Introduction

The introduction’s first section argues that, amid neoliberal realities, liberalism’s paradigms are in crisis. Positing the concept of “xenocitizen” as a historical way to begin moving past delimiting liberal fantasies, it suggests that contemporary scholarship requires a mode of “actuality without positivism.” The second section uses a hemispheric consideration of Simón de Bolívar’s writing to establish the asymmetrical landscape of nineteenth-century liberalism. Building on these contexts, the last two sections turn directly to the concepts of xenocitizen and ontology: setting the terms of engagement and the conceptual terrain for the chapters that follow.