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Lines of Geography in Latin American Narrative pp 1–28Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Heretofore: Delineation

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Part of the book series: Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies ((GSLS))

Abstract

By creating a dialogue between literary and geographical figures from within and beyond Latin America—from Homer to José Joaquín Olmedo, Elisée Reclus, Alexander von Humboldt, and William Vollman—this chapter delineates the ways in which geography has always been a political practice that discursively makes and unmakes land. It fleshes out the basics of transculturated geographical discourse and geocriticism to illuminate how the marriage between land and letters materializes from the particular colonial context of the Americas. Upon establishing that Latin America’s writer-statesmen imagine national consolidation through geocentered institutions and literatures, this chapter attends to the discipline’s complicity in past genocide and current ecocide. It closes with the power of photography and film to surmount discursive failures of representation.

Mas los sublimes montes, cuya frente

a la región etérea se levanta,

que ven las tempestades a su planta

brillar, rugir, romperse, disiparse,

los Andes, las enormes, estupendas

moles sentadas sobre bases de oro,

la tierra con su peso equilibrado,

jamás se moverán. Ellos, burlando

de ajena envidia y del protervo tiempo

la furia y el poder, serán eternos

de libertad y de victoria heraldos.

—José Joaquín Olmedo, “La victoria de Junín” (1824) 1

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, USA

    Aarti Smith Madan

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  1. Aarti Smith Madan
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Madan, A.S. (2017). Heretofore: Delineation. In: Lines of Geography in Latin American Narrative. Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55140-1_1

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