Lumpen style of thought and social theory from the periphery: the living work of Florestan Fernandes

Abstract

This review comments on the book Florestan Fernandes’ critical sociology: a social theory of Brazil and Latin America, published in 2024 by Routledge. By summarizing the argument presented in the work, relevant both for beginners and experts on the São Paulo sociologist’s work, I seek to highlight the following aspects in their assumptions and implications: the diachronic reconstruction (from 1940 to 1990) of Florestan Fernandes’ contributions to social theory and its political-intellectual networks in Latin America; the interdependence of the notions of racial dilemma, dependent capitalism and bourgeois autocracy as the core of his social theory; the proposition of the “lumpen style of thought” as a key thesis to understand the author’s own intellectual and political way of thinking/making.