{"title":"Toxicity, Transgenics, and the Flesh of Fiction in Samanta Schweblin","authors":"S. Dowd","doi":"10.1353/hir.2023.0000","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Toxins lurk in the soy fields around a small Argentine town in Samanta Schweblin’s 2014 novel Distancia de rescate. On the surface, Schweblin’s novel appears to use supernatural phenomena to criticize industrial soy production and its use of toxic herbicides. Current criticism, in turn, sees the novel as an extension of the Latin American fantastic, filtered through an ecocritical or Anthropocene lens. However, I argue that Schweblin’s novel, read alongside her short story “Conservas,” portrays a more complex relationship between flesh and the environment. Drawing on the ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, I argue that the chiasm, or crossing over, of flesh mimics the structure of transgenic organisms so that the characters resemble genetically modified soy. I show how Schweblin portrays flesh as reversible, interconnected, and increasingly intoxicated. Following Julia Kristeva and Jacques Derrida, she uses an abject counteraesthetic to blend nature and artifice and to question traditional distinctions between human and environment, subject and object that emerge from Kantian philosophy and continue into the aesthetic tradition of the sublime. In their place, Schweblin suggests an already intoxicated flesh that forms the basis of the categories of subject and object and an abject, toxic sublime, present in flesh and fiction.","PeriodicalId":44625,"journal":{"name":"HISPANIC REVIEW","volume":"91 1","pages":"1 - 23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"HISPANIC REVIEW","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hir.2023.0000","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, ROMANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT:Toxins lurk in the soy fields around a small Argentine town in Samanta Schweblin’s 2014 novel Distancia de rescate. On the surface, Schweblin’s novel appears to use supernatural phenomena to criticize industrial soy production and its use of toxic herbicides. Current criticism, in turn, sees the novel as an extension of the Latin American fantastic, filtered through an ecocritical or Anthropocene lens. However, I argue that Schweblin’s novel, read alongside her short story “Conservas,” portrays a more complex relationship between flesh and the environment. Drawing on the ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, I argue that the chiasm, or crossing over, of flesh mimics the structure of transgenic organisms so that the characters resemble genetically modified soy. I show how Schweblin portrays flesh as reversible, interconnected, and increasingly intoxicated. Following Julia Kristeva and Jacques Derrida, she uses an abject counteraesthetic to blend nature and artifice and to question traditional distinctions between human and environment, subject and object that emerge from Kantian philosophy and continue into the aesthetic tradition of the sublime. In their place, Schweblin suggests an already intoxicated flesh that forms the basis of the categories of subject and object and an abject, toxic sublime, present in flesh and fiction.
摘要:萨曼塔·施韦布林(Samanta Schweblin)2014年的小说《遥远的距离》(Distancia de rescale)中,毒素潜伏在阿根廷小镇周围的大豆田里。从表面上看,施韦布林的小说似乎用超自然现象来批评工业化大豆生产及其使用有毒除草剂。反过来,当前的批评将这部小说视为拉丁美洲奇幻小说的延伸,通过生态批判或人类世的镜头进行过滤。然而,我认为,施韦布林的小说与她的短篇小说《音乐学院》一起阅读,描绘了肉体与环境之间更复杂的关系。根据Maurice Merleau-Ponti的观点,我认为肉的交叉或交叉模仿了转基因生物的结构,使其特征类似于转基因大豆。我展示了施韦布林如何将肉体描绘成可逆的、相互关联的、越来越陶醉的。继朱莉娅·克里斯特娃和雅克·德里达之后,她用一种卑鄙的反美学来融合自然和技巧,质疑康德哲学中产生并延续到崇高美学传统中的人与环境、主体与客体之间的传统区别。取而代之的是,施韦布林暗示了一种已经陶醉的肉体,它构成了主体和客体类别的基础,以及一种存在于肉体和小说中的卑鄙、有毒的崇高。
期刊介绍:
A quarterly journal devoted to research in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian literatures and cultures, Hispanic Review has been edited since 1933 by the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania. The journal features essays and book reviews on the diverse cultural manifestations of Iberia and Latin America, from the medieval period to the present.