Abstract
The Zapatista movement that went public on January 1st, 1994, as a national liberation army occupying several towns in Chiapas, Mexico had long-lasting effects. Apart from inspiring other movements all over the world, the Zapatista movement introduced an alternative to the objective of taking political power through electoral victory or armed struggle. The alternative politics in question was based on equality that entailed a subjectification process. In this way, what allowed for the emergence of the alternative was, in Rancière's terms, politics as subject formation against the police order that attributes the proper places of the parts of society as well as defining the parts themselves. While there is a constant risk of cooptation of the moment of politics by the police order, the continuous subject formation through impossible identification in the Zapatista movement could make the movement the movement of all the excluded by reflecting the struggles of the other excluded groups into the movement and reflecting the movement into those other struggles.
Key Words: Zapatista Movement, Jacques Rancière, Politics, Subjectification, Impossible Identification
JEL Classification: H77, P32
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