Session: 2e
Time: 14.00–15.30
Room: JK2–3 1.15
Chair: José Manuel Marrero Henríquez
Panel description: The symbolic interpretations of actions carried out by living beings (non-human animals, plants, bacteria) that bring to light the intense toxicity spread by the ever-growing system of production and consumption over life on the planet stem from a desire to see and to make others see that nature as a whole is capable of responding to the aggressions inflicted upon it by human beings. In this panel, that includes both, academic and literary interventions, the participants read their critical and creative texts to put into words messages akin to those expressed by orcas attacking sailboats, trees wilting under pollution, zoo animals banging against the glass that cages them, fish gasping in polluted rivers, beautiful landscapes in decline, human animals affected by toxic food and those microplastics they themselves release into the oceans.
Juan Ignacio Oliva (Universidad de La Laguna), “‘Feel Like an Island’: Environmental Mediumship in Craig Santos Perez’s Docupoetry”
Abstract: In an interview (Wilson Colorado Review 2015), Craig Santos (Guam 1980-) spoke of his lyrical work as “docupoetry,” “foregrounding my own voice (thoughts, emotions, and perceptions) on a given topic.” As a starting point, the author situates himself in the terrain of confessional, “feel-thinking,” holistic literature with an environmentally activist vein. Born on the island of Guam in the Pacific Ocean and living and working in Hawaii, insularity necessarily marks his position as a human animal in a particular context, which implies a strong paradox between individuation and isolation, on the one hand, and the close connection between biotic and abiotic bodies, on the other. However, if one reads his work, a progressive focalization on nature uprising against its own destruction can be found. Thus, in “Good Fossil Fuels,” for example, he warns of the destruction of the earth and of human animals within it (“For every green garden / there’s a toxin that would poison you”); or in “Love in a Time of Climate Change,” he associates humans’ and the environment’s bodies with each other (“I love you as one loves the most vulnerable / species // “I love you organically, without pesticides.”); or in “One fish, Two fish, Plastics, Dead fish,” he consubstantiates the uniqueness of all the bodies that inhabit Earth (“Who will survive? I can’t say. / Say! Look at its tumors!”). Little by little, we become aware of how the poet’s voice is heard as if a moribund earth were taking possession of the medium and complaining about the evil that has been committed (like a ghost needing to denounce its murderer). This paper will thus analyze all these natural uprisings uttered by the human channel in a material symbioethical world imbued by solastalgia and the psychoterratic (Albrecht Earth Emotions 2019).
Bio: Juan Ignacio Oliva is Professor of Postcolonial Anglophone Literatures at U. La Laguna (Tenerife, Canaries, Spain). He edited The Painful Chrysalis. Essays on Contemporary Cultural and Literary Identity (Peter Lang 2011), Realidad y simbología de la montaña (U. Alcalá 2012) and coedited Revolving Around India(s) (CSP 2020). He is currently president of the Spanish James Joyce Association (2019-) and vicepresident of the Spanish Association for American Studies (2023-). He forms part of GIECO (Ecocriticism-Franklin Institute-U. Alcalá) and Ratnakara (Indian Ocean-U. Lleida) research groups.
Imelda Martín Junquera (Universidad de León), “The ‘Weeds’ Strike Back: Decolonizing American Landscapes”
Abstract: This paper engages with narratives which support the idea of American plant species reclaiming territory and ecological function, taking revenge against the introduction of foreign invasive plant species that asphyxiate and exterminate them. Colonial interventions or botanical imperialism have become the norm producing a significant loss of biodiversity in American landscapes. This is often metaphorical of the dispossession of indigenous peoples of their lands. The term weeds refers to unwanted plants which grow to a point to risk the success of crops from a time when cultivated lands turned crucial for survival. Those discarded plants, usually valuable for natives in America, as they served as food or shelter to wildlife, constantly offered resistance to disappearing and are eventually being rescued and restored to their original habitats. Ecohorror narratives have served to illustrate this process of return of the natives as a battle against the colonizing forces exerted by means of monocultures and the ecogothic proves as a valid theoretical framework to analyze this phenomenon. A good example appears in Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno García, a novel that explores the invasion of fungi brought from England to Mexico. Apparently, the mold possesses curative functions but the effect it causes on the locals is to suppress their will and agency. Balance will be restored by the intervention of a local healer who, with her natural remedies, helps the heroine stay away from the pernicious influx of the fungi. This presentation also discusses the TV series The Last of Us developed from a videogame and turned into a graphic narrative which presents a similar scenario of infection from fungi original from South America.
Bio: Imelda Martín Junquera is Associate Professor at the Department of Modern Languages. Her fields of research and interest are Chicano and Native American Literature and Culture, Border Studies, Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism. Member of GIECO (Research group in ecocriticism from the Universidad de Alcalá – Franklin Institute), coeditor with Dr. Carmen Flys Junquera of Ecocríticas2: evolucíón y nuevos enfoques (Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2025). She is currently co-editing Hay otra voz: The Life and Works of Tino Villanueva with Dr. Norma E. Cantú (Trinity University Press, 2026)
José Manuel Marrero Henríquez (Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), “Uprising Texts”
Abstract: Uprising texts are frequently made of uprising messages. Nonetheless, linguistic beauty incarnated in innovative metaphors, delicate rhythms, and temperate images also invite to social mobilization and involvement in favor of planet Earth. Literature does not belong to a binary conception of the arts, and multiple approaches to creative writing may serve to that world we are all part of. Explicit activism, formal care, empathy with the oppressed, even humor, sarcasm and irony contribute to the creation of texts that resonate along with nature for the benefit of landscapes, ways of living, professions, feelings, thoughts, animals, and plants in peril of extinction.
Bio: Poet, writer, essayist, José Manuel Marrero Henríquez is Professor of Literary Theory at the ULPGC. Currently vice-president of EASLCE, he has edited Hispanic Ecocriticism (Peter Lang) and published his poetry in Landscapes with Donkey / Paisajes con burro (Green writers Press). Escritos antivíricos (Baile del Sol) [Antiviral Writings] is his most recent collection of short stories. The ecocritical theory of literature that he calls “poetics of breathing” finds expression in his creative writing and in his academic engagement with environmental issues of artistic significance.