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Theory of Urgencies and the Present of Literature: a Speculative Reading Practice Based on Autobiography of an Octopus by Vinciane Despret

Abstract

This article seeks to develop a literary theory based on Vinciane Despret's Autobiography of an Octopus. Our aim is to read the narrative in a way that combines the main premise of its creation, the Anthropocene, with instruments developed by Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway, such as the war between Earthbound and Humans, sympoiesis and speculative fabulation. In this context, the Anthropocene takes on the character of "times of urgency", favourable to innovative relationships between beings and between disciplines and contrary to eschatological narratives of the end of the world. In this sense, we intend to outline a theoretical practice that allows the emergence of paradigms that value cognition through the body and the senses, diminishing the prominence of learning or reading traditionally understood as exercises of reason. This practice would cooperate with the conception of a world to come.

Keywords:
Anthropocene; literary theory; speculation; fiction; narrative

Programa de Pos-Graduação em Letras Neolatinas, Faculdade de Letras -UFRJ Av. Horácio Macedo, 2151, Cidade Universitária, CEP 21941-97 - Rio de Janeiro RJ Brasil , - Rio de Janeiro - RJ - Brazil
E-mail: alea.ufrj@gmail.com