Spheres of Insurrection

Notes on Decolonizing the Unconscious

Suely Rolnik, Sergio Delgado Moya

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English

Polity Press
17 August 2023

Philosophy; Politics & government

Series: Critical South

As the globalized regime of neoliberal capitalism consolidates its grip on the world, it refines the micropolitics proper to the capitalist system and makes it more perverse. This micropolitics involves the appropriation – what Suely Rolnik calls the “pimping” – of life, as it turns the life drive itself away from creation and cooperation and towards the deadening, destructive practice necessary for capital accumulation. This dynamic is the engine of what Rolnik calls the colonial-capitalistic unconscious regime. She also identifies the conditions necessary to fight against this regime – namely, a reappropriation of the life drive, the energetic basis at the heart of all life forms, human life included, and the principal source of extraction for capitalism.

Drawing on examples from across the Americas, including Brazil and the United States, Rolnik examines the circumstances that have given rise to regressive, reactionary governments throughout the world. These circumstances include, at the macro level, an alliance between neoliberalism and extreme conservatism and, at the micro level, a crisis of the hegemonic subject in the face of the emergent empowerment of marginalized communities that practice other modes of subjectivation.

This crucial book by one of the most prominent intellectuals in Latin America today will be of great value to anyone interested in contemporary politics and social struggles.

By: Suely Rolnik
Translated by: Sergio Delgado Moya
Imprint: Polity Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 137mm, Spine: 18mm
Weight: 272g
ISBN: 9781509552863
ISBN 10: 1509552863
Series: Critical South
Pages: 190
Publication Date: 17 August 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction – Stefano Harney Prelude: Words Flowering Out of the Lumps in Our Throats “Colonial-Capitalistic Unconscious” Macro and Micropolitical Insurgency: Links and Dissimilarities The New Modality of Coup: A Series in Three Seasons Finale: Ten Suggestions for the Practice of Decolonizing the Unconscious Notes

Suely Rolnik is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo

Reviews for Spheres of Insurrection: Notes on Decolonizing the Unconscious

In this book, Suely Rolnik dismantles the stable partitions between the micropolitical and the macropolitical. She maps out how to understand their internal vectors (reactionary and emancipatory) rather than reinforcing their simple binarism. Moreover, here shines a precise and precious definition of the colonial as that which makes us distrust the knowledge of the body. For that, this book is also proposed as a practical manual, part of a collective task, which makes the decolonization of the unconscious an anti-fascist practice. Veronica Gago, feminist activist and Professor at the University of Buenos Aires