Video, a revolutionary medium for consciousness-raising in Mexico : a dialogic analysis of independent video makers on the Zapatistas

This thesis examines the use of video technology as an alternative communication medium within a dialogic framework. It explores multiple dialogic encounters and different meanings of dialogue. It analyses dialogues within and around video technology and dialogues with contemporary events in Mexican history. The author argues that these dialogic encounters are contributing to an ongoing process of transformation in Mexican consciousness. The thesis’s theoretical framework draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism and employs a dialogic method that emphasises diversity. The author conducts an in-depth analysis of multiple series of dialogues between key people, events and discourses. The author examines the lives and work of a sample of the most significant independent video-makers producing work on the indigenous Zapatista rebellion that began in Chiapas, Mexico, on 1 January 1994.The author focuses on the discourses of independent video-makers looking at the indigenous Zapatista rebels and considers the indigenous uprising to be both a ‘political catalytic event’ and a ‘multi-catalytic event.’ The different dialogues looked at throughout the thesis reveal various processes of consciousness-raising which act in diverse, unexpected and unprecedented ways. The author argues that these dialogues have contributed to a crisis of legitimacy for the hegemonic power in Mexico and have also influenced the way the mainstream media operate, and their power within Mexican society