SPAN 6800 - Extractivism to Postextractivism in Latin American Culture

Spring. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

C. Fornoff.

This class considers planetary crisis from a Latin American perspective, attending specifically to the colonial imposition of extractivism and its continuation in the twentieth and twenty-first century as a primary path to national development. The concept of extractivism offers a material and figurative analytic for thinking about the appropriation and commodification of life. We will explore how Latin American visual art, literature, and film lay bare extractivism’s normalization of violence and offer ways of conceptualizing life otherwise, moving away from the singular logic of capital and toward the proliferation of plural ways of conceptualizing the planet.