Notes on the emergence of space in contemporary Brazilian fiction

Abstract

ABSTRACT: at a 1967 conference in Tunisia, Michel Foucault said that the 20th century was “the epoch of space”. This presentation contributed to what later became known as the “spatial turn”. If the “spatial turn” was marked, among other things, by an emphasis on socially produced spaces, the Anthropocene can be described as a geological epoch marked by the emergence of space in a double meaning: as a monstrous apparition, the “intrusion of Gaia” (Stengers) or the “Planetary” (Chakrabarty), and as an accentuation of climate crises, thus demanding a “return to the terrestrial” (Dünne). In recent years, Brazilian writers such as Daniel Galera (2019, 2024) and Carola Saavedra (2021) have been rethinking their own literary productions and the challenges of narrative in the face of environmental disasters. The space of the climate emergency and other spaces (influenced by Amerindian cosmologies) also feature strongly in recent works by Joca Reiners Terron and Veronica Stigger. The aim of this article is therefore to map out some of the challenges facing Brazilian literary production in the face of the Anthropocene, with an emphasis on space in its double emergency.