Rethinking Community studies Arguedas's fictional work, principally Todas las sangres, as political thought. It argues that Arguedas uses literature to craft a political theory that goes beyond the established terms of political thought, offering not only a ‘negative critique’ but also ‘models to follow, both for the task of emerging as a responsible political subject and for the task of creating a community’ (p. 13). Arguedas is here put into dialogue with Walter Benjamin, Jean-Luc Nancy, Carl Schmitt, Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben and others, on concepts such as community, political subjectivity, juridical norms and revolutionary change. Feldman presents her work as following that of William Rowe and Martin Lienhard (both in Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, 72 (2010)), and that of Estelle Tarica and Gustavo Gutiérrez (both in the conference ‘Arguedas: la dinámica de los encuentros culturales’, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, 2011). Another important precursor is Melisa Moore's En la encrucijada (UNMSM, 2003), which explores links between Todas las sangres and the social sciences. Relevant here but unmentioned is Misha Kokotivic's The Colonial Divide in Peruvian Narrative: Social Conflict and Transculturation (Sussex Academic Press, 2005). In addition, Alberto Moreiras's articles on El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (in The Journal of Narrative Technique 271 (2007) and Social Text 25.4 (2007)), as well as Jon Beasley-Murray's piece on the same novel (Iberoamericana 30 (2008)), merited further discussion. More recently, in parallel with the production of Feldman's book, Juan Carlos Ubilluz has explored the political in Arguedas in a notable essay (in Arguedas: El Perú y las ciencias sociales, IEP, 2014). Together, these texts represent a change of paradigm in interpretations of Arguedas: no longer seen only as a promoter of Andean culture or of intercultural exchange, he is now considered a political thinker who creatively struggled with existing frameworks. Feldman's contribution, in addition to bringing the discussion to an English-language readership (Todas las sangres has no English translation) and into inspiring dialogue with these theories, lies in clarifying that Arguedas's politics is not primarily one based on the dialogue between cultural identities, as has often been explored, but also one that highlights the importance of points of antagonism and, moreover, of legitimate uses of violence.
The book is divided into an Introduction, four chapters, endnotes and an index listing mostly political terms. A conclusion clarifying the main contributions that such a reading of Arguedas can make to contemporary debates, and also its shortcomings in this regard, is markedly lacking. In Chapter 1, Feldman reviews how Todas las sangres critiques the sovereignty of the state as abstract, violent and flawed in prioritizing the global capitalist economy over its subjects’ wellbeing. In contrast, the indigenous ayllu and, surprisingly, the hacienda are presented as ‘model’ sovereignties (p. 31), insofar as they run counter to the logic of capitalist accumulation and are ‘true’ communities with embodied, non-authoritarian leadership (‘kingly’ authority and direct democracy, respectively). This is despite the hacienda system being critiqued in the novel as abusive and unsustainable, which makes for a curious argument; perhaps it would have been wiser to suggest that Arguedas sees a potential in some aspects of the hacienda system, represented by Don Bruno as an a-typical hacendado.
In Chapter 2, Feldman argues that Todas las sangres proposes something similar to Nancy in foregrounding the topic of death and finitude in order to suggest that a nation-building based on an essential identity is deeply problematic, and that we must move towards a heterogeneous being-at-one with others. In this reading, Arguedas proposes a national front based upon the allegiance of nationalist industrialisation and indigenous communities against transnational capital. Chapter 3 follows on from this by looking into Todas las sangres in dialogue with Walter Benjamin's and Giorgio Agamben's work on violence. What emerges is a critique of the state as dependent on exerting violence against indigenous populations thus reduced to what Agamben calls ‘bare life’, and an argument ‘for the legitimate use of violence on the part of the indigenous communities for the sake of their inclusion as citizens’ (p. 88) – even when structural change beyond the targeting of certain individuals remains necessary.
Discussion of legitimate violence continues, in Chapter 4, in the analysis of Los ríos profundos, El sexto and especially El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo. Feldman looks into moments of revolutionary struggle and emergence of political subjects in the narratives, made possible through the identification of an absolute other who represents the limit of the tolerable. Her analysis of Los zorros highlights its exploration of political alternatives and, in comparison to his previous novels, its more complex, less affirmative depiction of the historical situation. Feldman argues that a new kind of political subjectivity is put forward, one ungrounded in terms of race or ideology and that takes on not the form of a party but of a flexible, elusive and therefore resilient mass. Regarding the delicate issue of the extent to which violence is seen by Arguedas as a legitimate tool for political change, Feldman concludes that Los zorros proposes a political practice that does not shy from antagonism and intolerance, but does not amount to bloodshed.
Feldman is sensitive throughout to how Arguedas combined empirical observation and creative practice, building upon encounters between languages and discourses in order to create new proposals and conceptual tools. A more explicit theorisation, and also greater caution, regarding how aesthetic work such as this can contribute to the political would have helped her argument and made this book a clearer contribution to bridging disciplinary gaps. It would also have been important to look at what, in his novels, escapes designation as a political theory; there is much to be said about contradictions or ambiguities in the political implications of his fiction that Feldman perhaps forces into a too-coherent whole. The author also seems keen to hail Arguedas as prophetic, a claim complicated by the fact that her evidence for this is taken not from Peru or Latin America in general but only from Bolivia (and primarily from Álvaro García Linera's optimistic take); moreover, there are discussions in post-colonial theoretical traditions highly compatible with Arguedas (such as Aníbal Quijano's) that are not engaged with here. Overall, this is an important book insofar as, connecting literary analysis and political theory, it takes Arguedas's oeuvre in new, relevant, political directions, but there is still much discussion to be had in this regard.
