Digital ghosts, global capitalism and social change

Abstract

This article traces the importance of colonial legacies for theorizing speculative capitalism by thinking from the use of digital media by indigenous social movements in the Andes. Indeed, rather than marginal to global capitalism, I maintain that indigenous peoples and media activists are at the forefront of experimenting with political and economic alternatives to capitalism. I argue that the racialized body remains tangible as digital media are read and used akin to older, analogue technology and its ‘writing of light.’ The desires for truth and corporeality in indigenous media point to the existence of borders from which alternatives to the current capitalist order are imagined and enacted. Similarly, in indigenous films speculative capitalism betrays its colonial constitution that ties it back to modern/colonial economic forms, rather than creating an entirely novel break with the past. In light of indigenous media digital images and the notion of immaterial labor are haunted by similar, colonial ghosts.

Keywords:

• immaterial labor
• coloniality
• indigenous media
• digital media
• Boli

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the members of CEFREC (especially Iván Sanjinés and Reynaldo Yujra) and CAIB (particularly Julia Mosúa, Marcelina Cárdenas, Jesús Tapia, Marcelino Pinto and Alfredo Copa) for sharing their thoughts with me on several occasions since I first started research on indigenous media in 1999. Thanks to both organizations for allowing me to see many of their videos at their production center in La Paz, Bolivia throughout the years. Thanks as well to the National Museum of the American Indian who granted me access to their video collection. Translations are mine, unless otherwise noted.

Notes

1. For a selection of different positions see the essays in Kafka Zúñiga (2004). The strongest alternative proposal was issued by a coalition of multiple indigenous and peasant organizations. The document was printed on inexpensive paper and widely distributed for debate in rural and urban centers (Asamblea, 2006).

2. CSUTCB (Confederación Sindical Unica de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia), CSCB (Confederacion Sindical de Colonizadores de Bolivia), the above mentioned CIDOB, CONAMAQ (Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Qullasuyu), FNMCBBS (Federación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas Indígenas Originarias de Bolivia Bartolina Sisa).

3. This position contrasts with the fruitful engagement of radical Italian philosophers by theorists and activists in Buenos Aires. See Colectivo Situaciones (2002) and Fontana et al. (2001).

4. The analysis of indigenous media productions in Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia is based on my field research unless otherwise noted.

5. This tendency (still) contrasts with the way Australian Aborigines have creatively adapted documentary's and television's stylistic conventions as a means of talking back to the colonial gaze. Through parody, self-reflexivity, even avant-gardist aesthetics that mix realism and antirealism as well as poetic address (see Beattie, 2004, pp. 69–79) aboriginal film makers have at once made use of and undermined documentary's truth claims. Ten years prior to Beattie's account, Faye Ginsburg (1994, p. 368) noted that for most Australian Aboriginal video makers, form and innovative solutions do not seem relevant. The aesthetic criteria used by aboriginal people privilege instead the strengthening of community ties. As Beattie states, Aboriginal film makers have grown tired of documentary form and are moving into fiction where there seems to be greater space for creative reframing (2004, p. 66). Similarly, in Brazil, documentaries such as Video nas Aldeias se Apresenta reflexively and humorously address the relationship between indigenous video makers and the camera itself. For a more detailed discussion of indigenous documentaries made in Bolivia see Schiwy (2009, chapter five).

6. See also Shohat and Stam (1994) especially chapter 3. On the return of the gaze see also Rony (1996).

7. Alessandro Fornazzari discusses this aspect in depth in his essay in this volume.

8. The new global order, marked by networks, immaterial labor, and biopower is seen as coming into being as a response to the actions of labor movements, the emphasis on labor being stronger in Negri than in Hardt (Hardt & Negri, 2000, p. xii–xv, 8–9, 19; Negri, 2003).

9. I would like to thank Thomas Reese (Tulane University) for calling my attention to the pervasive representation of labor in CEFREC-CAIB's fiction videos.

10. Members of CAIB and CEFREC expressed these views in personal conversations as well as during discussions of their videos at international film and video festivals, for instance in Guatemala (1999) and New York (2000). See also Mosúa, Copa and Pinto (2000) and Flores (2001–02).

11. As CEFREC (2005, n.p.) sees it, the process of audiovisual communication strengthens the tradition of collective decision-making in the communities.