An Ibero-American Perspective on Narratives of Pandemics

This volume critiques the realities of the pandemic in the Ibero-American world and its intertwined relationship with the environment. It explores the narrative of the pandemic being an accidental event in order to uncover its direct correlation to environmental degradation, the biopolitics around it, and argues for a new environmental ethic.

An Ibero-American Perspective on Narratives of Pandemics is a critique of the realities of the pandemic in the Ibero-American world and its intertwined relationship with the environment. Through a critical gaze into the history of the region as it has evolved through periods of socio-environmental and cultural conflicts, the book chronicles multiple experiences of how people managed to negotiate multiple crises on a daily basis by often clinging to their age old cultural and healing practices, as well as the humanistic representation of such experiences in various fictional and nonfictional writings. The contributors expose the biopolitics around COVID-19 and its effects particularly on marginalised populations and the environment in an effort to consider the complexity of the pandemic in its multiple dimensions. They evaluate it through climatic, socioeconomic, political, scientific, and cultural lenses that they argue shaped the realities of the pandemic. They also take a close look at the use and effects of language in virtual spaces, implying it has the ability to construct/mis-construct reality in this postmodern world, arguing there is a need for a new environmental ethic post-pandemic.

Preface, by Zélia M. Bora, Animesh Roy, and Ricardo Ballesteros de la Fuente

Introduction: Narratives of Pandemics: Literature and Culture—An Iberoamerican Perspective, by Zélia M. Bora, Animesh Roy, and Ricardo Ballesteros de la Fuente

Part I

Chapter 1. Tuberculosis and Melancholy in the Work of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, by Juan Pascual Gay and Mercedes Pascual Zavala

Chapter 2. The Turn of the Century and the Spanish Imaginary Facing the Disease: The Case of Ganivet, by Ricardo Ballesteros de la Fuente and Juan R. Coca

Chapter 3. The Language of a Sick Nation: Epidemics and Environmental Destruction in the Narratives of Lima Barreto, by Zélia M. Bora

Part II

Chapter 4. Guatemalan Expressions: Memorials and Private Reflective Spaces during the Internal Conflict and Covid-19 Pandemic, by Martha C. Galván-Mandujano

Chapter 5. Between Life and Death: Practices of Healing of the Ecuadorian Siona Nationality as a Political Spirituality, by María Fernanda Solórzano Granada

Chapter 6. Now That We Are Back to School…Pandemic, Environment, and Community Links, by Norma Georgina Gutiérrez Serrano

Chapter 7. Chronicle of Life during Covid-19 Pandemic in Mexico, by Georgina Vega Fregoso

Chapter 8. Afro-Brazilians and Covid-19: Revisiting the Concepts Necropolitics and Genocide, by Siddharth Monteiro Bora and Evely Libanori

Chapter 9. Language and Pandemics: Uses and Effects of Whatsapp—Students and Teacher under Isolation, by Juarez Nogueira Lins

Chapter 10. The Covid-19 Pandemic and Agency for a New Environmental Ethic, by Maria Geralda de Miranda and Bruno Matos de Farias

Chapter 11. Biopolitics and Environmental Governance in Time of the New Coronavirus Pandemic, by Marcus Alexandre Cavalcanti and Katia Eilane Santos Avelar