Biocosmism: Vitality and the Utopian Imagination in Postrevolutionary Mexico (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780826506528)

Most scholars study postrevolutionary Mexico as a period in which cultural production significantly shaped national identity through murals, novels, essays, and other artifacts that registered the changing political and social realities in the wake of the Revolution. In Biocosmism, Jorge Quintana Navarrete shifts the focus to examine how a group of scientists, artists, and philosophers conceived the manifold relations of the human species with cosmological forces and nonhuman entities (animals, plants, inorganic matter, and celestial bodies, among others).

Drawing from recent theoretical trends in new materialisms, biopolitics, and posthumanism, this book traces for the first time the intellectual constellation of biocosmism or biocosmic thought: the study of universal life understood as the vital vibrancy that animates everything in the cosmos from inorganic matter to living organisms to outer space. It combines both analysis of unexplored areas--such as Alfonso L. Herrera's plasmogeny--and innovative readings of canonical texts like Vasconcelos's La raza cmica to examine how biocosmism produced a wide array of utopian projects and theorizations that continue to challenge anthropocentric, biopolitical frameworks.

Author: Jorge Quintana Navarrete
ISBN-10: 0826506526
ISBN-13: 9780826506528
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Language: English
Published: 03/29/2024
Pages: 250
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.18lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.69d