REINVENTING THE SELF. POTENCY AND CONTRADICTION IN ECOLOGICAL INTENTIONAL COMMUNITIES

Abstract

We are currently witnessing a social and ecological crisis that requires immediate solutions, but at the same time imposes contradictions at different levels. We observed the emergence of intentional communities that experience other forms of relationship between the common, nature and the individual. Our research is framed within these communities and its objective was to analyze the practices in which Self is constituted. Through an ethnographic approach we investigated three case studies located in Chile, where we conducted participatory observations and in-depth interviews. Our results show that the constitution of the subject emerges in the practices as a transitory Self from the spiritual, religious, planetary, communitarian and individual agency. We conclude that the subject emerges as an expanded Self, narratively contradictory, communally affective, and socially withdrawn, contradictorily constituted between individual freedom, communal creativity and the constrictions of capital.