Performance Constellations: Networks of Protest and Activism in Latin America

by Marcela A. Fuentes

Performance Constellations maps transnational protest movements and the dynamics of networked expressive behavior in the streets and online, as people struggle to be heard and effect long-term social justice.  Its case studies explore collective political action in Latin America, including the Zapatistas in the mid-’90s, protests during the 2001 Argentine economic crisis, the 2011 Chilean student movement, the 2014–2015 mobilizations for the disappeared Ayotzinapa students, and the 2018 transnational reproductive rights movement. The book analyzes uses of space, time, media communication, and corporeality in protests such as virtual sit-ins, flash mobs, scarfazos, and hashtag campaigns, arguing that these protests not only challenge hegemonic power but are also socially transformative. While other studies have focused either on digital activism or on street protests, Performance Constellations shows that they are in fact integrally entwined. Zooming in on protest movements and art-activism in Mexico, Argentina, and Chile, and putting contemporary insurgent actions in dialogue with their historical precedents, the book demonstrates how, even in moments of extreme duress, social actors in Latin America have taken up public and virtual space to intervene politically and to contest dominant powers.
 

Genres: Cultural Studies

178 pages, Paperback

Published October 21, 2019

Reviews

[Sofía · Rating 4 out of 5]

read for spa387, interesting way to view contemporary politics in latin american

[sofia ines · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the digital age heralds economic, political, and social decisions in an intangible space of zeros and ones, isolating adversities such as the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic remind us that physical togetherness is not guaranteed, and ideologies from intensifying leaders such as Donald Trump threaten authoritarian regimes, Americans must reimagine our protesting toolkit to effectively resist disembodied forms of oppression.

Performance Constellations is a framework that Fuentes likens to the phenomenon of constellations, clusters of stars that are active at different times and proximities. She argues that "street protests lost their efficacy for fighting contemporary power configurations that are deterritorialized and networked" (17). To adapt to these power reconfigurations, we, activists, must 'entangle' technology with in-person protest. These digital networks do not replace street protests but offer new tools of expression.

This book introduced me to Latin American politics which I learned none of in school. I found that many examples she presented about government repression against abortions, education, and protesting served as precarious forecasts for the U.S. if we don't hold elected officials, corporations, and power structures accountable.

On the public education in Chile:
"In countries where education is offered as a consumer good that requires borrowing money, debt becomes a disciplinary method of 'debt governance' [...] it reframes the relation between state and citizens as between owners and non-owners of capital" (70)

In response to the public education crisis Drama School of Chile met and organized:
1800 Horas por la Educación (1800 Hours for Education)
in which the students ran (tag-team style) around La Moneda, the government building, for 18000 hours straight which is the estimated budget needed to fund students' education.

Fuentes described other unique forms of protest such as Kiss-ins and Flashmobs: "Stylized behavior to circumvent police repression and counteract negative media coverage. Used positive emotions like love, communal organization, sacrifice, and resolve"

The Drawbacks of social media platforms:
the algorithm "favors a hierarchal user base rather than the presumed, easily distributed democratic social sphere praised by many social media advocates."

[Valeria Garrote · Rating 5 out of 5]

Performance Constellations is an excellent book that intertwines digital networks, activism, and performance on the question of “how” to use them in response to contemporary systems of exploitation in Latin America. Fuentes goes deep into each old and new repertoire, analyzing in each case the body-based and digitally-mediated actions connecting activism across borders.
Chapters are short and focused, and she has the ability to explain a complex dynamic in a flow writing style. I like the concept of constellations as “tactics of disruptions and worldmaking,” as well as how she redefines spatiality, temporality, embodiment, and participation in contemporary activism. Through the chapters, from 1998 with the virtual seat-ins in Mexico to the present, Fuentes traces the constellation of activist performances “as a mode of collective, mediated presence, achieved through the assemblage of dispersed actions within a common frame or narrative” (16). We can follow the effects of neoliberalism in each scenario and the multiple communitarian tactics that people create to resist and propose alternative futures.
I like that Fuentes highlights theories of performance (Taylor, Muñoz), “kinesthetic imagination,” affects, and networks that focus on collective transformations, twisting the approaches to digital media as something superficial or not engaging. In each chapter, she plays with all the concepts focusing on cultural history, identity, and activism in contextual adaptability proposing a methodology. Archives and interventions are intertwined deeply. For example, she analyses the Argentinian crisis of 2001 along with different bodily and digital manifestations, tracing back and forth between those mass mobilizations and current “Ni una menos” and the movement for reproductive rights. I taught in a class the Chilean student movement. It was very enriching to show my students the acts of transfers between digital and body activism in a dialectical relationship between on and offline mobilizations. She goes back to the history of student debt and the multiple interpellations students play to engage with the public: social media, powerpoints, demonstrations, marathons with the flag, flash mobs. Political activism in the current moment articulates multiple kinds of performance, raising questions about liveness and experience. In the conclusion, Fuentes advances with the feminist movement “Ni una menos” to wrap up all the concepts, including a perspective as an activist herself. She unpacks more about feminist activisms in the Spanish translation or “version” published by Eterna Cadencia (I can’t wait to read it!). In conclusion Performance Constellations is a tool-book to think about digital networks and politics in a novel, creative way.