Not One Less: Mourning, Disobedience and Desire by María Pia López, translated by Frances Riddle, offers a theoretical and political reading as well as a historical, sociological and even philosophical analysis of the new feminist ‘tide’ that is represented in the ‘Not One Less’ (Ni Una Menos) collective and movement. Ni Una Menos has dominated Argentine feminism for the past six years and gained global status since the International Women's Strike of 8 March 2017. Even though the relevance of the movement has reverberated greatly among Latin American scholars, journalists and activists, it feels overlooked by Western, and more specifically English-speaking, academia. For this reason, López's work is a vital contribution to the field.

In a compelling, decisive and powerful work, the author gives a comprehensive account of the history of the unprecedentedly multitudinous, inclusive and intersectional feminist wave. The core aim of the book is to expound the fundamental theories, practices and utopian values of this tide. López does this by evidencing the inextricable links between the personal and the political that are expressed in the movement's praxis. In its actions, Ni Una Menos acknowledges women's individual pain and grief arising from the high rates of femicide and all types of gender violence, and formulates a collective response. As the phenomenon is still under way, the book does not have an end or, rather, does not intend to draw any conclusions. Instead it focuses on the rising of this tide in the creation of a new political subjectivity that articulates the oppression of those subjects whom liberal feminism neglects and previous feminist waves were not able to include.

López describes the feminist tide by differentiating Ni Una Menos from the slogan, which is used by many, in different ways. There's the Ni Una Menos collective, and then the local (Argentine), regional (Latin American) and global (the more than 55 countries involved in the Women's Strike) movement. Over five chapters, this book recounts the several different events and concepts that play an important role in the tide's identity(ies). This is done through a recollection and interrelation of tales and her-stories, events and processes, as well as of the obstacles, accomplishments and victories of the movement – at all the different geographical locations. Moreover, she traces the origins, genealogies and inherited legacies of the movements in precursors such as the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, LGBTQIA+ and National Women's Encounters, to name but a few in the Argentine context. Globally, the planning of the Women's Strike was key in articulating international alliances of diverse activist groups.

López shows how the tide's principles of being intersectional, anti-patriarchal and anti-capitalist are new to Argentine feminism, and were achieved only as a result of the internationalist organising of the strike. The transversality of the movement accommodates historical tensions and has been able to shape a new political context. Ni Una Menos has initiated a feminism of the masses, or ‘popular’ feminism, with intersectionality as its main instrument and transversality as a political strategy. But perhaps the most valuable contribution this book makes is the identification, naming and problematising of intersecting types of violence within a neoliberal context. López finds the underlying dynamics of colonialism, capitalism and the patriarchy in a Manichaean logic: the dichotomies of valuable versus disposable bodies or the idea of a good (‘innocent’) versus a bad (‘guilty’) victim; and the constant distinction between lives that are deemed worthy of saving and lives that are not deserving of protection (such as those of ‘criminal’ and poor people, trans people, working-class, migrant, Black and Indigenous women).

In this dispute over the meanings of violence, femicide can be understood either as a human rights issue or as a law and order issue. The latter is predominant in neoliberal contexts, where punitive powers blame victims and do not respond to the social injustice and inequalities that enable violence to take place. Instead, they deal with them by funding security forces and claiming to toughen sentences. In a similar vein, (neo)liberal feminism reproduces a capitalist and patriarchal discourse that separates the private from the public spheres, treats gender violence as a domestic issue and does not see it from a systemic perspective. In contrast, this feminist tide demands justice by redefining the dominant narrative and shifting the discourse. It does so by disarming the ideas of isolated violence, displaying the systemic occurrences and advocating the power of collective responses for defying historic systems of oppression. Ni Una Menos identifies the links between patriarchal, colonial, racial and economic violence that rely on a logic of oppressor–oppressed, and seeks to tackle the roots of violence in order to better eradicate it.

This feminist tide endeavours to configure different ways of living and of forging new social configurations. It arose to resist and challenge the neoliberal ‘pedagogy of cruelty’, a system that intersects different modes of violence. (López takes the concept from Rita Segato, La guerra contra las mujeres, Traficantes de Sueños, 2016.) Ni Una Menos wages a revolution with an existential character and an epistemological foundation, battling to understand life as more than merely survival and demanding that desire and joy be at the centre of this revolution – therefore placing feminism in opposition to sacrifice. It also reinvents politics by questioning everyday life: the personal as political takes the question of life outside of the private realm and posits it as a collective creation, opposed to individuality and complete autonomy, contrary to self-sufficiency and separation from cooperation. López describes how Ni Una Menos takes empathy to another level, enabling the recognition of a shared experience of humanity. Summarised in the popular slogan ‘If they touch one of us, we'll all come out’, a new political subject is created through shared ‘fragility’ and shared ‘power’.

In essence, López praises the uniqueness of Ni Una Menos in its ability to transform grief into desire and collective action; its ability to intersect many oppressions while at the same time inhabiting their differences. Its virtues are many: its redefinition and reclamation of the denomination of various forms of violence as systematic, political and public, instead of disconnected, detached from social structures and private; its capacity to reject mainstream definition of hate crime and its pink-washed versions of feminism; its original and revolutionary organising methods through mass open assemblies and worldwide direct actions; its subversive modes of expressions by occupying the streets, creating art and carnival; and, ultimately, its potential to become a tangible threat to the white-capitalist-cis-hetero-patriarchy.