Decrypting Power

Ricardo Sanín-Restrepo is a member of the Caribbean Philosophical Association and a professor of legal and political theory at several institutions across Latin America, including Universidad Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM), Universidad Central de Quito, Universidad San Luis de Potosí (Mexico), PUC Rio de Janeiro, and Universidad Javeriana in Colombia, among others. He is the author of Decolonizing Democracy (RLI, 2016).

• Part I: Introduction / Introduction: The Meaning of the Encryption of Power as the Razor's Edge of Politics, Ricardo Sanín-Restrepo / 1. The Encrypted Constitution: New Ways of Emancipation from Global Power, Gabriel Méndez-Hincapíe and Ricardo Sanín-Restrepo / Part II: Encryption Law and Power / 2. The Equivocation that Lies Like Truth, Angus McDonald / 3. Encrypted International Investment Law in the Age of Neo-Colonialism, Enrique Prieto-Rios / 4. Transnational Legal Production and its Encryption, Aleida Hernández-Cervantes / Part III: The Political Subject / 5. The Practices of the Commons Between Decryption and Insurgent Critique, Vito De Lucia / 6. Prohibition as Encryption: International Law and the Invitation into the Crypt of Modernity’s Origin, Kojo Koram / 7. The Symbolic Force and the Encryption of Gender in Law: The Brazilian Example, Marinella Machado Araujo / Part IV: Encryption, Political Theory and Language / 8. Metaphors of Decryption: Designs, Poetics, Collaborations, Hanna Musiol / 9. The People vs. Hegel: The Mystifying Transcendence of Time and the Immanence of Radical Democracy, Ricardo Sanín-Restrepo / Part V: Decryption and Political Action / 10. Polyvalent Anarchism as a Hypothesis to Decrypt the Constitution, Gabriel Méndez-Hincapíe and Felipe Orozco / 11. Grounding Human Rights in Decryption, Alejandro Rosillo / 12. The Field of Popular Power and Transformative Constitutionalism in Venezuela, Heiner Fechner / 13. Decrypting Global Capitalism: Identifying with the Excluded Outcast in the Taiwanese Sunflower Movement, Ted Yao-Hung Huang / Index

Decrypting Power offers a series of excellent articles on one of the most perplexing concepts that has plagued the left for centuries. From theory to practice, the word power almost always appears in slogans, tracts, and theoretical work. But what is a leftist notion of power? What does it mean to seize power? What does it mean to hold power? How do we distinguish power from force? In these illuminating essays these difficult questions are addressed. The essays are powerfully argued and well written and they are a must read for anyone who takes seriously what it would mean for the left to be in power, whether in the form of the state or other kinds of organization, such as transnational federations or continental communities. Sanín-Restrepo has provided us with a much needed service and we are in his debt.