De-Pathologizing Resistance

Anthropological Interventions

Dimitrios Theodossopoulos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138930247
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317397731
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

In a time of renewed interest in insurrectionary movements, urban protest, and anti-austerity indignation, the idea of resistance is regaining its relevance in social theory. De-Pathologizing Resistance re-examines resistance as a concept that can aid social analysis, highlighting the dangers of pathologising resistance as illogical and abnormal, or exoticising it in romanticised but patronising terms. Taking a de-pathologising and de-exoticising perspective, this book brings together insights from older and newer studies, the intellectual biographies of its contributing authors, and case studies of resistance in diverse settings, such as Egypt, Greece, Israel, and Mexico. From feminist studies to plaza occupations and anti-systemic uprisings, there is an emerging need to connect the analysis of contemporary protest movements under a broader theoretical re-examination. The idea of resistance—with all of its contradictions and its dynamism—provides such a challenging opportunity. This book was originally published as a special issue of History and Anthropology.

Introduction

On De-Pathologizing Resistance

Dimitrios Theodossopoulos

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.

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 path...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. On De-Pathologizing Resistance
• 2. The Ethnography of Resistance Then and Now: On Thickness and Activist Engagement in the Twenty-First Century
• 3. Upending Infrastructure: Tamarod, Resistance, and Agency after the January 25th Revolution in Egypt
• 4. Resistance and the City
• 5. The Ambivalence of Anti-Austerity Indignation in Greece: Resistance, Hegemony and Complicity
• 6. Indigenous Autonomy, Delinquent States, and the Limits of Resistance
• 7. Too Soon for Post-Feminism: The Ongoing Life of Patriarchy in Neoliberal America
• Index