Teaching Ecocriticism and the Global South. A View of Latin American Environmental Thinking through the Environmental Humanities (original) (raw)

South American Environmental Philosophy

Environmental Ethics, 2012

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, South America hosts the world's greatest diversity of plants and most animal groups, as well as a variety of environmental movements, involving urban and rural communities. South American academic philosophy, however, has given little consideration to this rich biocultural context. To nourish an emergent regional environmental philosophy three main sources can be identified. First, a variety of ancient and contemporary ecological worldviews and practices offer a rich biocultural array of South American environmental thought that can be disclosed and valued through the work of cultural anthropology, liberation philosophy, liberation pedagogy, liberation theology, ecofeminism, and biocultural conservation. Second, some recent academic environmental philosophy research and teaching teams have been formed in South American universities with the support of the interdisciplinary United Nations Environmental Programme or based on the individual interests of some scattered scholars. Third, social movements have increasingly demanded the incorporation of environmental values into regional policies and the decision-making processes. These three sources can foster intercultural, international, and transdisciplinary dialogues to further develop a South American environmental philosophy grounded in its precious biocultural diversity.

Latin American Environmental Thought: A Heritage of Knowledge for Sustainability

The cradle and the first steps Recently, and with increasing frequency, an idea has begun to turn in our minds and to beat in our hearts: the ambition of being the creators of our own thinking. We have begun to write about this new way of thinking in our books, to inscribe it in our educational programs, and to manifest it in our environmentalist actions with the aspiration of giving our environmental thinking the certification of a denomination of origin: Latin America.

Introduction_ The Latin American Ecocultural Reader

The Latin American Ecocultural Reader, 2020

The Latin American Ecocultural Reader is a comprehensive anthology of literary and cultural texts about the natural world. The selections, drawn from throughout the Spanish-speaking countries and Brazil, span from the early colonial period to the present. Editors Jennifer French and Gisela Heffes present work by canonical figures, including José Martí, Bartolomé de las Casas, Rubén Darío, and Alfonsina Storni, in the context of our current state of environmental crisis, prompting new interpretations of their celebrated writings. They also present contemporary work that illuminates the marginalized environmental cultures of women, indigenous, and Afro-Latin American populations. Each selection is introduced with a short essay on the author and the salience of their work; the selections are arranged into eight parts, each of which begins with an introductory essay that speaks to the political, economic, and environmental history of the time and provides interpretative cues for the selections that follow. The editors also include a general introduction with a concise overview of the field of ecocriticism as it has developed since the 1990s. They argue that various strands of environmental thought—recognizable today as extractivism, eco-feminism, Amerindian ontologies, and so forth—can be traced back through the centuries to the earliest colonial period, when Europeans first described the Americas as an edenic “New World” and appropriated the bodies of enslaved Indians and Africans to exploit its natural bounty.

Ecocriticism and the Anthropocene in Latin American Culture (Syllabus)

In this course, we explore how Latin American cultural production, both past and present, exposes and confronts the profound challenges and consequences of the Anthropocene-a geological epoch defined by human impact on the planet. Through an ecocritical lens, we will examine the environmental and social consequences of this era, focusing on the intersections of cultural studies, literary studies, and environmental humanities. By engaging with works that conceptualize the Anthropocene and related terms like the Capitalocene and the Plantationocene, we will uncover the connections between our ongoing environmental crisis and the legacies of colonialism, racialization, and extractivism. Our interdisciplinary approach includes diverse texts and artistic pieces that illuminate these complex interactions while also proposing possible responses to the problems they pose. By the end of the course, students will be familiar with current scholarship in environmental humanities and have a deeper understanding of Latin American culture, literature, and environmental art. The course will be taught in English, with further readings suggested for those proficient in Spanish or Portuguese.

Critical Thoughts on Ecosocial Devastation: Latin American Perspectives

Revista de Estudios Sociales, 2024

In this special issue, our focus will be on analyzing the contributions that Latin American thought has made or could make to the socio-ecological problems that currently afflict us. Latin American thought stands out for its epistemic-ecological disruptiveness, which reflects its ability to transform the very way we speak, know, and feel the relationship between humans and more-than-human entities (Alimonda, Toro Pérez, and Martín 2017). Latin American critical perspectives advocate for relational and ecological approaches to knowledge construction, while also revealing the presence of cosmocentric political, economic, historical, and artistic practices that challenge anthropocentric forms, modern dualism, and instrumental reason. These ideologies are responsible for the problematic division between humans and non-humans. The contextual nature of Latin American thought, coupled with its emphasis on relationality as an epistemological principle, fosters productive dialogues with intellectual traditions from various regions (such as Europe, India, or Africa). It enables Latin American perspectives to respond to global eco-social issues in a situated yet impactful manner. At the same time, the theoretical rigor and transformative potential of the Latin American perspective have led authors from the global north to draw on these perspectives to develop sophisticated critical theories and to complexify, for example, understandings of the Capitalocene (Moore 2015 and 2016) or theories of environmental justice (Álvarez and Coolsaet 2020; Rodríguez and Inturias 2018). We look forward to receiving contributions that explore how Latin American critical perspectives contribute to the ecological shift. To fully grasp the complexity of the socio-ecological crisis and the resulting responses, we eagerly invite theoretical texts that offer conceptual analysis or critical discussions of theoretical proposals. We also welcome empirical analyses, including field research or qualitative/quantitative methodologies, among others. Contributions can be organized around the following thematic axes, without being limited exclusively to them: 1. The utility of diverse non-canonical knowledge traditions in Latin America for addressing the global socio-ecological crisis. 2. Proposals emerging from Latin America within anti/post/decolonial studies, feminist perspectives, and artistic/aesthetic practices as pathways to addressing the socio-ecological crisis. 3. Critical Latin American studies on socio-environmental conflicts, conservation, and environmental preservation in specific territories, conducted through empirical methodologies involving fieldwork and/or engagement with communities. 4. Comparative analysis of contemporary critical approaches from Latin America in the fields of political theory and social theory in response to the challenges posed by the ecological crisis within the realm of social sciences.

Earth Stewardship and the Biocultural Ethic: Latin American Perspectives

Latin America hosts a diversity of ecological worldviews and practices rooted in Amerindian cultures (e.g., Aymara, Quechua, U’wa, and Waorani) and schools of thought (e.g., geoculture, decoloniality, liberation philosophy and ecotheology) that have actual and potential value for Earth Stewardship. However, global discourses do not adequately include the diversity of languages and ethics rooted in the heterogeneous biocultural mosaic of Latin America and other regions. This is due in part to the limited inter-linguistic and inter-cultural dialogue among academics, educators, and policy makers that reside in different regions of the world. To contribute to solving this deficit, this chapter couples the conceptual frameworks of Earth stewardship and the biocultural ethic to foster: (i) inter-cultural dialogues and negotiations that fracture the current homogeneity of neoliberal global discourses through the acknowledgement and inclusion of the diversity of ecological worldviews, values, and languages, and (ii) forms of biocultural interspecies co-inhabitation embedded in the diversity of habitats and life habits. A basic principle of the biocultural ethic is that life habits are interrelated with the communities of co-in-habitants and their habitats. These “3Hs” of the biocultural ethic offer a conceptual framework that can be coupled with three terms that identify Earth Stewardship: the habitats of the Earth, the habit of stewardship, and the communities of co-inhabitants including the stewards. This coupling makes explicit the participation of diverse stewards. To better recognize the stewards’ diversity is essential to identify their differential responsibility in the genesis of global environmental change, at the same time that to visualize and value a plethora of ways of conceiving and practicing Earth stewardship.