Abstract
Dinerstein argues that the form of utopia today is not abstract but ‘concrete’. Concrete utopias are ‘denaturalising’ capitalist-colonial society as they are negating the given and creating alternative practices at the grassroots. Dinerstein suggests that Marx’s critique of political economy constitutes the most unforgiving critique of capitalist society. Yet, in order to grasp concrete utopias, Marx’s critique should be read ‘in the key of hope’, that is through the lenses of Bloch’s principle of hope. Like this, Marx’s critique become a prefigurative critique of political economy that recognises the process of shaping concrete utopia as a critique of the value form from within the process of the self-expansion of value. In the final section, Dinerstein enquiries about the adequacy of the term concrete utopia to understand indigenous struggles for self-determination. She offers the notion of ‘subsumption by exclusion’ to argue for a particular form of subordination of indigenous peoples in capital. They ‘appear’ outside but also constitute a threat to the expansion of value. Both kinds of concrete utopia navigate the open veins of capital.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Social science for an other politics |
Subtitle of host publication | Women theorising without parachutes |
Editors | Ana Cecilia Dinerstein |
Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
Pages | 49-62 |
Number of pages | 16 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9783319477763 |
ISBN (Print) | 9783319477756 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 16 Dec 2016 |
Bibliographical note
(Ba Politics Buenos Aires, Ma-PhD, Warwick) is Associate Professor of Sociology in the department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath, UK. She has written books, journal articles, blogs and book sections for academic and non-academic audiences on issues of labour subjectivity; labour, rural and indigenous movements; utopia, hope and the uses of Ernst Bloch philosophy today, (Open) Marxist theory, Argentine and Latin American politics and autonomous organising. Her main publications include The Labour Debate (2002, in Turkish 2006; in Spanish 2009), and The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America: The Art of Organising Hope (2015). She is former editor of Capital & Class and a member of the Advisory Boards of Historical Materialism (London), Sociología del Trabajo (Madrid), Observatorio Latinoamericano and Herramienta (Buenos Aires). She is a Member of the Committee Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS, UK) and a Research Partner of the New Politics Project (2016-2020) at the Transnational Institute (Amsterdam).Keywords
- DENATURALISING CAPITALISM
- SUBSUMPTION BY EXCLUSION
- KEY OF HOPE
- ERNST BLOCH
- THE NOT YET
- KARL MARX
- CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
- PREFIGURATION
- CONCRETE UTOPIA