Subjetividade verde: ficção e identidade em The overstory

Abstract

This article aims to investigate how the novel The overstory (2018), by Richard Powers, challenges the traditional literary construction in configuring in its narrative a sense of identity to non-human beings – in the specific case of the work, trees. The novel consists of nine characters in different narratives, which intertwined, having in common the central presence of at least one tree in which story and presenting the complex relation between the aforementioned characters and those vegetal beings. The present work will be organized considering two focal points, in relation to the novel: first, the blurring of the division between the concepts of nature and culture, underpinned by contemporary environmental studies; and secondly, the relation between a developmentalist economic discourse and the environmental collapse, especially under the new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene. Thus, this article intends to show that The overstory tests the limits of the idea that only humans are the makers of meaning, highlighting that non-human beings can also be seen as possessors of identity.