ABSTRACT
This paper considers recent theories that claim that contemporary neoliberalism, more than the hegemonic free market economic doctrine of global capitalism, is one of the expression of a political project that enforces the rise of authoritarian, repressive or ‘monstrous’ forms of state power based on the militarization of social life and the propagation of a ‘culture of violence’. It claims that this form of violence deeply affects the psyche and structures of feeling of society, permeating into mainstream rhetoric and critical discourse as well. The repercussions for meaningful thought and action are legion, as these discursive critiques trump the productive and creative potential of collective and social agencies of resistance. Using Michel Foucault’s analysis of power-resistance and his formulation of apparatuses as an entry-point to the notions of ‘assemblage’, ‘agency’ and ‘affect’, which today are gaining attention in the humanities, the social sciences and human geography, the paper frames the methodological possibilities of instilling dissent and contestation with new lines of inquiry. It argues that contemporary urban social movements -in all their differentiation- may be read as a global agential assemblage infused with intense affectivity (desire) that affords the conditions of possibility for the emergence of a new ‘culture of contestation’ against the prevailing ‘culture of violence’ imposed by advanced neoliberalism. Using the case of Mexico, where in the past two decades the signs of a so-called neoliberal ‘necro-state’ have become too obvious to ignore, the paper attempts to trace an affective-agential line between the national social mobilization against the prevailing political culture of violence, and more modest forms of local, urban social dissent against the undemocratic expressions of the neoliberal state via the announcement of privately-exploited urban mega-projects that simulate social, public or collective interest. The affective intensities in these agential assemblages of dissent are intimately and relationally tied to their inherent power of contestation.