Reproduction Beyond Hu/Man Extinction: Detoxifying Care in Latin American Anthropocene Fictions

Abstract

Anxieties around failed parenting are linked to humanity’s failed stewardship of the planet in many recent Anthropocene narratives, yet the figure of the biological human child, as *the* signifier of futurity draws attention to the difficulty of imagining the future in non-heteronormative, non-Western, and non-anthropocentric terms. Reproduction is nothing if not a replication of self, of forms of life that are like us. In order to recuperate an alternative model of care from its anthropocentric lineage, I examine how Anacristina Rossi’s feminist sci-fi story ‘Abel’ and Samantha Schweblin’s gothic horror novella Distancia de Rescate (2014) perform radical critiques of the idea of reproductive bodies, while at the same time opening out to signal non-binary possibilities of life, offering species-level critique while at the same time remaining rooted in local geographies. These stories embrace the negative implications of Anthropocene thinking, challenging, reflecting, and perpetuating anxieties around sexual difference and the possibility of human extinction, without relying on essentialised mandates about femininity, childbearing and care giving. They engage with what Claire Colebrook calls ‘figural extinction’ as a way to signal the possibility of moving away from historically toxic androcentric, capitalist and anthropocentric visions of care, and toward an ethic of non/human connection.