CIAO DATE: 11/2008
December 2004
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Alex Khasnabish, a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University, received a Graduate Research Scholarship from the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition in the 2003-2004 academic year. He used this award to continue his doctoral research on the Zapatista rebellion and movement in Chiapas, Mexico, which began on January 1, 1994, the same date as the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect. The Zapatismo phenomenon is a complex one and offers many avenues for study and debate. In this Working Paper, Mr. Khasnabish examines the impact of the Zapatistas on political and social movements in North America. He is interested in whether the Zapatistas changed these movements in any important ways.
He argues that they did have a major impact, but it is not one that is immediately self-evident. The Zapatistas, despite being a ragtag group of poverty-stricken indigenous persons drawn from the state of Chiapas, were able to inspire hope among many other, very different and much more well-resourced social and political movements. They had this impact through their capacity to spur the political imagination of activists in new ways. Khasnabish argues that political imagination is crucial for social and political movements contesting the hegemonic dominance of neo-liberal thinking and neo-liberal practices in wealthier countries. To develop this argument, he begins by carrying out a careful review of several key philosophers and social critics who have commented on the role of the imagination. In this review, he finds that the thinking does not really help us to understand well the ways in which political imaginations drew strength from the Zapatistas. He turns then to theorists like Ernst Bloch, Cornelius Castoriadis and Guy Debord for inspiration in understanding better the role of the imagination. With this better understanding, he reflects ably on the comments he received from activists in North America outside Mexico on the Zapatistas and their impact on their own work in contesting global capitalism.
Resource link: Globalizing Hope: The Resonance of Zapatismo and the Political Imagination(s) of Transnational Activism [PDF] - 103K