Technopoetics of the Anthropocene: Rendering Our Present through Echoes in Mexican Bots and Machines

Abstract

The Anthropocene is marked with a multilayered environmental crisis that requires cultural changes. Although a complex task, the contemporary Mexican artists studied here have explored this issue through literary means. In this paper, I analyse La máquina distópica (The Dystopian Machine) and El mono infinito (The Infinite Monkey) as technopoetical tools to understand the present from a historical perspective. I suggest that the usage of canonical figures such as Amparo Dávila and Ada Lovelace in these pieces provides a critical grounding that tensions the notion of individual authorship and affords a transhistorical and transtemporal approach to an endangered planet.