"In Caracas, Rafael Sánchez witnessed a transformative scene that led to his groundbreaking theory of the state. This stunning memoir of the intersection of politics and personal life narrates his rejection of patriarchy and his growing understanding of the complexities and limits of emancipatory politics. A loving and living anthropology of an eccentric life, Reconocimientos is a testament to the transformative power of becoming."--Javier Guerrero, Princeton University

"In this uniquely moving, genre-bending book, Sánchez confronts patriarchal authority as it has imposed itself on his life and dissolves it into the collective, radically democratic powers of the Venezuelan crowd."--Rihan Yeh, University of California, San Diego "An essay of incredible originality, a work of passional reason by a writer with a wonderful poetic sensibility."--Charles Hirschkind, University of California, Berkeley What is the relationship between a writer's life, milieu, and thought? In this daring and intellectually expansive text, part memoir and part political philosophy, Rafael Sánchez explores the forces and events that shaped him and the nations through which he moved. Reconocimientos is a book of both personal and political reckoning, from the thrillingly emancipatory possibilities of Venezuela's plazas to the political promise and disappointments of revolution. Written in the final year of his life, Reconocimientos moves from scenes of Sánchez's youth in Cuba to fieldwork on the cult of Maria Lionza in Venezuela to confront the terrifying and alluring forces of patriarchal privilege at the base of monumentalist authoritarianism. Sánchez's intimate prose speaks with the urgency both of his own mortality and of the political crises of our moment. Amid the resurgence of patriarchy, hierarchy, and the valorization of inequality have become pillars of populist movements everywhere, Sánchez finds a residual radical possibility in 'horizontal' spaces, where the forces of mimesis permit manifold transformations. Rafael Sánchez (1950-2024) was senior lecturer at the Geneva Graduate Institute.