UC Riverside

This dissertation proposes to critique and reformulate the terminology used to discuss non-statist subjectivities, particularly regarding contemporary, neoliberal Argentina and Chile. By putting into dialogue the ethical thought of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida and the autonomist Marxism of Paolo Virno and Antonio Negri, I articulate an anarchistic thinking of ethico-political subjectivity in the commons and propose a new mode of situated reading/writing opposed to the capitalist State’s ordering of language. I argue that a situated thought of solidarity without epistemic capture and friendship as a form of love allows us to think the persistence of radical subjectivities and avoid attributing failure to emergent movements. Further, it allows us to comprehend our own theoretical limitations concerning subjectivities emerging or already extant in modes otherwise than statist politics. I articulate a theory of the neoliberal State’s function and continued relevance through an engagement with Nicos Poulantzas’s later works. I then think solidarity and friendship through readings of Nicanor Parra and Juan Gelman’s poetry, respectively. Afterwards, I explore radical persistence through a reading of post-saqueo independent video in Argentina and the current im-possibility of conceptualizing, within academic language, the relationship between the Mapuche and the Chilean state, through a reading of Elicura Chihuailaf Nahuelpán’s poetry and prose. I conclude that by learning to teach from and be taught by these texts, through what I term a paradoxical auto-didact’s pedagogy, we may better situate ourselves and our work vis a vis the necessity of a radical, anti-capitalist relationality, beyond the State.