Extranjería y simbiosis: imaginarios arbóreos en la cuentística de Guadalupe Nettel

Aurora Piñeiro

doi:10.22201/fesa.26832917e.2025.6.2.404

Authors

Aurora Piñeiro Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (MX) https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7789-7723

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22201/fesa.26832917e.2025.6.2.404

Keywords:

Guadalupe Nettel, wandering imaginaries arboreal, Anthropocene, ecoghotic, contemporary Mexican short story

Abstract

Based on the reflections on the arboreal made by Matthew Battles, Solveig Nitzke and Helga G. Braunbeck, the purpose of this text is to analyze two short stories by Guadalupe Nettel, “Jugar con fuego” and “Un bosque bajo la tierra”, as works of Gothic Anthropocene where the writer articulates two variants of the arboreal imaginaries and two types of human interaction with trees. In both stories, the author evokes the effects and emotions of fear and the eco-anxieties, maintains the condition of the ambiguous in the relationships between the human and the arboreal, intertwines the representations of natural imbalances with family dysfunctions and successfully articulates a perspective and language that dislocates the assumed supremacy of the human over the vegetal.

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Author Biography

Aurora Piñeiro, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Full-time professor in the Department of English at the Colegio de Letras Modernas, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). PhD in Letras (Letras Modernas), master of Literatura Comparada and graduated in Lengua y Literaturas Modernas (Letras Inglesas) from UNAM. Her main academic fields of specialization are contemporary Irish fiction (20th and 21st Century), Gothic literature in English (20th and 21st Century), and theory of postmodern novel (second half of the 20th Century). She was a visiting professor at University College Dublin (Ireland), from 2014 to 2015 and at the Centro de Estudios Irlandeses at the Universidad de Lovaina, Belgium, from January 15 to February 15, 2024. Among her published articles and chapters are: “The Language of Cartography in Anne Enright’s Writings” in ABEI Journal: The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies 24, no. 1; “Las cabelleras femeninas en Penny Dreadful: una exploración de los afectos y las tecnologías del glamour en la estética gótica” in El placer de la lectura: cuerpos, afectos, textos. Mexico: CISAN-UNAM; “A Trail of Bread Crumbs to Follow, or Gothic Rewritings of ‘Hansel and Gretel’ by Lina Meruane, Jorge Volpi and Mariana Enríquez”. Gothic Studies, 22.1, Edinburg University Press; “Scalding Drops on a Naked Eye: The Motif of the Double in Seeing Red by Lina Meruane”. Doubles and Hybrids in Latin American Gothic. New York and London: Routledge.

She is the editorial director of Nuevas Poligrafías. Revista de teoría literaria y literatura comparada, published by UNAM, and head of the Eavan Boland-Anne Enright Irish Studies Chair at the same university. Piñeiro is a member of the National System of Researches (SNII), Level 1.

References

Battles, Matthew. 2022. Trees. New York: Bloomsbury.

Campisi, Nicolás. 2020. “Tiempos extraños: comunidad, supervivencia e imaginación sostenible en El huésped de Guadalupe Nettel y Distancia de rescate de Samanta Schweblin.” A contracorriente. Revista de estudios latinoamericanos 17, no.. 2 (October): 165-181. https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/2027

Crutzen, Paul J. and Eugene F. Stoermer. 2000. “The ‘Antrhopocene’”. IGBP Global Change Newsletter no. 41. (May): 17-18. http://www.igbp.net/download/18.316f18321323470177580001401/1376383088452/NL41.pdf

Edwards, Justin D., Rune Graulun and Johan Höglund, eds. 2022. Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth. The Gothic Anthropocene. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Nettel, Guadalupe. 2008. Pétalos y otras historias incómodas. Barcelona: Anagrama.

Parker, Elizabeth. 2020. The Forest and the EcoGothic. The Deep Dark Woods in the Popular Imagination. Gewerbestrasse: Palgrave Macmillan.

Silva, Armando. 2013. “Teoría.” Imaginarios urbanos. http://www.imaginariosurbanos.net/es/

Smith, Andrew and William Hughes, eds. 2016. EcoGhotic. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Solvejg, Nitzke and Helga G. Braunbeck. 2021. “Arboreal Imaginaries. An Introduction to the Shared Cultures of Trees and Humans.” Green Letters. Studies in Ecocriticism 25, no. 4 (May): 341-355. https://doi.org/10.1080/14688417.2021.2072633