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

by Ilka Kressner (Editor), Ana María Mutis (Editor), Elizabeth Pettinaroli (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032084824
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/30/2021
Series:	Routledge Studies in World Literatures and the Environment
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

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