The Question of Science in Latin American Literature

Catalog description

The role of science in modern Latin America has been a complex one: it has been used as a tool to justify racial oppression and legitimize colonialist projects; scientific discourse has also been used to make more complex human beings' relationship with their society and the universe. In this course, we will explore the relationship between literature and science from the early twentieth-century until the present, using as a point of departure social Darwinist discourses that purported to explain through organicist metaphors the supposed failure of the modern project in Latin America, to arrive at this present where scientific discourse is used by narrators and poets to create novel assemblages between species, and to tackle the social and environmental crises brought about by the Antropocene.