827230

book-review2019
CNC0010.1177/0309816819827230Capital & ClassExtended Book Reviews

Capital & Class

Extended Book Reviews 2019, Vol. 43(1) 173­–221

© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0309816819827230
https://doi.org/10.1177/0309816819827230
journals.sagepub.com/home/cnc
Coloniality of power and
emancipation today
Luis Martínez Andrade
Religion without Redemption: Social Contradictions and Awakened Dreams in Latin
America (Decolonial Studies, Postcolonial Horizons), London; New York: Pluto Press,
2015; 176 pp.: ISBN 9780745335728, £27.99

Reviewed by Ana Cecilia Dinerstein, University of Bath, UK

Her long-standing tradition of radical grass-roots movements that mobilise libertarian,

autonomist, anarchist and Marxist traditions, combined with liberation theology and
indigenous insurgency, makes Latin America a constant source of inspiration for eman-
cipatory praxis. The continent is fertile in producing both critical knowledges and genu-
ine philosophical thinking. It provides the world with resourceful forms of resistance to
colonial-patriarchal capitalism. Since the 1990s, Latin American movements have been
prefiguring alternative politics and social relations with political imagination. Social
movements led by women, indigenous people, the landless, the unemployed, rural work-
ers, the marginalised and so on have become the protagonists of a sea of radical organis-
ing which is politically and socially oppressed, with some exceptions, by the governments
of the region. One of the features of these new mobilisations is that they are undertaking
a ‘decolonial turn’ (Maldonado-Torres 2011). This ‘turn’, writes Maldonado-Torres
(2011), means a new ‘shift away from modernization towards decoloniality as an unfin-
ished project that took place in the twentieth century and is still unfolding now’ (p. 2;
see also Castro-Gómez and Grosfoguel 2007). They are doing so by exposing and con-
testing in writing and action, what Aníbal Quijano coined as the ‘coloniality of power’
(Quijano 2008) in the present post-colonial world. The process of independence in Latin
America did not lead to a noticeable democratisation of the political on the bases on
which coloniality could be dismantled, argues Quijano. It rather meant ‘a re-articulation
of the coloniality of power over new bases’ (Quijano 2008: 214). The ‘coloniality of
power’ is the practice that penetrates social, cultural, economic, political interactions and
relations and exists between countries in the Global North and South, between countries
in the North and South of Europe, and between people within European countries, all
intertwined by class and gender discriminations. As they embrace the decolonial turn in
a greater or lesser degree, today’s social mobilisation rejects Eurocentric critical theory
and politics, for the latter is detached from real experiences and represent the coloniality
of knowledge and power that subaltern subjects reject.
174 Capital & Class 43(1)

In this context, Luis Martínez Andrade’s book Religion Without Redemption: Social
Contradictions and Awakened Dreams in Latin America is a must read for those
involved in theoretical and practical critiques of capitalist patriarchal coloniality.
Grouped in two parts, in this fine compilation of five essays or ‘Meditations’ on colo-
niality, emancipation, liberation, religion and Latin America written at different
points in the author’s career, Martínez Andrade reviews and discusses the work of
several authors gathered in the ‘decolonial option’, a split from the Latin American
Subaltern Studies, and from the Latin American philosophical traditions of ‘libera-
tion philosophy’ and ‘liberation theology’. All the essays focus on their critique of
Eurocentric interpretations of modernity and neo-colonialism, and their appreciation
of existing ontologies and epistemologies other than European, mainly produced in
Latin America.
Part I of the book, ‘Entelechies and Cathedrals’, addresses the critique of the ‘fetish-
ised truths’ of capitalism, that is, the alienating truths build upon money as religion.
In the first essay of this Part (Chapter 1), ‘Civilising Paradigms and Colonial Atavisms:
Power and Social Sciences’, Martínez Andrade challenges mainstream Eurocentric
interpretations of modernity-capitalism, by engaging with authors of the decolonial
option. These scholars locate the beginning of modernity with the conquest of the
Americas around 1492. This original interpretation reveals both the Eurocentric char-
acter of Enlightenment and the strategic character of race. Race, argues Quijano, was
invented in the 15th century, and in turn it facilitated the slow but unstoppable estab-
lishment of modernity-capitalism. Quijano (2008: 184) concurs that the formation of
the international division of labour in the Spanish-dominated region under the reign
of Castilla and Aragon contained a racial division of labour within it. The end of slav-
ery for the Indians (to preclude their complete extermination) led to their serfdom.
This social classification and the racial hierarchies of the control over labour continued
to expand, providing a specific role to the Indians. Therefore, ‘from the beginning of
the colonization of America, Europeans associated non-paid or non-waged labour with
the dominated races because they were “inferior” races’ (Quijano 2008: 186; Bonfil
Batalla 1987). In short, the creation of an inferior ‘other’ was key to the expansion of
the European Empires navigating the seven seas in search of new lands to conquer.
While there is nothing physical or intellectual that justifies the subordination of indig-
enous or Black people to European conquerors, their experience of oppression under
capitalism is entangled with the experience of race. While race, according to Grosfoguel
(2008), became the ‘organizing principle of the international division of labour and of
the global patriarchal system’, the classification of indigenous people as ‘inferior races’
or as ‘different’, subjugated and invisibilised cosmologies, paradigms of life and knowl-
edges that existed before colonisation.
All this means that modernity-capitalism was not only a process of primitive accumu-
lation via expropriation and dispossession, but one that also included a hierarchical divi-
sion within it, where the ‘indio’ was regarded as inferior to the ‘worker’. Martínez
Andrade exposes how this narrative enabled modern subjectivity to be established and
Europeans could have now a sense of self-superiority that was built upon the violence of
Spanish conquest of the Americas. Following Lander (2000) and others, the author high-
lights that the coloniality of power involves the coloniality of knowledge. In his words,
Extended Book Reviews 175

‘the incipient European hegemony over the world-system implied the projection of a
geopolitics of knowledge determined by the West’ (p. 17). The implication is that

the teleological dynamic of the coloniality of power and knowledge gave birth to the coloniality
of doing in Latin American and Caribbean society … [i.e.] the colonial discursive practices,
naturalised above all by the mestizo population in a symbolic cultural context. (p. 9)

Today, the left is still lacking a reflection on the significance of the persistence of this
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 against.
In Chapter 2, ‘The Shopping Mall as the Paradigmatic Figure of Neo-colonial
Discourse’, Martínez Andrade asserts that the perpetual process of production of hegem-
onic discourse is inextricably connected to specific dynamics of economic exploitation,
domination and control. The author contextualises the Latin American experience by
revealing the specific geopolitical mechanisms of control, rather than applying alien
social theories, and argues that the shopping mall has become a key object for the con-
figuration of a social imaginary that guarantees the consolidation of transnational capital
in people’s daily lives in the region. In the birth place of Liberation Theology (the branch
of the Catholic Church that influenced Latin American radical, grass-roots politics since
the 1960s), the promotion of consumerism is configured as an element of the civilising
process when in fact it is a particular form of colonial domination. Latin American strug-
gles for liberation, argues Martínez Andrade, need to recognise this ‘cultural dependency’
and ‘colonial atavism’ (p. 55) to break with the hegemonic paradigm.
The three Mediations of the second part of the book address the topic of ‘Utopia and
Liberation’. Here, the author brings into discussion the liberation proposals produced in
Latin America, and the revolutionary features of liberation theology in several of its
manifestations, ranging from Enrique Dussel’s idea of trans-modernity, to Leonardo
Boff ’s bio-civilisation and eco-socialism. In the first essay of this part titled ‘The
Portentous Eclosion of the Principle of Hope: Ernst Bloch And Liberation’, Martínez
Andrade explains why Ernst Bloch’s philosophy was the main inspiration for Father
Gustavo Gutiérrez, the creator of Liberation Theology. To be sure, Bloch was not reli-
gious but a ‘religious atheist’ (Löwy 1988: 8). He considered religion as ‘one of the most
significant forms of utopian consciousness, one of the richest expressions of the Hope
Principle’ (Löwy 1988: 8). Bloch’s philosophy offered Father Gutiérrez a dialogue
between Marxism and religion which empowered him and other radical priests to under-
take collective actions that removed ‘the traditional God of Christianity and insist[s] on
the power of future possibilities that humanity has yet to know’ (Moylan 1997: 97).
An important element to understand what might appear to be an uncomfortable mar-
riage between Marxism and religion from a Left-progressive perspective is that Bloch
distinguishes between the ‘theocratic religion of the official churches, opium of the peo-
ple, a mystifying apparatus at the service of the powerful’ from ‘the underground, subver-
sive and heretical religion’ so that religion is no longer seen ‘uniquely as a “cloak” of class
interests’ (Löwy 1988: 8). Following Moylan, Bloch described the Principle of Hope ‘as an
activity which “subverts the existing order”’ (Moylan 1997: 103) so to Farther Gutiérrez
176 Capital & Class 43(1)

the hoped-for salvation of humanity comes about not in the historical incarnation of hope
represented in the activities of Jesus and a community of believers but, rather, in a transcendent
future which makes the promise available to a receptive humanity. (Moylan 1997: 101)

Martínez Andrade (2009) argues elsewhere that hunger must be addressed from a
counter-perspective against reformist or neo-institutionalist positions of the hegemonic
system. In this other text, he reflects on Bloch’s treatment of hunger. To Bloch, hunger is
a ‘basic drive [of ] self-preservation … to preserve one’s being, that is and remains, accord-
ing to Spinoza’s unerring definition, the “appetitus” of all beings’ (Bloch 1986 [1959]:
67). Bloch is convinced that hunger-understood in a broad way,

cannot help continually renewing itself. But if it increases uninterrupted, satisfied by no certain
bread, it suddenly changes. The body-ego then becomes rebellious, does not go out in search of
food merely within the old framework. It seeks to change the situation which has caused its
empty stomach … The No to bad situations which exist, the Yes to the better life that hovers
ahead, is incorporated by the deprived into revolutionary interest. (Bloch 1986 [1959]: 75)

So Martínez Andrade follows Bloch in that

hunger … participates not only in the intersubjective configuration of a human beings but it
is also an element in popular emancipations … Hunger mobilises the subjects and, at the same
time, gives meaning to the desiderative images that are set in motion in the transformation
processes, forging themselves – as Bloch pointed out – an inseparable union between danger
and faith.

In the next essay ‘The Gun Powder of The Dwarf: Unearthly Reflections On
Contemporary Political Philosophy’, Martínez Andrade explores Christianity and poli-
tics and brings different perspectives on the potential of theory of liberation and, not
surprisingly, he chooses Boff ’s and Dussel’s liberation theology and philosophy, respec-
tively, over (against) Slavoj Žižek’s revolutionary project of communism. Martínez
Andrade writes Žižek’s argument for the strong revolutionary party:

‘really existing Christianity’ has not only neutralised its subversive and protesting nucleus, but
moreover, it has supported the projects of the dominant classes … the destruction of private
property and the old economic, political and ideological structures is an urgent task, and said
task can only be carried out through the creation of a strong party. (p. 100)

But Dussel has a counter argument. He proposes the notion of trans-modernity to

inform the amalgamation of collectives that exist ‘outside of totality (the Indigenous in
the colonial framework, women in the patriarchal context, Black people in the racial
field, the poor in the capitalist system, etc.) in a counter-hegemonic project that can
include the victims of modernity’ (p. 101). Dussel, the author tells us, recognises that ‘it
is difficult to translate the demands of the different social movements into a hegemonic
project [but] it is possible to make a common programme of diverse demands, and
the World Social Forum is an example’. As for Boff, the Brazilian theologian who is a
member of the Eco-Socialist Network of Brazil, his ethical-political commitment of the
Extended Book Reviews 177

intellectual to his people and his history is based on the idea that ‘the intersection of
theory and praxis is the only method for social transformation’ (p. 101).
The final chapter ‘Tendencies and Latencies of Liberation Theology in the Twenty-
First Century’ Martínez Andrade reflects on the relevance of liberation theology.
Although it has no longer the same greatness as before, it is still an inspiration for move-
ments in the Global South to understand the world and rethink the oath to liberation.
When I reached the end of the book, I realised that I could count on the fingers of
one hand the female scholars cited in the Meditations. Many feminist theologists are
mentioned at the bottom of page 114, but their work is not considered as a contribu-
tion to the topic and therefore not discussed extensively. There is one exception to this:
the special mention to Marcella Althaus-Rei, for her critique of the essentialist nature of
theology. This is disconcerting if the study of the coloniality of power cannot – or
should not – be separated from the analysis of patriarchy, as many female scholars have
demonstrated. The inclusion of the work of Maria Lugones (2010), Rosalba Icaza
(2017), Catherine Walsh (2012), Gloria Anzaldúa (2007; 2009) and Sylvia Winter,
among others, would have given the book insightful tools for the discussion of colonial-
ity, religion and resistance today.
While the Eurocentrism of the Left has been considered for decades by post-colonial,
feminists and decolonial thinkers, today this critique has taken a decolonial turn, and colo-
niality is now an important element of the experiential and practical critiques in the hands
of women, gender minorities, indigenous, landless, rural workers, immigrants, refugees,
who are mobilising against global extractive economic policy, financialisation, violence and
war, and creating alternative visions for sustainable global economic alternatives to what we
have (Dinerstein 2015; 2016). Concepts such as multiculturalism or cultural diversity
must be rejected for they do not eradicate the hierarchies that exist among struggles but
reinforces them (see López Bárcenas 2011).
The growing awareness about the persistence of the ‘coloniality of power’ (Quijano
2008) that resistance is bringing about has made the disentanglement between Marxism
and coloniality unsustainable. The book inspires a reflection on the European past which
is alive in the present colonial divisions between Global North and South, the North and
South of Europe, between people within European countries and in the colonial atti-
tudes towards the rest of the world. The publication of this extended book review in
Capital & Class means the recognition that critical ideas and movements that emerge in
the North are beginning to listen carefully to other forms of praxis, instead of consider-
ing another variation of the same struggle. Luis Martínez Andrade’s Religion Without
Redemption: Social Contradictions and Awakened Dreams in Latin America is food for
thought for those struggling to find the best ideas and practical ways to contribute to and
establish solidarities for a true global politics of hope.

References
Anzaldúa G (2007) Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute
Books.
Anzaldúa G (2009) Sexuality, spirituality and the body: An interview with Gloria Anzaldúa with
Linda Smuckler. In: Keating AL (ed.) The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, pp. 74–94.
178 Capital & Class 43(1)

Bloch E (1986 [1959]) The Principle of Hope. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Bonfil Batalla G (1987) Mexico Profundo: Una Civilización Negada. México city, México: SEP/
CIESAS.
Castro-Gómez S and Grosfoguel R (eds) (2007) El Giro Decolonial: Reflexiones para una diversidad
epistémica más allá del capitalismo global. Bogotá, Colombia: Siglo del Hombre Editores,
Universidad Central, Instituto de Estudios Sociales Contemporáneos, Pontificia Universidad
Javeriana, and Instituto Pensa.
Dinerstein AC (2015) The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America: The Art of Organising Hope.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dinerstein AC (2016) The radical subject and its theory. Introduction. In: Dinerstein AC (ed.)
Social Sciences for An Other Politics. Women theorising without Parachutes. Palgrave Macmillan:
Basingstoke, pp. 1–15.
Grosfoguel R (2008) Transmodernity, border thinking and global coloniality: Decolonizing polit-
ical economy and postcolonial studies. Eurozine, 4 July.
Icaza R (2017) Decolonial feminism and global politics: Border thinking and vulnerability as a
knowing otherwise. In: Woons M and Weier S (eds) Developing a Critical Epistemology of
Global Politics. Bristol: E-International Relations, pp. 26–45.
Lander E (2000) (ed.) La colonialidad del saber: Eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales. Perspectivas lati-
namericanas. Buenos Aires: CLACSO.
López Bárcenas F (2011) Las autonomías indígenas en América Latina. In: Adamovsky E,
Albertani C, Arditi B, et al. (eds) Pensar las autonomías. Alternativas de emancipacíón al capital
y el estado. México city, México: Bajo Tierra and SISIFO, pp. 53–70.
Löwy M (1988) Marxism and Liberation Theology (Notebooks for Study and Research).
Amsterdam: International Institute for Research and Education.
Lugones M (2010) Toward a decolonial feminism. Hypatia 25(4): 742–759.
Maldonado Torres N (2011) Thinking through the decolonial turn: Post-continental interven-
tions in Theory, Pilosophy and Critique - An Introduction. Transmodernity 1(2). Available
at: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/59w8j02x
Martínez Andrade L (2009) Consideraciones en torno al hambre y a la natura dominata.
Pertinencia del Principio Esperanza. Herramienta, 42. Available at: https://herramienta.com.
ar/articulo.php?id=1079 (accessed 2 January 2019).
Moylan T (1997) Bloch against Bloch: The theological reception of Das Prinzip Hoffnung and the
liberation of the utopia function. In: Daniel JO and Moylan T (eds) Not Yet: Reconsidering
Ernst Bloch. London; New York: Verso Books, pp. 96–121.
Quijano A (2008) Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. In: Moraña M, Dussel
E and Jáuregui C (eds) Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 182–224.
Walsh C (2012) ‘Other’ knowledges, ‘other’ critiques: Reflections on the politics and practices of
philosophy and decoloniality in the ‘other’ America. Transmodernity 1(3): 11–27.

Author biography
Ana Cecilia Dinerstein is a hope-maker, a mother and a critical theorist. She teaches political
sociology and Marxist, Feminist and decolonial theory at the University of Bath, United Kingdom.
Her transdisciplinary research on the Global Politics of Hope explores processes of social change
led by societies in movement. Her new book Open Marxism 4: Against a Closing World, Pluto Press
(co-edited with John Holloway) is forthcoming in November 2019.