UNIMAGINED HOME: EXTRACTIVISM AND THE GHOSTS OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM IN PATRICIO JARA’S GEOLOGY OF A DESERT PLANET

Abstract

The present article proposes a reading of Patricio Jara’s novel Geology of a Desert Planet (2013), framing the discussion in the context of the analysis of the feature of the literatura de los hijos generation in Chile. Deploying Rob Nixon’s theory of the “unimagined communities”, the article discusses the critique of the neoliberal and extractivist model proposed in the novel. Similarly, the present work reads the spectral aspects of the novel as a metaphor employed to provide a critique of the hidden mechanisms of global capitalism.