Keywords
eco-anxiety
horror
narrative ecologies
more-than-human relations
witchcraft Literatura contemporánea
eco-ansiedad
horror
ecologías narrativas
relaciones más-que-humanas
brujería
How to Cite
Abstract
This article analyzes Lapvona (2022) by Ottessa Moshfegh from the perspective of narrative ecologies and the field of the fictional uncanny. Through the character of Ina—accused of witchcraft and recognized for her embodied knowledge of plants, animals, and bodies—the study examines how the novel destabilizes the modern divide between humans and nature. Rather than presenting the uncanny as a supernatural intrusion, Lapvona articulates it as a perceptual intensification that reveals the material continuity among organisms, landscapes, and more-than-human forms of life. The analysis focuses on three dimensions: the materiality of bodies and fluids, abjection as a pathway to knowledge, and multisensoriality as a perceptual practice. Finally, the article argues that the figure of the witch functions as a narrative device that reinscribes the sacred within the shared materiality of the living world.
References
Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. Pantheon Books, 1996.
Barad, Karen. “Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter.” Signs: Journal of women in culture and society, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 801-831, 2003.
Bennett, Jane. Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Duke university press, 2010.
Bessiere, Irène. Le récit fantastique. La poétique de l’incertain. Larousse Université, 1974.
Bravo, Nicole Fernandez. “Doubles and counterparts.” Companion to literary myths, heroes and archetypes, edited by Pierre Brunel, Routledge, 2015, pp. 343–382.
Chatterjee, Ashmita. “Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh.” World Literature Today, vol. 96, no. 6, pp. 59-60, 2022.
Crutzen, Paul J.; Stoermer, Eugene F. “The Anthropocene.” IGBP Global Change Newsletter, no. 41, pp. 17-18, 2000.
Doyle, Rob. “Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh review – a carnival of the grotesque.” The Guardian, 14 Jun 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/14/lapvona-by-ottessa-moshfegh-review-a-carnival-of-the-grotesque Accessed 29 Jan 2026.
Federici, Silvia. Witches, witch-hunting, and women. PM Press, 2018.
Fisher, Mark. The Weird and The Eerie. Repeater Books, 2016.
Gaard, Greta. “Ecofeminism revisited: Rejecting essentialism and re-placing species in a material feminist environmentalism.” Feminist formations, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 26-53, 2011.
Gottschalk, Simon. “Sensory degradation and somatic labor: Critical sensory ethnography for hypermodern times.” The Routledge International Handbook of Sensory Ethnography, edited by Phillip Vannini, Routledge, 2023, pp. 69-81.
Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016.
Hutton, Ronald. The witch: A history of fear, from ancient times to the present. Yale University Press, 2017.
Ingold, Tim. The perception of the environment: essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. Routledge, 2000.
Iovino, Serenella. “Material ecocriticism: Matter, text, and posthuman ethics.” Literature, Ecology, Ethics: Recent Trends in European Ecocriticism, edited by Timo Müller and Michael Sauter, Winter Verlag, 2012, pp. 51–68.
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of horror: An essay on abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. Columbia University Press, 1982.
Küpers, Wendelin. “Queer (ing) moves: Beyond Anthropocene, toward convivial, sustainable futures.”, World Futures, vol. 76, no. 5-7. pp. 287-313, 2020.
Lüthi, Max. The European Folktale: Form and Nature. Translated by John D. Niles. Indiana University Press, 1986.
Molloy Murphy, Angela, et al. “Polyphonic storying with human and more-than human co-collaborators.” Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 382-397, 2025.
Moshfegh, Ottessa. Lapvona. Penguin Press, 2022.
Muecke, Stephen, et al. “Worlds and Stories: Description in Environmental Humanities Writing.” Environmental Humanities, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 506-524, 2025.
Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York University Press, 2009.
Purkiss, Diane. The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations. Routledge, 1996.
Reading Project. “Lapvona. Ottessa Moshfegh”. Reading Books, n. d. https://readingproject.au/BookReviews/Lapvona_OttessaMoshfegh Accessed 30 jan. 2026.
Sempruch, Justyna. Fantasies of Gender and the Witch in Feminist Theory and Literature. Purdue University Press, 2008.
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Translated by Richard Howard. Cornell University Press, 1975.
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton University Press, 2015.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2026 Luis Miguel Barboza Arias