Religion Without Redemption: Social Contradictions and Awakened Dreams in Latin America (Decolonial Studies, Postcolonial Horizons)

The world’s eyes are on Latin America as a place of radical political inspiration and as an alternative to the neoliberal model. Each country in the region deals differently in its method of government, yet there are common cultural themes that tie the continent’s trajectory together. Religion without Redemption looks at the sociology of religion, political philosophy and the history of ideas of the continent, in an attempt to show how Western understanding fails to come close to a correct analysis of how and why political and economic characteristics work as they do. Luis Martínez Andrade focuses on how the centrality of religion for the people of Latin America has influenced how they interact with the changes in the modern economic system. Capitalism, for example, has taken on religious characteristics: it has sacred places of worship (the shopping mall) as well as its own prophets. Martínez Andrade discusses how this form of ‘cultural religion’ accompanies many aspects of life in a contradictory manner: not only does it fulfil the role of legitimating oppression, it also can be a powerful source of rebellion, unveiling thus a subversive side to the status quo. Religion Without Redemption advances the ideas of liberation theory into the 21st century, and challenges the provincialism to which many Latin American thinkers are usually consigned.