Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the Romantic legacy in libertarian naturism of South American expression from the turn of the 20th century, with special reference to its biopolitical critique.

Paper long abstract:

It is known that the naturist tendencies which flourished amidst international anarchist movement between the last decades of the 19th century to the 1920s sustained a dissident ecocentrism taken from the Romantic set of ideas. Indeed, libertarian naturism gave continuity to the Romantic critique to modern industrialism and urban life and, most importantly, the movement gave political expression to the edenic vision of inter-species conviviality, engaging in struggles for the rights of other species and nature at large.

This paper intends a reading of two South American authors of the turn of the 20th century – the Brazilian novelist Lima Barreto and Rafael Barrett, for Paraguayan literature - in order to highlight they shared a common ground in the anarchist ecocentrism of Romantic lineage, which is the base of their biopolitical critique of South American authoritarianism and exploitation of labour.