Estudios de Teoría Literaria (Mar 2024)
Ecocritical Approaches to Two Transtextual Eco-artifacts: The Company and Another Day… (Synthetic Poems) 2019 by Verónica Gerber Bicecci
Abstract
This article delves into the ecocritical exploration of La compañía and Otro día… (poemas sintéticos) 2019 by Mexican writer and visual artist Verónica Gerber Bicecci, highlighting how they utilize transtextuality to engage with the ecological crisis and human-nature interaction. Drawing on Gérard Genette’s concepts of transtextuality, specifically intertextuality and hypertextuality, the analysis reveals how these “ecoartifacts” are built on rewriting, appropriation, and interaction with other texts, challenging traditional narratives and fostering a deeper, reflective understanding of our insertion in the environment and the impact on the Earth’s different layers. By examining the meticulous composition and explicit transformation strategies in Gerber’s works, it emphasizes their nature as artifacts in the richest sense of the term: products of art and technique that not only present narrative or poetry but act as conglomerates of art, reflection, and aesthetic intention. This approach resonates with ecological principles of interconnection and interdependence, reflecting how literature and art can serve as critical tools to address and reflect on contemporary environmental challenges. Considering these works within the framework of ecocriticism, we recognize their power to merge visual and textual meanings, creating a space where art meets science, and poetics meets politics, in a critical intersection that emphasizes our relationship with the environment and our role within it.
