Abstract
The annihilative nature of the neoliberal capitalist order cut across different domains of knowledge and life. By covering two distinct analytical axes - biotechnology and economics - we seek to explain some of the forms assumed by what we call patterns of annihilation. In biotechnology, particularly in the production of Genetic Modified Organisms (GMOs), we observe the contradictory process of the biodiversity-biotechnology-monoculture triad, where the results (monoculture) annihilate the very source of its existence (biodiversity). In a similar way, dominant economic thought (called mainstream) is constantly changing through a logic that is both selective and eliminative of alternative economic ideas, which makes up what we can define as economic heterodoxy. In a dialogical and comparative movement, the text aims to reflect on the forms assumed by this pattern: variation and uniformity, stability and inconstancy, multiplicity and singularity, forms capable of animating or annihilating ideas, world views, organisms and beings. In this reflective exercise, we propose an approach that permeates the relationships between anthropology, economics and biotechnology to understand patterns of repetition that are not random or unpredictable.
Keywords:
Patterns of annihilation; Economics; Biotechnology; Anthropology