A Collision of Disparate Historical Timescales in Ignácio de Loyola Brandão's And Still the Earth.

Abstract

This essay offers an eco-critical reading of Ignacio de Loyola Brandão 's 1981 novel Não verás país nenhum. (Trans. And Still the Earth, 1985). I examine in detail the novel's unconventional and multi-layered conceptualizations of history while also focusing on aesthetic aspects of Brandão's depiction of social, political, and environmental degradation. My analysis expands on the contextual timeframe of the Military Dictatorship years (1964-1985) with which the novel is conventionally associated. I propose instead to approach Brandão's text through wider historical and spatial perspectives. I show how the novel articulates unconventional conceptualizations of history that challenge long-standing humanistic approaches. Though closely related to specific historical and political contexts in Brazil, this decades-old narrative anticipated many of the anxieties that became part of current global debates on the Anthropocene and its impact on humanistic precepts in the Humanities and in the Social Sciences.