RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 Toxic chemicals in Samanta Schweblin’s "Distancia de rescate" ("Fever Dream")
A1 Pérez, Óscar A.
K1 Ecocriticism
K1 Argentinean literature
K1 Toxic chemicals
K1 Samanta Schweblin
K1 Fever Dream
K1 Ecocrítica
K1 Literatura argentina
K1 Productos químicos tóxicos
K1 Distancia de rescate
K1 Literatura
K1 Literature
K1 Medio ambiente
K1 Environmental science
AB Published in 2014 under the Spanish title “Distancia de rescate” and then in English translation as “Fever Dream” in 2017, Samanta Schweblin’s first novel joins the long and celebrated inventory of Argentinean literary works that draw upon innovative forms to question our reality. Set in a small town “four and a half hours” away from the capital, “Fever Dream” presents the stories of Amanda, Carla, and their families, whose lives are forever changed by the nightmarish environment around them, as they deal with the physical, emotional, and mental effects of the exposure to an omnipresent substance. In this article, I analyze “Distancia de rescate (Fever Dream)” in the context of the global change in ecosystems driven by toxic waste and persistent pollutants as byproducts of industrial and agricultural capitalist practices. From this perspective, Schweblin’s novel poses some thought-provoking questions: How does an environment altered by chemical poisons affect our perception of reality? What are we to do in the face of such invisible but omnipresent menaces? How can we talk about concepts such as medicine, science, and superstition? What possibilities does literature offer to examine the effects of the spread of toxic chemicals at a global scale? I propose some answers by establishing a dialogue with previous works that have examined the presence of toxic chemicals in the environment from a historical, anthropological, and literary studies perspective.
PB Universidad de Alcalá
SN 2171-9594
YR 2019
FD 2019
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10017/40048
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10017/40048
LA eng
DS MINDS@UW
RD 25-abr-2024