ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The insistence on the autonomy and contingency of the political domain is a notable feature of both poststructuralist and postcolonial approaches. Another important reference point here is Alain Badiou's description of politics as a truth procedure which always starts with a wager, a self-referential decision about the occurrence of an event, and continues with an utterly subjective, yet formally delineable, procedure of fidelity. In all cases examined in the book, the deficit of legitimacy, all its specific manifestations notwithstanding, originates in the global crisis of democracy. China and individual Latin American countries are unquestionably developing very different social models. But this diversity adds greater importance to another finding of this volume: their differences notwithstanding, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela and China all emphasize certain key values which are of secondary importance for the Western model of democracy.
