The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America. The Art of Organising Hope
By Ana Cecilia Dinerstein
With forewords by: Gustavo Esteva, Unitierra, Mexico, and Werner Bonefeld, University of York, UK
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 312 pp. Hard cover: ISBN 9780230272088
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Dinerstein offers a much-needed critical review of the concept and practice of autonomy. Defining autonomy as either revolutionary or ineffective vis-à-vis the state does not fully grasp the commitment of Latin American movements to the creation of alternative practices and horizons beyond capitalism, patriarchy and coloniality. By establishing an elective affinity between autonomy and Bloch’s principle of hope, Dinerstein defines autonomy as ‘the art of organizing hope’, that is, the art of shaping a reality which is not yet but can be anticipated by the movements’ collective actions. Drawing from the experience of four prominent indigenous and non-indigenous urban and rural movements, Dinerstein suggests that the politics of autonomy is a struggle that simultaneously negates, creates, deals with contradictions and, above all, produces an excess beyond demarcation that cannot be translated into the grammar of power. Reading Marx’s method in the key of hope, the book offers a prefigurative critique of political economy and emphasises the prefigurative features of indigenous and non indigenous autonomies at a time when utopia can no longer be objected.
“Terrific and necessary….The art of organising Hope. That is what we so desperately need, that is why the book is so important.” John Holloway, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico
“Dinerstein’s book is a major intervention which places the hopes, contradictions and possibilities of social movements centre-stage, while recognizing the specificity of Latin American and indigenous experiences. Clear and powerful, this work is badly needed.” – Laurence Cox, National University of Ireland Maynooth, Ireland
“The book is terrific. It is teeming with radical scholarship” – Mike Neary, University of Lincoln, UK
“This book demonstrates how the philosophy of Ernst Bloch cannot be said to exist in a purely abstract vacuum, as is often contended in western philosophical debate.”M-b~@~S Peter Thompson, University of Sheffield, UK
Path to the Possible 