Dialogues between Botany and Literature: The case of Verde bestiario. Microrretalos vegetales (2023), by Rafael Ángel Herra
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15517/rk.v48i2.61461Keywords:
plant criticism, Latin American literature, plant thought, mosnters, non-mimeticAbstract
This paper reviews the book Verde bestiario. Microrrelatos vegetales (2023), by Rafael Ángel Herra. First, a synthesis of some of the formal, discursive and thematic elements that make up the work is presented. Then, a brief analysis of some of the micro-stories in this collection is offered to point out the kind of convergence and dialogue with the critical turn of cultural studies about plants, as well as plant thought and intelligence. Finally, it is concluded that this book contributes to a renewed interest in (fictional) literature about plants and the «botanical turn», as a response to the need for new narratives that dare to propitiate dialectical spaces and challenge «plant blindness» (Wandersee and Schussler, 1999). This critical overview allows us to defend that this book is one of the most suggestive, shocking and moving forms of non-anthropocentric textualization that aims to revalue with freshness and ingenuity the non-human/vegetable thought and sensibility, as a projection of contemporary Latin American non-mimetic literature.
Downloads
References
Aloi, G. (2018). Why Look at Plants? The Botanical Emergence in Contemporary Art. Brill Rodopi.
Andermann, J. (2018). Tierras en trance: arte y naturaleza después el paisaje. Metales pesados.
Blackmore, L y Heffes, G. (2023). Investigación académica y prácticas artísticas ambientales latinoamericanas. Tabula Rasa, 46, 11-25. https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n46.01
Cielemęcka, O. y Szczygielska, M. (2019). Thinking the feminist vegetal turn in the shadow of Douglas-firs: An interview with Catriona Sandilands. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 5(2), 1-19.
Estok, S. (2009). Theorizing in a Space of Ambivalent Openness: Ecocriticism and Ecophobia. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 16(2), 203-225 https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isp010
Gagliano, M., Ryan, J. C. y Vieira, P. (Eds.). (2017). The Language of Plants: Science, Philosophy, Literature. University of Minnesota Press.
Hernández, E., y Rueda, M. I. (2020). La mata. Laguna Libros.
Hallé, F. (2002). In Praise of Plants. Timber Press.
Hall, M. (2011). Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany. University of New York.
Heffes, G. (2013). Políticas de la destrucción/poéticas de la preservación: apuntes para una lectura eco-crítica del medio ambiente en América Latina. Beatriz Viterbo Editora.
Herra, R. (2023). Verde bestiario. Microrrelatos vegetales. Esdrújula Ediciones.
Lemos, S. (2020). Plant Revolution! E-Flux Criticism. https://www.e-flux.com/criticism/316221/plant-revolution
Lindqvist, M. (2017). Encountering the Vegetal-being: An Inquiry Through Contemporary (Bio)Art [Tesis de Maestría en Artes y Cultura (MA), Universidad de Leiden]. https://studenttheses.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/45231
Lyons, K. M. (2020). Vital Decomposition: Soil Practitioners and Life Politics. Duke University Press.
Mancuso, S. y Viola, A. (2015). Sensibilidad e inteligencia en el mundo vegetal. (D. Paradela, ed. y trad.). Galaxia Gutenberg.
Marcone, J. (1998). De retorno a lo natural: La serpiente de oro, la «novela de la selva» y la crítica ecológica. Hispania, 81(2), 299-308.
Marder, M. (2013). Plant Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life. Columbia University Press.
Marder, M. (2014). The Philosopher’s Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium. Columbia University Press.
Marzec, A. (2020). Filosofia Vegetal (o Pensamiento Vegetal). Revista de Investigación Agraria y Ambiental. 11(3), 19-26.
Miller, T. L. (2019). Plant Kin: A Multispecies Ethnography in Indigenous Brazil. University of Texas Press.
Moore, J. W. (2016). The Rise of Cheap Nature. En J. W. Moore, (Ed.). Anthropocene or Capitalocene?: Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism (pp. 78-115). PM Press.
Morilla, S. (2023). El giro vegetal. El arte contemporáneo contra la ceguera vegetal. En A. Collados y S. Morilla (Eds.), Mira, una planta. Arte y ceguera vegetal (pp. 27-43). Editorial Universidad de Granada.
Nascimento, E. (28 de agosto de 2019). La literatura, las artes y las plantas: por un otro humanismo. Mímesis. https://edicionesmimesis.cl/index.php/2019/08/28/la-literatura-las-artes-y-las-plantas-por-un-otro-humanismo-por-evando-nascimento/#
Nascimento, E. (2023). El pensamiento vegetal. La literatura y las plantas (R. Rodríguez, Trad.). Editorial Mimesis.
Ponce de León, A. (2023). América Latina y el giro botánico en los estudios culturales. Tabula Rasa, 46, 49-64. https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n46.03
Rosa, S. (2019). La ecopoesía de Nicanor Parra como espacio de disentimiento. Humanidades: Revista de la Universidad de Montevideo, 6, 199-226.
Wandersee, J. H., y Schussler, E. E. (1999). Preventing plant blindness. The American Biology Teacher, 61, 82-86.
Wylie, L. (2020). The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature. University Press.
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Kimberly Huertas Arredondo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish in this journal accept the following conditions:
This work is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivative 4.0 International License.- The authors can make other independent and additional contractual agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the article published in this journal (eg, include it in an institutional repository or publish it in a book, personal website, blog or institutional repository), in the understanding that the commercial use of the work and its derivative work is restricted.
- Authors are allowed and encouraged to publish postprint version of the article published in our journal on the Internet, as it can lead to productive exchanges and a greater and faster dissemination of published work (see The Effect of Open Access).
