Throughout Latin American history, the most significant kind of Latin American political thought and practice has been one that creates interrelated experiences of awareness, selfhood, identity, and community. These experiences are transformative experiences of individual and collective subjectivity and agency that help create a new world. In this book, Marquez argues that these transformative experiences create a distinctive Latin American approach to political thought that differs from the more abstract and analytical approach generally favored in the West. He competently helps dispel the myth that Latin American politics and political theory are simply underdeveloped derivatives of Western European and North American models. Instead, Latin American politics and political theory enable us to identify and connect seemingly divergent Latin American phenomena as all being part of politics, and to understand how Latin American political ideas and ideals are played out through different but interrelated processes. Marquez begins by using the problematic of liberation in Latin American political life, and then moves on to explore prophetic/strong/performative discourses.These include colonialism and modernity, liberation theology, philosophy, and pedagogy, dependency theory, guerrilla revolution and socialist utopia, Latin American feminist movements, post-Cold War political thought and practice, and indigenism and ethnic-political movements. He concludes by summing up Latin American thought s distinctive features, speculates about its prospects, and suggests its contributions to our understanding of political theory in general.

At a time when there are very few books in print in English that tackle this topic, this essential resource raises important and new questions regarding many different facets of political thought and ideology in Latin America, but also points out the commonalities between different elements of Latin American political praxis.".