Participation Type
Paper
Session Title
Session 3.02 Appalachian Studies
Presentation #1 Title
Conflict, Solidarity, Imagination: Affect in Appalachian Development
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
In my paper I consider how, as major resource extraction-based development projects proliferate across North America, new population sectors are being forced to confront how the global economy defines people, places, things, ideas and behaviors as either valuable or expendable. Since Appalachia, as in colonized spaces elsewhere, was and remains a central site for refining the production and enforcement of value and expendability, I ask, what are the social and political effects of new sectors in Appalachia seeing themselves made expendable? Expendability, as it is experienced by new sectors of the population, can offer different coordinates from which to imagine political possibility. Residents, scholars, and activists unfamiliar with such a condition ought to learn from and think with populations most familiar with expendability. In this paper I suggest that a materialist, feminist, and decolonial reading of affect –a term describing the precognitive forces exchanged among objects, bodies and landscapes– can contribute to this learning and rethinking. So conceived, affect can better strengthen multi-scalar and multi-sectoral coalitions through and across lines of economic, ecological, and socio-political difference by critically linking subjects and groups to both material systems of social reproduction, (ecological, geological, and economic) and socio-political systems of group formation and interaction. Such a reading of affect offers a new understanding of the formation of political power among residents and activists and sheds light on the limits and possibilities of an Appalachian renaissance.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Gabriel Piser completed an MA in continental and decolonial philosophy from SUNY-Binghamton and is currently a doctoral candidate in Comparative Cultural Studies at the Ohio State University with a minor in critical Human Geography. Gabriel uses critical theory to better understand contemporary political and ecological conflicts. He connects his scholarship to larger issues through experiential and popular education and his work as a regional sustainability consultant and permaculture designer. His dissertation investigates the role of economic and environmental subjectivities in shaping uneven development outcomes. Specifically, he is interested in the connections among three clusters of issues. 1) The limits of traditional notions of 'expert' economic and ecological knowledge 2) The dynamics of social movements around development, resource extraction and environmental justice, and 3) The contemporary political imagination as it is shaped by anthropocentricity and a neoliberal capitalist developmental consensus.
Conflict, Solidarity, Imagination: Affect in Appalachian Development
In my paper I consider how, as major resource extraction-based development projects proliferate across North America, new population sectors are being forced to confront how the global economy defines people, places, things, ideas and behaviors as either valuable or expendable. Since Appalachia, as in colonized spaces elsewhere, was and remains a central site for refining the production and enforcement of value and expendability, I ask, what are the social and political effects of new sectors in Appalachia seeing themselves made expendable? Expendability, as it is experienced by new sectors of the population, can offer different coordinates from which to imagine political possibility. Residents, scholars, and activists unfamiliar with such a condition ought to learn from and think with populations most familiar with expendability. In this paper I suggest that a materialist, feminist, and decolonial reading of affect –a term describing the precognitive forces exchanged among objects, bodies and landscapes– can contribute to this learning and rethinking. So conceived, affect can better strengthen multi-scalar and multi-sectoral coalitions through and across lines of economic, ecological, and socio-political difference by critically linking subjects and groups to both material systems of social reproduction, (ecological, geological, and economic) and socio-political systems of group formation and interaction. Such a reading of affect offers a new understanding of the formation of political power among residents and activists and sheds light on the limits and possibilities of an Appalachian renaissance.
