An Ibero-American Perspective on Narratives of Pandemics (Ecocritical Theory and Practice)

An Ibero-American Perspective on Narratives of Pandemics is a critique of the realities of the pandemic in the Ibero-American world and its intertwined relationship with the environment. Through a critical gaze into the history of the region as it has evolved through periods of socio-environmental and cultural conflicts, the book chronicles multiple experiences of how people managed to negotiate multiple crises on a daily basis by often clinging to their age old cultural and healing practices, as well as the humanistic representation of such experiences in various fictional and nonfictional writings. The contributors expose the biopolitics around COVID-19 and its effects particularly on marginalised populations and the environment in an effort to consider the complexity of the pandemic in its multiple dimensions. They evaluate it through climatic, socioeconomic, political, scientific, and cultural lenses that they argue shaped the realities of the pandemic. They also take a close look at the use and effects of language in virtual spaces, implying it has the ability to construct/mis-construct reality in this postmodern world, arguing there is a need for a new environmental ethic post-pandemic. Cover Contents Acknowledgments Preface Introduction‌‌ Part I Tuberculosis and Melancholy in the Work of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer The Turn of the Century and the Spanish Imaginary Facing the Disease The Language of a Sick Nation Part II Guatemalan Expressions Between Life and Death Now That We Are Back to School . . . Pandemic, Environment, and Community Links Chronicle of Life during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Mexico Afro-Brazilians and COVID-19 Language and Pandemics The COVID-19 Pandemic and Agency for a New Environmental Ethic Biopolitics and Environmental Governance in the Time‌‌‌ of the New Coronavirus Pandemic Index About the Contributors