• The Conference
  • Home
  • Programme
  • Venue & directions
  • Organizing Committee
  • Scientific Committee
  • Exhibitors & sponsors
  • Satellite events
  • Conference Party
• Past & future
  • Previous symposia
  • Finland 2014
  • Spain 2016
• About FU Berlin
  • University homepage
  • Humanities at FU

Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1256

Part of Session 141: Taking over the squares (Other abstracts in this session)

Chilean Student Protests and the Smart Mobs: the language of multitude

Authors: García Agustín, Óscar (1); Aguirre Díaz, Félix (2)
Submitted by: García Agustín, Óscar (Aalborg University, Denmark)

The Chilean student movement rose on the 12^th of May 2011 with a demonstration gathering 20.000 people in Santiago. From May to November an average of 200.000 demonstrators took over the streets whenever a demonstration was organized. This is the largest number of people mobilizing in Chile since the beginning of the 70s. Despite of the high number of marches during these seven months only few clashes between (a minority of) violent demonstrators and riot police occurred. The creativity demonstrated to create a peaceful atmosphere during demonstrations was remarkable and it forced the government to abandon its initial discourse which emphasized the supposedly violent nature of the demonstrators.

The objective of this paper is to analyze how the Chilean student movement uses a joyful grammar of protest, which refers to a global repertoire but is applied nationally. Based on the idea of smart mobs (Rheingold 2002), we look at demonstrations such as flash mobs and collective performances organized through social media and new technologies to disrupt the use of public places and the dominant discourses trying to criminalize the student movement. In order to carry out this analysis we use the methodological tools of Discourse Analysis, and especially the role of intertextuality and interdiscursivity (Fairclough 1992; 2003) to redefine discursive practices, on the one hand, and theories about multitude and creative ways of expressing collectivity, on the other.

The alternative demonstrations of student movements in Chile are inspired by pop and mass culture.  In the case of mainstream pop music, protests take the form of flash mobs. Students, dressed as zombies, dance to the sound of Michael Jackson’s hit Thriller in order to express their critique of the current system. They also made a ‘Gagazo’ (a neologism mixing Gaga + the Spanish suffix -azo, which refers to a violent or sudden action) where Lady Gaga’s Judas was performed. This sort of music, which belongs to the global imaginary, is recontextualized and used for a political purpose. Flash mobs can be considered transgressive semiotics (Scollon & Scollon 2003) of decontextualized and universalized symbols (as the music video) which add a political dimension to the action.

The case of Gendikama (‘spirit sphere’) for Education refers intertextually to the famous cartoon tv-show Dragon Ball. By use of irony, the text from the tv-show is read publicly and adapted to the students’ fight against the (powerful and evil) government. Two discourses (the fictional and the real) and genres (tv-show and demonstration) are intertwined.  The parody representation of the protesters as multitude (a diversity that stay together) against the common enemy is also found in the flash mob superheroes against villains.

We argue that Chilean protesters as multitude develop a global language (flash mobs, collective performances) which contributes to the constitution of an emotional sphere (Bifo 2003) in which the joy of being together not only concerns a temporary occupation of the public space but also the claim for equality and social justice.