This book assesses the untimely relevance of Marx and Freud for Latin America, thinkers alien to the region who became an inspiration to its beleaguered activists, intellectuals, writers and artists during times of political and cultural oppression.
Bruno Bosteels presents ten case studies arguing that art and literature-the novel, poetry, theatre, film-more than any militant tract or theoretical essay, can give us a glimpse into Marxism and psychoanalysis, not so much as sciences of history or of the unconscious, respectively, but rather as two intricately related modes of understanding the formation of subjectivity.

Bruno Bosteels, Professor of Romance Studies at Cornell University, is the author of Badiou and Politics, Marx and Freud in Latin America, and The Actuality of Communism. He currently serves as the General Editor of Diacritics.