Escrituras tóxicas: cuerpos y paisajes alterados

Abstract

This article focuses on the recent rural turn in contemporary Argentine literature production. It draws from Laurence Buell’s notion of toxic discourse (1988) in order to analyze two narratives: Distancia de rescate (2014) by Samanta Schweblin, and Las estrellas federales (2016), by Juan Diego Incardona, along with the poetry collection Un pequeno mundo enfermo (2014), by Julian Joven [pseudonym of Cristian Molina]. With the emergence and more frequent use of agrochemicals in the Argentine rural soil, I argue that these writings articulate a discursive toxicity anchored in a transfigured pampa. Furthermore, the cultivation of transgenic soy transforms the space into a contaminated and contaminating landscape, whose agrotoxics inoculate indiscriminately both human and nonhuman bodies. I read these bodily and spatial representations, in both the fictions and poetry, as a textualization that redesigns the relation between subject and the natural environmental, specifically the rural space, displacing a discourse of “buen vivir” for a literary production of what I propose, tentatively, as of “mal vivir” (bad living). This aesthetic production appeals to a reflection on environmental justice that considers the imminent damage and degradation of the contaminated landscape.