Ecological catastrophe and apocalypse: Posthuman dystopias in Liliana Colanzi's “Nuestro mundo muerto” (2016) and “Atomito” (2020)

Abstract

Liliana Colanzi's literature proposes a reading of the world from the perspective of ecological chaos. Her narrative, almost always focused on polluted and dystopian worlds, brings to the table the need to rethink relationships with the environment, the identity of subjects in the face of decadent panoramas and the ecological trauma of terrestrial becoming. This article proposes a posthuman reading of the stories “Nuestro mundo muerto” (2016) and “Atomito” (2020) to identify the individual crises of characters who find themselves in a context that has ceased to be anthropocentric. Thus, amidst Bolivian cosmogony, whipalas, dead planets, extinct maternities and decadent characters, a Latin American science fiction panorama is created that glimpses the multiple catastrophe not only due to scientific advances or climate change, but also to social marginalization and unbridled horror that, together with the ecological, seems only to germinate an agonizing future. Regardless of the scenario of choice, Colanzi's universes analyzed here carry with them a point about the trivialization of ecological chaos resulting from technologies, the exploitation of resources and the radiation that makes “glow in the dark”, all aspects of human life that, in dead and not so dead worlds, will determine the course our species will follow in the years to come.