Performing Counter-Hegemonic Common(s) Senses: Rearticulating Democracy, Community and Forests in Puerto Rico

Abstract

Political ecologists have developed scathing analyses of capitalism's tendency for enclosure and dispossession of the commons. In this context commons are analyzed as a force to resist neo-liberalism, a main site of conflict over dispossession, and a source of alternatives to capitalism. In this paper we elaborate a view of the commons as the material and symbolic terrain where performative re-articulation of common(s) senses can potentially enact counter-hegemonic socio-ecological configurations. Expressly drawing on the concepts of hegemon, "common-senses" (inspired by Antonio Gramsci) and "performativity" (developed by Judith Butler), we argue that counterhegemony is performed through everyday practices that rearticulate existing common senses about commons. Commoning is a set of processes/relations enacted to challenge capitalist hegemony and build more just/sustainable societies insofar as it transforms and rearranges common senses in/through praxis. The paper draws on the experience of an anti-mining movement of Casa Pueblo in Puerto Rico, which for the last 35+ years has been developing a project self-described as autogestion. The discussion pays special attention to Casa Pueblo's praxis and discourses to investigate how they rearticulate common senses with regard to nature, community and democracy, as well as their implications for counter-hegemonic politics.

Commoning for inclusion? commons, exclusion, property and socio-natural becomings

“…For my purposes here, I want to probe how power operates within the commons to create inclusions and exclusions. Being a commoner is not a state of being, but rather a performative set of relations wherein the exercise of power brings people and non-humans into life giving relations 2 (García López et al 2017;Singh 2017Singh , 2018Velicu and García-López 2018). The presence of strong communitarian relations does not necessarily lead to commoning for all, nor does it necessarily foster nurturing relations with non-humans.…”

Emotions, power, and environmental conflict: Expanding the ‘emotional turn’ in political ecology

“…simultaneous ambivalence/inconsistency and connection of public–private spheres) of emotions in their interaction with power in environmental conflicts can help integrate into the analysis the varied personal and collective emotional geographies of subjects that inspire individuals to the array of thoughts, emotions, and actions we come across in the field as researchers of environmental conflicts. Considering emotions as multi-dimensional and ambivalent provides the necessary conceptual ground for developing tools of empirical inquiry and analysis of environmental conflict that have the capacity to study both subversion and the reproduction of hegemonic power as constant, painful yet unfinished processes and struggles (García-López et al, 2017).…”

Critical Commons Scholarship: A Typology

“…Many contemporary commons scholars analyze the process of the shift towards sustainability, assessing the political and governance outcomes, rather than assume sustainability to be good (Patterson, Schulz et al 2017). Some contemporary commons scholarship challenges neoliberal assumptions by using Judith Butler's idea of performance to argue that performing "commoning" is an anti-hegemonic form of resisting neoliberalism (García López, Velicu et al 2017, Velicu andGarcía-López 2018). Butler's performativity is usefully ambiguous between showing (e.g., performing a play) and doing (e.g., performing an action); performativity here is to be created and upheld by repetitive practices (Butler 1997, Butler 1999, Butler, Laclau et al 2000.…”

“…Butler's performativity is usefully ambiguous between showing (e.g., performing a play) and doing (e.g., performing an action); performativity here is to be created and upheld by repetitive practices (Butler 1997, Butler 1999, Butler, Laclau et al 2000. In the case of protecting forests from mining in Puerto Rico, performing community management was a way to resist enclosure and dispossession of common lands (García López, Velicu et al 2017). Patrick Bresnihan has also drawn on performativity, writing how examples of commons management are anti-hegemonic and antineoliberal ways of practicing alternative economies to capitalism (Bresnihan 2016).…”