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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.
Humanists, scientists, and artists collaborate to address the
disjunctive temporalities of ecological crisis In 2016,
Antarctica's Totten Glacier, formed some 34 million years ago,
detached from its bedrock, melted from the bottom by warming ocean
waters. For the editors of Timescales, this event captures the
disjunctive temporalities of our era's-the
Anthropocene's-ecological crises: the rapid and accelerating
degradation of our planet's life-supporting environment established
slowly over millennia. They contend that, to represent and respond
to these crises (i.e., climate change, rising sea levels, ocean
acidification, species extinction, and biodiversity loss) requires
reframing time itself, making more visible the relationship between
past, present, and future, and between a human life span and the
planet's. Timescales' collection of lively and thought-provoking
essays puts oceanographers, geophysicists, geologists, and
anthropologists into conversation with literary scholars, art
historians, and archaeologists. Together forging new intellectual
spaces, they explore the relationship between geological deep time
and historical particularity, between ecological crises and
cultural expression, between environmental policy and social
constructions, between restoration ecology and future imaginaries,
and between constructive pessimism and radical (and actionable)
hope. Interspersed among these essays are three complementary
"etudes," in which artists describe experimental works that explore
the various timescales of ecological crisis. Contributors: Jason
Bell, Harvard Law School; Iemanja Brown, College of Wooster;
Beatriz Cortez, California State U, Northridge; Wai Chee Dimock,
Yale U; Jane E. Dmochowski, U of Pennsylvania; David A. D. Evans,
Yale U; Kate Farquhar; Marcia Ferguson, U of Pennsylvania; OEmur
Harmansah, U of Illinois at Chicago; Troy Herion; Mimi Lien; Mary
Mattingly; Paul Mitchell, U of Pennsylvania; Frank Pavia,
California Institute of Technology; Dan Rothenberg; Jennifer E.
Telesca, Pratt Institute; Charles M. Tung, Seattle U.
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.
Humanists, scientists, and artists collaborate to address the
disjunctive temporalities of ecological crisis In 2016,
Antarctica’s Totten Glacier, formed some 34 million years ago,
detached from its bedrock, melted from the bottom by warming ocean
waters. For the editors of Timescales, this event captures the
disjunctive temporalities of our era’s—the
Anthropocene’s—ecological crises: the rapid and accelerating
degradation of our planet’s life-supporting environment
established slowly over millennia. They contend that, to represent
and respond to these crises (i.e., climate change, rising sea
levels, ocean acidification, species extinction, and biodiversity
loss) requires reframing time itself, making more visible the
relationship between past, present, and future, and between a human
life span and the planet’s. Timescales’ collection of
lively and thought-provoking essays puts oceanographers,
geophysicists, geologists, and anthropologists into conversation
with literary scholars, art historians, and archaeologists.
Together forging new intellectual spaces, they explore the
relationship between geological deep time and historical
particularity, between ecological crises and cultural expression,
between environmental policy and social constructions, between
restoration ecology and future imaginaries, and between
constructive pessimism and radical (and actionable) hope.
Interspersed among these essays are three complementary
“etudes,” in which artists describe experimental works that
explore the various timescales of ecological crisis. Contributors:
Jason Bell, Harvard Law School; Iemanjá Brown, College of Wooster;
Beatriz Cortez, California State U, Northridge; Wai Chee Dimock,
Yale U; Jane E. Dmochowski, U of Pennsylvania; David A. D. Evans,
Yale U; Kate Farquhar; Marcia Ferguson, U of Pennsylvania; Ömür
Harmanşah, U of Illinois at Chicago; Troy Herion; Mimi Lien; Mary
Mattingly; Paul Mitchell, U of Pennsylvania; Frank Pavia,
California Institute of Technology; Dan Rothenberg; Jennifer E.
Telesca, Pratt Institute; Charles M. Tung, Seattle U.
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