Argentina, once heralded as the future of capitalist progress, has a
long history of economic volatility. In 2001-2002, a financial crisis
led to its worst economic collapse, precipitating a dramatic currency
devaluation, the largest sovereign default in world history, and the
flight of foreign capital. Protests and street blockades punctuated a
moment of profound political uncertainty, epitomized by the rapid
succession of five presidents in four months. Since then, Argentina has
fought economic fires on every front, from inflation to the cost of
utilities and depressed industrial output. When things clearly aren't
working, when the constant churning of booms and busts makes life almost
unlivable, how does our deeply compromised order come to seem so
inescapable? How does critique come to seem so blunt, even as crisis
after crisis appears on the horizon? What are the lived effects of that
sense of inescapability?
Anthropologist Sarah Muir offers a cogent meditation on the limits of
critique at this historical moment, drawing on deep experience in
Argentina but reflecting on a truly global condition. If we feel things
are being upended in a manner that is ongoing, tumultuous, and harmful,
what would we need to do--and what would we need to give up--to usher in
a revitalized critique for today's world? Routine Crisis is an
original provocation and a challenge to think beyond the limits of
exhaustion and reimagine a form of criticism for the twenty-first
century.
