Dark Rurality and Dark Ecology in Recent Argentine Cinema

Authors

  • Carlos M. Amador Michigan Technological University

Keywords:

Criticism, Latin American Cultural Studies, Argentine film, Dark ecology, Albertina Carri, Lisandro Alonso, neoliberalism ecocriticism, Marxism, rural, pastoral

Abstract

This article proposes a reading of a melancholy or dark ecology in the cinematic aesthetics of films by Albertina Carri and Lisandro Alonso. I argue that these films are examples of a new ecological ethos that filmically imagines the indissolubility between non-human and human ecology as part of the rural, thus recasting traditional images of nature in the service of a new nationalism. The rural serves as the image bank for an inexhaustible mesh of ecological relations, tied by the darkness of infinitude. I show how these recent accounts of rural exhaustion and neoliberal control over the Argentine landscape simultaneously reimagine the rural as a source of density, vital, and ecological expression. I also argue that this reading represents a new modality for cognitive mapping that includes the filmic representation of the ecological sphere that goes beyond the mere description of neoliberalism.

Author Biography

  • Carlos M. Amador, Michigan Technological University
    Assistant Professor of Spanish and Culture Studies
    Department of Humanities

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Published

2019-02-11

Issue

Section

Articles / Artículos

How to Cite

Dark Rurality and Dark Ecology in Recent Argentine Cinema. (2019). A Contracorriente: Una Revista De Estudios Latinoamericanos, 16(3), 427-455. https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/1706