Is resistance always counter-hegemonic?

ABSTRACT

Current reflections on practices of opposition are informed by the resistance/hegemony paradigm. The shortcomings of the resistance/hegemony paradigm are, as many critics have pointed, both a result of the wide extension and romanticization of resistance, and the mis-construal of hegemony as a top/down process of manipulating consciousness. The present article proposes to address some of the limitations of the resistance/hegemony paradigm by pondering when practices of resistance may be considered part of a counter-hegemonic struggle. To answer this question, it presents a typology of the different forms of resistance according to their relationship with counter-hegemony. This typology is based on the degree to which certain practices are incorporated or tolerated by the hegemonic model; how they articulate between challenges at the symbolic level and challenges to the production and distribution of material resources; and whether there is a process of articulation at play among different practices that may create a collective subject capable of putting forward claims to achieve political power.

Notes

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2. J. Hollander and R. Einwohner, ‘Conceptualizing Resistance’, Sociological Forum, 19 (2004), pp. 533–554 at p. 533.

3. L. Abu-Lughoud, ‘The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power Through Bedouin Women’, American Ethnologist, 17 (1990), pp. 41–55; Brown, op. cit., Ref. 1; W. Roseberry, ‘Hegemony and the Language of Contention’, in G. Joseph and D. Nugent (Eds.) Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), pp. 355–365; U. Chandra, ‘Rethinking Subaltern Resistance’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 45 (2015), pp. 563–573; J. Whitehead, ‘Au Retour a Gramsci: Reflections on Civil Society, Political Society and the State’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 45 (2015), pp. 660–676.

4. C. Tilly, ‘Domination, Resistance, Compliance…Discourse’, Sociological Forum, 6 (1991), pp. 593–602.

5. It should be said that not all antagonistic relations are hegemonic. In a reflection on his own work on resistance, James Scott emphasizes the difference between hegemonic politics and politics of domination. In his view, hegemony exists where there is a need for legitimization and consensus, while domination means raw power.

6. A. Bayat,’From Dangerous Classes to Quiet Rebels: Politics of the Urban Subaltern in the Global South’ International Sociology, 15 (2000), pp. 533–557; K. Faith, Unruly Women: The Politics of Confinement and Resistance (Vancouver, BC: Press Gang, 1993); V. Pitts, ‘Reclaiming the Female Body: Embodied Identity Work, Resistance and the Grotesque’, Body and Society, 4 (1998), pp. 67–84; A. Prasad and P. Prasad, ‘Everyday Struggles at the Workplace: The Nature and Implications of Routine Resistance in Contemporary Organizations’, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 15 (1998), pp. 225–257; J. Rubin, ‘Defining Resistance: Contested Interpretations of Everyday Acts’, Studies in Law, Politics and Society, 15 (1996), pp. 237–260; R. Weitz, ‘Women and their Hair: Seeking Power Through Resistance and Accommodation’ Gender & Society, 15 (2001), pp. 667–686.

7. S. Vinthagen, ‘Editorial: Some Notes on the Journal of Resistance Studies and Its Exploration of “Resistance”’, Journal of Resistance Studies, 1 (2015), pp. 5–11 at p.7.

8. M. Foucault, History of Sexuality Vol. 1 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), pp. 95–6.

9. C. Death, ‘Counter-Conducts as a Mode of Resistance: Ways of “Not Being Like That” in South Africa’, Global Society, 30 (2016), pp. 201–217; M. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2007), pp. 261–4.

10. Bayat, op. cit., Ref. 6.

11. M. Lilja and S. Vinthagen, ‘Dispersed resistance: unpacking the spectrum and properties of glaring and everyday resistance’, Journal of Political Power, 11 (2018), pp. 211–229.

12. These categories are: overt resistance, covert resistance, unwitting resistance, target-defined resistance, externally defined resistance, missed resistance, and attempted resistance (Hollander and Einwohner, op. cit., Ref. 2).

13. M. Sahlins, Waiting for Foucault (Cambridge: Prickly Pear Press, 1993), p. 17.

14. Brown, op. cit., Ref. 1.

15. Chandra, op. cit., Ref. 3, p. 565

16. Ibid.

17. J. Gledhill, Power and Its Disguises: Anthropological Perspectives on Politics (London: Pluto Press, 2000).

18. J. Scott, ’Resistance without Protest and without Organization: Peasant Opposition to the Islamic Zakat and the Christian Tithe’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 29 (1987), pp. 417–452 at p. 419.

19. Roseberry, op. cit., Ref. 3; K. Sivaramakrishnan, ‘Some Intellectual Genealogies for the Concept of Everyday Resistance’, in R. Savyasaachi (Ed.) Social Movements: Transformative Shifts and Turning Points (London: Routledge, 2017); D. Theodossopoulos, ‘The Ambivalence of Anti-Austerity Indignation in Greece: Resistance, Hegemony and Complicity,’ History and Anthropology, 25 (2014), pp. 488–506.

20. R. Fletcher, ‘What are we fighting for? Rethinking resistance in a Pewenche community in Chile’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 28 (2001), pp. 37–66; J. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).

21. Scott, ibid.

22. J. Scott, Decoding Subaltern Politics: Ideology, disguise and resistance in agrarian politics (London: Routledge, 2013), p. 30.

23. Ibid.

24. Roseberry, op. cit. Ref. 3; Whitehead, op. cit., Ref. 3.

25. As we shall see later, we cannot talk of full stability because hegemony is always threatened by counter-hegemonic options.

26. G. Williams, ‘Concept of “Egemonia” in the Thought of Antonio Gramsci: Some Notes on Interpretation’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 4 (1960), p. 586.

27. A. Gramsci, The Modern Prince (New York: International Publishers, 1957); A. Gramsci, The Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916–1935 (New York: New York University Press, 2000).

28. Roseberry, op. cit., Ref. 3.

29. Ibid.

30. R. Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 113.

31. Gramsci, Reader, op. cit., Ref. 27.

32. C. Mouffe, ‘Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci’, in T. Bennet, G. Martin, C. Mercer and J. Woolacott (Eds.) Culture, Ideology and Social Process (London: The Open University Press, 1981).

33. E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985), p. 125.

34. M. de Certau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Scott, op. cit., Ref. 20.

35. Williams, op. cit., Ref. 30, pp. 123–124.

36. M. Landy, ‘Culture and politics in the work of Antonio Gramsci’, Boundary 2, 14 (1986), pp. 49–70.

37. Theodossopoulos, op. cit., Ref. 19, p. 489.

38. Lilja and Vinthagen, op. cit., Ref. 11.

39. J. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 290.

40. Scott, op. cit., Ref. 20, p. 183.

41. Ibid, p. 186.

42. Moreover, Williams and Scott’s approach erases differences between different kinds of subaltern groups and different historical situations, assuming their resistance as unitary. Their approach makes it difficult to address situations in which certain social groups become involved in practices of hidden – or even open – resistance, while others do not; and does not leave place to analyse power relations among the different subordinated groups.

43. N. Fraser and A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?: A Political-Philosophical Exchange (London: Verso, 2003).

44. E. Laclau, On Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2005); E. Laclau, Debates y combates: por un nuevo horizonte de la politica (Buenos Aires: Fondo Editor de América Latina, 2008).

45. This differentiation corresponds with the diffrerentation made by Laclau between the logic of difference (addressing individual claims), and the logic of equivalence (the construction of chains of equivalences among different claims).

46. In Scott’s own words, ‘the logic of symbolic defiance is thus strikingly similar to the logic of everyday forms of resistance’ (Scott, op. cit., Ref. 20, p. 196).

47. Fraser and Honneth, op. cit., Ref. 43.

48. N. Fraser, ‘From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a “Post-Socialist” Age’, New Left Review, 212 (1995).

49. Chandra, op. cit., Ref. 3.

50. Fraser, op. cit., Ref. 48.

51. Ibid.

52. Fraser and Honneth, op. cit., Ref. 43.

53. Scott argues that collective action is not a requisite for effective resistance, and that the exploited classes can engage in this type of action only through the mediation of (and thus submission to) subordinate elites. Though true in very repressive societies, these claims do not apply to societies where the constitution of the political subject is always already part of counter-hegemonic practices.

54. A. Escobar, ‘Culture, practice and politics: Anthropology and the study of social movement’, Critique of Anthropology, 12 (1992), pp. 395–432; Ho, ‘From resistance to collective action’, op. cit., Ref. 1.

55. This distinction is not easy since, as Williams claims, ‘it is exceptionally difficult to distinguish between those which are really elements of some new phase of the dominant culture… and those which are substantially… oppositional to it’ (Williams, op. cit., Ref. 30, p. 123).

56. Scott, op. cit., Ref. 18, p. 437.

57. Bayat, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 536.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid.

60. B. Kohl and L. Farthing, Impasse in Bolivia: Neoliberal Hegemony and Popular Resistance (London: Zed Books, 2006); A. Pearce, Evo Morales and the Movimiento al Socialismo in Bolivia: The First Term in Context, 2006–2010 (London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London, 2011).

61. M. Koefoed, ‘Constructive Resistance in Northern Kurdistan: Exploring the Peace, Development and Resistance Nexus’, Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, 12 (2017), pp. 39–53; M. Sorensen, ‘Constructive Resistance; Conceptualizing and Mapping the Terrain’, Journal of Resistance Studies, 2 (2017), pp. 49–78,

62. Koefoed, ibid.; Sorensen, ibid.

63. Koefoed, ibid.

64. Scott, op. cit., Ref. 20, p. 189.

65. J. Limón, ‘Western Marxism and Folklore’, The Journal of American Folklore, 96 (1983) pp. 34–52 at p. 33.

66. A term used in Israel to refer to Jews who emigrated from Arab countries and their descendants.

67. Gramsci, Reader, op. cit., Ref. 27.

68. Whitehead, op. cit., Ref. 3.

69. D. della Porta and M. Andretta, ‘Protesting for Justice and Democracy: Italian Indignados?’, Contemporary Italian Politics, 5 (2013), pp. 23–37.

70. D. Haynes and G. Prakash, ‘Introduction, the Entanglement of Power and Resistance’, in D. Haynes and G. Prakash (Eds.), Contesting Power: Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Lilja and Vinthagen, op. cit., Ref. 11.

71. Laclau and Mouffe, op. cit., Ref. 33; Laclau, op. cit., Ref. 44.

72. E. Balibar, ‘Is a Philosophy of Human Civic Rights Possible? New Reflections on Equaliberty’, The South Atlantic Quarterly, 103 (2004), pp. 311–322.

73. J. Scott, ‘Afterword to “Moral Economies, State Spaces and Categorical Violences”’, American Anthropologist, 107 (2005), pp. 395–402.

74. M. Lilja, M. Baaz, M. Schulz and S. Vinthagen, ‘How resistance encourages resistance: theorizing the nexus between power, “Organised Resistance” and “Everyday Resistance”’ , Journal of Political Power, 10 (2017), pp 40–54.