ABSTRACT
This essay examines Samantha Schweblin’s engagement with the Gothic genre in Distancia de rescate (2015) to represent the slow violence of agrochemical pollution and to criticize, at the same time, our tendency to privilege the visible and the immediate. The protagonist, a poisoned child whose soul has transmigrated to another body, incarnates the figure of the monster that in Gothic fiction fulfills the double function of showing and warning about hidden and invisible threats. I further argue that this child-monster shares some characteristics with the zombie, a figure linked with human and ecological exploitation in the plantation economy, and with the capitalist expansion that emerged from the implementation of this agricultural-based colonial economy. These resonances, I argue, suggest a critique of the model of agricultural production in Argentina. In addition, this paper explores the relationship between maternal narrative and ecological concerns and how this is connected to the Gothic genre in the novel. Bringing together Rob Nixon’s work on slow violence with studies on the Gothic genre and Maternal Ecofeminism, I propose that the elements of Gothic fiction present in Schweblin’s novel and her exploration of maternity in new contexts give visibility and imminence to the gradual poisoning of the world through the biotechnological manipulation of crops and the excessive use of agrochemicals.
