Agroecology in Byung-Chul Han's society of positivity:

Essay on agroecological practice and neoliberal subjectivity

Abstract

Our objective is to qualify, from the work of the philosopher Byung-Chul Han, society's implications from neoliberal positivity to agroecological practice, indicating challenges and impasses. Han understands that contemporary subjectivity is marked by excessive positivity and the feeling that, in search of maximum performance, the individual has the power of power. Atomized, the individual turns to himself in an exacerbated narcissism, causing the other, and everything that refers to the things in the world that generate friction, the negative, to disappear. Although agroecological movements resist the hegemonic forms that guide contemporary agricultural production, from land use to the privatization of biodiversity, they are also subjected to neoliberal subjectivity. In this context, we argue that the agroecological practice, based on systems of beliefs, cults, local rituals and peculiar temporality, becomes unfeasible and, in this way, tends to homogenization.