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Articles & book chapters by Anne Freeland
Historical Materialism, 2019
This article examines Bolivian vice president Álvaro García Linera’s use of concepts originating ... more This article examines Bolivian vice president Álvaro García Linera’s use of concepts originating in the work of Antonio Gramsci and Bolivian sociologist René Zavaleta Mercado. Zavaleta’s concept of sociedad abigarrada (usually translated as ‘motley society’) has a history of misappropriation in which García Linera participates by articulating it with the related concept of the estado aparente to claim that the merely apparent’ state which does not effectively represent the heterogeneous social reality of a country like Bolivia is abolished with the official establishment of the Plurinational State in 2009. This ideologeme of the Plurinational State as one that faithfully represents Bolivia’s abigarramiento is equated with the Gramscian stato integrale, which in Gramsci refers to the state proper plus civil society where these are thoroughly integrated to function as an organic whole (the modern capitalist nation-state). Beyond merely misusing the borrowed terms of this discursive operation, García Linera gives a prescriptive value to concepts developed for an analytical purpose to validate the existing regime.
Revisiting Gramsci's Notebooks, 2019
A Contracorriente, Jan 2014
The current debate on the reconstitution of the left in Latin America since the close of the twen... more The current debate on the reconstitution of the left in Latin America since the close of the twentieth century demands, and has indeed provoked, a return to the discursive legacy of the preceding decades of struggle and
Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Jul 29, 2013
Reviews by Anne Freeland
Marx and Philosophy Review of Books, 2020
Marginalia Review of Books, Aug 9, 2019
Modern Language Review, 2019
Translations by Anne Freeland
In February 1921, Federico de Onís, professor of Spanish Literature at Columbia University, gave ... more In February 1921, Federico de Onís, professor of Spanish Literature at Columbia University, gave one of the conferences organized by the Hispanic Institute and spoke about the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. This name, today glorious, probably first reached the ears of most of the many attendees, almost all teachers and students of Spanish. As soon as the admirable personality of the young Chilean writer and teacher was known, however, thanks to what Prof. Onís said and the reading he offered of some of her works, it is fair to say that Gabriela Mistral garnered, not only the admiration, but the affection of every person in the audience. Our commemorative bilingual edition of Desolación celebrates the centennary of the first poetry anthology by the 1945 Nobel laureate.
Bolivia’s foremost social and political theorist, René Zavaleta Mercado held diplomatic and minis... more Bolivia’s foremost social and political theorist, René Zavaleta Mercado held diplomatic and ministerial posts with the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement in the 1950s and ’60s, before eventually aligning with the Marxist left, where he developed the creative, heterodox philosophy for which he is known. Towards a History of the National-Popular in Bolivia is his final and most significant work, available in English for the first time.
Published posthumously, the book explores a series of critical moments in Bolivian history to illuminate the reconstitution of seigneurial rule and the challenges posed by plebeian, indigenous, and working-class projects, agitating for a more inclusive nation. It is a work of reflexive social theory that explores the limits of its own conceptual frameworks—including classical political philosophy and Marxism—through an engagement with the history that made possible its own conceptual horizons. In its content, method, and style, the book offers an original reflection on social formations and political knowledge that have far-reaching implications for the Global South. Rooted in history and yet exceedingly relevant, Zavaleta’s revolutionary work makes contemporary a long genealogy of theories of the national-popular—from Gramsci and Mariátegui, to Fanon and Ho Chi Minh.
Key Texts for Latin American Sociology, 2019
Excerpt from Towards a History of the National Popular in Bolivia, by René Zavaleta Mercado, tran... more Excerpt from Towards a History of the National Popular in Bolivia, by René Zavaleta Mercado, translated by Anne Freeland. Reprinted in Key Texts for Latin American Sociology, edited by Fernanda Beigel, SAGE, 2019, pp. 130–138.
The Literary Review, 2014
Papers by Anne Freeland
Postcolonial Studies, 2019
René Zavaleta is often described as a forgotten or understudied figure of the Latin American left... more René Zavaleta is often described as a forgotten or understudied figure of the Latin American left, and yet when he is cited it is to assign to him a position at once singular and emblematic within a certain canon. He has been read as a ‘local’ and localist theorist of the Bolivian social text, and the work published as Lo nacional-popular en Bolivia is held to represent this quality most consummately, as the most mature expression of his thought. This reading is supported by two overlapping narratives, one at the level of a certain tradition of the Latin American left as a whole, and one at the level of Zavaleta’s own individual work. Within the macro-narrative of Latin Americanist social thought, he is placed at the intersection of a discourse governed by the categories of class, people and nation, and one centred on indigeneity, heterogeneity and subalternity. In the current scholarship on Zavaleta, his intellectual trajectory is conventionally periodised into (1) a youthful, nationalist period, (2) an orthodox Marxist period, and (3) a final, criticalMarxist period in which universal (metropolitan) categories are rejected as inoperable for the theoretical production of non-metropolitan societies. The concept-metaphor most commonly associated with Zavaleta and cited to situate him at the threshold of a passage from a traditional Marxist left to a discourse aligned with the struggles of Indigenous movements is that of abigarramiento, translated here sometimes simply as ‘heterogeneity’ or, in its adjectival form, following existing English citations of the term, as ‘motley’. Abigarramiento refers to the coexistence of multiple modes of production and multiple conceptions of the world within a single national territory and therefore complicates the sequential and deterministic modes-of-production narrative and constitutes an obstacle to the methods of both modern social-scientific analysis and liberal democratic politics premised on the existence of a more or less unified national citizenry. The Bolivian social formation, for Zavaleta, is abigarrada because pre-capitalist (feudal) or non-capitalist (Andean ‘communitarian’) social relations persist within the space claimed by a formally capitalist nation-state. As a concept that supplements those received from European social theory to designate the specificity of a peripheral society, abigarramiento (too readily taken to stand for Zavaleta’s theoretical apparatus as a whole) tends to be read in a vindicatory key, as
Historical Materialism, 2019
This article examines Bolivian vice president Álvaro García Linera’s use of concepts originating ... more This article examines Bolivian vice president Álvaro García Linera’s use of concepts originating in the work of Antonio Gramsci and Bolivian sociologist René Zavaleta Mercado. Zavaleta’s concept of sociedad abigarrada (usually translated as ‘motley society’) has a history of misappropriation in which García Linera participates by articulating it with the related concept of the estado aparente to claim that the merely apparent’ state which does not effectively represent the heterogeneous social reality of a country like Bolivia is abolished with the official establishment of the Plurinational State in 2009. This ideologeme of the Plurinational State as one that faithfully represents Bolivia’s abigarramiento is equated with the Gramscian stato integrale, which in Gramsci refers to the state proper plus civil society where these are thoroughly integrated to function as an organic whole (the modern capitalist nation-state). Beyond merely misusing the borrowed terms of this discursive operation, García Linera gives a prescriptive value to concepts developed for an analytical purpose to validate the existing regime.
Revisiting Gramsci's Notebooks, 2019
A Contracorriente, Jan 2014
The current debate on the reconstitution of the left in Latin America since the close of the twen... more The current debate on the reconstitution of the left in Latin America since the close of the twentieth century demands, and has indeed provoked, a return to the discursive legacy of the preceding decades of struggle and
Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Jul 29, 2013
Marx and Philosophy Review of Books, 2020
Marginalia Review of Books, Aug 9, 2019
Modern Language Review, 2019
In February 1921, Federico de Onís, professor of Spanish Literature at Columbia University, gave ... more In February 1921, Federico de Onís, professor of Spanish Literature at Columbia University, gave one of the conferences organized by the Hispanic Institute and spoke about the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. This name, today glorious, probably first reached the ears of most of the many attendees, almost all teachers and students of Spanish. As soon as the admirable personality of the young Chilean writer and teacher was known, however, thanks to what Prof. Onís said and the reading he offered of some of her works, it is fair to say that Gabriela Mistral garnered, not only the admiration, but the affection of every person in the audience. Our commemorative bilingual edition of Desolación celebrates the centennary of the first poetry anthology by the 1945 Nobel laureate.
Bolivia’s foremost social and political theorist, René Zavaleta Mercado held diplomatic and minis... more Bolivia’s foremost social and political theorist, René Zavaleta Mercado held diplomatic and ministerial posts with the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement in the 1950s and ’60s, before eventually aligning with the Marxist left, where he developed the creative, heterodox philosophy for which he is known. Towards a History of the National-Popular in Bolivia is his final and most significant work, available in English for the first time.
Published posthumously, the book explores a series of critical moments in Bolivian history to illuminate the reconstitution of seigneurial rule and the challenges posed by plebeian, indigenous, and working-class projects, agitating for a more inclusive nation. It is a work of reflexive social theory that explores the limits of its own conceptual frameworks—including classical political philosophy and Marxism—through an engagement with the history that made possible its own conceptual horizons. In its content, method, and style, the book offers an original reflection on social formations and political knowledge that have far-reaching implications for the Global South. Rooted in history and yet exceedingly relevant, Zavaleta’s revolutionary work makes contemporary a long genealogy of theories of the national-popular—from Gramsci and Mariátegui, to Fanon and Ho Chi Minh.
Key Texts for Latin American Sociology, 2019
Excerpt from Towards a History of the National Popular in Bolivia, by René Zavaleta Mercado, tran... more Excerpt from Towards a History of the National Popular in Bolivia, by René Zavaleta Mercado, translated by Anne Freeland. Reprinted in Key Texts for Latin American Sociology, edited by Fernanda Beigel, SAGE, 2019, pp. 130–138.
The Literary Review, 2014
Postcolonial Studies, 2019
René Zavaleta is often described as a forgotten or understudied figure of the Latin American left... more René Zavaleta is often described as a forgotten or understudied figure of the Latin American left, and yet when he is cited it is to assign to him a position at once singular and emblematic within a certain canon. He has been read as a ‘local’ and localist theorist of the Bolivian social text, and the work published as Lo nacional-popular en Bolivia is held to represent this quality most consummately, as the most mature expression of his thought. This reading is supported by two overlapping narratives, one at the level of a certain tradition of the Latin American left as a whole, and one at the level of Zavaleta’s own individual work. Within the macro-narrative of Latin Americanist social thought, he is placed at the intersection of a discourse governed by the categories of class, people and nation, and one centred on indigeneity, heterogeneity and subalternity. In the current scholarship on Zavaleta, his intellectual trajectory is conventionally periodised into (1) a youthful, nationalist period, (2) an orthodox Marxist period, and (3) a final, criticalMarxist period in which universal (metropolitan) categories are rejected as inoperable for the theoretical production of non-metropolitan societies. The concept-metaphor most commonly associated with Zavaleta and cited to situate him at the threshold of a passage from a traditional Marxist left to a discourse aligned with the struggles of Indigenous movements is that of abigarramiento, translated here sometimes simply as ‘heterogeneity’ or, in its adjectival form, following existing English citations of the term, as ‘motley’. Abigarramiento refers to the coexistence of multiple modes of production and multiple conceptions of the world within a single national territory and therefore complicates the sequential and deterministic modes-of-production narrative and constitutes an obstacle to the methods of both modern social-scientific analysis and liberal democratic politics premised on the existence of a more or less unified national citizenry. The Bolivian social formation, for Zavaleta, is abigarrada because pre-capitalist (feudal) or non-capitalist (Andean ‘communitarian’) social relations persist within the space claimed by a formally capitalist nation-state. As a concept that supplements those received from European social theory to designate the specificity of a peripheral society, abigarramiento (too readily taken to stand for Zavaleta’s theoretical apparatus as a whole) tends to be read in a vindicatory key, as