As a critical pedagogy similar to the type described by the philosopher-educator Paulo Freire, Zapatismo expresses resistance to the power-over relationships institutionalized in capitalism and the state through open-ended questioning. Previous analyses have argued that the Zapatista struggle has been incommunicable, that it can be defined in terms of new media, that Zapatismo advances a Leninist ideology, and that its resonance is rhizo-matic. A challenge to these assumptions drawing on negative dialectics suggests that, as prefiguration of other worlds beyond the neoliberal reality, Zapatismo resonates because it teaches the recovery of democracy by direct collective decision making and horizontal organization and communication. Philosophical inquiry shows that Zapatismo has recollected the radical imaginary and resonated through the Independent Media Center network and Occupy Wall Street and continues to be borrowed and adapted by Occupy offshoots, anticapitalist collectives, and ongoing initiatives. Como una pedagogía crítica similar a aquella descrita por el filósofo y educador Paulo Freire, el Zapatismo expresa resistencia a las relaciones de poder institucionalizadas en el capitalismo y el Estado a través de preguntas abiertas. Análisis previos argumentan que la lucha zapatista no ha sido comunicable, que puede definirse en términos de nuevos medios, que promueve una ideología leninista, y que cuenta con resonancia rizomática. Un desafío a todas estas suposiciones basadas en una dialéctica negativa sugiere que, como prefiguración de otros mundos más allá de la realidad neoliberal, el Zapatismo resuena porque enseña cómo recuperar la democracia mediante la toma de decisiones colectivas directas y la organización y comunicación horizontal. Una investigación filosófica da muestra de que el Zapatismo ha recobrado el imaginario radical y resonado a través de la red del Centro de Medios Independientes y Occupy Wall Street. También, que aún es tomado en préstamo y adaptado por Occupy, grupos anticapitalistas, y otras iniciativas en curso.

The online censorship and subsequent arrest of scholar-activist Walden Bello is the latest instance of a disconcerting trend during a period of hegemonic crisis. To understand how a respected scholar ended up in jail and in grave legal trouble on very feeble accounts, we have to unpack the full implications of this case, and place it in relation to ongoing structural changes within the world-system—namely, the decline of the United States as global hegemon, the ascendancy of far-right authoritarianism as a popular political framework, and the use of institutions and technologies developed under liberal-democratic rule by authoritarian regimes for purposes of social control during a period of flux. The crisis offers an opportunity to reconfigure systemic arrangements through coordinated solidarity networks characterized by forms of organization and ways of relating that embody prerogatives and values different from those that predominate in the modern world-system and from those that reproduce the capitalist world-economy; which, more likely than not, will have authoritarian tendencies in the decades to come. As a conclusion, we offer some of the possibilities the global left has for these upcoming decades in regards of large coalitions aimed at changing the structure of the world-system at large.

In this essay, Foucault's concept “of other spaces” – or, heterotopia – is used to examine the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement in the context of systemic crisis. Neoliberalism is marked by innovations that amplify and accelerate contradictions, unfolding the false utopia of finance capitalism. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) helped hyper-financialize the economy, enrich banksters and extend inequalities. Conversely, high-tech developments allow for decentralized decision-making and more direct democracy, paralleling the ethics of OWS. New ICTs compress TimeSpace, opening doors for empathic connections, generating conditions for elevation of collective superstructural consciousness. This paper explores how these conditions create – and are recreated by – heterotopic spaces. Drawing on Foucault's method of heterotopology we throw light on the potential of OWS to prefigure another world, analyzing endeavors to promote cooperative autonomy, and raise consciousness in and through mediated environments, always contested, ever in flux, and inevitably over-(but never pre-)determined.

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