On De-Pathologizing Resistance

Abstract

This introductory essay draws attention to two processes, the pathologization and exoticization of resistance. Working independently or in parallel, these two processes silence resistance by depoliticizing it as illogical or idealizing it in out-worldly terms. In both cases, resistance is caricatured as abnormal or exotic and distanced from current political priorities. I argue that analytical de-pathologization and de-exoticization of resistance can (a) provide valuable insights on the silencing of resistance and (b) help us understand the relationship between hegemony and resistance in terms that stretch beyond the moderately pathologizing view of political inaction as apathy or “false consciousness”. In my analysis, I also engage with James Scott's seminal view of resistance, which, despite its de-pathologizing orientation, fails to capture the dialectical relationship of resistance and hegemony. I suggest that attention to the pathologizing and exoticizing workings of power may reveal the complexity and compromising ambivalence of resistance and contribute to the broader field of resistance studies, conceived as renewed interest in insurrectionary movements, rebellion, and protest.

Keywords:

• Resistance
• Protest
• Pathologization
• Exoticization
• False consciousness
• Hegemony

The concept of resistance was not that long ago a great source of inspiration for anthropology. More recently, however, anthropological interest has shifted to a variety of related topics: urban protest, insurrectionary movements, anti-austerity mobilization, and the increasing discontent with hegemonic economic policies. These topics are undoubtedly timely and have captured the imagination of a new generation of researchers. Their popularity highlights an emerging need to reunite anthropological discussion about resistance in a more encompassing conversation. In this introductory essay, I take a small step in this direction by outlining the relevance of two conceptual tools that can encourage such a unified conversation: the notions of de-pathologizing and de-exoticizing resistance.

The de-exoticization of resistance invites an approach to the study of resistance that aims to expose the denigrating or idealizing caricaturing of the resisting experience. If exoticization idealizes resistance as taking place in another (liminal) space and time, the de-exoticizing perspective repositions the analysis of resistance within social life. Similarly, the de-pathologization of resistance attempts to redress our view of resistance by exposing the pathologizing interpretations of politicians, institutions, ideological frameworks—the various “pathologizers” of the resisting experience. To the degree that the pathologizing gaze strives to de-normalize resistance by (re)presenting it as less-than-rational or worthy of preoccupation, the de-pathologing perspective attempts to refocus attention on the cultural embeddedness and situated meaningfulness of resistance.

Those who have reason to be threatened by the challenge posed by resistance, and the possibility of change this challenge engenders, are tempted to engage—and often do—in the practice of undermining resistance, de-rationalizing it as illogical (a social abnormality), representative of disorder, or the result of impulsive behaviour. This pathologizing process is sometimes complemented by an idealizing attitude, which is nonetheless condescending: it endorses the exoticization of resistance in sensational, yet patronizing and caricaturing terms. These two tendencies towards resistance—which pathologize and exoticize—intersect with each other in various permutations to re-represent resistance as a matter out of place. Even previously established movements, such as the feminist project of dismantling patriarchy, as Ortner illustrates in her contribution to this special issue, can be sidelined in terms of an idealizing (but exoticizing) tendency to see resistance as representative of an “other” (static) time of previous mobilization.

In anthropology, a number of critical anthropological interventions have contributed to the refinement of “resistance” as an analytical concept, which resulted in a more nuanced treatment of its complexity and local meaningfulness (see among many, Abu-Lughod 1990; Keesing 1992; Gledhill 1994; Ortner 1995). Despite intermittent complaints that the concept of resistance has been overused and over-generalized (see Brown 1996), successive waves of theoretical engagement and review have resulted in enhancing its relevance for anthropology and social analysis more generally (see for example, Miller, Rowlands, and Tilley 1989; Reed-Danahay 1993; Gutmann 1993; Kaplan and Kelly 1994; Fox and Starn 1997; Moore 1998; Fletcher 2001; Seymour 2006; Urla and Helepololei 2014). In fact, in some fields, for example in anthropological work written about Latin America, the idea of resistance has remained a “hot” and stimulating topic since the 1970s. Gledhill's (2012) recent volume, New Approaches to Resistance in Brazil and Mexico, provides a good example of the centrality of the concept in questioning power and understanding social change.

In other areas of anthropological engagement, a majority of recent analyses approach resistance-related topics through the lens of alternative themes: occupation (Hickel 2012; Juris 2012; Juris and Razsa 2012; Razsa and Kurnik 2012), social movements (Edelman 2001; Nash 2005), metropolitan protest (Rabinowitz 2014), anti-austerity protest (Theodossopoulos 2013, 2014), the “Arab Spring”/anti-authoritarian revolution (Elyachar and Winegar 2012; Werbner and Spellman-Poots 2014), militant investigation/activist scholarship (Shukaitis and Graeber 2007; Hale 2008; Graeber 2009; Urla and Helepololei 2014), and more generally, a critique of neoliberalism (for example, Gledhill 2004; Harvey 2007; Ortner 2011; Elyachar 2012; Muehlebach 2012).

I argue that it is time to consider reuniting academic discussion about the above-mentioned topics under the broader field of resistance studies. Such an inclusive perspective will allow the “related topics” to benefit from four decades of theoretical fine-tuning that have resulted in conceptualizing the relationship between domination and resistance beyond binary terms (see also, Gledhill 1994, 2012; Ortner 1995). The older analyses from the 1990s, as Urla and Helepololei's (2014) demonstrates, can provide a valuable framework for addressing contemporary challenges related to the study of occupation movements, anti-neoliberal protest, and activist research. In turn, and as Gledhill (2012, 3) suggests, the broader field of resistance studies will benefit from enlarging its perspective to include “contentious politics”, the collective, non-institutional challenges to power that also include social movements (Tarrow 1996, 874).

In a similar manner, academic analysis will benefit from expanding our view of resistance to embrace the countless local understandings of the resisting experience. The exact label of each particular movement is of lesser importance. Labelling and categorizing resistance can contribute to its essentialization as a limited and self-contained problem that can be potentially repaired or patched up (Shukaitis and Graeber 2007, 32). Thus, instead of imprisoning our analysis in narrow definitions of an explosive, always transforming experience—such as resistance—we will do much better if we focus our critical attention on the interplay of resistance with the workings of power, and the distortions and compromises that arise out of this interplay. The de-pathologizing and de-exoticizing perspective I outline in the following sections provide an antidote to such distortions.

Exoticizing Resistance

The spectre of exoticization sets some of the most challenging obstacles to the study of resistance; these are hard to overcome, as they relate to more than one exoticized view: one that denigrates resistance, another that idealizes it, and many others that denigrate and idealize resistance simultaneously. Many of these exoticizing predispositions are often deeply entrenched in the imagination of resistance as stemming from a world exterior to power. They may refer to indigenous leaders protesting for land claims, or working-class union leaders striking for pay-rise, nevertheless such views, in their exoticizing capacity, reduce complexity to caricature, and social change to performative imagery. The resisting subjects are either explicitly denigrated—as “primitive”, violent and “uncivilised”—or idealized, but patronizingly degraded—as noble (but savage), bigger than life (yet somewhat unrealistic), idealistic (although naive), daring (but nonetheless temporary); or often, more than one permutation of the above.

In both its denigrating and idealizing capacity, the exoticization of resistance is patronizing. It reflects upon the established order—and supposedly, its reversal—from a vantage point of relative safety: usually a comfortable position not directly threatened by the type of resistance in question. Thus, even when the exoticized gaze contemplates social change, it accentuates the liminal character of resistance, idealizing while parochial-izing the exotic-naïve, the exotic-pure-and-uncompromising, the exotic-heroic (but out of this world). Caricaturing of this sort encourages the silencing of resistance and its indirect dismissal as temporary, romantic, and inconsequential.

The simplification engendered by exoticizing resistance usually starts by providing a name for it. Labelling resistance—for example, “Occupy Everywhere”, “Indignant Citizens Movement”, “the Zapatistas Movement”—opens the door for its stereotypical reduction, the essentialization of the sub-categories of resistance into static images of homogenous, undifferentiated resisting subjects. Such frozen images of the resistance of Others—with a label—inspire the imagination of resistance from afar: the safe distance of the exoticizing gaze. Sanitized (and idealized) images of resistance enacted elsewhere, serve as decontextualized examples to support our arguments: the anonymous indignant protestor beaten by police outside the Greek parliament or the anonymous Kayapo leader recording his oppressor with a video camera.

This process of placing resistance at a convenient distance (in physical or social space) remind us of how colonial powers essentialized indigenous ethnic groups (and their resistance)—freezing them in time as naturalized unchanging categories (see Monteiro 2012); a distortion propagated, with less sinister intentions, by old fashioned anthropology (Fabian 1983). In a similarly exoticizing manner, “Occupy London”, Taksim Square, or Plaza del Sol become undifferentiated moments, muted and frozen, tribalized, but firmly placed (as exotic liminal exceptions) within an established framework of power imbalances. In this respect, the exoticized idealization or derision of resistance naturalize existing inequalities as solid and unchanging blocks that obstruct or excite resistance, hence discouraging the questioning of inequality itself, and its social parameters.

There is a further problem with the exoticization of resistance: the binary logic it often perpetuates, dividing the word into dominators/power-holders set against dominated/powerless victims. The resulting oppositions exaggerate the differences between elites and disenfranchized groups, and even worse, encourage a homogenous treatment of the polarized categories. Such a homogenizing view detracts analytic attention from the ambivalence experienced by resisting social actors (Ortner 1995, 187) and the grey area of interests that divide (or partially unite) them. In real life, subalterns may resist some things, while accept other things, or even dominate other subalterns (Gledhill 1994, 89). In fact, it is often the articulation of not radically separated interests (or political positions) that determines the future of a protest, encouraging complicity or adaptation to pre-existing and available structures of power or inequality.

Another binary is provided by Scott's (1990) Goffmanesque dichotomy between “off-stage” (hidden, indirect) and “on-stage” (public, engaging with power) resistance. In this model, the hidden transcripts of the disempowered emerge within autonomous subaltern spaces that appear to be uncontaminated by power (Gledhill 1994). This very dichotomy—power vs. a world untouched by power—exoticizes subaltern discourse by isolating it in contexts of secretive opposition, what Gledhill describes as “muttered defiance behind the backs of the dominant” (2012, 6). As several anthropologists have noticed, this view perpetuates the homogenization of the resisting subjects and their internal politics (Gledhill 1994, 2012; Ortner 1995; Moore 1998; Fletcher 2001). In real life, it is hard to find subaltern spaces completely uncolonized by power, while in resisting domination, subalterns also (partly) reproduce the categorical structures of domination (Keesing 1992).

So far I have identified several analytical obstacles that emerge as a result of the exoticization of resistance. Yet, I would like to end this discussion on an optimistic note. There is some scope to rescue the idealization of resistance from its caricaturing propensities, and identify a spark of inspiration within idealization. Kapferer (2013) has recently attempted to refigure the anthropological use of the exotic, focusing on the moment of the exotic recognition: “the exotic as a challenge to understanding”, the discovery of new possibilities “at the edge of knowledge” (Kapferer 2013). The problem, for Kapferer, is not the exotic per se, but the dualisms it propagates. From this point of view, the recognition of the resistance of Others, however, exoticizing this may be, can serve as a moment of inspiration—a recognition of the possibility of change—encouraging rifts with established power. The resistance of Others, however, simplified or idealized, can be “contagiously” inspiring across national borders or political regimes. The Arab spring and the anti-austerity resistance movements (in 2011–2013) are good recent examples of this type of inspirational contagion.

Pathologizing Resistance

There is a further danger lurking in the accentuation of liminality and eccentricity of resistance: this is its naturalization as “uncivilized” or impulsive behaviour, presented as irrational or representative of disorder. This denigrating view (and its countless nuances) encourage a perception of resistance as a “pathology”, a problem for society, or a negation of social order and its established values. For those who take the first step in describing resistance as less-than-rational, it is only a matter of time before they assume that it also represents a type of “social abnormality”, a malfunction that needs to be remedied. In consequence, the implicit or explicit pathologization of resistance is intimately connected with its official or unofficial silencing, under the pretext that resistance is atypical, illogical, and unreasonable.

When applied to social processes, pathologization—the tendency to treat a condition as psychologically abnormal—usually aims at de-legitimizating the social process in question: its dismissal as either detrimental or unreasonable, or even unhealthy and potentially destructive. In the previous section, I discussed how idealization or denigration—two faces of exoticization—contribute to the silencing of resistance: by distancing resistance from ourselves as something enacted in another (exotic, liminal, or isolated) social space or time, it is possible to ignore resistance altogether, or downgrade it as a lesser priority. We see a similar process at work when resistance is pathologized as abnormality. Pathologization works hand in hand with idealization and denigration to render resistance insignificant, yet it shakes our faith in resistance even further.

Pathologized resistance represents a deviation from reason, when “the reasonable”—broadly conceived—stands for the established order. This form of stigmatization capitalises upon the visible expression of emotion in resistance, translating the passion of those who dare to protest as lack of judgement or common sense. Violence, even if this is exercised to suppress resistance, can be similarly used to highlight its precarious nature, cultivating further the image of pathology; the violent and hot-tempered protesters remain stigmatized as violent and hot-tempered even when they evidently fall victim to brutal suppression. “They must have been crazy to challenge the police at the first place!” argue those who see resistance as an anomaly.

The stress on what is presented as defective logic relies on selective de-contextualization. Pathologizing narratives rely on isolating the complexity of resistance from its representation. The emotional, anti-structural elements of resistance are separated from their situational logic, usually by shifting attention to those aspects of resistance that appear—from the outside—to be sensational, over-zealous, and perhaps somewhat “irrational”. The resulting view of resistance as the product of sub-rational minds, hides from view its contextual specificities—which may be too complex and not directly translatable to outsiders—superimposing sensationalism (resistance seen in performative terms) on meaning (resistance substantiated by culturally embedded logic). Stripped of justification, resistance may then be decoded as abnormal behaviour, unconscionable conduct, yet another rebellion that looks structurally similar to so many others—an eye-grabbing two-minute video clip in the news.

As we have seen so far, the pathologization of resistance relies heavily on reducing complexity to essentialist stereotypes. Helepololei, who has conducted fieldwork among squatters in Barcelona, provide us with a good example of this homogenizing process (Urla and Helepololei 2014). The police and state intelligence agencies depicted the resisting subjects as rebels without a cause—having no “rational” economic theory or political agenda—thus, being “unreasonable” political actors unable to negotiate. Rationalisations of this type close the door to political dialogue, justifying the suppression of resistance under the “pretexts of security and counter-terrorism” (Urla and Helepololei 2014). Similarly, Rabinowitz in his contribution to this special issue illuminates how the established authorities in Israel succeeded in “de-legitimizing” the urban protest movement as violent and dangerous for public security. The protagonists of the 2011 social justice demonstrations in Tel-Aviv were stopped from protesting in 2012 through a well-orchestrated hegemonic attempt to issue a warning against and violently suppress occupation-related activities. The authorities rationalized their regime of suppression in securitization terms: they appealed on the grounds of public safety, contested the purpose of resistance (as unnecessary or unreasonable), and essentialized the protesters—as if mass protest represented a homogenous ideological project or an undeserving underclass (Rabinowitz 2014).

Thus, pathologization confines the explosive meaningfulness of resistance to a static mould, a template that fits all possible forms of resistance to a singular and taken for granted frame of meaning. Such a reductionist treatment of resistance is not surprising if we consider that the threat of resistance—for those who see it as threatening—emerges from the questioning of established conventions or truths. Without a doubt, narratives of resistance often emerge when established interpretations of political and social life fail to explain visible injustices. Consequently, and as far as the resisting mind upsets the status quo by challenging certainty, pathologizing explanations of resistance attempt to re-establish confidence in one or other official explanation. To the degree that resistance provides innovative interpretations of events and relationships—supported by alternative exegeses of justice and injustice in the world—those who see resistance as “illogical” respond by reiterating their preferred official reading of causality, usually a rationalization of the status quo.

The analytical proclivity of pathologizing resistance as conspiratorial is a case in point. As with conspiracy theory (Marcus 1999; Sanders and West 2003), the discourse that supports resistance is built upon culturally meaningful values; its underlying logic is often hidden within what may be seen from outside as contradiction. Commentators who pathologize conspiracy—including academics (Hofstadter 1965; Pipes 1996)—choose to stress the inconsistencies in conspiratorial thinking, “the curious leap in imagination” that such narratives entail (Hofstadter 1965, 37). Nonetheless, resisting local actors on the peripheries of power may entertain conspiracy-prone ideas with a much more political intention in mind, such as, for example, to expose power and shed light on its abuses (Brown and Theodossopoulos 2000). They may search for meaning in underlying patterns in history (the lessons from the past), interpreting the present in terms of recurring themes in the workings of power (Sutton 1998).

Anthropology has shown that such alternative readings of history and political causality, far from being worthy of pseudo-psychological treatment, deserve recognition as culturally embedded “sense making practices” (Sutton 2003; see also, Sanders and West 2003; Kirtsoglou 2006; Kirtsoglou and Theodossopoulos 2010). The pathologizing treatment of conspiracy as irrational and paranoid shows how pervasive the de-legitimization of anti-hegemonic logic as illogical can be; especially under the reign of neoliberal “hyper-rationalization” (Comaroff and Comaroff 2001, 44). “Conspiracy theories start their trajectory just like other theories, and only later do they become (labelled as) conspiracy theories” (Pelkmans and Machold 2011, 74). It is this process of labelling that represents what I call here pathologization. When conspiracy is unquestionably equated with paranoia, resistance may also be discharged, in turn, as conspiratorial, along the lines of very similar pathologizing naturalisations.

Hegemony Yes, “False” Consciousness No

One of the greatest challenges in the study of resistance is to explain why its initial momentum so often fades away. Certainly there are various structural implications that explain the decline of many resistance and protest movements: the exhaustion of the protesters, their limited knowledge of hegemony's bureaucracy, the fragmentation of the resisting group, or the co-optation of protesting leaderships. Even more often, resistance falters due to lack of available resources, as in most cases, those who resist have less means at their disposal than those resisted. Such evident imbalances encourage us to put in perspective Abu-Lughod's insightful reversal of Foucault's' axiom—“where there is resistance, there is power” (1990, 42). Resistance may engender new forms of power, yet the power of resistance, apart from being corruptive or occasionally divisive, is very often framed in terms of the very categories resisted. This last observation invites attention to the issue of consciousness.

Those who resist resistance have good reasons to target its logic and cultural meaningfulness. Often this take the form of relentless undermining, de-legitimizing, or, to follow the analysis presented so far, “pathologizing”: the systematic dismissal of resistance as illogical, wicked, and immoral—a threat to security or civil order, a product of inchoate or dangerous minds, and an act of unlawful rebellion and terrorism. Over and over again, the justification for ascribing illegal status to resistance relies on its previous systematic pathologization. Undoubtedly, the undermining of the moral or ideological basis of resistance can shed some light on why resistance so often declines with time, or fails to achieve its original purpose.

Several generations of Marxist thinkers have engaged with this problem, and a related question: to what degree do the disenfranchized internalize the pathologizing interpretations of their dominators? The orthodox Marxist position attempts to expose this process, by presenting it as a paradox: the disempowered act against their obvious interests in a self-defeating manner; they are prevented from having a clear view of their exploitation due to their “false” political consciousness, the product of ideological mystification. Although ideological mystification often relies on and contributes to the pathologization of resistance, the use of the adjective “false” in classic Marxist constructions essentializes subaltern consciousness, reducing political awareness to either a pathologized or non-pathologized alternative.

Later Marxists views, such as for example the Gramscian perspective, escaped the problems of this narrow conception of political consciousness by developing the notion of hegemony. If hegemony, in strict Marxist terms, creates ideology, for Gramsci, it constructs a broader domain of cultural meaningfulness that includes material, economic, and social relations. This broader view of how hegemony propagates itself, even within the premises of those who oppose it, provides a very compelling explanation of the elusive endurance of dominant ideological and political trends, such as, for example, capitalism-disguised-as-neoliberalism. Yet, for the purposes of this discussion, I would like to turn my attention to a theorist of resistance who has criticized the idea of false consciousness.

In his influential work on indirect resistance, Scott (1985, 1990) critically engages with the hegemony-and-mystification thesis as this is represented by, what he calls, the “thick” and “thin” versions of false consciousness. The “thick” versions of false consciousness, he argues, attribute “consent” in the misguided acquiescence of the dominated (who are persuaded by dominant ideology to accept the values that sustain their exploitation), while the “thin” versions interpret compliance as “resignation” (based on the imposed conviction that the dominant order is inescapable or natural) (Scott 1990, 72). In contrast to the premises of most Marxist points of view, Scott has stressed the subaltern awareness of domination, including the clear view subalterns have of their dominators and their capacity to visualize a hypothetical reversal of their situation.

Indirectly, and through his objections to the notion of false consciousness, Scott has contributed to the de-pathologization of indirect resistance. He brought to light the non-dramatic dimensions of resistance, the tactics of subversion in day-to-day life. The meaning and purposefulness of such everyday tactics inspires a reconsideration of the distinction between pre-political and political consciousness (Gledhill 2012, 8). In particular, Scott's emphasis on the ability of the disenfranchized to subvert certain aspects of their exploitation draws attention to subaltern agency. We might be prepared to accept that dispossessed groups are not that much mystified as to enjoy or passively accept their predicament. Their small daily acts of insubordination—“weapons of the weak” in Scott's terms—demonstrate a certain degree of awareness of the order of domination: subalterns undermine it, although temporarily and covertly, because they understand its subtle workings. Thus, the off-stage discourse of subordinate groups—“the hidden transcript”, according to Scott—is not simply true or false (Tilley 1991, 597), but deserves analysis on its own right and its own terms.

These considerations invite us to see in some de-pathologizing light, the notion of “false consciousness” itself. There is nothing fundamentally irrational in the inaction or complicity of the dominated. The attribution of “false consciousness” in classic Marxist analysis dismisses alternative, culturally embedded but non-resisting logics as pathological—illogical, apathetic, and self-defeating—a practice of de-legitimization that resembles conservative neoliberal rationalizations. Although Scott does not make this point explicitly, his persistent opposition to the falsification of subaltern consciousness provides useful insights for the reconsideration of the “false consciousness” thesis, or preferably, its revision in more politically correct terms.

At the same time, however, and in the context of the same topic of debate, Scott (1985, 1990) has made a fundamental mistake, which lies at the heart of his classic analysis of resistance. His separation between hidden and public transcripts hides from view the degree to which such discourses are “intimately intertwined” (Roseberry 1994, 361). Subaltern resistance is not autonomous from the wider cultural and politico-economic relationships that make it meaningful and morally justifiable at the first place (Gledhill 1994, 2012). “There is never a single, unitary, subordinate” (Ortner 1995, 175), or a completely autonomous subaltern subject (Keesing 1992). Even hegemony itself is not static and fixed, but adapts to its ideological opposition—as the top-down pathologization of resistance consistently demonstrates.

Gramsci's insightful perspective can help us contextualize this problem. His view of hegemony is often misread—conflated with culture (Kurtz 1996) or a non-anthropological understanding of culture (Crehan 2002), or simplified as a finished, static ideological project (Rosebery 1994)—while in fact it was originally conceived as a dynamic process that involves tension and negotiation between diverse social forces. Rabinowitz, in this special issue, succinctly compares Gramsci and Scott. While Gramsci's perspective can help us understand that “hegemonies are built on people's inclination to suspend the critique of power”, as Rabinowitz (2014) stresses, “Scott's analysis leaves little room for such consent”; the dominated and disenfranchized appear to be “consistently aware of the injustices that shape their lives”. It is in this respect that Scott over-rationalizes the subaltern as consistently rational (see Gledhill 2012). Such a generalizing approach, argues Rabinowitz (2014), “essentialises agents of domination as well as their victims”.

Thus, although we may feel compelled to praise Scott for de-pathologizing subaltern agency, it is not hard to see that his emphasis on the rationality of the resisting—representing a consistent and uninterrupted vision of the order of domination—equates agency with narrow calculation, or what Sahlins (1978) would critically describe as “practical reason”. “Scott presents the subaltern”, clarifies Gledhill, “as a deeply knowing, non-mystified elaborator of rich cultural practices of disguised resistance inhibited from more overt action only by a shrewd assessment of its impracticality” (2012, 9). Conceived in such calculative terms, indirect resistance is constrained by its practical functionality, isolated within hidden transcripts muttered under one's breath and is thus expediently pathologized (by dominators) as conspiratorial.

Analyses of resistance that focus too much on the calculative rationality of resisting actors may hide from view the simple fact that discourses of resistance communicate with—and sometimes form in juxtaposition to—previous discourses that represent, more or less explicitly, a dominant view of the world. Urla and Helepololei (2014) underline the contribution of Foucault in reminding us that the logic of resistance takes shape within established systems of knowledge. Situated actors may sincerely attempt to challenge hegemony, yet their success is often impeded by broader historical interpretations—for example, nationalism—that are made available by the hegemonic regime in question. In the empirical case study I provide in this special issue, I present a good example of the limits of anti-hegemonic discourse. An increasing number of citizens afflicted by austerity in Greece turn against the calculative logic of the economic establishment, challenging in their everyday commentary Germany's hegemony in the European Union, and the role of more powerful nations in the world order. The resulting anti-hegemonic critique, however, is often tainted by xenophobic or nationalist overtones and recycles previous hegemonic-cum-nationalist and cryptocolonial narratives (cf. Herzfeld 2007, 2011).

As a result, indirect resistance, despite challenging power, is not, in most cases, completely isolated from pre-existing hegemonic ideological influences, which, in turn, shape how local actors interpret causality when they attempt to explain their current predicament. In this respect, Scott, despite his perceptive de-pathologization of indirect resistance, fails to get across what Gramsci conveys so well, a relational and processual view of subalterity. Neither static nor isolated, the categories of domination as accepted by subalterns—and the categories of domination as adapted to subaltern opposition—are shaped dialectically in unpredictable but (locally) meaningful configurations. The process of resistance, Keesing aptly observes, “is a highly complex dialectical one in which the categorical structures of domination may be negated or inverted—hence doubly subverted—as well as reproduced in opposition” (1992, 238).

Resisting as a Way of Life

When resistance marks a great rift of structural inequality—as it repeatedly does—small and great victories may appear ephemeral or as bearing little consequence to the everyday life of disempowered but resisting subjects. This is one of the greatest limitations of resistance; it may address inequality, but often has little effect in reducing the structural violence that inequality has engendered. Resistance may be successful in generating change, yet change may be limited in scope: the result of compromise or merely a change of roles—frequently, the replacement of one elite by another. In such cases, those who resist may find themselves in the position of resisting for long periods of time or resisting again and again in successive bursts of uprising, provoked by similar abuses of power by the very same elites. For some groups, resistance may become a way of life.

Even more predictably, when inequality is deeply entrenched in the fabric of a particular nation or society, the history of a group's resistance may seem as if it repeats itself. Gledhill (2014) presents us with a case of protracted resistance in Mexico. The Nahua inhabitants of Ostula have defended the integrity of their community for generations against all sorts of outsiders: non-indigenous elites (desiring Ostulan lands and resources), and more recently, criminal organizations (operating with impunity in its territory). The resilience of the Ostulans represents an ethos of resisting against the odds—a culture of resistance—a permanent feature of social life. Their periodic victories do not eradicate structural or physical violence; thus there is no foreseeable end to their struggles. Resistance here substitutes government inaction and the failure of institutions that uphold social justice.

Very often, the reasons that may lead to resistance at the first place are never resolved, and the resisting subjects realize, as Elyachar (2014) shows, that “the tail-event of the impossible and unimaginable has become the stuff of everyday life”. More often than not the frustration of those who resist, but cannot see how their struggle has improved their everyday lives, remains unnoticed. There are very few avenues that allow outsiders access to the self-interrogation of resistance, with the exception of a rare ethnography or a penetrating novel. Capturing this sense of exhaustion, desperation, and more importantly, self-interrogation enables us to see deeper into the process of resistance and the contradictions that emerge in day-to-day life after resistance. “Why did we make the revolution?” ask Elyachar's Egyptian respondents two years after the 2011 revolution, “salaries are low, and prices are higher … what is going to happen?” (Elyachar 2014).

Impermanent and yet incomplete, resistance as experienced in the everyday remains one of the greatest challenges for social analysis—a big ethnographic hole that pre-1995 ethnographies, for the most part, failed to fill (Ortner 1995). Various questions remain unanswered: How do local actors deal with the unfinished status of resistance? How easy or difficult is it to switch from the modality of resistance to the mundane concerns of the everyday? How incompleteness—the unending and protracted nature of most resistance movements—shapes the identities of resisting subjects? It may be difficult, undoubtedly, to answer these questions, yet the questions themselves—which stem from anthropological engagement, including the articles in this special issue—demonstrate that the social experience of resistance is not taken for granted anymore in social analysis.

Conclusion

However incomplete, resistance is a necessary ingredient of change in social life: a series of dialogues among many parties (Howe 1998, 6), small constituents of a never-ending process. The people with whom anthropologists share their lives during fieldwork say that resistance is what they do in their everyday struggles (Gledhill 2012, 1–2; 2014). We may choose to create categories to refer to these struggles and create new typologies and sub-fields of study, such as the various resistance-related topics I referred to in the introduction—revolutionary demonstration, urban protest, insurrectionary movement, anti-austerity mobilization, and anti-globalization. Yet, I doubt if the analytical fragmentation of the multiple experiences of resistance will facilitate analysis. Adding “a name on the directions of tomorrow's revolutionary fervour”, Shukaitis and Graeber argue, can be “the first step in institutionalizing it, in fixing it” (Shukaitis and Graeber 2007, 32).

An awareness of this danger—the essentializing de-politicization of resistance—encouraged me to focus on its exoticization and pathologization, two processes that distantiate the resisting experience from its actual context, to Otherize subaltern struggle as a matter out of place (and time) or delegitimize discontent as impulsive, illogical, or representative of disorder. The view of resistance as fixed in space and time—sensationalized in idealistic terms or naturalized as unconscionable conduct—is stripped of its political referents. Positioning oneself at a distance to decode social interaction as a remote object of study may perhaps undermine our capacity to appreciate the interplay of social practice (Juris 2007, 165). A more engaged type of research, as Urla and Helepololei argue in this special issue, can complement Ortner's (1995) previous call for a thicker ethnographic perspective in resistance, and help us understand the constituent power of those bursts of resisting action that reshape social life (Shukaitis and Graeber 2007).

Earlier perspectives in the study of resistance have redirected attention on the purposefulness of non-dramatic resisting actions. The work of Scott (1985, 1990) has made a great impact in this respect, reconceptualizing indirect resistance beyond the moderately pathologizing concept of “false” consciousness. Nevertheless, Scott's emphasis on the tactics of the disenfranchized has isolated indirect resistance from the pervasive influence of hegemony, perpetuating the analytical separation of subaltern discourse from its broader ideological and political nexus. In other words, Scott exoticized resistance as taking place in a world exterior to power, and several anthropologists have aptly criticized him for that (Starn 1992; Gutmann 1993; Gledhill 1994, 2012; Gal 1995; Moore 1998; Fletcher 2001).

Therefore, instead of isolating resistance in hidden transcripts of uncontaminated subaltern consciousness—exoticizing the resisting actor as an uncompromising icon (a caricature)—social analysis would benefit from focusing on the local meaningfulness of resistance in “culturally intimate” contexts (Herzfeld 1997); a meaningfulness that emerges from creativity, struggle, and compromise in social experience. Classic anthropological accounts have taken important steps towards this direction, explaining the cultural embeddedness of resistance within local meaningful contexts, parts of broader regimes of power (see among many, Comaroff 1985; Stoler 1985; Herzfeld 1985; Ong 1987; Comaroff and Comaroff 1991; Howe 1998). Such nuanced accounts have captured the ambivalence of resistance (Ortner 1995), its metaphoric richness (Keesing 1992), and implications with power (Abu-Lughod 1990, Foucault). As with other all-embracing concepts—including some that resisting actors oppose, such as globalization for example (Theodossopoulos 2010)—resistance is empowered by its semantic ambiguity, which embraces so many types of local discontent.

Successful analytical constructs are often flexible enough to benefit from imprecision. The imprecision of the notion “hegemony”—as that of resistance—“has made it good to think with” and inspires, rather than constrains, analysis (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991, 19). In their interrelationship, hegemony and resistance are subject to continuous transformation. Thus, a processual view of hegemony (Williams 1977) will, in turn, inspire a processual view of resistance, realized dialectically as a response to hegemony. In this respect, the pathologization and exoticization of resistance, which may take the form of either “scientific rationalism” (Bourdieu 1998) or idealizing sensationalism, can be seen as an unending processes, continuously adapting to confront (and silence) defiant and transformative challenges.

As a remedy to the resulting de-rationalization of resistance, we may choose to adopt a de-pathologizing perspective to guide us in our studies of engagement with power. Such engagements may include a variety of timely topics: urban protest, occupation movements, anti-totalitarian rebellion, anti-globalization, and anti-neoliberalism. And indeed, I see no better time to put forward a call for the resurgence of resistance studies—de-pathologized, de-exoticized, and conceived as a broader field—than our current moment of engaging with power; perceived not as “alochronic” (Fabian 1983) projection, limminal, exotic, de-rationalized caricature of abnormality, but re-contextualized in the here and now of social experience.

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the seminar of the Anthropology department at the University of Manchester and the Think Tank seminar at the University of Kent. I am grateful to all colleagues for the constructive criticisms and comments.