Counter-conducts in South Africa: Power, Government and Dissent at the World Summit

Abstract

This article introduces Michel Foucault's concept of ‘counter-conducts’—‘struggles against the processes implemented for conducting others’—in order to rethink the relationship between power and dissent. It proposes an ‘analytics of protest’ to address forms of resistance, through which this article focuses on the mentalities, practices, and subjectivities produced at protests in South Africa at the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development. These protests were some of the largest public expressions of dissent since the end of apartheid, yet the article illuminates the ways in which power and resistance are mutually reliant and co-constitutive. These summit counter-conducts both contested and reinforced existing power relations, and were disciplined by discourses of civility/violence, partnership/disruption, and local/foreign from state authorities and the media. They were also disciplined by internal discourses of liberal dissent and radical protest from within the movements themselves. The article concludes that, from a Foucauldian perspective on counter-conducts, forms of dissent that are strategic, reversible, and flexible are preferable to those that are sedimented and entrenched.

Este artículo presenta el concepto de las ‘contra-conductas’ de Michel Foucault—‘luchas contra los procesos implementados para conducir a otros’—para replantear la relación entre el poder y la disidencia. Propone un ‘análisis de protesta’ para enfrentarse a las formas de resistencia, a través del cual, este artículo se enfoca en las mentalidades, prácticas y subjetividades producidas en las protestas de Sudáfrica, en la Cumbre Mundial de Johannesburgo 2002, sobre el Desarrollo Sostenible. Estas protestas fueron unas de las mayores expresiones públicas de disidencia desde el fin del apartheid, no obstante, el artículo ilumina las maneras como el poder y la resistencia dependen mutuamente entre sí y son co-constitutivas. Esta cumbre contra-conduce las relaciones de poder existentes tanto controvertidas como reforzadas, y fueron disciplinadas por las autoridades estatales y los medios, a través de debates sobre civilidad/violencia, sociedad/disturbio y local/extranjero. De igual manera, fueron disciplinados por debates internos de disidencia liberal y protesta radical desde el interior de los mismos movimientos. El artículo concluye que desde una perspectiva Foucaultiana sobre las contra-conductas, las formas de disidencia que son estratégicas, reversibles y flexibles, son preferibles a aquellas que están sedimentadas y arraigadas.

为了重新思考权力和异议二者间的关系，本文引入了米歇尔•福柯的概念“反抗行为”，即“对控制他人而实施的进程加以抵制和斗争”。本文提出了“抗议分析法”，用来分析反抗的形式。通过该分析法，本文重点研究了在2002年南非约翰内斯堡可持续发展世界峰会上抗议行为所表现出的心态、实践活动和主体意识。这些抗议行为是自种族隔离政策结束以来异议最公开表达的一部分。然而本文阐明的是权力和抗议是如何相互依存和相互建构的。此次峰会上的抗议行为既质疑又加强了现存的权力关系，且被政府当局和媒体的文明与暴力、合作与破坏、本土与外邦等话语所支配。它们也被来自抗议运动本身的自由派异议和激进派抗议的内部话语所规训。本文的结论是：从福柯式反抗行为的视角看，战略性、双向和灵活的异议形式比那些传统的、固步自封的方式更为可取。

Keywords:

• protest
• Michel Foucault
• Johannesburg Summit
• social movements
• resistance

Acknowledgements

This article benefitted from the input of participants at the ‘Disciplining Dissent’ workshop held at Bristol University in September 2009, as well as detailed comments from Lara Montesinos Coleman, Karen Tucker, and three anonymous referees.

Notes

The description of the relationship between power and protest as ‘hybrid’, ‘transversal’, and ‘rhizomatic’ borrows from authors such as Roland Bleiker (2000) and Jean-François Bayart (1993). These terms have been used by philosophers, such as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, to describe non-hierarchical, de-centred, heterogeneous power relations, in contrast to the ‘arborescent model of thought’ in which power is conceptualised as a unitary central trunk with diverse branches. See Deleuze and Guattari (1988, chapter 1).

This lacuna has been discussed in more depth elsewhere (Death, 2010a), but it will suffice to note here that many of the core texts within the Anglo-governmentality literature (Dean, 1999; Miller and Rose, 2008; Rose, 1999) have little to say about forms of protest, dissent, and resistance.

This research was based on fieldwork conducted between 2006 and 2008, and which involved over 45 semi-structured interviews with participants in the summit (Death, 2010a, 2010b). This article draws on a limited number of these interviews, particularly with some of the social movement activists.

Elsewhere I have deployed an analytics of protest organised around the categories of fields of visibility, regimes of knowledge, techniques and technologies, and political identities and subjectivities (Death, 2010a, pp. 240–241). This approach is broadly analogous to the mentalities, practices, and subjectivities described here.