Companion Nutria. Proximity, Emotions, and Affective Resistance within a Biological Invasion

Abstract

Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2020 and 2022 with individuals who chose to care for nutria (Myocastor coypus) as companion animals, this article investigates the role of emotions in both producing and unsettling the category of invasive alien species. Within a discursive regime that legitimizes eradication through affective and normative devices, everyday practices of care and intimacy give rise to forms of animal subjectivation that exceed and destabilize the managerial ontology of invasiveness. The interspecies relationships observed in the field highlight how emotions constitute situated modes of knowledge and political agency, far from being irrational residues. They generate relational worlds, reconfigure the boundaries between human and non-human, and radically question the distinction between lives deemed worth protecting and those marked for elimination.