Neo-Agro-Colonialism, Control over Life, and Imposed Spatio-Temporalities

Abstract

The control over what Dillon and Lobo-Guerrero (2008) conceptualise as 'pluripotent' life has become an essential factor of capitalist agriculture; this occurs through the regulation of strategic genetic resources. We recognise this course as part of a larger project of neo-agro-colonialism, which takes place by controlling both biotechnology and territories as an expression of a fungible power, turning geopolitics into biopolitics and vice-versa. While assessing the power relations and manipulation of spatio-temporalities in the process of life fabrication, we discuss the mechanisms of control over 'pluripotent' life-genetically modified seeds and biopiracy through patentisation of traditional knowledges-which turns life into a commodified good. This is to say that the instrumental use of life fabrication within the rationale of globalised capital (re)creates post-colonial tem-poralities that legitimise (re)new(ed) colonial ties. We ascertain that it is the manipulation of life's temporality that allows capital to be (re)produced in the agricultural context of the molecular age.