Jose Carlos Mariategui (1894-1994), considered one of Latin America's great Marxist theoreticians and activists, remains nearly unknown in the English-speaking world. This short collection of his essays aims to introduce the philosopher and thinker to English-speaking students of history.

Jose Carlos Mariategui is widely considered one of Latin America's greatest Marxist theoreticians and activists and remains nearly unknown in the English-speaking world. This collection of essays is an attempt to introduce the breadth and depth of Mariategui's thought to a new generation of English-speaking students of history, philosophy, literature, and radical theory and practice.

Jose Carlos Mariategui (1894-1994), considered one of Latin America's great Marxist theoreticians and activists, remains nearly unknown in the English-speaking world. This short collection of his essays aims to introduce the philosopher and thinker to English-speaking students of history.

Political Theories of Decolonization provides an introduction to some of the seminal texts of postcolonial political theory. The difficulty of founding a new regime is an important theme in political theory, and the intellectual history of decolonization provides a rich--albeit overlooked--opportunity to explore it. Many theorists have pointed out that the colonized subject was a divided subject. This book argues that the postcolonial state was a divided state. While postcolonial states were created through the struggle for independence, they drew on both colonial institutions and reinvented pre-colonial traditions. Political Theories of Decolonization illuminates how many of the central themes of political theory such as land, religion, freedom, law, and sovereignty are imaginatively explored by postcolonial thinkers. In doing so, it provides readers access to texts that add to our understanding of contemporary political life and global political dynamics.

Socialism is the watchword and the catchword of our day. The socialist idea dominates the modem spirit. The masses approve of it. It expresses the thoughts and feelings of all; it has set its seal upon our time. When history comes to tell our story it will write above the chapter “The Epoch of Socialism.” As yet, it is true, Socialism has not created a society which can be said to represent its ideal. But for more than a generation the policies of civilized nations have been directed towards nothing less than a gradual realization of Socialism.17 In recent years the movement has grown noticeably in vigour and tenacity. Some nations have sought to achieve Socialism, in its fullest sense, at a single stroke. Before our eyes Russian Bolshevism has already accomplished something which, whatever we believe to be its significance, must by the very magnitude of its design be regarded as one of the most remarkable achievements known to world history. Elsewhere no one has yet achieved so much. But with other peoples only the inner contradictions of Socialism itself and the fact that it cannot be completely realized have frustrated socialist triumph. They also have gone as far as they could under the given circumstances. Opposition in principle to Socialism there is none. Today no influential party would dare openly to advocate Private Property in the Means of Production. The word “Capitalism” expresses, for our age, the sum of all evil. Even the opponents of Socialism are dominated by socialist ideas. In seeking to combat Socialism from the standpoint of their special class interest these opponents—the parties which particularly call themselves “bourgeois” or “peasant”—admit indirectly the validity of all the essentials of socialist thought. For if it is only possible to argue against the socialist programme that it endangers the particular interests of one part of humanity, one has really affirmed Socialism. If one complains that the system of economic and social organization which is based on private property in the means of production does not sufficiently consider the interests of the community, that it serves only the purposes of single strata, and that it limits productivity; and if therefore one demands with the supporters of the various “social-political” and “social-reform” movements, state interference in all fields of economic life, then one has fundamentally accepted the principle of the socialist programme. Or again, if one can only argue against socialism that the imperfections of human nature make its realization impossible, or that it is inexpedient under existing economic conditions to proceed at once to socialization, then one merely confesses that one has capitulated to socialist ideas. The nationalist, too, affirms socialism, and objects only to its Internationalism. He wishes to combine Socialism with the ideas of Imperialism and the struggle against foreign nations. He is a national, not an international socialist; but he, also, approves of the essential principles of Socialism.

The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Marxism covers of the basics of Karl Marx’s thought, the philosophical contributions of later Marxist theorists, and the extensive real-world political organizations and structures his work inspired—that is, the myriad political parties, organizations, countries, and leaders who subscribed to Marxism as a creed. This text includes a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, both thinkers and doers; political parties and movements; and major communist or ex-communist countries. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Marxism.

Jose Carlos Mariategui is one of Latin America's most profound but overlooked thinkers. A self-taught journalist, social scientist, and activist from Peru, he was the first to emphasize that those fighting for the revolutionary transformation of society must adapt classical Marxist theory to the particular conditions of Latin American. He also stressed that indigenous peoples must take an active, if not leading, role in any revolutionary struggle. Today Latin America is the scene of great social upheaval. More progressive governments are in power than ever before, and grassroots movements of indigenous peoples, workers, and peasants are increasingly shaping the political landscape. The time is perfect for a rediscovery of Mariategui, who is considered an intellectual precursor of today's struggles in Latin America but virtually unknown in the English-speaking world. This volume collects his essential writings, including many that have never been translated and some that have never been published. The scope of this collection, masterful translation, and thoughtful commentary make it an essential book for scholars of Latin America and all of those fighting for a new world, waiting to be born."

This book deals with substantive issues that have the potential to enhance our understanding regarding how Marxist theory can be quite useful in interpreting Black specificities and the race paradigm. So far, Marxist theory has been excluded because it is supposedly class and economy reductionist, but the essence of this theory-dialectic-not only proves that it is a meaningful way of seeing racism for what it truly is, but also a way of filtering through the plethora of interpretations of what constitutes race. The timeliness of the approach should help revive discussion on ethnophilosophy as an ideology. So much academic consideration has led scholars to seriously underestimate ideology's extraordinary efficiency in blending into lived experience to the point where much of its most telling effects have become undetectable. This work suggests that critical theory must reorient itself and offers an important discussion on the dominant discourse of poststructuralism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, Marxism, African socialism, NZgritude, and Afrocentricity. The book's approach sheds a radical light on the claim for Black specificities and racism. It shows that racial and ethnological discourses are ideological and political mystifications, masking exploitation. Under such circumstances, racial and racist ideologies become cards to be played by the perpetrators or the victims, as the case studies of Haiti and South Africa illustrate. As can be seen, then, the intelligibility of racism and its various forms can only stem from an analysis of the social structures upon which they rest. Just to show how inextricably linked ideology, race, racism, political expansion, and economic domination are, the book looks at Africa and its Diaspora, revealing how Africans remain the scapegoat for racial 'othering' in the global economy's ideological praxis. In so doing, the book is also able to include African intellectuals' perspectives that have often been omitted from the dialogue on critical theory, race, racism, and Black specificities.

Originally published in 1994, Writing in the Air is one of the most significant books of modern Latin American literary and cultural criticism. In this seminal work, the influential Latin American literary critic Antonio Cornejo Polar offers the most extended articulation of his efforts to displace notions of hybridity or "mestizaje" dominant in Latin American cultural studies with the concept of heterogeneity: the persistent interaction of cultural difference that cannot be resolved in synthesis. He reexamines encounters between Spanish and indigenous Andean cultural systems in the New World from the Conquest into the 1980s. Through innovative readings of narratives of conquest and liberation, homogenizing nineteenth- and twentieth-century discourses, and contemporary Andean literature, he rejects the dominance of the written word over oral literature. Cornejo Polar decenters literature as the primary marker of Latin American cultural identity, emphasizing instead the interlacing of multiple narratives that generates the heterogeneity of contemporary Latin American culture.

Theorists interested in learning more about any given interpretive approach are often required to navigate a dizzying array of sources, with no clear sense of where to begin. The prose of many primary sources is often steeped in dense and technical argot that novices find intimidating or even impenetrable. Interpretation in Political Theory provide students of political theory a single introductory reference guide to major approaches to interpretation available in the field today. Comprehensive and clearly written, the book includes: A historical and theoretical overview that situates the practice of interpretation within the development of political theory in the twentieth century. Chapters on Straussian esotericism, historical approaches within the Cambridge School of interpretation, materialist approaches associated with Marxism, the critical approaches associated with varieties of feminism, Greimassian semiotics, Foucaultian genealogy, the negative dialectics of Theodor Adorno, deconstruction as exemplified by Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, and Lacanian psychoanalysis. An exposition of the theoretical and disciplinary background of each approach, the tools and techniques of interpretation it uses, its assumptions about what counts as a relevant text in political theory, and what it considers to be the purpose or objective of reading in political theory. A reading of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan to illustrate how each approach can be applied in practice. A list of suggestions for further reading that will guide those interested in pursuing more advanced study. An invaluable textbook for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and even seasoned scholars of political theory interested in learning more about different interpretive approaches.