Gaïa’s death. Literary Hints of a Future Inside and Out Nature

Abstract

The uncertainty about the future has resulted, over the years, in a prolific textual production that questions the future of humanity and society. The narrative of anticipation is thus positioned as a favorite textual type, which uses futuristic speculation to reflect on the present. This article aims to interrogate the relationship of the human being with nature as an other and its modes of connection —exploitation and representation— in a Latin American corpus that grants agency to the earth system to the detriment of the Anthropocene. With an interdisciplinary methodological approach that combines ecocriticism, postcolonial studies and new materialisms, a series of texts will be analyzed that postulate the importance of thinking about ways of life outside the Western paradigm —capitalist and anthropocentrist— where nature regains its agency as an active subject. We will thus contemplate environmental concerns, representation and power between human and non-human agencies. Our objective will then be to collect regularities in Latin American anticipatory thinking about human becoming and the natural environment that call into question our link with nature, bodies and non-human materialities.