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

How to Cite

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

Issue

Section

Articles / Artículos