 |
| Carlos Crespo present |
Phillip Rousseau comments
on Carlos Crespo’s “Statalization and Commodification of Natural Resources and
Social Resistances under the Morales Government”.
Carlos Crespo’s
public lecture focused on the long history of destruction of the commons by the
centripetal forces of the Bolivian State. From 19th century laws of
expropriation, to State led mining and oil extraction in indigenous territories
in the 20th century, the richly detailed presentation offered a
clear view of the renewable waves of statalization and commodification of
natural resources. The historical overview culminated in the presentation of contemporary
processes of resource extraction in Bolivia and recent indigenous strategies of
resistance to them.
Autonomy was a persistent theme in Carlos’ presentation. His explicit call
for a politics of autonomy to counter Bolivian statism was especially eloquent
in his presentation of the two main strategies of indigenous resistance to
State and Capital expansion. The gist of Carlos’ argument was that,
historically, indigenous struggles have been for autonomy and not just efforts to
obtain rights of citizenship from the State (and therefore not just asking for more
dependence/recognition). The two main strategies adopted by indigenous
populations presented were the following:
1)
Reciprocity as
contractual negotiations of rights and duties between State and indigenous
communities;
2)
Refuge
from territorial expansion of State and Capital, a strategy becoming more and
more difficult in the face of the intense mapping out of the Bolivian territory.
If, for Carlos, both
strategies enable some form or another of political autonomy, refuge seemed to
win his favor for its less conciliatory perspective.[1]
Although one can certainly understand the strategy of avoidance in this case,
how to articulate these practices to anything resembling a “common” certainly
becomes a highly critical issue. Political autonomy can certainly lead to forms
of appropriation that might be quite challenging to communal efforts wishing to
go beyond institutionalized political divisions.
The main thrust of what
follows is that, contrary to Carlos’ appeal, the concept of autonomy, albeit
necessary, seems more ambiguous to me then he suggested in his talk. This
deserves scrutiny since efforts we’re made to contrast this concept from what
he called “ideal concepts” like human rights, sustainable development, social
participation, etc. These abstract concepts, Carlos suggested, contrary to
immanent practices, lack the capacity to galvanize social cohesion and counter
commodification.[2] They
cannot do so, since they are based on a “rights” discourse that is mostly
individualistic.
Autonomy has everything to do
with a will to extract oneself from easy equivalences, abstractness,
interchangeability, loss of specificity, etc. State, Capital and the social
sciences are particularly well equipped for quick standardization and determinist
accounts lacking historical agency. In the case of indigenous populations, and
as the two strategies have shown, autonomy stands as an attempt to circumvent,
partly at least, the standardizing processes that inevitably comes with State citizenship
and ownership.
Yet, autonomy can play itself
out on many (political) scales: individual, local, regional, State or global
level. The State, for many – whether they are right or wrong – is an apparatus
that might give a certain political leveraging to those concerned (I come from a
Canadian province that sometimes likes to think so). Others might prefer to
find this autonomy at the local or even individual level against the State – again,
for better or worst.
Let’s zoom in on the individual
level for a second. We should not forget here that the rights discourse is precisely
a philosophical offspring of modernist moral philosophy (amongst other things).
In other words, self-law, self-government, self-rule we’re all concepts
deriving from an attempt at designing responsible and autonomous individuals (or
groups of) against fatalism and determinism. It was an attempt at giving autonomous
“free will” a practical traction in daily lives. This, of course, has not necessary
lead to autonomous forms-of-life, but abstract and standardized legal codification
with which comes the good, the bad and the ugly (and certain forms of social
cohesion). Yet, this example shows us that the politics of autonomy are not so
easily distinguishable from rights as was suggested in the lecture. One could
argue that autonomy is precisely at
the heart of a rights based approach.
Let’s continue with my very
crude analogy with the design of the modernist autonomous subject who is
constantly asked to know thy self and
act accordingly to her/his true
conscience. In other words, autonomy can imply being true to oneself, the
“authentic self,” its needs, desires and aspirations (constantly riveting us to
us or me to me). This reeks of authenticity speak and I’m a bit worried that
this underlying link between autonomy and authenticity might be replayed on
other scales then the individual one (which has already shown the incredible
levels of toxicity it can reach).
This becomes even more
troublesome if autonomy is weaved together with ideals about social cohesion
(as it seemed to be the case in Carlos’ presentation). What social cohesion are
we talking about here exactly? Who is to determine and apply the necessary criteria?
Is social cohesion to be linked with “authentic” ways of life?
I am not implying here that
the indigenous strategies in Bolivia are for these reasons reprehensible,
inefficient or morally skewed, my point is that the concept of autonomy used to
qualify them tends to become an abstraction in itself if it does not take into
account its own political and historical ambiguities. Exactly what Carlos
rightly tried to demystify during his important contribution to the workshop.
One last comment regarding the
lecture: Carlos’ strategy depended on historical continuity – the “long view”
as he called it – to read through the Bolivian case. A necessary strategy, of
course, that was executed with the hand of a maestro. The one issue I might
have with this type of narrative is that you end with the impression that you
simply have different historical reactions,
by State or locals, to the same
capitalism. It therefore tends to dehistoricize capitalism as an immutable
outside by concentrating on localized practices. Supplementing the Bolivian
case with the changing processes of Capital might offer interesting analytical
and political possibilities.
This is a tough nut to crack
for sure, but one that might enable autonomy to become a much more commonly
shared practice working against some of its own ambiguous impulses.
Phillip Rousseau
[1] This
links his efforts to the works of Pierre Clastres and James Scott. In his
classic work, La Société contre l’État (1974),
Clastres argued that where some tend to presuppose a lack of State formation in
“primitive” societies, one instead could find strategies of avoidance to it.
Carlos’ argument is based on a similar logic: indigenous populations do not
necessarily aim at being recognized by the State, but are actively trying to
dodge its expansive grip.
[2] (making wonder if “commons” is also an ambiguous ideal concept)
No comments:
Post a Comment