Spheres of Insurrection: Notes on decolonizing the unconscious

As the globalized regime of neoliberal capitalism consolidates its grip on the world, it brings into being a new kind of micropolitics, one that involves the appropriation - what Suely Rolnik calls the ‘pimping’ - of life itself, as it turns the life drive away from creation and cooperation and towards the deadening, destructive, homogenizing practices necessary for the extractive purposes of capitalist accumulation. This dynamic is the engine of what Rolnik calls the colonial-capitalistic unconscious regime.

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. She also identifies the conditions necessary to fight against these regimes micropolitically - namely, a reappropriation of the life drive, the drive to creation, the energetic basis at the heart of all life forms, human life included, and the principal source of extraction for the current regime of capitalism.

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.