Alerces in the Anthropocene. Pathos as a territory-affective approach from the forests of southern Chile.

Abstract

This article aims to present and develop the notion of pathos as a conceptual and methodological approach associated with territory, with a view to constructing an affective-territorial gateway for research in the Anthropocene. Pathos, as the main focus of the work, allows us to link affections, bodies, and territories in relation to socio-environmental phenomena. As a middle ground between essay and theoretical review, the research is fundamentally an environmental philosophical reflection, which is complemented and strengthened through an ethnographic approach, interviews, and a bibliographic review. In this way, the article proposes to territorialize pathos based on the larch forests in southern Chile. These forests are of great biocultural, social, and ecological importance, as well as allowing an encounter with more-than-human temporalities in dialogue with the Anthropocene. We enter the forest from the pathos, re-recognizing it from its own plant life in order to also rethink the habitation of humans and other-than-humans in an era where time itself, relationships, and territories are being called into question. These links manifest a pathos of reciprocity, care, empathy, and well-being, thus revealing the possibility of inhabiting other forests and the use of a concept—pathos—which, embraced by geography and socio-environmental studies, can yield interesting fruits of analysis and understanding.