The readings for this week center the Zapatista movement in México as a postmodern revolution that used different spaces as the cyberspace as a way to expand their presence descentering it from a single figure and leader, reproduce their ideas and to make it more accessible while reimagining the idea of presence.
Taylor, explains the complicated performance and important gesture of the “death” of Subcomandante Marcos. She explains the idea that, in spite of the attention that the movement caused, the government still “couldn’t see us” (the indigenous people) while they got a lot of attention from the media. This is very telling of the mechanisms of media that might highlight rebellions and their mestizo leaders, but still invisibilize indigenous people. Yet, the figure of comandante Marcos as a “drag-king” (Paul Preciado) that utilizes the mask to “transform the body of the multitude into the collective agent of revolution” is highlighted as a death that did not kill the ideas of the movement. As his figure disappeared, the movement became more centered in collective struggle, rather than in the image of just one leader. Yet, Taylor also looks at the important aspect of the circulation of the image of Marcos, as “his performance was that he was able to personify the thoughts and priorities of a movement far older and greater than he was.” In the interview to Domínguez they present us the idea of using the media as a space for bridging the most marginal with the spaces and systems of new forms of power.
Lane and Domínguez analyzes the use of digital media as a space for public protest that was also a form to “register a huge, collective, politicized presence in digital space.” (130) Through the analysis of the Electronic Disturbance Theater the authors explain the relation between performance and embodiment in the cyberspace as the Digital Zapatismo used “disturbance spaces” resignifying what we have been discussed as the space of appearance.