Son[i]a #321
César Rendueles
César Rendueles is a philosopher, sociologist, curator, cultural manager, teacher, columnist, essayist, sports fan, and father, among other things. He was in charge of cultural projects at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid for eight years, he has edited classic texts by Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin, Karl Polanyi, Jeremy Bentham, and Antonio, Gramsci, and he currently writes and teaches sociology at Universidad Complutense in Madrid. In everything he does, his sharp, militant, provocative analysis persists in exposing the seams of the neoliberal system as we watch it unravel before our eyes, with the rapid implementation of the networked society (now with the pandemic) and the eco-social crisis as a timeframe for urgent action, despite the paradoxical processes of individuation and radical fragmentation that are taking place.
When we chat to César Rendueles, the pages of his new book “Contra la igualdad de oportunidades. Un panflento igualirtarista” (Seix Barral, 2020) still smell of fresh ink. We talk about the myth of universal connectivity and technological dystopia. We touch on necropolitics, necroeconomics, and the importance of social ties in processes of social change. We go into museums, libraries, and schools to address the problems of public projects and the potential of egalitarian socialization and political imagination. We broach life and the market, work and care, health and business, meritocracy and privileges… to shed light on our shared fragility and our collective obligation to think about economics in a different way, accepting that we will never start from scratch.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with sociologist, editor and writer César Rendueles that we were unable to include the first time around.
Yayo Herrero
Yayo Herrero talks about different forms of ecofeminsim, about the political management of desires, expectations, and needs, about the importance of reproductive work and the need to find new patterns of social and institutional co-responsibility, and about the management of the commons.
Emilio Santiago Muiño
Emilio Santiago Muiño talks about salad gardens in museums, social movements and public policies, about oil as a magical substance, ecofascism, acceleration, and degrowth, and about how an imaginary of more modest utopías may, in the long term, become a means of finding our way home.