Abstract

Rhetorical studies of water-related controversies highlight multiple interpretations of water at stake. Yet nearly every dispute over water involves not just contested meanings but contested ontologies. This essay examines water ontologies in a controversy over water wells in Ontario, Canada, which residents claim were affected by pile driving for wind turbine installation. Drawing on Annemarie Mol’s theory of multiple ontologies and the Bakhtinian term, chronotope, I show how different water ontologies emerge from spatiotemporal orientations and shift how expertise is enacted. Common water ontologies, water-as-resource and water-as-chemical-entity, enshrine white settlers as experts, despite their different stances on the issue in question. Municipal leaders, corporate representatives, and community members enacted water as an entity knowable to technoscience and exploitable by humans. An alternative ontology introduced by First Nations leaders, water-as-lifeblood, emphasizes water as a sacred, life-giving force. Speakers authorize themselves as experts by enacting water differently.