What are the possibilities for a radical politics of universal humanity, at a time when the politics of identity increasingly defines the agenda of the left? What are the political and conceptual implications of such an emancipatory form of universality emerging through the struggles of Indigenous peoples on the extractive frontiers of global capitalism? How do such battles play out on the ground, and how should they be researched and conveyed? Extractivism and Universality takes an unorthodox approach to these timely questions. It tells the inside story of a spontaneous uprising in the Ecuadorian Amazon in 2017, in which mestizo, Black, and Indigenous workers and communities confronted the combined forces of a multinational oil company and a militarized state. The book documents a rapidly evolving battle that achieved a remarkable victory and captures the flourishing of an insurgent form of political universality in which racial, ethnic, and cultural divisions were suddenly and powerfully overcome. Intervening in debates on the resistances and alternatives developed by the inhabitants of resource extraction zones, it takes the reader deep inside a rebellion on an Amazonian oil frontier and offers a unique insight into insurgent universality in the lived reality of its material existence. It argues that the dominant decolonial dichotomy between Eurocentric universalism and an Indigenous pluriverse should be replaced by an approach that is attentive to manifestations of universality performed by diverse subaltern subjects. And it does so through a fast-paced fusion of radical political theory with the raw first-person style of gonzo journalism. It will appeal to scholars and students across the social sciences with interests in political and social theory, social movements, labor relations, and the political ecology of extractivism.

This is a theoretical and practical interrogation of how the post political has come to dominate governance. We are told that we live in a 'post ideological' era; that we have moved 'beyond Left and Right'; and that we are 'all in it together'. Democracy has been reduced to the consensual administration of economic necessity. How can we make sense of this form of depoliticisation? How does it manifest itself in different spheres of social life? And in what ways is it being challenged or subverted? Contributors to this volume respond to these questions through a wide ranging critical engagement with the concept of the post political developed by Chantal Mouffe, Jacques Ranciere, Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou and others. It interrogates the theoretical literature on the post political - its value and limits, its internal tensions, and the possibility of creative syntheses with other approaches. It critically engages with multiple cases of contemporary depoliticisation, such as multiculturalism, philanthropy, participatory development, sustainability planning and the regulation of biotechnology. It assesses the emancipatory potential of anti austerity protests, the Occupy movement and other political struggles in the context of continuing processes of post politicisation.

This is a theoretical and practical interrogation of how the post-political has come to dominate governance. We are told that we live in a 'post-ideological' era - that we have moved 'beyond Left and Right' and that we are 'all in it together'. Democracy has been reduced to the consensual administration of economic necessity. How can we make sense of this form of depoliticisation? How does it manifest itself in different spheres of social life? And in what ways is it being challenged or subverted? Contributors to this volume respond to these questions through a wide-ranging critical engagement with the concept of the post-political developed by Chantal Mouffe, Jacques Ranciere, Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou and others. It gives an overview of the literature on the post-political for people approaching the field for the first time: its value and limits, its internal tensions and the possibility of creative syntheses with other approaches. It empirically analyses the post-political in relation to a diverse set of interconnected themes. It works within 3 key spheres of post-politicisation: urban governance, political ecology and international development. It exposes the constitutive antagonisms and sites of resistance in post-political governance. It assesses the reality and limitations of emancipatory political projects.

An exploration of radical megaprojects in the Ecuadorian Amazon, considering the fate of utopian fantasies under conditions of global capitalism From 2007 to 2017, the "Citizens' Revolution" launched an ambitious series of post-neoliberal megaprojects in the remote Amazonian region of Ecuador, including an interoceanic transport corridor, a world-leading biotechnology university, and a planned network of two hundred "Millennium Cities." The aim was to liberate the nation from its ecologically catastrophic dependence on Amazonian oil reserves, while transforming its jungle region from a wild neoliberal frontier into a brave new world of "twenty-first-century socialism." This book documents the heroic scale of this endeavor, the surreal extent of its failure, and the paradoxical process through which it ended up reinforcing the economic model that it had been designed to overcome. It explores the phantasmatic and absurd dimensions of the transformation of social reality under conditions of global capitalism, deconstructing the utopian fantasies of the state, and drawing attention to the eruption of insurgent utopias staged by those with nothing left to lose.