Postcolonial Environments in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Works (original) (raw)

An Ecocritical Approach to Mexican and Colombian Brief Fiction, 2000-2015

This dissertation analyzes Mexican and Colombian brief fiction published after 2000, focusing on four authors from the Generation Zero Zero, Mexican authors Alberto Chimal and Heriberto Yépez and Colombian authors María Paz Ruiz Gil and Gabriela A. Arciniegas. The Generation Zero Zero consists of Latin American authors born in the 1970s who have published their major works after 2000. Agustín Cadena, Lorena Campa Rojas, Dolores Corrales Soriano, and Lauro Zavala separate the Generation Zero Zero from the writers of the Crack and claim that the group is heterogeneous in their lived experience in a time of crisis, their dismantling of utopic ideas, and their literary creations within the fantastic, science fiction and horror genres. This dissertation analyzes four authors of this generation to identify underlying ecocritical trends, an environmental unconscious, and the representation of human and non-human characters within this group of authors. Through an ecocritical approach to their writing and an exploration of their use of brief literary forms, I analyze Chimal, Yépez, Ruiz Gil, and Arciniegas’ representation of the environment and the non-human to reveal both anthropocentric and ecocentric perspectives within their publications, demonstrating a possible divide in the Generation Zero Zero in regard to environmental discourse.

Mythical dimension of human-environmental relations in modern latin- american prose fiction

Various modes of interaction between humans and the natural world are among the most important topics in modern Latin-American literature. The narrative discourse of the region debates the Old World myths and ideals projected onto the Latin-American reality. It also incorporates indigenous mythical concepts which contribute towards the creation of a new and original literary vision of the natural world. Growing interest in ecocriticism and its importance in postcolonial studies highlight the validity of new approaches to non-Western cultures and literatures and the necessity of reinterpretation of cultural practice within environmentally conscious theoretical framework. Far from being exhaustive, the present study suggests some new and ecologically sensitive interpretative patterns which centre on the relationship between myth, nature and narrative.

Swallowed: Political Ecology and Environmentalism in the Spanish American "Novela de la

Hispanía, vol. 93, no. 4, pp. 535-46 , 2010

In this paper, I begin with the identification of a moment of intertextuality between Un viejo que leia novelas de amor (1989) by Chilean Luis Sepulveda and La vorágine (1924) by Colombian Jose Eustasio Rivera as an analytical motif for a reevaluation of the environmentalism and political ecologies in the Spanish American novela de la selva tradition. I find that many of the well-established titles from the genre utilize a discourse of political ecology that can be characterized by its appeals to agents of the state. However, I propose a counter-tradition in the novela de la selva genre that expresses aspects of environmentalism such as the principles of "deep ecology," the role of emotion in nature protectionism, conservationism, the rights of nonhuman nature, etc. These works are precursors to the literary environmentalism of Sepulveda's novel and deserve a place in the canon of the novela de la selva. Furthermore, they anticipate and inform the environmentalism of Spanish American literature in particular and, as such, ought to be considered an essential element of environmentalist discourse in general, especially if that movement wishes to include local perspectives on such a globally important ecological asset as the Amazonian selva.

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.

The Capitalocene and Slow Violence in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude

Research Article, 2023

The term Global South originates in the social sciences, where it invokes the notion of a global North-South divide to organize nations according to socioeconomic and political status. In a literary context, the Global South signifies an ongoing endeavor to engage with the current global disposition by identifying its externalities and providing the framework in which wide-ranging and cross-regional resistance might be imagined. Drawing on this point of view, the Global South can be regarded as a resilient political imagination originating from the marginalized peoples' mutual recognition of analogous circumstances under contemporary capitalism. Recognition is, therefore, the critical point for the construction of Global South consciousness, which will enable those people to activate solidarities that can be put into action toward the goal of liberation. In this context, this paper intends to investigate Gabriel García Márquez's portrayal of an environmental apocalypse in One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), which offers rich possibilities for thinking about García Márquez in relation to the Global South. Paying particular attention to the geographical vulnerability of the Global South and Márquez's representation of the transnational banana company's ecocidal practices in Macondo, this paper establishes an analogous connection between capitalism's externalities and its impact on the environmental degradation and the living conditions of local communities. Drawing heavily on Jason W. Moore's notion of "the Capitalocene" and Rob Nixon's theory of "slow violence," this paper indicates that One Hundred Years of Solitude highlights the intersections between the analogous deterioration of the poor people's living conditions and the environment in Macondo, offering multiple entry points from which socio-ecological connections are embodied and conveyed to the readers.

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.

Environmental crisis in José Saramago`s fiction

Anthropocenica. Revista de Estudos do Antropoceno e Ecocrítica, 2021

José Saramago, vencedor do Prémio Nobel da Literatura em 1998, foi um dos mais acutilantes críticos da atualidade europeia nos domínios de crises económicas, políticas, sociais e ambientais. A última, a crise ambiental e as suas implicações e consequências, foi submetida a um atento e profundo escrutínio em narrativas ficcionais e não ficcionais de Saramago, tais como Os Cadernos de Lanzarote (1994) e A Caverna (2000). Neste ensaio, analiso a perspetiva multifacetada de Saramago sobre a crise ambiental em A Caverna. Em primeiro lugar, mostrarei que um espaço crucial do romance, a ironicamente chamada “Cintura Verde”, é na realidade um lugar sujo e monótono, tornando a expressão oximórica. De seguida, comentarei brevemente as configurações deturpadas do Centro circundado pela Cintura Verde enquanto lugar onde fenómenos e processos naturais, tais como a chuva e a neve, são apenas artificialmente construídos. Examino depois o impacto significativo da mudança climática nas vidas das per...