Calls
CALL FOR PAPERS
Today the cultural imagination of the present must represent our historical moment with an awareness not only of the deep past but of the far future. As writers and thinkers explore the long history of the occupation and settlement of territories, the colonization of indigenous peoples, and the effects of extractive policies and exploitative economies, their efforts in a wide range of literary and cultural genres inevitably turn also toward the speculative anticipation of future human governance, the long-term destinies of different human communities’ relationship to land, and fantastically prospective extrapolations of the planetary futures that might follow the damage caused by human beings to the Earth and its diverse species. For the section “Territorios Usurpados," the editors Mag. Virginia Frade (Universidad Tecnológica del Uruguay; Consejo de Formación en Educación) and Dr. Charles Tung (Seattle University, USA) invite contributions that focus on the theme "Literature of the Americas: from the Columbian Exchange to the Anthropocene." They invite investigations of literature and culture focused on environmental themes and the potential destructiveness of human actions, and on scenarios that address the psychological, social, technological, ecological, and/or economic consequences resulting from the indiscriminate predation of various species and from our impact on ecosystems.
As the terms “Columbian Exchange” and “Anthropocene” indicate, contributions to this special section may engage our occupation of territory at any spatial scale – from habitations and nations to the transnational, hemispheric, and global – and within a wide range of historical, geo-temporal, and cosmic frames. The “Columbian Exchange” is a concept first developed by Alfred Crosby in 1972 to describe the biological and cultural impact of the “Old World” coming into contact with the “New World.” The concept of the "Anthropocene" was developed by Eugene F. Stoermer and Paul Crutzen to refer to the current geological epoch, in which humans and our activities have become a geological force impacting our planet and its multiple ecosystems. While Stoermer and Crutzen argue that future scientists examining layers of rock strata will see a global indication of major changes to Earth systems starting in the middle of the twentieth century, Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin have argued that the start of the Anthropocene can be traced to the Columbian Exchange, when Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas. Not just a “discovering”, finding, or meeting a new continent, and not even the revision of the historical narrative from the age of exploration to the age of conquest, but rather this moment in history is part of a longue duree trajectory that began with the transfer of language, culture, ideas, plants, animals, germs, viruses, and illnesses, and will not end for millions of years.
Although these two concepts, the “Anthropocene” and the “Columbian Exchange”, do not originate from the realm of literature but rather from different scientific fields, they have had significant discursive potential that has allowed literature and other modes of cultural expression to engage in meaningful dialogue, incisive critique, and hopeful or desperate prognosis about the complex relationships between human beings and between humans and the environment. From theoretical as well as aesthetic perspectives, both concepts invite us to widen and deepen our spatial and temporal approaches to narratives that engage (explicitly or implicitly) planetary depredation, the effects of colonization, domination, extermination, oppression, social, ecological, or environmental inequalities, among others.
For this issue of Tenso Diagonal, we invite contributions in Spanish, English and Portuguese.
