Masculinity's (mis)fortune: Historicizing affect as extractivist infrastructure in Bolivian sodalite mining

Abstract

How is alienability produced as a mode of relation? Is capital a (racialized) affect? This article examines clashing expectations about minerals, specifically sodalite, at the Cerro Sapo mine in Ayopaya Bolivia. It describes how Cerro Sapo's current owner, a white Kenyan, engaged in narrative and bodily practices that sought to detach him from earlier labor histories and Indigenous demands for redistributive aid. Through a life history approach, the analysis centers one figure to provide insight into what capitalism looks like on the ground. This case sharpens scholarly understanding of the affective workings of extraction, highlighting the need to historicize feelings of trust and accountability by dis-aggregating the figure of “the mine” and “the firm.” By illuminating Cerro Sapo's continuities with, and revisions to, colonial structures of racial violence and exchange, the article aims to advance studies of racial capitalism and add a new layer to public debates about colonial debts and reparations for slavery.