This small book is the result of many conversations in many countries. I first presented its main argument as a series of lectures at the University of Macerata in 2013 and then elaborated it over the years on three continents. I want to thank the students of that dear Italian university as well as my students at the New School in New York. I want to thank also Amy Allen, Ben Brower, Amy Chazkel, Valeria Galimi, Luis Herrán Ávila, Aaron Jakes, Andrea Mammone, Nara Milanich, Pablo Piccato, Caterina Pizzigoni, and Angelo Ventrone for their comments and suggestions on different parts of the book. I also want to thank Giulia Albanese, Melissa Amezcua, Andrew Arato, Borja Bauzá, Chiara Bottici, Richard Bernstein, Fabián Bosoer, Magdalena Broquetas, Antonio Costa Pinto, Donatella Di Cesare, Richard Evans, Oz Frankel, Maximiliamo Fuentes Codera, Fabio Gentile, Emmanuel Guerisoli, the late Agnes Heller, Reto Hofmann, Andreas Kalyvas, Claudia Koonz, Daniel Kressel, Dominick LaCapra, Simon Levis Sullam, Sandra McGee Deutsch, David Motadel, Jose Moya, Julia Ott, Elias Palti, Raanan Rein, Sven Reichardt, Daniel Rodriguez, Gema Santamaria, Hector Raul Solis Gadea, Michael Steinberg, Ann Laura Stoler, Nathan Stoltzfus, Alberto Spektorowski, Enzo Traverso, Nadia Urbinati, Jeremy Varon, and Nikolai Wehrs.
My deep thanks to Kate Marshall, my ideal editor at UC Press. At UC Press, my appreciation also goes to Tim Sullivan, director of the press; Enrique Ochoa; Dore Brown; and Sheila Berg, for her acute and perceptive copyediting. I also thank Emmanuel Guerisoli for preparing the index.
My thanks to my parents, Norma and Jaime, and my siblings, Inés and Diego. As always I owe the deepest gratitude to my wife, Laura, and my daughters, Gabriela and Lucia.
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A signficantly shorter Italian version of the book was published in 2019 by EUM. Parts of the book were published in very different form in the journals Constellations (2016) and Hispanic American Historical Review (2007).