“Metabolic Governmentality”. Notes on Neoliberalism and Social Metabolism

Abstract

This work approaches the concepts of “social metabolism” and “organic interchange” (Stoffwecshel) used by Marx in The Capital from a triple-edge standpoint: biophysics, bioeconomics and biopolitics. The notion of “metabolic governmentality”, understood as human population´s capability to rule and regulate the activities and fluxes that constitute their social metabolism, allow us to transport this triple theoretical matrix to the relations between colonization, extractivism and neoliberalism, which is described as a polymorphic and decentralized politic rationality trending to colonization, monopolization and administration of the metabolic governmentality of the human(s) population(s).