Colonial Debts: The Case of Puerto Rico (Radical Américas) - Softcover

Zambrana, Rocío

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1478011831 ISBN 13: 9781478011835

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2021

Synopsis

With the largest municipal debt in US history and a major hurricane that destroyed much of the archipelago's infrastructure, Puerto Rico has emerged as a key site for the exploration of neoliberalism and disaster capitalism. In Colonial Debts Rocío Zambrana develops the concept of neoliberal coloniality in light of Puerto Rico's debt crisis. Drawing on decolonial thought and praxis, Zambrana shows how debt functions as an apparatus of predation that transforms how neoliberalism operates. Debt functions as a form of coloniality, intensifying race, gender, and class hierarchies in ways that strengthen the colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. Zambrana also examines the transformation of protest in Puerto Rico. From La Colectiva Feminista en Construcción's actions, long-standing land rescue/occupation in the territory, to the July 2019 protests that ousted former governor Ricardo “Ricky” Rosselló, protests pursue variations of decolonial praxis that subvert the positions of power that debt installs. As Zambrana demonstrates, debt reinstalls the colonial condition and adapts the racial/gender order essential to it, thereby emerging as a key site for political-economic subversion and social rearticulation.

About this title

About the Author

Rocío Zambrana is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Emory University and author of Hegel's Theory of Intelligibility.

Edition details

• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1478011831
• ISBN 13: 9781478011835
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280