29 BODIES DO MATTER: THE PECULIAR PERSISTENCE OF NEOLIBERALISM IN ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE Abstract Substantial academic attention has recently high- lighted the increasing and contradictory tendency to promote neoliberal market-based mechanisms such as “ethical” consumption as the solution to environ- mental problems exacerbated by processes of capitalist accumulation themselves. To date, the majority of this research has drawn on Marxist or Foucaultian frames, and thus has paid little attention to the embodied psychodynamic processes supporting this paradoxical dynamic. his article thus draws on Lacanian psycho- analysis, primarily through the work of Slavoj Žižek, to analyze the role of fantasy and desire in sustaining faith in the potential of market-based environmental- ism. In the process, it seeks to synthesize Marxian, Foucaultian, and Lacanian perspectives in pursuit of a comprehensive theoretical framework for understand- ing how contemporary environmental governance functions. It does so by treating the body as a crucial nexus of convergence among these diferent perspec- tives. he analysis is illustrated through discussion of how the practice of ecotourism, a quintessential market-based conservation strategy, is sustained through its promise to provide a transcendent experi- ence of nature-culture unity yet instead ofers, for the most part, a mere “pseudocatharsis” that paradoxically intensiies the very desire that it promises to satisfy and thereby supports the twin neoliberal fantasies of consumption without consequence and accumula- tion without end, in terms of which the body itself becomes a prime site of capitalization. Keywords: neoliberalism, environmental gover- nance, ecotourism, body Los Cuerpos son Importantes: La peculiar Persistencia del Neoliberalismo en la Gobernanza Medioambiental Resumen Una abundante dedicación desde la academia ha enfatizado recientemente la creciente y contradictoria tendencia hacia la promoción de mecanismos neolibe- rales de libre mercado como el consumo ‘ético’ como la solución a los problemas medioambientales exac- erbados por los procesos de acumulación capitalista. Hoy en día la mayor parte de estas investigaciones se ha basado en análisis marxistas o foucaultianos, por lo que se ha puesto poca atención a los procesos psi- codinámicos que sustentan esta paradójica dinámica. Este artículo se basa en el psicoanálisis lacaniano, sobretodo a través del trabajo de Slavoj Žižek, para analizar el rol de la fantasía y el deseo en el estableci- miento de la fe en el potencial del ambientalismo de libre mercado. En este sentido, se busca sintetizar las perspectivas marxista, foucaultiana y lacaniana en la Robert Fletcher University for Peace Ciudad Colón, Costa Rica