Book review • Victoria Furtado • January 30, 2025 • Leer en español

In Defense of Common Life introduces readers to Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar's intellectual and political trajectory, exploring not only her ideas but also the collective contexts and experiences of struggle that gave rise to them.

Her journey moves from participation in revolutionary groups in El Salvador in the eighties to the latest cycle of feminist struggles in Latin America. It includes time as a member of the Túpac Katari Guerrilla Army in Bolivia in the late eighties and as part of organizations that played a leading role in the so-called Water War at the turn of the 21st century.

The key merit of the text is that it brings us closer to the careful attention to language and concept that characterizes Gutiérrez's thought. This excellent edition and translation introduces the author to an English-speaking audience and invites a reflection on how our political language differs.

In Defense of Common Life was published by Common Notions at the end of last year, it is Gutiérrez's second book published in English. The work of editor Brian Whitener and translator JD Pluecker is meticulous, laying bare their commitment to the author's thinking.

Seeing in common

In Defense of Common Life arrives as Donald Trump is sworn in for a second term as President of the United States, surrounded by the billionaires responsible for the destruction of the material and symbolic conditions of life on this planet. The announcements and measures taken by Trump in his first days in office demonstrate a messianic agenda of nationalist and imperialist cruelty.

In his introduction, Whitener points to the importance of considering Gutiérrez's thought from the US context, particularly among those involved in left politics. He puts forward a critique of progressivism and highlights the importance of learning from Indigenous and anti-patriarchal struggles, as well as autonomous organizing in Latin America.

In Defense of Common Life is more than a translation. It seeks to open a dialogue between cultures or political traditions which, despite having points of contact, remain disparate. The selection of the two essays that make up the book, preceded by an interview between the editor and the author, zoom in on how some of the most important struggles on the continent over the last two decades took shape. The text sheds light on how these uprisings were theorized from within and externally without falling into the romanticization of Latin America that often permeates militant circles in the global north.

The initial interview is structured around the same political questions that run through Gutiérrez’s militant and intellectual trajectory, which, it should be noted, includes co-founding and editing Ojalá. 

The matter of how political decisions are produced is central in her work. This serves both as means to organize criticisms of authoritarianism within revolutionary organizations as well as to make visible experiences which, based on practical experiences of deliberation and assembly, deploy a politics of praxis in which different groups identify common problems and react in a coordinated way without compromising their autonomy.

There is a section on organizing inside a women's prison in Bolivia—in which Gutiérrez was a political prisoner—that describes how the political organizing there was only described in language and theory afterward. A methodology stemming from recent feminist experiences is also explored: holding discussions to identify shared problems, and organizing from there so as to act collectively in response. This is not an instruction manual but rather a political practice, one that allows us to see the relevance of permanently fostering our collective capacity to understand what we’re facing, and produce political decisions and concrete organization that allows us to engage in struggle.

Words that give power

In Defense of Common Life offers us a path towards a common language. One example is how Whitener talks about autonomy and Gutiérrez about popular-communitarianism, in reference to something that could appear to be similar tendencies.

Those of us who live between the north and the south can understand how this text seeks to create dialogue among words which, although similar in the imaginaries they evoke, do not refer to the same ways of doing politics. The contrast is fertile, and it invites us to interpret the words that Gutiérrez shares in their full complexity.

Another contribution of In Defense of Common Life is a critique of identity politics, which is what organizes much of what is done in the US context, both at the level of institutions and at the level of organizations.

Within the framework of neoliberal multiculturalism, identity politics fragmented social movements and encouraged each individual to claim more for themselves. But, as Gutiérrez notes, political subjects are not fixed, they do not exist prior to struggle, nor are they determined solely by identity. The question the author asks us to consider is around how we can come together collectively and connect our capacities for struggle.

The first essay traces the innovative and creative character of the political forms deployed in social struggles throughout Latin America. Gutiérrez proposes a theorization that distinguishes between liberal and communitarian forms of political action. The liberal form organizes public life around the delegation of collective capacity to intervene in ongoing events. Struggles for the common, on the other hand, consist of collective efforts to defend the material and symbolic conditions that guarantee the reproduction of life.

The author explains how the weavings of communal politics sustain the reproduction of life, and are the result of conversations and coordination between people who come together to freely define their purposes and establish the rhythms of their activities. What is perceptible in moments of intense struggle can be difficult to articulate, as it is enmeshed in intimate dynamics, which are what enables it to gain strength.

The way in which Gutiérrez links politics and language—as conversation, deliberation and the collective production of meanings—suggests a way forward in our polarized times. Instead of mirroring the language of war that neofascism attempts to install, we can seek out other frameworks. We can put deliberative and organizational processes at the center of how we do politics, and craft methods that open spaces for the collective construction of meaning.

Thinking and fighting

The collective nature of theorization is a key theme of the second essay, and it's something the author has encouraged through her intellectual and political practice. She suggests a method drawn from spaces of collective reflection, which is that we stop centering capitalism in our analysis, in order to make visible the symbolic, emotional and material activities that sustain human and non-human life on the planet, which are not directly linked to the production of capital.

Put another way, the collective praxis of everyday life becomes the starting point for analysis. Gutiérrez has been working on and refining this method—of putting life at the center—for over a decade through a graduate program she founded at the Autonomous University of Puebla, and for even longer with different political and academic spaces in South America. With the Puebla group, Gutiérrez writes, the academic process has consisted of transiting from a focus on what happens in extraordinary moments of struggle toward understanding the political work cultivated within communitarian weavings that sustain daily life.

This book shows us the power of connections between different peoples and collectives that are created through doing and conversation-deliberation, all of which, together, produce the common.

Gutiérrez does not give us a recipe, but she helps us see how, in moments of strength, struggles display a creative capacity to innovate and create political forms that do not follow any kind of guide.

In Defense of Common Life underscores what can be learned through practice and struggle without losing sight of the importance of reflecting on these experiences. Gutiérrez shares the political languages of struggles she’s been part of, and invites us to come together and start talking about what is affecting us here and now.