Rosemary Hennessy's Fires on the Border is a powerful meditation on the place of love in politics. The author brings a stunning command of literature on Marxist and materialist feminism, leftist philosophy, and labor studies to a sensitive and alert ethnography of labor organization in the light manufacturing sector of northeastern Mexico—the maquiladoras. We learn of the extremely exploitative working conditions of the women who work in these plants, and of their heroic struggles to meet the basic material and emotional needs that capital ignores. The erudition shines as brightly as the author's skill and passion for engaging people in the field and her commitment to directing cooperation and care toward the utopian horizon.

There are two main sections to the book, one that frames the research theoretically in Marxism, feminism, and recent discussions of affect, and the other that deploys key concepts to analyze particular aspects of gender, sexuality, bodily politics, and the recent history of globalization and the labor movement. A final section offers the reader something between a conclusion and point of departure about the power of hope and love to move from contradictions of capitalism to the consolidation of the common that sustains us all. Hennessy is equally agile at complex theorization and the ethnographic analysis of fieldwork. Her narrative flows easily from extended arguments about the need to make theories of affect and emotion more material, to reflexive examinations of her place in the field and the eros of fieldwork, to structural-historical discussions of neoliberalism, NAFTA, and deregulation.

There is a lot going on in this book, but some moments stand out. Chapter 2, “The Materiality of Affect,” is a very useful discussion of the scholarship on affect from the perspective of Marxist (or materialist) feminism. Hennessy establishes the importance of “feeling, emotion, passion, erotics, and the body for the study of social movements and organization. She ably presents the tradition of thought running from Spinoza through Deleuze and Guattari to Hardt and Negri, and presents a critique of the recent literature in this tradition as too discursive and psychological. She argues that a more material, more historical approach to “affect-culture,” drawing on the rich and radical body of Marxist feminist scholarship can help in three ways: 1) to recognize the inseparability of bodies, labor, and nature; 2) to conceptualize the revolutionary potential of care and cooperation; and 3) to support the role of affect in struggles for dignity such as those waged by the women workers that live in the pages of this book.

The ethnography of the power of affect in labor organizing is another success of the book. Beginning in the third chapter, Hennessy intercalates the voices of interlocutors from the field into the tight analysis of sexuality, erotics, and identity on the frontlines of resistance. These voices incite affect in both the author and reader, and assert their own analytical compasses, generating openness, dialogue, and respect in the text. They convey the deep pain, love, and hope that propels action. We meet women who for the first time in their lives begin to speak up and create friendships. We meet a transgender woman whose labor includes factory work and sex work, as she makes money to care for the same family members who deride and reject her. These are complicated and powerful ways of relating, and the author reminds us that they can oppress. But this rich ethnography makes it clear that the despite the dangers, the affective aspects of politics—the love, tenderness and care evident in these stories—are crucial to any struggle for dignity and positive change.