Fourteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

How can decolonial frames allow us to see through what cultural theorist Macarena Gomez-Barris calls the “epistemic murk?” How far can the deconstruction of modernity take us and what can Latin American undercurrents of resistance tell us about the variegated societies percolating below? Presenting the first chapter of my dissertation, I put forth an intersectional, transdisciplinary framework within the emerging dialogical plane of critical analysis coming out of Latin America. This conceptual chapter deploys extractivism as an analytical concept to understand its entanglements with the modern Peruvian state. This chapter operationalizes extractivism and neoextractivism, presenting its significance to the state as an inextricable state-building process born alongside it. Opening with an overview of the Antapaccay and Coroccohuayco mines in Espinar, it situates the local struggle within broader colonialities and systems of violence. As with other co-constituting enclosures on which the state manifests, this study argues that extractivism must be understood as a constituting regime, with Espinar serving as a flashpoint.