CALL FOR PAPERS

Visual Logics and New Aesthetics of Protest: Transnational Reverberations and Confluences between Zapatismo and Alter-Globalization (1994–2021)

Deadline for submission: December 7, 2025
Languages: French, Spanish and English
Dates: Université Grenoble Alpes, April 22-23–24, 2026

The defeat of communism at the end of the Cold War, celebrated triumphantly by the “free world”, appeared to confirm two emblematic slogans of the late 1980s: “the end of history” and “there is no alternative.” Yet these certainties were swiftly called into question by the emergence of a series of global protest movements, positioned against the excesses of the triumphant markets and the structural adjustment policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund. This new transnational confluence and coordination of social movements opposing capitalist globalization was given many names: the anti-globalization movement, the alter-globalization movement, the global justice movement, or even the movement of movements; and it eventually became also associated with the slogan “another world is possible.”

Its rapid expansion confirmed the persistence of resistance as a new stage in processes of emancipation (Plihon 2019) and the movement rose to prominence in the media through the organization of “counter-summits”: large-scale collective actions of transnational scope that coincided with summits of global institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization or the World Bank. Highly visible and performative, activist counter-summits (such as Seattle in 1999, Prague in 2000 and Genoa in 2001) disrupted these summits of power, drawing attention to the de-facto governance role of these transnational and non-democratic entities while also proposing alternatives for “globalization from below”. At the same time, the high visibility of these movements in the media and their reverberations within the art world contributed to the construction of a new visual regime of protest and civic organization.

Although anti-globalization set the agenda in the Global North throughout the 1990s and the early years of the new millennium, one of its original driving forces arose in the mountains of Chiapas (Mexico). In January 1994, the indigenous Zapatista uprising sought to challenge the neoliberal dynamics of the North American Free Trade Agreement and delivered a clear message to Mexican society. Thanks to an adept use of new communication technologies, this message also resonated internationally. Fighting for “a world where many worlds fit,” the Zapatista movement became a de facto point of reference for activists across the globe, inaugurating a new cycle of resistance and mobilization with direct repercussions in Europe.

Zapatismo blended the struggle for indigenous self-determination with the internationalism of the tricontinental guerrilla (as its origins lie in the National Liberation Forces), creating a space of dialogue and collaboration for a wide range of activist organizations. Indeed, the transnational coordination of social movements that would later crystallize in the anti-globalization movement began precisely with the “Intergalactic Encounters” organized by the Zapatistas (1996 and 1997), who invited activists from around the world to gather in Chiapas. These initiatives were soon joined by other civil society- and peasant movements across Latin America (such as the Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil and CONAIE in Ecuador), which emerged to contest and defy the policies of expropriation and dispossession of global capitalism (the Water War in Bolivia in 2000, the mobilizations in Argentina during the financial collapse of 2001, the student movement in Chile in 2011) that were closely followed (and not infrequently included) by European activist networks in their own fights for social justice.

The dialogue between struggles enabled not only the articulation of new forms of civil society mobilization in favor of a collective, anti-capitalist future, but also the emergence of a new aesthetic of resistance and protest. In the declared age of “Empire and the Multitude” (Hardt and Negri, 2004), the confluence between Zapatismo and other struggles from the Global South with Western social movements was accompanied by a resurgence of new practices of collectivization and communalization in Europe. These practices, combined with the innovative uses of imagery and performativity, sought to envision alternatives and responses to the excesses of neoliberal globalization.

The growing awareness about the impact of neoliberal globalization, which mobilized many groups concerned about environmental degradation, participated in these processes. From the Global South, protests were organized in response to the internationalization and intensification of resource extraction that aimed against an increasingly deregulating economy in the North. At the same time, on an institutional level, the United Nations’ Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, 1992) signaled that “issues such as global warming, wildfires in the Amazon, climate change and biodiversity loss” (Fioravanti, 2022) were finally being taken into account. However, given the limited results achieved, the protests expanded, taking the form of a rather unprecedented “political process” (Milani and Keraghel, 2007), such as the World Social Forum, whose first edition in Porto Alegre (Brazil, 2001) sought to defend “social control over the environment” (Milani and Keraghel, 2007). The issues debated during this first WSF remain relevant today and are being reconsidered through the lens of the commons.

Although the large-scale counter-summits of the anti-globalization movement eventually lost momentum (due to a set of intertwined reasons, including repression and the exhaustion of a spectacularized form of protest), the persistence of movements resisting global neoliberalism has continued in different forms (Agrikoliansky et al., 2005). These movements have shifted toward more decentralized and network-based models of organization, increasingly incorporating digital platforms and social media, with the consequent proliferation of images, photographs, videos and memes. Such dynamics remain closely aligned with projects of autonomy and sovereignty such as Zapatismo, whose enduring relevance stems from the fact that it was never limited to a one-time gesture of protest, but instead crystallized into a daily political practice of communitarian self-governance, territorial defense and the construction of economic, social and cultural alternatives. In this sense, Zapatismo continues to offer a meaningful horizon for contemporary movements that seek to resist global neoliberalism not only through confrontation, but also by creating autonomous spaces of life and coexistence. The project of “constructing society,” together with its principles and way of life, has thus remained an enduring example for the possibility of forging a model of resistance and coexistence that revalorizes indigenous knowledge and identity, affirms the role of women and assigns an essential place to art in these processes.

Within today’s framework of an extractivist turbo-capitalism (Luttwak 2009), these movements face tough challenge with the rise of the far right, which not only invokes the concept of a “Dark Enlightenment” (Land 2019) but has also replicated and co-opted many of the organizational and performative models originally developed in the wake of afore-mentioned activism. In response to this threat and to knit new networks —while moving beyond the spectacularized large-scale demonstrations of the late 1990s and early 2000s— the Zapatistas issued in 2021 a “Call for Life.” This appeal invited European activists to join in building a hybrid, non-binary common (Declaración por la vida, 2021).

The call of the Zapatistas was soon followed by a renewed moment of direct encounters during the so-called Travesía por la vida [The Journey for Life], undertaken to Europe in 2021. Its aim was to meet with grassroot-collectives resisting the ecocidal laws of the market and to exchange experiences with European activists. Throughout this journey, 1400 collectives coordinated and organized to host the travelers and share experiences through festive and political activities, supported by intensive communication efforts (photography, posters, videos, and social media). Thus, after 30 years of welcoming thousands of people from Europe and beyond to Chiapas for learning from a territory marked by atypical struggles and the sharing of knowledge(s), it was now the turn of European militants to respond politically and culturally to the Zapatistas’ call for dialogue and the sharing of experiences.

Indeed, if the EZLN had already transformed the use of images (Zagato and Arcos 2017), European collectives in turn demonstrated their creativity in the common defense of life and in struggles against racism, sexism, and homophobia. In this way, the encounters held during the Travesía por la vida closed the circle initiated by the first Intergalactic Encounters in Chiapas, extending the formation of a transnational commons that has connected Latin America and its struggles with Europe across the 20^th and 21^st centuries not only in the sphere of direct action, but also within visual and performative culture.

This conference seeks to explore the power of images and performative practices within social movements resisting globalization, examining their role from a dialogical and transnational perspective that foregrounds Zapatismo and the struggles of the Global South. Although such movements have often been studied within the framework of struggles for land, autonomy as well as the continuation of major Latin American insurrectionary movements (Baronet et al., 2011), our proposal is to situate them in dialogue with Europe and its contemporary urgencies. We aim to analyze the reverberations of their mandates with the demands that mobilize society (ranging from resistance to globalization to struggles against climate change, racism, femicides, and the rise of the far right), with particular attention to the role of images and performativity. Our objective is to delve into how images shape and reveal the visual construction of the social (Mitchell 2014) and to understand how performative practices associated with these struggles contribute to the social imaginaries and resistance dynamics of contemporary Europe.

Accordingly, this interdisciplinary conference positions itself at the intersection of several fields: global history, cultural history, art history, gender studies, the history of struggles, visual studies, geography and decolonial studies. By putting the image and its entanglements with struggles for emancipation in the center of analysis, our reflection demands a transnational reading of shared histories from the geographic and social margins.

Possible topics for papers include, but are not limited to, the following axes:

1. The analysis of gestures, images and material culture of protest and resistance as well as from the perspective of the latter, taking in account transnational networks and circulations from Chiapas to Europe (and vice versa).
2. The sites of encounter, collaborations and contact zones between the aesthetic/political practices of the Global South and European social movements.
3. The shared aesthetic strategies between European social movements and practices of the Global South.
4. The continuities and transformations of Zapatismo during the Travesía por la vida.
5. The aesthetic and political continuities and ruptures from the alter-globalization cycle to contemporary activism.
6. The representations of alter-globalization from a gender perspective, and the rereading of the role of feminisms and LGTBIQ+ struggles.
7. The recovery of marginalized agents and figures within the anti-globalization cycle.
8. The diverse constructions of the activist collective subject in alter-globalization and Zapatismo.
9. The analyses of activist performative practices in relation to prefigurative politics.
10. The aesthetic co-optations of social movement strategies by the far right.
11. The (re)writing of the historiography of Zapatismo and the resistance practices of the anti-globalization movement through exhibitions and artistic projects.

Submission of proposals

The conference will take place on April 22, 23 and 24, 2026, at the Université Grenoble Alpes.
The official languages are French, Spanish and English.
Those interested in participating are invited to submit an abstract of no more than 300 words with a short bio, by December 7, 2025. Proposals should be sent by anita.orzes@univ-tlse2.fr including the subject title: “Colloque Réverbérations altermondialistes et zapatistes (RAZ)”

Direction: Paula Barreiro López (Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès – Institut Universitaire de France), Sonia Kerfa (Université Grenoble Alpes), Julia Ramírez-Blanco (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Coordination: Anita Orzes (Université Toulouse II – Jean Jaurès) and Cristina García Martínez (Université Grenoble Alpes)
Scientific Committee: Paula Barreiro López (Université Toulouse II – Jean Jaurès), Sonia Kerfa (Université Grenoble Alpes), Tobias Locker (Saint Louis University, Madrid), Anita Orzes (Université Toulouse II – Jean Jaurès), Julia Ramírez-Blanco (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), María Ruido (Universitat de Barcelona), Fabiola Martínez Rodríguez (Saint Louis University Madrid).

Conference organized within the framework of the projects Esthétiques tricontinentales et leurs échos dans l’Europe du Sud (Institut Universitaire de France); Images politiques et nouveaux mondes à construire: la culture visuelle du voyage des zapatistes pour la vie en Europe / NOVA-IMAGO-ZAP (Labex SMS, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès), with the support of ILCEA4 at Université Grenoble Alpes and the international research platform Modernidad(es) Descentralizad(s).

Bibliography

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Baronnet, Bruno, et al. (2011). Luchas muy otras: Zapatismo y autonomía en las comunidades indígenas de Chiapas. México : Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana UAM-Xochimilco.

Baschet, Jérôme. (2002). L’étincelle zapatiste, insurrection indienne et résistance planétaire. Paris : Denoël.

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Milani, Carlos R. S.  et Keraghel Chloé (2007) , « Développement durable, contestation et légitimité : la perspective des mouvements altermondialistes », Cahiers des Amériques latines, 54-55 | 2007, 137-151.

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