Nation Form, Community Form: Nationalisation and Dialectic in García Linera's Thought

Abstract

This essay is a critical confrontation with Álvaro García Linera's thought, through the analysis of the role played by the device of nation in the articulation and chronological development of his political project. The conceptualisation of nation is traced back to the Bolivian triple tradition of emancipatory thought: Marxist, Indianist and Revolutionary Nationalist. Turning René Zavaleta's perspective upside down, García Linera uses the idea of sociedad abigarrada not as a limit to the fulfilment of the construction of nation, but as the very ideological material to successfully produce a hegemonic articulation for the production of a new Bolivian nation form that guarantees political renovation and social justice. He turns to the nation form as theoretical tool to organise a subjectivist political discourse intrinsically tied to a logic of representation and hegemony. The nation represents the ideological universal form to which he refers political subjectivation processes.