Networks,insurgencies,and prefigurative politics

Abstract

E-mail and Web pages made it possible to generate a space for global mobilization against the repression of the Zapatista indigenous rebels in the 1990s. The global justice movement that started in Seattle in 1999 extended global networks to organize action. In recent years, with the development of what has been called ‘Web 2.0’, spontaneous mass mobilizations emerged in large cities. These struggles are specific to each country and context; however, in all cases, they create shared spaces both in the physical world and in the networks, connecting the streets to the global flow of indignation. The intricate urban and digital spatiality of these insurgencies brings a demand for democracy that goes beyond national identities, through forms of protest that are more prefigurative than programmatic.