UC Santa Barbara

This dissertation proposes to examine the eco-noir, a study of crime fiction, noirs, anddetective novels through the lens of the literary figure of the landscape. The aim is to explore how this genres relate to the environment and ecological thought. I delve into the generic antinomies of crime fiction, specifically the tension between the resolution of the enigma of a case and the impossibility of that, and how they intersect with climate change, and the theoretical concept of hyperobjects, which I draw from Timothy Morton’s perspective. This enables me to reflect on the ways in which this genre and reason itself are challenged by environmental disasters. Specifically, in my research, I examine how Latin American crime fiction uses environmental narratives to investigate the relationship between violence, socio-environmental conflicts, and the effects of ecological destruction. In this regard, I incorporate Rob Nixon’s concept of slow violence, which sheds light on the gradual and imperceptible violence inflicted on the environment, into the analysis of crime fiction. The central question that guides my project is how twenty-first century Latin American crime fiction utilizes landscape, environmental degradation, and related affects to highlight the historical connections between violence towards nature and society, intersecting with race, class, and gender in complex ways. The works of prominent theorists such as Jane Bennett, Donna Haraway, and Stacy Alaimo are central to my analysis as they develop ideas on the force of things, transcorporeality, and the concept of symbiotic and Chtulucene, that I use to discuss how the landscape is being transformed by different networks and agents. My dissertation comprises four chapters, each examining a different work of Latin American crime fiction. In the first chapter, I analyze Ricardo Piglia’s Blanco Nocturno, which explores how the desertification of the humid pampas intersects with indigenous genocide and climate disaster. The second chapter investigates Cristina Rivera Garza’s El mal de la taiga, which utilizes environmental rhetoric to probe the ecological imbalances caused by global warming and deforestation in the boreal forest of the North Pole. In the third chapter, I examine María Inés Krimer’s Noxa and how it critiques the use of herbicides in transgenic soybean monocultures through the biopolitical attempt to control the toxic effects of herbicides that are uncontrollable. Finally, in the fourth chapter, I study the relationships between slow violence and corruption in the Ecuadorian novel Poso Wells, which tackles the sale of ecological reserves and the environmental risks of palm monoculture in Colombia, as seen in Juan Cárdenas’ El diablo de las provincias. My methodology combines ecocritical and affective studies, examining both the history of landscape in literature and the study of emotions. I argue that violence against the environment and the landscape has both material and emotional effects on biodiversity and society. The negative emotions experienced by characters in these novels, such as nostalgia, sinister concerns, fears of destruction, and anxiety about climate change, provoke deep reflections on ecology.