Posthegemony : Political Theory and Latin America

by Beasley-Murray, Jon

• ISBN13: 9780816647156
• ISBN10: 0816647151
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-01-06
• Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr

Summary

Posthegemonyis an investigation into the origins, limits, and possibilities for contemporary politics and political analysis. Jon Beasley-Murray grounds his theoretical discussion with accounts of historical movements in Latin America, from Columbus to Chavez, and from Argentine Peronism to Peru's Sendero Luminoso. Challenging dominant strains in social theory, Beasley-Murray contends that cultural studies simply replicates the populism that conditions it, and that civil society theory merely nourishes the neoliberalism that it sets out to oppose. Both end up entrenching the fiction of a social contract. In place of hegemony or civil society, Beasley-Murray presents a theory of posthegemony, focusing on affect, habit, and the multitude. This approach addresses an era of biopolitics and bare life, tedium and terror, in which state control is ever more pervasive but something always escapes. In his thorough examination, Beasley-Murray undoes the dominant narrative of hegemonic projects and counterhegemonic resistance, of civilization and subalternity, to reveal instead a history of failed contracts and unpredicted insurgencies.

Author Biography

Jon Beasley-Murray is assistant professor of Hispanic studies at the University of British Columbia.

Table of Contents

Introduction: A User's Guide	p. ix
Prologue: October 10, 1492	p. 1
Critique
Argentina 1972: Cultural Studies and Populism	p. 15
Ayacucho 1982: Civil Society Theory and Neoliberalism	p. 68
Constitution
Escalón 1989: Deleuze and Affect	p. 125
Chile 1992: Bourdieu and Habit	p. 174
Conclusion: Negri and Multitude	p. 226
Epilogue: April 13, 2002	p. 284
Acknowledgments	p. 297
Notes	p. 301
Bibliography	p. 325
Index	p. 353
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.