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Katixa Agirre / Paul B. Preciado / Txomin Badiola / Ernesto Castro / Aixa de la Cruz / Iván de la Nuez / Aingeru Epaltza / Iñaki Esteban / Mari Luz Esteban / Anjel Lertxundi / Marta Peirano / Fernando Pérez / Marta Rebón / Ixiar Rozas / Beñat Sarasola / Damián Tabarovsky / Alexei Yurchak

138 x 210 mm
208 pages
Spanish and Basque

Co-published with Azkuna Zentroa – Alhóndiga Bilbao

Design: Setanta

In recent years, a wave of dissent has challenged the political models we live with: neoliberalism and Chinese capital-communism, new oligarchies and the lingering effects of colonialism, racism and patriarchy, the trajectories of the Arab Spring, and the corrupt residues of Sandinism, as well as the paradigms of transitions (whether Spain's or those of post-communist states in Eastern Europe). A virus was missing… and then it arrived. With it came the mental state and regime of emergency, confinement, the transformation of domestic space into a workplace, the rise of screen-mediated interactions, and fear. The pandemic reached such hegemonic proportions that it both overshadowed and reinforced previous critical demands.

The texts in this collective book connect these circumstances, addressing them as stations along the same path of discontent. Despite their real or apparent differences, today’s various power models share, in different proportions, a market economy that is increasingly overwhelming and an exaggerated state authoritarianism. This mixture is central to this volume, which grapples with the crisis (the crises) and equips us with tools to rethink it. From gender and new social subjects to eroticism and difference, from the intersection of the local and transnational to the surrender of our data or the various facets of cultural and political experience, from contemporary rituals to the pressing challenges of climate change.

The voices gathered here not only present a rich array of topics but also consider how these topics are inscribed in a vision of the essay that exceeds its boundaries as a literary genre, becoming a way of being in the world. An essay that is both text and texture, writing and performance, literature and experience, art, life, and politics. It takes place in the agora and the streets, targeting power and empowering society.