Cartographies of Catastrophe: Precarious Futures in Contemporary Spanish American Speculative Fiction

My research project focuses on the creation of disastrous futures in a corpus of contemporary non-mimetic fiction from Spanish America, examining the interplay between catastrophe, territory, and the body. I investigate how literature translates on an aesthetic level the forms of precarity of our time, especially the intersection between the exposure to environmental disaster and other forms of injustice and violence.

The project originates from the observation of a trend in contemporary Spanish American literature, namely, the proliferation of texts portraying inhospitable, ominous futures. Interestingly, as Fredric Jameson suggests, these works of literature do not aim to provide mere "images" of the future, but rather convert the present into an inhabitable temporality, which can be contemplated as it emerges in the narrative as the past of a world to come.

Indeed, the present we inhabit already is a catastrophic time, marked by the anthropogenic shaping of the planet, the emergence of new pandemics, and the outbreak of new conflicts that threaten to end the world as we know it today. These considerations pave the way for my research questions:

How is catastrophe articulated in contemporary Spanish American literature? How do these works interact with contemporary issues?

How do these works depict the interplay between catastrophe, the territory where it takes place and the bodies of its inhabitants?

How do these works contribute to a rethinking of the positioning of the human on the planet and the relationship with it?

To answer the above questions, I examine a corpus of non-mimetic literature published in Spanish America from 2000 to the present. Specifically, I focus on novels and short stories from the Southern Cone, a region that brings together Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile-three countries that, besides geographical proximity, share similar cultural and socio-political histories.

I am interested in texts that use catastrophe as a productive space, in which aesthetic and formal strategies are creatively used to reflect on contemporary issues. I argue that catastrophe constitutes not only a recurring theme or diegetic element but rather becomes a modus legendi of the environment it reflects, and as such its examination cannot be separated from a discussion of the culture that imagines it.

This project falls within the field of literary studies, upon which it establishes its theoretical and methodological foundation. However, formal and aesthetic analyses specific to literary criticism will be combined with the discussion of the cultural, political, and discursive aspects illustrated in the texts. The examination of literary figurations of catastrophe relies on studies concerning the representation and mediation of disaster in the cultural sphere as well as reflections on precarity and vulerability as elaborated within feminist materialism.

Moreover, this project intertwines contributions from environmental humanities and ecocriticism and feminist posthumanism to question current representation of the human and to envision alternative modes of representation and relationality with the planet and its inhabitants.

The significance of this project extends beyond the limits of literary studies, as it constitutes a fundamental contribution to inter- and transdisciplinary discussions concerning the challenges of our present. On the one hand, the inclusion of epistemologies and experiences elaborated at the "margins" may contribute to the articulation of non-hegemonic discourses, and to the revision of conceptual and theoretical frames which prove to be inadequate today.

On the other hand, although it is traversed by other forms of inequality and precarity, catastrophe is an experience that indiscriminately exposes human vulnerability. It is precisely in the embrace of this shared, corporeal fragility that lies the possibility of rethinking our identity and relational existence in more equitable and sustainable way