Extractivist Imaginaries: Heteropatriarchal Environments and Queered Interdependence

Abstract

Extractivist Imaginaries: Heteropatriarchal Environments and Queered Interdependence analyzes Peruvian and Bolivian novels from the 1940s to the 2010s that represent environments of extractivism - large-scale agricultural and coca production, industrial fishing, and mining. Beginning in the nationalist period of the 1940s, I trace the development of what I term extractivist imaginaries, or representations of national prosperity and advancement derived from extractivist projects. This project intervenes in the fields of literary and environmental studies through examining the role of narratives and cultural imaginaries in the political, social, and material designs of extractivism. In studying cultural representations of extractivism, I analyze how social norms and hierarchies of heteropatriarchy, racialization, and disability form a basis for the justification of the extraction of one group’s labor, land, and lives for the benefit of another. Additionally, the narratives that I examine not only portray the hierarchical divisions upon which extractivism is grounded, but also the possibilities for disrupting extractive practices through queer and crip imaginaries of interconnected care and empathetic interdependence. In Chapter One I analyze the 1940s novels El mundo es ancho y ajeno, by Ciro Alegrîa, and La niña de sus ojos, by Antonio Díaz Villamil, both of which present extractivist imaginaries that elaborate promising dreams of advancement to indigenous communities if they engage in a process of masculinization, strengthening, and national integration that enhances their extractivist efficiency. Through reconfigurations of the indigenous communities’ traditions, material structures, and social norms, the novels’ mestizo protagonists erect heteropatriarchal environments. Within these environments, subjects with gender and ability privilege experience prosperity by extracting labor from human and non-human nature that is categorized as feminized and disabled. In Chapter Two I turn to the 1970s novels Redoble por Rancas, by Manuel Scorza and El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo, by José María Argueda, in which the nationalist dreams of prosperity gained through extractivist projects falter. Rather than undergoing the promised transformation, indigenous subjects encounter a disabling environment created by an international copper mining corporation in the rural mountainsides and an international fishing corporation in the urban ports. Within this disabling environment, feminized, racialized, and disabled characters experience poverty, hunger, destitution, and death. In Chapter Three I consider two novels published in the 2010s: Iris, by Edmundo Paz Soldán and 98 segundos sin sombra, by Giovanna Rivero, both of which diverge from the 1940s imaginaries of nationalist prosperity and 1970s realistic representations of extractivist debilitation to present illustrations of speculative fiction. While the extractivist imaginary of nationalist progress is still presented in these novels as one viewpoint within the narrative, supernatural forces of magic, extraterrestrials, and divinities overpower the social norms and hierarchies upon which extractivist imaginaries are constructed. Through relationships with these supernatural powers, queer and crip characters in these novels counteract structures of division and extraction, creating networks of connection, empathetic exchange, and interdependence.