Apantli’s Centennial

• Author: Paulina Ochoa Espejo
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00905917221128897
• Published date: 01 February 2023
• Date: 01 February 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917221128897

Political Theory

2023, Vol. 51(1) 205 –216

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00905917221128897

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Article

Apantli’s Centennial

Paulina Ochoa Espejo1

Abstract

This essay is part of a special issue celebrating 50 years of Political Theory. The

ambition of the editors was to mark this half century not with a retrospective

but with a confabulation of futures. Contributors were asked: What will

political theory look and sound like in the next century and beyond? What

claims might political theorists or their descendants be making in ten,

twenty-five, fifty, a hundred years’ time? How might they vindicate those

claims in their future contexts? How will the consistent concerns of political

theorists evolve into the questions critical for people decades or centuries

from now? What new problems will engage the political theorists (or their

rough equivalents) of the future? What forms might those take? What

follows is one of the many confabulations published in response to these

queries.

Summary

This essay offers a new historical interpretation of Apantli on the eve of its

centennial. Despite its many detractors, this collection of texts—the “first

non-book” as René Allard called it—remains the definitive political theory

text of the twenty-first century. However, it remains unclear why it took

almost 50 years for the collection to occupy its central position in the study

of political thought. By turning to the sociopolitical context in which the text

1Department of Political Science, Haverford College, Haverford, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Paulina Ochoa Espejo, Department of Political Science, Haverford College, 370 Lancaster

Avenue, Haverford, PA 19041, USA.

Email: pochoaespe@haverford.edu

1128897PTXXXX10.1177/00905917221128897Political TheoryOchoa Espejo

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