How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Market: Virtualism, Disavowal, and Public Secrecy in Neoliberal Environmental Conservation

There is often a substantial gap between ‘vision’ and ‘execution’ in neoliberal governance, yet this gap is rarely acknowledged within neoliberal discourse. In the realm of environmental governance this has manifested in increased reliance on neoliberal conservation strategies despite mounting evidence concerning their common failure to perform as intended. This paper seeks to explain this contradictory situation, drawing on Foucaultian as well as Lacanian theorization via Žižek to suggest that neoliberal conservation's ‘virtualistic’ vision commonly necessitates antineoliberal regulation, for the deeply flawed understandings of human behavior and social action in which it is grounded frequently compel intervention contrary to free market principles in order to preserve the goals that market mechanisms are intended to achieve. I contend, further, that neglect of the characteristic disjuncture between vision and execution in neoliberal conservation may take the form of ‘fetishistic disavowal’, functioning as a ‘public secret’ (something generally known but not generally articulated) in terms of which explicit identification of the disjuncture, paradoxically, intensifies its obfuscation. This analysis is illustrated through discussion of prominent conservation strategies in Latin America, particularly ecotourism and payment for environmental services, which are commonly described as neoliberal market mechanisms yet in practice operate quite differently.