Colonial Debts: The Case of Puerto Rico

Radical Américas

by Rocio Zambrana

"Colonial Debts develops the concept of neoliberal coloniality in light of the debt crisis in contemporary Puerto Rico. Debt functions as a form of coloniality, actualizing a race/gender/class hierarchy that marks populations as dispensable. Drawing from decolonial thought and praxis, Colonial Debts traces the relation distinctive of the case of Puerto Rico between colonialism, the juridical-political status of an unincorporated territory, and coloniality, the operation of race/gender as the central technology in the development and resilience of capitalism"--

Genres: Academic

272 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 19, 2021

Reviews

[Mariella · Rating 2 out of 5]

I want to like this book but I found it super too high level theoretical and mostly inaccessible with the ties to PR definitely worked throughout but lost.

[Mariam Rawwas · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me awhile to fully comprehend what was being argued here, but I think the passage on Dienst's contention that debt is analogous to the enclosure examined by Marx in Volume I of Capital (of Fraser's second tier, the "backstory" of Capital), but that it acts on the body rather than on land, is illuminating: Zambrana is concerned with how colonial exploitation "lands" on the racialized, sexed, and classed body, hierarchized and thus variably affected as it is, in an attempt to tie economics to somatics. I will say, despite the flurry of references, most of which are to figures which I do not count among my influences (many of which are mentioned only to be immediately revised via critique), I found this text far less theoretical than Zambrana's first, Hegel's Theory of Intelligibility, which to this day remains essential for me.

[sofia alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

Needed a second opinion or editor