Plant Theory in Amazonian Literature

This book discusses new developments of plant studies and plant theory in the humanities and compares them to the exceptionally robust knowledge about plant life in indigenous traditions practiced to this day in the Amazonian region. Amazonian thinking, in dialogue with the thought of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Emanuele Coccia and others, can serve to bring plant theory in the humanities beyond its current focus on how the organic existence of plants is projected into culture. Contemporary Amazonian indigenous literature takes us beyond conventional theory and into the unsuspected reaches of vegetal networks. It shows that what matters about plants are not just their strictly biological and ecological projections, but the manner in which they interact with multiple species and cultural actors in continuously shifting bodies and points of view, by becoming-other, and fashioning a natural and social diplomacy in which humans participate along with non-humans.

Reaches beyond anecdotic and identity-bound attention accorded to Amazon studies and criticism of indigenous literature in general, in order to incorporate them not only as objects of high theory and speculative reflection but also as loci and subjects producing theory relevant to pressing contemporary issues Situates Plant Theory and related research in the concrete and also highly symbolical, contentious scenario of postcolonial conflict and ecological exigencies of the Amazon Showcases paradigm-shifting works and discussions from Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, César Calvo, Pedro Favaron, and Emanuele Coccia that until now have received marginal recognition in the Latin Americanist humanities

Auteur
Juan R. Duchesne Winter is professor of Latin American Literature at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. His previous books on Amazonian literature and philosophy are Caribe, Caribana: cosmografías literarias (2015), and Invitación al Baile del Muñeco. Máscara, pensamiento y territorio en el Amazonas (2017).

Contenu

1. Introduction: Amazoning the Theory.- 2. Plant Theory and Amazonian Metaphysics.- 3. Writing Under the Influence: The Three Halves of Ino Moxo .- 4. Conclusion: Contrast and Pattern.