Contesting the climate unthinkable : Latin American cultural responses to a warming world / edited by Azucena Castro, Gianfranco Selgas, and Ken Benson ; foreword by Gabriel Giorgi.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Castro, Azucena, editor.

Selgas, Gianfranco, 1988- editor.

Benson, Ken, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Climatic changes in literature.

Climatic changes in motion pictures.

Climatic changes in art.

Latin American literature--21st century--History and criticism.

Latin American literature.

Motion pictures--Latin America--History--21st century.

Motion pictures.

Arts, Latin American--21st century--History and criticism.

Arts, Latin American.

Latin America--Environmental conditions--21st century.

Latin America.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Gainesville : University of Florida Press, [2025]

Summary:

"Examining Latin American cultural works that rethink environmental change and natural catastrophes. This volume explores Latin American cultural works from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that reflect environmental changes brought on by colonization, capitalism, and resource exploitation. Contributors examine films, novels, photographs, and videos from the Caribbean, the Southern Cone, the Andes, and the Amazon, showcasing how artists, writers, and activists depict the scale and impact of ecological crises. Drawing from environmental humanities, decolonial thought, and Indigenous scholarship, this book examines how relationships with the nonhuman reshape human understandings of ecological collapse and resilience. Contributors discuss movies on toxic waste in Chile and Bolivia, gothic elements in horror, art and mineral extraction in Venezuela, dystopian novels set in the Río de la Plata, Mapuche poetry and dance in protest of terricidio, and utopias in Brazilian Afrofuturistic novels. They show how speculative fiction, testimonial narratives, experimental films, and site-specific installations address environmental disasters, climate breakdown, and extractivism, revealing the colonial histories and economic structures that underpin climate change. The chapters in this book examine artistic forms that amplify the voices of affected communities and envision more ethical futures rooted in regional cultures, geographies, and practices. Highlighting the significance of perspectives from the Global South, this volume broadens understandings of environmental justice and ways of rethinking planetary survival. Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Contributors: Paul Merchant, Igor Barreto, Ken Benson, Victoria Saramago, José Carlos Díaz Zanelli, Andrés Obando, Jasmin Belmar Shagulian, Patrick Brock, Gianfranco Selgas, Sebastian Wiedemann, Roberto Roabilnho, Azucena Castro, Emily Baker, Montserrat Madariaga-Caro, Allison Mackey"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction : contesting the climate unthinkable : Latin America and the warming world / Gianfranco Selgas, Azucena Castro, Ken Benson

Dying well : micropolitics of life against terricidio in Mapuche poetics / Montserrat Madariaga-Caro

The art of an ecological constitution : beyond derangement in Chile / Paul R. Merchant

Entangled ruins : nature and post-catastrophic landscapes in Hiram Bingham's Inca land and José de la Riva-Aguero's Paisajes peruanos / Andrés Ernesto Obando

What is the conflict about? : ecology, ontology, and decoloniality in Joseph Zarate's Guerras del interior / José Carlos Díaz Zanelli

Archives of the planetary mine : art, political ecology, and media geology in Chile and Venezuela / Gianfranco Selgas

Fiction writing and environmental conservation in Latin America : the cases of João Guimarães Rosa and Alejo Carpentier / Victoria Saramago

Embodying anthropocene awareness in ecogótico rioplatense / Allison Mackey

Haunting trees in the Global South : image and life in the rubble of climate change / Roberto Robalinho

Toxic transits : ghostly double-gazes, slow violence and North-South ecologies of inequalities in the films sealed cargo (Bolivia) and Arica (Chile) / Azucena Castro

Culture, inequality, and queer ecology in Rita Indiana's La mucama de Omicunl / Emily Baker

Toward a cosmopolitics of the image : notes for a possible ecology of cinematic practices / Sebastian Wiedemann

Brazilian Afrofuturism, climate apocalypse, and heuristic function / Patrick Brock

Choike Purrun : the Mapuche people's sacred dance / Jasmin Belmar Shagulian

The paths not seen : how I structured my representation of nature / Igor Barreto.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Online resource; title from PDF title (JSTOR, viewed April 24, 2026).

Other Format:

Print version: Contesting the climate unthinkable

ISBN:

9781683405672

1683405676

9781683405764

1683405765

OCLC:

1564196100