From ‘A extinção das Abelhas’ to Chaos

Reflections about the ecoqueer dimensions of Brazilian Contemporary Fiction

Abstract

The anguish we have been feeling in recent years, with the whirlwind of information related not only to climate chaos but also political, economic, and social turmoil, has (potentially) resulted in an increase in publications about widespread collapse. Speculating about the future of what we understand as the planet and the multiple understandings of worlds, several authors have used fiction as a tool — or escape — to propose possibilities for the future. In this sense, it is worth questioning what forms of creating and thinking about relationships between existences make future imaginaries possible; and how thinking about affect and care, from a queer perspective, can offer fruitful future horizons. In A extinção das abelhas (2021), Natalia Borges Polesso reflects on the limits of this chaos and the viability of new affective arrangements in the ruins. Through the literary analysis of this text, from the perspective of Queer Ecology, in conversation with authors such as Catriona Sandilands, Greta Gaard, and Donna Haraway, I seek to explore new configurations of worlds, outside of binaries, by challenging hierarchies of species, gender, sexuality, class, geography, and race. Thus, what I seek to affirm is fiction — and literature — as a queer ecology by showing its action as a dimensional enhancer of the chains that make up the complex interspecies relations, being capable of fertilizing current practices of world making (PRATT, 2022).