Diverting Water in Rousseau: Technology, the Sublime, and the Quotidian

Rousseau's strategic placement of the question of water diversion within his corpus signals the importance of controlling the natural environment. For Rousseau, water diversion is important not only for the survival of the species, but also for providing an opportunity for communal effort and ethical and aesthetic experience. This essay analyzes passages from Rousseau's Confessions, Essai sur l'origine des langues and Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse to explore the meanings of diverting water in Rousseau's corpus. Bringing together two distinctly different strands of analysis—a literary/critical reading of Rousseau that focuses on questions of the sublime in relation to technological achievements, and a historical exploration of the mundane material problem of the accessibility of water in the eighteenth century—I attempt to unpack the social, political, ethical and aesthetic implications of hydraulic technology.