The Semiotics of Che Guevara: Affective Gateways

Alberto Korda’s famous photograph of Che Guevara titled the Guerrillero Heroico has been reproduced, modified and remixed countless times since it was taken on March 5, 1960, in Havana, Cuba.

This book looks again at this well-known mass-produced image to explore how an image can take on cultural force in diverse parts of the globe and legitimate varying positions and mass action in unexpected global political contexts.

Analytically, the book develops a comparative analysis of how images become attached to a range of meanings that are absolutely inseparable from their contexts of use. Addressing the need for a fluid and responsive approach to the study of visual meaning-making, this book relies on multiple methodologies such as semiotics, research-creation, multimodal discourse analysis, ethnography and phenomenology and shows how each method has something to offer toward the understanding of the social and cultural work of images in our globally oriented cultures.