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Decolonising the ‘autonomy of affect’ in volunteer tourism encounters

Abstract Promotion of volunteer tourism is couched within notions of ‘giving back’, drawing on affective sentiments of ‘care’, ‘compassion’ and ‘empathy’, reinforced by neo-colonial and neoliberal notions of developmental aid. It is not surprising then, that scholars are turning to theories of affect to make sense of the embodied, emotional aspects of the volunteering experience. We build on this emerging research trajectory by arguing that in drawing attention to the unequal geographies of international volunteering, the complexities and nuances of affect and emotion demand an engagement with theories that are more attuned to ambiguity, in order to open up dialogue for multiple possibilities. We critically engage with extant theorisations of affect as autonomous in volunteer tourism encounters to explore these possibilities. However we find a tendency within the conceptualisations of affect as autonomous (re)creates binaries, albeit in distinctive forms - with a focus on possibility - to the detriment of power. We therefore turn to decolonial feminist contributions to understand subjectivity, positionality and the pivotal role of the body in research in non-binary ways. We use this framing to reflexively re-engage with fieldwork six years on from a volunteer tourism site in Ecuador to demonstrate the nuances and complexities of theorising the affective aspects of volunteer tourism encounters. We focus this analysis around three key themes that arose in this re-engagement with the fieldwork: i) vulnerability and unlearning ii) critical intimacy and iii) affective closures. We conclude by arguing that the affective spaces in volunteer tourism are at once bound up in, and shaped by, the larger processes of neoliberalism and neo-colonial legacies, while at the same time, they contain borderland encounters of intersubjective relationalities and moments of vulnerability, care, critical intimacy and emergent decolonising connections.