A collective semiosis: the inclusion of the non-human in Lupe Gómez’s Camuflaxe

Abstract

Since 1996, there has been an effort to include the environmental crisis in the agenda of literary studies. The relationship between environment and literature has been ethnically and historically peculiar. Cultural appropriations and environmental assumptions team up with specific habitats and, sometimes, with specific language practices. Camuflaxe by Lupe Gómez (Fisteus 1972- ) constitutes an example of this. This article explains that Gómez relies on a praxis of language that encompasses human and non-human semiosis, affecting both the epistemic basis of the reader and the poetic language itself. To prove this, I follow Eduardo Kohn’s ideas on semiosis of the forests, and David Abrams’s epistemic calling via ecocosmology. The way Camuflaxe exemplifies another form of learning and experience, and how it renews poetic language through this peculiar semiosis, is to be analyzed throughout this article.