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The Government of Affections

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Political Ecology of Agriculture

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Abstract

In the fourth chapter, we continue our dialogue with neo-Marxism to elucidate some strategies of power that are not so evident from the structuralist point of view. The objective is to ask how capital dominates territory, controlling bodies, by redirecting affective relations and sensitivities among peasants and their places of reproduction. In this section, I maintain that territorial control cannot exist unless it is inscribed in the body, in affective feelings, and the sentient horizons of the hegemonized population, creating a frame of reference for what we can really feel. It is a shaping of sensitivities and desires organized by institutions that builds up de-territorialized imaginaries and unravels the social fabric in rural communities. It is not a question of fostering insensitivity, but rather of orienting sensitivity by distinguishing what can be felt from what cannot be felt. My hypothesis is that the effectiveness of this conquest of affectivity lies largely in the characteristics of the agrarian aesthetics produced by capital, since it is within such aesthetics that sensitivity arises in one way and not in another. It is in the field of agro-extractivism, where daily experience occurs, affections are regulated, and desires and knowledge are administered, that the true regimes of agro-capitalism take on meaning.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The theoretic background of this first part of this chapter was thoroughly covered in my article Giraldo, O.F. “Hacia una ontología de la Agri-Cultura en perspectiva del pensamiento ambiental”, Polis Revista Latinoamericana, 12(34): 95–115. 2013.

  2. 2.

    Charles Taylor says in this regard: “This is something completely new in our history, of being able to say in the past two centuries “I am I.” Previously, we did not use the personal pronoun I with the definite or indefinite article—the or a. The ancient Greeks or Romans and the people of the Middle Ages never used them as a descriptive expression. Now it is possible for us to say, “There are 30 people, or I’s, in the room,” but our ancestors would not have said it the same way. They would have said, “There are 30 souls in the room,” they would have used any other descriptive term, but they would not have used the word I” (Varela, 1998, p. 21).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Conacyt - El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico

    Omar Felipe Giraldo

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  1. Omar Felipe Giraldo
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Giraldo, O.F. (2019). The Government of Affections. In: Political Ecology of Agriculture. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11824-2_4

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