Towards a transnational ecocriticism: Contributions of Latin American philosophy and cultural criticism to ecocritical practice

Abstract

It is vitally important that ecocritical conversations take on a new transnational form and that practitioners contextualize profoundly local cultural expressions against the backdrop of broader, global, and planetary contexts. Latin American philosophers and cultural critics make a fundamental contribution to the construction of a transnational ecocriticism because, from a peripheral positionality, their texts comment upon the construction of knowledge, philosophies, and imaginaries that still govern human organization. The present article explores how the theoretical postulations of prominent intellectuals like Antônio Cândido, Enrique Dussel, Leonardo Boff, Enrique Leff and Walter Mignolo, can be applied to literary texts in ways that allow critics to forge a richer, more inclusive, and nuanced, ecocritical practice.