Books by Gisela Heffes
The Latin American Ecocultural Reader, 2020
The Latin American Ecocultural Reader is a comprehensive anthology of literary and cultural texts... more 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.
Las ciudades imaginarias en la literatura latinoamericana, 2008
This work examines the relationship between the representation of the imaginary city in a number ... more This work examines the relationship between the representation of the imaginary city in a number of political and cultural texts, and argued that the imaginary city represents a privileged laboratory through which one may assess the varied cultural, political and economic transformations associated with Latin American modernity. These literary representations of non-existent urban spaces and their significance in the wider political and cultural framework of Latin America constitute a crucial intellectual inquiry into modernity and its aftermath.
Este libro realizado en conjunto entre los departamentos de Arte y Literatura, reúne artículos y ... more Este libro realizado en conjunto entre los departamentos de Arte y Literatura, reúne artículos y trabajos de artistas que trazan en conjunto un recorrido crítico y estético por nuevos imaginarios y conceptualizaciones del espacio natural. En este recorrido, nociones como “geografía”, “territorio”, “paisaje”, “cartografía” e “itinerario”, entre otras, son vueltas a pensar y a tornar significantes en relación a una diversidad de prácticas culturales. Se estudian nuevos desplazamientos entre los distintos medios de las artes contemporáneas, lo que permite pensar no solo en los sentidos geográficos del espacio, sino también en espacios como el de la lectura, de la novela y del poema, y de sus redefiniciones en términos visuales y sonoros.
http://ediciones.uahurtado.cl/libro/mas-alla-la-naturaleza/
This study analyzes Latin American literary, cinematic, performative and aesthetic representation... more This study analyzes Latin American literary, cinematic, performative and aesthetic representations through the scope of three distinctive environmental tropes: “destruction,” “sustainability” and “preservation.” While informed by current concerns that originated in recent debates within American and English ecocriticism, my book shows how this critical apparatus cannot accurately operate vis-à-vis the specificity of Latin American literary and cultural productions.
Grounded in an interdisciplinary approach towards the exploitation of both natural and human resources, this project focuses on new attempts to formulate and analyze how Latin American representations are imbued with a rhetoric of waste and disposal in relationship to both the conservation and destruction of nature.
Cuadernos de Literatura 32 by Gisela Heffes
Book Chapters by Gisela Heffes
Visualizing Loss in Latin America Biopolitics, Waste, and the Urban Environment, 2023
This chapter circles back to the aesthetic works examined in the book and argues that they operat... more This chapter circles back to the aesthetic works examined in the book and argues that they operate at the intersections of biopolitics and ecocriticism, foregrounding questions of spatialities and temporalities, of the scope of waste, and of the all-encompassing significance of wastescapes. By placing Latin American figurations within a bioecocritical paradigm that accounts for the material conditions of human and non-human relational networks––especially those at the convergence of what’s discarded and what isn’t, what’s valuable and what is not––it seeks to foster alternative meanings and enable new modes of understanding. It argues that in Latin America the very scheme of ecological preservation implies a paramount paradox: while this environmentalist praxis is performed by the human workforce, the same subjects that come into contact with trash are subsumed by a rhetoric of waste, rendering both undistinguishable. This rhetoric of waste, therefore, inverts the very question of environmental preservation with that of upholding humanity. This chapter proposes bioecocriticism as a concept that enables us to visualize human and non-human obsolescence––loss––and, by doing so, to examine the ontological impact of consumption and expendability in both subjects and objects, human and non-human beings alike.
Handbook of Latin American Environmental Aesthetics, 2023
In this essay, I discuss the convergence of toxic matters and matters of toxicity at the intersec... more In this essay, I discuss the convergence of toxic matters and matters of toxicity at the intersections of space and time, politics and history, and violence and affect through the conceptual framework of recurrence in its dual meanings of “happening again,” as well as of “return” and “repetition.” Drawing on the work of Mexican visual artist and writer Verónica Gerber Bicceci, specifically her two works, Conjunto vacío (2015) and La compañía (2019), I argue that toxicity, as any other matter with agentic properties, expands, contracts, disrupts, and ignites interactions among relational subjects and objects, constituting collective forms of social and cultural networking.
"Ecocriticism," The Routledge Companion to Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Latin American Literary and Cultural Forms (edited by Guillermina Ferrari and Mariano Siskind), 2022
This chapter discusses the emergence of ecocriticism as both a critical and theoretical tool of c... more This chapter discusses the emergence of ecocriticism as both a critical and theoretical tool of cultural and literary inquiry in the context of Latin American studies. Ecocriticism originally developed in departments of English in the US and Britain, and has only recently begun to consider literatures of the Global South, which constitutes part of the postcolonial or so-called “developing” world. This chapter address the question of what it means to “do” ecocriticism in Latin American contexts by drawing on some examples of the scholarship that has been most productive in thinking about the relationship between nature and Latin American cultural production. In addition, this chapter considers the works of established and contemporary critical theorists that have had the greatest impact among current Latin American scholars, and highlight these theorists’ engagements with key analytical concepts such as “nature,” “culture,” “the human,” and “the nonhuman.” Ultimately, it is the goal of this chapter to draw on the works of the scholars who have been central in articulating a model of ecocritical practice that focuses on the relations of power that are represented in Latin America’s environmental literature.
Visualizing Loss in Latin America. Biopolitics, Waste, and the Urban Environment, 2023
This book is the result of an ecocritical reading of a wide range of texts—from brief tales and s... more This book is the result of an ecocritical reading of a wide range of texts—from brief tales and short stories to chronicles, plays, and novels—as well as documentaries and feature films, works of art and urban performances. Despite this broad range of source materials, they are all anchored in a specific territory: the space of the Latin American city from the early twentieth century to the present. Through an interdisciplinary analytical methodology, the proposed reading draws from ecocriticism as a tool of literary and cultural inquiry all the while interrogating the extent to which this critical apparatus—originating and circulating in Anglo-American scholarship—can account for a Latin American phenomenon. This sweeping introduction proposes the conditions for a specifically Latin American ecocriticism that distances itself, through its singular characteristics, from those proposals principally formulated in the disciplinary field coming from English-speaking studies. It argues that the aesthetic productions analyzed in this book operate at the intersections of biopolitics and ecocriticism, placing Latin American figurations within a bioecocritical paradigm that defines the material conditions of human and non-human relational networks while constituting different meanings and enabling new forms of understanding.
Pushing Past the Human in Latin American Cinema, 2021
En Más allá del mapa. Imaginarios del espacio abierto en la cultura latinoamericana contemporánea, eds. Macarena Urzúa Opazo e Irene Depetris Chauvin (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado): 231-48, 2019
Utopías urbanas: geopolíticas del deseo en América Latina (Gisela Heffes, ed.), 2013
The Utopian Impulse in Latin America, 2011
In Ecofictions, Ecorealities, and Slow Violence in Latin America and the Latinx World, 2020
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Books by Gisela Heffes
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.
http://ediciones.uahurtado.cl/libro/mas-alla-la-naturaleza/
Grounded in an interdisciplinary approach towards the exploitation of both natural and human resources, this project focuses on new attempts to formulate and analyze how Latin American representations are imbued with a rhetoric of waste and disposal in relationship to both the conservation and destruction of nature.
Cuadernos de Literatura 32 by Gisela Heffes
Book Chapters by Gisela Heffes
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.
http://ediciones.uahurtado.cl/libro/mas-alla-la-naturaleza/
Grounded in an interdisciplinary approach towards the exploitation of both natural and human resources, this project focuses on new attempts to formulate and analyze how Latin American representations are imbued with a rhetoric of waste and disposal in relationship to both the conservation and destruction of nature.
This article stems from the idea of anachronism postulated by Didi-Huberman in Before Time, as a model of questioning of history, and in connection with Benjamin’s dialectical model and the notion of “discontinuities” and “anachronisms of time” (2011: 154) to propose that the geological stratifications of the Anthropocene form layers that can be read as archives. I conceive the archive in this essay through two theoretical coordinates: on the one hand, necropolitics and necropower (Achilles
Mbembe); on the other, Walter Benjamin’s notion in relation to the act of collecting, especially that which treasures a value that escapes commodification devices and therefore it is capable of registering
remains, detritus, and everything that fluctuates on the threshold of extinction. I propose, in a broader sense, an anthropogenic necrospace that, altered and intervened by material layers of living and inorganic forms, will go on forging anachronistic archives. The aesthetic figurations analyzed here
are the novel El Rey del Agua (2016) by the Argentine Claudia Aboaf, the short stories “Agua” (1935) by Peruvian José María Arguedas, and “Los pescadores de vigas” (1913), by Uruguayan Horacio Quiroga. I read these aesthetic figurations from a critical exercise that bolster an anthropogenic
aesthetic/ethical proposal and that, through its conceptual flow, links them together with terrestrial, hydric and atmospheric layers. This gesture not only seeks to stress a formatted reading but also a form of analysis that is based on the erosion of a text and that therefore closes any possible layer of
meaning.
académicas, las obras de arte y los proyectos de trabajo de campo colaborativo reseñados aquí problematizan la dicotomía cultura/naturaleza como constitutiva de las actuales crisis ecológica y climática, reconsideran las premisas de la metafísica occidental ontológica y semiótica, y siembran experimentos simpoéticos y formas alternativas de conocimiento
que trascienden las divisiones disciplinarias.
This dossier brings together four essays that show how recent scholarship, art, and design practice are shaping the emergent field of Latin American Environmental Humanities — a rapidly consolidating discipline that cross-fertilises methods and perspectives stemming from the social sciences, arts and humanities, natural sciences, and Indigenous thought, to critically interrogate environmental histories and confront contemporary challenges.
Together, these review essays map a critical renewal of cultural studies that is currently unfolding through recent theoretical-analytical publications, ethnographic work, art practice, and site-specific art and design collaborations. We trace routes through a diverse corpus of emerging environmental scholarship, artistic and situated practice research, and
public engagement activities, to show how they respond to the urgent challenge “to think in the presence of ongoing facts of destruction”. The books, artworks, and collaborative fieldwork projects reviewed here problematise the culture/nature dichotomy as constitutive of the current ecological and climate crises, rethink the Western metaphysics of ontology
and semiotics, and seed sympoetic experiments and alternate ways of knowing that reach across disciplinary divides.
O presente dossiê reúne quatro ensaios que demonstram como um número de estudos recentes, junto com práticas de arte e design, estão reconfigurando o campo emergente das humanidades ambientais latino americanas — uma disciplina em rápida consolidação que nutre métodos e perspectivas derivados das ciências sociais, das artes e das humanidades;
das ciências naturais e do pensamento indígena — com o fim de interrogar criticamente as histórias ambientais e enfrentar os desafios contemporâneos. Os ensaios reunidos neste dossiê mapeiam uma renovação crítica dos estudos culturais que está tendo lugar por
meio de publicações teórico-analíticas recentes, trabalhos etnográficos, práticas artísticas e colaborações de arte e design em territórios específicos. Traçamos rotas por meio de um corpus diverso de estudos ambientais emergentes, pesquisa de práticas artísticas situadas
e atividades de participação pública, para destacar como respondem ao desafio urgente de “pensar en presencia de hechos de destrucción vigentes” (Stengers 2013, p. 186). As pesquisas acadêmicas, as obras de arte e os projetos de trabalho de campo colaborativo aqui resenhados problematizam a dicotomia cultura/natureza como constitutiva das atuais crises ecológica e climática, reconsideram as premissas da metafísica ocidental ontológica
e semiótica e semeiam experimentos simpoiéticos e formas alternativas de conhecimento que transcendem as divisões disciplinares.
of the Anthropocene, de Elizabeth DeLoughrey. Si bien el alcance de estos dos trabajos varía en términos de las geografías regionales y/o nacionales que abarcan, como así también los autores y artistas que se analizan, ambas investigaciones cuestionan el binomio naturaleza/cultura —junto a otras dicotomías modernas— desde posturas y ángulos diferentes (y quizás hasta opuestos). Mientras Hoyos apela a una desalegorización (es decir, a una «literalización») de un número de obras importantes dentro del canon
latinoamericano, DeLoughrey invita a reconsiderar la alegoría como una manera de simbolizar la «disyunción percibida entre los humanos y el planeta, entre nuestra “especie” y una “naturaleza” que es externa y dinámica».
The objective of this essay is to map the growing number of works that focus on the environmental humanities and to review two important contributions to the ongoing debates that are defining the direction of Latin American and Caribbean cultural studies. In 2019, Héctor Hoyos published Things with a History: Transcultural Materialism and the Literatures of Extraction in Contemporary Latin America, as Elizabeth DeLoughrey published Allegories of the Anthropocene. While the scope of these two works varies in
terms of the regional and/or national geographies they cover, as well as the authors and artists they analyzes, both books attempt to contest the nature/culture binary — along with other Modern dichotomies — from very different (perhaps even opposite) positions and angles: while Hoyos calls for a de-allegorization (namely, a “literalization”) of several important Latin American works, DeLoughrey, on the other hand, invites us to reconsider allegory as a way of symbolizing the “perceived disjunction between humans
and the planet, between our ‘species’ and a dynamic external ‘nature.’”
Este ensaio rastreia o número crescente de pesquisas no campo das humanidades ambientais e avalia duas importantes contribuições para os debates que atualmente marcam o rumo dos estudos culturais na América Latina e no Caribe. Em 2019, Héctor Hoyos publicou Things with a History: Transcultural Materialism and the Literatures of Extraction in Contemporary Latin America, e Elizabeth DeLoughrey publicou Allegories of the Anthropocene. Mesmo que o alcance dos dois livros varie em termos das geografias regionais e/ou nacionais que abrangem, assim como dos autores e artistas que analisam, ambos os dois tentam questionar o binômio natureza/cultura — junto com outras dicotomias modernas — desde posturas e ângulos muito diferentes (talvez opostos). Enquanto Hoyos apela a uma desalegorização (isto é, a uma «literalização») de várias obras importantes do cânone latino-americano, DeLoughrey, convida a reconsiderar a alegoria como uma maneira de simbolizar a “disyunción percibida entre los humanos y el planeta, entre nuestra ‘especie’ y una ‘naturaleza’ que es externa y dinámica”.
collaborations. We trace routes through a diverse corpus of emerging environmental scholarship, artistic and situated practice research, and public engagement activities, to show how they respond to the urgent challenge “to think in the presence of ongoing facts of destruction” . The books, artworks, and collaborative fieldwork projects reviewed here problematise the culture/nature dichotomy as constitutive of the current ecological
and climate crises, rethink the Western metaphysics of ontology and semiotics, and seed sympoetic experiments and alternate ways of knowing that reach across disciplinary divides.
(perhaps even opposite) positions and angles: while Hoyos calls for a de-allegorisation (namely, a “literalisation” ) of several important Latin American works, DeLoughrey, on the other hand, invites us to reconsider allegory as a way of symbolising the “perceived disjunction between humans and the planet, between our ‘species’ and a dynamic external ‘nature’”.
and climate crises, rethink the Western metaphysics of ontology and semiotics, and seed sympoetic experiments and alternate ways of knowing that reach across disciplinary divides.
This article focuses on the recent rural turn in contemporary Argentine literature production. It draws from Laurence Buell’s notion of toxic discourse (1988) in order to analyze two narratives: Distancia de rescate (2014), by Samanta Schweblin, and Las estrellas federales (2016), by Juan Diego Incardona, along with the poetry collection Un pequeño mundo enfermo (2014), by Julián Joven [pseudonym of Cristian Molina]. With the emergence and more frequent use of agrochemicals on Argentine rural soil, I argue that these writings articulate a discursive toxicity anchored in a transfigured pampa. Furthermore, the cultivation of transgenic soy transforms the space into a contaminated and contaminating landscape, whose agrotoxicity inoculates indiscriminately both human and nonhuman bodies. I read these bodily and spatialrepresentations, in both the fictions and poetry, as a textualization that redesigns the relation between subject and the natural environment, specifically the rural space, displacing a discourse of “buen vivir” for a literary production of what I propose, tentatively, as of “mal vivir” (bad living). This aesthetic production appeals to a reflection on environmental justice that considers the imminent damage and degradation of the contaminated landscape.
privileged the city over any other space. The writers featured here
propose a reconfiguration of the Latin American city in light of the
postmodern theme of disenchantment as well as a preoccupation
with the “end of utopia.”
Abstract: By the end of the XXth century and the beginning of the XXIst it has emerged a significant corpus of urban utopian narrative proposals where the preservation of nature is part of a specific “green” agenda. These utopian imaginaries offer a utopian scheme for private societies, in correspondence with the neoliberal economic politics that have been implemented in Latin America since the end of 1980s. Thus, the present article addresses the reconfiguration of this spatial imaginaries and the drastic contrast that these new urban and utopian models represent both in literature and cinema. It inquires, specifically, the role that both nature and environmental concerns play in these representations. Drawing from literary and cinematographic narratives such as the short story “No Retiro da Figueira” (1984) by Brazilian Moacyr Scliar, the novel La viuda de los jueves (2005) by Argentine Claudia Piñeiro, and the film La zona (2007) by Mexican Rodrigo Plá, this article will analyze how an urban and environmental rhetoric can be appropriated by an economically profitable discourse that will contrast, consequently, with the representations of both open and non-exclusive urban spaces, which exist side-by-side with these mileux, underlining its dystopian and ecocidal quality.