Premio al Mejor Libro en Humanidades, Latin American Studies Association-Mexico Section, 2025
Honorable Mention, LASA Environment Best Book Prize, Latin American Studies Association-Environment Section, 2025
During the twenty-first century, Mexico has escalated extractive concessions at the same time that it has positioned itself as an international leader in the fight against climate change. Cultural production emergent from this contradiction frames this impasse as a crisis of imagination. Subjunctive Aesthetics studies how contemporary writers, filmmakers, and visual artists grapple with the threat that climate change and extractivist policies pose to Mexicos present and future. It explores how artists rise to the challenge of envisioning alternative forms of territoriality (ways of being in relation to the environment) through strategies ranging from rewriting to counterfactual speculation.
Whereas ecocritical studies have often focused on arts evidentiary role-its ability to visualize and prove the urgency of environmental damage-author Carolyn Fornoff argues that wha