In Defense of Common Life - by Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The essential political and theoretical work of one of Latin America's most important contemporary theorists.

Raquel Gutiéeacute;rrez Aguilar is one of the foremost Latin American political thinkers. From armed Indigenous struggle in the Bolivian altiplano to the contemporary wave of feminist uprisings, Raquel Gutiérrez's life and work have spanned and spurred on some of the most important political sequences in the last forty years in Latin America.

Almost unknown in the United States, Raquel is one of the Latin American anticapitalist, antistate Left's most important contemporary theorists. She has produced important work on communal struggles and political forms and has been at the center of some of the most important political organizing in Bolivia and Mexico in the last forty years.

This volume presents an extensive interview with Raquel in which she charts her political and intellectual trajectory from her militancy in the Ejército Guerrillero Tupac-Katari, to Bolivia's famous Water and Gas wars, to the massive wave of popular feminist rebellions and organizing. Translator and writer, Brian Whitner offers two essays in translation that contain some of her central theoretical concepts, including the veto and reappropriation of communal wealth, for thinking a politics in common, and of the commons.

With the publication of In Defense of Common Life, a new audience of English-language readers can finally engage with the thought and political experience of a thinker and militant, whose contributions to social movements span an incredible political and regional breadth, and resonate deeply with current debates with the US about the conditions and practices of revolutionary change, feminism, and popular struggle.

Review Quotes

"Raquel Gutiéeacute;rrez Aguilar is not only an innovative theorist but also an inspiring activist. This beautifully edited and translated volume charts her extraordinary political trajectory and presents some of her vital contributions to contemporary political and theoretical debates. With this English-language edition, new audiences will be able to benefit from her important work."
-Michael Hardt, author of The Subversive Seventies and coauthor of Bolivia Beyond the Impasse

"In Defense of Common Life is a magnificent introduction of Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar's work to a wider audience. It crystallizes hard-won insights gleaned from four decades of political struggle in Latin America. She interrogates political organization, feminist praxis, and making-the essential social force that capital can never fully contain. To escape capitalism and stultifying definitions of revolution, she illuminates paths to imagine the world anew. Here is a text to wrestle with-- a gift in translation."
--Christina Heatherton, author of Arise! Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution

"Few walk the walk that Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar has, through her involvement in militant struggles such as the Ejército Guerrillero Tupac-Katari and the Water Wars and gas conflicts of Bolivia. In Defense of Common Life movingly presents some of the lessons she has learned along the way as 'concisely as possible.' These lessons are about autonomy, the value of lengthy discussion, and the difficult and yet crucial attention that the communal deserves in the fervor of revolutionary struggle. As such, this book is both a handbook for the future and a careful assessment of a complicated past."
--Juliana Spahr, author of Du Bois's Telegram

"Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar's brilliant analysis on the possibility of the commons helps us find ways to re-orient ourselves amidst the uncertainties of the political moment we are living in. Her nuanced and deeply critical political vision sheds light on what is enabled and possible when we look at the commons as the horizon for a politics centered around the very possibility of (re)production of life on earth. Critical of the different forms of complicity with neoliberal capitalism that leftist administrations have enabled, she looks at the complexity of articulating forms of collective desire that can channel social wealth to materialize ways of being in common.
Translating these works by one of the most important contemporary Latin American thinkers of the moment, allows us to understand different lines of history that permeate the question of the common, while facing the recurrence of state and capitalist captures of collective energies. Without posing easy formulas, Raquel offers critical trajectories to understand histories that are not much known in the North, thus open the possibility of inspiring readers to connect with and plot around key issues that traverses different geographies."
--Susana Draper, author of Libres y Sin Miedo: Horizontes feministas para construir otros sentidos de justicia and coeditor of Feminicide and Global Accumulation

About the Author

Brian Whitener is an associate professor of Spanish at the University at Buffalo and the author of Crisis Cultures: The Rise of Finance in Mexico and Brazil (2019). Other projects include The 90s (2022); Face Down (2016); De gente común: Prácticas estéticas y rebeldía social, edited with Lorena Méndez and Fernando Fuentes (2013); and the translation of Grupo de Arte Callejero's Thoughts, Practices, and Actions (2019) with the Mareada Translation Collective.