BOOK MANUSCRIPT
NECROTERRITORIES. SLAUGHTERHOUSES AND THE
POLITICS OF DEATH
In preparation
Necroterritories theorizes slaughtering sites as dynamic biopolitical territories that explicitly regulate animal death, and implicitly regulate both human and animal life. I take my cue from Achilles Mbembe’s definition of necropower as “the power that proceeds by a sort of inversion between life and death, as if life was merely death’s medium” (Necropolitics, 38) to examine how the concepts of “animality” and “animalization” have played an explicit role in the distribution of death and life in the River Plate basin, tracing these concepts in 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century literary and visual materials from Argentina, Uruguay, and Southern Brazil.
NECROTERRITORIES. SLAUGHTERHOUSES AND THE
POLITICS OF DEATH
In preparation
Necroterritories theorizes slaughtering sites as dynamic biopolitical territories that explicitly regulate animal death, and implicitly regulate both human and animal life. I take my cue from Achilles Mbembe’s definition of necropower as “the power that proceeds by a sort of inversion between life and death, as if life was merely death’s medium” (Necropolitics, 38) to examine how the concepts of “animality” and “animalization” have played an explicit role in the distribution of death and life in the River Plate basin, tracing these concepts in 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century literary and visual materials from Argentina, Uruguay, and Southern Brazil.
BOOK MANUSCRIPT
(IN)DEFENSE OF THE
LAND: BIODIVERSITY AND LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY IN 21ST-CENTURY POETRY FROM
ABIAYALA
In preparation
(In)Defense of the Land analyzes the relationship between biodiversity and linguistic diversity as two interrelated phenomena resulting from extractivism. Taking as a premise that the displacement of Indigenous, Afrodiasporic, and rural populations by the advancement of the extractive frontier has resulted in the loss of ancestral ecological knowledge conveyed in those communities’ languages, I show how contemporary poets writing in Guna, Garifuna, Guaraní, Maya K’iche’, Náhuatl, Ngäbe and Yucatec Maya advocate for the preservation of the biodiversity of Abiayala.
EDITED VOLUME
RUGE EL BOSQUE: ECOPOESÍA DE LA AMAZONÍA
Volumen III - In preparation
Co-edited with Javiera Perez Salerno and Whitney DeVos
This volume is organized around the ecosystem of the Amazon, the South American tropical forest that spans the nation-states of Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname, and Venezuela, as well as the French overseas department of French Guiana. Currently in preparation, this multilingual environmental poetry book addresses the Amazon rainforest from a transactional perspective, with an emphasis on the territorial existence of indigenous nations whose cultures and languages are situated within the Amazon basin.
RUGE EL BOSQUE: ECOPOESÍA DE LA AMAZONÍA
Volumen III - In preparation
Co-edited with Javiera Perez Salerno and Whitney DeVos
This volume is organized around the ecosystem of the Amazon, the South American tropical forest that spans the nation-states of Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname, and Venezuela, as well as the French overseas department of French Guiana. Currently in preparation, this multilingual environmental poetry book addresses the Amazon rainforest from a transactional perspective, with an emphasis on the territorial existence of indigenous nations whose cultures and languages are situated within the Amazon basin.
EDITED VOLUME
RUGE EL BOSQUE: ECOPOESÍA DE MESOAMÉRICA
Volume II – Caleta Olivia, 2024
Co-edited with Javiera Pérez Salerno and Whitney DeVos
This plurilingual anthology gathers environmental poetic expressions written in Guna, Maya K’iche, Nahuatl, Belizean Creole, Garifuna, Yucatec Maya, Spanish and English. The volume indexes the cosmological and linguistic plurality of the Mesoamerican region composed of the current nation-states of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and parts of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Honduras. The included poetics demonstrate the importance of considering natural biodiversity and linguistic diversity as concomitant phenomena, and to reflect about the risk posed by colonial and capitalist extractivist models to the existence of Abiayala’s territories.
RUGE EL BOSQUE: ECOPOESÍA DE MESOAMÉRICA
Volume II – Caleta Olivia, 2024
Co-edited with Javiera Pérez Salerno and Whitney DeVos
This plurilingual anthology gathers environmental poetic expressions written in Guna, Maya K’iche, Nahuatl, Belizean Creole, Garifuna, Yucatec Maya, Spanish and English. The volume indexes the cosmological and linguistic plurality of the Mesoamerican region composed of the current nation-states of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and parts of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Honduras. The included poetics demonstrate the importance of considering natural biodiversity and linguistic diversity as concomitant phenomena, and to reflect about the risk posed by colonial and capitalist extractivist models to the existence of Abiayala’s territories.
EDITED VOLUME
RUGE EL BOSQUE: ECOPOESÍA DEL CONO SUR
Volume I – Caleta Olivia, 2023
Co-edited with Javiera Pérez Salerno and Whitney DeVos
This anthology brings together environmental poetry written from the territories known today as Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay—and their borderlands. Underscoring the coexistence of Indigenous, hybrid, and colonial languages within the Southern Cone region, the poetics of this volume collectively think through the planetary climate crisis from a number of pluralistic ecological, cultural, and linguistic perspectives. To learn more about the work in this volume, see “Wetland Poetics: Regional Situatedness as Planetary Practice” by Valeria Meiller and Whitney DeVos.
RUGE EL BOSQUE: ECOPOESÍA DEL CONO SUR
Volume I – Caleta Olivia, 2023
Co-edited with Javiera Pérez Salerno and Whitney DeVos
This anthology brings together environmental poetry written from the territories known today as Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay—and their borderlands. Underscoring the coexistence of Indigenous, hybrid, and colonial languages within the Southern Cone region, the poetics of this volume collectively think through the planetary climate crisis from a number of pluralistic ecological, cultural, and linguistic perspectives. To learn more about the work in this volume, see “Wetland Poetics: Regional Situatedness as Planetary Practice” by Valeria Meiller and Whitney DeVos.
EDITED VOLUME
UNPREDICTABLE ARCHITECTURES: THE AESTHETICS AND POLITICS OF GARDENING IN LATIN AMERICA
Brill – Under Review
Co-edited with Lucas Mertehikian
The claim behind the essays in this volume is that gardens are, by definition, heterogeneous and unpredictable. They can be spaces of peace and quietness, but also of upheaval and political rebellion; they can be an idealized literary or artistic topos, but often conceal forms of racialized and gendered violence; they can seem to be atemporal, but are deeply embedded in history. Above all, gardens might be designed to appear still, but they are always changing. Gardens might even show up where we least think they will be. They are not only unpredictable but unexpected: they are bound to surprise us. In a time of rapid degradation of fundamental green spaces and accelerating climate change, Unpredictable Architectures: The Aesthetics and Politics of Gardening in Latin America reflects on the cultural, political, and aesthetic relevance of the vegetable world through spatial, artistic, and discursive practices from prior the first contact with European settlers to the present. From architecture and landscape history to comparative literature, and from urban parks and botanical gardens to horticultural magazines and contemporary artworks, the range of disciplines and objects of inquiry represented in this volume illustrate the multifocal ways in which gardens are conceived and rendered visible.
UNPREDICTABLE ARCHITECTURES: THE AESTHETICS AND POLITICS OF GARDENING IN LATIN AMERICA
Brill – Under Review
Co-edited with Lucas Mertehikian
The claim behind the essays in this volume is that gardens are, by definition, heterogeneous and unpredictable. They can be spaces of peace and quietness, but also of upheaval and political rebellion; they can be an idealized literary or artistic topos, but often conceal forms of racialized and gendered violence; they can seem to be atemporal, but are deeply embedded in history. Above all, gardens might be designed to appear still, but they are always changing. Gardens might even show up where we least think they will be. They are not only unpredictable but unexpected: they are bound to surprise us. In a time of rapid degradation of fundamental green spaces and accelerating climate change, Unpredictable Architectures: The Aesthetics and Politics of Gardening in Latin America reflects on the cultural, political, and aesthetic relevance of the vegetable world through spatial, artistic, and discursive practices from prior the first contact with European settlers to the present. From architecture and landscape history to comparative literature, and from urban parks and botanical gardens to horticultural magazines and contemporary artworks, the range of disciplines and objects of inquiry represented in this volume illustrate the multifocal ways in which gardens are conceived and rendered visible.
EDITED VOLUME
STILL
LIVES. THE INHUMAN IN LATIN AMERICAN CULTURE
Journal of Latin American Studies – Under Review
Co-edited with Nicolás Campisi
Why do plants, rocks, fungi, meat, and microbes feature so prominently in contemporary Latin American cultural production? Has the human receded to the background due to the onset of climate change and the sixth extinction? This edited issue studies the notion of the inhuman in contemporary Latin American culture to interrogate how the temporality of the Anthropocene has blurred the boundaries between the human and the geological, between inert and vital matter. Building on important theorizations of the division between the human and nonhuman in Latin American culture (see Heffes and Fornoff; Andermann; Giorgi; Hoyos; Vieira), this edited issue takes up the question of the inhuman to foreground how cultural producers engage with the deep temporality of minerals, the language of plants, or the cultural politics of meat.
STILL
LIVES. THE INHUMAN IN LATIN AMERICAN CULTURE
Journal of Latin American Studies – Under Review
Co-edited with Nicolás Campisi
Why do plants, rocks, fungi, meat, and microbes feature so prominently in contemporary Latin American cultural production? Has the human receded to the background due to the onset of climate change and the sixth extinction? This edited issue studies the notion of the inhuman in contemporary Latin American culture to interrogate how the temporality of the Anthropocene has blurred the boundaries between the human and the geological, between inert and vital matter. Building on important theorizations of the division between the human and nonhuman in Latin American culture (see Heffes and Fornoff; Andermann; Giorgi; Hoyos; Vieira), this edited issue takes up the question of the inhuman to foreground how cultural producers engage with the deep temporality of minerals, the language of plants, or the cultural politics of meat.
© 2024 Valeria Meiller