ABSTRACT
The chapter begins with the appraisal of three main fallacies that define the field of digital activism: spatial dualism, technological presentism, and alternativeness. To overcome these fallacies, the material multiplicity of the media practices of the Mexican Barrio Nómada collective are explored. Relying on multi-method engaged research, the chapter scrutinizes the notion of “total communication” that pervades the practices of the Barrio. Total communication involves the incessant navigation of three communicative tensions between: the physical and the digital, the old and the new, the corporate and the alternative. This chapter demonstrates that total communication is not just a matter of communicative abundance, but that technological multiplicity and hybridity can represent forms of resistance per se because sustaining a varied media ecology keeps the dissemination of critical content flowing under every adversity. Illustrating the ways through which the Barrio is able to traverse the complexity of cyber-urban space, this chapter highlights that bodies still reside at the centre of collective action. In contrast to an image of counter-power as a smooth journey between “spaces of places” and “spaces of flows”, it shows that activists’ nomadic practices are relentlessly troubled by the insecurity and uncertainty of Gore capitalism.
