Necessary illusions: Fetishism and the becoming of subsoil resources

Abstract The extraction of resources entails processes of transformation and rupture, the creation of new landscapes, communities, mining companies, as well as nations. Such processes involve varying forms of agency. In the promotion of both particular projects and national economies that encompass them, the language and locus of change often falls onto the resource itself. The inscription of agency and inordinate power onto subsoil resources represents a distinct form of resource fetishism. In this paper, I analyze the relationship between mineral boosterism and resource fetishism by examining imagery associated with Ecuador’s promotion of mineral exploration and extraction. I call attention to the ways that fetishism infuses the ubiquitous, yet often taken-for-granted imagery of mining promotion. I demonstrate how patterns of fetishism are an inherent part of the subsoil imagination, and relevant for on-going debates about the materiality and becoming of mineral resources.