Introductory description

Climate breakdown and the prospect of a post-nature world where human beings have irreversibly transformed their environment are correlated to the cultural and economic model of western modernity. So, while we think of progress, development and growth as incremental global processes that continue to expand to other regions and continents, we are called to question their significance: is modernity as we know it reconcilable with the future of the earth? Latin America stands in a unique place in relation to this question: as a region colonised by European powers, its natural resources were exploited to produce the wealth that made Europe the centre of the modern world. After gaining independence, its own modernity has continued to be hindered by the history of exploitation of its nature and people. What does it mean to be modern in Latin America, where development, democracy and social justice are undermined by continued exploitation in the name of global modernity? What can we learn about modernity and its contradictions from Latin America? And how have Latin Americans made sense of and responded to the notion that modernity is based on the domination of nature in the name of progress? This module explores these questions in relation to four main themes: 1) representations of new colonialism and extractivism in contemporary Latin American film; 2) visual reconstructions in twentieth-century visual arts of ideas of gender and race in relation to Latin American nature and its peoples; 3) recent recuperations of indigenous understandings of nature-human relations especially through storytelling in the Amazon; 4) current Latin American alternatives to the idea of modernity as endless development such as the notion of buen vivir, or what it means to live well. Students will be encouraged to use a variety of primary materials: film, visual arts and photography, short story and the essay of ideas. Countries include Cuba, Mexico, Bolivia, Colombia and Brazil. The module will be most suitable to students with an interest in one or more of the following areas: the literature and culture of the Hispanic world, twentieth-century and contemporary Latin America, ecology, post-colonialism and neo-colonialism, environmental history, environmental movements and ideas, global modernity, the politics of nature. All primary texts are also available in English.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

PRIMARY TEXTS:
Films: También la lluvia (Even the rain, Icíar Bollaín, 2010) and Birdwatchers (Marco Bechis, 2008) [available via tutor]
Visual arts: artists include Ana Mendieta (Cuba, 1948-1985), Teresa Margolles (Mexico, 1963- ) and photographer Sebastião Salgado (Brazil, 1944- ) [available via tutor/online]
Short stories: Juan Carlos Galeano, Cuentos amazónicos, 2014 (Folktales of the Amazon) [available via tutor/library]
Essays of ideas: authors include Arturo Escobar (Colombia, 1952- ) and Eduardo Gudynas (Uruguay, 1960- ) [available via tutor]

WEEKLY OUTLINE:
WEEK 2:
Part I: Introduction to the module
Part II: Discussion: Key terms ‘nature’ and ‘modernity’
READING: E. Dussel, ‘Eurocentrism and Modernity (Introduction to the Frankfurt Lectures)’, boundary 2, 20:3, The Postmodernism Debate in Latin America (Autumn 1993), pp. 65-76.
DISCUSSION QUESTION: Is modernity violent?

WEEK 3:
Part I: Lecture 1 “New colonialism and extractivism”
Part II: Discussion
PRIMARY MATERIAL: También la lluvia (Even the rain, Icíar Bollaín, 2010)
SECONDARY MATERIAL: Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, chapters 1 and 2
DISCUSSION QUESTION: In what ways can we analyse También la lluvia through the categories of ‘post-colonial’, ‘neo-colonial’ and ‘coloniality’?

WEEK 4:
Part I: GROUP 1 presentations: También la lluvia and Birdwatchers
Part II: Discussion
PRIMARY MATERIAL: Birdwatchers (Marco Bechis, 2008)
SECONDARY MATERIAL: J.R. Aparicio and M. Blaser ‘The “Lettered City” and the Insurrection of Subjugated Knowledges in Latin America’, Anthropological Quarterly, 81:1 (Winter, 2008), pp. 59-94.
DISCUSSION QUESTION: What is the relationship between knowledge and modernity?

WEEK 5:
Part I: Lecture 2 “Ecologies of race, gender and violence”
Part II: Discussion
PRIMARY MATERIAL: images provided by tutor
SECONDARY MATERIAL: Ana Mendieta: Decolonized Feminist and Artist, Berkeley Arts + Design (2017): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVk4UBA6HGQ.
DISCUSSION QUESTION: In what ways can we analyse the relationship between notions of ‘nature’ and the ‘body’?

WEEK 6: READING WEEK

WEEK 7:
Part I: GROUP 2 presentations: Ana Mendieta / Teresa Margolles / Alvaro Enciso / Sebastião Salgado (if you are interested in presenting on an artist not listed here, please consult with your tutor)
Part II: Lecture 3 “Nature and indigeneity in the Amazon”
PRIMARY MATERIAL: The Salt of the Earth (Wim Wender & Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, 2014)
SECONDARY MATERIAL: Afro-Colombian Activist Francia Márquez, 2018 Goldman Prize Winner, on Stopping Illegal Gold Mining, Democracy Now! (18 May 2018): https://www.democracynow.org/2018/5/18/afro_colombian_activist_francia_marquez_2018

WEEK 8:
Part I: GROUP 3 presentations: Juan Carlos Galeano
Part II: Discussion
PRIMARY MATERIAL: Juan Carlos Galeano, selected stories (provided by tutor)
SECONDARY MATERIAL: J. Adamson and J.C. Galeano, with illustrations by Solmi Angarita, ‘Why Bears, Yakumama (Mother of All Water Beings), and Other Transformational Beings Are (Still) Good to Think’, in S. Monani and J. Adamson (eds), Ecocriticism and Indigenous Studies: Conversations from Earth to Cosmos (Routledge, 2017), pp. 223-240.
DISCUSSION QUESTION: In what ways does the inclusion of the more-than-human affect the modern discourse?

WEEK 9:
Part I: Lecture 4 “Alternative (to) modernity?”
Part II: GROUP 4 presentations: essay of ideas
PRIMARY MATERIAL: E. Gudynas, ‘Buen Vivir: Today’s tomorrow’, Development, 2011, 54:4, pp. 441–447.
SECONDARY MATERIAL: Rosi Braidotti, ‘Posthuman Knowledge’, lecture at Harvard GSD (13 March 2019): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CewnVzOg5w.

WEEK 10:
Essay-writing workshop and essay consultations

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Engage critically with literary and visual texts (both individually and in a group) and be able to present in written form an essay that examines the context, content, and significance of cultural representations [cognitive/key skills]; Engage critically with secondary literature in English and Spanish, and demonstrate knowledge of the scholarly debates on the ideas and authors studied [cognitive/key skills]; Demonstrate knowledge of the scholarly debates on the ideas and authors studied [key skills]; Indications of independent research and of engagement with secondary literature are taken into account in the award of marks for formative and summative assessment.

Indicative reading list

HP321 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

General:
Acton, Mary, Learning to Look at Paintings (London: Routledge, 1997).
Alonso, C., The Burden of Modernity: The Rhetoric of Cultural Discourse in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Balfour, Sebastian, The End of the Spanish Empire, 1898-1923 (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press, 1997).
Bayly, C.A., Birth of the Modern World 1780−1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Maiden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 2004).
Carey, M., ‘Latin American environmental history: current trends, interdisciplinary insights, and future directions’, Environmental History, 14 (2): 221− 52 (2009).
Chakrabarty, D., ‘The climate of history: four theses’, Critical Inquiry, 35: 197− 222 (2009).
Devés Valdés, E., El pensamiento latinoamericano en el siglo XX: entre la modernización y la identidad. Del Ariel de Rodó a la CEPAL (1900-1950) (Buenos Aires-Santiago de Chile: Editorial Biblos-Centro de Investigaciones Diego Barros de Arana, 2000).
Franco, Jean, An Introduction to Spanish American Literature (Cambridge: CUP, 1969).
Larraín, Jorge, Identity and Modernity in Latin America (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000).
Martin, Gerald, Journeys Through the Labyrinth: Latin American Fiction in the Twentieth Century (London: Verso, 1989).
Miller, Nicola, In the Shadow of the State. Intellectuals and the Quest for National Identity in Twentieth-Century Spanish America (London: Verso, 1999).
Miller, Nicola, Reinventing Modernity in Latin America. Intellectuals Imagine the Future, 1900-1930 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
Miller, Shawn, An Environmental History of Latin America (CUP, 2007).
Skidmore, Thomas and Peter H. Smith, Modern Latin America (Oxford Paperback, 2001).
Swanson, Philip, The Companion to Latin American Studies (London: Hodder Education, 2003).
Williamson, Edwin, Penguin History of Latin America (London: Penguin, 2009).

Colonialism and extractivism:
Acosta, Alberto, La maldición de la abundancia (Quito: Abya-Yala, 2009). [TUTOR]
Denevan, William, ‘The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1491’, Annals of the Association of American Geography 82 (Sept. 1992).
Greenblatt, Stephen, Marvellous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Oxford University Press, 1991).
Escobar, Arturo, Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes (DUP, 2008). [LIBRARY E-BOOK]
Munck, R., Rethinking Latin America: Development, Hegemony and Social Transformation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). [TUTOR]
O’Toole, G. (2014) Environmental Politics in Latin America and the Caribbean, Introduction (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2014).

Latin American visual arts:
Ades, Dawn, Art in Latin America: The Modern Era, 1820-1980 (New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 1989).
Ana Mendieta: Decolonized Feminist and Artist, lecture by Laura Pérez at U. of Berkley, 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVk4UBA6HGQ
Baddeley, Oriana and Valerie Fraser, Drawing the Line: Art and Cultural Identity in Contemporary Latin America (London: Verso, 1989).
Lucy-Smith, Edward, Latin American Art of the Twentieth Century (Thames and Hudson, 1993).
Sullivan, Edward J., Latin American Art in the Twentieth Century (London: Phaidon Press, 1996).
Tarver, Gina McDaniel, Issues of Otherness and Identity in the Works of Izquierdo, Kahlo, Artaud, and Breton (Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico, 1996).
Salgado, Sebastião, The Silent Drama of photography: https://www.ted.com/talks/sebastiao_salgado_the_silent_drama_of_photography
Salgado, Sebastiâo, A Gallery of Spectacular Photography: https://ideas.ted.com/sebastiao-salgado-a-gallery-of-spectacular-photographs/
Wenders, Wim and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, Le sel de la terre (The Salt of the Earth, 2015).

Ecology and ecocritical literature (Juan Carlos Galeano):
Adamson, Joni and Salma Monani, Ecocriticism and Indigenous Studies: Conversations from Earth to Cosmos (Routledge, 2016). [LIBRARY - TUTOR]
Anderson, Mark and Zelia Bora (eds.), Ecological Crisis and Cultural Representation in Latin America: Ecocritical Perspectives on Art, Film, and Literature (Lexington Books, 2016).
Barbas Rhoden, Laura, Ecological Imaginations in Latin American Fiction (UP of Florida, 2011).
Clarck, Timothy, Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept (Bloomsbury, 2015). [LIBRARY - ONLINE READ]
Cronon, William, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (Hill & Wang, 1983).
Crosby, A.W., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Greenwood Press, 1972).
DeVries, S.M., A History of Ecology and Environmentalism in Spanish American Literature (Bucknell University Press, 2013).
Galeano, Juan Carlos, Cuentos amazónicos (Editorial Paraíso Perdido, 2007 / Tierra Nueva, 2014). [TUTOR]
— Yakumama (and other Mythical Beings), trans. J. Kimbrell and R. Morgan (Tierra Nueva, 2014). [LIBRARY]
Marcone, Jorge, ‘Jungle Fever: The Ecology of Disillusion in Spanish American Literature’, Encuentros, November 2007, N. 58, Inter-American Development Bank Cultural Center [Available at: http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=1774474]. [ONLINE]
Suárez Araúz, Nicomedes (ed.), Literary Amazonia: Modern Writing by Amazonian Authors (University Press of Florida, 2004).
Rivera-Barnes, Beatriz and Jerry Hoeg, Reading and Writing the Latin American Landscape (Palgrave MacMillan, 2009). [TUTOR - PDF]
Slovic, Scott et al. (eds.), Ecocriticism of the Global South (Lexington Books, 2015). [LIBRARY - EBOOK LOAN]
Tally, Robert and Christine Battista (eds.), Ecocriticism and geocriticism: overlapping territories in environmental and spatial literary studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). [LIBRARY]
Worster, Donald, The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination (Oxford University Press, 1993).
Wylie, L., Colonial Tropes and Postcolonial Tricks: Rewriting the Tropics in the novela de la selva (Liverpool University Press, 2009).
— ‘Introduction’, Amazonian Literatures, ed. L. Wylie, Hispanic Issues On Line 16 (Fall 2014): 1–16. [https://cla.umn.edu/hispanic-issues/online]
Wylie, Lesley, ‘The Poetics of Plants in Latin American Literature.’ Provincialising Nature: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Politics of the Environment in Latin America, edited by Malayna Raftopoulos and Michela Coletta (London: ILAS, 2016). [LIBRARY - TUTOR]

Modernity after nature in the essay of ideas:
Aparicio, J.R. and M. Blaser, ‘The “lettered city” and the insurrection of subjugated knowledges in Latin America’, Anthropological Quarterly, 81(1): 59− 94 (2008).
Coletta, Michela and Malayna Raftopoulos (eds.) Provincialising Nature: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Politics of the Environment in Latin America (London: ILAS, 2016). [LIBRARY - TUTOR]
Boaventura de Sousa Santos (ed.), Cognitive Justice in a Global World: Prudent Knowledges for a Decent Life (Lexington Books: 2007).
Descola, P., Beyond Nature and Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2013).
Dussel, E., ‘Europe, modernity, and eurocentrism’, Nepantla, 1 (3):465− 78 (2000).
Fatheuer, Thomas, Buen Vivir: A Brief Introduction to Latin America's New Concepts for the Good Life and the Rights of Nature. Trans. John Hayduska (Berlin: Heinrich Böll Foundation, 2011).
Gudynas, E. ‘Buen Vivir: today’s tomorrow’, Development, 54 (4): 441− 7 (2011).
Mignolo, W., Local Histories/Global Designs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
— ‘The geopolitics of knowledge and the colonial difference’, The South Atlantic Quarterly, 10 (1): 57− 96 (2002).
— ‘DELINKING: the rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality’, Cultural Studies, 21 (2): 449− 514 (2007).
— The Darker Side of the Renaissance. Literacy, Territoriality, & Colonization, 2nd edition (University of Michigan Press, 2003).
Quijano, A. ‘Coloniality of power, ethnocentrism, and Latin America’, Nepantla, 1 (3): 533− 80 (2000).
— ‘“Live well”: between “development” and the descoloniality of power’, in A.L. Bialakowsky et al. (eds.) Latin American Critical Thought: Theory and Practice (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2012).

Research element

4000-word research essay: students are encouraged to create their own approach to a variety of topics and are allowed to propose their own essay title.

Interdisciplinary

Students read philosophical and sociological essays, short stories, watch films and analyse visual arts. They are encouraged to use tools from different areas of knowledge and epistemic approaches in order to develop their own critical and creative reformulations.

International

Global approach to the study of Latin American modernity from the perspective of resource extraction and the Anthropocene.

Subject specific skills

Critical knowledge and understanding of Latin American modernity and modernisation within the global extractive context; critical knowledge and understanding of the historical, material and symbolic entanglements of the climate crisis in global extractive zones like Latin America; critical and independent reflection on deeper connections between cultural/symbolic understanding and socio-political significance of global modernity.

Transferable skills

Learning to build and present a reasoned argument through group discussion and interaction; developing oral presentation skills through individual or small group presentation; analytical skills through close textual analysis; critical thinking skills through individual and group reflection; digital presentation skills through preparation of visual presentation.