Luis I. Prádanos - Böcker

An Open Access edition of this work is available on Modern Languages Open (https://www.modernlanguagesopen.org)Postgrowth Imaginaries brings together environmental cultural studies and postgrowth economics to examine counterhegemonic narratives and radical cultural shifts sparked by the global financial crisis of 2008. A number of critical voices worldwide have emphasized that in the context of a finite biosphere, constant economic growth is a biophysical impossibility. The problem is not a lack of growth but rather the globalization of an economic system addicted to constant growth, which destroys the ecological planetary systems that support life on Earth while failing to fulfil its social promises. Post-2008 Spain offers an optimal context to investigate these cultural processes, and this book demonstrates that a transition toward what Prádanos calls ‘postgrowth imaginaries’—the counterhegemonic cultural sensibilities that are challenging the growth paradigm in manifold ways—is well underway in the Iberian Peninsula today. Specifically, this book explores how emerging cultural sensibilities in Spain—reflected in fiction and nonfiction writing and film, television programs, photographs and graphic novels, op-eds, web pages, political manifestos, and socioecological movements—are actively detaching themselves from the dominant imaginary of economic growth. By approaching the counterhegemonic cultures of the crisis through environmental criticism, Postgrowth Imaginaries uncovers a whole range of cultural nuances often ignored by Iberian cultural studies.

Contesting Extinctions: Decolonial and Regenerative Futures critically interrogates the discursive framing of extinctions and how they relate to the systems that bring about biocultural loss. The chapters in this multidisciplinary volume examine approaches to ecological and social extinction and resurgence from a variety of fields, including environmental studies, literary studies, political science, and philosophy. Grounding their scholarship in decolonial, Indigenous, and counter-hegemonic frameworks, the contributors advocate for shifting the discursive focus from ruin to regeneration.

An exploration of how writers, artists, and filmmakers expose the costs and contest the assumptions of the Capitalocene era that guides readers through the rapidly developing field of Spanish environmental cultural studies.From the scars left by Franco's dams and mines to the toxic waste dumped in Equatorial Guinea, from the cruelty of the modern pork industry to the ravages of mass tourism in the Balearic Islands, this book delves into the power relations, material practices and social imaginaries underpinning the global economic system to uncover its unaffordable human and non-human costs. Guiding the reader through the rapidly emerging field of Spanish environmental cultural studies, with chapters on such topics as extractivism, animal studies, food studies, ecofeminism, decoloniality, critical race studies, tourism, and waste studies, an international team of US and European scholars show how Spanish writers, artists, and filmmakers have illuminated and contested the growth-oriented and neo-colonialist assumptions of the current Capitalocene era. Focussed on Spain, the volume also provides models for exploring the socioecological implications of cultural manifestations in other parts of the world.CONTRIBUTORS: Eugenia Afinoguénova, Samuel Amago, Daniel Ares-López, Kata Beilin, John Beusterien, Miguel Caballero Vázquez, Jorge Catalá, Glen S. Close, Jeffrey K. Coleman, Jamie de Moya-Cotter, Ana Fernández-Cebrián, Ofelia Ferrán, Tatjana Gajic , Pedro García-Caro, Santiago Gorostiza, Germán Labrador Méndez, Maryanne L. Leone, Shanna Lino, Jorge Marí, José Manuel Marrero Henríquez, Maria Antònia Martí Escayol, Christine Martínez, Cristina Martínez Tejero, Micah McKay, Pamela F. Phillips, Mercè Picornell, Luis I. Prádanos, Cécile Stehrenberger, John H. Trevathan, Joaquín Valdivielso, William Viestenz, Maite Zubiaurre