The Book in Movement: Autonomous Politics and the Lettered City Underground (Illuminations) - Softcover

Rabasa, Magalí

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822968673 ISBN 13: 9780822968672

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2026

Synopsis

Over the past two decades, Latin America has seen an explosion of experiments with autonomy, as people across the continent express their refusal to be absorbed by the logic and order of neoliberalism. The autonomous movements of the twenty-first century are marked by an unprecedented degree of interconnection, through their use of digital tools and their insistence on the importance of producing knowledge about their practices through strategies of self-representation and grassroots theorization. The Book in Movement explores the reinvention of a specific form of media: the print book. Magalí Rabasa travels through the political and literary underground of cities in Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile to explore the ways that autonomous politics are enacted in the production and circulation of books.

About this title

About the Author

Magalí Rabasa is assistant professor of Hispanic studies at Lewis & Clark College.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

© 2026 University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved. Not for distribution. Provided by the publisher University of Pittsburgh Press for review copy purposes only.

From the Introduction

IT WAS still light out, late in the afternoon, and the line stretched down the block. Hundreds of young people, mostly teenagers from neighborhoods in the peripheries of the city, had traveled by some combination of foot, bus, and subway to make their way to the Colonia Roma in the center of Mexico City for a hip- hop show. The entrance to the venue, a steel roll- up door no wider than any other storefront on the block, was crowded with people waiting to pay their hundred pesos to get in the door. A “laboratorio de culturas subterráneas” (laboratory of underground cultures),1 the Multiforo Alicia is a legendary venue for the underground Mexican rock and punk scene with an overtly radical political identity.2 It borrows its name from Alice in Wonder-land and adopted the Cheshire Cat as its logo. As I was pushed through the entrance and up the narrow stairs to the main auditorium, it almost felt like an inverted trip up the rabbit hole, and my senses were immediately scrambled as I made the abrupt transition from daylight to darkness, with little more illumination than the black lights picking up the graffiti- style mural covering an entire wall. For the next three hours, the space pulsed with the energy of the hundreds of bodies packed into the hot space―hands in the air (many holding camera phones), as the young fans recited the lyrics they had committed to memory of each and every song and spoken word piece.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822968673
• ISBN 13: 9780822968672
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224