The Hypothesis of Idealization and the (Dis)composition of Worlds: Space, Nature, and Neoextractivisms

Abstract

This article examines how certain metaphysical, historical, and conceptual frameworks produce an abstraction of nature and space that facilitates their appropriation, administration, and exploitation within the logics of capital. This analysis is articulated through what Jacques Derrida (1988) calls the “hypothesis of idealization,” understood as an operation of thought that reduces the singularity of lifeworlds through processes of abstraction and conceptual emptying. Within this framework, the study explores how such forms of idealization sustain contemporary extractivist rationalities and how their deconstruction opens the possibility of thinking world-compositions grounded in ecological interdependence. The aim of the paper is to contribute to the critique of the metaphysical assumptions that legitimize extractivist rationality, enabling the imagination of alternative forms of ecological justice and world-making. Through theoretical analysis and the case of the Cerro Blanco Mine as an analytical vignette, the article shows that the ecological crisis is not merely a technical problem, but the effect of a metaphysical configuration that fragments the relation between nature, space, and life, while the situated experiences of affected communities reveal forms of knowledge that exceed dominant state and techno-administrative frameworks.