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

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. 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 the 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. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 List of Illustrations 9 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction 13 PART I Bad Living: Mutations, Monsters and Phantoms 48 1 Monsters and Agritoxins: The Environmental Gothic in Samanta Schweblin’s Distancia de rescate 50 2 Toxic Nature in Contemporary Argentine Narratives: Contaminated Bodies and Ecomutations 66 3 The Ruins of Modernity: Synecdoche of Neoliberal Mexico in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 85 PART II Econarratives and Ecopoetics of Slow Violence 104 4 The Representation of Slow Violence and the Spatiality of Injustice in Y tu mamá también and Temporada de patos 106 5 The Voice of Water: Spiritual Ecology, Memory, and Violence in Daughter of the Lake and The Pearl Button 125 6 From Polluted Swan Song to Happy Armadillos: The Cold War’s Slow Violence in Nicaragua 139 PART III Protracted Degradation and the Slow Violence of Toxicity 156 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 158 8 Violence, Slow and Explosive: Spectrality, Landscape, and Trauma in Evelio Rosero’s Los ejércitos 173 9 The Environmentalism of Poor Women of Color in Mayra Santos-Febres’s Nuestra Señora de la Noche 191 PART IV Materialities, Performances, and Ecologies of Praxis 208 10 Slow Violence in a Digital World: Tarahumara Apocalypse and Endogenous Meaning in Mulaka 210 11 Slow Violence in the Scientific Ecosystem: Decolonial Ecocriticism on Science in the Global South 229 12 Bodies, Transparent Matter, and Immateriality: Compagnie Käfig’s Ecodance Performances 247 13 Llubia Negra: Fetishism of Form, Temporalities of Waste, and Slow Violence in Cartonera Publishing of the Triple Frontier (Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina) 268 Contributors 288 Index 292