The Political Economy of Seepage

The theory of "seeping ontology" understands the human subject not as a fortified fortress but as a porous sieve, constantly leaking affects, meanings, and bodily signs. By extending this ontology into the political domain, this article formulates the concept of the "political economy of seepage" as a framework for the critical analysis of power in the age of fluidity. The central argument is that in late modernity, power operates not merely through the discipline of bodies, but through the management, extraction, and unequal distribution of subjects' seepages. By integrating seeping phenomenology, critical theory, and political economy, the article identifies three main mechanisms of seepage power: (1) the extraction of seepage as primitive accumulation of the fluid, (2) perceptual immunization as a mechanism of social exclusion, and (3) the unequal distribution of the right to leak as the reproduction of hierarchies. Finally, "rhizomatic survival" and "tactical pause" are analyzed as two poles of resistance, and a "seepage ethics" is proposed to distinguish emancipatory seepages from repressive ones. Keywords: Political economy of seepage, seeping ontology, fluid power, perceptual immunization, rhizomatic survival, tactical pause, seepage ethics.