New Worlds Collide: Science Fiction's Novela de la Selva in Gioconda Belli and Santiago Páez

Authors

  • Vaughn Anderson Rutgers University Program in Comparative Literature

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37536/ECOZONA.2012.3.2.474

Keywords:

science fiction, New World, ecology, postcolonial, ciencia ficción, Nuevo Mundo, ecología, poscolonial

Abstract

The science fiction form adopted by Santiago Páez, in "Uriel" (2006), and Giaconda Belli, in Waslala (1996), owes the rudiments of its literary structure to early colonial narratives of New World encounter. Such science fiction not only contains strong traces of what Mary Louise Pratt has famously called the “rhetoric of discovery,” but also employs tropes directly or indirectly inherited from colonial travel narratives. However, Páez and Belli associate this science fiction form with a legacy of United States neo-imperialism, in which colonial narratives have been invoked and repeated triumphantly in the construction of national imaginaries. In Central and South America, conversely, the novela de la selva—the other clear structural source for Páez and Belli, and a literary form equally indebted to colonial narratives of New World encounter—remains conscious of its enunciation as a postcolonial form critical of its colonial narrative sources. While the novela de la selva, then, shares a literary taproot with sci-fi narratives of futuristic exploration, Páez and Belli utilize the latter to renovate and reactivate the former’s critique of an imperialist legacy by exploiting tensions that arise between these two disparate literary forms whose central tropes so often coincide.  I argue that by adapting the ecologically aware New World imaginary peculiar to the novela de la selva, in which positivist ambitions of national expansion are checked by a forest that nevertheless becomes part of a national imaginary, Páez and Belli fundamentally alter the New World imaginary that underwrites high science fiction narratives of exploration and expansion.

  

 Resumen

 

"Uriel" (2006), del Ecuatoriano Santiago Páez, y Waslala (1996), de la novelista nicaragüense Giaconda Belli, utilizan una forma específica de la ciencia ficción, la cual debe los elementos básicos de su estructura a las narrativas coloniales del "descubrimiento" del Nuevo Mundo. Este sub-género de la ciencia ficción no sólo demuestra lo que Mary Louise Pratt ha llamado una "rhetoric of discovery," sino que también emplea varios tropos heredados – directamente o indirectamente – de las crónicas coloniales. Sin embargo, en la obra de Páez y Belli, este sub-género se asocia principalmente con una tradición estadounidense de neoimperialismo, donde estas narrativas coloniales se celebran como parte integral de los imaginarios nacionalistas. En contraste, en Centroamérica y América del Sur, la novela de la selva – otra fuente narrativa para la obra de Páez y Belli, e igualmente fundamentada en las narrativas del descubrimiento del Nuevo Mundo – reconoce su propia enunciación como forma poscolonial y se mantiene crítica de sus fuentes coloniales. Así, mientras la novela de la selva comparte una raíz narrativa con este sub-género de la ciencia ficción, Páez y Belli hacen productivas las tensiones que surgen entre estas formas distintas cuyos tropos centrales, con mucha frecuencia, coinciden y entrechocan. En este ensayo argumento que el imaginario del Nuevo Mundo particular a la novela de la selva, marcado por una conciencia ecocrítica, sirve aquí para modificar y criticar los usos narrativos del Nuevo Mundo típicos de las narrativas futurísticas de exploración y expansión inter-galácticas.

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Author Biography

Vaughn Anderson, Rutgers University Program in Comparative Literature

Vaughn Anderson is a PhD candidate in the Program in Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. His areas of interest include Inter-American literature and literary circulation; literary urbanism in English, Spanish and Portuguese; ecocriticism; comparative science fiction; translation studies.  Vaughn is a Jacob K. Javits Fellow.

Additional Files

Published

2012-10-06

Issue

Section

The Invention of Eco-Futures