Open Invitation, The

Activist Video, Mexico, and the Politics of Affect

At the core of The Open Invitation, then, is a demand that we take seriously the aesthetic as a sphere of generative insurgent activity. . . . [The book] thus do[es] some significant work in making a case for the cinema’s capacious function as an agent of insurrection.
Journal of Cinema and Media Studies

Request Exam or Desk Copy. Request Review Copy

The Open Invitation explores the relationship between prefigurative politics and activist video. Schiwy analyzes activist videos from the 2006 uprising in Oaxaca, the Zapatista’s Other Campaign, as well as collaborative and community video from the Yucatán. Schiwy argues that transnational activist videos and community videos in indigenous languages reveal collaborations and that their political impact cannot be grasped through the concept of the public sphere. Instead, she places these videos in dialogue with recent efforts to understand the political with communality, a mode of governance articulated in indigenous struggles for autonomy, and with cinematic politics of affect.

about the author

Freya Schiwy

Freya Schiwy is associate professor of media and cultural studies at the University of California, Riverside.

learn more
Freya Schiwy