The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America

The author contests older concepts of autonomy as either revolutionary or ineffective vis-à-vis the state. Looking at four prominent Latin American movements, she defines autonomy as 'the art of organising hope': a tool for indigenous and non-indigenous movements to prefigure alternative realities at a time when utopia can be no longer objected.

The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America offers an invaluable starting point for thinking about these challenges and for confronting the limitations of fatalist critiques or naïve optimism that too often pervade debates on autonomy. More than that, it offers an open blueprint for thinking about and acting upon the idea that, within a concrete reality that continues to be overwritten by the hopelessness of neoliberalism, the seeds of hope still remain. (Adam Fishwick, AntipodeFoundation.org, October, 2016)

Autorentext

Ana C. Dinerstein is Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath, UK. She has published extensively on Argentine and Latin American politics, autonomy, subjectivity, labour, social and indigenous movements, emancipatory struggles and the politics of policy. Her main publications include The Labour Debate (2002), La Ruta de los Piqueteros. Luchas y Legados (2010) and La política de la Esperanza en America Latina (2013).

Inhalt

1. Embracing the Other Side: An introduction PART I: THEORISING AUTONOMY 2. Meanings of Autonomy: Trajectories, Modes, Differences 3. Autonomy in the Key of Hope: Understanding Prefiguration PART II: NAVIGATING AUTONOMY 4. Organising Negation: Neoliberal Hopelessness, Insurgent Hope (Mexico) 5. Shaping Concrete Utopias: Urban Experiments (Argentina) 6. Resisting Translation: Indigenous-Popular Resistance (Bolivia) 7. Venturing Beyond the Wire: The Sem Terra's Dream (Brazil) PART III: RETHINKING AUTONOMY 8. Confronting Value with Hope. A Prefigurative Critique of Political Economy 9. Living in Blochian Times: Opening Remarks