1st Edition

Ecofictions, Ecorealities, and Slow Violence in Latin America and the Latinx World

    300 Pages
    by Routledge

    298 Pages
    by Routledge

    Ecofictions, Ecorealities and Slow Violence in Latin America and the Latinx World brings together critical studies of Latin American and Latinx writing, film, visual, and performing arts to offer new perspectives on ecological violence. Building on Rob Nixon’s concept of "slow violence," the contributions to the volume explore processes of environmental destruction that are not immediately visible yet expand in time and space and transcend the limits of our experience. Authors consider these forms of destruction in relation to new material contexts of artistic creation, practices of activism, and cultural production in Latin American and Latinx worlds. Their critical contributions investigate how writers, cultural activists, filmmakers, and visual and performance artists across the region conceptualize, visualize, and document this invisible but far-reaching realm of violence that so tenaciously resists representation.



     



    The volume highlights the dense web of material relations in which all is enmeshed, and calls attention to a notion of agency that transcends the anthropocentric, engaging a cognition envisioned as embodied, collective, and relational. Ecofictions, Ecorealities and Slow Violence measures the breadth of creative imaginings and critical strategies from Latin America and Latinx contexts to enrich contemporary ecocritical studies in an era of heightened environmental vulnerability.

    Contents

    Ecofictions, Ecorealities and Slow Violence in Latin America and the Latinx World

    List of Figures

    Acknowledgements

    Introduction

    Ilka Kressner, Ana María Mutis, and Elizabeth Pettinaroli

    Part I

    Bad Living: Mutations, Monsters and Phantoms

    1 Monsters and Agritoxins: The Environmental Gothic in Samanta Schweblin’s Distancia de rescate

    Ana María Mutis

    2 Toxic Nature in Contemporary Argentine Narratives: Contaminated Bodies and Ecomutations

    Gisela Heffes

    3 The Ruins of Modernity: Synecdoche of Neoliberal Mexico in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666

    Diana Aldrete

    Part II

    Econarratives and Ecopoetics of Slow Violence

    4 The Representation of Slow Violence and the Spatiality of Injustice in Y tu mamá también and Temporada de patos

    Laura Barbas-Rhoden

    5 The Voice of Water: Spiritual Ecology, Memory, and Violence in Daughter of the Lake and The Pearl Button

    Ida Day

    6 From Polluted Swan Song to Happy Armadillos: The Cold War’s Slow Violence in Nicaragua

    Jacob Price

    Part III

    Protracted Degradation and the Slow Violence of Toxicity

    7 Collateral Damage: Nature and the Accumulation of Capital in Héctor Aguilar Camín’s El resplandor de la madera and Jennifer Clement’s Prayers for the Stolen

    Adrian Taylor Kane

    8 Violence, Slow and Explosive: Spectrality, Landscape, and Trauma in Evelio Rosero’s Los

    ejércitos

    Carlos Gardeazábal Bravo

    9 The Environmentalism of Poor Women of Color in Mayra Santos-Febres’s Nuestra Señora de la Noche

    Charlotte Rogers

    Part IV

    Materialities, Performances, and Ecologies of Praxis

    10 Slow Violence in a Digital World: Tarahumara Apocalypse and Endogenous Meaning in Mulaka

    Lauren Woolbright

    11 Slow Violence in the Scientific Ecosystem: Decolonial Ecocriticism on Science in the Global South

    Thaiane Oliveira

    12 Bodies, Transparent Matter, and Immateriality: Compagnie Käfig’s Eco-Dance Performances

    Ilka Kressner

    13 Llubia Negra: Fetishism of Form, Temporalities of Waste, and Slow Violence in Cartonera Publishing of the Triple Frontier (Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina)

    Elizabeth M. Pettinaroli

    Contributors

    Index

    Biography

    Ilka Kressner received her Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of Virginia. She is currently Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York.



    Ana María Mutis received her Ph.D. in Spanish, University of Virginia. She is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Trinity University.



    Elizabeth M. Pettinaroli received her Ph.D. in Spanish Literature at the University of Virginia. She is currently Associate Professor of Spanish Literature and Director of Latin American and Latinx Studies at Rhodes College.