Networks of Alterity in Syndemic Times: Sociodigital Media Controversy Around Racism in Mexico

ABSTRACT

This contribution seeks to contextualize historically a particular conjuncture through which significant changes to the national formation of alterities are expressed and performed by different media outlets and socio-digital networks as the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Mexico. By analysing three significant media events – which have triggered a broader discussion about racism, ethnicity, mestizaje, media and politics in Mexico – I argue for the need to develop a theoretical framework able to account for the constitutive relations between communication technologies, culture industries and singular articulations of local, regional, and cosmopolitan practices of inclusion/exclusion, at a time when notions of indigeneity, afromexicanidad, whiteness and mestizaje are being reshaped politically.

KEYWORDS:

• Identity
• ethnicity
• sociodigital networks
• digital media
• national formations of alterity
• Mexico
• COVID-19
• syndemic

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Medical Anthropologist Merrill Singer developed the notion that the syndemic approach “focuses on the biosocial complex, which consists of interacting, co-present, or sequential diseases and the social and environmental factors that promote and enhance the negative effects of disease interaction”. (Singer et al. 2017:941).

2 The polyvalent character of this relationship refers to the diverse and often conflicting political positions that social actors have historically assumed concerning the ethnical and racialised forms of national identification.

3 In 1994 the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, a Chiapas based guerrilla movement, declared war against the Mexican State in response to centuries of systemic neglect and marginalization suffered mostly by vast number of indigenous people in that region of the country. The Neo-Zapatista uprising has since, become a fundamental reference for progressive politics worldwide. (Rebrii 2020).

4 There is a rich collection of documentaries and short films produced by afromexican directors, but none of them have stirred as much controversy in the national arena as La Negrada has. A good starting point for more references about these films can be found here: https://www.ambulante.org/en/2020/06/seis-peliculas-sobre-visiones-afromexicanas-disponibles-en-linea/

Additional information

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André Dorcé

André Dorcé’s interests are focused on the role of both material and symbolic communication technologies as expressions – and constitutive elements – of contemporary subjectivities and power relations.