Culling optimism: Circulating neoliberal affects in entrepreneurial animal disease policy

Abstract

Using Berlant’s concept of cruel optimism, this paper explores how animal disease eradication can represent an unimaginable fantasy, the pursuit of which is an obstacle to farmers’ emotional and financial prosperity. The paper shows how atmospheres of optimism surrounding disease eradication are constructed and linked to policy mobilities. These apparent trans-national circulations of neoliberal logics of ‘ownership’ provide policy legitimacy at times of crisis, but also disguise the emotional experiences of neoliberal policy lives and serve political interests by marginalising alternatives to the allure of eradication. The paper bases these arguments within an analysis of the development of animal disease policy in England since 1997, and recent interviews and workshops exploring future policy options for disease control with farmers and other stakeholders. Following the development of bovine Tuberculosis policy, the paper shows how the transnational mobility of neoliberal policies promoting farmer ownership were used to legitimise farmer- owned culling companies to control infected wildlife. In describing how these policies unravelled through emotional burnout and disillusion amongst farmers, the paper describes the difficulties of detachment from a relation of cruel optimism, either marked by tragedy and trauma, or an incompleteness defined as ‘attached detachment’. In conclusion, the paper calls for further attention to other rural and agricultural fantasies to shed further light on the inequities of neoliberal life and need for just transitions.