
Ana Cecilia DinersteinUniversity of Bath | UB
Ana Cecilia Dinerstein
PhD in Sociology, and MA in Comparative Labour Studies Warwick
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88
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Introduction
Dinerstein is a Professor of Political Sociology and Critical Theory at the University of Bath, UK. She has done research on labour subjectivity, Argentinean and social movements in LA. Her term 'the art of organising hope,' (Dinerstein 2015) creates synergies between prefigurative struggles and Ernst Bloch's philosophy. She is a member of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives. Her publications The Global Politics of Hope (PM Kairos) and A Decolonising Marxism (Pluto Press) are forthcoming
Additional affiliations
April 2019 - present
Publications
Publications (88)
Open Marxism: chapter 12, Encyclopedia of Critical Political Theory, Edward Elgar Publishing, edited by Clyde Barrow
https://www.elgaronline.com/display/book/9781800375918/9781800375918.xml
The article enhances Frigga Haug’s theses on Marxism-feminism by discussing a silence in the theses regarding the internal colonialism of the feminist movement that continue creating racialised hierarchies among White feminist and indigenous people and women of colour and their struggles. The author contends that Marxism-Feminism is failing to find...
Open Marxism is a strand of Marxism that argues that Marx's critique of political economy should be understood in the first place as the subversive critique of the economic categories of bourgeois society, its philosophical concepts, moral values, and political institutions. Contrary to structural Marxism, which conceptualizes social forms as a kin...
Los primeros tres volúmenes de Open Marxism fueron publicados entre 1992 y 19951. ¡Qué tiempos fueron aquellos! El imperio soviético colapsó y el capitalismo fue celebrado con bombos y platillos, no solo como victorioso, sino como el epitome de una civilización que ahora se confirmaba como el fin de la historia –como si fuera la historia la que man...
The contributions to the Forum refer to Simon Clarke’s ‘two stages of the same project’, as Clarke explained regarding Marx’s work. They make apparent that Clarke’s initial intellectual contributions to the critique of political economy, form analysis, value theory, theory of the state and money were essential to his later understanding of the coll...
In this brief Afterword, I bring E. A. Poe’s poem The Raven (1845) as a way to say goodbye to Simon
This edited volume aims to provide an accessible and interdisciplinary introduction to the concept of prefigurative politics. The idea for this collaborative project came from the realization that despite the increasing popularity of the term across the social sciences, it is hard to find articles or books which, instead of taking its meaning for g...
This rejoinder focuses on two issues discussed in Samuel Mercer’s review of Ana C. Dinerstein and Frederick Harry Pitts’s book A World beyond Work? Labour, Money and the Capitalist State between Crisis and Utopia. The first concerns the authors’ alleged defense of concrete labor against abstract labor; the second concerns the accusation of humanism...
Sensing a world of post-work opportunity lurking in an age of crisis, today ‘postcapitalist’ utopias proliferate that see a way out of the present through an escape from work. Using critical theory to unpick the political economy of contemporary work and its futures, this book mounts a forceful critique of fashionable thinking about the possibility...
In this paper, we suggest that not enough attention is being paid to the place of political contestation and antagonism in terms of how SDGs are being rolled out as part of a broader consensual, liberal geo-politics under conditions of contemporary neoliberal capitalism. In particular, we argue for more consideration of the significance of the SSE...
Today, the left is still lacking a reflection on the significance of the persistence of coloniality by minimising, neglecting or subsuming specific forms of non-Western sub- ordination and resistances to a general analysis of world resistance by use of Eurocentric categories that reproduce the coloniality of power that movements are struggling agai...
This article contests the suggestion that the automation of production and the provision of a basic income potentiate the transition from a post‐work to a postcapitalist society. This vista—mainly represented by the work of Paul Mason and Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams misses how capitalist work is both preconditioned by a historically‐specific set...
At the beginning of the twenty first century, Latin America was characterised by a condition of political transformation. The social and labour mobilisation against neoliberalism that emerged during the 1990s facilitated the accession to power of new centre-left political forces and coalitions that were collectively christened the ‘pink tide’. The...
¿Cuál es el poder de crítica de la negatividad a la luz de las luchas por la reproducción social en el
presente? ¿Es la negación el único camino hacia la emancipación como nos dice Agnoli? ¿Cuáles son las tensiones y contradicciones entre la necesidad de negar la forma valor, y la necesidad de afirmar la vida, en una sociedad donde la reproducción...
In this reflection, we assess the theoretical faultline running through the contested current of Corbynist thought and politics at present. On one hand, we find a techno-utopian strand preoccupied with automation and the end of work. On the other hand, a nascent politics of social reproduction with a foreshortened potential to realise the promise o...
By engaging with the recent experience of Latin American Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) movements, this chapter discusses three ideas. First, that SSE practices by social movements can be seen as tools for the anticipation of alternative reality/ practices, relationships and horizons—in the present. Second, that the integration of SSE practice...
Academics from a range of disciplines and from a number of European and Latin American countries come together to question what it means to have a 'sustainable society' and to ask what role alternative social and solidarity economies can play.
The need to avoid dangerous climate change whilst meeting the needs of millions in the global north and south suggests that a new economic model is required. Social and solidarity economies have been suggested as an alternative to the failed models of both public and private enterprise. What can they contribute in terms of offering the hope of an e...
John Holloway’s work spans over four decades of intellectual development and commitment to radical change. Holloway develops his ideas through ongoing dialogues, conversations, debates and discussions with both Marxists and radical scholars and students, and social movements and activists, worldwide. His work developed within the context of the Con...
This book opens up a unique intellectual space where eleven female scholar-activists explore alternative forms of theorising social reality. These’Women on the Verge’ demonstrate that a new radical subject-one that is plural, prefigurative, decolonial, ethical, ecological, communal and democratic-is in the making, but is unrecognisable with old ana...
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 grass roots. Dinerstein suggests that Marx’s critique of political economy constitutes the most unforgiving critique of capitalist...
Dinerstein argues that a new radical subject that is unrecognisable with old analytical tools is in the making. This radical subject is plural, prefigurative, decolonial, ethical, ecological, communal and democratic. A critical theory should demonstrate those qualities, too. She reflects on the shortcomings of theory in understanding these changes...
Jueves 4 de agosto – 17:00 El Trabajo en Transición: Multiplicación, reproducción social ampliada y re-espacialización del trabajo 1 A.C.Dinerstein@bath.ac.uk El tema de este Congreso de ALAST es la recuperación de la centralidad del trabajo. Siguiendo dos de los puntos delineados en la propuesta del panel, quisiera explorar algunas cuestiones que...
RESUMEN: ¿Cuál es la forma que adopta la utopía hoy? Mediante el establecimiento de una afinidad electiva entre autonomía y el principio de esperanza de Bloch, la autora de este trabajo define autonomía como 'el arte de organizar la esperanza'. Esa es una utopía concreta que desafía los parámetros de legibilidad de la realidad dada: niega, crea, en...
The Zapatistas are an armed revolutionary movement that represents the voice of indigenous people of Chiapas, Southeast Mexico. The “Zapatistas” came to light on January 1, 1994, when the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) occupied several counties of Chiapas, an economic strategic area where abundant natural resources (biodiversity, oil, wa...
All of them out! Much has been written about the Argentine financial crisis and the popular insurrection of December 2001, and their legacies. But today the slogan of the popular insurrection of December 2001, i.e. ‘¡Que se vayan tod@s!’ (referred to as ‘QSVT now onwards) sounds like a beautiful melody that brings nostalgia. Just before the new def...
In my review of the four modes of autonomy and their conversion into the key of hope (Chapters 2 and 3), I posed the question of whether autonomous organising is a praxis that fluctuates eternally between rebellion and integration or whether there is anything else to autonomy that can informs its political virtues to produce radical change? I sugge...
During the 1980s and 1990s, Latin America became the privileged site for both neoliberal experimentation and the emergence of laboratories of resistance against and beyond it, in the jungle, the forest, the neighbourhoods, the settlement, the outskirts, the city: a ‘laboring laboratory possibilis salutis’ (Bloch, 1977: 389). Recent studies of Latin...
At the start of the new millennium we find the rural world everywhere to be in a state of crisis. The historical origins of this crisis, in the nations of the South, can be found in colonial land grabs and the displacement of farming peoples from fertile lands with adequate rainfall, toward steep, rocky slopes, desert margins, and infertile rainfor...
The aim of this chapter is to produce an alternative understanding of autonomy that engages with the movements’ processes of prefiguration. I offer a definition of autonomy as the art of organising hope. I examine the previously mentioned four modes of autonomy through the prism of Ernst Bloch’s philosophy. By paraphrasing the language of music, I...
An explosion of rage and hope irrupted and expanded throughout the Latin American region at the end of the twentieth century. A general sense of injustice felt by millions asserted itself as a series of demonstrations, mobilisations, struggles, strikes, uprisings and upheavals against neoliberal politics and policy. These collective actions underta...
In this chapter, I discuss the third mode of autonomous organising (i.e., contradiction) by looking at the struggles of indigenous-popular movements in present Bolivia. Autonomy (self-determination and self-government) is an ancestral practice among indigenous people in Latin America, but it became a new ‘paradigm of resistance’ (Burguete Cal y May...
Hope is an essential component of any process of resistance against power. Nothing new. No hope, no change. Yet, my argument has been that we must see the present condition as ‘living in Blochian times’, a time when utopia can be no longer objected. But this is of course a different kind of ‘utopia’. Bloch highlights that ‘Once [s]he has grasped [h...
What is ‘autonomy’? The concept of autonomy has been historically the subject of enquiry by both scholar and activists alike but it has recently come under acute examination, generating worldwide debates about new social movements, power, politics, the state, policy and radical change. The reason is that for the past two decades the claim and pract...
Dinerstein offers a much-needed review of the concept and practice of autonomy. She argues that 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. By establishing an elective affinity bet...
Why talk about the global economic crisis today? The topic no longer seems as relevant or fresh as it did two years ago when we issued the call for papers. At that time, the events following the implosion of Lehman Brothers in 2008 seemed to be at the centre of everyday and media discourse: we heard it on the radio, saw it on television, read it in...
To what extent are recent labour upsurges defensive struggles? This essay uses the experience of the Argentinean Movement of Unemployed Workers (also called the Piquetero movement) as the empirical basis for discussing the contribution of unemployed workers to the current reshaping of the labour question. The author offers an alternative interpreta...
Bringing together contributions from a multi-disciplinary and international group of experts, this volume explores the effects and legacies of Argentina's 2001-2002 social, economic, and political implosion. Interrogating the nature and effects of the crisis, the contributors reject the dichotomy of 'old' and 'new'; instead, they argue that respons...
How can we understand the diversity of forms of radical counter hegemonic resistances within current processes of accumulation of capital, from a non-Eurocentric perspective? In this paper, I anticipate a conversation between two approaches to resistance: Decolonial School and Open Marxisms. By constructing the imaginary dialogue between these two...
The essay discusses negativity as the force underpinning social antagonism, with particular reference to the fleeting moment of hope experienced in Argentina in December 2001. Developing Ernst Bloch's notion of "real as process," the essay problematizes "factual reality" and argues that the "real as process" informs both the process of valorization...
In December 2001 Argentines began a journey marked by a mixture of contradictory feelings. On the one hand, things seemed to have gone totally wrong (again), with the financial crisis without question, a key element that contributed to their experience of instability and insecurity. Argentina was rightly perceived within and outside its borders as...
The recent re-emergence of autonomy as a central demand in many social movements across the world (which involve claims for self-determination, organisational self-management and independence vis-à-vis the state and capital) has opened a theoretical space to re-think its meanings in novel ways. Particularly interesting are in this regard autonomous...
This chapter is about the transformation of the subjectivity of labour during the second half of the 1990s in Argentina, and in particular, the role of unemployed workers in the politicisation of labour issues and the emergence of new forms of non-governmental public action. The subjectivity of labour refers to the historical forms of identity, org...
This article offers a comprehensive review of John Holloway’s Crack Capitalism by situating it within the wider body of his work spanning the last two decades. The article reflects on the significance of Holloway’s argument that revolution must be conceived as an interstitial process, suggesting that this latest volume offers both a more grounded a...
Social mobilizations that are devoted to contesting development and creating alternative economic arrangements conducive to the pursuit of a dignified life have recently sprung up. Not only do they criticize the current state of affairs but they actively seek and experience new ways of living, inspired by what Bloch calls the anticipatory conscious...
The Zapatistas are an armed revolutionary movement that represents the voice of indigenous people of Chiapas, Southeast Mexico. The “Zapatistas” came to light on January 1, 1994, when the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) occupied several counties of Chiapas, an economic strategic area where abundant natural resources (biodiversity, oil, wa...
This article argues that the concrete practice of autonomy by social movements is deeply embedded in socioeconomic and political contexts, and as such involves a contested relationship in and against the state, the market and hegemonic discourses on development. The task is then to explain and learn from this contested character of autonomy in each...
In this paper we interrogate the demand and practice of autonomy in social movements. We begin by identifying three main conceptions of autonomy: (1) autonomous practices vis-a`-vis capital; (2) self-determination and independence from the state; and (3) alternatives to hegemonic discourses of development. We then point to limits associated with au...
In: El trabajo en debate. Una investigación sobre la teoría y la realidad del trabajo capitalista Compiladores: Ana C. Dinerstein, Michael Neary | Ediciones Herramienta, Buenos Aires, 2009 | 304 páginas | ISBN 978-987-1505-09-8
This article aims to contribute to the debate on the short- to medium-term political implications of the 2001 Argentine crisis (see issues 10.4, pp. 5-38 and 14.1. pp. 155-248 of this journal). The bulk of the argument deals with the criticism of the notion of 'reinvention of politics'. The article presents the theoretical premises and empirical da...
English
In the last decade many Argentine enterprises became bankrupt, inspiring thousands of workers to take them over and resume production by forming cooperatives. In 2004, the Programme for Self-Managed Work became the instrument by which the government ‘institutionalised’ the takeovers, depoliticising the radical aspects of workers’ actions in...
This Forum discusses John Holloway's Change the World Without Taking Power. Inspirational and provocative, the book is a call for emancipatory reflection and thus an important contribution to the politics of resistance of our times. Contributors to the Forum explore and engage passionately with the controversial arguments contained in the book, fro...
Latin American Politics & Society 47.1 (2005) 128-133
If there is anything distressing about recent mainstream work on globalization and neoliberal structural adjustment, it is that while the scholarship analyzes structural transformations, it says very little about how people make sense of these changes as actors. It also says little about how sig...
Javier Auyero, Contentious Lives: Two Argentine Women, Two Protests, and the Quest for Recognition. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Photographs, appendix, notes, bibliography, index, 230 pp.; hardcover $54.95, paperback $18.95. - Volume 47 Issue 1 - Ana Cecilia Dinerstein
This paper explores a significant dilemma brought about by the crisis of December 2001 for the Unemployed Workers Movement in Argentina: the construction of a political movement to dispute institutional power or the development of territorial community work directed to the construction of a counter-power. The argument put forward is that the differ...
In December 2001, Argentina experienced a decisive crisis. A financial collapse accelerated by the massive flight of capital and the IMF denial of a new loan was followed by a popular insurrection which, by putting forward the slogan ¡que se vayan todos, que no quede ni uno solo! forced the resignation of national authorities. Whilst Duhalde's prov...
En diciembre de 2001 Argentina vivió una crisis decisiva. El colapso financiero disparado por la fuga masiva de capitales fue contrarrestado por una insurrección popular que, guiada por el slogan ¡que se vayan todos!, derrocó a las autoridades nacionales. Mientras el gobierno provisional negocia apoyo financiero internacional, la organización y res...
ROADBLOCKS ORGANISED BY the unemployed, public sector workers and the local community have spread through several provinces of Argentina. Demonstrators have demanded employment programmes, job creation and capital investments as well as their participation in the decision making process with regards to those matters. This is a continuation of a nea...
Michael Neary and Graham Taylor, Money and the Human Condition, London: Macmillan, 1998, £40.00, v+141 pp. - - Volume 13 Issue 4 - Ana Dinerstein