Depletion

This essay introduces the problematic of groundwater depletion and aquifer ethnography on the US High Plains, home to five generations of the author's family, in order to reflect more broadly on the following questions: What would it mean to take responsibility for our roles in the political present? How might rurality orient a search for nonnormative commons within the contemporary? What kind of commensurabilities could enable a more effective critical engagement with proliferating experiences of extraction, disregard, and uncertainty? And how might ethnography contribute to a future beyond depletion?