Overview

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.

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9780826506177

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Reviews

"Carolyn Fornoff’s insightful and clearly written Subjunctive Aesthetics draws inspiration from a grammatical mood expressing uncertainty and emotion to offer a new interpretation of twenty-first-century Mexican cultural production addressing ecological catastrophe. An innovative contribution to Latin American Environmental Humanities research, Subjunctive Aesthetics stakes an eloquent claim for the capacity of literature, visual arts, and film to imagine the possibilities of a post-extractivist world."" —Charlotte Rogers, author of Mourning El Dorado: Literature and Extractivism in the Contemporary American Tropics ""Brilliant and wide-ranging, Subjunctive Aesthetics shows how, instead of merely translated into cultural responses based on a straightforward rendering of factual evidence, the inescapable reality of the current ecological crisis has been reimagined by writers, visual artists, and filmmakers in alternative, hypothetical, and speculative ways. This book is fundamental for anyone interested in contemporary Mexican culture and new directions in the Environmental Humanities.""—Victoria Saramago, author of Fictional Environments: Mimesis, Deforestation, and Development in Latin America “Subjunctive Aesthetics is an original, innovative, and sweeping study of the narrative strategies deployed in Mexican cultural production of the 21st century in response to the climate crisis. It proposes that the subjunctive mood operates as an artistic expression to contest the definitiveness of foreclosure. In a moment of great despair towards a grim future, Subjunctive Aesthetics opens the possibilities to disrupt such closeness by mobilizing desire, emotion, and the imagination. Through innovative theories that illuminate and deepen our understanding of the climate crisis, Fornoff’s marvelous work allows us to reconsider our place in Earth while it reassures that the seed for transformations nests in potentiality.”—Gisela Heffes, author of Visualizing Loss in Latin America: Biopolitics, Waste, and the Urban Environment ""This is a fantastic and timely project. The impressive depth of Fornoff’s contextual research is well matched by the nuance in her analyses.""—Brian Gollnick, author of Reinventing the LacandÓn: Subaltern Representations in the Rain Forest of Chiapas"

"""Brilliant and wide-ranging, Subjunctive Aesthetics shows how, instead of merely translated into cultural responses based on a straightforward rendering of factual evidence, the inescapable reality of the current ecological crisis has been reimagined by writers, visual artists, and filmmakers in alternative, hypothetical, and speculative ways. This book is fundamental for anyone interested in contemporary Mexican culture and new directions in the Environmental Humanities."" --Victoria Saramago, author of Fictional Environments: Mimesis, Deforestation, and Development in Latin America ""Subjunctive Aesthetics is an original, innovative, and sweeping study of the narrative strategies deployed in Mexican cultural production of the 21st century in response to the climate crisis. It proposes that the subjunctive mood operates as an artistic expression to contest the definitiveness of foreclosure. In a moment of great despair towards a grim future, Subjunctive Aesthetics opens the possibilities to disrupt such closeness by mobilizing desire, emotion, and the imagination. Through innovative theories that illuminate and deepen our understanding of the climate crisis, Fornoff's marvelous work allows us to reconsider our place in Earth while it reassures that the seed for transformations nests in potentiality."" --Gisela Heffes, author of Visualizing Loss in Latin America: Biopolitics, Waste, and the Urban Environment ""Carolyn Fornoff's insightful and clearly written Subjunctive Aesthetics draws inspiration from a grammatical mood expressing uncertainty and emotion to offer a new interpretation of twenty-first-century Mexican cultural production addressing ecological catastrophe. An innovative contribution to Latin American Environmental Humanities research, Subjunctive Aesthetics stakes an eloquent claim for the capacity of literature, visual arts, and film to imagine the possibilities of a post-extractivist world."" --Charlotte Rogers, author of Mourning El Dorado: Literature and Extractivism in the Contemporary American Tropics ""This is a fantastic and timely project. The impressive depth of Fornoff's contextual research is well matched by the nuance in her analyses."" --Brian Gollnick, author of Reinventing the Lacandón: Subaltern Representations in the Rain Forest of Chiapas"

Author Information

Carolyn Fornoff is an assistant professor of Latin American studies at Cornell University.

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