Per una nuova politica dell’autonomia. I “movimenti sociali” nello specchio latino-americano

The essay takes as a point of departure the lively debates surrounding the “politics of autonomy” in Latin America and investigates the transformations of the very political notion of autonomy against the background of the developments that have characterized the so-called long decade of the new “progressive governments” in the region. Moving beyond the alternative between “conflict” and “cooptation” that have widely circulated in recent political and academic debates, the authors analyze the relations between “social movements” and “progressive governments” from the angle of the transformations of capitalism in Latin America. Such notions as neoliberalism and neo-extractivism are critically discussed in order to build up an analytical framework within which to reconstruct the recent history of Latin American social movements and to test the productivity and the limits of the very notion of “social movement” in the present political conjuncture.