Subjunctive Aesthetics argues for the importance of ecocritical
approaches within the field of Mexican Studies. While environmental
historians of Mexico have been leading the charge in terms of
foregrounding the nonhuman as a legitimate object of analysis,
Mexican cultural studies is just beginning to do. This monograph
engages with established and up-and-coming Latin American
ecocritical scholars who argue that Latin America offers an
important corrective to Anglocentric approaches to the Anthropocene
by foregrounding colonialism and empire. Studies indicate that
Mexicans are more worried about climate change than any other
global issue, more anxious about natural disasters than any other
quotidian threat (including crime), and that suicide rates have
risen along with temperatures. These fears are grounded in reality:
in the last twenty years, Mexico issued more than 2,000 extreme
weather warnings linked to hydrometeorological events, and ranked
in the top ten countries in terms of absolute economic losses
caused by (un)natural disasters. Mexico is also one of the
deadliest countries in the world for environmental activists: in
2018 alone, twenty-one defenders of the land were murdered, and
many others criminalized or intimidated. Pervasive social anxiety
in Mexico about ongoing and future climate change is reflected in
the outpouring of eco-cultural production over the past decade, a
body of work that has yet to be comprehensively studied. The
exponential explosion of cultural responses to climate change is
not limited to any one genre: Mexican poets like Karen Villeda and
Isabel Zapata have thematized extinction, sci-fi writer Alberto
Chimal recently published a dystopian young adult climate fiction,
and performance artist Naomi Rincón Gallardo has created works
that contest extractivism’s murderous tactics. Subjunctive
Aesthetics brings together these artists and others to collate a
diverse constellation of Mexican cultural responses to climate
change that index the multifaceted nature of this crisis. Carolyn
Fornoff argues that what unites this array is the way in which it
deploys the subjunctive—not the what is, but the what if—in
order to disrupt current paradigms of energy consumption and
envision a more just and sustainable planetary future.
General
Imprint: |
Vanderbilt University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Series: |
Critical Mexican Studies |
Release date: |
2024 |
Authors: |
Carolyn Fornoff
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152mm (L x W) |
Pages: |
288 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8265-0618-4 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-8265-0618-6 |
Barcode: |
9780826506184 |
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