Literary Cartographies of the Anthropocene: 21st Century Narratives and Poetry on Climate Change and Solastalgia in the Southern Cone, South America
This work explores how Chilean and Argentinean fiction depict the emotional and social changes caused by climate change in the Southern Cone, an area that has been affected by mining, environmental malpractices, drought, deforestation, and agricultural over-exploitation. I will analyze the Works of authors such as Raúl Zurita, Samantha Schweblin and Pedro Mairal, utilizing innovative concepts like solastalgia (distress from environment change of someone’s home), eco-insile (alienation from living in a damaged environment), eco-exile (forced to leave home after ecological destruction) and Retrocapitalism (nostalgia for past extractivist economics that obscure their ecological and social harms) to understand how literature helps to link environmental affairs with public awareness. The Project includes field archival investigation work in Chile and Argentina, and digital literary mapping in collaboration with the UVA Digital Humanities Center, to elucidate the role of literature as a bridge towards environmental empathy and action.
