Gaston Gordillo
In my current ethnographic project (funded by an Insight Grant from SSHRC), I’m analyzing the territorial and environmental effects of deforestation by agribusiness in the Gran Chaco region of northern Argentina, how this process is made possible by the infrastructures of the soy supply chains, and the activism through which campesino and Indigenous residents generate agro-ecological territories in opposition to industrial agriculture.
In parallel to this project, I'm close to completing a book entitled Here Comes the Horde: Racial Geographies of the Argentine Multitude, which draws from close to a decade of research on the racialization of space in Argentina. This book proposes to rethink Argentine history and its cycles of political violence, from the Spanish era to the present, through an analysis of the racialized geographies challenged by multitudes on the streets. In particular, I examine past and contemporary territorial struggles by expansive crowds that have challenged the Argentine elites’ attempts to whiten space through genocidal violence and mass European migration. But the book also seeks to understand, more broadly, the affective geographies of whiteness and white supremacy beyond Argentina. I therefore analyze how the fear of non-white hordes, and the calls to repress them violently, has been constitutive of colonialism and white supremacy worldwide. The book argues that the case of Argentina, despite its specificities, helps shed light on similar racialized anxieties in North America and Europe about the “invasion” by racialized crowds fleeing poverty, violence, and climatic disruptions, a phenomenon that is poised to intensify as the climate crisis worsens.
This interest in the spatialization of racialized violence draws from my earlier work in the Gran Chaco and in particular from my research on ruins and debris of colonialism and capitalism in the region, which led to my book Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction (Duke University Press, 2014; Honorable Mention, Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing). Based on fieldwork in the region where the Gran Chaco lowlands meet the Andes, this book examines space through the rubble that is part of its materiality. Rubble proposes a theory of ruins as rubble that is based on the ethnographic examination of the material, historical, and affective ruptures congealed in lost cities from the seventeenth century, derelict train stations, overgrown Jesuit missions and Spanish forts, stranded steamships, mass graves, abandoned towns, and razed forests, as they are entangled with each other and with the towns, cattle ranches, farms, and annual collective events that exist around them. For the rural poor, these palimpsests of debris evoke —rather than dead relics from a distant past— the haunting traces in the geographies of the present of the processes of destruction and violence that created them. The book shows that this experience is at odds with, and often challenges, the fetishized views of ruins embraced by the regional and scholarly elites. The experience of the people who live amid these constellations of rubble reveals that the modernist, elite infatuation with ruins is based upon the disregard for the rubble generated by capitalist and imperial forms of destruction. Drawing from anthropology, history, geography, philosophy and the exploration of constellations of debris from multiple eras, this ethnography brings to light the salience of rubble not only as a set of objects but also as a spatial, conceptual, and political category
In parallel to this project, I'm close to completing a book entitled Here Comes the Horde: Racial Geographies of the Argentine Multitude, which draws from close to a decade of research on the racialization of space in Argentina. This book proposes to rethink Argentine history and its cycles of political violence, from the Spanish era to the present, through an analysis of the racialized geographies challenged by multitudes on the streets. In particular, I examine past and contemporary territorial struggles by expansive crowds that have challenged the Argentine elites’ attempts to whiten space through genocidal violence and mass European migration. But the book also seeks to understand, more broadly, the affective geographies of whiteness and white supremacy beyond Argentina. I therefore analyze how the fear of non-white hordes, and the calls to repress them violently, has been constitutive of colonialism and white supremacy worldwide. The book argues that the case of Argentina, despite its specificities, helps shed light on similar racialized anxieties in North America and Europe about the “invasion” by racialized crowds fleeing poverty, violence, and climatic disruptions, a phenomenon that is poised to intensify as the climate crisis worsens.
This interest in the spatialization of racialized violence draws from my earlier work in the Gran Chaco and in particular from my research on ruins and debris of colonialism and capitalism in the region, which led to my book Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction (Duke University Press, 2014; Honorable Mention, Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing). Based on fieldwork in the region where the Gran Chaco lowlands meet the Andes, this book examines space through the rubble that is part of its materiality. Rubble proposes a theory of ruins as rubble that is based on the ethnographic examination of the material, historical, and affective ruptures congealed in lost cities from the seventeenth century, derelict train stations, overgrown Jesuit missions and Spanish forts, stranded steamships, mass graves, abandoned towns, and razed forests, as they are entangled with each other and with the towns, cattle ranches, farms, and annual collective events that exist around them. For the rural poor, these palimpsests of debris evoke —rather than dead relics from a distant past— the haunting traces in the geographies of the present of the processes of destruction and violence that created them. The book shows that this experience is at odds with, and often challenges, the fetishized views of ruins embraced by the regional and scholarly elites. The experience of the people who live amid these constellations of rubble reveals that the modernist, elite infatuation with ruins is based upon the disregard for the rubble generated by capitalist and imperial forms of destruction. Drawing from anthropology, history, geography, philosophy and the exploration of constellations of debris from multiple eras, this ethnography brings to light the salience of rubble not only as a set of objects but also as a spatial, conceptual, and political category
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affective processes through which determined multitudes overcome this hostility by attuning to place, empowering their strategies through engagements with different types of terrain, and expanding rebel
territories. I conclude by discussing why these questions are relevant today to radical politics amid the climate crisis.
KEYWORDS
revolution; terrain; place; territory; affect; Ernesto Che Guevara; Latin America
Ce commentaire offre des réflexions générales sur les dimensions destructrices de la production alimentaire par les entreprises de l'Amérique du Sud contemporaine. La dialectique de la production et de la destruction qui a défini le capitalisme a souvent été considérée comme une «destruction créative». Cette phrase fait que la production commerciale à grande échelle semble être acceptable et même positive, malgré ses impacts sociaux et environnementaux négatifs. Les auteurs qui ont contribué à cette section spéciale sur la production/la destruction en Amérique latine révèlent, en revanche, que la destruction a fait partie intégrante de la production industrielle à grande échelle dans tout le continent. Ces articles nous rappellent que la création d'un monde moins destructif et plus égalitaire exige la création d'énergies renouvelables, mais aussi une repensation radicale de la manière dont les aliments sont produits, distribués et consommés. Et l'expérience de l'Amérique du Sud au cours de la dernière décennie nous apprend qu'il existe des limites politiques aux modèles progressifs d'accumulation. Ceux-ci ne délignent pas la production de nourriture de la pensée corporelle à courte vue qui privilégie les bénéfices et l'hyperproductivité par rapport à la justice sociale et à la durabilité.
Este ensayo ofrece algunas reflexiones generales sobre las destructivas dimensiones de las formas corporativizadas de la producción alimentaria en Sudamérica contemporánea. La dialéctica de producción y destrucción que por mucho tiempo ha definido al capitalismo, ha sido representada como una "destrucción creativa", frase que puede hacer ver el negativo impacto social y ambiental de la producción alimentaria, como algo aceptable, incluso positivo. Los autores que contribuyeron a esta sección especial sobre Producción/Destrucción en América Latina revelan, por el contrario, que la destrucción ha ido a la par con formas de producción alimentaria industriales y a gran escala en diferentes partes del continente. En este sentido, estos artículos nos recuerdan que la creación de un mundo menos destructivo, más igualitario demanda (entre otras cosas) no solamente la creación de formas renovables de energía, sino también una reformulación radical de las formas en que los alimentos son producidos, distribuidos y consumidos. Además, la experiencia de Sudamérica en la década pasada, nos enseña sobre los límites políticos de modelos más progresivos de acumulación que, por todos sus méritos, no se atreven a desarticular la producción alimentaria de la naturaleza miope de los modelos corporativos que priorizan las ganancias y la hiper-productividad sobre las justicia social y la sustentabilidad.
affective processes through which determined multitudes overcome this hostility by attuning to place, empowering their strategies through engagements with different types of terrain, and expanding rebel
territories. I conclude by discussing why these questions are relevant today to radical politics amid the climate crisis.
KEYWORDS
revolution; terrain; place; territory; affect; Ernesto Che Guevara; Latin America
Ce commentaire offre des réflexions générales sur les dimensions destructrices de la production alimentaire par les entreprises de l'Amérique du Sud contemporaine. La dialectique de la production et de la destruction qui a défini le capitalisme a souvent été considérée comme une «destruction créative». Cette phrase fait que la production commerciale à grande échelle semble être acceptable et même positive, malgré ses impacts sociaux et environnementaux négatifs. Les auteurs qui ont contribué à cette section spéciale sur la production/la destruction en Amérique latine révèlent, en revanche, que la destruction a fait partie intégrante de la production industrielle à grande échelle dans tout le continent. Ces articles nous rappellent que la création d'un monde moins destructif et plus égalitaire exige la création d'énergies renouvelables, mais aussi une repensation radicale de la manière dont les aliments sont produits, distribués et consommés. Et l'expérience de l'Amérique du Sud au cours de la dernière décennie nous apprend qu'il existe des limites politiques aux modèles progressifs d'accumulation. Ceux-ci ne délignent pas la production de nourriture de la pensée corporelle à courte vue qui privilégie les bénéfices et l'hyperproductivité par rapport à la justice sociale et à la durabilité.
Este ensayo ofrece algunas reflexiones generales sobre las destructivas dimensiones de las formas corporativizadas de la producción alimentaria en Sudamérica contemporánea. La dialéctica de producción y destrucción que por mucho tiempo ha definido al capitalismo, ha sido representada como una "destrucción creativa", frase que puede hacer ver el negativo impacto social y ambiental de la producción alimentaria, como algo aceptable, incluso positivo. Los autores que contribuyeron a esta sección especial sobre Producción/Destrucción en América Latina revelan, por el contrario, que la destrucción ha ido a la par con formas de producción alimentaria industriales y a gran escala en diferentes partes del continente. En este sentido, estos artículos nos recuerdan que la creación de un mundo menos destructivo, más igualitario demanda (entre otras cosas) no solamente la creación de formas renovables de energía, sino también una reformulación radical de las formas en que los alimentos son producidos, distribuidos y consumidos. Además, la experiencia de Sudamérica en la década pasada, nos enseña sobre los límites políticos de modelos más progresivos de acumulación que, por todos sus méritos, no se atreven a desarticular la producción alimentaria de la naturaleza miope de los modelos corporativos que priorizan las ganancias y la hiper-productividad sobre las justicia social y la sustentabilidad.