Guilt and Ecocriticism: new poetic representations for the antrophogenic crisis in Mireia Calafell, Núria Mirabet and Silvie Rothkovic

Abstract

As a result of the intersection with biology, philosophy, and anthropology, psychology has generated a valuable theoretical corpus on the theory of affect and emotions in a context where the subject faces a permanent biosphere crisis. Scholars such as Melanie Klein (1998, 2001) and Lawrence Buell (2016) agree in distinguishing between depression and fear as immediate emotions in adversity. However, we note that in recent years so-called outlawed emotions (Jaggar, 1989), such as hatred, envy, shame, or guilt, have also played a decisive role in interpreting moments of crisis. Among these emotions, guilt is the one that has generated the most literature so far and the one that, according to traditional psychology, harms the subject the most (Freud 1923). Still subject to rigid gender stereotypes, guilt is characterized by its negative impact on the psyche and the ability to activate adaptive mechanisms concerning moral and social behaviour (Barret, 1995; Eisenberg, 1986). Given these characteristics and the fact that in modern subjectivity it no longer fits only within the limits of the individual self, this article will explore the new poetic figurations of guilt in the anthropogenic era. Thus, from the analysis of a selection of poems from Nosaltres, qui (2020) by Mireia Calafell, Lianes o les rates que imiten l’Esther Williams (2021), Núria Mirabet and Als llacs (2021), Silvie Rothkovic, I will study how ecohumanism manifests itself in the poetic imagination when faced with destruction, extinction, and irreversibility narratives.