Corroding Extractivism: Copper Extraction and Microbial Disobedience in Atacama Desert

• In Event: Finitude in Other Terms: Uncommoning Extinction - I

Abstract

Within the South American region, in general, and in Chile, in particular, extractivism emerges as the most crystalized expression of the Anthropocene. In the driest desert of the world, the Atacama desert, extractivism is indeed threatening life itself through the over-extraction of water and minerals afforded by a myriad of knowledge practices and infrastructures. In this paper we want to explore how microbial disobedience resists the deployment of the project of extractivism. In order to do so, we explore how microbial processes of corrosion complicate, and sometimes, jeopardize, copper extractivist practices and materials tout court. Inspired by the call of this panel, we want to think about processes of corrosion as the expression of what we call the microbioscene, a non-silenced geological force that exceeds totalizing understanding of ‘human’ agency in times of environmental destruction. We will mobilize the term corrosion as both an empirical as well as a conceptual tool for thinking about one possible way to provincialize totalizing narratives of the Anthropocene. In particular, this paper will ethnographically explore how microbial colonization of huge mining slurry pipelines -that transport copper concentrate from copper mines to the Chilean coasts- is taking place in Atacama, thus foregrounding corrosion as the most disobedient and decolonizing microbial and perhaps conceptual process.

Authors

• Cristobal Bonelli, CIGIDEN - Research Center for Integrated Disaster Risk Management

• Cristina Dorador, University of Antofagasta