Geological Alephs: The Latin American Novel in the Anthropocene

Abstract This essay theorizes the concept of the geological novel. It argues that Latin American writers push the boundaries of literature’s association with human plots to produce deep-time consciousness by comparing our era of climate change with previous geological eras and countering myths of human mastery over nature. The article shows that writers move from the paradigm of the global to the geological to expand the reach of the novel from the time of the human to the deep pasts and futures of the nonhuman. By reading the work of Cristina Rivera Garza, Mike Wilson, and Michel Nieva, the article’s author posits three instances of the contemporary geological novel: geological autobiographies, encyclopedias, and science fiction. In addition to refashioning the novel’s narrative features to account for the Anthropocene’s scalar complexity, these authors reflect on geology’s participation in excluding racialized populations from the establishment of modern nation-states. Together, they tackle the narrative challenges of reflecting the Anthropocene’s geological instant: the unthinkable divide between the large scales of the earth’s history and the limited bounds of our fleeting presence on the planet.