Logistics and the multiplication of labor: Towards a new look at the operations of capital in Latin America

Abstract

Logistics as an analytical lens and as an object of analysis: this is the proposal that emerges from reading the book Logistica e America Latina, a compilation of seven case studies that offer a new standpoint from which to approach the dynamics of capitalist domination and the resistances they provoke in the region. In the epilogue, Mezzadra sees logistics as an analytical lens—an approach or even a method (also proposed by the editors in the introduction)—with which a multiplicity of processes and mechanisms sustaining the reproduction of capital can be grasped. Logistics is also proposed as an object of analysis, not only because of the leading role this domain (in its different spatial, organizational, cognitive and economic dimensions) plays today in the global economy, but above all because it is increasingly becoming a terrain of conflict and resistance. Within it we can observe heterogeneous expressions of the tensions between capital and living labor, even though it often remains invisible or underestimated in critical thought and in political discourse concerned with emancipation.