Aesthetics and affective resistance in manga in Latin American digital culture

Abstract

This paper seeks to address how the study of manga allows us to think critically about contemporary social, political, and cultural challenges in Latin America. It argues that the relevance of manga lies not only in its mass appeal or entertainment value, but also in its potential to activate forms of sensitivity, reflection, and resistance that allow us to question the hegemonic structures that shape everyday life in globalized capitalism. Through its visual, aesthetic, and affective narratives, manga offers a space for intercultural mediation where meanings, values, and emotions are brought into play and can be reinterpreted from local Latin American contexts, enabling new forms of critical reading and symbolic appropriation. In contexts such as Latin America, it is important to highlight manga’s ability to incorporate critical discourses on neoliberalism, precariousness, and collective trauma. From a cultural communication perspective, manga creates a space where meanings, affections, and forms of micro-political resistance are negotiated, favoring readings that integrate the intimate and the structural, the global and the local. Thus, it becomes a key tool for thinking critically about the contemporary world from a predominantly digital culture. On the other hand, access to manga has historically been mediated by unofficial technological practices, such as piracy, fansubbing, and scanlation, which allowed Latin American fan communities to access content that was not available in their languages or countries. These practices not only facilitated access, but also generated new forms of active participation, where fans were not mere consumers, but translators, curators, and mediators of meaning, marking a pioneering form of digital literacy, collective use of software, collaborative online work, and decentralized distribution.