The power of safe resistance

Abstract

This paper seeks to critically reimagine the relationship between power and resistance. The aim is to better understand how resistance aids in the construction, exercise and often reproduction of power. These efforts open the space for a new perspective of power linked to the production of the resistance subject. Specifically, it is argued that hegemonic power relations create in their wake dominant forms of resistance, which ironically provide individuals with a stable social identity. Power operates, in turn, by creating a ‘safe’ resistance that preserves the ontological security individuals’ gain as resistance subjects within these dominant power relations. Yet, while all resistances are to an extent ‘safe’, this does not mean they are necessarily ‘safe’ to an existing hegemony.

Keywords:

• power
• resistance
• identity
• ontological security
• hegemony

Notes

1. I would like to thank Hope Rubin, Mark Haugaard, George Baca and Sam Dallyn as well as two anonymous reviewers for their valuable insights in the writing and revision of this article.

2. A quick note of caution, this stability, at least in principle, could be more or less temporally entrenched. Put differently, it may be constituted for only a moment or for longer periods of time. In this sense, even if a power holder, like a policeman, is simply ‘making it up as he or she goes along’, so to speak, this is still being directed at a stable resistance target. I would like to thank Dr Sam Dallyn for helping me with this insight.

3. I would like to thank Dr George Baca for pointing out that resistance in this argument serves as a ‘modality of power’.

4. It is important to note that this by no means denies the multiplicity of subject positions an individual can have within a given social context. Instead it is to simply point out that in any situation of power there is also present a hegemonic resistance identity. In this respect, individuals may come to embrace a number of differing stable resistance identities given their varying social roles (e.g. family, worker, etc.).