ABSTRACT
A broad consensus exists among scholars about the contributions of culture to both state formation and the legitimation of state rule. Historically, cultural homogeneity became the language of the state, couching ways of world making in a discourse of cultural diversity. Focusing on the disputes about territory in Bolivia, this article illustrates how the universalisation of modern territorial practises left no part for Indigenous practises of territory-making. Inspired by the work of Marisol de la Cadena, this article argues that the legitimation of state rule is ‘not only’ a cultural effect but is also associated with the partition of the sensible into a universal nature and culturally diversified humanity. Despite this, because Indigenous practises of territory making ‘exceed’ the limit of what the state recognises as legitimate, they challenge the limits imposed upon them, undoing the state and pluriversalising society. Some of these transformations were enshrined in the 2009 Political Constitution, whose preface reads that Bolivia ‘left the colonial, republican and neo-liberal state in the past’. Others, including the call to depatriarchalisation, did not have a place in the Constitution.
