Rocha has concentrated his research on the literatures and oralitures of the indigenous peoples of America, as well as on Latin American literary criticism.
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This Thursday the book “Reforesting the Imagination” (Economic Culture Fund), by Miguel Rocha Vivas, PhD in Literature from the University of North Carolina and professor at the Javeriana University, will be presented at FILBO.
The presentation will be at 5:30 pm in the Great Hall E, where the author will talk with Keratuma, film director Embera Eyabida, and Juan Carlos Caicedo, PhD in Biomedical Sciences and director of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Sciences and Human Processes of the Externado University.
“Reforesting the Imagination” establishes a deep relationship between climate change and the destruction of forests with a crisis of the imagination and the poetic. This reflection had its origins more than 10 years ago, when Rocha lived in a forest in North Carolina (United States) while studying his doctorate, and he began writing it in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Reviewing what has happened to nature since the industrial era, and putting the worldviews and medicines of ancient peoples in dialogue with what we in the West call “art,” the author proposes that the environmental crisis is related to a crisis of language that ends up castrating the imagination, so it proposes, from this point of view, some alternatives to avoid a greater collapse.
Rocha has concentrated his research on the literatures and oralitures of the indigenous peoples of America, as well as on Latin American literary criticism.
In 2016 he received the Casa de las Américas Prize for his book “Mingas de la Palabra, oralitegraphic textualities and visions of the head in contemporary indigenous oralitures and literatures,” based on his doctoral dissertation. In addition, he is the author and co-author of books of essays, literary criticism and narrative such as “The Hero of Our Image” (2004), “Perumanta qanchis aswan allin willakuyna” (2005), “Multicultural Interactions” (2008), “Before the Dawn ” (2010), “The sun drools pineapple juice” (2010), “Diamond flowers” (2010), “Pütchi Biyá Uai, precursors” (2011), “Pütchi Biyá Uai, points aside” (2011), “ Path to Yes” (2012), “Big Words, Living Words” (2012), “Ark and Wrath” (2019), among others.
