Abstract

This thesis looks at the online and offline affective reverberations of the 2021 Colombian National Strike through its visual culture to understand what counter public digital expressions reveal about how Colombians engaged with the events and the affective histories of the nation surrounding these moments. My goal is to show how the interplay between material and digital spaces contributed to the emergence of a new affective structure. I argue that by looking at the images and affects that were shared online, it is possible to see a shift from an affective structure of fear and apathy—promoted by the visuality of the Colombian armed conflict and anti-insurgent propaganda—to a new, and perhaps temporary, structure of “awakening.” By following particular nodes in the strike’s visual and digital affective fabrics, I show how spaces like Twitter (now X) not only offered an affective and political arena to share, discuss and enact practices of resistance, but also became “affective archives” or “counter archives” through which these changes could be traced.
My thesis looks at affect through and as digital images to understand their textures and the ways in which visual activism and digital images touch us. Focusing on two particular moments/spaces that took place during the strike, I use the figure of the hero to understand how these affective changes happened, and, at the same time, how national identity was renegotiated.