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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from Explore Bristol Research, http://research-information.bristol.ac.uk Author: Liceaga Mendoza, Rodrigo I Title: A critique of the Internet in Mexico From coordination without politics to decolonial politics General rights Access to the thesis is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International Public License. A copy of this may be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode This license sets out your rights and the restrictions that apply to your access to the thesis so it is important you read this before proceeding. Take down policy Some pages of this thesis may have been removed for copyright restrictions prior to having it been deposited in Explore Bristol Research. 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A critique of the Internet in Mexico: from coordination without politics to decolonial politics Rodrigo Iván Liceaga Mendoza A dissertation submitted to the University of Bristol in accordance with the requirements for award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies September 2019 Word count: 82, 930 Abstract A developmental agenda of economic growth and modernisation, together with the ideal of democratisation, has guided and shaped efforts to expand and promote the use of the Internet in Mexico. Such efforts, while taking for granted the functionality of this technology for enabling political participation, ignore the Internet’s provenance and pitfalls. Situating such omissions within the context of Mexico’s colonial heritage, the thesis questions: what is the Internet doing in Mexico and how is it related to coloniality? And how has an alternative politics and use of the internet been practiced in Mexico considering this context of coloniality? With a decolonial orientation and drawing on the insight from Science and Technology Studies that understands technological objects as structured in particular ways to achieve particular interests, the thesis analyses the Internet’s design in the United States and three prominent cases of Internet use for intended national transformation in Mexico: Enrique Peña Nieto’s digitisation policy, #YoSoy132 mobilisations and the Zapatista insurgency. This analysis is developed through the thesis’ central concept of ‘coordination without politics’, meaning that collective coordination and experience are possible when mediated by an external third party, which hinders the emergence of embodied political experiences. This concept is drawn from Giorgio Agamben’s approach to instrumentality and the political and oriented by and toward the Zapatista political experience, the latter which works as a contrasting case as it embodies the concept of the political in relation to technology. The thesis argues that rather than a greater degree of political participation the use of the Internet in Mexico has primarily served to reproduce this technology’s embedded forms of coloniality as an instrument of coordination without politics, which is only intelligible through the inclusion of a decolonial element in critical and philosophical approaches to the internet. The Zapatistas on the contrary and so far, have not only countered such forms of coloniality/instrumentality but also, regarding Maya cosmology and the practice of intersubjectivity, contribute to our understanding of how to decolonise politics in relation to technology. Key words: Internet technology, instrumentality, coordination without politics, the political, decolonial thinking. i ii Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr Columba Peoples and Dr Elspeth Van Veeren for their advice, patience and support. Special thanks to Héctor Nájera, Karina García, Magda Mogilnicka, Samir Balakishi, Alexis Bedolla, Juan Pablo Rodríguez and Aslak-Antti Oksanen for their friendship, support and encouragement. Thanks to Andreas, Denny, Neema, Fernán, Julio, Marc, Mark, Carlos, Phil, María Teresa, Kate, Lucía and “la pichanguita” for smiling. It was a privilege to be supported by the Postcolonial Studies Association and the Society for Latin American Studies. El más profundo agradecimiento a mis padres, Mario Liceaga y María Elena Mendoza, a Carmen Mendoza y a mi hermana, Vanessa Liceaga, por todo su cariño, paciencia y apoyo. Gonzalo, Gabriel, Yohnatan y Gerardo, los llevé conmigo siempre. Gracias a CONACyT y la DGRI de la SEP por el apoyo brindado. Esta tesis es para Paulina, de todo corazón. iii iv Author’s declaration I declare that the work in this dissertation was carried out in accordance with the requirements of the University's Regulations and Code of Practice for Research Degree Programmes and that it has not been submitted for any other academic award. Except where indicated by specific reference in the text, the work is the candidate's own work. Work done in collaboration with, or with the assistance of, others, is indicated as such. Any views expressed in the dissertation are those of the author. SIGNED: DATE: v vi Table of Contents List of Acronyms xv Chapter 1 Introduction: The Internet in Mexico, coloniality and a decolonial orientation 1 Methodology 14 Chapter 2 On coordination without politics, coloniality and decolonial thinking 23 2.1 Con-founding Geographies: Social Construction of Technology, Critical Theory of 24 Technology and International Technological Development 2.2 The politics of technology, democratisation and an everyday technical 29 experience as someone else’s politics 2.3 An instrument of coordination without politics in a colonial context 32 2.4 Coloniality and decolonial thinking 37 2.5 The Political as locus of redefinition of instrumentality 41 2.6 Conclusion 44 Chapter 3 Governing Design/Designing Government The Internet as an instrument coordination 47 3.1. Designing the management of a complex technical and social system 49 3.1.1. ARPA and new forms of informal management 50 3.1.2. A different emphasis for a network model in a Cold War context: Paul Baran’s idea of packet-switching and the evident imperative of command and control 52 3.1.3. Technical and Social Strategy: Modularity, or the production of ignorance through hidden layers of control and operation 54 3.1.4. Points of authority and what government means: Military, 57 entrepreneurial and scientific control and orientation 3.1.5. The internetworking/Internet project and the Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP): Management through a simplified version of the system 61 vii viii 3.2. Expanding the protocol: Managing diversity through governed distribution, simplification and concealment 63 3.2.1. Defense Investment in the Commercial Potential of the networks 64 3.2.2. Harnessing the fragments of a complex system and accommodating heterogeneity in informatics, security and 65 social life 3.3. Commercialising the Internet: Privatisation, decentralisation and new markets 68 3.3.1. Exporting a protocol: The international expansion of TCP/IP and governed decentralisation 69 3.3.2. From computer programmers to final users: Privatisation as a shared cultural value 71 3.3.3. The flexibility, adaptability and expansion of US governmental, entrepreneurial and scientific orientation: Towards a global marketplace of new resources 73 3.4 Conclusion 75 Chapter 4 Governing the Internet and governing through the Internet: A globalising instrument and its coordination of resources 77 4.1 On instrumentality and the Internet: Who controls what and how? 78 4.2 Government at a distance: Global connectivity, Free flow of information, 80 Personalisation of identity and Mediation of Subjectification 4.2.1 A resource for security and freedom: Data 81 4.2.2 Global Connectivity: Global Interoperability, Cybersecurity 82 and global commerce in everyday life 4.2.3. Internet Freedom and the Free Flow of Information or the mediation that fragments collective meaning and orientation before capitalism 84 4.2.4. Personalisation of Identity or the production of a single digital identity 90 4.2.5. Mediation of Subjectification 92 4.3. Conclusion 94 ix x Chapter 5 The Mexican state, Digitisation and the Internet in Mexico Instrumentality and the engendering of trust as scientific and economic development 97 5.1. The Mexican connection to the Internet 98 5.2. Digitisation as a dispositif and a Digital Mexico 102 5.2.1 The National Digital Strategy and a new relationship between the State and Society 104 5.2.2. The index of digitisation and the Society of Information 107 5.2.3. Connectivity 109 5.2.4. Open Data 112 5.2.5. A Single Digital Identity 119 5.3. Conclusion 124 Chapter 6 #YoSoy132 and the Internet: On connected multitudes and the flexible coordination of fragments 127 6.1 Digital Activism in twenty-first century Mexico: Tecnopolítica and the concealment of hierarchies and strategic usage 128 6.2 The tecnopolítica