Political Resistance

Several recent works in political theory argue that exit, rather than being a coward's choice, is a potent mode of resistance that is particularly well suited to the current political era. These works reclaim exit, seeing it as a method of political opposition. While innovative and illuminating, these accounts are limited because they tend to treat all exits as resistance, regardless of context or content, and they are inclined to over-saturate exit with oppositional political meaning. I argue that resistant exit should be more narrowly defined. By examining a range of empirical cases, I identify and explore three distinctive characteristics of this particular type of opposition. In addition to clarifying a recently developed idea in current scholarship, this article provides a systematic way for scholars to understand and interpret the intersection between resistance and exit.

ABSTRACT The popularity of a particular term – the Rotten Banana – has paralleled the one-sided centralisation of public services since the Danish Municipal Reform of 2007. The Rotten Banana denotes peripheral Denmark, which takes a geographically curved form that resembles a banana, and it symbolises the belief that rural areas are backward and (too) costly. This article shows how the negative connotations of rural areas have come to outweigh the positive ones and to legitimise liberal visions of the ‘sustainable’ welfare state. Whereas previous studies on the perceptions of rural dwellers have focused on the discourses of rurality that produce rural outsiders, this article builds on the work of de Certeau and of Laclau and Mouffe. Based on both quantitative and qualitative data, the study shows how, in Denmark, negative connotations and centralisation have together spurred a new and political mobilisation in many parts of the ‘banana’. Through skilful ‘consumption’, rural dwellers have adapted the alienating liberalist ‘logic of equivalence’ to their own use and produced a ‘logic of difference’, thus challenging the predominant political discourse of rurality. As a result, the Danish Liberal government was forced to introduce a new and more inclusive rural policy in September of 2010 and grant rural dwellers a political voice in parliament.

I offer a conceptual framework for assessing the normative legitimacy of coercive disobedience—involving threats, disruption, force, and deceit—by social movements. A standard liberal view is that while coercion may be required to resist authoritarian regimes, it is illegitimate in a democratic state since it conflicts with majority rule and mutual respect. In restricting disobedience to a form of moral persuasion, this perspective neglects how social power andmaterial interests can distort the conditions for open, fair deliberation. I offer a principled defense of coercive disobedience, not only in repressive states but in plausibly democratic societies. I argue that coercion can be justified on democratic republican grounds as ameans to collectively contest objectionable forms of political domination. The use of coercion can be justified as a surrogate tool of political action for those who lack effective participation rights; as a remedial tool to counteract the dominating influence of powerful actors over the process of democratic will formation, and as a mobilizational tool to maintain participation and discipline in collective action. I conclude by proposing democratic constraints on the use of coercive tactics designed to offset the potential movements themselves become a source of arbitrary power.

The collection of papers in this special issue offer framing concepts and normative analyses appropriate to the changing, real-world practice of oppositional politics. They challenge us to reconsider the normative character of civility and what constraints (if any) it places on political action, opening up new productive lines of inquiry in thinking about dissent. Taken together, the papers in this special collection offer a timely and indispensable resource with which to understand and evaluate contemporary practices of protest and resistance.

The state occupies a central place in the study of a range of political, economic, and social outcomes. This article brings into dialogue literature on the state and emerging research on criminal politics through a study of protection rackets. Conceiving of criminal protection rackets as institutional arrangements of extraction and domination, I develop a political economy framework to explain variation in forms of resistance to rackets. The framework shows that distinct configurations of economic and political resources influence the type of resistance available to subordinates. I illustrate the framework's utility using micro-level data on resistance to rackets in Latin America. Attention to how resource endowments shape patterns of resistance to projects of extraction and domination provides a novel window into the bottom-up dynamics of state building.

Tracing historical as well as current understandings that contribute to shape discourses of sexual rights, this article aims to show how particular under-standings of sexuality interact in the discursive production of Sweden as a modern, rational and liberal nation. Inspired by recent developments in queer theory, I engage in a broader critique of how understandings of sexuality intersect with notions of gender, class, " race " /ethnicity and national identity. With departure in three historical points of impact for the development of sexual rights, I provide a historical contextualization to tease out the specific features of sexual rights' discourses in this context. Guided by an interest to study how particular discourses of sexual rights come to retain a status as legitimate and " true " , I then conduct a close reading of a graphic novel, as well as of the reception of this novel. Finding that norma-tive understandings of love and sexuality in mainstream culture sustain their status by a selective inclusion of more radical views, I show that the dominant view of sexual rights in Sweden is ambivalent. Here, I use discourse analysis to illuminate how notions of equality is constructed through processes of normalization. Drawing on these findings, I conclude the article by arguing for the need of a critical engagement with norms as collective sites for political resistance.

In the wake of the invasion of Afghanistan by the coalition led by the US-led NATO coalition, female bodies have been explicitly used to legitimize the war on the basis of rhetoric concerning women’s liberation from Taliban domination. Currently, the postwar setting shows increasing levels of insecurities for women as misogyny practices have been institutionalized, directly related to the current political situation. Based on previous research, this article aims at exploring, from Gender Studies, the territories of insecurities and the scenarios of bodily resistance of women in the “post-war” scenario in Afghanistan. The text deals with a brief history of the political context, then it explores the insecurities experienced by the female body and, finally, it seeks to understand the
emotional and physical aspects of female resistances in this country.

Contemporary Islamic legal scholar, Khaled Abou El Fadl, proposes a coherent methodology for the narration of individually formed discourses within the Islamic community against their sublimation by both authoritarian fundamentalism and liberal relativism. In examining his work, this article identifies a tripartite methodology involving a process of de-legitimization for the current hegemonic narrative, a  re-presentation of plurality both possible and existent, and an evaluation of this plurality in light of the broader tradition. Abou El Fadl’s work serves as the building block of a political and social form of resistance to the homogenization of identity and meaning within society, which allows for the narration of alternative discourses to those that are currently hegemonic, whether within the state as a whole or within a  religious or social tradition. This resistance, brought about through the author’s structural methodology, aims to offer insights for the development of a notion of state-individual negotiation and identity formation.

The CIRS research initiative on media and politics in the aftermath of the Arab revolts has resulted in an edited volume, Bullets and Bulletins: Media and Politics in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings (Oxford University Press/Hurst, 2016), offering critical examination into the profound sociopolitical and media transitions that have occurred within Arab states during and in the wake of the uprisings. It explores the intricate ways in which politics and media intersect in their representation and negotiation of political resistance and cultural production in a shifting Arab world. By analyzing different aspects of Arab mediascapes—transformations in the culture of Arab journalism, the construction of media cities, the rise of religious media, and the attention to subcultures and public diplomacy—this volume provides insights into the changing political dynamics of the region, and maps out the rearticulation of power relations between state and society. The chapters adopt a multidisciplinary approach in their analyses of the changing dynamics of media and politics before, during, and in the aftermath of the revolts.

Introductory Words

It is no coincidence that ‘the return of the political’ (Mouffe 1993) accompanies the return of the ignored, degraded, oppressed and subjugated. The ‘political’ that has been returning corresponds to the struggles for re-accommodating the voices of various minorities. Members of cultures,
languages, religions and sexes different from those of the majorities that dominated the public sphere have started to speak not individually but collectively, transcending the private sphere to which they had been confined. The political does not only return via the encounter of minorities with the dominant discourses in the public sphere but also through what
the former says and how it speaks. In this respect, they are invited to be a part of contemporary critical theories, which suggest that ‘it is from those who have suffered the sentence of history – subjugation, domination, diaspora, displacement – that we learn our most enduring lessons for living
and thinking’ (Bhabha 2001: 172). Therefore, the call for the political invites those hitherto excluded to the stage, which is no more to be inhabited only by the ‘professional’ actors. In remembering Arendt (1998), action is the human condition of plurality, which is the conditio per quam (sufficient condition) of all political life. However, this sufficient condition has been
deactivated through the weakening of plurality, which has undermined the basis of the political.
The political does not simply mean unique ‘national’ interests, a qualified majority of votes, or limited parliamentary seats. Determining state territories is not only about drawing lines on a piece of land, but also about fencing the living areas and minds of people. The minority question, in fact, simply makes the fences less invisible. This visibility helps question the dominant ontological and epistemological settings that not only restrict minority rights but also constrain the contemplation of majorities. As Horkheimer emphasises, ‘how this  dehumanization of thinking affects the very foundations of our civilization can be illustrated by analysis of the principle of majority, which is inseparable from the principle of democracy’
(1974: 26). The principle of majority is embedded in the principle of democracy through the idea of the nation-state. In this respect, the return of the political can be analysed by examining the principle of the nationstate, which constructs the majority in opposition to the minority. The principle of majority becomes the operating tool of the nation-state, which uses majority power to dominate minorities.
As the most figurative asset of membership in a majority or minority and the most symbolic aspect of national authority, language is a major site of struggle for majority power and minority resistance. Therefore, the question of minority rights in general and the linguistic rights of minorities in particular constitutes one of the most appropriate frameworks within
which this site of struggle can be analysed through the theoretical perspectives questioning the principles of majority and minority. For the purposes of this study, which focuses on the question of Kurdish linguistic rights in Turkey, the sites of struggle for majority power and minority resistance are as follows: the documents of international and European organisations on the linguistic rights of minorities, the impact of the modernisation and nation-state building process in Turkey on the Kurdish-speaking community and the resistance engendered by the Kurdish intelligentsia in the European diaspora and in Turkey against the majority power delimiting
the Kurdish linguistic rights.
...

In this article, I deconstruct the concept of legitimacy (notably in the form elaborated by Max Weber) by emphasising its conceptual complicity with the notion of sovereignty. Through an analysis of Derrida's critique of Austin's theory of performativity, I elaborate another, non-ontological 'concept' of legitimacy, located before and beyond sociological methodology, International Relations theory, and performative ontologies of power. This legitimation-to-come signifies the structural fallibility and pervertibility of the performative, and instantiates the archi-originary force of an unconditional resistance, conditioning both the position and the deconstruction of ontologies of sovereign ipseity (ipsocracy). Pursuing the efforts of Cynthia Weber and Rob Walker, I attempt to sketch the implications of this post-performative legitimacy with respect to the protocols of legitimation of International Relations theory and sociological methodologies, through an analysis of their persistent ontological presuppositions.

During most of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1550-1200 BCE) Syria-Palestine was occupied and ruled by foreign powers: Egypt in its southern part, Ḫatti and Mitanni in its northern part. In a situation as such, having the foreign political hegemony marking the pace of inner socio-political dynamics, it is possible to wonder whether there were actual instances of political resistance and maneuvering “from below” in the petty kingdoms of the Levant. Politics from below can in fact be detected in the textual-epigraphic data from the period. This paper offers an analysis of these local political dynamics faced to foreign rule, also sketching a basic political anthropology of the region.

This article is written in Spanish (Castilian). It discusses the Theses LVI which belong to a series of hitherto unpublished early manuscripts of the Dutch humanist and jurisconsult Hugo Grotius (1583-1645). These papers  were acquired by the University of Leiden in 1864. It is not certain when the Theses were written, but preliminary research on the physical manuscript and the sources cited indicate two possible windows. The first is around 1602-1605, that is roughly at a time when Grotius was also working on his Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty (De Iure Praedae Commentarius). The second dating places the genesis of the manuscript around 1613-1615.
In the context of Grotius’ writings, the Theses LVI assume an important position for several reasons: They raise questions about state formation, the duty of citizens to the state and the right of political resistance in far greater detail than in any other work of the celebrated Dutch humanist. The Theses LVI also feature important reading notes that yield priceless insights into the sources that Grotius directly consulted and their influence on his ideas. The manuscript grants modern scholars a unique glimpse into the working mind of its author. Evidence points not only to the ferocious haste with which Grotius wrote his works, but also the occasional sloppiness of his reading and research habits