The symbiosis between humans and non-humans through the post-colonial ecogothic aesthetics of O colonizador, by G. G. Diniz

Abstract

Based on the analysis of the novel by G. G Diniz’s (2020a), O colonizador, the representation of symbiosis between a human and a fungus we will be discussed, in addition to its respective correspondences to the Latin America and Caribbean social reality, marked by the coloniality of power. The narrative takes place mostly in the future, on a glacial planet used by the mining company Astra for iron extraction. Amid this exploitation, remnants of sentient life were found, and in the ice samples taken, there were air bubbles containing traces of an unknown species of fungus that would be revived and analyzed by an exobiology team, composed of Dr. Costa and Jandira, his auxiliary researcher. Through their persecutory experience, the narrative explores the fear of contamination from the perspective of a protagonist whose social markers of difference represent, for traditional Gothic culture, racial and gender “deviations” treated as “contagious.” Therefore, as a contemporary Brazilian author committed to environmental and social themes, Diniz (2020a) updates that tradition through tensioning the anxiety about humans and “non-human” relations and the idea of nature as a source of horror. From this movement, an alternative unfolds to the exploratory model of relating to the otherness of humans. To support this discussion, we rely on the thoughts of Ochy Curiel and Generoso (2020) to relate the concept of coloniality of power to  extractivism. Then, we contextualize how the concept of postcolonial Ecogothic is articulated in O colonizador as a discursive technology against colonial-rooted ecophobia.