Vitalidad: Emanaciones-de-Lugar

This paper aims to describe the affective life as narrated by peasants, neorurals and environmental activists who live in the Tropical Montane Cloud Forest in Colombia. Theoretically speaking, I intend to present, on the one hand, a perspective of the world from the world itself -which I termed “Openings of the Earth”, and on the other hand, an approach to an affective life that coheres with such perspective- which I call “Emanations”. From a non-representational perspective, I assert that if there is no distinction between subject and object, hence affect belongs to an ecology where place participates actively in the generation of such affective life. In short, place exudes affects; affects emanate from places, and also elements, organisms, and so on. Environmental aesthetics as a sub-field of the environmental humanities project has substantially contributed to the understanding of how aesthetic values extend human consideration on the environment. However, the modern subject-object dualism and the representational imperative underpinned these reflections. As a consequence, the subject monopolized any agential capacity, projecting on the environment a variety of values and norms. In this context, I wonder if is it possible to think in a nonrepresentational way, that is, a thoughtful consideration of what is beyond the subject? Is it possible to escape the subjective trap, which translates the complexity of the world to a mere scene where human subjects project their struggles? I would like to explore a way of thinking that trust in the givenness of the world. In this case, the world is not understood as the background horizon of human actions; quite the contrary, the world is a center of activity across human and non-human bodies. Correspondingly, in the following lines, I aim to describe how the emergence of an affective life which is not human-centered, grounds ethical-political engagements with space-times. I will illustrate this theoretical endeavor with different situations and conversations I had in the Tequendama region in Colombia. Mainly, I will describe vitality as an affect which emerges among people working and living at the intersection between conservation and agricultural activities.