Conceptualizing 'Everyday Resistance': A Transdisciplinary Approach 1138556548, 9781138556546

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CONCEPTUALIZING ‘EVERYDAY RESISTANCE’

Everyday resistance is about the many ways people undermine power and domination through their routine and everyday actions. Unlike open rebellions or demonstrations, it is typically hidden, not politically articulated, and often ingenious. But because of its disguised nature, it is often poorly understood as a form of politics and its potential underestimated. Conceptualizing ‘Everyday Resistance’ presents an analytical framework and theoretical tools to understand the entanglements of everyday power and resistance. These are applied to diverse empirical cases including queer relationships in the context of heteronormativity, Palestinian daily life under military occupation, workplace behaviors under office surveillance, and the tactics of fat acceptance bloggers facing the war against obesity. Johansson and Vinthagen argue that everyday resistance is best understood by accounting for different repertoires of tactics, relations between actors and struggles around constructions of time and space. Through a critical dialogue with the work of James C. Scott, Michel de Certeau and Asef Bayat, they aim to reconstruct the field of resistance studies, expanding what counts as resistance and building systematic analysis. Conceptualizing ‘Everyday Resistance’ offers researchers and students from different theoretical and empirical backgrounds an essential overview of the field and a creative framework that illuminates the potential of all people to transform society. Anna Johansson is Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the Department of Social and Behavioural Studies, University West, Sweden. Her areas of research are mainly resistance studies, critical fat studies and gender studies. Stellan Vinthagen is Professor and Endowed Chair in the Study of Nonviolent Direct Action and Civil Resistance at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is also Co-Leader of the Resistance Studies Group at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden and co-founder of the Resistance Studies Network, as well as Editor of the Journal of Resistance Studies. His research is focused on resistance, power, social movements, nonviolent action, conf lict transformation and social change.

“Resistance comes in many different forms. It is ultimately about forming assemblies, engaging in collective and/or individual protests and it involves everything from direct oppositions to delay tactics, refusals to collaborate to the creation of alternatives, et cetera. In addressing ‘everyday resistance’, this timely and well-written book helps us in filling a gap in our current understanding of resistance (practices) and, by extension, social change. In close dialogue with other important scholars in the field, this illuminating, interesting, inspiring and important book is a needed corrective to the existing literature that provides some coherence and congruity to the emerging field of Resistance Studies. I would recommend it to a wide readership, to anyone interested in understanding the dynamics of current (world) politics.” — Mikael Baaz, Associate Professor of International Law and Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Gothenburg

CONCEPTUALIZING ‘EVERYDAY RESISTANCE’ A Transdisciplinary Approach

Anna Johansson and Stellan Vinthagen

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Anna Johansson and Stellan Vinthagen to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-55654-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-55655-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-15015-4 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo Apex CoVantage, LLC

To all the steadfast who resist in their everyday, even when what they do is unrecognized, and even if their resistance for the moment seems to not lead to any change.

CONTENTS

Foreword by James C. Scott Acknowledgements Author Biographies Introduction

ix xii xiii 1

PART I

A Theoretical Framework: Resistance as Everyday Counter Practice

15

1

Everyday Resistance as a Concept

17

2

A Theoretical Approach Beyond Scott and de Certeau

33

3

Everyday Resistance as Practice

46

4

Everyday Resistance as Counter Practice

62

Intermezzo: Towards a Framework That Guides Our Analysis of Everyday Resistance

81

viii

Contents

PART II

An Analytical Framework: Dimensions of Everyday Resistance 5

Repertoires of Everyday Resistance in Relation to Configurations of Power

85

87

6

Relationships of Agents

106

7

The Spatialization of Everyday Resistance

121

8

The Temporalization of Everyday Resistance

136

9

Four Dimensions of Everyday Resistance: The Case of Palestinian Sumūd

149

Conclusion: Towards a Transdisciplinary Social Science Analysis of Everyday Resistance

181

References Index

192 210

FOREWORD

I begin with a completely banal example of everyday resistance that embodies, for safety’s sake, a nod of assent to the prevailing hegemony. A pedestrian has begun crossing the street a few seconds late and the traffic light turns green, releasing the oncoming file of automobiles. The pedestrian in many cases then pantomimes haste by raising her knees a bit higher for a few steps. The pantomime signals the car-driver that the pedestrian recognizes, the auto’s right-ofway. But, if I am not mistaken, the pedestrian typically moves no faster across the street than she would have if she simply continued walking at the same pace without the pantomime. Practically, the pedestrian has “usurped” a temporal fraction of the right of way without challenging (in fact gesturing assent to) the normative status quo. Notice the difference between this scenario and a pedestrian who proceeds at the same pace and yet turns and gestures belligerently at the driver, miming a claim to her right-of-way. This last is a public and normative challenge—a small confrontation—by the pedestrian to the driver’s right to the street. It is, therefore, not everyday resistance in my understanding of the term but a public, political challenge. Everyday resistance, as in the first example, avoids public claims and settles for de facto, undeclared victories (re-appropriations) rather than aiming for a codified, de jure, public victory. My claim is that for most of history and for most human subjects, political life was largely everyday resistance and that to ignore this perpetual struggle was to ignore the bulk of political life. Identical political aims can be pursued via everyday resistance or by a (more dangerous) public challenge. Control of arable land can be pursued by “squatting” or by a public land invasion; access to forest resources can be sought by “poaching” or by a public claim to woodlands; opposition to conscription can be expressed by desertion or by open mutiny; cultural disapproval can be expressed by gossip or by open denunciation in the

x

Foreword

public square. In each case, everyday resistance is the safer, more clandestine option that sacrifices de jure recognition for practical, de facto achievements. The most important compliment that can be paid to any author of social criticism is that her work be taken seriously, scrutinized as to its logic, examined for its relevance, and subjected to thoughtful criticism. I am most grateful to Stellan Vinthagen and Anna Johansson for paying me their compliments in this fashion. It has been thirty-four years since I published Weapons of the Weak, depicting everyday resistance in a Malaysian rice-farming village, and nearly thirty years since I followed it up with Domination and the Arts of Resistance, suggesting how the concept might be applied to broader areas of social and political life. In the interim, a substantial number of scholars and activists have found the concepts developed in these two works “good to think with” and, as is to be expected, worth criticizing, amending, and even dismantling! I have remained, throughout this period, an interested and opinionated observer, but not a commentator. The main explanation for my relative silence was simply that I had moved on to other issues and intellectual problems which monopolized my attention. A part of the explanation is also that I have avoided, however tempting, crossing swords with critics, as correcting what I often considered a misunderstanding of my argument and restating my position nearly always comes across as defensive. And, without doubt, when some of the criticism seemed well-taken, I absorbed the shortcomings of my position and resolved to incorporate them in subsequent work. This volume, however, is so thorough, so well-thought-through, and so discerning in its insight and critique of my work and that of de Certeau, that I have decided to break my rule and make some brief comments. First, I want simply to concede two important criticisms made in these pages. It is true that my analysis of resistance is both centered on relatively static class relations and therefore ignores a wealth of situations that cannot be reduced to class differences. For example, racial or ethnic stratification, gender identity, or generational differences. It is also the case that I do not account for the many instances in which an actor occupies an intermediate class position, subordinate to some and superior to others and, therefore, both an example of domination and of resistance depending upon the situation. Above all, I wholly accept the criticism that my analysis was conceptualized without much of a temporal dimension. Once one builds in the historicity of relations of subordination, then one adds an important dose of learning, customary practice and reciprocal adjustment over time. My analysis would have been greatly enriched by a more discerning temporal dimension. Vinthagen and Johansson argue that, by insisting on evidence of “intention”, I exclude a great swath of behavior that they believe should be classified as everyday resistance. I would be the first to admit that the question of intention is perhaps the most fraught issue in analyzing everyday resistance. This is

Foreword

xi

so, in large part, simply because everyday resistance succeeds by systematically concealing intentions or, in fact, misrepresenting intentions as loyal and allegiant. How does one establish intention when the agent has every reason to conceal or misrepresent it and when the human targets of the resistance themselves have an interest in not calling attention to certain acts as resistance? (How often have actual rebels been called “bandits” to de-politicize their aims?) Despite all the difficulties of evidence, I am not convinced that we can do without an analysis of intention. How, otherwise, can we distinguish between, say, a pure theft of no political interest and a theft that likely represents everyday resistance. In the case of poaching in England I took the fact that it was almost impossible to find a villager who would ever testify against local poachers in court and a climate of opinion that regarded unimproved woodlands and waterways as, by right, open to popular access as indicative of intention. Not definitive evidence of intention but surely strong circumstantial evidence. I would go so far as to say that the social understanding of intention is, in fact, more important in the study of resistance than either the act itself or the intention of the individual actor performing the act. Jesse James seems to have been interested in theft qua theft; but because he attacked the banks and railroads that rural people in Missouri hated, his robbery was seen as resistance against evil institutions. The social understanding of the intention behind his acts turned what may have been a mere robbery into a significant political event. It’s the “audience’s” construction of intention that matters for resistance studies. The poacher may be only interested in rabbit stew but when all his neighbors see it as a just use of the common lands, then it becomes, socially, an act of everyday resistance. But as we say, it’s such disputes on important issues that “make horse races”. What is without doubt is that this volume represents an enormous contribution to our understanding of political life in general and everyday resistance in particular. For that, we will long be in debt to Stellan Vinthagen and Anna Johansson. James C. Scott Sterling Professor of Political Science, Yale University

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We want to thank the editors at Routledge, Natalja Mortensen and Maria Landschoot, for believing in our project and for their patience with us and our delays. We also appreciate the previous publishers of our articles: Resistance Studies Magazine, Critical Sociology and Journal of Political Power, for generously providing permission to reprint sections from these original texts. Initially it was important for us when we got some economic support from University West, Sweden to work on the first steps of this project several years ago. During our work on this project that grew every year, it has been important for us with all the colleagues and friends that have continously discussed with us over the years, such as the RESIST research group at the University of Gothenburg (Mikael Baaz, Mona Lilja and Michael Schulz), and all those who read various drafts of our texts over the years, especially Sean Chabot, Carol Daniel, Nornos (the Nordic Nonviolent Resistance Seminar) and the graduate students at the Fall 2018 course on Everyday Resistance at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, but also the helpful anonymous reviewers from the journals in which we have published. Anna Johansson and Stellan Vinthagen, Gothenburg and Dals-Ed, Sweden, February 18, 2019

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

Anna Johansson is Senior Lecturer at University West with a PhD in Sociology (1999) from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her areas of research are mainly resistance studies, critical fat studies and gender studies. She is the author of several books and numerous articles. Since the eighties Johansson has been an educator, organizer and activist, involved in social movements such as the solidarity movement for the people in Central America, feminist groups, etc. One of her more recent engagements was as initiator and co-founder of an activist network called the Middle-Class Revolt (Medelklassupproret) in Sweden, which resists the privileges of the middle class, such as tax reduction. Johansson is also a practitioner in gestalt psychotherapy and has in that role initiated a network for norm critical psychotherapy. Stellan Vinthagen is Professor of Sociology and a scholar-activist. Vinthagen has a PhD (2005) in Peace and Development Research from University of Gothenburg. He is the Inaugural Endowed Chair in the Study of Nonviolent Direct Action and Civil Resistance at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is also a Professor of Sociology at University of Gothenburg, where he is co-leading the Resistance Studies Program. Vinthagen researches resistance, power, social movements, nonviolent action and social change. He has written or edited several books and numerous articles. Vinthagen is a academic advisor to the International Center on Nonviolent Conf lict (ICNC). Vinthagen has since 1980 been an educator, organizer and activist in several countries, and has participated in numerous nonviolent civil disobedience actions, for which he has served in total more than one year in

xiv

Author Biographies

prison. Vinthagen is one of the initiators of the European Plowshares movement and Academic Conference Blockades, and one of the founders of Ship to Gaza Sweden, a coalition member of the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. He lives in the activist communes Irene, Dalsland, Sweden and the Pioneer Valley Cohousing, Amherst, USA.

INTRODUCTION

“One summer I worked temporarily in a storage facility, where most of the workers were manually loading goods onto pallets—washing powder, orange juice, candy and stuff like that. It was low paid and quite heavy and boring work, collecting items to be shipped to supermarkets according to what appeared to be endless lists. We worked in two-shift: from 6 am to 2 pm, and from 2 pm to 10 pm. I soon noticed that the work-pace changed dramatically over the course of a shift. In the morning-shift it took a long time before we started, and we always worked really slow the first couple of hours, but then in a decent tempo from 8 am until 2 pm. When I did the late-shift the work pace varied in the opposite direction. We worked promptly between 2 and 4 pm, afterwards the pace drastically slowed down: with people standing around having long chats, extended coffee breaks, and long-time visits to the bathroom, etc. After a while it dawned on me that we only worked without unmotivated interruptions during the period when the management at the office where present: between 8 am and 4 pm. No one ever told me this was the informal policy, I just noticed clearly how people changed their behavior and since I was new I followed the pattern of the others. Occasionally accidents in which goods were dropped and damaged happened, but it rarely involved soap, batteries or toilet paper. It was usually packets with chocolate or other attractive content which was the victim of these accidents, and such damaged goods we could eat from during our breaks. . . . Sometimes after our shift ended there were guards that checked our bags and pockets. I never saw anyone who was apprehended for stealing anything, but one of my fellow workers was demoted for having a company pen in his pocket and had to give it back.”1

This workplace story is from Europe and represents typical examples of informal everyday forms of resistance: work slow-downs, property destruction and theft disguised as hard work, accidents and mistakes. The resistance is not organized or

2

Introduction

politically articulated, but supported by a silent work culture that legitimizes a performance of work pace according to low payment and envisions chocolate as a “bonus”, etc. This resistance does not preclude organized trade-union actions and formal negotiations of work conditions, but it constitutes a complement that increases the class-war and the material and symbolic gains for the workers when organized actions don’t succeed to create fair compensation or the dignity workers feel they are entitled to. Sometimes everyday resistance also might work as a facilitator of open rebellion and mass mobilization, especially when an elaborate and widespread culture of everyday resistance feeds into organized initiatives, as within the occupied territories of Palestine. In this way, connections might develop between the more individual, informal and scattered forms of resistance that people conduct in their everyday, at workplaces, in neighborhoods and in their families, and the kind of public confrontations through collectively organized protests that we easily recognize as “resistance”. This connection between everyday resistance and public mass mobilization we call a “culture of resistance”, which is something we will develop in our chapter on Sumūd (Palestinian everyday resistance) in the occupied territories (Chapter 9). Basically, we argue that waves of mass actions might feed into everyday resistance and vice versa, in a way in which (certain forms of ) resistance inspires (other forms of ) resistance (Lilja et al. 2017). In some contexts, such a culture of resistance might develop as a form of “subculture” among a particular social group, not only in a military occupied territory, as in Palestine, but also in urban contexts, as we have seen with for example punk, queer or animal rights’ cultures. Resistance is both a popular and largely misunderstood concept. It is often invoked, in daily discourse, in media as well as in academia, and then related to a limited phenomenon: as an exceptional and dramatic attempt to stop ongoing processes, often through violent or confrontational means, as in “riots” or “rebellions”. It is seen as a reaction that is sometimes progressive, at other times reactionary. The resistance of groups that powerful elites fear is demonized, while the courage shown by individuals that refuse to participate in atrocities generally tends to be admired. Some people, on the other hand, instead romanticize resistance and view it as inherently and univocally progressive, hopeful and liberating of repressed people. In this book we hope to show that resistance can be very different things, even mundane kind of practices of accommodation and non-confrontation, and that resistance can be integrated into our daily life in a way that makes it almost unrecognized. In our contemporary world it becomes increasingly unclear what we should count as “political”. “Politics” in a broad sense, as the public management of power relations, is affected by transnational f lows of capital, information, cultural symbols, governance, migration and environmental processes (Castells 1996; Hardt and Negri 2000; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Tilly 2004; Vinthagen 2003, 2011). Local contexts are increasingly interconnected to each other, in ways

Introduction

3

that make us interdependent and affected by what happens at other places on the planet. At the same time, the situation looks different for different groups of people, and contexts vary. It is not clear what all this means, except that the boundaries between what should reasonably count as politics, power or resistance are changing, and vary. It is, however, clear that the conventional idea of politics as restricted to the public participation in the governing of the state is becoming less and less appropriate. Today, especially among younger generations and in contemporary subcultures and movements, almost everything is politicized. Even the most everyday kind of behavior is politicized, as for example what people eat (e.g. preferences of local organic food, or the political boycotts of certain producers, or those that adopt identities as vegetarians or vegans), the clothes people wear (e.g. fair trade, brand boycotts, etc.), and how people speak and write (e.g. politically-correct language to show differences without being offensive, as when activists inform each other about their preferred gender pronouns at the start of meetings, or the invention of new grammar and concepts, such as “ze” to replace “he or she”, or “functional variation” instead of “disabled”, etc.). Some of these subcultural norms and behavior have become established; for example, now it is mainstream to say “police officer” (instead of “policeman”) or first name (instead of “Christian name”). In a world of changing relations of politics, it becomes more important than ever to stay alert to forms of resistance that evolve and defy conventional definitions. This book is focused on what we call “everyday resistance”, the area of resistance in which people engage with power relations in their everyday. Basically, we are trying to cover the broad field and variation of resistance that is neither uniquely individual acts, nor public confrontations of authorities by formally organized collectives (in the conventional forms of political parties, nongovernmental organizations, civil society associations or social movement organizations). We are trying to capture the patterns of practices done by individuals or informal gatherings of groups, in which they engage with power relations or the effects of power in their ordinary lives. These patterned practices tend to not be recognized as politics in any conventional meaning. Often these practices are not even identified at all and continue to stay out of sight of the gaze of power, mainstream society or science. A range of questions is actualized once you decide to pay interest to this area of non-recognized politics of everyday resistance practices. How is it possible to define everyday resistance in a way that makes it meaningfully identifiable, yet avoids restricting it so much that you do not detect the creative innovations and unexpected changes by practitioners? Is it necessary that those doing resistance are motivated by a political intention or might the everyday resisters also be motivated by desires, needs, affects or other intentions not conventionally understood as political? Does everyday resistance have to be somehow “effective” or “successful” (as having political consequences) in order for us to regard small acts in the everyday as resistance, or does it make sense to consider

4

Introduction

also small symbolic acts in the everyday, acts that might only be visible for the actors themselves? Is resistance a normal and common phenomenon in all everyday life situations, for everyone, or only in some particular situations by some particular groups, for example, only those most repressed (subalterns, the poor, etc.)? ** This book focuses on everyday resistance and develops a unique framework that considers theoretical approaches in other fields. Our framework is applied through several empirical illustrations that show its usefulness in a variety of contexts. Despite a high interest in everyday resistance since the 1980s within social science there are mostly single case studies or edited books on everyday resistance. This makes the field heterogenous and rich, yet without a common language to speak across cases and perspectives. No other book has developed a coherent and general framework that guides research and includes poststructuralism and intersectionality, shown to be applicable on vastly different kind of contexts and types of cases and suitable for different theoretical approaches. Our book updates a field based mainly on 1980s peasant studies, “history from below”, anthropology, queer studies and critical political science, and shows its relevance for diverse fields, among others, research on humor, surveillance, military occupation, as well as critical fat studies. This is something we have worked on since 2012 ( Johansson and Vinthagen 2014, 2015; Vinthagen and Johansson 2013). We hope our framework is coherent enough to create communication across the plurality of studies on everyday resistance, yet loose enough to open up for variations of theoretical and conceptual approaches. We are not aiming for mainstreaming or creating straight-jackets, quite the opposite. We think plurality and disagreements are signs of a healthy intellectual environment and create promises of high-quality research. Still, without a common language for talking about our different studies, we will not learn from each other and create knowledge together. In one of the most well-known quotes of Michel Foucault, he claims: “Where there is power, there is resistance” (1978, 95–96). Still, social science has been, as was Foucault, preoccupied with exploring power, largely isolated from an analysis of resistance.2 Lately we have witnessed a renewed interest in resistance studies, which is partly due to the upswing of various poststructuralist perspectives and language/discourses as a point of departure for studying power and social change. David Couzens Hoy expresses this as follows: “From the poststructuralist perspective, a society without resistance would be either a harmless daydream or a terrifying nightmare” (Hoy 2004, 11; see also Lilja and Vinthagen 2006). All in all, today resistance studies seems to have advanced within the social sciences. Over the last decades, research on resistance has grown within fields that partly overlap; mainly subaltern, feminist, cultural, queer, peasant and post-structural studies. Since James C. Scott wrote Weapons of the

Introduction

5

Weak (1985), a significant part of resistance studies has investigated the area of everyday resistance; the informal and non-organized resistance that Scott also calls “infrapolitics” (or invisible politics). This is the area of resistance we are focusing on. Everyday resistance is basically about how people act in their everyday lives in ways that might undermine power. Everyday resistance is not easily recognized like public and collective resistance—such as rebellions or demonstrations—since it is typically hidden or disguised, individual and often not politically articulated. Therefore, everyday resistance poses a special challenge for research. Sometimes everyday resistance is purposefully hidden or disguised, as when, for example, poachers illegally take firewood and hunt animals in a forest belonging to a large landowner, or when workers do their jobs slowly or pretend to make mistakes in order to lower the production stress. At other times, everyday acts of resistance are simply not recognized in the public discourse as being politics, as when persons adopt a way of life in which they refuse to support the mainstream “meat culture” and only use vegan products. Our understanding of what constitutes “resistance to dominant power or injustice is formed in a historic process of social construction particular to that society, and takes time before it changes. It will not be enough that some academics, such as us within resistance studies, recognize certain everyday behavior by ordinary people as resistance for it to become recognized by a public discourse. Therefore, we might argue that certain unrecognized patterns of actions by people are everyday resistance even if they are not understood as resistance or even politics in mainstream discourse. Someone might ask the valid question of why we need research on everyday resistance, especially when it is often about practices that are designed to be hidden or disguised. The risk is then, of course, that research might undermine the possibilities of such resistance by exposing how it is done, where and by whom, and thus unwittingly assist repressive forces. Since others have discussed the ethical-political aspects of resistance studies at length elsewhere, we will not go into depth regarding this problem (see e.g. Baaz, Lilja, and Vinthagen 2017). Our general response to this fundamental questioning of resistance studies is twofold. Firstly, we think that we always have to be aware of the risk that research might be unhelpful for human liberation, or in the worst case, counter-productive. Therefore, our research will always have to seek opportunities to become as relevant, meaningful and helpful as possible for those trying to liberate themselves from various forms of domination. The fundamental ethical-political requirement is that we try to avoid creating harm for people. But the risk will always be there and needs always to be taken seriously. Secondly, we are convinced that the repressive forces that try to secure forms of domination are already aware of, mapping and analyzing resistance. The amount of surveillance, data mining and intelligence mounted to keep track of different forms of resistance is immense. Thus, to us it is a more fundamental

6

Introduction

problem that scattered individuals, subordinated groups and ordinary people do not know enough of each other, and do not learn from the experiences of others. In general, we think the lack of popular knowledge about creative resistance practices and particular experiences from everyday struggles is the real problem here. This book, and the whole field of resistance studies in which it belongs, is trying to counter that problem and make the knowledge about options, challenges and problems of resistance more widely shared. An important point guiding our research is the claim that power and resistance are not the dichotomous phenomenon that is often implied. In our analysis we often need to maintain a clear distinction between power and resistance in order to disentangle the complex dynamic, but in practical interactions they might be mixed and interconnected hybrids ( Lilja and Vinthagen 2009). Agents of resistance often simultaneously promote power-loaded discourses, being the bearers of hierarchies and stereotypes as well as of change. Then, each actor is both the exerciser of power and the object of power exercised—the subject is exposed to ranking and stereotyping as well as promoting repressive “truths”, ranking or stereotyping others—thus being both an agent exercising powers and a subordinate who has been subjugated and reduced to order by disciplinary strategies ( Lilja 2008). Resistance is always situated in a context, a historic tradition, a certain place and/or social space formed by power. Therefore, resistance is also situated in relation to previous resistance. Especially when resistance is innovative, experimental and creative, it needs to build on the material left by other rebels—stories, myths, symbols, structures and tools available in that special situation ( Tilly 1995; Traugott 1995). New forms of resistance connect to old forms by using them as stepping stones, translating existing hegemonic elements, dislodging and recombining that which is available to them ( Vinthagen 2006). And, the power of today is inf luenced by struggles with resistance in history. Thus, resistance and power are intimately connected, something that will become increasingly clear later in this volume. Although there has been a growing interest in the study of resistance, there have so far been few serious attempts to develop a more coherent analytical framework in order to systematically study resistance. One of the most ambitious attempts is Hollander and Einwohner’s overview article “Conceptualizing Resistance” (2004). While they make a substantial contribution to the field in their literature review, we do not agree with their conclusion and proposal. Their construction of a clear-cut typology by which one is to decide if an act can be recognized as resistance and if the act is intended as resistance, by involved targets, agents, and observers, contradicts the authors’ simultaneous emphasis on resistance as a complex and ongoing process of social construction. Furthermore, their typology privileges consciousness as “recognition” by or “intention” of actors, which dramatically limits its scope. Consciousness might be of interest for an analysis and understanding of resistance, especially

Introduction

7

if we want to understand why people do what they do or want to explore how a strategic development of resistance might be possible, but privileging consciousness limits us methodologically. It is often hard to determine or even detect, not only historically, but also among repressed groups that have good reasons to not honestly reveal why they do what they do, or if a researcher tries to understand groups that act within cultures very different to that from which the researcher comes. There is also the risk with privileging consciousness that political awareness is made more important than emotions, desires or practices, and educated groups (that are able to explain their intention in ways recognizable as political) are made more important than non-educated, etc. Instead, we would like to hold on to and take our point of departure from their basic premise: acts or patterns of actions are defined as resistance within on-going processes of negotiation between different agents of resistance (the resisters), between the agents of resistance and the agents of power (the targets), and between the two former parties and different observers. Such observers are, for example, researchers who contribute to creating “the truths” about resistance through scientific discourses. These on-going processes of negotiation might not always be explicit, but implicit and indirect. In our view, resistance consists of practices that have the potential to undermine dominant power relations. This is something we will discuss in depth later. However, not all resistance does succeed, at least not always, or in all aspects, but might instead reproduce and strengthen relations of dominance ( Lilja and Vinthagen 2009; Lilja, Baaz, and Vinthagen 2013). This is not only due to the creation of counter forces or new oppositional alliances that explicitly try to capture the state or other entrenched power institutions, but is a more fundamental paradox of inbuilt ambivalence, complexity and an unescapable entanglement with power (which, also is something we will discuss at length later). Our book is thus needed in order to offer a theoretically informed analytical framework that, in contrast to the one by Hollander and Einwohner, does not aim for precise (and therefore limiting) categorization. We think it is too early to be precise. The research on resistance is still scattered and emerging and is trying to find a basis for translation and communication between the plurality of perspectives we need. Instead a useful framework needs to relate to basic sociological concepts. We see the need to anchor an analysis of resistance in some of the fundamental “organizing principles” of social action. This book is an attempt to find ways to analyze everyday resistance through asking the questions: who is carrying out the practice, in relation to whom, where, when and how? This facilitates a complex analysis and avoids simple categorizations, yet structures our analyses and makes them more coherent and comparable. Resistance studies build on theories, concepts and empirical findings within several research fields, disciplines or traditions ( Lilja and Vinthagen 2009). Resistance studies are simultaneously rich and poorly developed. Specialized

8

Introduction

and systematic research on resistance is uncommon; while at the same time resistance is a concept that is at least (occasionally) used within most social science disciplines. Thus, research on the subfield of everyday resistance is even less developed, and therefore this book tries to contribute to such theoretical development. In a broad sense an overview of everyday resistance will have to engage with intersections of other more established fields of study: (1) theories of the everyday that use perspectives or concepts related to resistance, even though they might not use the concept (e.g. gender studies or sociology of the everyday); (2) general theories of resistance related to the everyday (e.g. cultural and identity theories of social movements); and (3) studies that explicitly deal with everyday resistance (e.g. subaltern studies). All of this is, however, not possible to fully cover in this book. We therefore focus on the third intersection, but cover some of the key literature concerning the first and second intersections. In the first part of this book, we position ourselves in relation to current debates within the studies of everyday resistance. However, we do not position ourselves in relation to the major debates within social science on structure/ agency and discourse/materiality. This choice merits an explanation. For us it seems clear that it is a matter of combinations, not either-or. Structures and systems inf luence human agents (individuals and collectives) through language, political economies and similar, yet, none of these structures are total and actors do have a (limited) scope of agency. And these structures are material and discursive, symbolic and physical. Speech-actors are embodied organisms, always-material beings. At the same time, we do not have strong positions on how exactly such combinations should be understood and described, or—more importantly—we do not find it necessary to position ourselves in a particular way to create our theoretical and analytical frameworks around everyday resistance. Instead, we think an added merit of our analytical framework is its utility for researchers and authors subscribing to vastly different theoretical positions in these core social science debates, as for example Marxism and post-structuralism.

The Themes, Concepts and Ideas We Will Develop Our hope is that the book will provide students of different theoretical and empirical fields with an overview of the research, a possible definition of everyday resistance and a useful analytical framework to inspire further research on power and resistance. The chief objective of this book is to contribute to systematic studies of everyday resistance. This includes the clarification of the relatively elusive concept of everyday resistance: taking on the challenge to explore how to limit the concept enough in order for it to be a useful and distinct concept, simultaneously avoiding limiting it so much that it loses its relation to ordinary social life and becomes an academic abstraction. The

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9

elaboration on different theoretical aspects of everyday resistance is done in relation to competing concepts such as “hidden transcripts”, “infrapolitics”, “off-kilter resistance” and “tactics of the weak”. Everyday resistance will be defined as a pattern of acts (practice) done by someone subordinated in a power relation and that might (temporary) undermine or destabilize (some aspect of ) dominance. Such resistance is necessary to be understood as intersectional, which is something we will motivate and illustrate extensively as we proceed. In addition, everyday resistance will be discussed in relation to other contested concepts such as: body, emotions, bio-politics, social change, etc. We also aim to map the specific field of everyday resistance, its main theoretical approaches and the range of different empirical material. The key debates of the field that we will visit are: (1) how to define “resistance” and “everyday resistance”, and how different definitions serve different purposes; (2) how the resistance actors’ intentions, motivations or consciousness matter in relation to the definition and our understanding of resistance; (3) how power and resistance relate—as an oppositional dichotomy/binary or an entangled ambivalence with occasional cooperation. This debate is fundamentally about whether it is possible to separate power and resistance—not only analytically but also empirically; (4) whether or not power and resistance are unitary entities/phenomena or plural heterogeneities (as “powers” and “resistances” in plural, perhaps entangled with each other). Formulated differently: is resistance connected to one power relation or several power relations simultaneously? Are different forms of resistances articulating differences, perhaps even contradictions, or do they all show a common logic; and lastly, (5) if what counts as resistance is a matter of context and discourse, or something universal. The wearing of a veil, like the hijab, can be an act of subordination if it is mandatory in a particular Muslim context, but an act of resistance if it is generally devalued, met with hostility and even illegal, such as in a Christiansecular context like France or Denmark today. By taking positions in the debates accounted for previously, we aim to develop our theoretical understanding of everyday resistance by suggesting how it can fruitfully be linked to theories within studies on poststructuralism, Foucault, queerness and gender, as well as other approaches. In these discussions, we develop our own theoretical platform that consists of some fundamental assumptions that are as follows ( Vinthagen and Johansson 2013): 1. 2. 3.

Everyday resistance is a practice or a pattern of acts (not a certain consciousness, intent or outcome) that is countering power. It is historically entangled with (everyday) power (not separated, dichotomous or independent). Everyday resistance needs to be understood as intersectional with the powers that it engages with (not a singular power relation).

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Introduction

4.

It is heterogeneous and contingent due to changing contexts and situations (not a universal strategy, logic or coherent form of action).

All these theoretical positions will be discussed and illustrated in detail throughout the book. With this theoretical framework, we want to position ourselves in relation to some key ongoing debates in the field of everyday resistance (points one and two), and we also want to incorporate some established theoretical assumptions from other fields (including feminism and poststructuralism) into the field of everyday resistance (points three and four), with the aim of bringing the field into closer communication with contemporary radical social science. Furthermore, with the aim of facilitating more systematic development of research on everyday resistance, we then develop our own analytical framework, based on basic and general dimensions within sociology. The starting point is another conceptualization that has inspired us, developed by Chin and Mittelman (1997), which suggests an analytical framework for studies of resistance. Our interest lies in the same analytical elements that they suggest: forms, actors, sites and strategies. These elements serve as keys to our analytical framework, but with a different theoretical point of departure. We try instead to cover four pivotal aspects of the study of social life, dimensions that are frequently used by sociological research in other fields: patterns and relationships of social interaction, and how they are organized and conceptualized in time and space. Thus, our framework consists of four dimensions: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Repertoires of everyday resistance (and its relations to configurations of power) Relationships of agents Spatialization of everyday resistance Temporalization of everyday resistance

The analytical dimensions are primarily developed to point out and illuminate aspects of everyday resistance that we find particularly significant, but not to use as distinct analytical tools (since they are by purpose more general, to fit different contexts). In actual social life and with acts of everyday resistance these dimensions are, we suggest, intertwined and in no way mutually exclusive. We regard all dimensions as applicable, but not always equally relevant, in all contexts. In order to show the usefulness of our framework we proceed by applying it to a number of empirical cases as illustrations. While the first part of the book outlines the basic concepts and assumptions of our theoretical framework (Chapters 1–4), in the second part we outline our analytical framework (Chapters 5 –10) in order to illustrate, specify and continue to develop the framework.

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With the analytical framework, we aim to create a framework that is as much as possible grounded in contemporary social science (utilizing well-established core concepts) and also open for utilization by authors and researchers that subscribe to very different social theory traditions (e.g. structuralism, poststructuralism, Marxism, feminism, postcolonial studies, peasant studies, etc.). With this construction of the analytical framework, we want to recognize and show appreciation for how the field needs to have research emanating from vastly different theoretical approaches. Thus, our framework is consciously chosen to relate to fundamental social categories. We think it is then possible to achieve two things simultaneously. It then becomes possible for resistance studies (which has been a rather isolated discourse so far) to connect to current social science discussions (which tends to focus much on space, time, relations and strategies/repertoires). Ultimately, we are aiming to lay a foundation for a transdisciplinary social science of everyday resistance, not just useful for sociology, but also for other disciplines. We are, however, not trying to build a general theory, just a transdisciplinary framework that makes it possible to analyze everyday resistance in relation to different contexts, and from the perspective of different theories and approaches. Other authors on everyday resistance have used concepts and dimensions we choose not to make central, such as ideology, consciousness, organization, strategy, forms, types, history, structure, system, etc. In our view these alternative concepts and dimensions are either already included in or easily possible to add to our more general and broad dimensions, or they are too specific and suited for a particular approach to include in a framework that aims to be inclusive of different theoretical traditions. We will not discuss the empirical “effects” or impact of specific cases of everyday resistance in this book. Although the question of impact is clearly important, few have made the attempt so far, and we believe it is a major challenge to seriously asses impact. The challenge is that such a discussion demands an empirical evaluation of a complex set of factors and dynamics rooted in an analysis of a particular context. That is beyond the scope of this book that is trying to contribute to the definitional, theoretical and analytical groundwork on everyday resistance, work that will make impact studies possible at a later stage. We are utilizing a high number of illustrating cases and do not have the capacity to analyze these cases in a deeper sense within the limits of this project. Therefore, we do not think it is possible to argue that everyday resistance is in general either “ineffective”, as some argue—since it consists of small or scattered and local actions by individuals or small groups against large systems of domination—or “effective”, as others argue—since it is uniquely contagious due to its stealth mode of resistance, which makes the risk of punishment minimal. Instead, we think the effects and impact of everyday resistance will vary depending on the context and particular circumstances in every case. It is our

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Introduction

hope that our attempt of improving the way we research and analyze everyday resistance will make such assessments of its outcomes more possible in future. The content of previous research (see the next chapter) is, we claim, profoundly different from what we do here. We aim to present new combinations of theoretical tools to understand the entanglements of everyday power and everyday resistance and build a solid analytical framework. By incorporating the work of these previous studies and adding inf luences from other social science fields, we will be able to propose a comprehensible, theoretically updated, transdisciplinary and new approach to everyday resistance.3 In such a way, it is our aim to contribute to the development of the empirical research and the conceptual consistency of everyday resistance research. As stated by Žižek (in Welcome to the desert of the real, 2002), there is a current trend within the social sciences to understand the world from the power/resistance couplet. If Žižek is correct in this observation, and we think he is, this new and emerging interest will most likely increase the relevance of our book. We think our study is of relevance for students and researchers who are interested in issues relating to democracy, development, peace, social change, bio-politics, body, identity-politics, everyday resistance, globalization and/or different shapes of power. In particular, our discussion is relevant to researchers dealing with marginalized groups such as women, queer people, refugees or ethnic minorities, etc. Furthermore, this book is also—with its keen interest in the techniques of resistance—directed to activists and other theory-interested non-scholarly readers with a particular interest in the relations of power and resistance.

Book Structure Our book is divided up into two parts. Part I outlines our theoretical framework, which is our basic understanding of what everyday resistance is (“Resistance as Everyday Counter Practice”); Part II presents our proposal of a new analytical framework, which is our suggestion of how to analyze everyday resistance in a systematic way in future studies (“Dimensions of Everyday Resistance”). We begin in Chapter 1 (“Everyday Resistance as a Concept”) by outlining different conceptual understandings of everyday resistance and arguing for our approach to the concept, suggesting a tentative definition. Within the existing literature we identify two authors, whom we identify as representing two very different ways of conceptualizing and theoretically analyze everyday resistance. From these two authors, we build our own understanding in Chapter 2 (“A Theoretical Approach Beyond Scott and de Certeau”), taking up the basic idea that everyday resistance is oppositional to dominant power (from James C. Scott) and a particular way of acting—a practice (from Michel de Certeau). In Chapter 2 , we also point out the limitations of the classic works by Scott

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and de Certeau, and the need to move beyond their frameworks. This leads us to clarify what it means to understand everyday resistance as a practice (not as a particular consciousness/intent or consequence), in Chapter 3: “Everyday Resistance as Practice”, and as an opposition that engages with power relations, in Chapter 4: “Everyday Resistance as Counter Practice”. Since we have not found an already existing theoretical framework and approach that captures our understanding of everyday resistance, we then try to move from this basic view of an everyday oppositional practice towards a possible alternative perspective. This brings us to our proposal of a new analytical framework that would deal with the limitations of previous studies and update research on everyday resistance to align with current theories on poststructuralism, queer studies, gender studies and intersectionality (Intermezzo: Towards a Framework that Guides Our Analysis of Everyday Resistance). The basic ideas within our analytical framework are outlined in the Intermezzo that bridges Part I and Part II. In Part II, our analytical framework is presented through our constant utilization of different studies by other authors, in order to both specify the four dimensions of the framework, and to illustrate its usefulness for a coherent understanding of everyday resistance. In Chapter 5 (“Repertoires of Everyday Resistance in Relation to Configurations of Power”), we present the first dimension, configurations of power and repertoires of everyday resistance. Since we consider power and resistance always to be intimately related we discuss them together in this dimension. Our choice of the concept “repertoires” is loosely inspired by Charles Tilly’s concept of “repertoires of contention”, which is particularly useful since it connects to historical configurations of power and their related culturally learned repertoires. Chapter 6 (“Relationships of Agents”) discusses the second dimension, relationships between actors, with a focus on who is carrying out the actions of everyday resistance (the resisters), as well as the relationships with the other main types of actors involved in the practice of resistance (the targets and the observers of resistance). Basically, we argue that the identities of actors are constructed and changed through interaction, that fixed or stable actor identities are unusual and that hybrid positions evolve. Chapter 7 (“The Spatialization of Everyday Resistance”) discusses the third dimension, spatialization, and highlights how everyday resistance, in the form of activities, social relations and identities, is spatially organized and how everyday resistance is practiced in and through space as a central social dimension. As the fourth and last dimension we introduce temporalization in Chapter 8 (“The Temporalization of Everyday Resistance”). Just as everyday resistance involves repertoires of practices entangled with power relations, as well as social relations and identities, and is practiced in and through space as a central social dimension, one may equally talk about everyday resistance as temporally organized, and as practiced in and through time as a central social dimension. Temporalization of everyday resistance may be about creating and embodying a different conception of and relation to time than the dominant ones, for

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Introduction

example, queer temporalities. In Chapter 9 (“Four Dimensions of Everyday Resistance: The Case of Palestinian Sumūd”), we apply the earlier proposed analytical framework on everyday resistance to the case of Palestinian Sumūd (steadfastness) in relation to the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. The chapter aims to show how the four dimensions can be utilized simultaneously in an analysis of a case with respect to its specific context. In the final chapter, “Conclusion”, we are then equipped to summarize our discussions and contribution to the field, the strengths and weakness of our proposed analytical framework, and suggest further research needed in the field of everyday resistance.

Note 1. Story shared by Majken Jul Sörensen in personal communication, July 15, 2017. 2. However, in his later works, Foucault argued to begin with resistance, not power, since resistance was possible to view as a way to detect power. But he was never able to shift his focus to resistance, and it continued to be marginal to his writings. 3. A number of Swedish scholars within resistance studies have brought attention to the need to expand the analysis of power and resistance beyond the study of cultural processes, discourses and intersubjective meaning systems by also including materiality (Törnberg 2013; Lilja 2017; Von Busch 2017; Johansson, Lilja, and Martinsson 2018). While we acknowledge the inf luence of post human theories and schools of thought in social sciences, particularly new materialism and its attempt to undermine the binary opposition between humans and non-humans and complicate the hierarchy that has placed humans in a privileged position, are inspired by the previous call, however, this book, with its focus on everyday resistance, does only to a very limited extend integrate and use post human perspectives and concepts.

PART I

A Theoretical Framework Resistance as Everyday Counter Practice

1 EVERYDAY RESISTANCE AS A CONCEPT

If we operate with a superficial understanding of resistance, we sometimes have problems detecting even large-scale resistance, if it occurs as aggregation of more individualized and scattered forms. Mahdavi (2008) shows how women in Iran have to deal in their everyday with the “komite” (the Iranian morality police) that enforces strict dress codes and behavioral rules in public spaces. However, she argues that there is a “sexual or sociocultural revolution” happening in Iran today (2009, 3). It is subtle and often hidden and uses small signs and steps in order to push the limits of how you are able to dress and behave, and sometimes it bursts, and mobs attack the “komite” (2009, 6). This happens mainly among youth—the majority of Iran—in Tehran and other urban centers mainly, and it involves “music, dancing, alcohol, and premarital sex—all punishable offenses” (2009, 7).1 Mahdavi claims this youth culture is so strong the regime has to adjust to it progressively. “I watched women both uptown and downtown walk the streets of Tehran wearing more and more makeup and dressing less and less Islamic in style. Shrinking and colorful headscarves replaced long, black, loose-fitting and conservative hejâb, and form-fitted overcoats replaced looser, more conservative mânto” (2009, 8). This cultural resistance seems connected to an ongoing modernization or Westernization, and is informal, dispersed and individualized, not organized, ideologically united or with leadership (which eventually got organized in the Iranian “Green Revolution”, or rebellion of 2009). Several years before the outbreak of the Arab Uprising Bayat (1997a, 1997b, 1997c, 2000, 2009) wrote a lot on the “informal people” who during many years have conducted resistance in Iran and the Arab world and who sometimes are brought together as “social non-movements” (2010, 14–19), i.e., individuals brought together by the activated “passive networks” in a social space of temporal affinity, which enable a coordination despite the

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A Theoretical Framework

lack of formal leadership, formal organizations and united plans or strategies. The research by Bayat and Mahdavi on ongoing everyday resistance reminds us how all the major revolutionary changes have taken researchers preoccupied with formal leadership by surprise (e.g. the regime changes in Eastern Europe 1989 and in Soviet Union 1991, or in South Africa 1994, and the Arab Uprising 2011, etc.) (Goodwin 2011). Thus, if we are interested in how people can liberate themselves in repressive contexts, it seems we have to pay close attention to the everyday forms of resistance that precede (and follow) the drama of revolutions. Basically, this chapter is an overview of the existing theories and conceptualizations in the field, in which we show the plurality and the main tendencies, the many disciplines involved and varied understandings of everyday resistance. A main conclusion is that the field lacks an accepted understanding of what the phenomenon in question is, and how to empirically study it. It is also not clear what its key characteristics are, and what roles it plays in politics, social change or life of people, and we certainly do not know how its meaning changes in different contexts and historical periods.

Everyday Resistance as a Research Field Everyday resistance studies are about exploring how people act in their everyday lives in ways that might undermine power. In order to achieve clarity in our definitions and analytical discussions, we maintain an analytical-theoretical distinction between resistance and power, but as will become clear during our discussions, to “undermine power” is not a clear-cut either-or thing in the empirical reality, but rather complex, dynamic and both-and. This is so because power is intimately integrated into and exists in several ways in the everyday lives of people. And at the same time power and resistance are often intimately entangled. Our understanding of power will be developed in a more nuanced way as we proceed in the text, but for now we can say that power is here understood as power over people that is fundamentally limiting their potential (possible ways of life, identities, subjectivities, discourses and ways of behaving) through a variation of techniques (including hierarchies, stereotyping, discipline, violence, etc.) that is forming human existence in particular ways. In a Foucaultian sense, power is something practiced in all social relations throughout society, on all levels and in indeterminate struggles, negotiations and changing relations of forces. In line with Foucault, power is understood as sometimes forbidding, but primarily productive and basically decentered, heterogenic and plural, however, sometimes taking somewhat more stable forms, as “domination”. However, our analysis of everyday resistance aims to also suit other understandings of power, at least those that resemble Foucault’s, e.g. Bourdieu’s, Butler’s, Laclau’s, Lukes’, etc. Everyday resistance is a theoretical concept introduced by James C. Scott in 1985 in order to cover a different kind of resistance; one that is not as dramatic

Everyday Resistance as a Concept 19

or visible as rebellions, riots, demonstrations, revolutions, civil war and other such organized, collective or confrontational articulations of resistance (Scott 1985, 1989, 1990). Everyday resistance is quiet, dispersed, disguised or otherwise seemingly invisible to elites, the state or mainstream society; something Scott interchangeably calls “infrapolitics”. Scott shows how certain common behavior of subordinated groups (for example, foot-dragging, escape, sarcasm, passivity, laziness, misunderstandings, disloyalty, slander, avoidance or theft) is not always what it seems to be, but instead resistance. Scott argues these activities are tactics that exploited people use in order to both survive and undermine repressive domination, especially in contexts when rebellion is too risky.2 According to Scott, the form of resistance depends on the form of power. Those who claim that “‘real resistance’ is organized, principled, and has revolutionary implications . . . overlook entirely the vital role of power relations in constraining forms of resistance” (Scott 1989, 51). If we only care for “real resistance”, then “all that is being measured may be the level of repression that structures the available options” (Scott 1989, 51). Scott fundamentally transformed our understanding of politics, making the ordinary life of subordinated groups part of political affairs. He also directly played an inspirational role in the international establishment of “subaltern studies” as a distinct school that reformulated a “history from below” of India and South Asia ( Haynes and Prakash 1991; Kelly 1992 , note 1, 297; Ludden 2002 , 7–11; Sivaramakrishnan 2005), and he still inspires numerous empirical studies on everyday resistance (Sivaramakrishnan 2005): with general applications (for example, Smith and Grijns 1997), on how covert resistance transforms into overt forms (for example, Adnan 2007) or on effectiveness (for example, Korovkin 2000). Some deal with specific social spaces, such as the workplace (Huzell 2005), the family (for example, studies of resistance among women in violent relationships, Holmberg and Enander 2004) or gay/queer spaces (Myslik 1996; Camp 2004). Others study everyday resistance and specific categories, often women, low-skilled workers, migrants, gay/queer people, Palestinians, minorities, peasants, but also sometimes “new agents” such as white-power activists (Simi and Futurell 2009) or white, middle class singles resisting stigmatization (Zajicek and Koski 2003). Studies may also cover specific themes, such as resistance and stigma ( Buseh and Stevens 2006) or resistance and consumption/ shopping (Fiske 1989), etc.

Theoretical Perspectives on Everyday Resistance Besides agreeing that resistance is an oppositional activity, the literature on resistance differs in the meaning of the concept, at the same time as theoretical understanding and empirical scope varies tremendously (Hollander and Einwohner 2004; Lilja and Vinthagen 2009; Vinthagen and Johansson 2013). The classic theoretical frameworks for understanding resistance are based on the literature of Karl Polanyi, Antonio Gramsci and James. C. Scott (Gills 2000).

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A Theoretical Framework

Chin and Mittelman provide an overview and argue that these “three master theories of resistance[:] Antonio Gramsci’s concept of counter-hegemony, Karl Polanyi’s notion of counter-movements and James C. Scott’s idea of infrapolitics” (1997, 26), deal with different targets. Gramsci deals with “state apparatuses (understood as an instrument of education)”, Polanyi with “market forces” and Scott with “ideologies (public transcripts)”. Furthermore, these master theories deal with different modes of resistance (“wars of movement and position”; “counter-movements aimed at self-protection”; and, “counter-discourse”) (Chin and Mittelman 1997, 34, Table 1). Thus, we get a work-division between these “master theories”, where Gramsci and Polanyi deal with collective politics and Scott with individual everyday life, at the same time as they ref lect on how globalization transformed conditions of resistance: “as societies became more complex, so too did the targets and modes of resistance” (1997, 34), and furthermore, as they argue, also the forms, agents, sites and strategies, become more diverse and complex (1997, 34–36). For our purpose, with a focus on the micro-level of resistance, it is Scott that becomes important. Unfortunately, we think this neat categorization of Chin and Mittelman treats Scott incorrectly, reducing him to an ideological and discursive struggle in the everyday. As a difference, we recognize how Scott very much (also) focuses on the material class war in the everyday. Furthermore, we would argue that at least de Certeau should be added here, perhaps also Bayat and Foucault, although Foucault has more of an indirect importance, as someone that provides help to understand the network environment of micro-relations and techniques that everyday resistance operates within. All of these authors we will discuss in detail in the process of developing our perspective. Now, we want to outline some of the main contributions in the research field of everyday resistance, and, in the process, show that none of the other publications have done what we are aiming to do here.

Previous Research There are quite a lot of edited books that deal with everyday resistance that add to our understanding, but they fail to develop coherent theoretical tools and analytical frameworks, as is the aim of this book. Among the recent literature on resistance, two edited books: The Global Resistance Reader by Amoore (2005) or the Cultural Resistance Reader by Duncombe (2002) hold sway. While the former focuses on social movements, the latter centers on broader cultural, individual or “everyday” resistance exemplified by, for example, women shopping (Fiske, in Duncombe 2002, 267–274), smoking (Frank, in Duncombe 2002, 316–327) or women identifying with other women (Radicalesbians, in Duncombe 2002, 248–254). A more recent version of such a collected volume with diverse approaches is the SAGE Handbook of Resistance (2016), edited by Steve Vallas and David Courpasson. In a similar manner, the edited book, Entanglements of

Everyday Resistance as a Concept 21

Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance (2000), gives close attention to how resistance played out in specific contexts, taking the domination/resistance couplet as a point of departure, but with a focus on the spatial dimension of domination/resistance, ignoring other dimensions that we suggest are important. There are also those edited books that more explicitly deal with everyday resistance. For example, Everyday Forms of Resistance in South East Asia (Kerkvliet and Scott 1986)that focuses on peasant studies in a regional context. Since all these are edited books they add a range of interesting perspectives to the field but cannot provide a coherent framework, neither in terms of theory, conceptual clarity, nor empirical scope. There are, however, some few books that do that, and they are key to our later discussions. One of the few books that indeed does develop a coherent theoretical framework is the classic work by James C. Scott (1990) Domination and the Arts of Resistance, which is fundamental for the understanding of everyday resistance. It is a book that makes the locally developed concepts in Scott’s classic ethnographic study among peasants in Malaysia (1985) into a more general framework, shown to be applicable to serfs as well as slaves and other particular groups. Many have criticized Scott (see Gupta 2001; Howe 2000; Field 1994; Gal 1995; Gutmann 1993; Kelly 1992; Tilly 1991), without proposing a consistent alternative. One of these is O’Hanlon (1988), who argues in line with subaltern studies in general and claims that Scott applies too strong a division between dominants and subalterns while simultaneously overemphasizing the role of resistance. To O’Hanlon, “this is a major problem since acceptance and submission is probably the strongest element of subaltern culture” (1988, 214). Such a dichotomous understanding of resistance and power as Scott professes is not something we use, instead we argue that resistance and power are entangled, and subalterns are often divided along different positions in relation to class, gender and sexuality as well as race. Therefore, we prefer the concept “subordinated” as a broader and less charged categorization than “subaltern”, which is today often used to indicate the most subordinated in society.3 In another ground-breaking work, Life as Politics (2009) by Bayat, is a book that focuses on the urban poor in Third World societies and Muslim/Arab everyday articulations of resistance. Unlike Scott, Bayat shows a link between individualized and disguised forms of everyday resistance, on the one hand, and temporary mass mobilizations of the urban poor, on the other. But neither Bayat nor Scott has the ambition to create a theoretical framework that incorporates other key perspectives in the field of everyday resistance, such as de Certeau’s, or the power theory of Foucault or other poststructuralists of later style, as we will do throughout our discussions. Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1984) looks in an unusual and refreshing way at how creative practices in liberal-democratic contexts from a perspective of postmodernism and cultural studies can be understood as resistance in the everyday. However, we argue both de Certeau and Scott

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A Theoretical Framework

fail to incorporate the power/resistance dynamics. de Certeau solves one of the main problems with Scott, that of his privileged (class antagonistic) intention. Instead de Certeau focuses on practice (creative ways of acting)—a solution we also follow, but by suggesting a framework that closely and continuously relates resistance to power. We try to avoid the main problem with de Certeau: that acting “differently” becomes resistance. de Certeau views too much as “resistance” and makes power disappear. In our attempt to go beyond both Scott and de Certeau, we will focus on what it means to understand everyday resistance as a subverting practice that is entangled in a dynamic with power. Popular Dissent, by Bleiker (2000), is the first serious engagement with social science theories on discourse, Foucault, de Certeau and nonviolent forms of everyday resistance and activism. Bleiker (2000) criticizes Scott for not understanding that subordinates who deliberately are “maintaining a public posture of consent”, out of reasons of self-preservation or strategy, are not able to do so from any “pre- or extra-discursive knowledge” or “position of authenticity” (193). Like everyone else, subordinates “live in a community whose language, social practices and customs set limits . . . [and] provides the conceptual tools through which ‘reality’ makes sense” (193). To Bleiker the solution lies in combining strengths from both Foucault and Scott in order to avoid their respective weaknesses (2000, 193). Basically, Bleiker argues that Foucault is helpful for understanding power, while not equally so for resistance, at the same time as Scott is helpful for understanding resistance, while not when it comes to power. This is something we agree with and take inspiration from and try to pursue. Bleiker, however, does not develop a comprehensive understanding of all the social dimensions of everyday resistance; instead he focuses on the potential of cultural, linguistic and discursive aspects. Similarly, David Couzens Hoy makes a foundational work in applying poststructuralist theory (Derrida, Foucault, Nietzsche, Žižek, etc.) in Critical Resistance: From Poststructuralism to Post-Critique (2004). His focus is, however, more on developing poststructuralist approaches to ontology, ethics and critique, and he arrives at a suggestion of “post-critique” as an alternative. Hoy does not pay interest to methodology, empirical research or frameworks for analyzing cases of (critical) resistance. Then we have two books that do innovative theoretical work to help us to find a new understanding of subordinated groups that previously have been limted to Marxist class theory or liberal human rights’ frameworks. Charles T. Lee outlines, in Ingenious Citizenship: Recrafting Democracy for Social Change (2016), a critique of the limited use of liberal human rights approaches for oppressed and marginalized people. Based on several in-depth case studies of migrant domestic workers, global sex workers, trans people and suicide bombers, Lee shows how those made “abject” to mainstream society fight for an integration into liberal citizenship in “ingenious” ways that unsettle and open up new cracks for further resistance, and ultimately hold a potential for transformation of the liberal hegemony. Lee does not totally dismiss human rights activism, but argues for

Everyday Resistance as a Concept 23

its application together with everyday resistance in context-adopted, f luid and creative ways. Instead of typically arguing for a straightforward inclusion of marginalized groups through expanding liberal citizen rights, Lee argues that rights-based activism on behalf of groups that are oppressed and made into non-citizens (“abjects”) needs to combine with the innovative, ingenious and unsettling forms of everyday resistance applied by “abjects” themselves—as for example “hidden tactics”, “calculated abjection”, “morphing technologies” or “sacrificial violence”. Thus, in an original way Lee’s sophisticated theoretical and empirical analysis opens up a link between organized rights activism and everyday resistance. However, since this work is an attempt to make sense of “ingenious citizenship”, it does not aim to offer a general framework. The same applies to the next book. In a similar but very different attempt, Kevin Van Meter’s Guerillas of Desire: Notes on Everyday Resistance and Organizing to Make a Revolution Possible (2017) is building an approach that connects everyday resistance with more organized struggles. He starts from popular experiences, organizing and struggles and shows how, historically, working and poor people under slavery, in peasant life and throughout modern capitalism have been innovative in developing forms of resistance suitable to the context and realities of their exploitation. Van Meter argues that the “creation of counter-communities” through creative forms of solidarity, communication and mutual aid, is key to make both everyday resistance and more generalized revolts possible. The book is also different in the consistent way in which it critiques the external imposing of models, theories or ideologies from professional activists, intellectuals or academics, and tries to develop guidelines for organizing rooted in local contexts, lived experiences and particular communities of resistance. Recently two researchers, inspired by de Certeau, have in an article suggested a theoretical framework similar to ours for the analysis of resistance: the “specific acts of resistance and their consequences: their political aesthetics and the way they link into practices of distinction, their temporal duration, and their spatial extension” (Frers and Meier 2017, 128). Their approach differs from ours, in that temporality and spatiality are focused on how resistance practices travel in time and space, not how they relate to an attempted reconstruction of (dominant) time and space. Furthermore, “distinction” is about how the practices through exclusions and inclusions, preferences and biases, etc. “actually unfold for the individuals involved in each case” (131). Even if “distinction” is about characterizing the specific everyday practices of resistance in relation to its environment, which is somewhat similar to our emphasis on the repertoire of resistance, the main difference is that we, like Scott, and as a difference from de Certeau, focus on how resistance practices are related to forms of domination. We have saved the most similar attempt for last. In a recent book, Everyday Resistance, Peacebuilding and State-making, Marta Iñiguez de Heredia (2017), uniquely develops a new framework, based on de Certeau and Scott and her

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critical reading of the everyday resistance literature. She proposes a new definition and a framework that “connect patterns, intensions, motivations, acts and actors . . . [through] gradients of intentionality, intensity, exposure and engagement” (69). In our view, Heredia (2017) is so far the most elaborated attempt to build on and go beyond the founders of resistance studies and create an empirically useful perspective for how to research the elusive phenomenon of everyday resistance. Her work is a great step forward in theoretical development of the research on everyday resistance, and she shows how a more elaborated understanding of the concept can be applied in an empirical study. However, as distinct from Heredia, we develop a more generally applicable framework, including more dimensions. Heredia’s ambition is after all to contribute to a subfield within everyday resistance studies: International peacebuilding.

“Everyday Resistance” as a Concept Everyday resistance is not easily recognized like public and collective resistance— such as rebellions or demonstrations—since it is typically (by design and necessity) hidden or disguised, individual and often not (openly) politically articulated. Therefore, everyday resistance poses a special challenge for research; but, it is well worth the effort. Our aim is to give an overview of the specific literature on everyday resistance, its main theoretical approaches and the range of different empirical material.4 By taking positions in current debates within the field, the proceeding aim is to theoretically develop our understanding of everyday resistance by suggesting how it can be fruitfully interpreted as an activity in a dynamic interaction opposing dominant power. Through this exploration we hope to show the potential usefulness of the concept. The existence of mundane or non-dramatic resistance shows that resistance could fruitfully be understood as a continuum between public confrontations and hidden subversion. Such a continuum also suggests a possibility to understand from where collective rebellions come, and it might help us to understand why sometimes and in some places, they don’t occur, despite “objective” conditions. Furthermore, everyday resistance suggests that resistance is (sometimes) integrated into social life and is a part of normality, not as dramatic or exceptional as assumed—even if it is still unclear how common it is.5 A clear problem with the concept of “everyday resistance” is that it risks labeling too many other activities as “resistance”. All expressions of difference, opposition, protest, deviation or individuality should not, we think, be labeled “resistance”. Every concept that is made excessively inclusive becomes less interesting or useful since it is not clear enough what different activities have in common. The challenge for our investigation is to explore if everyday resistance is possible to limit enough in order for it to be a useful and distinct concept, both for theoretical development and for empirical studies, while simultaneously avoiding limiting it so much that it loses its relation to social life

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and becomes an academic externality. A strict and delimited concept has academic merit but risks failing the main test, in our view: its usefulness for capturing the creative innovations of subordinated people and activists that employ everyday resistance in an empirical reality. Therefore, our conceptualization of everyday resistance needs to strike a balance between clear delimitation and openness to creative innovation, showing its main characteristics without being too strict. Scott has suggested a general categorization of resistance that builds on two main forms: the public and the disguised resistance (Scott 1989, 55–56; Scott 1990, 198). These two forms of resistance relate to three forms of domination (material, status and ideological), which result in six types of resistance. Although we find this categorization to be a problematic dichotomy, it serves to clarify Scott’s position and it is a simple way to differ between forms of power and resistance that is initially helpful for our discussion. According to Scott, resistance exists as publicly declared resistance as (1) open revolts, petitions, demonstrations, land invasions, etc. against material domination; (2) public assertion of worth or desecration of status symbols against status domination; (3) public counter-ideologies against ideological domination. Further, in a corresponding way, resistance exists as disguised, low profile, undisclosed or “infrapolitics” as (4) everyday resistance (e.g. poaching, squatting, desertion, evasion, foot-dragging) and direct resistance by disguised resisters against material domination (e.g. masked appropriations, anonymous threats and carnival); (5) hidden transcripts of anger or disguised discourses of dignity against status domination (e.g. rituals of aggression, tales of revenge, use of carnival symbols, gossip, rumor, creation of autonomous space for assertion of dignity); or (6) dissident subcultures (e.g. millennial religions, slave “hush arbors”, myths of social banditry, class heroes, world-upside-down imagery, myths of the “good” king or the time before the “Norman yoke”) against ideological domination. Thus, a typology of “paired forms of resistance” construes the difference between everyday resistance and “a more direct, open confrontation”. In everyday resistance, one seeks “tacit, de facto gains”, while in the other “formal, de jure —recognition of those gains” (Scott 1989, 34). Desertion corresponds to open mutiny in the same way as pilfering is the hidden version of open attacks on markets, etc. The objectives are similar, but the forms are different. “If everyday resistance is ‘heavy’ on the instrumental side and ‘light’ on the symbolic confrontation side, then the contrasting acts would be ‘light’ on the instrumental side and ‘heavy’ on the symbolic side” (Scott 1989, 56). Everyday techniques are “small scale”, “relatively safe”, “promise vital material gains” and “require little or no formal coordination” (Scott 1989, 35), but “some level of cooperation”, and evolve into “a pattern of resistance” (Scott 1989, 36) that “rely on a venerable popular culture of resistance” (Scott 1989, 35). The practical techniques come in many varieties but acquire “a certain unity . . . [through

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their] invariably quiet, disguised, anonymous, often undeclared forms” (Scott 1989, 37). This amounts to a: quiet unremitting guerilla warfare . . . day-in and day-out [that] rarely make headlines. But just as millions of anthozoan polyps create, willynilly, a coral reef, thousands upon thousands of petty acts of insubordination and evasion create a political and economic barrier reef of their own. And whenever . . . the ship of state runs aground on such a reef, attention is typically directed to the shipwreck itself and not the vast aggregation of actions which make it possible. (Scott 1989, 49) The coordination of small acts of resistance is not done formally but informally through the culture of subordinated groups. Scott first understood this while studying peasants in South East Asia. He argues that the “climate of opinion” articulated in “folk culture” of peasants gives legitimacy, or is even a “celebration, of precisely the kinds of evasive forms of resistance” (Scott 1989, 52). What he finds is a typical way of doing collective actions among peasants, not unique for resistance. Peasant societies coordinate a range of complex activities such as “labor-exchange to wedding preparations, to rituals [through] networks of understanding and practice” (Scott 1989, 52). However, everyday resistance is “not a peasant monopoly” (Scott 1989, 52), but one that exists among all kinds of subalterns (Scott 1990). It is key to understand that to Scott, everyday resistance is not a lesser or primitive force of resistance. It is just operating according to a very different, even opposite logic to public and collective resistance, and at other places or times, occasions where public collective resistance would be futile, self-defeating or too dangerous. The key characteristic of everyday resistance is the “pervasive use of disguise”, through either “the concealment of anonymity of the resister”, in which “the personal (not the class) identity of the protesters” is kept secret, or the concealment of the act itself (Scott 1989, 54). “Instead of a clear message delivered by a disguised messenger, an ambiguous message is delivered by clearly identified messengers” (Scott 1989, 54–55). Thus, the true identity of the resister, or the resistance is hidden. “A practical act of resistance is thus often accompanied by a public discursive affirmation of the very arrangements being resisted” (Scott 1989, 56). And within folk culture we typically find trickster figures, spirituals, metaphors or euphemisms that “have a double meaning . . . so that they cannot be treated as a direct, open challenge” (Scott 1989, 54). The two main forms of resistance have very different relations to the dominant symbolic order. The “public, symbolic confrontations .  .  . intended as discursive negations of the existing symbolic order .  .  . fail unless they gain attention”, while everyday resistance “by not openly contesting norms of law, custom, politeness, deference, loyalty and so on leaves the dominant in command

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of the public stage” (Scott 1989, 57). Scott compares the two forms in an example of resistance to the “norm of a religiously sanctified marriage as the only legitimate basis for family life”, by arguing that this moral norm can be resisted not only through a social movement that “openly repudiates the norm”, but also through “a pattern of unsanctified, common law marriages that are widespread but . . . undeclared as public acts” (Scott 1989, note 37, 62). Thus, what is an effective form of resistance in one context might not be that in another more repressive context. In a highly repressive environment, as for example in Western Sahara, occupied by Moroccan military forces, where police regularly beat up protesters and use torture on Sahrawi activists, some brave activists do continue with public protests, but most have to resort to more subtle, hidden or disguised forms of resistance in the everyday.

Beyond Dichotomies—Other Concepts Even if Scott recognizes that hidden everyday resistance might evolve into public and collective forms of resistance (1989, 58), his conceptualization seems to create a dichotomy between his “paired forms of resistance”—everyday resistance and public resistance. Such a dichotomy might make what seems in empirical reality to be a continuum of mixed forms of resistance invisible. Instead, we would maintain the need for an analytical distinction between “everyday resistance” and other more public and collectively organized forms of resistance, but still recognize how empirical reality displays combinations and hybrid forms. We are not alone in taking such a position. Several resistance researchers argue that public and hidden resistance mix and combine (e.g. Bayat 2000, 545–546; Katsiaficas 1997; Simi and Futurell 2009). Simi and Futurell (2009) claim the study of activism has become based on an implicit dichotomy of “normal activism” versus everyday resistance: “Researchers have not usually considered everyday forms of resistance to be what participants in established social movements do as part of their activism” (2009, 90). Instead, they argue that managing the stigma of being an activist in a certain social movement is a type of “veiled, identity-based resistance that occurs across many everyday contexts” (2009, 91). In order to make their point, they utilize an empirical illustration from an unconventional subordinated group: White Power activists, a group that, in a complex way, show simultaneous subordination (to a self-declared non-racist liberal hegemony) and superordination (to people of color and immigrants). In their position as subordinated to hegemony, they experience, according to the authors, a stigma. In their article, “Negotiating White Power Activist Stigma”, Sims and Futurell describe a process that “pivots on strategies of calculated concealment and revelation of their Aryan activist identity” (2009, 89), thus, a form of combination of hidden and public resistance. The Aryans experience stigmatization through experience of “soft” repression such as ridicule, ostracism, and other “interactional conf licts”, which surge within the contexts of everyday life. Based on interviews

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with Aryan activists the authors identify a wide range of stigmatization such as neighbors that shun and picket their residences when they are exposed, as well as losing jobs. The Aryan activists always conceal more than they reveal, and Simi and Futurell regard the disclosures the activists make as a “form of individual everyday activism to resist social controls that subjugate them to others’ values and identity expectations” (2009, 106). Furthermore, all social movements are not necessarily creating formal kind of politics. They might even resist the formalization of (their) politics. Autonomous anarchists create what Katsiaficas calls an “anti-politics” of “the first person”, in which individuals do not act on abstract principles, distant goals or on behalf of large-scale collectives, but based on their own desires and values by trying to implement change locally, informally and directly (1997). Thus, their way of life (i.e. their “everyday”) becomes one of resistance, both as persons and as (public) activists, in a way where it is hard to tell the difference between their life as activists and their life as private persons. Again, we see resisters (from different ends of the political spectrum) mixing public and hidden everyday resistance. Therefore, we have to avoid creating a dichotomy and need to understand everyday resistance as a different kind of resistance that relates to other resistance. It constitutes an initial, off-stage, or later stage activity in relation to other more sustained, organized and conventional political forms of resistance. Thus, everyday resistance goes on before, between or at the side of the dramatic resistance events. Thus, everyday resistance is a practice conducted in certain situations and contexts, when public resistance for some reasons is not an alternative, while resistance against power still is deemed as motivated. Resistance is not a characteristic or quality of any certain group or people—be that peasants or subalterns—but a particular type of activity among many other types of activities that peasants or other subordinated groups might employ. When and where everyday resistance occurs is not necessary for us to determine here. Our interest is to put the searchlight on these less obvious kinds of resistance that are—for the moment and in certain situations—neither expressed in dramatic, confrontational and public events, nor with (collectively elected) leadership, or (explicit) political motivations or sustained by (formal) organizations. The concept of the “everyday” ( Neal and Murji 2015) in everyday resistance is necessary to understand in contrast to the extraordinary or, according to Bhabha: the “spectacular”.6 Heredia (2017) connects the everyday to “patterns”, thus, something that is repeated in the lives of people, however, not necessarily literally “every” day. In a similar manner, also dominant power is reproduced in the everyday, in the way people accept, normalize, follow and enforce norms, rules, hierarchies, stereotypes, discourses, orders, laws and policies, often in an automatic non-ref lective way. In this sense, everyday resistance becomes the silent, mundane and ordinary patterns of acts that are normalized ( Heredia 2017, 3, 12, 17) within a certain

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subordinated culture or community. Everyday resistance happens in other spaces and times or in other relations, although everyday resistance might be facilitated by waves of public mobilizations, and sometimes the consequences of everyday resistance are dramatic and crash into the public scene (like the shipwreck in Scott’s previous quote). Therefore, and this is a key observation for our later discussions, actors themselves are not necessarily regarding it as “resistance” at all, but rather as an established or conventional part and way of their lives, personalities, cultures and traditions.

A Tentative Definition of Everyday Resistance Definitions are needed in order to create clarity, to specify what we include, search for and talk about. The problem with a definition is that the more successful it becomes, the more people will use the same one and therefore subscribe to the same understanding. In such a situation, definitions become an exercise of power. Then it does not guide us by distinguishing something we did not see before, but regulates in a way that limits our exploration of empirical variation and innovations. Our aim in this book is not to impose our definition or suggest all resistance researchers need one and the same definition. Instead, we want to emphasize how research on resistance is fundamentally about the power of discourse, not only the discourse of resisters, but also about the scientific discourse on resistance. Every discourse on resistance runs the risk to marginalize, exclude and silence different articulations of resistance; especially when only some intentions are counted as legitimate. Those intentions that have to do with “non-political” or “private” goals, emotions or personal needs are not regarded as relevant, irrespective of whether they undermine power relations. Why are certain “political” intentions and consciousness privileged? Michael Adas (1986, 69), for example, claims that resistance (or, what he calls “avoidance protest”) “must involve a conscious and articulated intent to deny resources or services or do injury to those who are perceived as the sources of their suffering.” It is as if expecting of all resistance to express “politics” in the same way as researchers, regimes, national and educated elites and intellectuals do. Such assumptions become a problematic power exercise. How we include or exclude the resistance of others is key to resistance studies. In social science, in general, there seems to be a problematic tendency to privilege political consciousness, or public, direct and confrontational resistance. In such a way, other forms of resistance are made invisible and insignificant. What is more surprising is that researchers who focus on marginalized forms of resistance, such as hidden and everyday resistance (as, for example, in James C. Scott’s work), still tend to privilege certain “political” forms of resistance. Some kind of consciousness and intention are always an element in human behavior or action. Humans always try to achieve something when they act. Basically, the only exception is when we talk about mere ref lexes, automatic

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body movements. Therefore, in our proposed definition we reject the idea of limiting the world of possible intentions and making it a necessary criterium of the definition that actors have or can articulate a certain political intention or a class-antagonistic consciousness. We do this in order to open up the concept to other intentions. We view it as important to not exclude intentions or a consciousness that seem non-political. There is an importance to knowing the intentions that motivate people, of course. But, it will always be more or less formulated or clear for people themselves, and thus for the researcher. And it will often be hard or even impossible to know what other people (really) think. Not everything within everyday politics or the lifestyles of subordinated groups is a form of resistance, other patterns of acts might articulate accommodation or exercise power. This is somehow self-evident, but most authors fail to point this out or draw the proper consequences of this important observation. It means that the same subordinated person might practice everyday resistance in one typical situation, when, for example, stealing something insignificant from the storage of a landlord, while exercising power in another, when, for example, commanding a child to do some work for the landlord, and yet again, show accommodation when the landlord enters by working harder without being ordered to do so. It is, thus, necessary, on the one hand, to talk about specific acts as being resistance—in the sense of a subordinate’s patterns of acts that might undermine power ( Lilja and Vinthagen 2009)—and, on the other hand, acts that are part of ordinary, everyday life—in the sense of being integrated into the actor’s way of life. Thus, certain acts might be resistance, or not, but in a strict meaning, there are no persons that are “resisters”. Individuals will always also, to some degree, participate in the exercise of power. If we can identify both of these aspects—the everyday and the resistance—then we have detected everyday resistance. Therefore, conceptualizing and analyzing everyday resistance begins with a two-step identification of something as being part of the everyday and that part as being an expression of resistance to power. We, consequently, propose a definition that reserves everyday resistance to such resistance that is done routinely (as patterns of acts), but which is not politically articulated in public or formally organized (in that situation). This definition will be maintained in the discussion, and we will return to it, and specify it, in the end of the book. Everyday resistance is a form of activity that often avoids being detected as resistance. But it might also be made politically invisible by society, by not being recognized as resistance (as in “infrapolitics”), despite that the actor is politically conscious and aims to act politically. “Infrapolitics” (Scott 1990; Mittelman 2001) is often used by Scott as a way to describe everyday forms of resistance, which emphasizes the fact that certain practices that have political intention or consequences are not treated or perceived as “political” in that society. Acts that deviate from hegemonic understandings of politics or resistance tend not to achieve recognition. Sometimes

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we have a kind of “lifestyle” or “way of life” of people, like that of vegans for example, that makes visible everyday resistance to certain norms and discourses. Despite being a visible “counter-hegemonic embodiment” ( Kwan and Roth 2011, 194) it is largely politically invisible, as it does not conform to conventional understandings of politics. What you eat is seen as “private”. In relation to a hegemony of meat-eating norms, living as a vegan is, we maintain, everyday resistance. As an individual pattern of acting, it undermines that dominance of the norm in that person’s life, and as a public position it challenges the legitimacy of the norm, at dinners, lunch counters, and schools. If many do the same, or it is made impossible to ignore by becoming visible, it might even transform the hegemony to at least respect and give an established space for non-meat eating. There are several alternative concepts that cover aspects of resistance that are done in the everyday. “Off-kilter resistance” is one possible concept and form that is not following any strategic principles, but tactical opportunities ( Butz and Ripmeester 1999). “Embedded resistance” is a kind of “almost unwitting resistance” in which subordinated people “inf luence the nature of the hegemonic structure as they broaden their roles by working within the system .  .  . [and] continue to “embrace their role in the hegemonic system, and because, in hegemonic fashion, they are not motivated by a consciously articulated resistance” (Mihelich and Storrs 2003, 419). Recently, there have been those suggesting “resilience” as a key concept that can replace resistance (see, e.g., Chandler 2015), but we regard it more as an aspect or dimension of resistance, entangled with power relations (Butler, Gambetti, and Sabsay 2016, chap. 3). It is rather common to use “worker resistance” or “peasant resistance” as a concept, based on the actor category, or “anti-capitalist resistance”, based on the target category. Since we are not focusing on the actor or the target, but the resistance itself, we have chosen “everyday resistance” as our concept. It is intuitively understood and encompasses many variations, yet it easily relates to other resistance concepts (e.g. armed resistance, nonviolent resistance, economic resistance, etc.). We choose the concept despite being aware of a critique that it is difficult to distinguish between coping, survival techniques and compliance. In our view, these problems are possible to deal with by focusing on the act of resistance and its relation to domination, and by avoiding the trap of privileging the acting subjects or the political consciousness of actors— something we will develop in the following chapters.

Note 1. “Urban young adults, who compose almost two-thirds of Iran’s population, are highly mobile, highly educated (84 percent of young Tehrani’s are currently enrolled in university or are university graduates; 64 percent of these graduates are women), and underemployed” (2009, 9).

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2. This “zone of struggle exists in between the public and hidden ‘transcripts’ of native discourse, a construction of resistance not dissimilar to Bhabha’s ‘Third Space’ of colonial discourse” ( Jefferess 2008, 38). 3. “Subaltern” has become popular in social science through postcolonial studies and subaltern studies, but came originally from Antonio Gramsci, who used it to indicate a broader cultural understanding of the “working class” than in orthodox Marxism. Gramsci chose the concept from the military ranking of a lower officer, not the lowest of soldiers. 4. The empirical illustrations all deal with “everyday resistance” (seen in an inclusive sense). They illustrate different theoretical points, deal with issues from different fields of studies and together show a variation of intersections, space and time. When possible, we use complex theories of power and resistance with empirical richness to illustrate various dimensions and aspects of resistance. When not possible, we use different illustrations that together show complexity and variation. 5. We need more systematic and empirical studies to determine its actual frequency and integration in the everyday of different contexts. 6. Bhabha calls hidden resistance “sly civility”, which he distinguishes from “spectacular resistance” ( Jefferess 2008, 37–44).

2 A THEORETICAL APPROACH BEYOND SCOTT AND DE CERTEAU

In this chapter, we draw our theoretical framework from a discussion of what we see as the two main competing theoretical perspectives, developed by James C. Scott and Michel de Certeau. With the help of these theorists we develop the ways in which everyday resistance can be understood as oppositional ( James C Scott) and an activity (Michel de Certeau). We could as well have chosen Michel Foucault instead of de Certeau, as the representative of the micro-techniques of resistance, but the advantage with de Certeau is that he—contrary to Foucault— speaks more explicitly about the connections between the everyday and resistance, while for Foucault it is more appearing in an implicit way, as a part of the analysis of power and dominance ( Lilja and Vinthagen 2014). The link between Scott and de Certeau is obvious. Whereas Scott speaks of the “weapons of the weak” as hidden transcripts, infrapolitics and everyday resistance, de Certeau speaks about how “a tactic is an art of the weak”, “determined by the absence of a proper locus” as “a maneuver ‘within the enemy’s field of vision’ . . . and within enemy territory . . . [that] operates in isolated actions, blow by blow.” (de Certeau 1984, 37). For both of them, everyday resistance is a matter of the less visible and small actions by subordinated. This is not in any way surprising since Scott explicitly mentions that he draws on de Certeau’s work. Scott looks on class struggles in repressive contexts from anthropological and political science perspectives, while de Certeau looks on creative practices in liberal-democratic contexts from a perspective of cultural studies. Scott comes from a social science perspective on everyday resistance, while de Certeau comes from the humanities. The typical actor in Scott’s texts is the peasant, while we encounter the consumer in texts by de Certeau. In this discussion we argue that it is necessary to build on both of them but move beyond certain key limitations. In our attempt to go beyond both Scott and de Certeau, we

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will focus the rest of the book on a discussion of what it means to understand everyday resistance as a practice that is entangled in a dynamic with power.

James C. Scott—Class War of Infrapolitics In his book Decoding Subaltern Politics (2013), Scott summarizes in a condensed way his understanding of everyday resistance and its relation to “the little tradition” of peasants, ultimately the conf lict between the state and “the vernacular world”. Scott argues that villages are “face-to-face communities and, as such, resist abstractions” (2013, 4). Therefore, peasants do not have general “class relations” but particular landlords with vital personalities and social relations. Furthermore, small-scale agriculturalists or peasants are importantly following a “subsistence ethic” that aims to minimize risks, not maximize profit, and where maintaining good social relations and solidarity with everyone, including patrons, is essential to their social security. Thus, “social and economic arrangements are judged more by how well they protect against the most catastrophic outcomes than by how quantitatively exploitative (e.g. how much of the harvest a landlord takes) they are.” (2013, 5). Finally, this way of life means that the social and economic are interwoven in the way that social status is connected to the ability to maintain subsistence over time. Therefore, (economic) risk aversion is also about a claim for cultural dignity and respect. Scott demonstrates how great traditions of written, codified doctrine (religions or political ideologies) display a systematic “gap or slippage” when they meet folk culture. For example, the ecclesiastical orthodoxy of Catholicism is meeting a “folk heterodoxy, not to say heresy”, while Communism has had problems with “‘folk’ communism” (2013, 7–8). The opposition to ruling elites (and sometimes also oppositional elites) comes from “a distinct vernacular perspective that is more than simply a parochial version of cosmopolitan forms and values” (2013, 10), and often amounts to a “‘shadow society’ .  .  . opposition to the politico-religious tradition of ruling elites”, particularly during rebellious periods (2013, 10), something that is described by Christopher Hill (The World Turned Upside Down, 1972, on the English Revolution) and Richard Cobb (The Police and the People, 1970, on the French Revolution). This “little tradition” has some “more salient themes— localism, syncretism, and profanation” as opposition to both elite versions of religion and politics (2013, 24–63). “Much as the official religious doctrine is selected, reworked, and profaned in little tradition cults, so is the existing political order symbolically negated in popular millennarian [sic] traditions” (2013, 60). So, Scott’s conclusion is that “there is no such thing as a perfect ideological hegemony. . . . [Instead] it would appear that the growth of oppression dialectically produces its own negation in the symbolic and religious life of the oppressed” (2013, 61). Therefore, Scott suggests a fundamental conf lict

Beyond Scott and de Certeau

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between peasants and their elites, and an everyday practical manipulation of dominant ideologies, mitigating their domination. These forms of dissimulation and small acts of resistance, since they indeed “all involve immediate self-interested behavior” and are not principled, at least not in a self-conscious way, “might be termed opportunistic, unorganized, and prepolitical ” by a skeptic. But the real problem, according to Scott, is “the tendency to assign greater historical priority and weight to the organized and political than to everyday resistance, a position that, in my view, fundamentally misconstrues the very basis of economic and political struggle conducted daily by subordinate classes—not just the peasantry—in repressive settings” (2013, 93). “Class conf lict is, first and foremost, a struggle over the appropriation of work, production, property, and taxes” (2013, 94). Scott even suggests that we recognize that everyday forms of resistance, at least that in terms of durability, persistence, tactical wisdom, and f lexibility, as well as results . . . may well eclipse the achievements of what normally are considered social movements . . . Acts which, taken individually, may be trivial need not have trivial consequences when taken cumulatively . . . As a case in point . . . [we find] the collapse of the Confederacy . . . [where] Robinson estimates that as many as 250, 000 deserted or avoided conscription altogether . . . [and these] were compounded by massive shirking, insubordination, and f light among the slave population. (2013, 92–93) And, in a similar manner, Scott suggests that the collapse of the Tsarist repressive force in 1917 was in large degree a matter of “desertions from the largely peasant rank-and-file” (1986, 25). Despite these cases showing indications of the political potency of everyday resistance, Scott has often heard the critique that everyday resistance is not “real resistance”, and, as such, it is claimed that it should not be called “resistance”. For example, Scott looks at studies of slavery and resistance (Gerald Mullin and Eugene Genovese) and concludes that the authors tend to view everyday resistance as “pre-political” or not “real resistance”, basically since it, in the view of the authors, lacks the proper qualities of consequences and intentions (1986, 23–24). Combining these overlapping perspectives, the result is something of a dichotomy between real resistance on the one hand and “token”, incidental, or even epiphenomenal ‘activities’ on the other. “Real” resistance, it is argued, is (a) organized, systematic, and co-operative, (b) principled or self less, (c) has revolutionary consequences, and/or (d) embodies ideas or intentions that negate the basis of domination itself. “Token”, incidental,

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or epiphenomenal “activities” by contrast are (a) unorganised, unsystematic and individual, (b) opportunistic and “self-indulgent”, (c) have no revolutionary consequences, and/or (d) imply, in their intention or logic, an accommodation with the system of domination. (1986, 24) Scott, of course, disagrees and maintains that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of “the very basis of the economic and political struggle” and is “based on an ironic combination of both Leninist and bourgeois assumptions of what constitutes political action” (1986, 24). Scott, then (1986, 24–31), argues strongly against all these assumptions. According to Scott, the assumption of self lessness or principle-based resistance totally misunderstands the nature of resistance: “It is precisely the fusion of self-interest and resistance that is the vital force animating the resistance of peasants and proletarians” (1986, 26). That is the case for both everyday resistance and organized class-based resistance by peasants and proletarians. Different forms of resistance can of course be categorized, but to dismiss individual and non-organized forms of resistance is simply to let the forces of domination and existing division of resources decide what counts as resistance (1986, 28–29). Since resistance, both in terms of context and culture, has to adjust to circumstances in order to make sense and have some meaningful effect in the situation in which people find themselves, it is not the lack of “real resistance” that should be criticized in circumstances where it is difficult to conduct. Instead it is the lack of meaningful options for “real resistance” that should be analyzed. That means we need to shift the focus to analyzing the configurations of power that limits and forms the options of resistance. If resistance is ever going to be able to transform dominant power relations, it has to at least initially adjust to the given circumstances. Only after taking root, developing momentum and emerging as a force in a particular context, would it be possible to actually transform dominant power and open up new avenues for other forms of resistance, which then would be able to further the transformation of power. Anything else is just wishful and unrealistic thinking, divorced from the everyday experience of resisters. On another, but related, point we find it interesting how Scott shows how everyday resistance is not that totally different from public resistance, but rather it is a matter of degrees. Everyday resistance is, as we have seen, not formallyorganized collective resistance, but patterned individual acts or scattered acts by informal groupings. Yet it is often informally organized or rather coordinated in some more loose way, according to Scott. Even if: folk-culture is not co-ordination in the formal sense, it often achieves a “climate of option” which, in other more institutionalized societies,

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would require a public relations campaign. The striking thing about peasant society is the extent to which a whole range of complex activities from labor-exchange to house moving to wedding preparations, to feasts are coordinated by networks of understanding and practice. It is the same with boycotts, wage “negotiations”, the refusal of tenants to compete with one another, or the conspiracy of silence surrounding thefts. No formal organizations are created because none are required; and yet a form of co-ordination is achieved which alerts us that what is happening is not just individual action. (1986, 29) Thus, here it is more the existence of norms in a subaltern community that creates the circumstances in which coordination is possible, which makes what seems like spontaneous and individual acts into collective patterns of acts within a community. Therefore, we should not infer that individual acts of everyday resistance are necessary simply individual or non-collective. They might be part of a coordinated collective pattern. One of Scott’s key claims is that everyday resistance is intentional in a particular way, firstly, as “class-antagonism”. In the Introduction of Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance in South-east Asia (1986), Scott and Kerkvliet suggest that acts of everyday resistance “often represent forms of ‘self-help’” and are forms of “‘routine’ resistance of this kind” (1986, 1). Secondly, Scott claims: “To constitute resistance, the act must be at the expense of or be directed toward superordinates, not equals or subordinates. Third, those [authors in this book] wrestling with the problem of how to identify everyday resistance concur that intention is important” (1986, 2). For Scott, resistance is whatever peasants do “to deny to [sic] [should be ‘or’, compare (1986, 22)] mitigate claims by appropriating classes or to press their own claims vis-à-vis these superordinate classes.” (1986, 2). Scott maintains that: “Any definition of resistance thus requires at least some reference to the intentions of the actors” (1986, 26). Among these formulations of key traits of everyday resistance, we take issue with exactly this privileging of intentions. That is something we will return to later on. For now, we want to just highlight that, although Scott highlights intentions, our emphasis on practices of resistance is not totally contrary to Scott, actually. Firstly, Scott recognizes that we might not be able to identify the intentions at play. In the restatement of his definition of “peasant class resistance” from Weapons of the Weak, Scott emphasizes how “intentions are built into the definition” (1986, 22). However, in the section “What counts as resistance?” (1986, 22–31), Scott argues that the question of intention is “enormously complex . . . Even if we were able to ask the actors in question and even if they could reply candidly, it is not at all clear that they would be able to make a clear determination” (1986, 23).

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Secondly, Scott makes clear, in an often-overlooked way, that he is not talking about gathering data on individuals and their “intentions”. Rather, he reads the intentions from interpretations of the culture, in fact from the practices. And “intentions may be so embedded in the peasant subculture and in the routine, taken-for-granted struggle to provide for the subsistence and survival of the household so to remain inarticulate. . . . [Therefore] their intentions are inscribed in the acts themselves” (1986, 24). When it comes to those social settings where the material interests of appropriating classes are directly in conf lict with the peasantry (rents, wages, employment, taxes, conscription, the division of the harvest) we can, I think, infer something of intentions from the nature of the actions themselves. This is especially the case when there is a systematic pattern of actions that mitigate or deny a claim on their surplus. (1986, 30) Scott emphasizes, “resistance is not simply whatever peasants do to maintain themselves and their households” (1986, 30). To us, this means that, although Scott clearly emphasizes intentions, no doubt about it, it is still possible, at least based on the previous quote, to infer that his actual treatment of intentions is more about making culturally informed interpretations of a practice within a subaltern community, and thus, quite similar to the emphasis we make on practices of everyday resistance.

The Critique We have already criticized Scott for creating a polarization between everyday resistance and public/organized resistance in our discussion in the previous chapter. There are more problems with his framework that we need to identify before moving beyond it. Although Scott views everyday resistance as evolving in opposition and relation to domination, particularly by placing limitations on what kind of resistance becomes possible, his detailed analysis of forms of everyday resistance is still static and limited to a class-based perspective. Our critique generally suggests that Scott gives resistance and its agents too many independent abilities—a kind of autonomous or even isolated position. To us, the main weakness of Scott’s perspective is that of not incorporating resistance into a dynamic and interactive process with power. And, if power would be integrated throughout the analysis, it would mean that we have to take the intentions, consciousness and articulations of resistance actors as, at least, partly formed by the powerful discourses in which actors are situated. The consequences are that Scott—contrary to what several of his critics have claimed—views too little as resistance. It will only be that which displays a certain (political) intention that will count.

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Another (implicit) critique comes from the creator of the concept “rightful resistance”, Kevin O’Brien (1996) who argues that resistance by subalterns, and by those that are severely repressed, in for example rural China, does not have to be disguised or hidden and does not have to be antagonistic against the elites. O’Brien claims peasants in China (and many other places) exploit the divisions among power elites by articulating a form of public contention of “critique within the hegemony” (1996, 35) that creatively uses the rhetoric and myths of the hegemonic society and the laws and policies of the state in their open protests against local or particular elites and authorities who they perceive do not live up to the ideals and standards of the hegemony. In this way the “rightful resisters seek rather than avoid the attention of elites . . . [and] mitigate the risks of confrontation by proclaiming their allegiance to core values rather than by opting for disguised dissent” (1996, 34). As a consequence, this form of resistance also breaks up the Scottian dichotomy between dominant elites and subordinated classes. As O’Brien claims: “in these circumstances setting up ‘subordinates’ in opposition to ‘superordinates’ can obscure” our understanding of resistance (1996, 31). We agree with O’Brien, and think we need to be open to that also everyday resistance can, depending on its context, sometimes display somewhat public forms of resistance (even when the identity of the resister is public). As we will argue in detail later, we think it is not helpful to base our understanding or definition of everyday resistance on class-antagonism or any other particular political intentionality, as Scott does. de Certeau presents a perspective that is an alternative to Scott’s privileging of intention, one that instead highlights the creative practice of everyday resistance.

Michel de Certeau—Creative Cultural Tactics Michel de Certeau was a Jesuit priest, historian and cultural researcher teaching in France and the US. De Certeau is a key analyst of everyday tactics of resistance, who frames these resistance practices in a very different way than Scott. He was part of founding the psychoanalysis society in Paris together with Jacques Lacan, and worked with the French history journal Annales, which focused on the everyday lives of ordinary people and their making of history (Gonzalez-Sanz, Amezcua, and Noreña-Peña 2017, 2). De Certeau’s perspective of resistance is primarily discussed within cultural studies, but it has over the years spread to a wide range of other fields. Although he writes in different subject areas (theology, history, psychoanalysis, culture, etc.), it is the everyday practices of ordinary people that preoccupies him. This is visible both in his approach to history and culture. His approach to popular culture is distinct and avoids an essentializing approach by not subscribing to the conventional definition of culture as a domain of texts or artifacts, but rather as a set of practices or usages of texts and representations (Schirato 1993; Frow 1991, 52). For de Certeau, “consumption” is not opposed to “production”, but is another (more

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informal, invisible and everyday) form of production, one of creative making or handling, in “innumerable and infinitesimal transformations” (de Certeau in Frow 1991, 53). His historiographic texts suggest that historians are mixing science and fiction in a unique way, as part of a cultural practice where the past is connected to the present, and where the repressed “other” returns in the writings of history ( Reekie 1996). De Certeau’s analysis of creative cultural practice and popular everyday resistance is so widely utilized and discussed—not only in cultural studies, history and theology, but also sociology, literature, media and communication, anthropology, etc.—that it has made it into widely different areas. We find examples such as discussions about children’s resistance in preschool against rules delimiting popular culture (Henward 2015), nurses’ resistance to pressures at health institutions (Gonzalez-Sanz, Amezcua, and Noreña-Peña 2017), graffiti and street art in urban space ( Kenaan 2016), resistance among mass transit users of the NYC subway system (Ziegler 2004), everyday lies among information technology users (Mannell 2017), and the ruses of “Traveller Gypsies” in the UK ( Karner 2004), just to mention some examples. De Certeau is used in discussions of how to design new educational policy (Saltmarsh 2015), and his theories create an awareness of how ordinary people’s resistance needs to inf luence the design of new control policies (see, e.g., d’Abbs 2015). For our purposes, with a focus on everyday resistance, it is primarily his distinction and conceptualization of “strategy” (as power) and “tactics” (as resistance) that are of interest, and that have been utilized by authors in various field studies or case analyses. We agree with Butticci (2012), who suggests that de Certeau’s “tactics” are “forms of adaption to the environment” created by the powerful and their disciplinary strategies (93). They happen at the micro level as temporary and creative manipulations of “events, spaces, practices, symbols and materialities in order to turn them into opportunities” (93). Tactics can be seen as pointing out “absence” or gaps, and “serve as a sign of that which is lacking” within seemingly total systems (strategies) (Alonso 2017, 329). In this way de Certeau focuses on specific and small mundane acts by ordinary people (i.e., everyday resistance), where they make creative use (tactics) of what is given and designed by hegemonic power (strategy). One illustrative example of this strategy-tactics approach is the relation between migration and the nation state. The security strategies and technological apparatus of the state create migration control of national borders and internal territory. This grid of power control is continuously reworked, manipulated and operated on by migrants and solidarity activists in the form of creative tactics (Gill et al. 2014). The same technological control system that is put in place to control migrant bodies is tactically used by migrants and activists in various ways; for example, to more easily facilitate witnessing from experts and health professionals through video-links in court cases and to document migrants’ cases and make them stronger. For example, one migrant, “Lucy”, used the queue ticket at a migration office to prove she did show up in time for

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an appeal when she, the next day, was threatened with deportation. Thus, “the paper trail that the state generates to numerically document, order and govern can be usurped and put to use holding bureaucratic procedures to account” (Gill et al. 2014, 377). In her case, it proved successful, and eventually Lucy could stay, just because of a queue ticket . . . Migration activists also copy a similar logic of surveillance as the state, but in order to create “court-watching” as a kind of surveillance of the state from below by citizens (“sousveillance”), documenting how well the state follows its own policies and laws (Gill et al. 2014, 376). Thus, the strategic power technology of the state is met by tactical creativity that exploits the cracks in the system, operating within the gaze of power, achieving results without aiming to alter the power relations, although inf luencing them. If thousands of individuals do the same, it might even shift power relations more fundamentally. Another example is the tactical harnessing of conditional cash transfers (CCT) that poor people in the rural areas of Brazil utilize (Garmany 2017). When the state supports poor families with monthly cash transfers in Northeast Brazil, it is not solely out of a humanist concern with poverty. The state applies a power logic to manage the population by demanding that the poor change their behavior and develop their capacities. The cash transfer is conditioned on that the families make sure their kids attend school, make health check-ups, and take vaccinations, etc. At the same time, CCT is a clear example of how a power strategy is met by numerous resistance tactics. In meetings with local authorities, villagers, for example, assure their willingness to meet the school obligation, but simultaneously suggest that without improved roads and bus transports, it will be “difficult” for them to live up to the demands. Since the local economy is dependent on this cash f low, authorities and businesses develop an interest to facilitate frustrated needs of the poor, which is something the poor villagers opportunistically take advantage of, in order to press for improved services. Therefore, “conditionalities are not fixed or immovable state strategies but can instead be engaged tactically by [CCT] recipients to pressure the state and shirk particularly burdensome obligations. . . . It thus appears that CCTs introduce even more tactical opportunities for program recipients—as well as strategic ones for the state—leaving relationships between poor people, development, and the state neither stronger nor weaker, but rather more unsettled and intensely renegotiated” (Garmany 2017, 385). As we have seen, many are those that make analysis of resistance inspired by de Certeau. Dey and Teasdale found that third-sector actors in England utilize a form of “tactical mimicry” in which they learn how to play the game without changing power relations and “conforms to governmental strategies only in order to exploit them” (2016, 485). In a different context, Borba and Milani (2017) suggest in a study of transsexuality in health clinics in Brazil that: cisgender norms of binarity, pre-discursivity and durability are taken as the diagnostic benchmark of ‘true’ transsexuality. This crystallised

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structure, in turn, takes locally meaningful discursive shapes, framing health professionals’ “field of vision” (de Certeau 1984) and guiding them to make specific evaluations that have a real impact on trans people’s lives. Trans people who most clearly stylise their bodies and subjectivities according to cisgender aesthetics are seen as more legitimately trans. (28) This is something that trans people creatively manipulate in a tactical play to create advantages, while being entangled within a discourse of discipline. De Certeau’s best known work is The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), a book in which he summarizes his approach to everyday resistance. For him, language is a way of reading and talking, a way of using a system, which is an approach that is key when he develops his everyday life perspective on resistance. De Certeau “proposes an anti-Foucauldian path to understanding domination and resistance” that does not over-privilege the apparatus of discipline ( Bleiker 2000, 201): If it is true that the grid of “discipline” is everywhere becoming clearer and more extensive, it is all the more urgent to discover how an entire society resists being reduced to it, what popular procedures (also “miniscule” and quotidian) manipulate the mechanisms of discipline and conform to them only in order to evade them, and finally what “ways of operating” form the counterpart, on the consumer’s (or “dominee’s”?) side. (de Certeau 1984, xiv) Together the “ruses of consumers” and ways of operating make up the “network of antidiscipline” (de Certeau 1984, xv). Although, we think that de Certeau overemphasizes his critique of Foucault, we appreciate how he puts the emphasis on “antidiscipline”. In fact, Foucault does the same thing as de Certeau towards the end of his life (when focusing on “counter conduct” and “self-care”), something de Certeau does not seem to recognize. In any case, the important thing is that de Certeau helps us to understand how this form of everyday practice works. The everyday resistance of de Certeau is a matter of “tactics” that “depends on time” since it does “not have a place” (de Certeau 1984, xix). It is not securely placed anywhere, and has to be mobile, and it “is always on the watch for opportunities that must be seized. .  .  . Whatever it wins, it does not keep.” (de Certeau 1984, xix). From de Certeau it becomes clear that everyday resistance is about a “way of using imposed systems” (de Certeau 1984, 18, emphasis in original) and how people use “‘popular’ tactics” in their ordinary and daily activities to turn “the actual order of things” “to their own ends” (de Certeau 1984, 26). Thus, “here order is tricked by an art” (de Certeau 1984, 26, emphasis in original). Despite his critique, de Certeau is in many ways a companion to, and supplements, Foucault. Like his contemporary, Foucault, de Certeau is a historian

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that investigates the “particular relation between the field of practice and the conceptual order” (102), but one who pays more interest to cultural life as a whole, and its contextual particularities, trying to develop a “microphysics of human agency” (not a microphysics of power, as explored by Foucault) ( Frijhoff 1998, 103). Key for how de Certeau understands the practice of everyday life is the communicative or two-way process of cultural “appropriation”: by powerful discourses and by ordinary people (Frijhoff 1998, 103–105). Cultural agents use “tactics” to live with, accommodate to and manipulate the cultural products in their particular contexts, and, as such, appropriation is both topdown and bottom-up. As a tactic, it is a creative use of the network of social discipline within which agents are entangled. The meeting point between the agent and the objective, standard cultural representations or power strategies is the point of cultural creativity: “It is precisely this coping tactics, with its everyday competency, but somewhat at the margin of the prescribed order, which forms the quintessence of culture since it is the place of creation” (Frijhoff 1998, 106). In this way, de Certeau, as a difference to Foucault, is mainly focused on the historic social practices that did not become power strategies, but that still exist and might subvert dominant discourses and practices. As we have said before, we do not think the difference between de Certeau and Foucault should be overstated. Foucault did pay an interest to resistance (see Lilja and Vinthagen 2014), and de Certeau is sometimes also analyzing power. The difference is more one of what they mainly focus on.

The Critique There are of course critiques of de Certeau that interrogate some of his theories and concepts, like historiography, “return of the repressed”, popular culture, “walking in the city”, etc. (see, e.g., Frow 1991; Morris 2004). However, for us it is the theories and concepts that deal with everyday resistance that matter. Although de Certeau solves one of the main problems with Scott, that of his privileged intention, he also, like Scott, fails to incorporate the power/ resistance dynamics (Morris 2004). According to Morris (2004), de Certeau utilizes a simplified top-down model of power, and ends up with binaries where strategies or tactics, and compliance or resistance, become a rigid either/ or choice. We follow de Certeau’s focus on practice (creative ways of acting) as a way to avoid the privileging of (class-antagonistic) intention by Scott, but by suggesting a framework that closely and continuously relates resistance to power we try to avoid the main problem with de Certeau: that acting “differently” becomes resistance. In our view, such a perspective falls into the opposite trap from Scott’s: it views too much as “resistance” and makes, paradoxically once again, power disappear in the analysis. This recurring problem of looking on resistance without continuous attention to power is a weakness in both Scott’s and de Certeau’s perspectives that our framework tries to resolve.

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A problem with de Certeau’s understanding of everyday resistance is that although these practices are indeed per definition connected to power networks and “concerned with battles” (see de Certeau 1984, 34), they are not visible in the way he analyzes them. It is as if all ways of using the dominant’s products, spaces, systems, etc. become resistance, even if they do not have the potential to inf luence power relations. When he, for example, discusses Foucault’s privileging of the panopticon system, he does not analyze it as a technology of power, but as a form of privileged technology (de Certeau 1984, 45–47). De Certeau has the tendency to treat non-conventional or different ways of practice, which somehow are not using existing systems according to the imposed way, as “resistance”. So, the question is if a practice that differs from the design made by power is making it into “resistance”. We think it might, sometimes, in some contexts, and sometimes not. The key is how it relates to power, if it has the potential to undermine or destabilize power, or not, at least temporarily. That, we will only know if the practice is analyzed in relation to that specific power relation. And this is what we lack with de Certeau. He is not engaging directly and explicitly with a power analysis when he discusses his forms of tactics. Later, it will become clear how that power discussion is one key aspect of our analytical framework. Mitchell (2007) is one of those who critique de Certeau for lacking a coherent theory of resistance, suggesting what we are offered is more of “a theology of agency, resistance and subjectivity that sees resistance through ‘tactics’ as the manifestation of an enduring counter-modern human spirit, and as inherently morally good” (2007, 89). While we do not want to stretch it that far, we agree that de Certeau does not develop a theory in any coherent and systematic way. Several are those, as we have seen, that have tried to connect Foucault and de Certeau, bridging the gaps in both by utilizing their respective strengths (Foucault on power and de Certeau on resistance) (see e.g. Frijhoff 1998; Wendt 1996). In our own way, we are in this book, through the theoretical and analytical frameworks we develop, loosely connecting Foucault and de Certeau, or more exactly, we connect the power analytics of Foucault to the resistance practice analytics of de Certeau.

Towards a Different Theoretical Framework In summary, we argue that both de Certeau and Scott fail to incorporate the power/resistance dynamics. We appreciate how Scott clearly links forms of power with forms of resistance, but suggest he does not, when discussing practices of everyday resistance, analyze how power and resistance interact, entangle or evolve together. It is only as a contextual background that Scott outlines the importance of power relations, in deciding the circumstances of and limitations of what kind of resistance can occur. There is no ongoing dynamic

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interaction and transformative process in which power and resistance evolve together. De Certeau solves one of the main problems with Scott, that of his privileged (class-antagonist) intention. Instead, de Certeau focuses on practice (creative ways of acting), a solution we follow, but we do that by suggesting a framework that closely and continuously relates resistance to power. In this way we try to avoid the main problem with de Certeau: that acting differently necessarily becomes resistance. Thus, de Certeau views too much as “resistance” (as it is enough to act differently), while Scott views too little as resistance (as it has to be politically intended in order to count), and both of them make power disappear from the dynamic. In our attempt to go beyond both Scott and de Certeau, we will focus the rest of the text on a discussion of what it means to understand everyday resistance as a practice that is entangled in a dynamic with power. This chapter has basically been a presentation of the perspectives of two key authors in the field and a critical assessment of their contributions, outlining strengths and weaknesses. We have offered a critique of Scott’s focus on class antagonism or political intentions, his dichotomy between resisters and dominants and his underdeveloped power theory. In Scott’s perspective, there is no dynamic relation and transformation of power and resistance and no transformation of the resisters. Power is not seen as affecting the discourses or practices of resistance, despite that the resister’s life is formed within the inf luence of power. And, we have offered a critique of de Certeau’s emphasis on (cultural) creativity/difference, without an analysis of the specific power relations and dynamics with resistance. Through this discussion, we have created the foundation for the main arguments in Chapters 3 and 4: that everyday resistance is a practice/technique (not an intention, consciousness, ideology, recognition, or outcome/effect), and always oppositional or related to power/dominance/ hegemony. The theoretical weaknesses within present research on everyday resistance will be addressed in the following two chapters by proposing a framework for the two basic features of everyday resistance (Hollander and Einwohner 2004): (1) It is an everyday act; and (2) That it is done in an oppositional relation to power, countering the practice of power, which compels power to respond (i.e., being an everyday interaction).

3 EVERYDAY RESISTANCE AS PRACTICE

Now we move beyond presenting existing theories and critiques of them, towards developing the arguments for our own perspective. The basic arguments in this chapter are that everyday resistance is fruitfully understood as a particular form of social practice (pattern of acts) or a technique applied by subordinated subjects in a power relation (sometimes referred to as “subalterns”). This way of acting is always in a relation to power (Scott), where the meaning of that practice cannot be understood without analyzing it as related to power (which we discuss in detail in the next chapter). This practice is characterized by its creative technique (de Certeau) of doing things differently from manifest design, what contemporary power holders or designs “want” or what lays in the interest of existing power relations. It is, however, not enough to act with creative difference. The relation to power needs to at least potentially be possible to inf luence. The key is practices by subordinated people in a way that might undermine, weaken, dissolve or destabilize that particular power (while perhaps utilizing or even strengthening other forms of power in the process). In this chapter, we also claim that alternative interpretations of everyday resistance (focusing on intention, consciousness, ideology, recognition or outcome/effect) are less useful.

Everyday Resistance is Practice/Action—Irrespective of Intent/Consciousness If you base a field of study on a certain kind of act, it seems to be a mistake—as many researchers within the field make, including Scott—to infer a certain kind of consciousness, intention or even a class-motive to the definitional properties of this act. The resistance scholar and urban sociologist Asef Bayat, who

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we will utilize extensively in this chapter, shows an objection to almost all aspects of the classic definition of resistance by Scott, in which Scott suggest that resistance is “any act” by a subordinate class that is “intended” to “mitigate or deny claims . . . by superordinate classes” “or to advance its own claims” (Scott quoted in Bayat 2000, 542). To Bayat, Scott and other resistance writers basically “confuse an awareness about oppression with acts of resistance against it” ( Bayat 2000, 543). Instead, if possible, such mental or psychological properties should be part of what we investigate. In this chapter, we suggest that there is no particular intention or consciousness of the actor (e.g. Scott) or recognition by targets of resistance (see, e.g., Hollander and Einwohner 2004) that is necessary in order to detect everyday resistance. When people work slowly in the workplace, slander the boss, take long breaks and steal time, products or bandwidth at work, they might have many different intentions or reasons for doing so. They might find their work meaningless, feel resentment over how they are treated or they might think the conditions are unjust. Or, they might just feel tired, or angry, thinking they deserve a better salary. Or, when they download music or movies from the Internet, they might simply desire the entertainment available to them. All these motivations are possible, and one and the same person might very well have several of them at the same time, in some combination. Some of these intentions an observer might assess as “political”, other ones more as “personal” or something else. People do intend or recognize different things with the same acts. Instead of making the intention a key part of the definition of everyday resistance, we suggest, in line with de Certeau, it is the resistance act, the agency itself or the way of acting that counts. Furthermore, we argue that no particular effect or outcome should be mandatory, only the potential of undermining power. This is important since we have to count on many factors that matter for the de facto effect on power in different contexts. Resistance is a particular kind of act, not an intent and effect, even if it will always have some kind of intent or effect. Instead of any particular consciousness (recognition or intent) we suggest that discourse and context matter. It is through particular power discourses situated in certain contexts that resistance and power is framed and understood—in which actors understand themselves and their identities. That means consciousness will vary immensely, and it will be inf luenced by power relations in that context. Is it, for example, possible to define the practice of humor among women in a lower-class neighborhood in Nicaragua as everyday resistance? That is a practice which does not have any articulated intention of resistance and is performed out of sight from the men who are the target of the jokes, thus without recognition by the targets. Johansson (2009) argues that the jokes are part of an ongoing creation of identities that center on pride and independence. As such, the jokes are part of the creation of distance from the oppressive conditions these women are living in—some kind of space for breathing and maneuvering, therefore a way of creating themselves as agents of change. They do, therefore,

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arguably resist the sexist cultural framework and discursive structures that subordinate them by making them complicit. In general, whether a joke is resistance or not, will depend on the joke, the joke teller, the relationship with the audience and the wider context. According to Hollander and Einwohner (2004), theorists of resistance have addressed the issue of intent in three different ways (1) the actor’s conscious intent is crucial for the classification of an act or behavior as resistance; (2) assessing intent is close to impossible; and (3) an actor’s intentions are not central to the understanding of an act or a behavior as resistance. Scott belongs to the first group, arguing that the actions of an actor who intend to resist should be defined as resistance regardless of the outcome of their actions. Intent is a more relevant indicator than outcome, Scott argues, since acts of resistance do not always achieve the desired effect. Still, Scott is forced to detect intention in creative and indirect ways in his often-historical investigations of resistance, in ways that more often establish patterns of practices legitimated in the culture, rather than individual political or class intentions (see, e.g., Scott 1989, 49, 53).1 Thus, despite his explicit focus on intention in the definition of everyday forms of resistance, in Scott’s analysis it is rather cultural patterns and discourses that are identified, not the “intention” of individuals. One of the pioneers in research of everyday resistance, Kerkvliet (2009) argues that when people navigate within a political system and try to get by, they might perform actions that look like everyday resistance; but they are not. “These actions usually convey indifference to rules and processes regarding production, distribution, and use of resources. They are typically things people do while trying to ‘cut corners’ so as to get by” (2009, 237). What distinguishes them from everyday resistance, according to Kerkvliet, is that they do not intentionally resist and oppose, hurt or target people in superior positions or voice claims at odds with the interest of their superiors. Apart from that their actions may hurt and harm people who are in the same position as themselves; for example, when peasants bad-mouth fellow peasants due to their different ethnicities and religious beliefs or when men put down women, or the poor steal from other poor people. However, if their cutting of corners is actually at odds with the interest of or power exercised by their superiors, then it seems to us that it is indeed resistance, irrespective of whether it is intended or not or has side effects or creates problems for their peers. Why should resistance have to be (politically) pure? Why is it not allowed to be “contaminated” with other motives or effects? Like Wietz (2001, 670), we think research on resistance has to move away from the focus on consciousness and intention, and instead “try to assess the nature of the act itself ”. It is sure that in any classic sociological definition of social action, the intention of the actor is the key. We do not dispute that. When people act, they always, per definition, have intentions. Therefore, also (everyday) resistance is indeed done with intent, however, not with one type of intent: neither necessarily a political-ideological one, nor an antagonistic class

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interest ( Jefferess 2008, 40; Lilja and Vinthagen 2009). Actors’ intent might be to survive, solve a practical problem, fulfill immediate needs, follow a desire, “cut corners”, gain status among peers, take a pause or something else. If we create a category of action according to the political awareness or orientation of the actor, we risk excluding not-yet political awareness, or differently motivated resistance. It is of paramount importance to avoid making resistance into a category for the politically educated that excludes lower classes. It is furthermore “close to impossible” to access information on the intent of resisters when they are unavailable; for example, if they have political or personal reasons for wanting to stay anonymous or have lived in another historical period.2 However, more importantly, intent is irrelevant for the definition of a type of action, but relevant for understanding the ideas, strategic thinking, plans, psychology or cultural meaning that actors articulate when they resist. Also, Ortner emphasizes that transformative processes are not necessarily directed by intentions: “Things do get changed, regardless of the intentions of the actors or the presence of very mixed intentions” (Ortner 1995, 175). We suggest, in the same way as de Certeau (1984), that what matters is how people are acting—not what their intention is. In fact, one of the recurrent repressive mechanisms of dominance is the accusation against (recognized) resistance for not having legitimate, legal or otherwise “appropriate” intentions. In an ironic and most probably unintentional way, critical scholars of resistance in effect follow suit in that tradition when they demand a certain kind of “political”, “ideological” or “class” motive or claim of the activity in order to qualify it as “resistance”.

Art of Resistance Instead of defining resistance according to particular properties of the consciousness of the actor, our proposal is that we should try to understand and analyze the act itself or the way of acting—the creativity of resistance, the actual art of resistance. De Certeau (1984) gives several examples of how such a detailed activity analysis can be conducted. One example is about “La perruque [‘the wig’]”, a general phenomenon that: is the worker’s own work disguised as work for his [sic] employer . . . as a secretary’s writing a love letter on ‘company time’. . . . Accused of stealing or turning material to his [sic] own ends and using the machines for his own profit, the worker who indulges in la perruque actually diverts time (not goods, since he uses only scraps) from the factory for work that is free, creative, and precisely not directed toward profit. [And] reintroduces ‘popular’ techniques of other times and other places into the industrial space. (de Certeau 1984, 25–26)

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Thus, everyday tactics of resistance can be a matter of creative appropriation and use of time, material, and resources given by the hegemonic power. The resistance practice is not confronting power head on but manipulate it, use it differently than what is designed or assumed, applying it for some kind of interests or desires of the resister. These transverse tactics do not obey the law of the place, for they are not defined or identified by it . . . [but] they remain dependent upon the possibilities offered by circumstances . . . [and] can only use, manipulate, and divert these spaces . . . [A] North African living in Paris . . . find ways of using the constraining order of the place or of the language . . . which lays down its law for him, he establishes within it a degree of plurality and creativity. By an art of being in between. . . . These modes of use—or rather re-use—multiply with the extension of acculturation. (de Certeau 1984, 30, emphasis in original) Therefore, it could be concluded that the more people are mobile and localities experience cultural change, the greater are the opportunities that arise for creative and non-hegemonic ways of using dominant systems. De Certeau implies these ways of reusing dominant systems are connected to: a different kind of production, called ‘consumption’ and characterized by its ruses, its fragmentation . . . its poaching, its clandestine nature, its tireless but quiet activity, in short by its quasi-invisibility, since it shows itself not in its own products (where would it place them?) but in an art of using those imposed on it. (de Certeau 1984, 31) Thus, through economic and cultural consumption—shopping, using cultural symbols, eating, dressing, communicating, etc.—people are creative, utilizing and bending the norms and rules, to achieve pragmatic aims, form styles, forge (new) identities, and get by in different social spaces. People do this when the dominant design does not work for them, and their desires push them towards a creative use of their own style. De Certeau’s emphasis on the agency of ordinary people and their creative everyday techniques. However, for us, it is key how such resistance, or consumption, might simultaneously serve power and undermine it, depending on what aspect we focus on. When people, for example, desire certain brands of clothes and steal them from shops or make their own copies of them (by “hacking” their design), they are simultaneously endorsing the corporately-designed ways of consuming these brands (by rallying around a “brand” and its fashionable style), while subverting the consumption of them at the same time (by stealing or copying, i.e. not contributing to corporate profit) (von Busch 2012).

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One example is what some activists call “proletarian shoplifting”, i.e. theft of livelihood goods from big companies. A collection of cultural and artistic resistance activities are displayed in The Interventionists: Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life (Thompson and Scholette 2004). They include the Yomango group from Barcelona who promotes a lifestyle of “social disobedience” by a specially designed shopping bag for shoplifters: This magic bag makes objects disappear. It’s ergonomically designed to be the ultimate shoplifting utensil. It is simple to make and is based on the same principles as the devices used by magicians and other tricksters. YOMANGO converts going to the mall into a magical experience. (Thompson and Scholette 2004, 108) The Yomango shoplifting bag illustrates clearly how the creative tactics of everyday resistance can go beyond “difference” from dominant designs. Rather, it is a matter of a subversive design that opens up space for new ways of acting that undermines dominant relations of power in society.3 Accordingly, as indicated previously, we disagree with de Certeau’s equation of creative/ different use and resistance. Everyday resistance is not only a matter of creative ways of doing things “differently”, but fundamentally a silent, somewhat hidden way of (at least potentially) undermining dominant power. The next chapter will return to this theme: how resistance is not only impossible to define and understand without relating it to power, but that it is always articulated as power/resistance interaction. A micro practice that might fit here as an example, is the practice of “talking back” described by bell hooks in her book Talking back. Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (1989): In the world of southern black community I grew up in ‘back talk’ and talking back means speaking as an equal to an authority figure. It means daring to disagree and sometimes it just means having an opinion. (1989, 5) “Talking back” is defined as an act of resistance as black women and women of color refuse to stay voiceless and silenced by the politics of domination of racism, sexism and classism. This may be viewed as an illustrative example of moving from silence into speech, what, according to hooks (1989), signifies a movement from being an object to becoming a subject (hooks 1989). As such, those that dominate through powerful positions and sexist or racist behavior, will have less power to subordinate others if they start to “talk back”. Thus, the everyday resistance of “talking back” illustrates how it is in small, specific acts in the everyday, that occur in interaction with dominant power, and that potentially undermine that domination.

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To detect, understand and analyze the (creative) everyday resistance practices of undermining power is an art in itself, with several pitfalls. It seems inherently difficult to measure these acts. In its mundane, repetitive and nondramatic way of subverting domination it often acquires an almost invisible character (de Certeau 1984, 34). Everyday resistance acts are hard to capture since they rely on contextual tactics, opportunities, individual choices, temporality and it is shifting, moving and transient. It is not a long-term strategic planning by a collective that articulates a claim to a well-defined target.) use the term “off-kilter resistance”, which they argue may be manifested in “continuous tentativeness”. This is a lack of strongly voiced statements, definitive platforms or “arguments made strongly enough to seem definitive” (1999, 5). “This ref lects the creativity, tentativeness, and sensitivity to opportunity that is characteristic of everyday resistance in general”. This also suggests that the tactics used can never be seen as reliable. “[T]here are no guarantees that a particular tactic will work—or work the same way—twice” (1999, 5). This, however, does not mean there is a clear-cut dichotomy between everyday resistance and public and collectively organized resistance. One author that develops how these f luid combinations of organized resistance and everyday resistance can take on creative articulations, is Asef Bayat.

Asef Bayat—“Quiet Encroachments” and the Collective Resistance of Non-Movements Asef Bayat (1997a, 1997b, 1997c, 2000) has developed a theory of resistance that differs from Scott’s and social movement theory. He argues that what we see is a different kind of political activism when it is done by “ordinary” people in Third World cities, or rather the urban poor and “informal” people that live in urban neighborhoods and engage in the informal economy—the unemployed or underemployed, the street vendors, the squatters. Their activism is one of the everyday, and it involves resistance, but it is not necessarily “hidden” or “disguised”, or non-collective or informally organized, as Scott would argue. Therefore, Bayat avoids the term “everyday resistance”, and suggests instead “quiet encroachment”. Bayat claims the “quiet encroachment”, applied by marginalized and informal groups, is f lexible and adapts to circumstances, all in the purpose of creating a more self-regulated and dignified life. “Quiet encroachment” means “the silent, protracted but pervasive advancement of the ordinary people on the propertied and powerful in order to survive and improve their lives . . . marked by quiet, largely atomized and prolonged mobilization with episodic collective action” ( Bayat 2000, 545–546). This “quiet encroachment” is a typical politics of the poor under certain structural and cultural conditions. The “new global restructuring” in the Third World—with the crisis of socialist, nationalist and populist regimes, liberalization, privatization and globalization—has led to the growth of informalization

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and marginalization of vast segments of the populations ( Bayat 2000, 534), a situation where this form of resistance becomes more prevalent and important for politics. In the initial stage, it is done by individuals in a quiet way when they advance, and gain access to land, houses, electricity, water, or other property, as when informal settlements are created as illegal occupations in the margins of urban areas. Here individuals and their families will compete and form factions, and street vendors will form negotiated territorial divisions. However, this aggregation of thousands of individual acts, becomes a public and collective struggle as soon as the state or other power elites crack down on these unauthorized advancements by the people. When these individuals— for example, the street vendors—are threatened with evictions by the police, they get together and mobilize others, despite not having a previous organization or movement, often not even knowing each other beforehand, and despite normally competing against each other on the street market. The elite threat against their small subsistence activity brings them together as a result of “passive networks” of scattered individuals recognizing that they are living in a similar position in a shared public space. These passive networks become activated when they need to make public and collective defensive efforts and articulate collective claims, demanding their rights against a state they otherwise mostly ignore and from which they try to subsist independently. Threats can be one trigger of collective mobilization. The other option is sudden increased opportunities to advance in times of state crisis, crises of legitimacy and capacity due to economic problems, wars, revolutions or other similar major change processes (Bayat 1997a). This means the resistance of the poor urban masses might build on individual and hidden, small-scale survival techniques, while some of these activities have large-scale cumulative effects in which street vendors take control of territories and informal settlements outgrow the formal city and formal planning, in which changes to property structure and urban space are drastic, even changing power relations. This resistance is therefore highly f luid and f lexible—both hidden and public, both individual and collective, both informal and (sometimes) formally organized, both everyday survival and political claim making. Bayat (2000) argues that theories that try to understand the urban poor in terms of a culture of poverty, survival strategy, urban social movements and everyday resistance have serious problems to explain this “street politics” of the “quiet rebels”. Bayat defends the politics of the poor against essentialist ideas of a fatalist and passive “culture of poverty” or the idea that the poor only are active in the sense of survival (at the expense of themselves in the long run, or other poor people). Bayat claims the poor indeed are political, however, not typically creating the kind of sustained and ideological mobilizations as the middle class or other more advantaged groups (in the form of “social movements”). Instead, much of the mobilizations of the urban poor,

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especially in the Middle East, circulate around kinship/ethnicity-based networks, or “imagined solidarities” in f luid and heterogeneous groups, groups without permanent communication channels or a common identity. And, in opposition to Scott and other resistance writers, Bayat maintains the distinction between collective acts and their political consequences, rather than making all acts with intentions against superiors into “resistance”. Thus, to Bayat, the urban poor sometimes do political acts (of resistance), however not only, and not primarily by being consciously antagonistic to superior class members, and they do not (typically) sustain these political mobilizations in the form of “social movements” (with sustained organization, identity, claims and communication). In his book on the Street Politics of the poor in Iran, in 1998, Bayat articulates his criticism of the “resistance literature” (1998, 5–7), but he does so in a more developed version in his article in International Sociology (541–545). Here, Bayat connects the “resistance literature” to the inf luence of the poststructuralism of Foucault and the cultural politics of Gramsci, and critically argues against how Scott defines resistance ( Bayat 2000, 542). To Bayat, Scott and many other resistance writers basically “confuse an awareness about oppression with acts of resistance against it” ( Bayat 2000, 543). In a powerful section of his review of the resistance literature he claims that: Yet this “decentered” notion of power, shared by many poststructuralist “resistance” writers, underestimates state power, notably its class dimension, since it fails to see that although power circulates, it does so unevenly.  .  .  . It is, therefore, not accidental that a theory of the state and the possibility of cooptation is absent in almost all accounts of ‘resistance’.  .  .  . The result is that almost any act of the subjects potentially becomes one of ‘resistance’. .  .  . [Therefore] they tend to fall into the trap of essentialism in reverse. [And] [t]his is so because they overlook the crucial fact that these acts occur mostly within the prevailing systems of power . . . In short, much of the resistance literature confuses what one might consider as coping strategies (when the survival of the agents is secured at the cost of themselves or that of fellow humans) and effective participation or subversion of domination. (Bayat 2000, 544, 545) Thus, according to Bayat, since too few scholars have systematically analyzed how subordinated groups cope with the state or systems of power, they have superficially labeled most of what subordinated people do as “resistance”. On the one hand, it is clearly a mistake by Bayat to put Scott in this general nonstate-category of resistance writers or “poststructuralists”. Two years earlier, Scott had already connected everyday resistance to a theory of the state, in Seeing Like a State (Scott 1998). L, and later, he continued that project in The Art

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of Not Being Governed (2010), in which cultures of resistance are related to the historical emergence of state projects. On the other hand, the general criticism by Bayat of the resistance literature, at least the part that is oriented to poststructural perspectives, might still be valid. But why only focus on a theory of the state? Is this not rather a matter of resistance studies underestimating the dynamic interaction between and within resistance and power? That dynamic is our focus in the next chapter. In our view, it is therefore possible to see how some theories help us to understand certain kinds of politics in the everyday. Scott helps us to understand the submerged forms of “infrapolitics”, in which subaltern groups are so severely repressed that they utilize “hidden transcripts” in order to sustain and develop their everyday resistance, survival activity, sense of dignity and class interest. However, as Bayat helps us to understand, in circumstances where the cumulative effects of their individual and scattered everyday politics make them targets of repression, despite their quiet and individual way of surviving, they are brought together and mobilize collectively and with public claimmaking. This is, on the other hand, not necessarily leading towards sustained mobilization—the key kind of resistance studied by social movement theory— but might be a process that after a sudden mobilization goes back to the original “quiet encroachment” of individual families and persons, until the next immediate threat (or major opportunity) arises. It seems important to observe that everyday resistance is, like social change, linked to durability and scope. Thus, sustained non-dramatic everyday resistance might in the long-term spread beyond a few individuals and transform relations and cultural patterns. Both Scott and Bayat argue along these lines. Scott identifies hidden or disguised forms of resistance, particularly in the rural context of repressive relations, while Bayat shows the dynamics and effects of everyday forms of resistance, particularly in the urban context among poor and exploited groups. Thus, Scott and Bayat also supplement each other. The main difference between them, as we see it, is the emphasis on political/class intentions by Scott (and dismissal of the importance of consequences), and the emphasis on political consequences by Bayat (and dismissal of the importance of consciousness/intentions).

What Is Not Resistance? If we then follow Bayat (and de Certeau) and focus on social practice as the key to resistance then we have to be able to distinguish between different types of practices. Bayat, as we have seen, cautions us to not view too much as resistance. In the resistance literature, there are some key types of practices that are debated. Among the more frequent ones are: survival/coping, accommodation or avoidance/escape. It is not possible to discuss them in detail here, but we will brief ly illustrate how we make use of our focus on action/practice.

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Avoidance and Escape From Power Let us begin with something easy: avoidance/escape. If resistance is about ways of acting that might undermine power, then the question is if “avoidance” can also be resistance (i.e., the act of avoiding engagement with the space, time or relation in which power is exercised). Critics argue that when you avoid power you cannot inf luence it, and surely cannot undermine it. However, there are those who argue that also avoiding or escaping power relations might be resistance since avoidance makes the exercise of power on that specific individual or group (temporarily) impossible. In situations when presence is needed for the interests of state or market, avoidance or f light can be a forms of resistance that open up negotiations of grievances and improve the status of a group, as in the case of the peasants at Java that in the 1840s f led en masse the tobacco production forced upon them by the Dutch colonizers (Adas 1986). To Hardt and Negri (2004), escape (or “exodus”) is a key strategy of resistance against the contemporary globalized network power of the “Empire”. Every (mundane) act in which we do not serve globalized capitalism (e.g. by calling in sick due to a hangover), we temporarily escape the profit-making system and reduce its productivity. Thus, “escape” is not necessarily the total, permanent and physical removal of yourself. It might be temporary, as in daydreaming or in taking a longer lunch break when possible. Or, it might be more permanent as in the psycho-somatic disability reaction of apathetic migrants doomed for deportation back to misery, as has been seen in Sweden since 2005. “Escape” is, in a fundamental meaning, not really the reaction to domination as it sounds like ( Papadopoulos, Stephenson, and Tsianos 2008, xiii), but it emerges from social practices and desires, joy and hope that creatively seeks its own meaning beyond particular given situations in which people find themselves. People move, connect and create by themselves in response to situations and conditions they encounter. It is only after, when power systems try to capture these bodies, control their routes and integrate their practices that we speak of “escape from” ( Papadopoulos, Stephenson, and Tsianos 2008, xiii). When people subvert their existing conditions in forms they refrain from naming and that are also not recognized by others as subversion—as imperceptible politics—they engage in a social practice that is a particularly potent social transformation ( Papadopoulos, Stephenson, and Tsianos 2008, xv). One historic example of such imperceptible politics—which is not invisible, but “outside of existing regulation and outside policing”—is the migration practiced by various “vagabonds” in the late Medieval Period (the poor, bandits, beggars, colonists, lunatics, pilgrims, crusaders, nomads, pirates, etc.) who created a crisis for feudalism, before wage-labor capitalism and biopolitical power created a new control of this “army of the poor” and transformed them into a productive “working class” (42–43, chap. 4). Thus, for some, it is possible to argue that not only are avoidance, escape or exodus sometimes forms of resistance, but also

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that they might be effective in breaking down one power system (feudalism) and provoking the creation of a new one (biopolitical capitalism). Riessman’s (2000) study of childless women in India who resist stigma, concludes that while resistant thinking and avoidance strategies do not attack stigma and discrimination directly, they might be “tactically necessary” ( Riessman 2000, 124). As such, they might be a preparation for resistance, making resistance possible at a later stage, in another situation. Furthermore, if individuals are needed for power to be exercised, as with sexism or racism, then avoidance/escape does indeed undermine in itself. It seems obvious that when someone escapes from prison or slavery it is a form of resistance to the prison/ slavery system. One person less is being oppressed every time there is an escape. Also, at other times, escape can be a form of resistance, as when thousands of (mostly educated and professional) people fled Eastern Europe through the looser border control in Hungary, eventually contributing to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Our conclusion is that it will depend on the context, the way the escape is made and the particular power relation it affects. If those who escape are needed, the escape might indeed be resistance, but even so, if those who stay are even more repressed or fearfully obedient as a consequence, it might only be resistance in a more limited way, while reproducing power in a more general sense. And, perhaps the resistance achieved might have been more sustainable with a widespread work slow-down, a typical form of everyday resistance. Sometimes avoiding power relations might be a practice that strengthens power, at other times it will be something that weakens or destabilizes it. It depends on the context, type of power and the way the avoidance or the escape is made.

Accommodation With Power Similarly, we argue that accommodation is not necessarily the opposite of resistance, even if it accepts and follows the logic of power. To most people, accommodation is simply conforming to or obeying power and, as such, the reproduction of power. However, even if that is at least partly true, the point with Scott’s disguised forms of resistance is that the resistance does appear as-if it were accommodation. It is through being both accommodation and resistance, simultaneously, but in different aspects, it becomes a disguised form of resistance. Furthermore, in line with Judith Butler's perspective, we claim that it is impossible, even when someone wants to act according to the prescriptions of dominant instructions, to repeat exactly according to the stipulated norms and hegemonic discourses. Every repetition becomes a copy with slight differences, some of which are through misunderstandings or mistakes, other through willful resistance. Within postcolonial discussions this is called “mimicry”, the attempt by colonized Others to behave as the colonizers, while never fully succeeding, even when that is their aim. In the eyes of the colonizers, such

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subordinated subjects are never fully equal, irrespective of how much they try. Thus, as a subordinated subject, there is some inherent impossibility to satisfy the dominant elite. Therefore, it seems too simple to dismiss subordinated groups’ accommodation as necessarily and only the reproduction of power relations and as “non-resistance”. There is always, in our view, the potential or aspect of resistance within accommodation. Camp (2004) shows, in her study of slave resistance in the US South, that “accommodation” and “resistance” are not mutually exclusive concepts, but instead spaces within which the enslaved moves back and forth, with parts of her/his activity, body or time. The open rebellions and non-cooperation of bondspersons developed from the spaces and room of maneuver created by hidden and partial non-cooperation under slavery (Camp 2004). Similarly, Crewe (2007) suggests a sliding scale for how prisoners might orient themselves and create variations in their public appearances: as “committed compliance”, “fatalistic or instrumental compliance”, “detached compliance”, and “strategic compliance and manipulation”, while overt resistance is uncommon. Thus, again, it is the context that matters. Sometimes some aspects of accommodation will be part of reproducing power relations, while at other times it is part of resistance. It all depends on the situation, type of power relation and how this accommodating practice is conducted.

Survival/Coping Despite Power In our view, techniques of social and material survival in everyday life, as well as mental and physical techniques of coping under repression or immediate violent threats, might sometimes be resistance in their (cumulative) consequences of undermining power. Again, this depends on how the techniques are applied, in what context and in relation to what power. Both Scott and Bayat argue along these lines. Scott claims that scattered resistance acts might have “aggregate consequences all out of proportion to their banality” (Scott 1989, 34). And, when Bayat analyzes how the masses of urban poor advance through individual and hidden, small-scale survival techniques (“quiet encroachment”) and expand the informal settlements of Third World cities, he claims it has profound “cumulative” consequences, not only for urban planning and social services access, but also for property rules, infrastructure and urban space, which sometimes can change power relations (1997a). To us, it seems reasonable to at least be open to the cumulative of what individuals do and not dismiss survival or coping practices, per se. The question is whether ordinary survival activity might undermine power relations between the rich and the poor. The existence of shacks, begging, collection of food from garbage or wastelands, etc. is not in itself making profit-making, luxury housing, or consumerism more difficult, but perhaps somewhat more problematic morally, practically or esthetically. Normally, it

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only becomes a disturbance in the sense that it makes the rich uncomfortable or annoyed. However, we suggest there might be a point when this disturbance becomes an obstruction or even transformation. Sometimes the survival needs may compel poor people to occupy land demanded by the elite, and use it for their own purposes. The creation of “shantytowns”, “slums” or “informal/illegal settlements” are in itself an appropriation of land, an occupation that challenges the private and entitled ownership. It is a way of acting in which you demand space in the city, claim the right to be close to the wealth-generating city despite not having the entry ticket: money to buy a place. The difference, then, needs to be a matter of how much space, resources or attention these survival activities of the poor are taking in society. If the slums are getting so big that they block the possibilities of building new commercial or housing estates for the rich, if the begging on the street makes the leisure and consumer lives of the rich difficult, it becomes a matter of resistance. Sometimes, these individualized and scattered everyday activities focused on survival and practical needs, get mobilized even in powerful movements that articulate a radical politics of the poor and dispossessed. As, for example, the “living politics” of the shack-dwellers in the Durban-based Abahlali baseMjondolo that organize urban poor and articulate their political demands. Or, the biggest social movement in Latin America: The Landless Workers Movement MST in Brazil, that mobilizes the rural and urban poor and makes land occupations. According to Scott “survival” or “coping” is often a form of resistance, since everyday forms of resistance are about circumventing material exploitation or countering elite repression of subaltern dignity. Scott reserves (non-resisting) “survival” or “coping” to such practices that damage fellow subalterns. That would for example be to steal food or property from other poor people in order to survive. And, in a similar manner, Bayat defines “coping” as “when the survival of the agents is secured at the cost of themselves or that of fellow humans” (Bayat 2000, 545). We agree with Scott and Bayat here, but would take it one more step, emphasizing that resistance involves ways of acting that undermine power relations (at least temporarily and potentially), while some “coping” or “survival techniques” only manage power effects. Thus, survival activity does not necessarily undermine power relations. But if this survival activity is in some way circumscribing, for example; the profit making, legal framework or cultural legitimacy of the rich, then it is, de facto, partly undermining their power, and then survival activity of the poor becomes, in its consequences, resistance. ** Everyday resistance is a type of practice available to all subordinated subjects, all the time, in some form or another. The maneuver for resistance might be minuscule, but as long as subjects interact with power and their collaboration is demanded, resistance is possible, at least in small ways, sometimes. But not

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all will resist. And even those who do resist only do so sometimes and in relation to some aspects of domination, while they might simultaneously utilize other positions of dominance available to them. When they resist, they will not always succeed to affect power, and sometimes they will by design or unwittingly even strengthen existing power or create new forms of power techniques. Since everyday resistance reveals how the “resister” (the subordinated subject) sometimes might do some resistance actions, while at other times or sites and in other occasions, will act in subordination, there is no point in tying “resistance” to the subject, even if that is a severely oppressed subaltern. For example, the work life researcher Karlsson (2012) has found how not just workers but also middle-level management “misbehave” in creative ways when their dignity and autonomy is circumscribed. Thus, also individuals that normally exercise power might resist when their bosses infringe on their work situations through degrading regulations and restrictions. The point is that resistance is about specific ways of acting in specific contexts. These acts of resistance are, like any other acts, done by individuals, since all acts have actors and rely on some form of agency. Thus, yes, the subordinated does resist, but the resistance is not an attribute of the subordinated subject. Resistance does not “originate” within the subject, but it arises from the combination of subjectivity, context and interaction. And, even then, when a particular context and character of a subject make resistance more likely to be a part of the subject’s way of life, it will only be so in certain interactions. No subject will resist all the time, in all situations and in all relations. Thus, resistance cannot be an attribute of any subject (as cannot power either), irrespective of whether the subject is a “subaltern” subject. Both power and resistance are activities, techniques or practices that occur in relationships. And, this relation between resistance and power is ontologically coupled. Resistance fundamentally exists together with power, and neither phenomenon makes sense without the other. In summary, we suggest in this chapter that “coping/survival”, “avoidance/ escape”, “accommodation” or “resistance” are not either-or choices, but complex and contextual combinations. We are not saying these other practices are the same as resistance, but that the context decides; sometimes, what might look like “coping”, “survival”, “avoidance/escape” or “accommodation” is possible to view as resistance. Although there might be analytical reasons to distinguish the concepts and their particular types of practice, in empirical reality they tend to mix, blend and co-exist in combinations. The path forward is to focus on the situated techniques of the acts themselves. It is exactly when we stop looking for the mental status of the resister, but instead look for techniques and how they relate to discourses, relations and contexts—in a similar way to Foucault—that we are able to see how those subordinated combine very different kinds of actions: power recreation, coping and resistance, as well as other conventional everyday activities. We will then be able to understand how

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the same person is doing contradictory things or utilizes creative and complex combinations. We might then be able to find out how what initially seems to be coping in its intentions, actually turns out to be resistance by its undermining consequences for power; or, on the other hand, what looks like resistance turns out to be power recreation, or even how the one and same act turns out to be resistance in some aspects, yet a power exercise in other. We will later on get several examples of all of these possibilities. Such complexity is a realistic option, since power is not only dispersed, but also plural—operating along several intersections. And as we will argue in the next chapter, resistance is always related to power(s).

Notes 1. There exist only indirect recordings in archives due to its small scale and anonymous form and officials’ unwillingness to publicize the insubordination (Scott 1989, 49). Thus, the “nature of the acts themselves and the self-interested muteness of the antagonists thus conspire to create a kind of complicitous silence” (1989, 50). The “evidence of intention” is found through detecting a “systematic, established pattern” supported by a popular culture in “a relation of domination that seems to preclude most other strategies” (1989, 53). 2. This does not mean we oppose the attempt to utilize various archeological methods to trace or extract consciousness of historical resistance cultures with the help of folklore, myths, jokes, symbols, proverbs, etc. We only oppose the definitional criteria of such theorized mental states. 3. For an analysis of the Yomango movement as an example of “hacking” consumerism, informed by new materialism, see Von Busch (2017 ). He views the cookie handbag of Yomango as an object that possess certain “thing power”, orienting human actors towards resistance in their everyday lives. The bag is perceived as a materialization of Yomango ideas, of creativity and disrespectfulness, thus symbolizing the possibility for resistance against surveillance as well against “regimes of ownership”. Moreover, it is endowed with a material agency by offering an “unsurveilled space for the possibility of stealing” (80).

4 EVERYDAY RESISTANCE AS COUNTER PRACTICE

We have seen how everyday resistance has to be understood as a pattern of acts, or a practice. This chapter explores the second of the two basic features of everyday resistance, what it means that this pattern of acts occurs in an oppositional relation to dominant power as a practice that counters power (or its effects). As we have seen in the previous discussions it seems necessary to understand the various types of resistance acts/practices in a context as a matter both-and, not either-or. Subordinated subjects produce both resistance and power. In this chapter we will, step by step, discuss features of this relationship between power and resistance. The main focus is to develop the meaning and consequences of the unavoidable power/resistance couplet. We have four main claims we want to argue here. We start by (1) showing why the relation to power is unavoidable, also “after liberation” and for all, also the resisters. Fundamentally, our understanding of “power” will also decide how we view the relation between power and resistance. We think it is necessary to go beyond simplistic or universalistic understandings of “power” (a point where Scott has already been critiqued), and instead embrace dispersed, interactive, dynamic, contextual and complex views on power (e.g. Foucault, Lukes, Bourdieu, Butler, Deleuze). Such an approach will show how the relationship to power is unavoidable. As we also have seen, the relationship between power and resistance is oppositional, in the meaning that resistance is, per definition, about undermining dominant power. Resistance is not just another (smaller) form of “power” engaged in a struggle with dominant power, but a force that undermines, destabilizes or even tries to go beyond power, creating other ways of life and ways of being. The consequences of this ontological opposition are that everyday resistance evolves through repeated actions and reactions (as does power). Therefore, this relational marriage between power and resistance needs to be

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understood as (2) dynamic interactions played out in history, space and context that produce many unexpected results. Resistance inf luences and reacts to power, while power inf luences and reacts to resistance, creating an interactive change process of both power and resistance. This also means that everyday resistance depends on context and is not fixated or singular. Furthermore, we suggest that everyday resistance is always situated in several power relations at the same time, while involved actors are not necessarily engaged with or aware of them all. We argue that since power is not singular but both decentered and intersectional, it means, logically, that also resistance is (3) decentered and intersectional; i.e. resistance is always in relation to several powers simultaneously. Resistance is therefore inherently plural. However, in empirical reality, most resistance might be focused on one aspect. Resistance might be radically oppositional to one power (e.g. class dominance), while simultaneously ignorant or in alliance with another form of power (e.g. sexism or homophobia). Lastly, this also means, that power and resistance are interdependent and constitute/affect each other and, as a result, become (4) entangled. Therefore, what we have is an historical entanglement, not a dichotomy of separate or “clean” categories; not a choice between accommodation or resistance but combinations of the two. Research on everyday resistance is then a matter of trying to understand how this entanglement is changing within the everyday lives of subordinated people in particular contexts. But, now, let’s take one step at a time to outline the relations between power and resistance.

(1) Power Is Unavoidable Our first claim is that since resistance needs to be understood as a counter practice or as oppositional, it exists in relation to power, and, therefore, cannot be determined without a power analysis. This is not only necessary so as to detect what is resistance, but to understand the ways in which resistance operates, how it is connected to power and in what sense it is partly autonomous while still intertwined with power. An analysis of a particular configuration of power will reveal the kind of norms, rules or ideals that are maintained, and how, with what discourses, institutions and techniques. This is obvious in some cases, as in an authoritarian regime when the state represses dissent, using torture and imprisoning those that dare to resist. It is also clear in formal hierarchies in a corporation or bureaucracy. Early power theory focused on such more dramatic, forbidding, punishing and violent forms of power (what Foucault called “Sovereign power”). Later theories, especially such theories as those developed by Steven Lukes, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu and later Judith Butler, and others, have emphasized more subtle forms of power. Most forms of power systems—those organized according to class relations, sexuality, gender, race, religion, able bodies and minds,

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age and other key social categories—can be formal, violent and blatant, but can also be more subtle, informal and discursive. Still, when only manifest in its discursive way these power relations do exist, and might have even more profound inf luence as forming subjectivities and desires, truth regimes, and everyday life. One illustrative way in which power operates in a subtle way is the everyday construction of gender. In Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990) she posits, there is no essence, no pre-discursive biological female or male body. What we perceive as “natural” and as a stable and permanent gender identity is an illusion, and an effect of social and cultural processes. Gender is instituted through: a stylized repetition of acts . . . which are internally discontinuous . . . [so that] the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief. (Butler 1988, 519–520) Thus, gender is “real only to the extent that it is performed”. The body that is defined and/or perceived as “female” or “male” is either created or appears by repetition of statements and actions—but not of any actions whatsoever. It needs to be a repetition of a certain set of compelling norms about gender and sexuality that are repeated. Norms are compelling in that when they are broken or not followed there is a risk of social sanctions. The normative actions associated with masculinity or femininity need to be repeated over and over again in everyday interactions, activities and relationships. If the person terminates the repetition and questions, breaks and even redefines the dominant norms, they may suffer from social sanctions. They can be ridiculed and shamed, and attributed to various stigmatic signs associated with lack of masculinity, such as gay, sissy, coward, and, at worst, exposed to both discrimination and physical violence. Thus, gender is, according to Butler, something that is created and recreated in repetitive and embodied normative acts in the everyday, the “stylized repetition of acts”. When subjects follow these norms, they enact dominant power relations, and when they break, negotiate, undermine or otherwise destabilize the gendered norms, by acting differently in their everyday, they are resisting the gendered power relations. The potential for resistance, of gender transformation, is found in “the possibility of a different sort of repeating, in the breaking or subversive repetition of that style” (520). Such subtle power exercise in the everyday is possible to detect for a number of key relations of categories in our communities, not just gender, but also race, sexuality, class, functionality, caste or religion, etc. And, of course, there are various power relations among subaltern groups (Mittelman and

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Chin 2005, 23). Also, when class is not creating hierarchies among those most repressed, there is always gender, religion, race or caste, ability or age that will matter. In a similar way we find power also in equal relationships among friends or couples, even when they are outspoken in favor of equality, since they are also formed by unequal expectations inherited in community norms and might involve differences of gender, class, religion, job or family conditions, etc. (see, e.g., Holmberg 1999 on inequality among explicitly “equal” couples). Furthermore, resistance movements are formed by power relations, since they all will involve some kind of leadership, need for discipline, security against various threats, both internally and from their enemies. The more revolutionary and militant the resistance, the more power will form the movement, since the threats increase. Foucault is our main inspiration to understand how power operates in the everyday. When Michel Foucault started to discuss the concept of power, notions such as capillary and disciplinary power were introduced into the theoretical debate. Foucault focused on how and by what means power is exercised, by comprehending power as the “interaction of warring parties, as the decentred network of bodily, face-to-face confrontations, and ultimately as the productive penetration and subjectivizing subjugation of a bodily opponent” (Foucault in Habermas 1994, 63–64). Foucault outlines power as something that is always exercised and circulating: “Power is located at the levels of struggle and manifest in its effects” (Haugaard 1997, 67, see also Lilja 2008). To Foucault, the individual is both subjugated and constituted through power and an actor who disseminates it. Foucault also argues that it is the application and effectiveness of the power/knowledge regime that is important. Knowledge is linked to power; firstly, because it assumes the authority of the “truth” and, secondly, because it has the power to make itself true (Foucault 1994). In our discussions we are drawing on three different power forms as outlined by Foucault: (1) sovereign power; (2) disciplinary power; and (3) biopower ( Lilja and Vinthagen 2014). These three forms of power “emerged in different historical phases of modernity, but did not replace each other”, the rise of the modern European state, early capitalism and modern liberalism ( Larsson, Letell, and Thörn 2012 , 9–10). Departing from this theoretical framework of a “triangle” of power ( Dean 2010, 122), we will discuss how different power techniques need to serve as the corresponding reference points for possible resistance techniques, where the peculiarities of power decide how resistance can be conducted. Sovereign power is quite obvious in its violent articulations, as the use of overwhelming violence (police, military, intelligence agencies, etc.), the legal system, or other enforcement mechanisms and institutions of which we associate to state power. However, the workings of discipline and biopower are less obvious, but, according to Foucault, more powerful in their consequences for individuals and the society, at least in our historic modern era.

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In Foucault’s analysis of power, the production of a discursive norm is central. Disciplines are the bearers of a discourse, but this cannot be the discourse of right. The discourse of discipline has nothing in common with that of law, rule, or sovereign will. The disciplines may well be the carriers of a discourse that speaks of a rule, but this rule is not the juridical rule deriving from sovereignty, but a natural rule, a norm. The code they come to define is not that of law but that of normalization. (Foucault 1994, 44) Each individual action is referred to a whole that is at once a field of comparison, a space of differentiation and the principle of a rule to be followed (Foucault 1991, 182; Johnston 1991, 161). In other words, all humans are referred to a norm that may become, for the individual, an optimum towards which she or he strives (Foucault 1986, 241; Lilja 2008). In this sense, disciplinary power shapes and normalizes subjects who eventually become, speak, think and act in similar manners (Foucault 1991, 177–184). Biopower is also a productive form of power, but according to Foucault, one that operates on populations, not individual behavior. It is a “technology of power”, which organizes human subjects as a population. The techniques of biopower function to “incite, reinforce, control, monitor, optimize and organize” (Foucault 1978, 136). It is a power that is “taking charge of life” ( Foucault 1978, 143). Power applies itself to everyday life and the processes in which we are categorized and that are attached to our own identities (Foucault 1982, 781). Analyzing power, then, embraces an analysis of how subjects are “gradually, progressively, really and materially constituted through a multiplicity of organisms, forces, energies, materials, desires, thoughts, etc.” ( Foucault 1994, 35). Foucault does not use the concept of everyday resistance but suggests how a set of “techniques of the self ”, such as writing diaries, following diets, or other programs of self-formation, can be related to resistance.1 The critique, however, has been that, especially in our neoliberal times of individual projects of self-realization and marketing, these techniques of the self rather appear as techniques of power, exercised over oneself (see, e.g., McKinlay and Starkey 1998; Rose 1999). However, we follow Thompson (2003), who argues that Foucault outlines a creative practice of “self-constitution” (formation, governance, knowledge and rule), not self-regulation (administration and “infatuation”). Self-formation is not self-fabrication. To produce something is to impose static form upon recalcitrant matter, to stamp being upon becoming. To be cared for rather than to care for one’s self is to live simply under the sway of programs and procedures defined by this logic. (Thompson 2003, 130)

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Thus, although prevailing interpretations maintain that self-techniques are power mechanisms, we suggest that people also are able to modify themselves differently and/or resist the processes of internalizing power through alternative modes of self-making. Mohandas Gandhi’s “ascetic activism” is one such example (Howard 2013). Since the independence of India was understood by Gandhi as “self-rule”, there was a close connection made between the power of asceticism and the power of the independence movement. “Gandhi ritualized every aspect of his life, which became a testament of his commitment to the cause; it was his personal performance of ritual that was to be imitated” in a way in which he “embodied symbols that communicated his political strategy—a strategy based on simplicity, self-sacrifice, and self-reliance” (Howard 2013, 77, 219). In his unique way of reinterpreting and applying the disciplines of asceticism as instruments for the goals of politics, Gandhi utilized the traditionally religious, inner-worldly and individual tradition of asceticism and expanded its scope to political, outer-worldly and collective activism (Howard 2013, 215). Without clearly belonging to any one of these traditional categories, he transformed both traditions into his original kind of “ascetic activism”. Thus, we regard such techniques of the self or self-formation as potentially useful within studies of everyday resistance, and will later on in the book apply it to one illustrative example. We use the concept of “configurations of power” as a way to indicate a combination of forms and particular techniques of power applied in a certain context. For example, in the occupied territories of Palestine, the Israeli Defense Force is using sovereign power, disciplinary power and biopower to control the Palestinian population, while the main form of power has shifted over the history of the occupation (as we will show later in this book). And, with the emergence of surveillance systems at workplaces, the specific techniques of power have shifted dramatically in the last decades, from guards and alarms, to CCTV camera systems and digital log-files that document activities, including who uses what applications on the computers and when, using time stamps, certain doors are opened in a building with a certain individual’s keycard. There is a whole debate on the role of intention or consciousness in relation to power. Sovereign power is often intentional, but less clearly so discipline and biopower, where one intention with the introduction of a new technique is replaced by others in other contexts over the time of history. The inherence and diffusion of techniques and discourses, across time, context, states, corporations or other institutions, might separate the intention or consciousness of certain individuals from how the power is exercised or the structure of domination. But this might also depend on the context. For example, people in Palestine are targets of explicit and sophisticated intentions and strategies by the occupying forces that use all forms of power (see Chapter 9). The argument here, in the first step of our elaboration of how everyday resistance relates to power, is that resistance is always related to power, in some

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way, although it might be in more subtle forms and very particular relations, depending on the context. This is partly because of how we have chosen to define “resistance”, as related to power. Our definition means that whenever you are trying to determine if a certain practice can be viewed as “resistance” or not, you will have to make a power analysis. If that practice is: (1) related to power; and (2) is done by someone in a subordinated position to that power; and (3) that practice has a reasonable chance to somehow undermine or destabilize power (at least temporarily), then it can be viewed as resistance. Thus, power analysis is the first necessary step in determining resistance. The definitional criteria demand such an analysis. But the relation to power is not just a definitional part of everyday resistance, it is also inescapable. Resistance cannot get “outside” or “beyond” power in any absolute or definite sense, only temporary or partially. This does not mean that resistance and power is the same type of phenomenon, just that they are ontologically related, despite or more correct, exactly because they exist in a struggle with each other. And, sometimes power and resistance even reinforce each other by the dynamic interaction of forces that counter and build on each other.

(2) Power/Resistance Evolves Through Dynamic Interactions From any power analysis, we will find that resistance is conditioned by the structures or relations of power that determine how and what to resist. The main argument by Scott for why everyday resistance makes sense, is that in certain repressive contexts, when, for the moment, there is no capacity to successfully rebel, subalterns will have to pretend conformity while awaiting opportunities for hidden or disguised resistance. Thus, the conditions set by domination make everyday resistance the rational mode of class war for Scott. This is not only valid in general, but also for the particular technique of power, or its configuration in a specific context. When power involves space and time bondage, as with slavery in the 18th century US South, then everyday resistance, logically, manipulates borders and regulations of space and time (Camp 2004, chap. 1). Slave regulations dealt with limiting the space of movements, demanding permissions for all activities outside of the plantation, and enforced strict time discipline throughout the day and week. All of these regulations could be and were manipulated. Some slave owners used a “task system” in order to get slaves to work more effectively. It meant that when slaves were finished with their work assignments for the day, they could tend to their own gardens, crafts, homes and families. Increased efficiency created more time for the enslaved, a kind of “free” time. Thus, a motivational system was supposed to increase productivity. However, in the perspective of slaves, the doing of tasks was still slave time. Therefore, doing the tasks with less care meant spending less slave time on slave tasks; i.e., gaining more time for yourself. Eventually, one of the key reasons to abandon slavery was its economic inefficiency, and we do not know to what

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extent this inefficiency could be explained by the everyday resistance of slaves, but it is, for sure, one reasonable part of an explanation. Resistance is inconceivable without power since resistance is essentially oppositional to something conditioned by dominant power and affects existing power. Resistance changes over time since it has to adapt to the changes of power. But power is also reacting to resistance. During historical change, new techniques of power and resistance are developed, explored, rejected, refined and reinvented. Change does happen as a result of these struggles, and neither power nor resistance (permanently) “wins”. Both continue to exist, at the least as temporary tendencies, subterranean desires or potential activity. The historical evolution of new techniques and discourses of schools, prisons, factories, military barracks, etc. can be viewed as a continuous refinement that makes discipline and productivity more efficient, i.e. in overcoming various obstacles emanating from students, inmates, workers or soldiers. At least a part of those obstacles is resistance. If power and resistance are related and react to each other, then we have to conclude it is an interaction we are talking about. Karner (2004) combines Foucault and de Certeau and argues for how there is a dynamic between power and resistance that needs to be accounted for. Similarly, Cheung (1997) argues that hidden transcripts of resistance relate to domination in an interaction. Such a dynamic between power and resistance is also shown by Adnan (2007). His study of poor peasants in Bangladesh, and the transformation of covert resistance into overt forms, shows “that there were sequential shifts in the respective strategies of domination and resistance . . . which shaped each other interactively over a dynamic trajectory.” (Adnan 2007, abstract). Within the “contentious politics” framework, a main argument is that actual articulations, actions and results of political struggles arise from the dynamic interaction (mechanisms and processes) of the struggle itself—not from independent strategies or moves by actors (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001). The social change that happens as a result of the interactive dynamic between power/resistance does not seem to us to follow any single logic, but it shows various alternative patterns. One is when resistance leads to increased power and worsened conditions for subordinated groups. An illustrative example comes from the organizational research inspired by post-structuralism ( Huzell 2005, 43–44), which argues that during the 1990s employers extended their possibilities to control and construct the identities of employees through new discourses of management ( Just in Time systems, Human Resource Management, etc.) and new methods of surveillance. According to Huzell studies show that employees’ resistance was counter-productive. Common strategies of resistance such as cynicism and skepticism towards management reproduced power rather than undermining it. In principle, we can imagine the interactive dynamic leading to 1) diminished, 2) increased, or 3) changed techniques for exercising power. And, since

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there is no absolute “amount” of power in the world, power might increase, decrease and change simultaneously at different places and in different forms, and there is no contradiction in itself with increased power at the same time as increased resistance. Thus, we should not assume that the dynamic interaction diminishes power just because we are able to detect how it does so at some place or occasion. It might be temporal, local and partial. Power might increase at other places, later on, or along other dimensions. We should also not assume power is diminished just because one form of it is. When we see less of brutal power exercised, there might instead be an increase in its discursive, indirect, normative, or other disciplinary forms. In other words, we should not be naïve, but assume that when one form of dominant power dissolves, it only transforms into something new and less obvious, if not proven otherwise.

(3) Power/Resistance Is Intersectional and Decentered The early studies of everyday resistance were based on a division and dichotomization of superior-subordinate relations: powerful-powerless, victim-perpetrator (e.g. manager-worker, men-women, landlord-peasant, etc.). Over the years, many authors within the field have turned against this tradition since it ignores the fact that there are multiple systems of hierarchies, and individuals can be simultaneously positioned as powerful and powerless within different systems (see, e. g., Hollander and Einwohner 2004). Thus, today, there is a recognition that one and the same individual can be subordinated in relation to power from one or multiple systems, while superordinated in relation to power from another system. According to Mittelman and Chin, Scott put “a unidimensional face on resistance” and logically then “assigned a similar unidimensional countenance to domination” (2005, 23) and argue that he did not pay sufficient attention to the interaction between class and “non-class forces”. “Class is but one . . . modality of identity in landlord-peasant or other forms of dominant-subordinate relations” (ibid.). The authors instead put forward Gramsci´s analyses as more complex since Gramsci “reminded us that subaltern identities are embedded in complex overlapping social networks in which individuals simultaneously assume positions of domination and subordination” (2005, 23). They define this as the “internal politics of subaltern groups” and as a phenomenon of “domination within domination”. Already in 1991, Gillian Hart had developed a sharp critique of Scott and called for a “major rethinking of James Scott’s notion of ‘everyday forms of peasant resistance’”, from a gender perspective. With her gendered analysis of class formation, published in the article “Engendering Everyday Resistance: Gender, Patronage and Production Politics in Rural Malaysia” (1991), she shows how struggles within the labor process intersect with those in the local community and the household, and how gender meanings shape the struggles at these interconnected sites. In her analysis,

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the relationships and practices of everyday resistance are gendered as well as classed. Since Hart’s article, gender has become a significant analytical lens for resistance studies. In a recent study, Redden (2016) explores the relationships between gender, everyday resistance and the global political economy. Drawing on data from interviews on the significance of gendered everyday acts with former transnational call center workers in Ontario, Canada, she suggests that along with the “feminization of labor” within the industry it may be necessary to raise the issue of “feminization of resistance”. But gendering resistance is also not enough. As the perspective and analysis of intersectionality has demonstrated, it is necessary to recognize that power has more than one or two dimensions. Without an intersectional perspective one tends to become stuck in a notion of one-dimensional, structural power that is fixated around a specific set of relations (such as relations of class, race or gender) and one type of conf lict (for example, labor/capital) that is given a higher value of explanation than others ( De los Reyes and Mulinari 2005). This, we would like to add, also keeps one stuck with a one-dimensional, structural notion of resistance. By holding on to dichotomizations, such as that of labor/capital, one risks obscuring the complexity behind dichotomous categories, as well as how these construct each other. The problem is when the categories become fixed essences without history or context (how and when they were produced), and without acknowledgement of their variation in meaning and practice. Our position is that resistance is always related to power and power is plural, thus simultaneously creating differences according to several logics. Since the relationship of power from a Foucaultian perspective is viewed as a multiple process and a dynamic relationship, this is also how the relationship of resistance needs to be viewed. The relationships between dominant and subordinated groups, whether these are men/women, employer/employees, middle class/working class, or racialized, are negotiated continually in different contexts and interactional settings. In the same way as there is a multiplicity of power relations played out on the grounds of race, class, age and sexuality, as well as ability and religion, there is a multiplicity of resistance relations as well. Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) in the late 1980s, the concept of “intersectionality” has been used by feminists not only to focus on gender as a source of oppression, but also to extend their energies to studying other power dimensions such as class, race, sexuality and disability, particularly the neglected social locations in which two (or more) of these dimensions intersect. According to many feminist researchers who have elaborated on the concept, the study of intersectionality is useful to establish links between different categories and hierarchies and to encompass complexity and differences. Brah and Phoenix regard the concept of intersectionality as “signifying the complex, irreducible, varied and variable effects which ensue when multiple axes of differentiation  .  .  .  intersect in historically specific contexts” (2004, 76). They

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argue that the concept “emphasizes that different dimensions of social life cannot be separately extracted and presented as discrete and pure strands” (76). Prins (2006) distinguishes between a constructionist approach to intersectionality, in contrast to a more systemic intersectional approach. The systemic approach, she argues, emphasizes the impact of system or structure upon the formation of identities, while the constructionist approach emphasizes the impact of dynamic and relational aspects of social identity. We find the constructionist approach to intersectionality most appealing, particularly that of Ferree (2009), who prefers to call it “interactive intersectionality”, since it opens up more space for agency. Taking her point of departure in sociology she views intersectionality as an ongoing multilevel process of structuration that happens simultaneously on both an institutional as well as on an individual level: The ‘intersection of gender and race’ is not any number of specific locations occupied by individuals or groups (such as black women) but a process through which ‘race’ takes on multiple ‘gendered’ meanings for particular women and men (and for those not neatly located in either of those categories) depending on whether, how and by whom race-gender is seen as relevant for their sexuality, reproduction, political authority, employment or housing. These domains (and others) are to be understood as organizational fields in which multidimensional forms of inequality are experienced, contested and reproduced in historically changing forms. (85) This idea of “organizational fields” fits well into our framework of configurations of power. However, intersectionality studies have so far focused more on power and domination than on resistance.2 We think intersectionality opens new perspectives on what resistance might be. For example, a study of “Bear culture” by Hennen (2005) looks at a specialized homosexual subculture that consists of men who value big bodies, beards, outdoor activities and working-class dress. This study shows that, as gay men, “bears” are marginalized in relation to heterosexual men, but as whites they are positioned and position themselves as superior to men of color, as middleclass men superior to blue-collar men, and as men superior to women (at least women with less privilege). Thus, it goes without saying that one cannot make the “additive claim” that big, gay men identifying as bears are twice as marginalized as slim, heterosexual men, nor should we understand their practices of resistance from that perspective. Instead, this example needs to be understood as an illustration of the “entanglement” of power and resistance (something we develop further in the next section), where one has to carefully investigate practices of resistance that are produced as an ongoing interactive process of contradictions, multiplicity and complexity ( Yuval-Davis 2011). The practice of dressing in f lannel shirts, ripped jeans and working boots, is a practice of resistance in relation to the dominant gay culture, and at the same time it

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reinforces the norm of heterosexual, white masculinity. As Hennen (2005, 33) notes, the identification with the bear and the “back to nature” image is linked to a “raced cultural dynamic which equates the return to nature to whiteness”. It is also historically a reaction to presumed feminization. This intersectional combination of positions also seems to manifest in how resistance is made. In their study of narratives of women in hotel work, Adim and Gurrier (2003) focus on the interlocking of gender with nationality, race, ethnicity and class. They argue that, as with gender, categories such as race and class reinforce structural power relationships. To be a woman lessens one’s power within the organization, as does being black or a migrant female worker. However, the authors also note that the respondents do not seem to interpret their work experience in terms of one type of difference being added to another type of difference. Instead, they seem to conceptualize their identities as “f luid”. The way the women tend to emphasize certain identities and downplay others is a narrative practice that Adim and Gurrier define as a form of resistance. For example, while Rachel resists parts of her identity, another woman, Maria, instead brings forward the aspects of her identity that give her advantages. The authors point out that their study illustrates that gender and other representations at work should not be understood as a process of adding difference onto difference where categories are considered as separate and fixed. Instead, what emerges is a negotiation of many categories that exist simultaneously and that shift according to context. While it is evident that there has been a development toward a more complex analysis of the relationships of everyday resistance, the challenge is still to integrate an intersectional approach into the field. As we have stated previously we find it of importance to focus on how different orders or aspects of resistance construct each other in relation to power(s). Therefore, we suggest that everyday resistance has to be understood intersectionally, as embedded in simultaneous combinations of several powers. Resistance might resist one power while embracing another. This calls for a shift in the study of everyday resistance; a shift that for example makes it possible to capture the construction of multiple and shifting identities of agents of resistance and the interplay between these, as well as the contradictory positions of being both dominant and subordinate, depending on within which system, context or relationship subjects are positioned and position themselves. Throughout the book we will try to illustrate how this can be done in an analysis, and in Chapter 9, we will demonstrate a concrete example of how such an intersectional analysis of everyday resistance can be done (in occupied Palestine).

(4) Power and Resistance Are Entangled Thus, resistance is always related to several powers at the same time, and the resistance/power couplet evolves in an interactive dynamic. So, when we look

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at all the features of power and resistance simultaneously it will become clear that rarely we will find resistance that simultaneously undermines all the features of power, or even the most essential ones. And clearly, resistance will not be able to permanently undermine all power systems, only temporarily and partly. Instead we will find it undermining some, while enforcing other features by using them as part of its attempt to become forceful resistance, and similarly enacting or proposing other new power relations within its vision and institutionalization of a different society. This intimate and hybrid combination of power and resistance, we call their “entanglement” (Sharp et al. 2000), something that is illustrated with the example discussed in the previous section of the gay subculture of “bears”. What then do we mean by “entanglement”? Entanglement might be understood through the metaphor of threads that are entangled with each other, contributing to differences while maintaining their identities (see Bryant, larvalsubjects.wordpress.com, May 2, 2010). It “suggests dynamic relations among threads tangled and all akimbo [sic] with another, nicely capturing the ongoing dynamism of relations among objects with their interaction with another” (Ibid.). It also suggests a stickiness—that is, the interactions are sticky, and the different distinct elements are “all knotted up” (Ibid.). Resisters tend to focus on some aspect/type of power and ignore others, like the workers movement that was preoccupied with class relations, but largely ignored gender and race. Or, the early feminism that became dominated by white middle-class women while portraying (their own understanding of ) “gender” as universal, which was criticized by black feminists later on. Likewise, much of the feminism in the 1960s in the US arose out of frustration with male dominance within the civil rights movement, where gender dominance was seen as secondary to race dominance. Typically, this focus on certain forms of power goes together with how resisters utilize their relative power in one system to fight their relative subordinated position in another power system, as when (white, male) trade union activists struggle against their inferior position in a class system. This creates combinations of power and resistance practices that are contradictory, and which form the specific discourse, repertoire and technique of resistance in a culture. This is clear from even a superficial reading of social movement theory, and there are no reasons to assume that cultures of everyday resistance would be different. At least that is something we will have to empirically investigate and expect. Also, everyday resisters will have assumptions—both conscious and unconscious ones—about “men”, “women”, “we” and “them”, “society” and what is “right” and “just”, which will create exclusions, hierarchies and normalizations that amount to new forms of dominance, should the resisters become effective or forceful in transforming society. One way in which this entanglement is articulated is when resistance creates new forms of power in the process of resistance. Jo Freeman shows in a classical text, The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1984), how anti-hierarchical feminist

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groups in the 1970s developed new power forms and undemocratic behavior from their radical democratic ambition and strong posture against formal structures and rules. These activists developed a particularly militant culture built on the celebration of informal politics and a belief in “structurelessness”. Structure was viewed as “repressive” and a sign of power and therefore they claimed liberation came through rejecting “structure”. However, this only meant the structures of decisions, leadership and rules became invisible or diffuse. Those activists who developed strong ties with each other could establish a normative leadership, while others who did not fit these guiding group norms— those who had the “wrong” type of sexuality or music preference, were dressed “wrong” or spoke in a less “radical” manner—became marginalized and were not allowed into the inner circle of (powerful) friends. The rejection of formal structures also meant that there was no agreed time and place where decisions were taken, no minutes, and not even any clear agendas of issues to discuss. Those that had a lot of free time to invest gained greater inf luence, while those with other commitments, a day job or children, lost inf luence on key decisions. Since informal leaders are not elected, they can also not be rejected in a new election or open debate. As Freeman claims, structurelessness is impossible. Structure always exists, either informally, or both formally and informally. Thus, in a paradoxical way, a strong resistance against internal organizational power might produce an informal organizational power ruled by elite cliques that are even more difficult to reject. In conclusion, when resistance builds on, negotiates and produces power, yet simultaneously undermines (some other aspects of ) power, resistance prevails as both rational and irrational ( Lilja, Baaz, and Vinthagen 2013). Thus, resistance can be argued to both fulfill its purpose to undermine dominant power, but also to work against the very same rationality, by building dominant power. Power and resistance become entangled or intertwined in hybrid ways, despite being oppositional. In a strict meaning: Power and resistance are analytically speaking oppositional (in a definitional, theoretical meaning), but might in empirical reality become entangled. Thus, power and resistance are not dichotomous, a question of either-or, rather they become complex combinations, which change with time, space and circumstances. One clear example of this is visible in the clash between the power of international organization and local everyday resistance in the context of violent conf lict management ( Berents 2015; Das 2006; Kaplan 2001; McGee 2017; Walker 2010). Liberal international organizations, as for example the United Nations (UN) or the European Union (EU), have intervened in protracted violent conf licts in the world, utilizing overwhelming military and economic power. They have poured in money, fostered institution building, trained professionals, facilitated the involvement of international NGOs and integrated societies in the world economy in order to secure stability and liberal peace. Yet, despite all this, the outcome has frustrated the international community, since local societies

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and actors have in various ways resisted these interventions and undermined the liberal peace paradigm, both with armed struggle and scattered, informal and everyday forms of resistance (Arjona 2014; Heredia 2017; Masullo 2015; Richmond 2010, 2012). Instead, the result has often been a “hybrid peace”, one in which negotiated and complex arrangements between international and local forces and interests, have reached somewhat legitimate and stable results (Mac Ginty 2010, 2014; Richmond 2009, 2011). Thus, in general, all actors, both international and local ones, are frustrated, having to settle for negotiated compromises and combinations of formal and informal rules that take a heterogeneous set of interests into account. Although the interaction between (dominant) power and (oppositional) resistance is indeed, per definition, asymmetrical, it does not mean power always decides the dynamic. Most tend to see resistance as a reaction to power, as an act against something that already existed and provoked a response: thus resistance, they argue, has to be secondary. That also fits with a commonsense perception of what it means “to resist”. Others, however, maintain that “resistance” is an original activity without the consent of power, thus a way of acting by itself. As such, as an activity ruled by itself, it can be seen as leading the interactive dynamic, in line with Hardt and Negri (2004). In their view, it is only resistance (the “Multitude”) that is able to produce, while power (the “Empire”) is simply an attempt to organize, capitalize or prey on production performed in freedom, or on social life itself. Empire is a “vampire”, and “can only isolate, divide, and segregate” ( Hardt and Negri 2000, 39). As such, Empire is a perverse product of the Multitude, not the opposite, and the only reconstruction possible of Empire goes through the resistance of the Multitude. Thus, in a way, they argue that resistance comes “first”, is the original, and power is what reacts to activity/production, which becomes “resistance” only when the attempt to control arises (i.e. “power”). What exists “first”, it could be argued, is people moving around as they please, doing things they like and relating freely to each other, without government, in anarchy. Governance only comes in when someone perceives a need to get things in “order”, distinguishing what is “right” from what is “wrong”, and succeeds to organize other objects, individuals or practices according to some external principle or rule that is established through force. An alternative position, which we tend to agree with, is, of course, to argue for some combination, as have Foucault and Butler, claiming that power indeed produces subjectivities, although it never does that in a totalitarian and complete sense; it is always partial. And this incompleteness creates fractions or “cracks” that open up opportunities for resistance to develop through people orienting their behavior in the everyday from another non-capitalist logic; for example, out of friendship or passion (Holloway “Crack capitalism” 2010). Irrespective of this somewhat impossible debate on origin (similar to the eternal debate on the chicken and the egg), we know one thing for sure; forms of

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power and forms of resistance have existed as long as known history, and they have evolved together, in an entangled way. In our understanding, one would have to say that resistance and power are intimately interrelated and produced in a continuous process. Hollander and Einwohner (2004) discuss this relationship in terms of a cycle: “Resistance and domination have a cyclical relationship, domination leads to resistance, which leads to the further exercise of power, provoking further resistance, and so on” (2004, 548). We agree, but we think that the image of repetitive cyclical stages misses how this production is an open-ended and historically emerging process. Power and resistance affect each other throughout history, in local contexts and in general, through translocal models and techniques that spread, in what we would instead describe as a spiral, or rather, constant spiral-dynamics of actions and reactions, of innovations and counter-innovations, measures and counter-measures. Multiple experiences are built up. Rulers learn new things and find ways to create obedience, and control rebellions. But those who make rebellions and become subjugated, also learn and find new methods and strategies. Constant learning from what earlier generations have done evolves; past mistakes and successes are built upon and form traditions. Subjectivity and its personal motives or intentions fades away in the fog of multiple layers of past battles—battles that go on over generations, since new subjects with new motives and intentions take on inherited positions of superordination and subordination and take up culturally-learned techniques of power and resistance. Collective knowledge traditions of how to rule and how to resist are created. And those who master the knowledge and know the rules of how to do it (while at the same time are able to surprise, to take new initiatives, to play the rule-game and break the rules at appropriate moments) will also become successful; at least momentarily, until others learn new tricks and maneuvers. Thus, to us, the history of interaction between power and resistance seems inherently dynamic and fundamentally unpredictable, at least on this longterm, general and theoretical level. However, in a specific context, at a particular time, with regard to certain actors and relations, this dynamic might seem stable and predictable. Within a particular state of stability, it will only change in minor steps and temporarily. It is then that everyday resistance comes in and makes sense, as part of the minor bending that opens cracks in stable and repressive contexts. Through this intersectional and historical co-development, resistance and power become intertwined, blended and mixed, and even constitute each other. Although most articles within resistance literature indeed view power and resistance as related ( Hollander and Einwohner 2004), there is a tendency to see them as two related opposites and as a static relation. Butz and Ripmeester (1999) suggest a theoretical location that occupies the space between those poles. They argue that: “Supposedly separate realms of power and resistance are more productively understood as mutually-constituted parts of the

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f luidity, play, or ambiguity of social life”. Power relations are “not a binary structure with dominators on one side and dominated on the other, but rather a multiform production of relations which are partially susceptible to integration in overall strategies” ( Butz and Ripmeester 1999, 2). Thus, resistance becomes impossible to understand without its relation to power—that which is resisted. The same is true of power, as it becomes pointless without at least the risk of resistance and, more importantly, it won’t be power anymore if resistance develops new and more effective techniques. And if they historically grow and change together, through various combinations and battles, they also become entangled (Sharp et al. 2000). When they use each other as stepping-stones, new things are made possible. There are often elements of resistance within power institutions and elements of power within resistance projects. Mumby (2005) argues that studies of workplace resistance are often based on an implicit dualism of control and resistance as mutually exclusive. According to him, a so-called dialectical approach instead captures control and resistance as mutually constitutive and as a “routine social production of daily organizational life”. Sometimes, it is a matter of coinciding power systems that inf luence each other, that live side by side, and develop together; for example, like the male trade union activist who is mounting all his resistance against the capitalist system at his workplace, while he is the strong patriarch in his family home, ensuring that the women in the household respect him properly, and while furthermore, he is a willing subordinate to his Christian God and his priests in the neighborhood where he lives. These three power systems—capitalism, sexism and religion—are intertwined because they organize the same human bodies and subsequently the intertwining of power/resistance also occurs. To reproduce power at the same time as you resist it, is one common form of entanglement. There are, for example, numerous studies within gender research that shows that women collaborate in the reproduction of gender hierarchy at the same time as they challenge and undermine it. Gagne (1998) shows how transgendered individuals conduct “gender resistance” as “a discursive act that both challenges and reifies the binary gender system”. And, in her study on laughter, humor and carnivalesque practice as everyday resistance among women in a Nicaraguan lower-class neighborhood, Johansson (2009) concludes that while the humorous practice reinforces the idea of women and men as stereotypical and mutually exclusive categories—through jokes in which the women are constructed as responsible, rational and altruistic, and the men are represented as irresponsible, irrational and egoistic—they also, at the same time, undermine the superior position of masculinity and men. We have, in this chapter, argued that power and resistance are unavoidably related and entangled in an historic and dynamic interaction, in which hybrid forms develop and in which intersectional analysis of this power/resistance nexus is needed. Power is always present in some way, and power/resistance

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is mutually constitutive through their constant inf luence and reaction to each other. And, since power is plural it is not strange but instead common that resistance is focused on one or two forms of power, while it utilizes some other form of power to make its impact. Only the most radical forms of resistance would be aware of and in opposition to all forms of power, something that seems rare, and perhaps, less likely to be successful. We should therefore not be surprised when resistance is strongly oppositional along certain dimensions, while supportive and ignorant of other aspects of power relations. Taken together, we have to recognize that the power/resistance nexus is an entanglement that over history creates intersecting layers of power and resistance or hybrid power/ resistance combinations. Pure resistance seems to be an ideal type that is hard to find in empirical reality. Fundamentally, we claim that resistance is not possible to understand or define as an independent category. It has to be analyzed in relation to its ongoing struggle with and reliance on power(s). This is something we will further analyze later (mainly in Chapter 5). The oppositional practice of everyday resistance is not distinct from power just because it is opposed to power, quite the contrary. The often-quoted statement of Foucault, “Where there is power, there is resistance”, is important to spell out completely, since it actually continues: “and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance, is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (Foucault 1978, 95–96). This also means, as Lila Abu-Lughod observes, “where there is resistance, there is power” (1990, 42). Everyday resistance is clearly enmeshed in power relations discourse. It resists only bits and pieces of power and is never fully outside of the network of powers. Therefore, it logically follows that everyday resistance is necessarily contradictory—both subordinate and rebellious at the same time. And, resistance will be more a matter of minor adjustments of how power operates on us, as “the art of not being governed like that and at that cost” (as Foucault suggests).

Notes 1. Foucault suggested two concepts that deal with the everyday and involve resistance: “techniques of the self ” and “counter-conduct”. The self-techniques we will discuss later. “Counter-conduct” was suggested brief ly in 1978 and then quickly abandoned by Foucault ( Lorenzini 2016). We think it is still useful, as a way to understand how people try to conduct themselves differently when being subjected to governance in the form of the regulation and control of how people behave. Still, we do not, equal to Foucault himself, see the concept as necessary in order to understand resistance as such. To be exact, Foucault used it in a specific reference to its main historical articulation in Europe in the form of a culture of “critique”, in the text “Qu’est-ce que la critique?” (Foucault 2015). Instead of counter conduct we utilize “counter practice” since everyday resistance is not always a behavior that is subjugated to surveillance by power or other people. 2. The so-called “intersectional turn” in feminist theory has been subjected to serious critique. Maria Carbin and Sara Edenheim (2013) argue that the popularity of intersectionality in feminist theory owes its success to the absence of considering

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the concept’s ontology and epistemology. “Intersectionality promises almost everything: to provide complexity, overcome divisions and to serve as a critical tool. However, the expansion of the scope of intersectionality has created a consensus that conceals fruitful and necessary conf licts within feminism” (233). This argument is very much in line with Myra Marx Ferree’s (2013) argument. She writes that “the idea of intersectionality as a moment of resistance to mainstream erasure of inequalities has been converted into the idea of ‘diversity’ understood as a positive, albeit neoliberal approach to social inclusion” (11).

INTERMEZZO Towards a Framework That Guides Our Analysis of Everyday Resistance

From our discussion so far, we can conclude that everyday resistance is possible to understand as individual or small-group resistance practices that are guided by specific situations (and individual creativity) but done regularly in a way that is (sub)culturally patterned and that are not recognized as “political” by mainstream society. It is neither unique individual acts, nor formally politically organized. If that is, as we argue, a possible and fruitful perspective that guides our research, the question that we now turn our attention to is: how can we (despite enormous variation in contexts and types of practices) analyze everyday resistance in a way that make different studies able to speak to each other? Is there a framework that is general enough across contexts and practices, yet not so specific that it only suits a very particular theoretical perspective or disciplinary tradition?

Towards a Theoretical Framework for Everyday Resistance We have seen in Chapters 1– 4 the deep disagreements within the literature on everyday resistance, regarding how to define the concept, and there are indeed clearly different theoretical perspectives on this everyday oppositional practice, at the same time as the variation of theories is very limited, divorced from established theories within related fields, and without much communication between different authors writing on forms of everyday resistance. These conditions make it hard to develop the field. A creation of more communication between authors belonging to different disciplines and theoretical traditions is hard, especially when there are disagreements on the fundamentals of how to understand “everyday resistance” as a phenomenon. To us, it seems there is a lack of a common understanding and communication between authors

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belonging to different disciplines and theoretical camps. An understanding demands some translation between different scientific languages for talking about everyday resistance. Such a common understanding seems even more necessary if we choose to accept a description of everyday resistance not just as an oppositional practice, but also as involved in a complex relation with power that is dynamic, interactive, intersectional and contextual. We think we need to facilitate an understanding to capture everyday resistance also when such oppositional practice is called something else by participants in a certain community or context. We need a framework that helps us to analyze the properties of everyday resistance and its interaction with power in different contexts. Such a framework also has to help us to improve the quality and communication of research within the field, making it more systematic and comparable, without creating a mainstreaming and “normalization” of science. We need a heterodoxy and constructive discussions between approaches in order to facilitate unexpected discoveries. In order for that to be possible, there is a need for translation and understanding between perspectives. If that is possible, the field of everyday resistance studies could take a decisive step forward. Therefore, we have developed an analytical framework that can guide our research on everyday resistance, a framework that is applicable to a broad range of definitions, theoretical approaches, and research methodologies. Basically, we have built this framework on fundamental social science categories (used to analyze other social phenomena) with the intention of applying it to everyday resistance. This, we think, will increase the possibility of communication between different academic communities. For that purpose, we have chosen four core categories that we utilize as analytical dimensions of everyday resistance: repertoires of everyday resistance, and their relations to agents, social space and time: (1) repertoires, (2) social relations, (3) spatiality and (4) temporality. All of these are seen as relevant across very different contexts, even if not all might be equally important always. But, the first step in the analysis is always to analyze power. The first dimension—repertoires—is seen as intimately connected to the particular configuration of power relations and techniques active in the context in which everyday resistance is articulated. This configuration of power is also the starting point of the analysis, and functions as the major contextual grounding of the analysis, with descriptions not only of certain power techniques or relations (such as disciplinary institutions, biopower strategies, etc.) but also of the historic development of political economic structures, cultural ways of life, prevalent discourses, etc. Then, when the application of the analytical framework proceeds with all four dimensions, the particular repertoires of everyday resistance will be analyzed in its full contextual, embedded situation (through power configurations, relations and time/space).

Intermezzo

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Dimensions of Everyday Resistance—An Analytical Framework The first dimension (Chapter 5), repertoires of everyday resistance, is inspired by Charles Tilly’s concept of “repertoires of contention” and is particularly useful since it connects to historical configurations of power and their related culturally-learned repertoires. With this dimension, where repertoires of resistance are related to configurations of power, we follow in the footsteps of Scott (and Bayat), who emphasize how forms of resistance and power relate. The second dimension (Chapter 6), relationships between actors, focuses on who is carrying out the actions of everyday resistance (the resisters) in relation to other actors involved in the practice of resistance (the targets and the observers of resistance). We suggest that these actors define each other in interaction. No actor is an agent in isolation but becomes a particular subject in relation to others. The third dimension (Chapter 7), spatialization, highlights how everyday resistance in the form of activities, social relations and identities, is always spatially organized and how everyday resistance is practiced in and through space as a central social dimension. As the fourth and last dimension (Chapter 8), we introduce temporalization. Just as everyday resistance involves spatially-organized activities, social relations and identities, and is practiced in and through space as a central social dimension, one may equally talk about everyday resistance as temporally-organized, and as practiced in and through time as a central social dimension. These four analytical dimensions are, throughout, explained and motivated through illustrations from existing research. When we look on one dimension we focus on a special thematic as entry point for the analysis. In social reality, as will become increasingly clear in the book; all four dimensions are always present and interconnected. For example, the configuration of power is not just linked to the repertoire of everyday resistance, but power will manifest itself in some form in time/space and social relations. Therefore, it is argued, all four dimensions need to be studied in intersections. That is something we then proceed to illustrate, specify and further develop in the proceeding chapters. In Chapter 9, we especially highlight this interconnectedness of the dimensions by analyzing all dimensions in one and the same case (Palestinian everyday resistance, or “Sumūd”). Throughout Part II we will apply the theoretical perspective of “queer” and use empirical studies from queer studies. Queer theory is understood as a practice of political and critical inquiry in which assumptions taken for granted are challenged ( Wykes 2014), and in which there is an attempt to question and undermine fixed categories and presumed links between, for example, body, gender, identity and desire and, hence, norms related to sexuality and gender. Thus, we use “queer” as a verb (to queer, queering). While initially used to criticize heteronormativity, queerness is today deployed in a much broader sense, referring to the non-normative, that which is in conf lict with normality

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and the legitimized ( Berg and Wickman 2010). We will, in this book, use it both in the narrower sense, as well in the broader one. In each chapter (5, 6, 7 and 8), we will attempt to “queer” each of the dimensions in focus, that is, we will be queering repertoires of everyday resistance, queering relationships and queering time and space. This means we look at everyday resistance through a queer lens; we step outside a heterosexist and heteronormative framework and primarily trouble binaries such as man/woman and heterosexual/homosexual. We think that queering is a key example of a concept and theoretical approach that is very close to (and in some respects overlaps with) resistance, and it therefore serves our interest to show how studies of everyday resistance can be enriched by applying a more transdisciplinary openness, translation and dialogue with related fields.

PART II

An Analytical Framework Dimensions of Everyday Resistance

5 REPERTOIRES OF EVERYDAY RESISTANCE IN RELATION TO CONFIGURATIONS OF POWER

Introduction We have, over the course of Part I, brought up a multitude of ways to perform everyday resistance. In this chapter, we will make an attempt to theorize the patterns of resistance acts and their relationship to patterns of power relations. Humorous practices of resistance in the workplace may serve as an illustrative example. As workplace research has shown, humor is used as means of resistance by employees within a wide range of branches and at different types of workplaces, often in hidden and informal ways ( Huzell 2005). In one case, when the management at a call center announced a change of dress code ( Taylor and Bain 2004, 289) and salespersons were told to wear a shirt and tie, the employees spread the word around to wear fashion shirts and ties that would make them look “as unprofessional as possible”. The interviewee who told the story to the researchers, had chosen to wear a very wide tie with a car in technicolor with a purple shirt. The management could not do anything but chose to withdraw the dress code. This case might be seen as an example of humor being used to both follow the rules but yet, at the same time subvert them. During our inventory of the field of (everyday) resistance, we discovered that a variety of concepts are used to capture different actions, their shape and how they are carried out. Among the most frequent are “form”, “types”, “techniques”, “modes”, “strategies” and “tactics”. These terms are often used interchangeably and without theoretical distinctions and clarity.  Should the humorous acts be defined as forms of resistance, as strategies or as modes? What about the different sorts of humor as irony, satire, parody, ridicule and so, should they be seen as “types” or “subforms”? For example, Hollander and Einwohner (2004) make the distinction between two different modes of resistance:

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(1) material and physical resistance such as marches, picketing, formation of organizations, violence, working slowly, feigning sickness, wearing particular clothing or stealing from one´s employer, and (2) a mode of resistance that takes more symbolic forms, such as talk, dance, silence and breaking silence. Such distinctions certainly have relevance. However, the boundaries between material and symbolic forms of resistance are in no way clear, but rather, quite blurred, with a materialist perspective gaining inf luence in resistance studies ( Baaz and Lilja 2017; von Busch 2017), increasingly so. Instead of trying to distinguish the different concepts of form, types, modes etc. from each other, or to find one concept that might encompass them all, and use that to systematize resistance acts, we embarked on another journey— re-discovering the concept of “repertoire”, which is inspired by the historical sociology of social movements and revolutions of Tilly and his “repertoires of contentious politics” ( Tilly 1995). Among other things, the concept of repertoires allows us to capture contextually- and situationally-bound combinations of everyday resistance, and their complex and dynamic character—all in relation to power. Even so, we do agree with Tilly when he states that the concept is more of a “suggestive metaphor” than “a precise analytical tool” (cited in Traugott 1995, 3). In this chapter, we will introduce our own particular usage of the concept of repertoires and link it to configurations of power. Further we will give several examples of repertoires, repertoires used against colonialism or surveillance regimes as well as ones deployed against “the war against obesity” and fat stigma. The chapter ends with an attempt to queer repertoires of everyday resistance. In line with the pluralistic and open stance of exploring possible productive perspectives and concepts in the study of everyday resistance that inf luences this book, we use both Tilly’s concept of repertoires as well as bringing forward Foucault’s reverse discourse.

Configurations of Power As we have stated earlier, Scott (1985, 1989, 1990) did not only distinguish the everyday form of resistance in relation to a more conventional notion of political resistance, but he was also a pioneer in setting out to identify and systematize forms of everyday resistance in relation to forms of power. Although we do find it highly valuable that Scott perceives forms of power and forms of everyday resistance as interdependent, by linking them together and making a systematic attempt to connect certain forms of resistance to certain dimensions of domination, his framework also has serious f laws, something we discuss in depth in Part I. In this chapter, a Foucauldian perspective of power is adopted, where power is conceptualized as ubiquitous rather than located in certain groups; that is, power is productive rather than merely repressive and relational rather than reified (Foucault 1978, 1980, 1991). What follows this is also a particular notion of power

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and resistance. Power and resistance are involved in a complex interplay with one another, which emphasizes a more ongoing and open process in contrast with Scott’s model. Consequently, the studies we refer to are mainly related to the different forms of power as identified by Foucault, rather than relating the forms, strategies and techniques of everyday resistance to material, status or ideological forms of domination, as Scott does (see, for example, Deleuze 2011 [1992]). We have elsewhere briefly introduced the concept of configurations of power. In this section we will elaborate more on the notion of power as historically organized in different complex shapes and compositions which need to be studied in their particular contexts. The work of Gordon (2008) is particularly useful for our purposes, since he combines a strong theoretical interest in Foucault´s concept of power and conducts systematic analysis of the different forms of power in the setting of Israeli occupation, an analysis we will return to in Chapter 9. He claims that though the three modes of power—sovereign1, disciplinary2 and biopower3 — tend to be simultaneously deployed, the specific form of governing is shaped by the particular configuration between the different modes (2008, 14). One form of governing may emphasize discipline and biopower and put less emphasis on sovereignty, while another form may accentuate another configuration. The particularity of each configuration determines how individuals and populations are managed, while no configuration is fixed, so that certain processes modify the relation and emphasis among the different modes of power and consequently change the way society is governed and controlled. (Gordon 2008, 14) The configurations are in turn, shaped in interplay with the repertoires of resistance developed and deployed by various social movements and actors of resistance in the particular historical, social and cultural context in question. Lilja and Vinthagen (2014), in an analysis of biopower and resistance, have pointed out that even though biopower is directed to the society rather than towards the individual, it is closely connected to disciplinary power and its disciplinary apparatus. Certain aspects of disciplinary power—training and discipline—are elements employed as biopolitical strategies which are used to manage births, deaths, reproduction and illnesses of different populations. Consequently, resistance against disciplinary forms of power would have an impact against biopower if, maybe, applied in a larger scale, with more people, as a national (or international) movement, for example, strategies that aim to undermine punishments, surveillance and corrective or therapeutic techniques.

The Concept of Repertoires We do not argue that one has to subscribe to the power theory of Foucault in order to do research on everyday resistance. There is a more inclusive

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possibility if we instead opt for the concept of “repertoires”—a concept we find both dynamic and broad enough for the purpose of linking patterns of resistance practices to specific configurations of power. Our use of “repertoires” is inspired by Tilly, at the same time as we go beyond Tilly’s particular use of the concept. Tilly defines repertoires of contention as a set of culturally-learned routines in which larger groups interact in conf lict with each other (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001; Tilly 1995; Traugott 1995, 2). According to Tilly, repertoires of contention are formed in relation to political structures and processes, particularly state institutions and processes of modernization. Thus, in this view, a historic relation to the state forms resistance in its context. Resisters are indeed innovative and continuously adapt their specific tactics to changing circumstances, but they do so within the prevailing repertoire parameters. Although innovations constantly occur, Tilly emphasizes that: “Only rarely does one whole repertoire give way to another” ( Tilly 1995, 28). Basically, a new repertoire only appears when long-term historical changes coincide with creative innovations by activists in particular social contexts. In Tilly’s view, contemporary movements are only variants of the same repertoire that emerged in Western Europe during the breakthrough of modernism ( Tilly 2004). We agree with Tilly that history and context determine the repertoires of resistance, since activists perform resistance in ways that make sense to them, building on previous experiences. But contrary to Tilly, we argue that (1) not only (or probably not even primarily) do state institutions matter, but also significant is the range of various local and global power relations that informs the context in which people live (global capitalism, sexism, racism, etc.), and (2) the creative innovations of activists are decisive, and, within their history and existing contexts, creative experimentations can result in new repertoires. Sometimes activists develop new action repertoires through creative innovations from the given material that a prevailing context offers (Chabot and Vinthagen 2004; Vinthagen 2005, 2006; Chabot 2012). While Tilly is interested in patterns of collective action (that is, carried out in an organized form by larger groups), specifically linking them to certain historical forms of state power, we are interested in patterns of individual actions as well as resistance cultures that are not formally organized or necessarily public or intentionally political, and we link them to configurations of power in everyday life. For Tilly, repertoires emerge from dynamics of interaction with authorities, while everyday resistance tries to avoid interaction with authorities. Everyday resistance engages with, undermines or manages effects from everyday relations of power, while avoiding collective and organized confrontations with institutions of power. In this meaning there are fundamental differences between our utilization of “repertoires” compared to Tilly’s. But our use of the repertoire of everyday resistance is otherwise similar to when Tilly uses it for the public resistance of movements; it is the combined result of the historical interplay between social structures and power relations, as well as

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activists’ cultural learning and creative experimentation with tactics and experiences of earlier attempts to practice resistance, together with the situational circumstances in which the resistance is played out. A repertoire is available to a certain set of agents of everyday resistance in a certain social context—whether they are part of a social movement or not. This set of agents might use specific forms/techniques of everyday resistance, as well as strategies and tactics of public resistance. With the term “repertoire of resistance” it becomes possible to make the connection between configurations of power. Our unfaithful or loose application of Tilly’s concept of repertoires directly connects to historical configurations of power and their related culturally-learned repertoires, without having to see such power configurations as only and necessarily tied to state power (Tilly), or for that matter, to sovereignty/discipline/biopower (Foucault). A configuration of power might look different in a particular context, yet the point is that it has evolved from somewhere (is historic) and is always related to a culturally-learned repertoire of resistance.

Configurations of Power and Repertoires of Everyday Resistance The first example treats the area of surveillance and everyday resistance. The use of new technologies in surveillance and their promotion and adoption by a wide range of agencies have made surveillance a central phenomenon of contemporary society. While the different regimes of surveillance and relations of power are continuously analyzed and debated within the field of surveillance studies, the research on the surveilled and their reactions and practices, for example, practices of resistance, is still relatively sparse (see Dupont 2008; McCahill and Finn 2014).

The Power of Surveillance and Repertoires of Everyday Resistance David Lyon, who is one of the leading figures of the field of surveillance studies, defines surveillance as “any collection and processing of personal data, whether identifiable or not, for the purposes of inf luencing or managing those whose data have been garnered” ( Lyon 2001, 2). Foucault’s notion of disciplinary power has, since the beginning of the study of surveillance, been at the heart of the field, with the panopticon4 as a central metaphor in the analysis of the technologies of control and surveillance. However, in the past decade there has been ongoing debate about new forms of power and post-panoptic surveillance systems (Bogard 2006). (Deleuze 2011 [1992]) has, when drawing on Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, argued that a shift has occurred from disciplinary societies to “societies of control”. While the panopticon is characterized by a human

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being that “watches” your behavior, the order of “panspectrocism” is based on a computer which predicts your behavior by searching for patterns across a much broader register of information ( Kullenberg 2009; Palmås 2010). Instead of disciplinary power through material or immaterial enclosure, the power in “control societies” is distant and dispersive. According to Bogard (2006, 97), there is a development from “territorial to deterritorialized forms of social control”, for example, from the exercise of control within and through guarded or confined spaces such as prisons, schools or mental institutions, to a social control carried out through digital networks. The control has in “control societies” become “continuous”, widespread and now permeates all social contexts, preconditioned by an extensive collection of information and a consistent system of surveillance. Surveillance is today used in many areas in society and for a multitude of projects, among them deterrence, consumption, health promotion and education, and it is not directed solely at underprivileged groups but is “omnipresent” (Haggerty 2006, 29). Surveillance is also used for pleasure and entertainment, as in reality television series such as Big Brother and web-cams for personal use. As Haggerty notes: “Hence, at a societal level, it is increasingly difficult to suggest that surveillance serves a single coherent purpose, such as ‘social control’, or even a limited set of purposes” (2006, 28). Some scholars argue that literature inspired by the frameworks of both Foucault and Deleuze fail to explain why, or how, new surveillance technologies “have come to play such a central role in contemporary society” and has turned to other theorists, for example, Bourdieu (McCahill (2015, 11). Argues that, so far, surveillance theorists have not managed to connect the society-wide analysis of the emergence of a surveillance society with the micro-sociological analysis of local dynamics and resistance. Hence, the development of studies of everyday resistance is of vital importance to the field. We do not wish to make any generalized descriptions of “surveillance society” and/or control society but sympathize with the call for an analysis of the variations between different surveillance societies and of the contextual characteristics of each society (McCahill 2015). Nor do we argue that contemporary surveillance technologies all function according to post-panopticon logics. Rather, we assume that panoptical and panspectral orders or technologies are not mutually exclusive, but can, and often do coexist in a given context or situation (Dahan 2013). Nevertheless, we do acknowledge that certain shifts have occurred that make it possible to claim that new conditions of resistance have surged (see, e. g., Harold 2007, xxviii). The shift from territorial to deterritorialized forms of social control mentioned earlier involves the emergence of rhizomatic information networks, with no general hierarchy or single center. As explained by Haggerty (2006), surveillance regimes are indeed created with specific purposes in mind, but since the systems tend to be used in creative and unexpected ways, they also have unintentional outcomes. Since deterritorialized forms of social control are difficult to secure and control,

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they tend to produce deterritorialized forms of resistance that are often immanent in how the system organizes itself ( Bogard 2006). Examples of this are practices of resistance such as file sharing and copying, hacking and cracking, spamming and identity theft. One of the most frequently used frameworks for analyzing (everyday) resistance against surveillance is Gary Marx’s (2003, 2009). He has developed a systematization of forms, as well as of techniques of everyday resistance to surveillance in the context of computerized workplaces. Marx argues that socalled “neutralizing actions” (2009, 297) are a covert resistance that should be distinguished from “broad strategic response such as challenging a law or encourages a boycott”. The aim of the action of resistance is “to maximize its effectiveness and/or avoid suspicion and sanctioning”. He continues: “The goal is to defeat a given use, not to abolish its use”. Marx distinguishes twelve different techniques of individual resistance, which together serve as a good example of a repertoire. Those are: “discovery moves” (for example the discovering of bug detectors), “avoidance moves” (choosing an employer who does not monitor electronic communication), “masking moves” (using another person’s ID and password), “distorting moves” (holding down computer keys to appear productive), “blocking moves” (encrypting communication), “breaking moves” (for example, adding battery acid to a urine sample), as well as “piggybacking moves”, “switching moves”, “cooperative moves”, “explaining” and “Contesting moves”, “refusal moves” and “counter-surveillance moves”. These techniques are all examples of what Marx calls “behavioral neutralization”, which in turn is defined as “a form of resistance” (Marx 2009). The “moves” illustrate hidden, informal and non-organized practices that are carried out by individuals. These practices might be informed by clear political intentions to oppose a regime of surveillance but might also be informed by the wish to create more personal freedom at work. Behavioral neutralization is, like the society of control, based on manipulation of information and communication technology and is in this way utilizing the configuration of power that it tries to undermine. Thus, discovery moves, masking moves and blocking moves could be seen as deterritorialized forms of resistance, often immanent in how the system organizes itself. Both the forms and the techniques of resistance studied by Marx are, we suggest, part of a repertoire: a set of culturally-learned routines in which a set of agents interact in power relations and conf lict with each other—in this case, employees in relation to employers/managers/systems of surveillance. In our understanding, “culturally-learned routines” may be the routines of a culture, a subculture or an organization, or may refer to a specific discourse; that is, they are neither given nor static, but contextual and changing, and, most importantly, in order to capture and define the nature of the repertoires, one needs to investigate them in relation to power. A repertoire is a collection

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of ways or methods of resistance that people are familiar with, understand and can handle. These methods, or tactics, grow out of the particular circumstances of the social positions and life experiences of the people that do the resisting. We choose to define behavior techniques of neutralization and the various concrete techniques as a part of a specific repertoire of resistance that has been developed within and in relation to the control society’s power configurations and surveillance strategies, which include both disciplinary and biopolitical power techniques. Neutralization can consist of practices by a social movement and a political group in an organized, collective action, but it can also be used by, for instance, isolated employees at a workplace as everyday resistance. There might also exist a culture of everyday resistance against surveillance in the workplace, that is to say, a regular and relatively extensive use of resistance practices, but still not actions that workers openly and intentionally coordinate and agree to. In this context, it is often a matter of the employees and the management acting in relation to the issue of surveillance techniques and practices. Departing from the framework of Bourdieu and his theory on different forms of “capital”, McCahill and his fellow researcher Finn (McCahill and Finn 2014, 4–5; McCahill 2015) have coined the term ”surveillance capital” to explain how surveillance subjects use “the everyday forms of tacit knowledge that is acquired through first-hand experience of power relations to challenge the very same power relation”. For example, “prolific” offenders take advantage of the “file” or “database” that stores information about them to refuse to answer questions during face-to-face interviews (McCahill and Finn 2014). Instead, they tell the workers in the probation office to “go check the file”. By using their “surveillance capital” the offenders avoid an open confrontation with the authorities, at the same time as they, with small means, resist direct control. You might also call this a tactic, in line with de Certeau’s theory. In our opinion, the use of the term “surveillance capital” conceptualizes in a most productive way the agency of the subject being surveilled, in an analysis of the practice of resistance in a particular context. Gilliom and Monahan (2012) point out that everyday resistance against surveillance regimes takes on a specific meaning since surveillance “counts on and develops as a politics of visibility” (410), in contrast to everyday resistance that instead “counts on and develops as a politics of invisibility”. Thus, widespread patterns of everyday resistance offer an “ideological challenge” to the very core of the surveillance society: forced visibility. Prolific offenders could be said to act along the lines of a call made by Ball to “break the circuit of knowledge, information, and threat by silencing ourselves—by not giving up information in an age where it is so valued as a commodity” (2010, 99). We will return to these issues in Chapter 7, when we explore everyday resistance in and through cyberspace.

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The Obesity Discourse Regime and Fat Acceptance as Everyday Resistance The second illustrative example explores the everyday resistance against the dominant obesity discourse and fatness stigma, practiced by members within the fat acceptance movement and body positivity movement ( Johansson 2017 ). Our point of departure is taken in critical fat studies, which offers a critique of the alarming discourse about the “obesity epidemic” or “obesity crisis” that currently permeates health research and public debate, in the West particularly but globally as well. As put by Evans et al. (2008, 13), the obesity discourse has come to serve as a ”framework of thought, talk and action concerning the body in which ’weight’ is privileged not only as a primary determinant but as a manifest index of well-being surpassing all antecedent and contingent dimensions of ’health’”. This frame work is understood as being shaped by, and intertwined with neoliberal governmentality and biopolitics. Or as Rose (1996) puts it, governing in the advanced liberal society is built on the principle of “responsibilization”. In this way neoliberalism produces a hypervigilance regarding control and self-discipline (Guthman and du Puis 2006; Guthman 2009). The dominant obesity discourse is an expression of both disciplinary power as well as biopower, implemented through strategies/techniques such as surveillance, normalization and regulation in different combinations (for eight major techniques of power, see for example Gore 1995). Drawing on the definition of biopower by Rabinow and Rose (2006) they are strategies which manifest the truth discourses in practical behavior; they are the disciplinary and regulating strategies which make it possible to govern bodies, such as health promotion (Wright and Harwood 2009). As Lilja and Vinthagen (2014, 119) point out, biopower is “pastoral” in the sense that it seems positive and constructive, it might even be perceived as care or love. This care is prevailing in the war against obesity, particularly expressed through so called bio-pedagogy. Wright and Harwood (2009), among others, argue that the co-joining of biopower and pedagogy allows for a framework for analysis of “bio-pedagogical practices”, that is, the extensive pedagogy of bios that saturates many contemporary contexts (how to live, how to eat, how much to eat, how to move, how much to move) that are aimed at the whole population. The forms of resistance that are practiced against biopower set out to avoid the managing of population policies and institutions by acting differently, in subcultures and by cultivating a different set of values, practices and institutions ( Lilja and Vinthagen 2014). This resistance will also take on the challenge and

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develop non-productive forms of life and biological existence—forms of life that are not useful for the power regime. Furthermore, it will try to undermine the social engineering of the population. We view the fat acceptance movement as an example of current collective resistance against both forms of disciplinary power and biopower, trying to avoid the managing of population policies and institutions articulated and practiced in the war against obesity. Instead, the movement articulates a counter-discourse to the dominant medicalized discourse on obesity, and in the different subcultural expressions promoting and cultivating an alternative set of values and practices regarding health, body size and beauty. An important part of the fat acceptance movement is HAES, Health at Every Size, a system of belief or a community in which acceptance of the fat body is emphasized, as well as the view that health is not necessarily connected to slenderness and loss of weight ( Lyon 2009; Burgard 2009). Similarly to biopower, fat acceptance as resistance is not coordinated by a (would-be sovereign) resistance center but is a multitudinous and heterogeneous diffusion of resistance strategies and techniques ( Lilja and Vinthagen 2014). Thus, the strategies and techniques are practiced both as strategies and techniques in different subcultural settings but also individually in everyday life settings as family, workplace and virtual settings, in which they are not formally organized nor necessarily public nor intentionally political. Fat activism, both as a collective, organized resistance as well as everyday resistance is to a large extent practiced within and through online communities. In what is called the fat-o-sphere, safe and alternative spaces are created in which the participants question and challenge fat phobia, fat shaming and fat discrimination. There, they create positive meanings of fatness and construct new identities ( LeBesco 2004; Pausé 2014). The conversations on the Internet may include jokes, tips on where to buy special clothes, sharing of experiences of sexuality and body or on discrimination by employers and physicians. Through the participation in these conversations there are possibilities to create community, find ways to handle or get over shyness and break social isolation without entering the physical world which might involve stigmatization. The anonymity makes it possible to share experiences of being fat that the person might not dare to tell elsewhere. In this sense, the resistance that is carried out within the fat-o-sphere can be understood as hidden, and as such it can provide the kind of protection from repression that is typical of everyday resistance. The slender and fat-free body is today not only at the heart of the construction of femininity, but also that of hegemonic (neoliberal) masculinity. Even though women still are the main target for the tyranny of slenderness, the war on obesity also involves stigmatization of men. In the most comprehensive study of fat men to-date, there are a number of accounts of how men experience being stigmatized and feeling shame (Monaghan 2009). Still, few of the activists/members of the fat acceptance movement are men. Johansson (2017)

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analyzes the blog of a member called “Sam”, highlighting issues around fatness, shame, acceptance, masculinity and everyday resistance. Some of the ways Sam deals with fat stigma and discrimination are organized, formal and intentionally political strategies of resistance within the fat acceptance movement, such as participating in rallies and different campaigns, but, for the most part, his resistance is expressed through a repertoire of everyday resistance. In line with the understanding of repertoires as a set of routines that are culturally acquired and used when actors coordinate with each other in a conf lict, we distinguish certain routines that are deployed by Sam, who has embraced—and, to a certain degree, internalized—the counter-discourse of the movement. These include a multitude of methods and tactics challenging and undermining the disciplinary and regulatory strategies that shape the ”slim self ” and resisting interpellation as “obese”, “immoral”, and/or “unhealthy”. One way that Sam practices everyday resistance is by refusing to restrict his intake of food. Another example is how much and in what way he moves/exercises. In line with HAES philosophy, he tries to eat and to move in a way that gives him pleasure and joy, and according to his individual needs, instead of being guided by ideas about disciplining the body with the purpose of shaping a slender and fat-free body. He describes how he likes the feeling of not shaming himself for what he eats and how “content” he is with having moved around for fifteen minutes, even if the only thing he did was make dance movements in his chair. Sam’s eating habits and his habits of moving are examples of embodied resistance—a term that according to Shinko (2012) highlights how bodies “talk back” to power. In his blog, Sam brings up how people around him define him predominantly as “fat”, and how he is objectified ( Johansson 2017 ). Medical doctors, family and friends are preoccupied with telling him what he should do about his weight and argue for a variety of disciplinary practices. He expresses frustration and anger over how family members refuse to respect his stance of fat acceptance and instead try to make him see that “my fatness, my choices and my views are wrong, selfish”, recognizing that as a fat person who refuses to succumb to the regulatory and normalizing practices of dieting (etc.), he is in fact denied agency. Moreover, he challenges the fat-stigma and uses the resistance strategy of talking back by redefining what the problem is (fat phobia) and who is to blame, arguing that the problem lies in the values of the accuser rather than in the stigmatized person. In this way Sam also undermines guilting and shaming as significant bio-pedagogical strategies in the war against obesity. The repertoire of resistance practiced by the fat acceptance movement, and activists like Sam, developed in relation to a specific configuration of power: biopower and disciplinary power. What characterizes the repertoire of everyday resistance practiced by Sam as an individual member of the fat acceptance movement is, for example, refusal to listen to calls by family members and

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physicians to follow regulatory practices according to normalizing discourse (to diet, to exercise), a refusal to be a compliant body. He also uses the embodied practice of talking back.

The Regime of Colonialism and Non-violence as an Everyday Way of Life One interesting concept within the field of resistance studies is the concept of non-violence. In this section, we will investigate the new repertoires of everyday resistance that have been developed within some non-violent movements: non-violent resistance as a way of life. We will look at one illustrating case: the non-violent anti-colonial movement in India. This we do since (1) the use of violence is often key in the configuration of (sovereign and disciplinary) power, and in this case, it is a key part of British colonialism in India, and (2) everyday resistance in the form of non-violent ways of life illustrates a link between everyday resistance and mass-mobilized and public resistance in the form of a social movement, in this case the Indian anti-colonial movement and (3) the case of Indian anti-colonial non-violence shows how activists sometimes develop innovative and fundamentally new resistance repertoires. “Non-violence” is characterized by a creative and complex combination of unconventional values, idealized forms of action and socially practical methods and organizational forms, which together constitute a unique movement repertoire (Vinthagen 2005, 2015). Non-violent movements have historically sprung from liberation-oriented philosophy and violence critique in Christianity and Hinduism, and they became established in the anti-racist struggle in South Africa and the anticolonial liberation movement in India, particularly through the work of Gandhi (Vinthagen 2003). Non-violence is a combination of two meanings: “without-violence” and “against-violence”. On a basic level, “without-violence” implies that you innovate ways of life free from violence, and “against-violence” that you counteract the violence that occurs in the world. It is through the combination of combating violence in ways that do not entail violence that “non-violence” emerges, and where it becomes relevant for studies of resistance as a form of “constructive” or “productive” resistance. Through acting against violence without using violence, nonviolent movements attempt to go beyond violence in their social construction of other ways of living (Vinthagen 2015, Chapter 7). This way of life is practiced by some dedicated non-violent activists within movements, communities, and groups, as well as in political conflicts and society at general. Thus, we can see here how an organized movement is coupled with everyday individual life. In this way “non-violence” serves as an example of how activists might renew their repertoires through a reconstruction of their way of life and integration of resistance into their everyday lives (Vinthagen 2015). The non-violence repertoire’s discourse, action types and organizational forms are innovative and have a distinctive feature: the unity between nonviolence as a goal and non-violence as a means (Gandhi 1999; Vinthagen

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2005). Their counter-cultural idea is that the way in which conflicts are handled in everyday life and in confrontational struggles is what forms historical change. This ambitious project is primarily described in terms of “creating community” (Coover et al. 1977; Berrigan and Wilcox 1996, 163ff). In our view, this is possible to understand as a resistance repertoire where a new society emerges ( Vinthagen 2006, 2015, Chapter 7). Such pre-figurative “society construction” attempts to fundamentally displace commonsense and everyday routines by institutionalizing a new way of life, for example in communal social work, local community life, codes of actions, and even individual diets. The personal-individual-spiritual development and collective “constructive program” that Gandhi advocated can be understood as the social construction of the individual and collective ability to live and perform non-violence ( Ebert 1983, 37; Gandhi 1945; Vinthagen 2005). The constructive program consisted of an 18-point plan for renewal and development—from below—of Indian villages, political economy and democracy (Constructive Programme, a pamphlet written by Gandhi 1941). Gandhi’s idea was that the liberation movement should initiate self-empowerment and development of a new society during British colonial rule. Dedicated non-violence activists lived a collective life in villages together and became an example for other villages that wanted to adopt the constructive program. Their community creation linked to an ancient tradition of “ashrams”: monastic religious communities (from Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam). Through practical work, collective discipline, individual vows, everyday routines, service to others based on the principles of the movement, meditation, prayer and joint actions and movement organization, nonviolent values were internalized, and the ability for nonviolent struggles was created ( Thomson 1993). The most famous disobedience campaign—the Salt March and its extensive disobedience to the British monopoly of salt—arose after a long period of ashram life. The everyday form of non-violence as practiced by the anticolonial activists within the Indian liberation movement was a matter of resisting the internalized violence or colonialism within colonized Indian culture (what Gandhi called “the Lion’s nature”), not just the external colonizers (the British, or “the Lion”) (Chabot and Vinthagen 2015). The resistance was performed in the everyday by individuals living in communities through self-discipline and spiritual purification ( Vinthagen 2015, Chapter 7). Their practices were not hidden or disguised per se, but inward-oriented (to the self or community of activists) as constructive work and what Foucault would call “self-care”, thus hidden from the gaze of colonial hegemony. This form of non-violence society’s culture is about creating a confrontational alternative society that challenges power structures by living by its own values and principles and positioning itself in such a way that this society interferes with or impedes the functioning of the dominant system. In contrast to Tilly’s historicized “contentious repertoire”, which is confined within macro-structural processes, the non-violence movements’ repertoire

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shows that a local, radical and creative experimental repertoire change is possible, despite emerging in relation to a prevailing context. This renewed repertoire is fundamentally different from the modern repertoire described by Tilly, by not (purely) targeting a state government (in protest against prevailing politics), but in a kind of direct action, a new society is being pursued. As a “moving society”, the non-violence movement constitutes a contradiction to the very basic assumption in the theory of contentious repertoires: that movements essentially try to induce governments to realize the goal of the movement (through protests, disruptions or revolutions). Thus, we propose that a decisive change to the historically-given opposition repertoires is possible. Within a substantially more f lexible overall historical frame than Tilly offers, genuinely new repertoires seem to be possible. However, we do not suggest that such repertoires can free themselves from their cultural, political and economic contexts; on the contrary, they must be interactively constructed in relation to and from the given contextual material. The innovative integration of “non-violence” into local cultures, everyday ways of life and the mass mobilization of the Gandhian anticolonial movement in India is an illustrative example of how it can happen. In relation to Tilly, we can say that it is perhaps true that macro-structural changes are likely to limit a repertoire’s opportunity for social change and success. At the same time, the action repertoire of nonviolent movements represents an example of how history is not only structurally shaping resistance, but also how history is shaped by movements. In relation to everyday resistance, we can say that the non-violence movement culture constitutes an example of how a movement might organize, institutionalize and construct an everyday way of life that is subversive of hegemonic values and ideals, and at the same time serves as a basis for development of new capacities to conduct mass-scale resistance articulating radically new strategies. The next section will involve the “queering” of repertoires of everyday resistance. While “queer” might be understood broadly as “practices and interactions that resist gendered regulation of bodies, pleasures, desires, and experiences” (Simula 2013, 72), and not necessarily as the identification as “queer”, in this case we position the resistance practiced by the LGBTIQ5 movement in the West at the center. Among the multitude of strategies used by LGBTIQ persons to challenge and disturb hegemonic discourses are the practices of “reverse discourses”.

Queering Repertoires of Everyday Resistance The characterization of a reverse discourse is that it counters a dominant discourse and carries the sign of the norm that it attempts to resist. Butler (1997, 92–93) suggest that reverse discourse is one “possibility of subversion or resistance in the course of subjectivation”. Through reiteration of the dominant

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discourse with a slightly different meaning the subject is able to effectuate resignification and subversions. For example, take “bear” culture, a subculture within the gay community that celebrates the big and hairy gay body in opposition to the dominant ideal of the slim, muscular and fit body (Hennen 2005). Many of the gay men who identify as “bears” are white, middle-class men. Yet, they dress in f lannel shirts, ripped jeans and working boots and could be said to enact a fantasy about a working-class man, and actually reinforce the norm of heterosexual white masculinity (see Johansson and Vinthagen 2014). However, drawing on Butler’s theories on gender performativity and reverse discourse, this practice of dressing could also be defined as “bear drag”, and as a “failed” repetition of heterosexual working-class masculinity, rearticulating its meaning ( Johansson 2017). A reverse discourse is mobilized against the regime of normalization by which it is produced ( Butler 1997, 93). The main example of a reverse discourse articulated and practiced by the LGBTIQ movement is the revaluation of “queer”, originally a slang term used mainly in homophobic discourse and a name publicly heard as an insult. Today, it is used both to name a theoretical perspective and an academic lens, certain politics, a community/culture/s, practices and identity/ies. As emphasized and analyzed by theorists such as Foucault (1984) and Butler (1997), language is, and has historically been used regularly by those with power to control and to injure various populations. At the same time, language has also been very consciously used by those with less power, in attempts to reclaim notions of self and community, and to “take back” words that are, or have been used, as degrading slurs ( Tomkins 2011). In her analysis of hate speech, Butler (1997) contends that the injury made by language might be revalued by the intended recipients of the injury and become tools of resistance. The revaluation of the term “queer” is, according to Butler, a particularly relevant example of this phenomenon. The production of “reverse discourse” is pivotal in Foucault’s analysis of power and resistance, and shows how resistances are formed “right at the point where relations of power are exercised” (Spargo 1999, 21). “Discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy” (Foucault 1979, 101). Foucault points out how, in nineteenth-century psychiatry and jurisprudence, a whole series of discourses take shape regarding “perversity”, such as different types of homosexuality, pederasty, and hermaphroditism (101). On the one hand, this made possible a variety of control techniques in this area. On the other hand, it also made possible the construction of a “reverse discourse”: [H]omosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or “naturality” be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified. (Foucault 1979, 101)

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Spargo (1999) suggests that already in these early forms of reverse discourse we might find the beginning of identity politics, in the sense that those who are produced as deviant subjects, “homosexuals”, find a shared cause and voice. Power thus produces knowledge and identities as well as resistance. Yet, Foucault himself also points out the limitations of the liberationist “reverse discourse”. He admits that while it is useful in the struggle for homosexual rights and equality it does not pose a challenge to the fundamental structure of “homosexual oppression” (in Katz 2007, 174). The formation of the specific reverse discourse of queerness first took place in the beginning of the 1990s when Queer Nation and other groups organized street patrols to protect gay men from violence, commemorated the victims of homophobic violence with street graffiti campaigns and carried out antihomophobic education in straight bars (Spargo 1999). The groups also organized media and arts campaigns undermining and playing with rightwing and homophobic propaganda and imagery. The concept of “queer” was central to the groups’ rhetorical and representational strategies. As stated in the Queer Nation Manifesto from 1992 (www.historyisaweapon.com): “Why Queer . . . Well, yes, ‘gay’ is great. It has its place. But when a lot of lesbians and gay men wake up in the morning we feel angry and disgusted, not gay. So we’ve chosen to call ourselves queer. Using ‘queer’ is a way of reminding us how we are perceived by the rest of the world . . .” The reinterpretation and celebration of the term “queer” was of great importance to some people in the United States (and in Great Britain), both to their identities and to their social, political and cultural positions (Spargo 1999). For those who found it difficult to identify with “gay” and “lesbian”, the position of “queer” was perceived as less limiting, and opened up new possibilities. Driver’s study on “queer girls” and popular culture (2007) captures this phenomenon well. She finds that the girls she interviewed refused to categorize themselves in binary gender coding such as “girls” or “boys” or in binary sexual coding as “lesbians” or “fags”. Instead they mixed and played with the categories and codes, calling themselves, and each other “girlie-femme” or “girl fags” for example. “Queer” is not used by the girls as a recommended label but as a tool with which to convey and read multiple aspects of themselves and the world around them. Further, it is as Driver suggests, deployed “as a way of enabling possibilities rather than guaranteeing identity or knowledge about identity” (3). The redefinition and usage of the term “queer” here becomes a vehicle to escape the binary categorization of compulsory heterosexuality. From being a term that was articulated intentionally by lesbian and gayactivists, as a political weapon against heteronormative and homophobic society, “queer” became a term that was used not only in political contexts but also in expressions of an everyday queer subculture. In this subculture queerness is

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performed not only through linguistic practices but through everyday practices ( Jones 2009), such as sexual practices, practices of dressing, use of make-up, body movements and so on. These practices are informal, some of them hidden in the sense that they are practiced within “safe spaces”, out of sight of heterosexist and possibly homophobic/transphobic contexts, and thus are primarily non-confrontational acts of everyday resistance. In this chapter, we have explored and discussed repertoires of everyday resistance, inspired by Tilly’s concept of “contentious repertoires” and argued that this concept is particularly useful since it connects to historical configurations of power and their related culturally-learned repertoires. We have in contrast to Tilly, argued that agents sometimes are genuinely culturally creative, and perform innovative repertoires and introduced as one example, the fundamental originality practiced by the Indian anticolonial movement when they reformulated Hindu traditions and Western concepts into campaigns and a politicized everyday life in communities of “Satyagraha” (“nonviolent resistance”) under the leadership of Mohandas K. Gandhi. Moreover, the fat acceptance movement has served as an illustrative example of a repertoire of resistance that developed in relation to a specific configuration of power: biopower and disciplinary power. The case of Sam’s blog touches upon the embodied nature of everyday resistance against the war on obesity but does not plunge into it. A future area to explore could be how the materiality of the body contributes to the formation of strategies and tactics of everyday resistance, for example how human agents (fat persons practicing fat acceptance) align themselves with nonhuman actors, such as with food for example, in the practice of everyday resistance. As we have shown, the practices among LGBTIQ persons to use “queer” as a label and perform queer acts, might be defined as practices of collective and organized resistance as well as practices of everyday resistance. Nevertheless, as discussed in the previous section, while resisters are creative and continuously adapt their specific tactics to changing circumstances, they usually do so within the prevailing repertoire parameters. We understand the reverse discourse of queer, which emerged in the 1990s, as an expression of continuity within the LGBTIQ movement and among LGBTIQ persons, rather than being an expression of a new repertoire. Tomkins (2011) also brings forward the limits of the term “queer”. On the one hand, she posits that the refusal to label one’s sexual identity at all could be considered “a queer endeavor”. Consequently, some of the trans-identified partners in her investigation are refusing labels for sexual identity altogether and consider calling themselves “queer” would be to succumb to the (homo) normative requirement to name oneself. On the other hand, Tomkins is concerned about whether silence actually might “reify heteronormative power”. Butler recommends caution either way and states that “(. . .) it would be a mistake to think that simply speaking the term one either transcends heterosexual

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normalization or becomes its instrument” (1995, 237). She points out that “the risk of renormalization is persistently there” (237). The risk of “renormalization” presents itself in several ways. One is related to how the articulation of the reverse discourse of queerness, as acts of everyday resistance, is not an individual act carried out in isolation, and should not be seen as dependent on the courage of individual LGBTIQ persons. Rather, acts of resistance against heteronormative and homophobic society need to be understood as shaped, informed and supported by queer subculture/s, or by what we earlier have discussed in terms of a resistance culture. A person who proudly and openly calls hirself “queer”, and perform queerness through clothes and make up in one context (such as in the family) might not dare or find it possible do so in another (at work). Instead, the tactic of concealing queer identity might be used and, in certain ways, a person might try to adapt to normative expectations. Hence, as Simi and Futurell (2009, 91) point out, it is also significant to study the everyday non-movement contexts. For example, managing the stigma of being an activist in a certain social movement might be a type of hidden, identity-based resistance that is practiced across a variety of everyday contexts. Many critiques have noted how queerness, as a non-normative sexuality and/or gender identity, has been created and established as a new normative identity (see, for example, Tomkins 2011, 23). New deviant ideals and subcultural norms are practiced within queer communities and function as (sub)cultural discourses structuring member’s behavior. Thus, the reverse discourse is not only mobilized against the regime of normalization from which it was spawned but has also, in certain ways, become a tool for (re)normalization. This queering as normalization shows again the entanglement between resistance and power or resistance repertoires and power configurations. In the following chapter, we shift focus from acts of resistance, and the patterns of acts shaped in different repertoires, to the actors practicing the repertoires, and their relationships.

Notes 1. One of the definitions of sovereign power that is in use and is discussed today is that of the Italian philosopher Agamben. The state of exception creates “an unprecedented generalization of the paradigm of security as the normal techniques of government” (Agamben 2005, 14). 2. Disciplinary power trains, shapes and controls individuals through institutions, punishments, awards and scientific discourses. It shapes “docile bodies” through careful observation. ( Foucault 1991; Lilja and Vinthagen 2014). 3. One of the most influential—and in our view—clarifying definitions of the concept of biopower is the one by Rabinow and Rose (2006, 195): “Biopower, we suggest, entails one or more truth discourses about the ‘vital’ character of living human beings; an array of authorities considered competent to speak that truth; strategies for intervention upon collective existence in the name of life and health; and modes

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of subjectification, in which individuals work on themselves in the name of individual or collective life or health”. 4. The panopticon is the architectural design developed by Jeremy Bentham in the mid-19th century for prisons, later used also for asylums, schools and other institutions. The circular prison laid each inmate open to the constant observation of the gaze of a central watchtower. The disciplinary power lies in the internalization of this “panoptic gaze”. 5. The acronym “LGBTIQ” refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex and queer (or questioning). Sometimes it is used with an asterisk at the end of trans* to indicate that the category/term is complex and that there might be more to trans-ness that have been covered.

6 RELATIONSHIPS OF AGENTS

Introduction So far, we have focused on the conceptualization of acts of resistance, and how these may be clustered in repertoires and linked to configurations of power. Here we will focus on who is carrying out the actions of everyday resistance: the different agents and their relationships. In all research on resistance there is a need to identify an agent carrying out the resistance practice, in relation to some kind of target.1 The agents of resistance are the individuals or groups carrying out the acts of resistance (such as women, students, peasants or gay men) and their relationships with the power holders need to be analyzed. For example, a study on everyday resistance strategies among foreign live-in domestic workers in Singapore (Sun 2006) shows how owning and using cell phones, despite their employers’ prohibition, make it possible for the maids to keep up relationships with family and friends. Furthermore, it enables them to create some “virtual privacy” in relation to the control exercised by their employers. In the analytical framework of Chin and Mittelman (1997), the agents of resistance are one of five fundamental categories, seemingly conceptualized as autonomous units (individual or collective). In our own conceptualization, an agent is a social identity constructed in relationships that are not singular or fixed (as in Scott’s peasant/landowner relationship) but perceived as plural, complex, contextual and situational. We find Hollander and Einwohner’s approach (2004) fruitful since they identify three different and crucial types of agents in the construction of resistance: the actor, the target and the observer; and furthermore, they suggest that resistance is defined in a process of social interaction between the resisters, targets and observers. Understanding the

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interaction between these agents is “at the heart of understanding resistance” (548). This view emphasizes resistance as socially constructed and how different agents participate in this process. As concluded by Hollander and Einwohner: “Resistance is defined not only by resisters’ perception of their own behavior, but also by targets and/or others’ recognition of and reaction to this behavior” (548). Whereas we do acknowledge that this three-actor model has some serious limitations since it does not include all possible actors that practice resistance (for example non-human actors) and that the idea of assemblage2 might be more fruitful, the three-actor model serves our present purpose. That is: to call for a shift in the study of everyday resistance, a shift that makes it possible to capture the construction of multiple and shifting identities of agents of resistance and the interplay between these, as well as the contradictory positions of being both dominant and subordinate, depending on in which system/context/relationship subjects are positioned and position themselves. Actors of everyday resistance—individuals as well as collectives—both place themselves and/or are placed in various positions. They are shaped by discourses as well as non-discursive conditions and create various identities that are in relation to one another and in relation to the “target”. The relationships will not only vary according to the position within different hierarchical orders but also according to a number of other aspects: types of agent (individual/collective), what kind of relation they are in (such as parent-child, friends, colleagues, etc.), how much contact they have (intensity), in what way they have contact (means of interaction, for example: face-to-face or virtual) and the type of context and situation in which they meet, the pattern of their interaction. Thus, an act or a pattern of actions is given meaning in ongoing processes of negotiation. In that way, it may be argued that a practice of everyday resistance emerges out of a series of relationships and processes of interaction, between agents of resistance (the resisters), between the agents of resistance and the agents of power (the targets), or between the two former types of agents and different observers. Depending on the scientific discourses concerned, and the positioning by and within them, scholars change their points of departure regarding what is considered resistance and who is to be defined as targets and resisters. We begin this chapter by suggesting that the third actor in the three-actor model, the observer, is worthy of more attention. We then proceed by making a distinction between “old” and “new” actors of resistance and discussing the expanded definitions of resistance actors and move on to concepts and studies that are found within the field of post-structuralism, introducing the concept of disidentification and give examples of how to use it in resistance studies. The chapter ends with a section on queering the dimension of relationships.

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Resistance as a Process of Social Interaction As stated previously, one important starting point for understanding these relationships is found in Hollander and Einwohner’s approach (2004). Martin, van Brakel, and Bernard (2009) point out that to the extent there are studies of resistance within surveillance research, researchers mainly focus on what happens between the surveilling actor (target) and the surveilled (resister). Whether the third actor is civil society, commercial actors, media or NGOs, the authors stress that future research must incorporate other actors into the research paradigm and expand the understanding of the process of resistance. For instance, Martin, Van Brakel, and Bernhard (2009) analyze the introduction of the National Identity Scheme (NIS) in England (which entails the use of biometric identity documents as ID cards and passports) and find that the London School of Economics Identity Project plays an important role by means of its critical report on the government proposal. Individual researchers or research groups can play an important part as “informed advocates”. To focus more on the third actor in the three-actor model presents an interesting and important challenge for resistance studies, including for the study of everyday resistance. We find that it is neither possible nor desirable for researchers to take a position of “neutral” outsiders. Rather we would like to stress that an increased focus on the researcher as a third actor means an increased degree of ref lexivity whereby the researcher should make their role visible in the social process that constructs definitions and meanings of resistance. This has for example proved to be a challenge in Vinthagen’s present studies among slum dwellers in Mumbai, India. Whereas the informants tell the researcher about their everyday acts without perceiving them as resistance, since they are not organized “political actions” such as collective protests, the researcher in turn, who takes his point of departure from Scott etc., defines the acts as everyday resistance. By showing his curiosity about and interest in these everyday acts—for example, women maintaining their shacks and participating in production of goods for street vendors, and men finding creative ways of (illicit) tapping into municipal water pipelines and electricity cables—and through follow-up questions and interpretations suggesting framing them in a certain way, as “resistance”, the researcher takes an active part in redefining the meaning of the acts of the informants. Thus, the task for the researcher is to account for and ref lect upon the significance of this process and how it might change the discourse of mundane everyday activities. Fundamentally, the dilemma is that the researcher tries to understand what people do in their everyday lives and the subjective intentions and cultural meanings they attach to these activities, at the same time as the very act of doing such research might simultaneously change the meaning of those activities. In the same way as we have argued that the position of resistance actor (or target) never is fixed and cannot be taken for granted, the position of observer needs to be defined in its specific contexts and set of relations and interactions.

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Towards New Definitions of Everyday Resistance Actors According to Mittelman and Chin (2005) the actors that have been defined as resistance actors have, historically speaking, mostly been workers active in unions, armed rebels or farmers and political dissidents (a category that includes students). These are all actors who could be considered members of subordinated groups that direct their opposition “from below” and “upward”, to a superior group (Hollander and Einwohner 2004, 536). In today’s resistance research, the definition of resistance actors has been expanded to include civil servants, housewives, middle management and other non-traditional categories. “Implicit in the designation of different peoples as agents of resistance is an expansion of the boundaries associated with the traditional sites of political life” (Mittleman and Chin 2005, 25). Let us take one example from the rich field of workplace study, an investigation that attends to the everyday resistance of the group of female domestic workers, based on field research in Mumbai, India ( Barua, Haukanes, and Waldrop 2016). We choose this study as an example for various reasons. One is that since domestic workers carry out their work in the home, a site associated with the private sphere, women and femininity, their workplace is not what resistance studies define as a “traditional site of political life”. Thus, domestic workers are not traditionally recognized as resistance actors. Another reason is that the authors take their point of departure from Scott’s framework of everyday forms of resistance and apply it to domestic workers in an Indian context—an approach which they assert is “analytically novel” in India. Barua, Haukanes, and Waldrop (2016) analyze the strategies that domestic workers use in their everyday lives as they attempt to negotiate, undermine and challenge the hierarchical markers of physical and social distinction (through organization of space and forms of dress for example) that the employers use in order to mark their difference from and superiority in relation to the worker. The authors find that, although the domestic workers are union members, they still avoid open confrontation and explain this with their precarity and dependence on their employers. Instead, the workers practice hidden and informal resistance, i.e. everyday resistance, through a discourse of “dignity, negation and of justice”, representing themselves as hard-working and honest, and stressing that their work is essential and valuable. It is argued that women use these “dignified selfhood transcripts” to contest and distance themselves from the dominant public transcripts of domestic workers as inferior and their work as degrading. Similar to our own approach, Barua, Haukanes, and Waldrop (2016) also acknowledge a complex interplay of compliance and resistance in the women’s everyday experiences of and responses to dominant ideologies. While the relationship between the resistant actor and the target is represented as hierarchical, it is still not viewed as fixed. Rather, the study emphasizes the domestic workers as creative agents of resistance and how they through their

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resistance renegotiate roles, positions and identities and contest the validity of the distinctions of difference. In the next section we will move on to discuss expanded and new definitions of resistance actors, and the theoretical and empirical challenges this involves.

Resistance Actors With Structural Power Besides the expansion of the understanding of the domains and practices that are considered political, a change has taken place leading to a reevaluation of which actors are assumed to exercise resistance. This ties into, among other things, a shift in the view of power resulting from the Foucauldian system. Power is here viewed as a complex and dynamic process and relation. The relationship between dominant and subordinated actors, despite whether they are men or women, employers or employees, upper-class or working class, can be seen as created in ongoing negotiations in various contexts. This shift in perspective has of course entailed consequences for how resistance relations are interpreted. Recent years have witnessed the birth of research that defines and/or discusses groups/individuals as resistance actors that may be considered controversial (see for example Hollander and Einwohner 2004). These include whites’ resistance to integration in residential areas, “rightwing” movements, tax evaders, rapists or actors perceived as “antisocial”, such as drug dealers. This augmentation of the definitions of “resistance actors” poses both a theoretical and empirical challenge to the field, particularly when it comes to defining actors with structural power as resistance actors. In a study brought up earlier, Simi and Futurell (2009) analyze how white power activist (or as they are also called in the study, “Aryan” activists) carry out everyday resistance against the stigma that follows their openly racist stance. The white power activists describe experiences of stigmatization in the form of “soft” repression such as ridicule, ostracism and other “interactional conf licts” surging within the contexts of everyday life at work or in the neighborhoods where they live. In order to avoid constant indignation and conf lict the white power activists conceal their Aryan identity. Simi and Futurell describe their actions as “strategies of calculated concealment and revelation” (89) and regard them as a “form of individual everyday activism to resist social controls that subjugate them to others´ values and identity expectations” (106). While we find it reasonable to define the strategies (and tactics) that these white power activists use as everyday resistance, we also find it necessary to discuss under which circumstances their acts might be defined as resistance, and under which circumstances they might not. As discussed earlier, in Part I, rather than defining certain actors as given, or in a fixed position, as “resistance actors”, we understand resistance as specific actions carried out in certain contexts and relationships. Fundamentally, we argue that resistance cannot be the same as

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exercising power, instead resistance is only meaningful as a concept to cover a practice done by someone subordinated, which might undermine the power that subordinates. Hence, in a situation in which a group of white power activists verbally or physically attack or discriminate against a group of non-white persons, the white power activists are exercising power over the non-whites. However, in a situation in which an individual white power activist is questioned or verbally attacked by a group of white colleagues at his/her work place, using stigmatization, his/her position is different. It is here that an intersectional perspective becomes indispensable. A white power activist, who is white and working-class, facing the anti-racism of white, middle-class people, is positioned and positions him/herself differently from a white power activist facing the anti-racism of nonwhite, middle-class people. This argumentation also, once again, highlights the entanglement of power and resistance. In one situation and relation, the white power activist strengthens one power order, such as racism, in another the activist might undermine another power order, such as power relations based on class. We have to be clear about the fact that a white power activist, in a liberal democracy formed by an (at least rhetorically) anti-racist and human rights discourse, will be subordinated to the dominant liberal regime. Therefore, in relation to that liberal regime, white power statements and activities might constitute a form of resistance.

The In-Between Position—Local Chiefs in Rwanda We have previously emphasized the shifting positions between being positioned/ positioning oneself as an actor of resistance and being a target respectively. There are also actors who, within a certain context have an ambiguous, inbetween position. Such a position is analyzed in the article “Resisting Resettlement in Rwanda; Rethinking survival/resistance and dominance/subordination” by Hahirwa, Orjuela, and Vinthagen (2017). The authors problematize the dichotomies between “dominance” and “subordination” that point toward new and unexpected resistance actors. Based on fieldwork in Rwanda among peasants who experienced the country’s large-scale villagization program, the authors demonstrate how local chiefs are situated in an ambivalent in-between position, between national reform leaders and the local communities targeted by the reforms. Due to conf licting interests, sympathy or other motivations, these local reform implementers have often displayed a shifting loyalty to the reform plans and to the local communities. This has proved mostly a case in relation to the poorer farmer families, who local leaders often have allowed doing things in violation to the rules and reform plans, if it has been necessary for their survival. The local chiefs might be said to navigate between dominance and resistance. The authors argue that their research is a specific example of a more complex understanding of power relations as intersectional or layered.

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For us, this case serves as an illustrative example of how a focus on the (everyday) practice of resistance might open up a sensibility and perception for new and unexpected resistance actors. As we have pointed out, resistance is not only carried on by the typical subaltern, the most subordinated of all in different hierarchies of domination, but also by those who are less subordinated, those who might also, otherwise, in other practices and situations, exercise power. Also, local chiefs might resist imposed restraints or controls they do not agree with or find excessive. It makes sense. Since anyone that is perceiving effects of domination, and is in a position circumscribed by domination, might find resistance to be an option or necessity. After all, power is not either-or, but a matter of complex relations of forces and layered hierarchies. In the next section, we will attend to a concept that we find fruitful when analyzing the relational dimension of everyday resistance: disidentification. The concept of disidentification is deployed in feminist theory as well as queer theory to analyze the construction of political identities and subject positions, and of political resistance. It captures practices of resistance and strategies used to relate to or respond to interpellations and positioning by power ( Dean 2008; Wasshede 2010; Lykke 2014). Since it is defined as a strategy, we could have brought it up in the previous chapter, on repertoires, but, as it is also a way to focus on the resisting actor or subject, we have chosen to present it here, to also attend to the complexity of the process of subjectivation—of positioning in relation to power and conf licts within subjects.

Disidentification First, some notes on identities, subject positions and interpellation. According to Stuart Hall, identities are “points of temporary attachment to the subject positions which discursive practices construct for us” (1996, 3–6). Identity is a combination of the hailing of the subject into a certain position, or interpellation, and the subject investing in the position. One might be positioned, but there is always the possibility of refusing the interpellation. Thus, disidentification is understood as one way to handle interpellation. Lykke (2014) distinguishes three different theoretical frameworks and contexts for understanding the concept of disidentification. One is a psychoanalytical one, which is represented by Fuss, among others, who suggests that disidentification is about an identification that has been made and denied in the unconscious—for example someone homophobic who secretly fears his/her own homosexual desire. The second is the position inspired by Marxist theorist Althusser, in his theory of ideology. Disidentification is there defined as a political position between identification and counter-identification with dominant ideologies. This definition is built on a notion of conscious political resistance, rather than unconscious psychological resistance (as in Fuss’s definition), and it

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is represented primarily by Pêcheux. The third context and theoretical framework is the discursive one, in which disidentification is understood as political resistance but resistance “to hegemonic and normative discourses” (32), rather than to dominant “ideology”. This framework is inspired by Foucault and Butler and represented by Muñoz (1999), among others. In this text, we mainly take our departure from Muñoz’s classical Disidentifications (1999) in which he defines disidentification as “the survival strategies the minority subject practices in order to negotiate a phobic majoritarian public sphere that continuously elides or punishes the existence of subjects who do not conform to the phantasm of normative citizenship” (4). Muñoz identifies three strategies to handle interpellation. The first one is identification, that is, to accept what you are defined to be; a “good” subject chooses to identify with ideological and discursive forms. The second is to resist it through counter-identification, to become the opposite; a “bad subject” resists and tries to reject identificatory sites and the images that are offered by dominant ideology/ discourses. Disidentification is what Muñoz calls “the third mode” of how the subject deals with, and is constructed by, ideological practices, the one that neither opts to assimilate within such a structure nor strictly opposes it (11). He gives a multitude of examples, such as an Asian queer person who might embrace queerness but not Asian-ness because of the characteristics attributed to being “Asian”, or a femme lesbian who might choose between aspects and elements of herself that she wants to represent. In Muñoz’s understanding, the projects of disidentification are intersectional in that they consider the aspects of “class, gender, and race, as well as sexuality” (22). Muñoz emphasizes how the subjects put together different identity fragments into a postmodern identity in a process of hybridization. Johansson (2017) finds the concept of disidentification fruitful in understanding the resistance practiced by the fat acceptance activist Sam who was introduced in the previous chapter (Chapter 5). As accounted for, through practices of certain repertoires of everyday resistance, Sam challenges the dominant biomedical discourse in a multitude of ways. On the one hand, he identifies as “fat” and as someone who has internalized fat shame and is struggling with selfhatred. On the other hand, he has established a certain distance from the normative expectations of what this identification contains, and he refuses to diet, for example, as a way of consciously embracing the stance of fat acceptance. The ways Sam deals with his interpellation as fat in a fat-phobic society might be interpreted as in permanent f luctuation between identification and counteridentification, and of managing friction and conf licts. Johansson points out that for Sam as a cis-identified, heterosexual and white fat man there generally seem to exist few alternative articulations and representations of masculinity and embodied resistance. (He himself regrets that he is not being able to participate in bear subculture, for instance.) This also applies to the context he is part of, the fat acceptance movement.

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The Use of Disidentification in Prison The concept of disidentification is used and discussed by Ugelvik (2014, 67–68) in his study of power and resistance in a Norwegian, all-male prison. He identifies a multitude of forms of power in prison and various subject positions available to the prisoners, some of them contradictory. Prisoners are understood as people who have chosen the “wrong” thing and have to be punished for it. They are seen as morally inferior, not to be trusted, irrational and inclined to do “bad” things and in need of control and discipline to become normalized and responsible. Since many prisoners view it as a challenge to be hailed as a prisoner, they practice resistance in various ways. As Ugelvik stresses, being a prisoner is gendered. Since being a prisoner means not being able to support oneself or provide for one’s family, and not being seen as trustworthy or responsible, the prisoners are being deprived of the means of constructing themselves as “real men”. Some of the prisoners do masculinity (a certain type) through resistance, involving fights and gambling. On the one hand there is the identification with the position as “prisoner”, on the other hand there is counter-identification of “the transformed prisoner subject, as a real man, as free, as active, as morally superior and responsible”—as “a non-prisoner” and someone who “stands up to the (superior) power” (239). However, the consequences of saying “no” in prison and refusing to “play the game” can be quite severe. You may risk being viewed as confrontational, stupid or stubborn by both officers and fellow prisoners. Under these circumstances, subtle acts of resistance that “go below the institution’s radar” might be a better alternative. Ugelvik discovers a type of resistance practice that is creative and focuses on “achieving something, on doing something, even in prison” (240). It is about practices of resistance through which the prisoner becomes something other than prisoner, through which he appears as “a capable bricoleur”. Ugelvik argues that the prisoner who is able to take liberties, even in the restrictive surroundings of the prison, becomes, at least “partly and temporarily, free”. Somewhere between the officer’s “good prisoner” and “bad prisoner” is the “smart prisoner” ( Ugelvik 2014), who practices a hidden resistance that operates within what the officers can accept on a daily basis but which nonetheless serves as resistance, that is, the prisoner exercises some freedom and does not totally answer to the interpellation by the power. The subject who thereby enables a disidentification position is the subject who makes creative use of the sparse resources available, the subject who manages to “make the best of it, the subject who will not allow himself to be broken, and who retains his optimism and his wit”. ( Ugelvik 2014, 240) Food in prison is a complex and complicated phenomenon (129–155). It is both part of the prison’s control regime and the prisoners’ resistance to this

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regime. For example, food preparation can be seen as associated with two of the characteristics that the prisoners ascribe to “the smart prisoner”. The smart prisoner is a prisoner who handles everyday prison life, who does not let himself be “broken” by the institution’s demand for submission and does not lose his sense of humor. Florin, for example, uses cooking to pass the time, chopping and preparing garlic at length every week. Another prisoner, Tarik, puts in a lot of time and effort to make a good cup of coffee that tastes nothing like the prison coffee. He has his own system and has developed a procedure that he is very proud of: Just because we’re in prison, it doesn’t mean that we can’t live a little. It is important to be creative, to use the resources you have. Then, all will be well. . . . (Tarik cited in Ugelvik 2014, 53) Ugelvik argues that the “relatively non-confrontational, day to day resistance” is vital to upholding the everyday balance in prison and the resistance functions as “a safety valve” (243). Hence, everyday resistance is necessary for the operation of the institution, since it legitimizes and justifies discipline and the introduction of new control measures. It proves the importance of the prison and the work done by the prison officers. The practice of disidentification strategies involves the rejection of certain subject positions, and the positioning as a “smart prisoner” gives the prisoner a sense of freedom and pride. Whereas neither identification nor counter-identification involves entering new subject positions, disidentification is defined as a “more creative form of protest” (67). The position of disidentification involves a certain amount of friction, and Ugelvik contends that with disidentification you will find “hybrid forms” and “genuinely innovative ways of relating to one’s surroundings” (68). However, at the same time, these practices of everyday resistance help to uphold, and in some ways even strengthen, the prison system. We find the concept of disidentification to be rich and could be used to detect and analyze everyday resistance in a plethora of contexts and situations. While the position of counter-identification is characterized by some stability and might be nourished and sustained by a resistance culture / a subculture, the position of disidentification is characterized by instability and, as stated previously, might be understood as a permanent movement between identification and counter-identification. One question that is particularly vital to ref lect upon is: how do we understand this movement, and how/under which circumstances is it possible to sustain this strategy over time? We now proceed to discuss and illustrate how to queer the dimension of relationships and agents, following the example of Elia (2003) and others who promote a paradigmatic shift toward queering relationships.

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Queering the Relationships of Agents of Everyday Resistance During the last decades queer theory and research has criticized, and contested, the normative assumptions that have been made in social science, regarding social relations and identity formations within a variety of social institutions and areas of social life. As Elia (2003, 72) notes: “heteronormativity is marketed and reproduced to create a sexual relationship hierarchy—with a certain form of heterosexuality elevated to the tip, as the most revered and cherished relational form”. He continues by stating that the “queering” of relationships requires “thinking and acting outside of the hetero-relational paradigm” recognizing the multitude of configurations of relationships that might be considered “queer” such as polyamorous relationships, BDSM, fuck buddies, fetishism, etc.—relationships associated with “potentiality, expansiveness, plasticity, instability” as well as “lability” (78). Elia further suggests that these types of relationships call into question and undermine classism, racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia and might provide sexual gratification, political activism and freedom from, for example, the constraints of traditional formations of gendered relationships and identities. Queering relationships does not only involve critiquing heteronormativity but also patterns of “homonormativity”, what Duggan (2002, 179) defines as “politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions, but upholds and sustains them”. Elia (2003), for example, makes a point of not including same-sex marriages in what is defined as “queer relationships”, since they are based along “assimilationist lines”. One particular area of interest regarding the queering of relationships is the identities and lives of trans people. The academic scholarship on transgender identity and trans lives has grown significantly in the last two decades (Pfeffer 2017). Nevertheless, the research on trans people’s experiences in partnerships and families is still sparse, that is, how trans people live in relation to social institutions and what Pfeffer calls their “liminal socio-legal status”. Pfeffer herself has contributed considerably to the field (2012, 2017) by investigating “queer families” consisting of transgender and transsexual men and their partners: cisgender women. She focuses on how cis women experience their lives through and against their relationships and their trans partners, collecting data from fifty cisgender women primarily from the United States and Canada. Pfeffer explores the strategies members of this particular type of trans family deploy as they negotiate social structures and institutions in their everyday lives, some of which could be defined as practices of everyday resistance.

The Resistance by and Position(s) of Cisgender Partners One concept used by Pfeffer is “normative resistance”, defined as “conscious and active strategies and actions for making life choices distinct from those considered most socially expected, celebrated, and sanctioned” (2017, 135). In

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an earlier study (2012), she identifies several areas in which informants practice this “normative resistance”, among them are parenthood and marriage. Participants, for example, expressed resistance against the socially normative and celebrated ideal of having children as pivotal to both womanhood and family. One of the informants explained that she celebrated the decision not to have children by going and getting “a huge tattoo piece” which among other things symbolized an empty womb (584). Pfeffer also found resistance against the ideal of monogamy. As much as 40 percent of the relationships with trans men that participants described were polyamorous (not strictly monogamous) at one point or another over the course of the relationship. Especially for younger, queer-identified cis women, forming an open relationship structure with a trans partner could become one way in which this group creatively keep their relationships counter-normative as well as maintaining a personal and community-based “queer” identity. What Pfeffer defines as “normative resistance” could be included in our understanding of acts of everyday resistance, carried out within the context of the queer family. The practice of resistance among cisgender partners is of vital significance even in the dissertation Intimate Allies: Identity, Community, and Everyday Activism Among Cisgender People with Trans Identified Partner s. Tomkins (2011) examines a number of broad questions regarding sexual identity, on finding and creating community, activism and resistance. The aspects which are of most interest for us are the ones regarding cisgender people as allies to the trans-persons with whom they partner, and how being an ally is connected to forms of everyday resistance and educational advocacy. Tompkins posits that while social movement activism is most often examined by researchers in these fields, they tend to neglect the forms of “microactivism” that many people engage in on a day-to-day basis—acts, described as “everyday activism”, “that seek to resist hegemonic control and assumptions in everyday life” (2011, 167). In line with definitions of everyday resistance, Tomkins argues that everyday activism is “an individualized form of resistance where institutional and macro structures of power are not the main targets” (167), but rather about shaping a good enough everyday life (168). This kind of “micro-activism” is often the kind of activism carried out by cisgender partners. According to Tomkins (2011), partners and other allies are key elements to the trans movement as a whole, pointing out how cisgender people engage in forms of trans activism, often using forms of everyday resistance, even though they might not define themselves as “activists”. She explores the everyday actions that cisgender partners use as they advocate for trans people, their partners in particular, as well as how the relationship with a partner who identifies as trans makes everyday resistance a routine practice. These partners are often engaging in “educational advocacy” around trans issues as an everyday activist tactic. While education is generally not considered

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to be activism, Tompkins wants to encourage us to see the partners’ actions as everyday resistance and part of a larger (trans) activist project aiming for social as well as political changes, based on the potential effects these actions might have. As an example, she takes the practice of correcting pronouns instead of just ignoring their misuse. One partner explains in her vlog: Just maybe once or twice we’ll get a “ladies” or he’ll get a “ma’am” but in those instances we correct them, either one of us, whoever says it first, will correct them. With our families we try to educate them more instead of fighting. . . . (183) As we stated earlier, an act or a pattern of actions is given meaning in ongoing processes of negotiation. Thus, the practice of everyday resistance emerges out of a series of relationships and processes of interaction, between agents of resistance, between the agents of resistance and the agents of power or between the two former types of agents and observers. From this approach we find the role of the cisgender partner highly interesting. The notion of someone taking the outsider role of an “ally” in relation to a repressed group, as cisgender partners to trans people, has been contested within activist contexts. Instead the concept of ”co-conspirator” has been suggested.3 We, however, hold on to the concept of “ally” but recognize the ambivalence in this position, for example, the cisgender partners’ position could be defined as a type of observer, yet, at the same time, as actively engaging in everyday resistance, they could be seen as resisters. Despite that their everyday actions as educators, correcting pronouns, are not in themselves detectable as “resistance”, understood in the context of the repression that trans-people are facing, and the cisgender persons being in a relationship with a trans person, those small acts might well to be recognized as everyday resistance. In this chapter, we have kept coming back to the crucial point of the need to examine the context of power configurations and attend to the relationships between the different actors. Thus, in the same way as it depends on the context and its power configurations and relationships, whether a white power activist is to be defined as representative of power/as target or as resister, it is also contextual if a cisgender partner could be defined as being a resister as well as/ or observer/ally. This shows the importance of replacing the notion of fixed agents of everyday resistance with the notion of relationships between actors and attending to the social process in which an agent of resistance is shaped. The different cases serve as illustrative examples of how the positions of the actors are to be seen as shifting and also as in-between or ambivalent Moving on to theoretical concepts, we introduced the concept of disidentification and gave illustrative examples of how it could be applied in the study of everyday resistance. The friction and conf licts inherent in the strategy (and/

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or tactics) of disidentification is one of the aspects to be further explored in relation to everyday resistance, not being a permanent state/position of the actors concerned. Neither fat activist Sam, nor the prisoners, could be considered agents of everyday resistance in every context or situation, but rather they oscillate and move between positions. We would like to stress the importance of how the context, relationships and situation create or stif le possibilities of continuing to move and creatively resist. One of the questions that arises in relation to Ugelvik’s study is: in what way might the practices carried out by the prisoners, such as making a good cup of coffee, be defined as everyday resistance, and in what ways are they “just” ways of coping? As we have discussed earlier, in Part I, we do not view coping and resistance as either-or choices, but as combinations, or as posited by Crewe, they “exist on the same spectrum” (cited in Ugelvik 2014, 42). Further, we suggest that the context of configurations of power and relationships determines what is to be defined as resistance and coping, respectively. Similarly, to our position, Ugelvik (42–43) emphasizes that for a practice to be defined as resistance (and not coping) it has to be connected to specific forms of power. In the final sections of this chapter, we brought forward the importance of queering the relationship dimension both as a theoretical endeavor as well as an empirical attempt to explore and analyze queer relationships. By centering queer families and their relations we have been able to discover some very specific conditions for the practice of acts of everyday resistance. Both Pfeffer’s examinations of trans families / queer families and Tomkins’ studies on cisgender partners of trans persons explore practices of everyday resistance, defined as “normative resistance” and/or “micro-activism”. This resistance is carried out within the context of the queer family and shaped by the relationship with a trans partner and being part of the trans community. Albeit the micro-activism is not described as hidden, and thus, would in Scott’s definition not be considered everyday resistance. However, since it is not considered “politics”, and could be defined as “hidden” from politics, we regard it as everyday resistance. Thus, we find it reasonable to define the cis partners’ small acts of correcting pronouns as everyday resistance since it targets the repression and discrimination of trans people through actions that are not formally organized or recognized as political. In the next chapter, we will shift focus from relationships to the spatiality of everyday resistance, since all relationships (involving resistance) occur within a spatial environment, and space is an inherent part of how domination manifest itself.

Notes 1. Here, we disregard the fact that the “target”, in its immediate meaning, does not always have to be a person, group, or organization, but perhaps a discourse, symbol, etc. Importantly, for our argument, a symbol will also have its proponents. Thus,

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any target of importance will mobilize its defenders and, therefore, indirectly, the “target” will, indeed, include humans, its (power) actors. 2. “Assemblages” can be defined as complex combinations of heterogeneous elements such as objects, bodies, signs/utterances, events and territories, elements that enter into relations with one another and come together for varying periods of time (see, for example, Deleuze and Guattari 1987 ). 3. See, for example: “Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing The Ally Industrial Complex”, anonymously published May 14, 2014, by Indigenous Action website at www. indigenousaction.org/accomplices-not-allies-abolishing-the-ally-industrial-com plex/ (Visited June 29, 2018).

7 THE SPATIALIZATION OF EVERYDAY RESISTANCE

Introduction We now leave the agents, what they are doing and how, and their relationships with each other, to instead highlight a dimension that we believe is fundamental for the understanding of resistance repertoires and power configurations, as well as for the understanding of relationships of agents: the dimension of space. Let us take Fiske’s “Shopping for Pleasure: Malls, Power and Resistance” as an example, defining the shopping mall as a “terrain of guerilla warfare” in which young, mainly unemployed people practice their art and tricks of the “weak” against the power of consumerism (2009, 290). The practices of how young people turn malls into their meeting places and how browsing through stores and trying on clothes and other goods without any intention of buying, are seen as resistance. Inspired by de Certeau, Fiske defines the young people as “tricksters” practicing an ethics of “tenacity” (291–292). Instead of playing according to the rule of the game, that is, the game of consumerism, they subvert the rules and turn them into their advantage. They practice everyday resistance in and through the space of the mall. And through that they temporally transform that consumer space into a (partly) trickster space. To highlight space is by no means original. Chin and Mittelman’s (1997) conceptualization includes the spatial category “sites of resistance” and illustrates its importance by claiming that since resistance is “localised, regionalised and globalised at the same time that economic globalization slices across geopolitical borders” (35), the public-private dichotomy no longer holds. They also bring forward the development of cyberspace, “a site in which resistance finds its instantaneous audience via the internet or world wide web” (35). Site is an important spatial category. Everyday resistance is always situated somewhere and in a particular location: a workplace, the city, the street, the kitchen. In

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this context, sites are social spaces—places where social life is structured in a place-specific way (for example, a church or a dock)—and they are structured politico-legally, socio-culturally and socio-economically. However, to be able to develop a more complex analysis of how everyday resistance is linked to space—and taking the claim seriously that everyday resistance is contextual, relational and situated—we would like to extend this dimension beyond sites. We would like it to be about how everyday resistance in the form of activities, social relations and identities, is spatially organized and how everyday resistance is practiced in and through space as a central social dimension. As Pile and Keith (1997, xi) argued in the 1990s, in Geographies of Resistance, that “a spatial understanding of resistance necessitates a radical reinterpretation and reevaluation of the concept”. They continue, “by thinking resistance spatially, it becomes both about the different spaces of resistance but also about the ways in which resistance is mobilized through specific spaces and times”. To capture the ways in which the social and the spatial are inextricably interwoven and to indicate how the social produces the spatial (and vice versa), one may use the term spatiality. In a search for a “fully sociological theory of space”, Shields (1991) goes further and defines the social construction of the spatial as “social spatialization”. This is an ongoing social construction of the spatial at the level of social imagery (collective mythologies, discourses) as well as at the level of interventions in the landscape (for example, the built environment). Whereas a distinction between a real and a non-real spatiality (see Harvey 1990 concerning “material” vs. “imaginary” space), might clarify different aspects of the spatial dimension, but as stressed by Rose (1993), the boundaries between the material and symbolic space need to be understood as f luid and imprecise. Shields (1991) sees social spatialization as a fundamental system of spatial division, such as in processes of inclusion or exclusion. Space is political and ideological, which implies that certain social groups have a higher degree of access to or power over space, while others have more limited access to space. As Harvey states: “the assignment of place within a socio-spatial structure indicates distinctive roles, capacities for action, and access to power within the social order” (1990, 419). Relations of power and discipline are “inscribed” into the spatiality of social life (Soja 1989). Nevertheless, the “assignment of place” within a socio-spatial order, and the relations of spatial power should in no way be seen as fixed and given. Rather, space is to be seen as unstable and f luid. Both material and symbolic space is remade and unmade constantly, being contested in meaning, undermined and negotiated in ongoing social processes and through social interactions.

The Spatial Organization of Everyday Resistance In this chapter, we intend to explore how everyday resistance is spatially organized, beginning in cyberspace with virtual practices of everyday resistance and

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proceeding through the body, as well as highlighting concepts which attend to the spatial dimension and resistance. In analyzing the spatialization of resistance there are plenty of fruitful concepts available, which are frequently used to theorize space, power and resistance within resistance studies and feminist, queer and postcolonial studies—among them that of marginal spaces (hooks 1984, 1990), borderlands (Anzaldúa 1987), heterotopia (Foucault 1984) and third space ( Bhabha 1994; Soja 1996). We have, in this chapter, chosen to focus on the concept of third space. The chapter ends with the queering of space, by accounting for some of the research on queer space and discussing a couple of issues that we believe have relevance for the study of everyday resistance.

Practices of Everyday Resistance in and Through Cyberspace To Foucault, “space is fundamental in any exercise of power” (1980, 252). The linkage between knowledge, power and space runs through all of his work. The concept of panopticism as a model for disciplinary power shows the link between spatial orderings and discipline. Discipline begins with division in space, which creates closed territories of order and control (Foucault 1991). This spatiality of power is also central to Deleuze’s notion of the societies of control (2011 [1992]), in which the central forms of power are characterized by being absent yet always present. It is dispersive; wherever and whenever we move around there are mechanisms of control present and ready to be deployed when needed, when system “security” or “stability” is threatened. Internet or cyberspace, as a virtual terrain with a myriad of spaces, has received an increasing amount of attention, both as spatiality for control and surveillance, as well as for resistance ( Dupont 2008; Fuchs et al. 2012). On the one hand, nation states are increasingly delving into implementing measures of mass surveillance in cyberspace ( Tryfonas et al. 2016). On the other hand, cyberspace can also be described as “a site in which resistance finds its instantaneous audience via the Internet or world wide web” (Chin and Mittleman 1997, 35). This resistance might well be open, but in many cases, it is hidden, primarily in the sense that the resisting agent uses a different name or chooses to be anonymous. Albeit the degrees of corporate and state surveillance today are unparalleled; at the same time new forms of resistance are emerging (Palmås 2010). Apart from the more spectacular resistance that has been manifested by Wikileaks, which, in 2015 alone, published among other documents NSA intercepts and drafts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the acts of whistle blowers such as Edward Snowden, there are ongoing practices of resistance against surveillance by a number of social movements, political groups and individuals (see for example Coleman 2014). This resistance is practiced by activists with technical know-how, who create encrypted communication systems and creatively reconstruct cyberspace into a cipher-space and even Internet into a “Darknet” (an almost totally anonymous and hidden virtual space). The fight to gain

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access to encryption technology is a vital part of resistance (Martin 2007). Even if hacking in itself cannot be seen as a political practice, it brings with it subversive potential by means of being a practice that aims to trim the system’s locked design, expand alternatives and possibilities and increase participation ( Von Busch 2009). By opening spaces that have been exclusive for their owners and experts, they are made more accessible for all consumers and users, or at least for some (tech-skilled) excluded. With a basis in the surveillance researcher Marx’s eleven everyday resistance strategies (or “moves”) that were accounted for and discussed in Chapter 5, Dupont (2008) selects two strategies that he argues Internet users practice in order to limit surveillance of their online activities: “blocking moves” (use of encryption) and “masking moves” (entering meaningless information to the surveillance system). “Masking moves” that allow the users to surf anonymously on the Internet are more frequently implemented than blocking moves. With the help of free tools, it becomes very difficult to see who is communicating with whom and about what. Moreover, “masking moves” manipulate registration and search data to minimize establishing profiles that are based on viewing patterns and connecting information from various databases. Free tools on the Internet offer false socio-demographic facts and temporary identities and email addresses so that you can avoid providing your real details at the required registration at certain webpages. In Censorship and Everyday Forms of Resistance in Chinese Cyberspace, Cao (2015) investigates both the forms of surveillance and control by the Chinese Internet censorship system, pointing out keyword filtering as one of the main methods for censorship, as well as the forms of resistance. The author argues that research on how Chinese “netizens” “actively manage to bypass restriction in their everyday online experience has been insufficiently covered” (107). Cao distinguishes between technological resistance and symbolic resistance. Technological resistance includes using already existing platforms and services for anti-censorship purposes such as mobile phones and SMS. The sharing of stories and information via SMS, that the government wants to censor, is named “the power of the thumb”. However, the main forms of resistance to breach the censorship used by “non-tech-savvy netizens” are those of symbolic resistance, which include a multitude of discursive strategies and means. One is speaking in alternative ways, using satirical and cynical words and phrases when delivering critique against the political leaders. Another one is using satirical images, or rhetorical means such as parody. Cao especially emphasizes the importance of the use of humor as rhetorical means since not only does it enable forms of critique but laughter also creates emotional bonds between the participants. Memes that shame and ridicule the power may in fact create a “tiny revolution”, he suggests. Nevertheless, Cao posits that although both the technological and symbolic resistance have the potential to create fissures in Internet governance, they still do not bring about fundamental change. While netizens

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practice a variety of covert resistance strategies and tactics, the authorities also have those of their own, which tend to undermine some of the power of the resistance. For example, they use “selective incorporation”, which means that they appropriate popular phrases by incorporating them into official texts or use popular forms, such as humorous cartoons, for Internet propaganda. In conclusion, at the same time as the resistance seemingly challenges the system, it also may work as a reproduction of domination. This is yet another example of how power and (everyday) resistance are entangled in a most intricate way.

Everyday Resistance Against Virtual Surveillance Leaving the surveillance and resistance in and through cyberspace, we turn our attention to surveillance technology that is used to control the movements of employees in space, and their everyday resistance. In her dissertation Resistance to Surveillance in Everyday Life (2012), Geesin argues that when studying resistance practiced in opposition to surveillance, one must ref lect upon the relationship between electronic systems and physical space. She points out how the expansion of electronic forms of surveillance exemplifies how the border between “reality” and “the virtual” increasingly has become blurred. Now that surveillance techniques are portable and integrated into everyday actions, they have become all the more “real”. For example, the use of GPS to surveil movements or to assist in navigation clearly demonstrates how physical space permeates data and how interwoven virtual representations possess physical “reality”. If you analyze the real and the virtual separately, you will understand control and resistance differently. If the surveillance is only viewed as practices in physical space based on, for example, Foucault, you miss what is happening in the digital/virtual sphere. You need to consider “how practices of resistance embedded within computing inform practices in the physical environment and how, vice versa, practices of resistance” (114). Geesin (2012) distinguishes a number of different ways of resisting surveillance technology that controls movements in space. In one of her case studies she investigates the resistance carried out by Philadelphia’s taxi drivers who have had GPS and credit cards machines installed in their cars by the Parking Authority. The GPS system enables the collection of large volumes of information about the drivers and an increased control over how they work. The database stores information about each trip, hours worked, income from driving, and a real-time map of where the various cars are, in which direction they are moving, at which speed and so on. This is of immense significance as the taxi drivers often use the cars privately in their free time. The taxi drivers carried out resistance to the surveillance in a variety of ways, but whereas traditional political methods of strikes and protests carried out by the union were not effective, the everyday practices of resistance were. The drivers would, for example, refuse to accept credit-card payments since the

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credit-card system makes it possible for the Philadelphia Parking Authority to keep track of not only base earnings but tips as well. Although the drivers were ultimately forbidden to refuse to allow customers to pay by credit card, they still managed to limit how many passengers pay by credit card by, for example, claiming that the machine was broken. Some chauffeurs used the opportunity to explain their opposition to the system to gain public support. In a different study on resistance directed at surveillance, McCahill and Finn (2014) suggest that security officers who work in malls practice everyday resistance, using techniques that neutralizes CCTV surveillance. One way is to remove themselves from the view of the camera. In relation to these avoidance measures the security officers use areas in the mall that are not covered by CCTV as “backstage” areas to employ prohibited behavior such as checking their phones and storing drinks. This is not an outspoken critique of the surveillance system, as in the case with the taxi drivers, but rather it might be interpreted as a way of using the cracks of the system, practicing tactics which create some space for pleasure and personal freedom. The Philadelphian taxi drivers’ resistance and the practices of the security officers are not isolated examples. On the contrary, studies of resistance demonstrate how employees regularly and in varying ways manipulate surveillance. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that the surveillance-based information upon which company management bases decisions does not accurately ref lect activities in the workplace (Ferneley, Sobreperez, and Stevens 2004). We will now proceed to another spatial area, to how feminist theory has conceptualized the body as a space of power and resistance, and to give some examples out of a rich literature.

The Body as a Space of Power and Everyday Resistance Feminist studies have played the role of pioneer in linking space, power and resistance, by introducing gendered analyses of space, both regarding how notions of gender are spatialized as well as how gender relations are organized in space ( Rose 1993). In her early feminist critique and development of Foucault, Bartky (1993) notes that women are subjected to gender-specific forms of discipline and control: certain disciplinary practices which produce a docile body whose shape, movements and surface is to be defined as “feminine”. This body is, per definition, being confined in space: a body that does not take up space, that makes itself small, thin, with its arms close to the body, legs together and hands in the lap. As Ahmed (2004, 70) states, feelings of vulnerability and fear shape women´s bodies as well how their bodies inhabit space. “Vulnerability is not an inherent characteristic of women’s bodies¸ rather it is an effect that works to secure femininity as a delimitation of movement in the public, and over-inhabitance in the private”. She argues that fear works to align body and social space. Some bodies (male-identified) are enabled to “inhabit and move

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through public space through restricting the mobility of other bodies that are enclosed or contained” (70). However, the “female” body has been recognized not only as a site or arena of power but also of resistance—and similarly, any arena and site of resistance might be seen as being created through the enactment of the body. Feminist research has highlighted multiple ways in which women practice everyday resistance through the body, in subcultures as well as on an individual basis. One arena of resistance is related to the “tyranny of slenderness” that particularly aims at the discipline of women’s bodies through dieting. The classic work Fat is a Feminist Issue (Orbach 1998), was first published 1978, focusing on how eating and becoming fat might be a way that women resisted objectification. The resistance by the fat and gendered body was later explored by various scholars ( Johansson 1999; Braziel and LeBesco 2001). LeBesco (2004) defines the fat body as a “revolting body” in both senses: being seen as disgusting and being a body of protest. Embodied everyday resistance has also been identified as performed by the use of clothes, shoes, bags, jewelry, hairdos and certain colors (see, for example, Ambjörnsson 2009; Wietz 2001). Yet another arena is resistance through body surface (make-up, tattoos, piercing, being hairy). Pitts-Taylor (2003) argues that non-mainstream body modifiers create new forms of social rebellion through the body. Body art is seen and used by some women as a way to resist male dominance and to “reclaim” power over their bodies: “In creating scarred, branded, pierced, and heavily tattooed bodies, they aim to reject the pressures of beauty norms and roles of ‘proper’ femininity” (3). Feminist and queer research has further introduced the embodied performances of female masculinity as resistance (Halberstam 1998) and the embodied resistance of transgender persons ( Na and Choo 2011). In the collection, Vulnerability and Resistance, Butler, Gambetti, and Sabsay (2016) call for a dissolution of the dichotomy between vulnerability and resistance and argue that vulnerability has not sufficiently been understood in relation to existing practices of resistance. Rather than understanding vulnerability and resistance as mutually oppositional they suggest that vulnerability might be seen “as a resource in the act of resistance or as part of the very meaning” (1). Central to their argument is to undermine, and move away from, the binary categorization of vulnerability as passive, and as linked to women and femininity, in contrast to agency as active, and as linked to men and masculinity. This theorization has significant bearing for the previous understandings on gender, body, power and resistance. In Chapter 9, we will give examples of how embodied vulnerability is mobilized by Palestinian women in acts of everyday resistance. After these examples of theorization and empirical research attending to how everyday resistance is spatially organized and how everyday resistance is practiced in and through space, we will go on by introducing the theorization

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and work on third space as a tool to understand resistance, in particular, everyday resistance.

“Third Space” as an in-Between Space of Everyday Resistance The third space concept has been developed and used both by Homi K. Bhabha (1994) and by Edward Soja (1996), both of whom emphasize it as an in-between space—a space of permanent movement that dissolves dualism. While Bhabha (1994) stresses the ambiguity and uncertainty of third space, Soja (1996), who is inspired by Lefebvre, Foucault’s work on heterotopia, as well as by hooks’s marginalized spaces, defines it as an “an-Other” space of openness and creativity, and a radical zone created and populated by the marginalized. Even though Soja’s understanding of third space is both interesting and valuable, it is developed with the intention to change the “meanings and significance of space” (1), and its usefulness in empirical studies appears to be limited. Furthermore, since we have found that most empirical studies within social sciences use Bhabha’s third space concept, it seems more fruitful for our purposes. The concept has, for example, been used to analyze the practice of everyday resistance among Palestinian people, emphasizing the character of ambivalence and hybridity. Junka-Aikio (2016, 57) speaks of “hybrid resistances” and suggests that by exploring spaces of everyday life, in particularly the Gaza beach, you might find a third space in which “meaning is not governed by received interpretative frame works, and where subaltern articulations of Palestinian subjectivity and agency begin come to the fore”. Bhabha’s point of departure is an elaboration on what he defines as “a process of cultural hybridity”. He suggests that hybridity does not emerge through the synthesis between two components but from an in-between space or third space that creates “something different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation” (Bhabha in Rutherford 1990, 211). The so called third space is a “productive space of the construction of culture as difference, in the spirit of alterity or otherness” (209). Cultural hybridity is produced at the moment of the colonial encounter and is seen as a “sign of the productivity of colonial power, its shifting forces and fixities” ( Bhabha 1994,112), and as a moment in which the discourse of colonial authority loses its univocal claim to meaning. Bhabha introduces the third space as a part of his postcolonial framework. Even so, it does not have to be applied exclusively on processes of cultural hybridization. Pile (1994) uses it in his understanding of space, power and resistance and conceptualizes Bhabha’s third space as “a location for knowledge” which (1) highlights and explores the grounds of dissimilarity on which dualisms (such as man-woman, etc.) are based; (2) recognizes that there are spaces beyond dualism; (3) suggests that this third space itself is recurrently fragmented, incomplete as well as uncertain (Pile 1994, 27; Pile cited in Law 1997, 109). In the following section, we particularly draw on the understanding of

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third space such as it is articulated by Law (1997), Butz and Ripmeester (1999) and Butz (2002), since they directly relate it to hidden, non-direct and informal forms of resistance. Third spaces are defined as sites where dualisms are elaborated and disrupted, and as sites of struggles for meaning and representation. Butz asserts that “what remains largely implied in Pile and Bhabha: that the deliberate construction of third spaces is a strategy particularly amenable to the circumstances of the radically disempowered—those condemned by their location in a field of power to struggle, not to win definitively, but simply to fight another day” ( Butz 2002 , 24).

Trails, Bars and Other Third Spaces Butz and Ripmeester (1999) and Butz (2002) use Bhabha’s third space notion as they analyze the everyday resistance of porters in Shimshal, a small mountain community in northern Pakistan, or as they call it, non-direct or off-kilter forms of resistance. The community earns a substantial part of their income from portering, that is, carrying tourists’ luggage from a nearby highway to the village. Various forms of oppression are built into and constituted through the space of the trail, such as when porters carry the tourists and their luggage across streams or bring them hot tea and so on. The authors imagine the space of the trail as a third space “a space that has long been both local and global—as well as a liminal space between the local and the global, the inside and outside, the indigenous and the metropolitan” ( Butz 2002 , 24). The labor relationship between the porters and trekkers is highly unequal and organized around a dichotomy of the first being constructed as “brown, beast, servant, ahistorical, natural and the other as white, beast-master, master, historical, social” ( Butz and Ripmeester 1999, 8). However, according to Butz and Ripmeester the porters occasionally practice tactics to utilize the third space of the trail to introduce “some ambiguities” into the fixed and dichotomous identities of the parties in this relation. Butz outlines a complex situation in which the Shimshali porters practice a multitude of actions that are to be interpreted as everyday resistance towards their oppressive work conditions, such as pretended ignorance and refusal to understand, work stoppage, sickness, accidents and theft. Over time, the porters of the Shimshali area earned a bad reputation and were seen as greedy and unreliable. Consequently, trekking companies and guides became reluctant to hire them. Butz argues that as the porters realized the negative consequences of their resistance, they began to “make trekkers as active co-conspirators, by attempting to sell practices of resistance as a struggle for ‘authenticity’ in which trekkers can participate, in opposition to guides, tour companies, and their own material interests” (2002 , 22). Another example of the use of Bhabha’s third space concept is the study by Law (1997) of a go-go bar in the red-light district of Manila as “uneasy politics of third space”. Her point of departure is a critique against the popular

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representation of the bars as “sites of foreign oppression” and sex-worker identity as “metaphorically fixed within rich-Western-male/poor-Filipina-femaledichotomy, ultimately convey a powerful subject/disempowered other” (107). She does not deny relations of power in the sale of sex, but she argues that the representation of fixed identity and subject positions conceals and offers no possibilities of negotiations of identity and resistance. Instead, she suggests that the power relations played out at the bar in fact are complex and are constructed at various points where gender, race and class intersect. The focus for Law is on how individual resistances reveal power in particular contexts and how these resistances, taken together, play a role in defining the contested terrain of politics in/at the bar. This is a way to conceptualize resistance, and at the same time displace dichotomized relations of power. Law finds that the women engage the Western men in ways that are not outside power but are in liminal spaces between power and identity. Within these domains there are mobile and multiple points of resistance which surface in dancers’ relationships with customers, researchers, management and between themselves, and at issue are more personalised questions of self-actualisation, personal ethics, friendship, morality and so on. (122) Law argues that Bhabha’s perspective is productive as to move beyond the stereotypical representations of voyeur/victim, “opening a space for alternative subjectivities capable of differentially engaging the relations of the bar” (111). She emphasizes the ambivalence of the third space and as a space of negotiation. The bar, as a third space, is neither indigenous nor foreign, nor a liberating or oppressive space but simultaneously offers possibilities of both liberation and oppression. Neither are the white, male gaze autonomous voyeurism, nor the women powerless objects of such a gaze. Using a formulation by AlSayyad (2001), the bar in Law’s study might be said to fulfill the potential of the third space becoming a site of resistance in which “the colonized hybridized and the colonizer fails” (7). According to Butz and Ripmeester (1999) the characteristics of actual third spaces may be most susceptible to what they term “off-kilter forms of resistance”. The ambiguous character of third spaces may allow resistance to shape or utilize discursive terrain beyond dualisms. Its sensibility can also allow the subordinated groups to reshape actual spaces in ways that make it possible for them to practice more direct forms of resistance. Butz (2002) concludes his paper by suggesting a hybridity implicit in this form of resistance. Albeit illustrated with examples from empirical research, the third space remains rather abstract. We agree with the critics who argue that it could benefit from formulations more grounded in everyday practice and contextualized

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(AlSayyad 2001). With Bhabha’s conceptualization in focus, Mitchell issues a warning that: “without context, this in-between space risks becoming a mobile reactionary space, rather a travelling space of resistance” (cited in AlSayyad 2001, 7). Following this line of critique, we believe that contextualization of third space is pivotal for it to be a useful concept for resistance studies. We will return to examples of how to use the concept of third space in the context of the Israeli occupation in Chapter 9. If a third space is understood as a temporary space, one challenge would then be to identify through which social processes this temporary space is constructed. More specifically, through which type of acts of everyday resistance / repertoires of everyday resistance and through which type of relationships between targets, resisters and observers is a third space constructed? Apart from contextualization, there is also the route taken in a study on the performances by Bangladeshi/British dancer Akram Khan (Mitra 2015), who reinterprets third space from a phenomenological approach as an “embodied and lived condition”. Mitra posits that Khan in his solo dances performs a “new interculturalism” and embodies the complex reality of diasporans, characterized by multiple identities/positions and belongings. Her approach dissolves the distinction between space and body and opens up an exploration of the embodied third space. In the next section, we continue with the queering of the different analytical dimensions in the framework and explore such questions as: What is a queer space? How does queerness shape space? And, in what way might queer spaces be understood in terms of everyday resistance?

Queer Space/Queering Space As Oswin (2008) points out, there has been a growing interest within queer studies in the construction of queer space, with its starting point during the 1990s. A queer perspective on space takes its point of departure in the assumption that “space is not naturally authentically ‘straight’ but rather actively produced and (hetero) sexualized” ( Binnie 1997, 223). Queer space has been defined and investigated as primarily a gay and lesbian space that offers a radical alternative to a heterosexual, heterosexist and heteronormative space. In Nash’s understanding, queer spaces can be described as “places where individuals were expected to be attentive to or aware of alternative possibilities for being, including nonnormative formulations of bodies, genders, desires and practices” (Nash 2011, 203). Brown (2006), on her part, argues convincingly that queer space should not be conf lated with lesbian or gay spaces but be characterized by practices that seek to transgress the binary distinctions of hetero/homo and man/woman and that operate “beyond powers and controls that enforce normativity” (889). However, since we account for research that in fact does conf late queer space with lesbian and gay spaces, Brown’s definition is too narrow for our purposes.

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Valentin (2003, 417) calls attention to how “colonizing and occupying space has proved an important queer tactic”. This tactic might include becoming visible in public spaces in general, or claiming certain spaces as their own, such as gay/lesbian bars and/or clubs, bathhouses or specific streets and neighborhoods, as well as taking over the streets and public places of the inner cities with annual Pride festivals, creating temporary queer spaces. The phenomena of claiming and creating urban queer spaces is an example of the spatialization of resistance. Some of the acts of resistance are organized and planned, but they also involve patterns of mundane acts that characterize the everyday practices and rituals of queer subcultures, of performing queerness through sexual encounters and relations, dressing in a certain way, etc. Among the early and groundbreaking studies exploring the spatial resistance of “queer spaces” was Myslik’s (1996) study of the role that queer spaces play in helping gay men to “cope with the realities of heterosexism, and the violence that often accompanies it”. He explored the experiences and perceptions of the white gay men who resided or visited the neighborhood of Dupont Circle, a territory claimed by the gay men of Washington DC. This neighborhood has an enormous emotional significance for gay men who are marginalized and have no sense of control in the city. This space is not a safe haven from the threat of violence—quite the opposite; in these areas gay men are especially targeted. Nevertheless, Myslik emphasizes that: As sites of resistance to the oppressions of a heterosexist and homophobic society, however, queer spaces create the strong sense of empowerment that allows men to look past the dangers of being gay in the city and to feel safe and at home. (Myslik 1996, 168–169) A number of scholars have pointed out how “queer” spaces have been organized in ways that promote neoliberal norms of privacy, domesticity and consumption. Binnie (2004, 4) argues that the research on “queer space” has primarily been located in “the metropolitan west”, within major urban centers of gay consumer culture or in inner city neighborhoods known to have a high concentration of LGBTIQ residents. In line with this critique, Oswin (2008) brings up the aspect of class. She points out how since the lesbian/gay and queer spaces often are commercial spaces, only certain groups of LGBTIQ persons have the resources to consume them. “Queer” neighborhoods like Greenwich Village in New York have for example always been the domain of gay men, due to the gender pay gap (Gieseking 2018). Studies that have focused on transgender people (Stone 2013) have demonstrated that although there is a degree of transgender inclusion in queer spaces, there are also processes of exclusion. Queer spaces are racialized as well (Oswin 2008) and, as Puar puts forward, “the claiming of space—any space, even the

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claiming of queer space—[is] a process informed by histories of colonization, these histories operating in tandem with the disruptive and potentially transgressive specifics at hand” (2002, 936). Richter (2010) has, for example, accounted for how the entries to queer spaces in “gay friendly” Israel, such as clubs and bars, operate as yet another type of “checkpoint”, in which Palestinianness is a cause for being denied entrance. Thus, Rushbrooks’s question: Does the inclusive queer space actually exist, or is it only a theoretical construct, could be considered highly relevant (2002). Our position is that since queer spaces never are construed only through and out of sexuality but are also entangled with gender, class, race, etc., they are continuously producing both sameness and difference, both inclusion and exclusion. Queer space cannot be imagined or defined as a “pure” alternative space, free from power relations and dynamics. And typically that which is resisted is a limited part of (hetero/homo) normality.

In Queer Times and Places The concept of queerness, Halberstam (2005, 2) states, “has the potential to open up new life narratives and alternative relations to time and space”. In hir1 classical book, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (2005), ze contributes in a number of ways to the study of queer/ing space and time. For example, whereas the concept “queer space” primarily had been (and still is) considered equivalent to lesbian/gay space without including transgender ( Brown 2006), Halberstam brought transgender bodies into focus. The project by Halberstam goes beyond empirical studies of queer time and space. Ze delivers a serious critique against the main theorists of “postmodern geography”, among others, Harvey and Soja. While these authors give some attention to the racialization and gendering of postmodern space, they have nothing to say about sexuality and space. Halberstam points out the total absence of a discussion about what ze calls “the naturalization of time and space” in relation to sexuality, and subsequently shows how reproductive time and family time are heteronormative time/space constructs: Queer uses of time and space develop, at least in part, in opposition to the institutions of family, heterosexuality, and reproduction. They also develop according to other logics of location, movement, and identification. (2005, 1) We will return to Halberstam’s analysis of queer time and space in the next chapter, but now we explore some issues that are pertinent in the understanding of “queer space” and resistance. In Transgender Architectonics: The Shape of Change in Modernist Space (2015), Crawford distinguishes between, on the one hand, those scholars who account for and explore specific places and travels as

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potentially queer spaces of such diverse character as BDSM-bars, drag performance places, women’s bath houses and the queer Muslim diaspora, and, on the other hand, those scholars whose accounts on queer localities “imbue queers with an almost mystical quality to change space. ‘Space’ in those accounts are often rendered in the abstract.” (20). Crawford takes Halberstam as an example of the latter and argues that even though “the local” is given a significant analytical role, Halberstam offers few examples of queer spaces and concrete local spaces. Rather than attending to queer space as architecture and spatial design, ze understands it in terms of “place-making practices within postmodernism which queer people engage in” (2005, 5). Hence, queer space is conceptualized as an act. Crawford cautions against a dichotomization between space and subjectivity, whereas space is constructed as passive and subjects as active. While Crawford finds this “willingness to imagine new queer relations to space” productive, he also wonders “how precisely one ought to ‘queer’ space and how spatial design might participate in this queering” (2015, 22). We find Halberstam’s emphasis on practices and agency in constructing queer spaces invaluable. However, we also partly concur with the critique delivered by Crawford, this since it both points towards the often-abstract character of queer theorizing as well as the need to take the agency of materiality into account in the study of queer spaces (of bodies, buildings, walls, squares etc.). The importance of materiality in producing and shaping resistance has lately been brought forward ( Baaz and Lilja 2017; Von Busch 2017) emphasizing how human and non-human actors are mobilized in different forms of resistance. A material perspective could be of vital significance when attending to the role, for example, spatial design plays in the queering of space. Queer spaces as spaces of resistance are both the concrete localities with particular spatial design, for example Greenwich Village and its streets, bars and clubs, but might also be the everyday queer practices such as sexual practices and the symbolic meanings with which those are imbued that produce both concrete alternative localities and more symbolic spaces of belonging. Since space is never fixed and stable, queer spaces need to be sustained in ongoing processes of creation and recreation. Gieseking (2018) suggests that unlike the territorial neighborhoods gay men frequent, lesbian and queer spaces are of a more fragmented and f leeting character and are produced through “constellations” or networks of bodies that “bind” space together. Ze also underscores the complexity and heterogeneity of queer spaces, and that they might be of more partial and peripheral character than what usually is defined as a “queer space”. Take a group of friends, who identify themselves as lesbians and every Friday go to a “dyke bar”. Afterwards, they meet at a specific pizza place, and, while this is not an obvious “queer space”, according to Gieseking it becomes queer at that moment the women meet there. But how do the women’s bodies actually queer the pizza place? We turn to a study by Eves (2004), who explores how women self-identified

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as lesbians use style and butch and femme aesthetics as tactics to resist heterosexual space and achieve visibility. Thus, it could be argued that clothes, hair styles, body movements, etc. are used to practice resistance and create both more stable as well as temporary and fragmentary queer spaces. This also serves as an example of how space is queered through more subtle acts of everyday resistance. We have, in this chapter, given examples of everyday resistance strategies (or “moves”) to limit surveillance of online activities in cyberspace, as well as examples of ways employees resist surveillance technology that controls movements in physical space. As pointed out by Geesin (2012), with the expansion of the electronic forms of surveillance, the border between “reality” and “the virtual” is blurred, something which has to be taken into account in the study of resistance. Another challenge is how to conceptualize embodied, gendered, everyday resistance, viewing vulnerability as a resource. Furthermore, third space has been brought forward as a concept with the potential to be fruitful in the studies of everyday resistance. Nevertheless, we also agree with the critics who argue that third space, as well as queer space, could benefit from formulations grounded in a more contextualized everyday practice, connected to spatial design and non-human objects. As final words on the theme of space, we would like to underscore that we see temporal and spatial dimensions as intertwined, and, for example, analyze the queer use / production of queer time and space as a combination. Despite that, for the sake of analytical clarity, we separate the two dimensions, and in the next chapter, the temporalization of resistance is in focus. As we attend to the exploration of queer time in the end of Chapter 8, we hope to be able to tie the two dimensions together. Here we also open up a broader definition of queer / queer spaces that includes binary distinctions and norms that organize other power relations and orders than those of gender and sexuality.

Note 1. We use “hir” and “ze” as pronouns for the authors/persons who do not define themselves as cisgender persons.

8 THE TEMPORALIZATION OF EVERYDAY RESISTANCE

Introduction The fourth and final dimension in our analytical frame is time. This is a dimension that has yet to arouse much attention in the models of resistance that have been developed to date (Chin and Mittelman 1997; Hollander and Einwohner 2004). While space is a recognized (albeit undeveloped) dimension in the conceptual framework of Chin and Mittelman (1997), the dimension of time is ignored. In our conceptualization, time is a central dimension, something that is more complex than just the (linear) “history” of an empirical case as analyzed by some resistance scholars. Just as everyday resistance involves spatially organized activities, social relations and identities, and is practiced in and through space as a central social dimension, one may equally talk about everyday resistance as temporally organized, and as practiced in and through time as a central social dimension. In the same way we speak about spatialization we may speak about the social construction of the temporal as “social temporalization” ( Johansson 1994), in order to emphasize its function as an ongoing social process. In the article “Whispering Truth to Power: The Everyday Resistance of Rwandan Peasants to Post-Genocide Reconciliation”, Thomson (2011) gives an example of how to use time in the practice of everyday resistance against the mandatory gacaca court, a key mechanism in the promotion of the government’s vision of national unity and reconciliation, and perceived by many peasants as state control, creating fear and insecurity. To avoid participating in court, one of the peasant women simply gets up early. By studying everyday resistance, time can, in some respects, be seen as more decisive than space as “the everyday aspect” is based on routine, familiarity and regular social life, and everyday resistance does not hold a territory (as does

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sovereign power) but moves spatially; that is, it is temporarily spatial (de Certeau 1984). “The tactics of the weak” are used to create a space in an environment defined by strategies. “The space of the tactic is the space of the other” (1984, 37) and cannot, like strategies, be planned in a visible space where oversight is possible. A tactic is dependent on time and must constantly manipulate events to transform them into possibilities. “The tactic must take those opportunities that come about in each moment, exploit the gaps that arise in the power’s surveillance and control; surprise, enshroud, employ subtlety and play tricks on the power” ( Johansson 2009, 216). Such tactics do not necessarily succeed over time. The woman who got up early, resisting going to the gacaca did in fact avoid attending the court that very day, and in that sense, she successfully practiced everyday resistance. Nevertheless, even if she might be able to avoid it more days, she will, according to Thomson (2011), finally be forced to comply by the local official. This chapter will take its point of departure in the issue of time control in work life and examples of everyday resistance such as “time theft”, using this theme as an example of temporalization of power and resistance. However, the issue at stake here is to also explore and grasp alternative temporalities, ways of understanding and organizing time that contest and undermine the dominating ones. Dinshaw ( Dinshaw et al. 2007, 185) for example calls for a thinking “outside narrative history” which requires reworking “linear temporality”. She looks for an “expansion of the experience of temporality that is not regulated by clock time or by a conceptualization not narrowed by the idea that time moves steadily forward, that it is scarce, that we live on only one temporal plane” (185). Thus, this chapter will also elaborate on the queering of time. While earlier chapters (5, 6 and 7), have each introduced one concept (non-violence, disidentification and third space) and then ended by queering the dimension in question, this chapter has another structure. In this chapter, we have chosen to introduce and discuss several concepts below the heading of queer time; concepts such as queer utopia, futurity and queer moments that we see as interlinked. As emphasized in the previous chapter, time and space can only be understood as separate processes on an analytical level. The spatialization and temporalization of social reality are always intertwined and related to each other.

Control of Time Time and space as socially constructed must be, and are increasingly so, linked to power. It is not only that time can be used as a means of power and control, but as Foucault has shown, control of time (and space) is decisive for disciplinary power. Control of time is practiced in all institutions where disciplinary power is practiced (e.g. hospitals, prisons, schools), through an exact division of time according to a schedule (Foucault 1991). Clock time has become a social

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and economic reality that controls, disciplines, normalizes and structures social life (Adams 1990, 120). The presumption that time is socially constructed, leads us to raise the question of which individuals or groups have inf luenced and controlled the way in which time is perceived and measured in a particular society (Davies 1989). Power and time have been mostly associated with the introduction of mechanical clock time—a new way to conceptualize and organize time that became institutionalized with the emergence of an industrialized capitalist society (Adams 1990), and with colonialization. Control of time is particularly practiced in working life through time schedules and an efficient use of time (Foucault 1991). The Marxist historian Thompson documents the transition from a society regulated by what he calls task-oriented time to a time that is valued in money and is used as an instrument of control over peoples’ working lives. The employer must use the time of his labor and ensure that it is not “wasted” ( Thompson 1967). Taylorism became a key to the disciplinary development of mass production within industrial capitalism. As Snider notes (2002 , 92), efficiency is “an inherently time-bound term”. Thus, modern society and its organizing powers utilize certain time structures. Yet resistance is also temporalized. For example, the issue of time control has been crucial in the struggle for improved working conditions (Huzell 2005). Early workplace research shows that factory workers with twelve-hour working days and sixday workweeks developed various systems for breaking up the long days of monotonous work at the machines into more manageable parts. They created, among other things, a time system founded upon various events as “banana time”, “peach time”, “coke time”. Other strategies that were used by bakers included “making time”, “negotiating time”, “avoiding time”, etc. (Strangleman and Warren 2008, 212). In the following section, we shall focus on repertoires of everyday resistance in relation to the control of time in workplaces.

“Time Theft” Both Scott and de Certeau accentuate acts of resistance that “steal” from the employer. One of the many types of everyday resistance identified by Scott (1985) is “foot-dragging”: intentionally dragging your feet along and lowering your working tempo. In The Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau illustrates his definition of “the tactics of the weak” by introducing the term la perruque. He uses it in the situation when the worker’s private “work” is done at the workplace and “disguised” as work in the eyes of superiors. It may, for instance, be a matter of the secretary writing love letters on “company time”. Instead of producing profit for the employer, she uses the time for her own pleasure, needs and interests—for activities that are free and creative and not profit-oriented (de Certeau 1984, 25). This means that de Certeau includes resistance that has

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ideological effects by means of undermining the system whose purpose is to discipline the workers. Everyday life consists of an abundance of such tactics, smart tricks and knowledge about how it’s possible to at least partially and temporarily avoid control and discipline. Since Scott and de Certeau wrote their works, practices like foot-dragging and working on personal activities on work time have been put on the agenda by critical research, but they have also been brought up and defined as serious problems for employers who speak of “time theft”. According to Snider (2002), “time theft” categorizes a new kind of crime directed at capital. Snider emphasizes that the employee is, in this case, viewed as criminal, as opposed to simply lazy or slow. The category, “time theft”, includes a number of various actions (Stevens and Lavin 2007) such as arriving too late to work, leaving early, making personal telephone calls, using email and Internet access for private communication and personal purposes, taking long lunches and coffee breaks, working slowly to get overtime, leaving the workplace to do your own errands and shopping, intense socialization with colleagues, fighting with customers, faking illness and taking out sick leave, falsifying time reports, sleeping on the job and working under the inf luence of alcohol or drugs. Time theft is not only defined by a form of material theft but is also perceived to include all attempts to intentionally or unintentionally reduce productivity (Stevens and Lavin 2007, 45).

Employee Resistance at Call Centers Stevens and Lavin (2007) study “time theft” as a kind of everyday resistance that is practiced by employees. They view the new forms of control and surveillance of the employees’ time as the preconditions thereof. In their study of a telemarketing company (a call center), the authors have stated that surveillance technology is decisive in employers’ attempts to reveal and counteract the “time theft”. Every week the employees’ time is made the object of statistical analyses in which the company documents and analyzes behavior and work performance. The reports cover a number of aspects: how frequent and how long employees’ breaks are, whether they come and go on time, absence, how long it takes them to handle telephone calls, how many calls they receive during a specific period, how much time they do “nothing” and so on. The employees report intense surveillance of their breaks and that, if they take a break only one minute longer than the time they are allowed to take, they have to turn in a signed confession that they have caused the employer a delay. This information is then documented in the employees’ “file” and can be used to discipline them at the present moment or in the future. The authors find that both at this center, as well as at other telemarketing companies, both individual and collective resistance develop from the daily experience of work. The employees practice various ways of resting a while,

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despite whether they receive permission from management or not. At certain call centers, employees are given time between calls to write up notes in the customer’s account, which is called wrap time. In order to increase the time between conversations, the employees press the “wrap up” button twice, something which is called double wrap. This is perceived as an example of how the employees use technology in a creative way to carry out resistance to the management’s constant emphasis on productivity and the “right” way of using time (2007, 51). This practice of “double wrap” can be categorized under what Marx (2003) defines as a “masking move” or as a way of conducting “distorting moves”. That is to say, the counterpart to pressing down computer keys to appear productive. These various ways of “stealing time” should be seen as everyday resistance that, although not openly, does challenge the workplace’s surveillance and control systems, and undermines the efficiency and productivity discourses that dominate work life. While these examples have to do with repertoires of everyday resistance against the controlling and surveillance of the time of the employees, we will now shift to an exploration of the creating and embodying alternative conceptions of, and relations to time, and then to the dominant ones. As suggested by Baaz, Lilja, and Vinthagen (2017), in order to resist a dominant mode of temporality, it’s “naturalization” has to be destabilized or disconnected. You need to invoke other possible temporalities. Kern (1983) uses three modes of time in his The Culture of Time and Space: past, present and future. While we believe these distinctions are too simplified and need to be expanded and elaborated upon, they still make a good starting point for the next section. The queering of time calls for new conceptions of and practices in time, in the past, present and future.

Queering Time/Queering Space The concept of “queer time” has been discussed among queer theorists for about a decade, primarily by Freeman (2005) and Halberstam (2005). Freeman (2005), whose analysis also grasp economic and political processes in a global context, calls for a dismantling of what she calls “a narrow chronopolitics of development”, which defines nations as well as individuals, and which is at once racialized, sexualized and gendered. In her call for a “deviant chronopolitics” she brings forward bodily pleasure as central to her queer analysis of an alternative understanding of time. Against the turn to loss, shame and grief in queer studies, she introduces “erotohistoriography”: “a politics of unpredictable, deeply embodied pleasures that counters the logic of development” (2005, 59). Erotohistoriography looks at how enjoyable queer physical practices shape subjectivity and create new forms of temporal or historical consciousness. In the previous chapter, we brought up Halberstam’s work on queer space and time and pointed out how this work is especially interesting for us since

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ze explores queer time and space in relation to each other. Ze argues that one location in which queer time emerges is within those gay communities “whose horizons of possibility have been severely diminished by the AIDS epidemic” (2005, 2). The experience of “constantly diminishing futures” that developed during the crisis creates a new emphasis on the here and now, in a way expands the “potential of the moment”. Although queer time emerges from the AIDS crisis, it is not only about compression and elimination; it is also about the potentiality of a life that is not shaped by the conventions of family, inheritance, and child rearing (2005, 2), but that disrupts and resists the dominant script: Queer time for me is the dark nightclub, the perverse turn away from the narrative coherence of adolescence—early adulthood—marriage— reproduction—child rearing—retirement—death, the embrace of late childhood in place of early adulthood or immaturity in place of responsibility. (Halberstam in Dinshaw et al. 2007, 182) Halberstam also points out that while subcultural participation has been defined as something connected to youth and which ends with adulthood, particularly urban queer people tend to participate in subcultures for much longer than heterosexuals, one may even call it a “lifelong commitment”: “this may take the form of intense weekend clubbing, playing in small music bands, going to drag balls, participating in slam poetry events, or seeing performances of one kind or another in cramped and poorly ventilated spaces” (2005, 174). This involvement actually dissolves the binary between youth and adulthood, Halberstam contends. Involvement in queer subcultures produces alternative temporalities, queer time. At the same time ze specifies that “queer,” in this context, refers not exclusively to sexual practices but rather to “an outcome of temporality, life scheduling, and eccentric economic practices” (20). Thus, according to this line of thought queer time could be produced and used by people other than those identifying as “queer”. However, Halberstam also highlights and problematizes what ze regards as “temporal aspects of homonormativity” in sexual subcultures: the emphasis on f lexibility, f lexibility of desires, identifications and practices (Halberstam in Dinshaw et al. 2007, 190–191) is set in opposition to being rigid. Mobility over time is associated with liberation and more fixed identification is seen as being stuck in time. The white queer subject is the norm, and white middleclass queers who perform, and define, gender and sexual f lexibility tend to define communities of color—black communities, working-class Latina or butch-femme communities—as “behind” the curve of history, as traditional (190–191). Stone (2013) shows that f lexibility as norm within queer spaces can also be used to marginalize and control transgender bodies. In interviews with members of a queer leather group calling themselves “the Club”, they represent

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themselves as sexually “f lexible” and therefore inclusive towards transgender members. At the same time, they contrast “playful queer f lexibility” with “serious transgender bodies”. Hence, queer time risks being associated with, and developed primarily by, a certain dominant group among LGBTIQ people; white, cis, male and urban queers. As pointed out by Lilja, Baaz, and Vinthagen (2015, 8), “even more pluralistic frameworks of temporality in which particular time experiences are not exclusive might become hegemonic constructions through status hierarchies of temporalities in which certain temporalities are tied to relations of domination”. We propose that the acknowledgement and analysis of temporalization of everyday resistance is a crucial challenge for studies of everyday resistance. The most productive path, we believe, would primarily be to move towards the connection of time and space—to investigate the time/space of everyday resistance, in relation to investigating the intersections of gendered, queer, classed and racialized practices of everyday resistance. That means we have to combine, not only time and space, but also the intersectional relationships of the resisting agents, and how that resistance is connected to particular configurations of power. We will give more in-depth examples of this in Chapter 9. Linked to queer time are concepts like “queer utopia”, “queer futurity” and “queer moments”. Since we believe these concepts carry great potential for the study of everyday resistance, we stay on this track, and end the chapter by offering an example of how queer time needs to be related to and organized in a queer space ( Halberstam 2005). We begin with the concept of utopia, taking our point of departure in Levitas’ quite basic definition “the desire of being otherwise, individually or collectively, subjectively and objectively” (2013, xi).

Queer Utopia and Futurity Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality. Put another way, we are not yet queer. We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality. We have never been queer, yet queerness exists for us as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future. (Muñoz 2009, 1) This is how Muñoz begins his Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009), a book about the “utopian” dimension of queer and the queer dimension of the utopian. Queerness should, according to him, actually be about rejecting the “here and now” since that is a “prison house”, and instead be about insisting “on a potentiality or concrete possibility for another world”. It is about potentiality and futurity, “of queerness as a temporal arrangement in which the past is a field of possibility in which subjects can act in the present

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in the service of a new futurity” (16). He further elaborates on the concept of utopia as “a temporal disorganization”—a moment when the here and the now are transcended by a then and a there that could be and indeed should be” (97). To Muñoz, utopias are not about optimism but about politics of emotion, of hope, which is particularly important for “minoritarian subjects who are cast as hopeless in a world without utopia” (97), such as queers without biological children who are seen as “forsaken” since they do not live normative lives according to heterosexual temporality. Muñoz’s work is of great importance for queer studies in general, but here we use it specifically for a theorization around queer time and everyday resistance. Cruising Utopia argues against “anti-relationality”, and, more specifically, against the argument outlined in Edelman’s No Future: Queer Theory and Death (2004). Edelman here contends that the image of the innocent child, in need of protection, representing the possibility of the future, shapes the logic of the political field—a logic he calls “reproductive futurism”. This “ideological limit” on political discourse as such “preserves in the process the absolute privilege of heteronormativity by rendering unthinkable, by casting outside the political domain, the possibility of a queer resistance to this organizing principle of communal relations” (2). While it is perceived as impossible to be on the side of those not “fighting for the children”, Edelman suggests that that is precisely the position queerness should take. Queerness, he argues, establishes its “ethical value” through recognizing and accepting “its figural status as resistance to the viability of the social” (3), embracing the position as a negative force ultimately challenging “the very value of the social itself ” (6). Muñoz, on the other hand, who refuses “to hand over futurity to normative white reproductive futurity” (2009, 95), places his work among that of queer feminists and queer people of color whose critique he defines as an important counterpose to the anti-relational (17). Moreover, he seeks to replace the anti-relational mode of queer theory with “a queer utopianism that highlights a renewed investment in social theory (one that calls on not only relationality but also futurity)” (10). Muñoz insists on understanding queerness as being about relationality and collaboration, about “futurity and hope”. But is there potential for a realization of a “queer utopia” in how queerness is being practiced already today? Are there ways that a queer utopia may manifest itself in everyday social interaction? What does a “queer futurity” mean? The collection Queer Utopias, Queer Futurity and Potentiality in Quotidian Practice Jones (2013) takes its point of departure in Muñoz’s notion of queer utopia, among other sources of inspiration, but sets out to ground and develop it, through studies of interactions and everyday practices. The authors of this collection side with Muñoz’s exploration of queer utopias and transformative spaces, and they seek to create a critical dialogue about the emergence of queer spaces and the way in which these spaces aim to further queer futurity. The focus of the book is the quotidian practice that demonstrates the potential for

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queer futurity, in which everyday acts of resistance have a pivotal role. One of the contributions is Simulas’ (2013) chapter on the BDSM play in which the idea of “ecstatic time” is introduced. We find that this serves well as an example of alternative organizations and experiences of time. “BDSM” is an umbrella term for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, as well as for sadomasochism (Simula and Semerau 2017). It is a term used both in scholarly literature and by the participants themselves to “refer to a range of consensual activities (i.e. scenes or play) including but not limited to leather, kink, sadomasochism (SM), dominance and submission (D/s), master/ slave (M/s) relationships, power exchange, bondage, and discipline” (2). Even though BDSM is a plethora of different practices, Simula (2013) identifies at least four criteria for labeling something BDSM: consensuality, some type of power exchange, mutual definition of the situation and a frequent but not necessary sexual context and/or meaning. The BDSM participants in her study do not necessarily identify themselves as queer or LGTB, yet they all according to Simula actively and intentionally practice BDSM to resist gender regulation and normativity. In the play, or what some of the participants also call “scenes”, participants invent and practice “interrelational methods of resistance”. You may say that the participants interviewed by Simula, at least temporarily, create queer relationships, something brought up in Chapter 6 and defined as thinking and acting outside of the hetero-relational paradigm ( Elia 2003). Drawing on Muñoz’s conceptualization of queer utopia, Simula contends that “the f luid temporality” of the scene stage make it possible for the BDSM participants to experience “ecstatic time”, and through this they “resist, transgress and transform heteronormativity and gender regulations” in unique ways. Ecstatic times are “times of intense pleasure”, as the participant Tracy explains, it is moments of “escape” from all negative thoughts and problems of everyday life. They are to be understood, Simula suggests, “interruptions of the here and now”, and a subversion of the gender identities that are performed outside of the BDSM space. The linearity of straight time is disrupted and “stepped out of ” and the methods and moments of resistance make it possible for the practitioners of BDSM to see glimpses of “the horizons of queer utopia”, beyond what they strive to create together within the BDSM space. It is fair to say that the interactions and everyday practices within the subcultural space of BDSM usually are not acknowledged as “political”, either by mainstream society or even by all of its practitioners. Simula however, argues convincingly that the alternative sexual practices of BDSM in some aspects aim to undermine dominant conceptions and norms of gender and sexuality and carry the potentiality of alternative temporalities. Thus, in this context, the moments of “escape” might be defined as part of a practice of everyday resistance. As we explained in the introduction of this chapter, we distinguish several concepts which we see as close to each other and/or interconnected. Still focusing on queerness, futurity and hope we now move on from Munõz’s “queer

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utopia” to “fat futurity” as a temporalization of everyday resistance, performed in and through the fat-o-sphere as a queer digital space. In this context, queer is used in the broad sense, as referring to the non-normative, that which is in conf lict with, and disrupts normality, and that which is considered deviant. Fatness and fat bodies are, from this definition, understood as “queer” ( Johansson 2017). Most of the online practices carried out in and through the fat-o-sphere involve contesting the fat-stigma and the performance of new, alternative identities, practices that include acts of everyday resistance.

Performing Fat Futurity in the Fat-o-Sphere Inspired by Jones’s (2009) post-humanist vision for “queer heterotopias”, we suggest that queer time and queer space (queer time-spaces) are created through the disruption of not only the man/woman, male/female and hetero/homo binary but also the binary of human/non-human. One way to open for the possibility of this is the cyborg, or the techno-body ( Jones 2009). In the following section, we will introduce fat cyborgs as examples of techno-bodies that are created through, and creators of, queer futurity and queer spaces. Taylor (2016) is, in her dissertation Fat Cyborgs: Body positive activism, shifting rhetorics and identity politics in the fat-o sphere, interested in how fat activists intersect technology with activism through an investigation of fat acceptance blogs. Haraway’s theory of the cyborg helps her understand the relationship between the body and technology: Particularly in this contemporary time of ubiquitous computing . . ., the lines between online and off line, f lesh and fantasy, private and public, are blurred if not erased altogether, for some users, resulting in a continuum of human existence in hybrid digital and ‘real’ spaces. . . . (52) Drawing on Haraway’s argument that anyone online could be considered a cyborg, Taylor posits that the participants in the fat-o-sphere, called “fat rhetors”, “are using their skills as cyborg for displaying, circulating, and engaging with bodies, which has been challenging historically, but has recently become possible through the growth of personal, mobile technologies. Using their power as digital rhetoricians and cyborgs, fat rhetors are renegotiating the fat body across multiple frames, conversations, and disciplines” (54). They are, like Haraway’s cyborg, committed to, among other practices, irony, perversity and intimacy. Fat people use technology to “speak back” (53). What Taylor identifies as “alternative fat rhetorics” produce new truths that have often not been heard before. Following a similar line of argument as Taylor, Yingling (2016) introduces “fat futurity” and investigates fat embodiment and identity through the

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discussion of “digital avatars”. The concept of fat futurity is used to describe the created and planned images of fatness that many fat Internet users deploy in ways Yingling defines as being “radical and provocative” (29). It departs from the assumption that time is manifested in “fat f lesh”. The idea and process of fat futurity involves a movement to digitize oneself to “claim fatness” through the manipulation of a perceived division between the user and their cyber-self. Yingling suggests that the “digital personas” “talk back” to the fat stereotypes of laziness, being unsexy or asexual and shameful, and as a body without future. Fatness is actualized as a part of the embodiment of the users, and they are able to “reinstate the future of their bodies”. As a person digitizes their identity, they have the freedom to represent fat as desirable, confident, unapologetic, fierce, fashionable, human. (Yingling 2016, 28) Yingling (2016) primarily analyzes images and texts on different social media platforms, for example those of Jessamyn Stanely, a black, fat blogger and yoga practitioner who poses flexibly for the Body Positive Yoga site in form-fitting bras and yoga pants. Not only do the images of Stanely challenge stereotypes of the fat body as passive and unhealthy, but as Yingling posits, through maintaining and embracing her fatness, (and not aspiring thinness), Stanley actualizes herself digitally as her ideal fat person. Fat users create cyborgs that are an extension of the body, and while the real fat body is limited, the “fat cyborg” allows for “a process of self-actualization that exhibits an ongoing refashioning according to one’s own ideals” (35–36). Yingling defines this as a kind re-embodiment. Moreover, she emphasizes how the precondition for the users to be inspired to experiment with their embodiment in alternative ways is the sense of being safe in the fat-o-sphere. To conclude, using queer in the broad sense, fat futurity might serve as an example of a “queer time” that is played out in a “queer space”—the fato-sphere. Through the production and actualization of imagined bodies, the binary organization of thin and fat bodies is momentarily dissolved (LeBesco 2014) and transgressive spaces are created. It further results in an undermining of the dominant notion that the only possible trajectory of a fat body is to be transformed from “fat” to “thin”, and that thinness is the only option for a “better” or hopeful future. Fat futurism suggests a future where fat bodies are no longer casted out of time and “coded in dystopia” (Yingling 2016, 30), but are instead seen as possible and being included. However, if the concepts of “queer time”, “queer utopia” and “queer futurity” are to be fruitful in the study of resistance in everyday activities and situations, they need to be, in the same manner as “third space” (see Chapter 7) contextualized and grounded in concrete social action and everyday quotidian practices. And, like third space, we have to be alert to how queer time, queer

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utopia and queer futurity will subvert some (aspects of ) power, while they leave others unchallenged or even reinforced (as e.g. in relation to gender, race, relation, class, etc.).

Queer Moments The final concept that will be introduced and discussed in this section is queer moments. This is a concept that appears in Ahmed’s theorization on a queer phenomenology (2006a, 2006b) in which she takes her point of departure in the assumption that sexual orientation also is about how we inhabit space. Drawing on the phenomenological emphasis on the embodiment of lived experience Ahmed thus explores what it means to be oriented, and how it can be, and how social relations are, organized spatially. While being oriented can be defined as being at home, having a sense of order and belonging, queerness can be understood as a disruption and reorganization of social relations in another direction, as a deviation from the paths people are expected to follow. The temporal aspect of this experience is captured by the concept of “queer moments” as “moments of disorientation” or “where things come out of line”. Such moments, experienced as moments of disorder might fill us with a sense of “horror”, but according to Ahmed, if we stay with these moments our bodies might reorient, and the queer moments may be a source of vitality and joy. Ahmed (2006b, 570) also rejects the position taken by Edelman of queerness being without future and instead sides with Muñoz in stating that queer politics do have hope: because what is behind us is also what allows other ways of gathering in time and space, of making lines that do not reproduce what we follow, but instead create new textures on the ground. To refer back to the introduction of this chapter and the reference to de Certeau: queer moments are often created through tactics which manipulate events to transform them into possibilities. Resistance is practiced through seizing the moment. In our minds, the agents of resistance, both in Taylor’s and Yingling’s studies, create and experience queer moments, which in relation to fatness might be defined as moments which strive to disrupt normativity, provide us with a glimpse of a time when big, fat, excessive bodies will be performed, thought about and related to without fat-phobia ( Johansson 2017). In the account for an elaboration on queering of time concepts such as queer utopia, queer futurity and queer moments have been introduced and discussed. We have given examples of alternative temporalities (Halberstam 2005; Dinshaw in Dinshaw et al. 2007), of temporalities that disrupt “linear temporality” and that could be defined as “queer”. In the case of ecstatic times in Simulas’ example, straight time is “stepped out of ” and thus things truly “come out of line” and undermine heteronormativity. Furthermore, the queer moments of

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“ecstatic times” evoked by BDSM play (Simula 2013) presumably give the participants a glimpse of a queer utopia. There are a multitude of challenges in the study of the construction of alternative, queer temporalities through practices of everyday resistance. One question to ponder is what actually constitutes a “queer moment”? How is such a moment created? And is it possible to understand more stable queer temporalities and queer spaces as created through repeated “queer moments”, shaping new patterns of social practices? Linked to these questions is the issue of embodiment. Yingling’s article on fat futurity is published in a special issue of Feral Feminisms which focuses on what the editors St. Piers and Rodier define as “an undertheorized intersection between embodiment, temporality and resistance” (St. Piers and Rodier 2016, 5), and that explores “how bodies that move, desire, communicate, fuck, laugh, stim, stutter, jiggle, give birth, and leak are possible openings for more hospitable, generative and anti-oppressive temporalities” (5). The moments of intense pleasure experienced through BDSM play is one among many possible examples of how embodied practices of everyday resistance could create such openings. Returning to Ahmed’s definition of queer moments as “moments of disorientation”, or “where things come out of line”, it becomes increasingly clear how the spatial dimension is entangled with that of temporality. If we stay with the moments of disorientation our bodies might “reorient”, that is, another orientation in space and new (embodied) patterns and shapes will emerge. Throughout these last four chapters we have described and discussed the four dimensions that make up our analytical framework, giving a myriad of examples of research on everyday resistance, as well as providing theoretical tools. In the next and final chapter that follows, we use these dimensions to explore a specific case within a particular context, the case of the Palestinian sumūd.

9 FOUR DIMENSIONS OF EVERYDAY RESISTANCE The Case of Palestinian Sumuˉ d

Introduction In this chapter, we apply our framework by illustrating how it could be used to study a specific and largely ignored kind of everyday resistance, namely Palestinian everyday resistance: sumūd, in the occupied territories (OPT) and in the refugee camps.1 As stated earlier, we strive towards a framework that helps to analyze how a section of these acts of everyday resistance is situated in particular time, space, and relations, and how it engages with different (types of ) actors, techniques and discourses. The complex theoretical debates as well as the rich body of empirical work regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict give us an opportunity to explore the possibilities as well as limits of the framework. As explained by Zoughbi, director of the Bethlehem-based NGO Wi’am: Sumūd has been part of the non-violent struggle of the Palestinian people against the colonial presence in this land. (. . .) [W]ith relentless persistence, we remained here. I am here to stay. You cannot uproot me. I am like the cactus. Even when the environment is dry I can live. (Zoughbi www.PalestineFamily.net) This is how the director of the Palestinian Conf lict Resolution Center Wi’am in Bethlehem explains the meaning of sumūd. “Sumūd”, literally persistence or steadfastness, is a term often used by Palestinians to describe a type of inner strength or hardiness to confront and live through the extreme conditions created by Nakba ( Van Teeffelen 2006). “Nakba” means literally “the

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catastrophe”, a Palestinian term that refers to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the displacement of refugees (Schiocchet 2012).2 One of the cultural symbols of this hardiness and persistence has been the cactus, able to survive in an utterly unfavorable environment, as well as the hundreds-of-years-old olive tree, with its roots deep in the land and evergreen ( Van Teeffelen 2006). The concept of al-sumūd as steadfastness refers originally to an Islamic divine attribute (Schiocchet 2012), and is therefore sometimes also used by others, besides Palestinians. “Sumūd” emerged as a political term within the Palestinian community in the 1970s and 1980s, introduced by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), to emphasize the importance of maintaining a presence on the land despite Israeli colonial settler policies of so-called silent ethnic cleansing, or “spacio-cide” (as opposed to genocide) (Hanafi 2013). It also emphasized that to live as a refugee and to insist on being Palestinian (e.g. through celebrating Palestinian food or dance) is already an important form of resistance against the occupation ( Van Teeffelen 2006).3 “Sumūd” was used to refer to the right to remain on the land, the need to resist forced expulsions and the commitment to have many children who would inherit the struggle and hopefully the victory ( Van Teeffelen 2006). This original nationalist understanding of sumūd was later criticized as a form of passive resistance focusing on survival only. It has also been said to over-romanticize rural society, peasant life and sometimes also the fecundity of women, in the sense that sumūd becomes a strategy for keeping or expanding a presence on the land by raising large families ( Van Teeffelen 2006; Schiocchet 2012). Furthermore, it has also been associated with femininity—with silent endurance, passivity and sacrifice for others ( Peteet 1991, 153). New interpretations and practices of sumūd have developed as something more proactive, captured in the common refrain, “al hayat lazim tistamirr” (life must go on) (Hammami 2005; Schiocchet 2012). Thus, the conceptualization of sumūd is plentiful and complex. It is understood as an attitude, a cultural trait, or an “inward-directed” life stance—a term that captures the underlying values of the Palestinian struggle ( Van Teeffelen 2006; Schiocchet 2012). Others conceptualize it primarily as a social practice and a form of everyday and nonviolent resistance ( Richter-Devroe 2010, 2011). As a political strategy, it has been described by the lawyer and activist Raja Shehade as “the third way”, a position of steadfastness that is neither armed struggle nor passive acceptance: Sumud is watching your home turn into a prison. (. . .) Living like this you must constantly resist the twin temptations of either acquiescing in the jailer’s plan in numb despair, or become crazed by consuming hatred for your jailer and yourself, the prisoner. (Shehadeh 1984 cited in Hazou 2013, 151)

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Sumūd is often associated particularly with women’s daily struggles—as a strategy concerned with preserving family, livelihood and community life. Palestinian women from various backgrounds continuously stress their everyday struggles to “maintain a normal and—to the extent possible—enjoyable life for themselves, their children and families, despite destruction, frustration and death around them” ( Richter-Devroe 2011, 33). They organize weddings and gather women through mainly informal networks to go on trips and picnics in the countryside, despite Israeli imposed restrictions of mobility. In most contexts, a wedding or a trip out of town are understood as practices that are an integrated part of an ordinary everyday life. However, in the context of the Israeli occupation and what Gordon describes as a phase of destruction of infrastructure existence (2008), they are arguably acts of everyday resistance. As we have shown in the first part of this book, it is the relational dynamic with power that decides whether a certain practice becomes “resistance”. If a practice, done by someone subordinated to power, has the potential of undermining power, irrespective of whether only partially, locally or temporally, it becomes a form of resistance. And, since the occupation is militarized and involves regular threats and sometimes deadly use of violence, it makes sense that Palestinian everyday resistance is understood as nonviolent. “Non-violence” is, as we argued in Chapter 5, after all, possible to understand as a combination of acting without and against violence, a form of resistance that has a long-standing tradition in Palestine ( Vinthagen 2015, Chapter 2, and 56). We acknowledge the existence of a multitude of interpretations of sumūd, some of them conf licting. Our understanding of sumūd in this text is that while it might involve a sense of an inner state or be articulated as a “stance”, in line with Richter-Devroe (2010, 2011), it primarily refers to a pattern of acts directed against the occupation, a social practice of everyday resistance. We want to stress that although sumūd is expressed in nonviolent everyday acts of resistance it should in no way be perceived as a “passive” form of resistance, something that also applies to “the remaining on the land”. As accounted for previously, sumūd is practiced both as a public and intentional political strategy and as a repertoire of everyday acts of resistance. We are primarily interested in the latter. Nevertheless, the articulated strategy of sumūd and the subtler and mundane acts of everyday resistance by individuals are interdependent and interwoven in complex ways, both historically and in today’s resistance practices. Since sumūd as acts of everyday resistance is to be considered an explicit part of the Palestinian culture, it is only partly to be conceptualized in terms of a hidden transcript. Of course, hidden transcripts might still be used at certain situations when people are planning or doing resistance and there is a risk that the (surveillance by the) occupation might interfere. Sumūd is partly chosen as a suitable case since it is recognized as a particular and local form of resistance practiced by the Palestinian people in the

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OPT, Gaza and the West Bank, as well as outside, for example, in the refugee camps in Lebanon. Sumūd is a helpful example since it is played out in an unusually severe case of domination, and it is unusually well-developed as a form of everyday resistance. Moreover, sumūd is an example of what we call a “culture of resistance”, where a particular kind of culture is created, which to a high degree is formed by its resistance and struggle to survive, and where it is an explicit and tacit knowledge among members to seek and develop opportunities for resistance in multiple forms as much as possible. Within nations or other cultures of people that live as minorities within a nation state, such as Indigenous communities, or societies living under military occupation, as is the case of the Palestinians, historical traditions of struggles to survive and cultural ways of life might be developed that articulate an encompassing repertoire of resistance. In such cases, everyday resistance becomes an integrated dimension of the culture, rather than just scattered acts by individuals and small groups, as described by Scott and others within the field of resistance studies. As we will show, there are contexts in which the practices and stance of sumūd shapes and saturates everyday life both in an economic/material sense, as well as in the sense of social relations, not just “cultural” expressions in a more limited sense. We primarily make use of empirical studies of refugees that, even though they highlight the difficult conditions, avoid focusing on the Palestinians as victims and recipients (of aid, development, policies, etc.), and instead, regard them as “active political agents with distinct (and multiple) political subjectivities and cultures” ( Richter-Devroe 2012 , 105). In using the category of “refugee” in this text, we are as researchers (observers) part of a process of creating Palestinians as “victims”,4 but we are at the same time creating the category “Palestinians” as actors of resistance. We especially seek not to reproduce the Orientalist image of Palestinian women as uneducated, oppressed, and passive. As emphasized by Sayigh (2012, 14), after many decades of exile and separation, there is actually little that links Palestinians together beyond the fact that they all live and share the consequences of the Nakba. Palestinians are not in any way a homogeneous community but manifest a range of differences and variations. Despite positioning ourselves within a Swedish—Palestinian solidarity context, we are white Swedish researchers analyzing from outside, and as such we try to recognize the challenge not to treat “Palestinians” as a single and homogeneous category, but to include and highlight the complexity of experiences and the multitude of voices. The text is divided into five sections, the first four applying each of the four dimensions to the same case—the Palestinian everyday resistance to Israeli domination, sumūd, and in the final section combining the different dimensions, focusing on everyday resistance at the checkpoint. In the concluding ref lections, we assess the merits of our framework for understanding everyday resistance in a particular context.

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I. Repertoires of Everyday Resistance in Relation to Configurations of Power: Sumūd as a Repertoire The everyday resistance carried out by Palestinians in the Israel/Palestine conflict that might be defined as part of the repertoire of sumūd includes a variety of forms, strategies and techniques. Some of the more obvious examples are the refusal to leave their land, the making of a life and community despite occupation and the regular negotiation of repressive practices at the checkpoints. In addition, it is possible to include many more. One investigation, looking at Palestinian youth in the OPT and their different ways of resisting the occupation ( Baumung 2012), shows how the youth mainly spoke of nonviolent means of resistance with education at the top of the list. As expressed by a 17-year-old young woman living in the West Bank: “Education is our most powerful form of resistance. If we can be more clever (sic) than the occupiers, we will win” (72). On this ranking list of means of resistance, education was followed by social cohesion, i.e., engagement and participation in youth groups and social activities, such as sports, traditional dances, and creative arts groups. The third category brought forward was ways of enhancing self-esteem, including “working on confidence”, “laughing”, “smiling” and “keeping up morale” (37). This could be connected with the notion of sumūd as developing an inner peace, described in a study on peacebuilding (Foster 2011, 108) as self-confidence, love for others, not being haunted by frustration and solving inner conflicts. What makes all these examples of everyday resistance is that they have the potential to undermine the occupation (or its effects), and are individual or done in small informal groups without large and organized coordination, yet they form patterns of activity. Even though, in the case of sumūd, it is neither relevant nor possible to draw a distinct line between organized and not organized resistance, since also the small, hidden acts of resistance are part of a collective struggle, an ongoing discourse of how to achieve liberation and a culture of resistance (see Bayat 2000, 2009). However, it still makes sense to emphasize that the distinguishing feature of these acts is how they are integrated in and emerge from ordinary people’s everyday lives, as individual responses to the experience of domination, and the necessities of survival. New forms of resistance emerge from individual and informal experiments and creativity, not organized leadership. Bayat's concept of quiet encroachment (2000, 2009) is helpful in capturing some of these features of sumūd; individual acts for survival, which have political consequences when masses of people practice them. Richter-Devroe (2011, 33) argues that the term sumūd is used to refer to a wide variety of acts, ranging from more “materially based survival strategies” (such as tending occupied agricultural land or engaging in small-scale income-generating projects) through “cultural resistance” (by upholding folkloric songs or dress and other customs), to “social and ideational resistance” (by, e.g. maintaining hope and a sense of normality) (33). These distinctions are of particular interest since they capture the complexity and contextuality

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of the repertoire. That is helpful since we especially focus on the various subtle, non-organized and individual acts of resistance in daily life that need to be detected, interpreted and investigated in their specific context. One example of such a contextual analysis is Abdo’s study (2014) of Palestinian female political detainees within the Israeli prison system. She shows how the female detainees resist control and abuse in prison through a variety of collective practices, such as hunger strikes, as well as a variety of individual practices, such as occupying bathrooms for long periods of time while the prison guard waits outside, refusing to collaborate during interrogation or walking very slowly while ordered otherwise. According to Abdo (171), “resistance is learnt practice, which comes through others experiences or existing prison literature (let alone the very act of resisting itself )”. The senior political detainees mentally and morally support and aid the junior ones in the challenge of, for example, remaining steadfast when facing brutal interrogation. However, as Abdo (34) points out: While general means and forms of resistance are commonly and collectively shared by female political detainees, the individual experience of torture and resistance remains culturally and historically specific. Another example is given by Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2002) as she tells the story about how an everyday act performed by Palestinian women, such as wearing a scarf, the manadeel, becomes an act of everyday resistance and of sumūd within the context of occupation: It was my aunt, Umm Samir, and other relatives, such as my cousin Nabiha, who introduced me to my favorite selection of manadeel (scarves) as a means of our refusal to accept the colonization of our minds. The manadeel carried much meaning for me and my female friends. Not only did we enjoy adorning our heads with them, we were also able to express in a non-incriminating voice, our belief that they serve as a documentation of our people, our land, our pain. Hence, our songs, dances, poetry, art, and attire expressed what our hearts felt. . . . My national consciousness was formulated by the unspoken colors, shapes, and embroidery of the manadeels. (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2002, 183) Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2002) defines the act of wearing the manadeel as an act that symbolizes decolonization. To the social actor, it constitutes an act of refusal to let her mind be controlled by a process which they consider colonization. According to the distinctions made by Richter-Devroe (2011), wearing the manadeel could further be categorized as a way of practicing sumūd both through “cultural resistance” (by upholding folkloric songs or dresses and other customs) as well as “social and ideational resistance”. A final aspect is that,

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through the use of the manadeels, the Palestinian women perform embodied everyday resistance (see Johansson and Vinthagen 2014), an aspect we will return to later on. In both examples, it is clear that acts of resistance, such as occupying the bathroom in prison for a long time or putting on a manadeel, are not part of a formally organized or planned collective action with a clear political intention, and furthermore, they would not make sense as resistance outside of their specific context. As individual and subtle practices that acquire meaning as resistance in their context, it is also clear they are culturally learned routines, historically connected to cultural traditions and creatively applied, thus, part of an experienced everyday repertoire. Hence, this kind of resistance demands special analytical tools and focused attention. Everyday resistance will easily be misunderstood as “non-political” or might not even be detected, since much of its mundane logic is to be either hidden/disguised or non-confrontational (without attached public claims) ( Vinthagen and Johansson 2013). Therefore, sumūd is possible to understand as an attempt to conduct resistance without necessarily being understood as doing resistance (you might, e.g. claim you occupy the bathroom for a long time because you have a bad stomach  .  .  .), without directly challenging a (much too) dominant opponent and thereby minimizing the risk of punishment. As we have underscored in earlier chapters, a repertoire of (everyday) resistance is shaped and practiced in relation to specific configurations of power. In the case of sumūd, the patterns of resistance have been developed over the years in the context of the Israeli occupation. It is a result of the interplay between social structures and power relations, as well as the experiences of earlier attempts to practice resistance and try new tactics and strategies, both in the organized struggle of social movements and in daily life of everyday routines.

Israel’s Occupation: The State of Exception and to Exist Is to Resist There are many ways we resist, but we are resisting just by staying alive. To exist is to resist. Young man, 25, at the West Bank. (Baumung 2012, 31) Some of the most frequently used frameworks for understanding the Israel/ Palestine conflict are the ones developed by Foucault (1991) and Agamben (1998, 2005), respectively (see e.g. Gordon 2008; Hanafi 2008; Lentin 2011), as well as Mbembe’s theory on necropower (2003). Agamben argues that the state of exception creates “an unprecedented generalization of the paradigm of security as the normal techniques of government” (Agamben 2005, 14). This exception enables the state to turn the lives of those under state rule to bare life, “homo sacer” (1998). Agamben’s analysis is focused on how the juridical

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protections were eliminated of those people who were the target of the sovereign in the ultimate site of exception, “the camp”: [w]hoever entered the camp moved in a zone of indistinction between outside and inside, exception and rule, licit and illicit, in which the very concepts of subjective right and juridical protection no longer made any sense. (Agamben 1998, 170) Mbembe (2003) draws on the concept of biopower, defining it as “.  .  .  that domain of life over which power has taken control” (12), and examines it in relation to notions of sovereignty (imperium) and the state of exception. Expanding Agamben’s theorization of the state of exception from the camp to the colony, Mbembe identifies the current “late colonial occupation” of Palestine as “the most accomplished form of necro power” (27). For Palestinians, the acts of government characterizing biopower become acts of death, that is, necropolitics ( Lentin 2011, 167). As stated in an earlier chapter, we are inf luenced by the analysis made by Gordon (2008) regarding the different modes of power in the setting of Israeli occupation and his claim that every form of governing is shaped by its particular configuration of sovereignty, discipline and biopower. The repertoires of resistance are developed and practiced in relation to these particular configurations. In his book, Israel’s Occupation (2008), Gordon proposes a genealogy of Israel’s forms of control and an analysis of how they interact. His central claim is that “the excesses and contradictions engendered by the controlling apparatuses helped shift the emphasis among the modes of power and shape Israel’s policy choices and Palestinian resistance” (15). Gordon divides the occupation into five periods and identifies a development from a “politics of life” in the wake of 1967 to the present “destruction of infrastructure of existence”. The Palestinians are in the present period and configuration of power reduced to “bare life” (“homo sacer”), people who can be killed without it being considered a crime. There are, Gordon posits, certain elements in the structure of the occupation that have changed the forms of control. While the period of colonization between 1967–1980 was characterized by Israel trying to normalize the occupation through creating economic prosperity, improving the standard of living for the Palestinians and assuming some kind of responsibility for the people, the period from the second Intifada until now has been characterized by a sole interest in the resources and no responsibility for the people. There has been a suspension of all legality, which among other things leads to unpredictable discipline and punishment. The development and practice of the Palestinian resistance should be understood in this context.

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There is an ongoing debate about how Agamben’s theory of “exception” can be applied to the Israel/Palestine conflict and its consequences. Lentin (2011, 67) argues that despite making a clear link between “nation” and “birth”, Agamben fails to analyze the gendered meaning of “homo sacer” in Palestine. According to Lentin Israeli necropolitics combine “state racism and state sexism” in which “women are permanently banned as the producers of future generations of the racially inferior”. The female version of “homo sacer” is, Lentin posits, “femina sacra”. The biopolitical violence carried out by Israel includes control over the Palestinian demography, women’s reproductivity and body politics. A range of scholars have also criticized Agamben for his lack of attention to and space for resistance and agency (see Lentin 2006, 2008). It is argued that following the line of argument of Agamben, the only space left for Palestinian agency in the state of exception is the control over their own death. Thus, the possibilities of resistance become reduced to the act of martyrdom ( RichterDevroe 2011). As Lentin poses her own dilemma with the theory: despite Agamben’s positing sovereignty’s subject as homo sacer or ‘bare life’, at the mercy of sovereign power (1995)—such analysis runs the risk of erasing the active agency of the Palestinian subject represented as either passive victim of Israel’s dispossession or aggressive insurgent, but with interpretative control wrested away. (Lentin 2008, 2) Our position is that with the help of concepts such as “everyday resistance” and “third space”, we are able to capture how a less visible kind of politics is finding its ways, utilizing the ambiguity of power/resistance and fissures of dominance, however tiny and transient. Without an expanded notion of “resistance”, there is a limited possibility to capture and detect practices of resistance among people living in a state of exception. In our view, the concept of everyday resistance has turned out to be both highly relevant and valuable for this scope, and the Palestinian resistance of sumūd serves as an example of a repertoire of such everyday resistance, despite facing a severe and innovative sovereign regime. Hammami (2016) takes her point of departure in the frameworks of Foucault, Agamben and Mbembe, but also in theorization on precarity, vulnerability and resistance. She argues that Israeli sovereign power distributes precarity unevenly within and across the occupied territories and introduces the concept of “hyperprecarity” to define the situation and conditions of life in the Palestinian communities of Masafer Yatta, in what is called “area C” in the West Bank, which is still under direct military control by Israel. Here 200,000 Palestinians live in a number of scattered communities, side-by-side with 300,000 Israeli settlers in several hundred settlements. Not only are the Palestinians dominated by, discriminated against and violated by the Israeli state, but they

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are also dependent on that very state and the occupation force to be able to continue. As Hammami (2016) contends: the logics of elimination are free to unfold relatively unimpeded; there modern biopolitical techniques (urban planning, land use, residency procedures) in the service of necropolitics, bound by military ‘law’, operate in tandem with the frontier violence of the colony’s shock troops: its settlers. (170–171) It is in relation to such an extreme state of vulnerability we need to understand the particular forms of resistance that are captured in the slogan of the Popular Resistance Committee in Masafer Yatta: “To exist is to resist”. Even though Hammami (2016) acknowledges that simply to exist as bodies and communities in itself is a resistant act, she points out that to create and sustain an infrastructure of livable life under these conditions requires constant, everyday work. It requires a myriad of everyday acts of resistance. It could be argued that without the acknowledgement of this extreme vulnerability it is not possible to understand and value the significance of simple things such as attending school, planting a new olive tree or making a wedding celebration, and therefore, it is impossible to grasp its character of resistance. To live on, to continue to exist and keep on trying to create “a livable life” despite facing “the logics of elimination” in the everyday is what sumūd is about.

The Practice of Sumud ˉ in Lebanese Refugee Camps Whereas sovereign power is at the heart of the analysis of configurations of power, and repertoires of resistance within the Israeli/Palestine context, it is of vital concern to acknowledge that the occupying power of Israel is not the one and only sovereign regime. Palestinian refugees operate under various regimes of sovereignty, for example, in the West Bank, it is that of the occupying power (Israel), their (host) government (the PA), the UNRWA (United Nations Refugee and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), different political parties, but also refugee organizations, such as the popular committees in the camps ( Richter-Devroe 2012, 106). Hanafi (2008) contributes a complex analysis of sovereign power in the Lebanese camps, and, while the situation in the camps differs substantially from the one in the OPT, it is still shaped by the same conflict. The host government has built its legitimacy through the humanitarian discourse of protecting the rights of the refugees, but “its actual practices cement the exclusion, marginalization and discrimination of refugees” ( Richter-Devroe 2012, 106). During the 1970s, the camps in Lebanon became a “liberated zone” for the armed struggle, and thus became targets of attack from Israel, Lebanon and Syria ( Peteet

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1991). The refugees in Lebanon, mainly Sunni Muslim and rural in origin, have always been seen as a security issue and threat and subject to strict zoning and army control (Sayigh 2002). Despite absence of the occupying power of Israel in the Lebanese camps, Hanafi (2008) still defines them as “spaces of exception”. A single sovereign does not officially announce such exception; instead, many actors involved in different modes of governance are part of the suspension of this space under the cover of laws and regulations. These actors are mainly the Lebanese authorities and, to a lesser degree, PLO UNRWA, but also Islamist groups and different local political commissars. We will return to these actors and Lebanese camps as “spaces of exception” in the next section. As Peteet (1991) shows, there is a long tradition of practicing sumūd in the Lebanese camps: In Lebanon the term sumūd as used by Palestinians acquired a specificity of meaning. Attacks on Palestinian camp community were designed to expel them. Palestinian steadfastness was a powerful, and yet also poignant, symbol of the failure of enemies’ attempts to dislodge an already uprooted people. (Peteet 1991, 153) Several scholars have captured the culture of resistance developed in the camps of Lebanon ( Peteet 1991). In a fieldwork on Palestinian refugee communities in Lebanon, Schiocchet (2012) describes how sumūd and the expressions of Palestinianness are intertwined and saturate the everyday life of the camp of Al-Jalil. He finds that a public use of the powerful symbols of being Palestinian, such as the flag, images of the fighter and the martyr, the key (symbol of displacement and right to Return), and the map of Palestine, are reproduced in posters and graffiti all over the camp. Additionally, many of the inhabitants also displayed their identities as Palestinians through the use of necklaces and t-shirts that reproduced the same symbols. However, earlier studies of the expressions of sumūd ( Peteet 1991; Schiocchet 2012) need to be understood in relation to economic, political and cultural changes which have affected and shaped life in the refugee camps. For example, over the previous decades there has been a rise in Islamism (political Islam) among Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, championed by groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad ( Knudsen 2005), turning refugee camps into battlefields between different groups and factions with conflicting views of Palestinian nationalism. Schiocchet (2012) points out that while sumūd as practice is inspired by Islamic culture, it has primarily developed as a secular praxis. Over time, this has changed and today sumūd has become a part of Islamic praxis, and political activism and Palestinian resistance have been increasingly conflated with Islamic resistance. Thus, in this sense, we can say that the everyday resistance of sumūd is in a dynamic relation

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with more public and collective forms of resistance in the Palestinian liberation struggle. The forms feed on each other and do probably serve different functions for the struggle. According to Schiocchet (2012), this, in turn, causes Palestinian Christians to distance themselves from the Palestinian struggle, and stop dreaming of returning to Palestine. If this is an accurate analysis, the resistance strategy of maintaining the hope of return (what Richter-Devroe calls “social and ideational resistance”) is being abandoned by certain Palestinian groups within the refugee community. This highlights that when applying an intersectional analysis of resistance practices on the particular conflict of Israel/ Palestine, it is necessary not only to look at the “typical” intersections between gender, age, race, class and sexuality in the formation of these practices, but in the case of Palestinians, it is also necessary to take into account significant aspects, such as place of origin in Palestine, political affiliation, and religion (see Sayigh 2012). Both repertoires of resistance and configurations of power are complex and shifting within the Lebanese camps. Resistance needs to relate differently to different kinds of power ( Lilja and Vinthagen 2014). One example is how the governance of populations and life (biopower) operates through humanitarian aid carried out in the refugee camps in Lebanon. Hanafi (2008) argues that the refugees—within the aid process—become depoliticized as Palestinian political subjects and made invisible as individual human beings, regarded only as bodies to be fed and sheltered. Although biopower works in a specific way within the context of Israeli occupation, we still find it relevant to turn to the reasoning by Lilja and Vinthagen (2014) as they point out how the forms of resistance that are used against biopower attempt to undermine or avoid the policies that aim to manage the population. This is, for example, done by shaping and practicing a different set of values and norms within and through subcultures. The resistance culture of sumūd could be seen as an example of this. The performance of Palestinianness as accounted for previously could be interpreted as a way the refugees refuse becoming depoliticized and insist on making themselves visible as human beings. Here the creation of semi-autonomous forms of governance run by Palestinians themselves is key (Stel 2016) in the resistance to biopower. With the help of partly autonomous institutions and the creation of their own norms guiding their society, they fundamentally undermine the external governance of their lives and culture through everyday activity ( Vinthagen 2015, Chapter 7 ).

II. Multiple and Hybrid Agents of Resistance and the Gendered Relationships of Sumud ˉ So far, we have focused on the conceptualization of acts of resistance, and how they may be clustered in repertoires, linked to configurations of power. Here we will focus on who is carrying out the actions of everyday resistance, the

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dimension of different agents and their relationships, and continue to draw on the approach taken by Hollander and Einwohner (2004) in that the interaction between the main agents is seen as crucial for the understanding of resistance. In the context of the Israel/Palestine conflict, the resisters are in most cases state-less, non-citizens, and/or refugees and displaced Palestinians in relation to the Israeli army and authorities as targets. However, the relationships between these two categories of actors are in no way simple or straightforward, and any analysis of resistance should in our view try to challenge dichotomous categorizations and any focus on one type of conflict or one set of actors (Israelis vs. Palestinians). Otherwise “resistance” will be understood too narrowly. To illustrate this point we return to the analysis by Hanafi (2008) of the multiplicity of sovereign regimes in Lebanese refugee camps. a tapestry of multiple partial sovereignties: real sovereigns like the Lebanese government or the PLO, but also phantom sovereigns like UNRWA, in addition to a web of actors who contribute to the state of exception and the suspension of laws. (91) As emphasized by Hanafi, there are several actors that create and sustain the state of exception at the camps. Stel (2016, 2017) has studied the interaction between the Popular Committees and the Lebanese state as an example of plural governance in what she calls “a hybrid political order”. She has investigated how the governance structures of the local Palestinian Popular Committees on the one hand have an informal and non-recognized status, and yet an established governance interaction with the Lebanese state. She calls the Popular Committees “twilight institutions” and suggest that they adopt the “languages of stateness” to reinforce their own authority. Although Stel does not write about resistance, her analysis of governance in hybrid contexts opens up a new understanding of resistance and its relation to the complexity of domination. Hence, a complex analysis of everyday resistance needs to attend to the process of social interaction between the different agents. How are we to understand the acts of everyday resistance practiced in a context with multiple and hybrid sovereignties and agents of resistance? While certain acts of resistance might be directed against the spatial confinement, assault, discrimination and harassment carried out by one of the “real sovereigns”, the Lebanese Government ( Peteet 2005), they at the same time are directed towards different “local sovereigns”, depending on who/which groups are acting. On the other hand, certain acts of resistance which are directed against both the “real sovereigns” and “phantom sovereigns” such as UNRWA might be led by “local sovereigns”, who in that way reinforce their positions of power. This is not only an example of the complex nature of the interactions between different types of actors, but also of the complex entanglements of power and resistance. As

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Hollander and Einwohner point out “(. . .) resistance is not always pure. That is, even while resisting power, individuals or groups may simultaneously support the structures of domination that necessitate resistance in the first place” (2004, 549). Some of them are positioned, and position themselves, in the kind of in-between positions we brought up in Chapter 6.

Everyday Resistance Practiced by Female Detainees in Israeli Prisons Everyday resistance is shaped by the intersectionality of the repression and categorizations of Palestinians. As Prins (2006) argues, in contrast to identity politics, the perspective of intersectionality not only takes into account differences between groups, but focuses on intragroup differences as well. At the same time, as we have argued earlier, intersectionality constitutes a critical alternative to additive claims in which a black woman is defined as twice as repressed as a white man (2006, 278). The different aspects of social difference should be understood as mutually constitutive, rather than additive. From a Palestinian perspective, Abdo (2014, 21) argues that racism and racialization are considered “primary constituents of the settler-colonial state: they are embedded in its structure and institutions, and especially so in its prison institution”. She argues that the Israeli state uses notions of Palestinian traditions, religion and family patriarchy to legitimize violence and dehumanization of the Palestinian political detainees, and women’s bodies and sexuality are “rendered a prime site of humiliation, subjugation and victimization” (21). In her book, Captive Revolution (2014), Abdo alleges that Palestinian female political detainees are both racially and sexually abused in Israeli prisons. In the attempt to control Palestinian female political detainees, she alleges that not only are direct acts of sexual torture used, but sexual psychological torture as well. The latter include threats to communicate fabricated stories about the female detainees’ sexuality to family members and the wider community. This is part of what is called “isqat” (literally, “downfall”) and refers to the use of the politics of sexuality—how Israel exploits the concept of honor in order to recruit Palestinians as collaborators or to create fear (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2009, 14–15). As recounted by one female prisoner, Ahlam, the female detainees use a variety of means to resist abuse (Abdo 2014). Ahlam who was 15 when she was arrested was taken from the school grounds as her school was raided. She recounts that in prison, she was repeatedly beaten. Once four female prison guards came into the prison room that she shared with several other women. They began to beat one of them and Ahlam tried to stop them by holding one of the soldiers. Afterwards she was brought to an interrogation room, where she alleges that: During interrogation, he (i.e., her interrogator, Abu-Ali) kept calling me names, and I kept throwing ones back at him. He beat me on the face

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with his huge fist. I grabbed a chair and threw it at him. He started hitting me with his fists and boots and shouting “sharmouta” (whore), and I kept responding: “I am a Palestinian munadela” (freedom fighter, article author’s translation). (Abdo 2014, 150) By talking back to the interrogator and redefining herself, Ahmal tries to resist both the racial and sexual abuse. While the Israelis define all young Palestinians as a major security risk, the meanings and subject positions facing a young Palestinian woman are different from those facing a young Palestinian man due to the way they are positioned and position themselves within a multitude of orders of domination and systems of categorization. Therefore, their everyday resistance needs to take on somewhat different forms.

Gender, Generation and Everyday Resistance In an earlier section on repertoires, we brought up how the transformation of the political terrain of Palestine during the second Intifada also transformed the relations between Palestinians, both gender relations and intergenerational relations. Johnson and Kuttab (2001) detect three linked crises in gender relations emerging from the new conditions during the second Intifada: a crisis in masculinity, a crisis in paternity, and a crisis in maternity. Even though during the first Intifada, the symbol of male resistance was the stone-throwing adolescent, with his keffiyeh (traditional Arab headdress) disguising his face, the gendered division of labor in war was in fact blurry and fluid (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2003; Foster 2011). The site of struggle was the community, its streets, neighborhoods and homes, and women participated alongside their male counterparts in the streets. Consequently, there was no clear distinction between battle-front and home-front nor between a (male) combatant and (female) non-combatant. This changed during the second Intifada as the combatant became highly defined by gender and age, excluding both women and older men. While traditional norms in Palestinian society privilege elderly men as the representative figures of the community, their age is an attribute of both social status and masculinity ( Peteet 2005). However, after the first Intifada, elderly men lost a measure of their social place to young men who were able to physically confront the occupying forces in a way the older men were not ( Peteet 1994). Heightened status was ascribed especially to the young men tortured in Israeli prisons. The respect shown in deferential gestures to the former prisoner or beaten youth marks his re-entry into society with a new status of respect and manhood ( Peteet 1994, 325). The male prototype of the second Intifada became the martyr, i.e., the one killed or sacrificed as an active participant of the Palestinian resistance, or as an innocent victim of Israeli attacks (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2003). Although women and girls are also memorialized as martyrs, the popular, archetypical

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martyrs are boys and men. In this context, women’s reproductive role as bearers of the (male) fighters was heightened and the mother of the (male) martyr (Um Al- Shaheed) became a powerful symbol of resistance. Thus, the meaning of their traditional role was simultaneously transformed and reproduced (see, e.g., Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2003). Lately, scholars of Palestinian life and identity have identified and explored intergenerational difference as a most significant issue (Ali 2012). For instance, Palestinian refugees use generation to describe their own identities, often in relation to historical events ( Richter-Devroe 2012). Thus, an analysis of everyday resistance has to place great importance on generation, and the way lived historical events have shaped each generation’s sense of identity.5 Jean-Klein (2000) shows how relationships between agents of resistance are reshaped through combinations of age and gender. She interviews younger as well as older men in 60 households in the city of Ramallah in the West Bank, discovering that while a reputation for suffering physical abuse at the hands of Israeli soldiers enhances the moral standing of the young men, the older men associate the abuse with passive reception, something which is devaluing for a man in a highly masculine culture. Furthermore, the roles of the mothers, and to a lesser extent, the sisters, become crucial in validating the prison experience of the sons and the brothers. Together they create the “heroic selves” of the young men, and strengthened by the nationalist movement, they challenge the authority of the patriarch, excluding the fathers of the household. These moral selves and resistance identities are actively produced discursively by the different agents in interaction ( Jean-Klein 2000; Moore 2007, 39–40). Women’s narratives of the suffering of their sons and the physical abuses they have endured create an account of the stoical, resisting sons. The sons are redefined as moral persons in relationship to and in dialog with mothers and sisters, who in their turn become “mothers of heroes” and “politically active girls”. It is what Jean-Klein calls a “collaborative cross-subjective exercise of self ” (2000, 102–103). It is possible to conclude that everyday resistance is dependent on the relationships involved and the interaction between agents. Resistance is as per definition relational, since it will always be in a relation to power, and therefore in a relation to those subjects that engage in power techniques. Thus, the logic and practice of everyday resistance will depend on what others do, and what others do depends on the relationships that permeate the situation in which resistance acts are played out. The previous example also shows how the intersections between heterosexual gender relations and age shape the practices of everyday resistance and are shaped by them. Through the same practices that the young Palestinian men and the mothers achieve their (very different) status as agents of resistance, the older men are marginalized. What Johnson and Kuttab (2001) call a “crisis in masculinity” could also be defined as a changing hierarchal order between different groups of men within Palestinian society in which a new hegemonic ideal of masculinity seems to have been established (see Connell 2005).

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The Role of the Observer We have earlier stressed the importance of illuminating and taking to account not only the role of the resistant actor and the target but also a possible observer, to understand the processes of resistance. Also, in the same way as we have argued that the position of those who practice resistance in relation to a target, such as the Palestinian in relation to the Israeli occupant power, never is fixed, the position of the observer also has to be defined in its specific context and set of relations and interactions. In the context of the Israeli occupation and Palestinian struggle, the international community also plays an important role for many Palestinians. In a study on Palestinian youth and resistance ( Baumung 2012), the young participants emphasize the importance for them of distancing themselves from conventional media images of Palestinian youth. When asked how they believe that the Israeli public and international community perceives them, they use terms, such as “terrorist”, “aggressive”, “frightening” and “violent” ( Baumung 2012, 47). These perceptions evoke frustration, shame, rage and resilience and influence behavior, so as to resist the stereotypes with nonviolent means, for example, through cultural activities. As one young man from Aida Camp at the West Bank says, “We need to show more accurate images of the Palestinians through the media. This is why I have taken up photography—I want to show the truth about us” ( Baumung 2012 , 47). This is an example of how the repertoires of resistance are not only shaped within the relationship between the Israelis (targets) and Palestinians (agents). Equally significant, the international community is constructed as a target as well, relative to whose interpretative horizon all acts of resistance should be scripted. In both its roles, as observer and target, the international community plays an important role in inf luencing what forms of resistance will be practiced. At the heart of the thesis, Palestinian University Students Narrating Life Under Occupation (Phoenix 2016), is the assumption that the participants’ narratives ref lect their motivations for participating in the research. Phoenix argues that some of the participants tried to encourage support for international resistance efforts through their participation, and that for most of the participants it was important “to convey their resolute steadfastness to an international audience” (223). This production of knowledge about sumūd could possibly be said to serve as a way to give legitimacy to and to reinforce certain practices/actions. Thus, a key point is that while the observer might try to be neutral and noninterfering, that is often not the case. If participants are aware of observers they made into audiences, then the observers become part of the interaction process of everyday resistance. This is particularly important to understand in a context like Palestine. Since Palestinians are severely dominated by the much more powerful Israeli force they have to take the role of third actors or audiences into account to have a stronger impact on the situation.

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III. The Spatialization of Everyday Resistance—Israeli Policies as Spatial Dominance and the Practice of Resistance in and Through Space We will now move on from the agents, their actions and their relationships to each other, to highlight what we have argued is fundamental to the understanding of resistance repertoires and power configurations, as well as the understanding of relationships of agents: namely, the dimension of space. Israeli policies have been analyzed predominantly as a policies of spatial control, for example, in terms of “enclavization” and “bantustanization” ( Richter-Devroe 2010). The militarization of Palestinian space is a widely used tactic of the Israeli military and is reflected in the hundreds of military checkpoints, attacks on Palestinian educational institutions and house demolitions. The concept of a third space has been used by several researchers to analyze everyday resistance among Palestinian people for example Ozguc (2010). We here use it primarily to illuminate and capture the character of ambivalence of the Palestinian refugee camp. Being a “space of exception” does not preclude being at the same time “a space of resistance”, a political space. Remaining in the refugee camps, maintaining life and continuing to reside in it, despite the destruction, violence and massacres, are expressions of resistance ( Jamal and Sandor 2010), what Richter-Devroe (2010, 2011) defines as a practice of sumūd. We believe the concept of a third space captures the camp as being an in-between space, a space of ambiguity. The notion of “homo sacer” as a passive state is then here replaced with a notion of passive and active/resistive deviations.

The House as a Third Space in a Refugee Camp “The attack on the Palestinian home is a deliberate strategy of war . . . It leads to changing gendered roles and intergenerational confrontations, and shakes social values” (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2010a, 12). While the power of Israel is primarily of spatial character, the resistance of the Palestinians is also consequently of spatial character. The heart of sumūd is described as being “steadfast on the land”. Studies regarding the resistance of Palestinian women emphasize the theme of space and land, some of them particularly highlight the significance of the house ( Lentin 2011, 6). As pointed out by Lentin (2011), even though Palestinian women are particularly at risk for evictions and house demolitions, they are also agents of resistance. Based on fieldwork carried out in 2004 in the Dheishe camp in the West Bank, Gren (2009) analyzes how the Palestinian family house in the context of the second Intifada becomes a politicized space, and how the women practice resistance in and through that space. Facing the increasing number of arrests carried out in the camp, as well as searches and frequent threats of demolition,

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often at night with only minutes to leave: “Such trespassing of boundaries and encounters with representatives of the occupation in people’s homes mean that home offers no real security for people in Dheishe (. . .)” (141). However, Gren argues, the home may not only be an arena for fear and humiliation, it may also be a place for the development of feelings of empowerment. One of the women in the camp, Umm Mustafa, regularly spoke about events that she had experienced during the first uprising (Intifada) when her husband had been working abroad and she lived with their children and other women in an extended family. On a number of occasions, she had fought soldiers with her bare hands in or nearby her home to save one of her children from being arrested or harmed. One day her oldest son, 14 years old at the time, was chased by Israeli soldiers and had run into the house, and to the bedroom, to hide. The women had protected the boy from the soldiers with their own bodies. Even though the boy was captured in the end, arrested and badly beaten, and even though she had also been overpowered the other times she tried to defend her children, some kind of empowerment arose: Her resistance of the soldiers, however futile, gave Umm Mustafa a sense of empowerment in the face of their invasion of her home. In her narrative, she reframed her limited ability to stop the invasion of her home as well as her family’s suffering into acts of resistance and means of coping. . . . (Gren 2009, 144) Gren’s analysis illustrates the spatiality of a particular repertoire of everyday resistance: sumūd, and some of the practices of sumūd carried out by an actor (mothers) in relation to a target (Israeli soldiers), given a particular meaning by being carried out in the Palestinian home. The analysis may also be linked to the dimension of race. While (white) feminist work often views public space as the space of liberation for women, of freedom of movement and action, as opposed to the private (home) which has been constructed as a space of confinement and limitation, bell hooks (1990) offers another perspective. She argues that since (white) public space can be very hostile to African-Americans (men as well as women), the home can be an important site of resistance. Here, African-Americans might restore their dignity that is denied in the public, white world, and home becomes in this way a political space. This argument has high relevance in the Palestine/Israel context, especially considering the increasing marginalization of women in public, militarized space during the second Intifada ( Johnson and Kuttab 2001). The position from which women act is marginal, however, their acts of everyday resistance carried out within and through the house not only dissolve the dualism between public/private, political/non-political, but also the dualism of combatant/non-combatant. This is also an argument that Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2010a) brings forward when she discusses how feminist methodologies in conf lict zones must be

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attentive to the meaning that certain spaces carry, such as the meaning of the home space. While she does recognize that the home for some Palestinian women might be experienced as a site of oppression and subordination, “it is also the only space that affirms their humanity in an otherwise inhumane and brutal global and local contexts” (10). Important is that the home does not become only a site for personal development but a space of political resistance and agency. Following in the footsteps of hooks, Shalhoub-Kevorkian also points out the home as a space where women “restore their dignity”. Using the third space concept to analyze the spatialized resistance practiced by Palestinian women, we suggest that the house is created as a third space, in the meaning of Bhabha, an ambivalent, in-between space. The house as a third space simultaneously offers possibilities of both oppression and empowerment. It is produced as a space of movement that dissolves the dualism of private and public, of politics and non-politics, of power and resistance, and becomes a site of struggles for meaning and representation. The house temporarily becomes a site in, and through, which there are ambiguities introduced into the seemingly fixed identities of Israeli soldier and Palestinian woman/mother. Umm Mustafa’s house was invaded by military force, her and her children’s lives were threatened, but she stayed put, defended her son with her own body, positioning herself as an agent. Overall, we find the concept of a third space clearly fruitful in identifying and analyzing the spatialization of everyday resistance within the Palestinian refugee camp. This also serves as an argument against the dichotomization made by Agamben that life in camps is depoliticized to the point of “bare life” and that the Palestinian refugees are reduced to beings without agency. Agamben’s denial of resistance and agency is only possible if one ignores everyday resistance.

The Body as a Third Space Finally, the third space concept might also be used in analyzing the gendered body as both a space of control as well as of resistance. As we have seen earlier in the chapter, Abdo (2014) describes how Palestinian female political detainees resist sexual abuse. She argues that some of the women use the knowledge of how the Israelis treat their bodies as tools to force them to submit, to turn their own bodies into sites of resistance. Halema “A” is one of them, and she alleges: In one session of interrogation when the interrogator said ‘I will fuck you now’ I was wearing pants and a shirt. I unbuttoned my shirt and told him ‘Do what you wish’. Deep inside me I knew they were exploiting our traditional values and playing on the issue of sexuality. I basically wanted

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to give him a clear message that his threats did not frighten me and that I knew what his intentions were. (Abdo 2014, 173) Thus, Halema “A” shows clearly that not even the threat of rape will give the interrogator control and make her submissive. Halema “A”’s resistance is an example of embodied resistance—a term that, as we have suggested earlier, illuminates how bodies “talk back” to power (Shinko 2012) and how the body is risked and sacrificed in the resistance. Feminist research on rape identifies plentiful strategies and tactics of resistance: physical resistance, talking to the offender, trying to alert others, doing the unexpected, mental/inner resistance and dissociation ( Jordan 2008). The mental/inner resistance has been highlighted by Hollander (2005), who distinguishes between cognitive resistance (as when women reinterpret sexual violence as an attempt to subdue their politics and think of different alternatives and strategies to protect themselves) and emotional resistance (as when women primarily protect a significant “inner” part of themselves). Halema “A” both talks to the offender, doing the unexpected, and practices mental/inner resistance. However, her acts are part of a repertoire of everyday resistance, shaped and used in context of being a female Palestinian detainee in an Israeli prison. In this context sexual violence is not only normalized and an everyday routine, but deployed by the Israelis as a well-thought-out strategy to compromise the “honor and purity” of female prisoners in order to undermine Palestinian family and society (see Abdo 2014, 180). When a politically-aware Palestinian woman understands how sexual violence is used as a political tool of repression, it can help her to resist its political aim, making her an even more committed Palestinian nationalist. Further, we suggest that Halema “A” creates her body as a third space of ambivalence. In using the third space in this context we also wish to once again emphasize and highlight how power and resistance are interwoven rather than separate. The moment when Halema “A” unbuttons her blouse might be interpreted as the moment in which the discourse of colonial, male authority loses its undisputable claim to meaning. As Halema herself explains she sends the interrogator “a clear message”. We do not suggest that the power relations are reversed, nor that Halema “A” was able to avoid being raped or sexually abused in other ways at the next interrogation. Because if the threat of rape does not force Halema “A” into submission, the interrogator has to come up with another way to control her, maybe through physical violence? As we have stated elsewhere, the tactics of the weak often only work temporarily. Nevertheless, for a moment, Halema “A” creates her own body as a (temporary) third space of movement in / during which the positions between the colonizer/ man/interrogator and colonized/woman/detainee are not fixed, but rather

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ambiguous. Drawing on Mitra (2015), we also find it fruitful to conceptualize third space in this situation as an “embodied and lived condition”. Leaving the specific case of Halema “A”, we note that while the beaten and tortured bodies of the female detainees became symbols of dishonor, the beaten and tortured bodies of male detainees became symbols of maturity and honor. As Peteet argues in “Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian Intifada: A Cultural Politics of Violence” (2005), for shabab (young men), the detention and beating were interpreted by the community as a rite of passage into adult-male-hood, as an act of resistance. It has been pointed out earlier that increased militarization during the second Intifada changed relationships within the Palestinian society, and formed, in Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s words, “increased religious, conservative, and patriarchal modes of resistance” (2009, 19). In fact, the new position of power of the young man, the shabab, had some devastating consequences for Palestinian women. As the shabab launched a campaign to establish a “proper code of morality”, the abuse of women increased and women were accused of dishonoring their society and therefore killed (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2009, 18). Thus, to conclude, the strategy of resistance exercised by Halema “A” as she turns her body into a site of resistance and refuses to submit to the threat of rape, does not only challenge Israeli power, it also challenges the patriarchal power of Palestinian society. Her embodied resistance challenges the militarized sexual abuse and gendered spatial control and domination carried out by both Israel and the Palestinian resistance movement. The way we conceptualize the spatialization of everyday resistance allows us to analyze everyday resistance as structured by sites and places. Basically, we argue that resistance is always situated somewhere in socialized space, whether it is a refugee camp, a house, or the body; space matters. We also want to point out that in both these examples vulnerability can be seen as a resource in the practice of resistance, and as part of “it’s very meaning” (Butler, Gambetti, and Sabsay 2016, 1). Umm Mustafa and Halema “A” both practice what Butler calls “forms of nonviolent resistance that mobilizes vulnerability for the purposes of asserting existence, claiming the right to public space, equality, and opposing police, security, and military actions” ( Butler 2016, 26). It is even possible to argue that the mobilization of vulnerability is characteristic of nonviolent resistance ( Vinthagen 2015, 18–20). However, while Butler primarily refers to nonviolent resistance in the form of organized political actions, Umm Mustafa’s and Halema “A”’s way of using their bodies is part of a repertoire of resistance practiced by a collective, their acts are at the same time individual and nonorganized acts of resistance. Now, we will attend to the fourth and final category in our proposed framework: temporalization of everyday resistance, as connected to the Palestinian context.

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IV. “Racialized Time” in Palestine/Israel and the Temporalization of Sumud ˉ As stated in the previous chapter, the spatialization is intertwined with a process of temporalization of social reality. This is clear when we look at sumūd. To be steadfast on the land is also, logically, a temporal idea: to stay on the land over a long time. While the “spatialization” of control and resistance has been investigated in plenty of interesting studies, time is still under-investigated both with regard to power and resistance. Let us return to the colonial setting of the Israel occupation, an area of study in which there are obvious possibilities for linking time, space, power and resistance. In Surveillance and Control in Palestine/Israel (2011), Zureik argues that it is important to study the relationship between surveillance and time: “An ontological feature that is overlooked in the study of surveillance, especially in colonial settings is the ability to inject racialism and affect one’s mastery and use of time” (17). Israeli control of Palestinian use of time and space is legitimized and carried out in the form of closures, curfews, checkpoints, the “separation wall”, restrictions of mobility and land use. As anthropologist Peetet argues: “(. . .) time, like space has been critical to colonial rule in Palestine” (2008). She tells stories of mobility constrained and denied on a daily basis, with prolonged waiting and repeated delays, of trips that before took a couple of hours and now take a day or more or do not happen at all. Palestinians are forced to wait at numerous checkpoints before being granted or refused permission to pass, in any case, without an explanation. As one Palestinian man expresses it ( Peteet 2008): “They are stealing our time. Everything takes so long”. Peteet posits that Palestinians and Israelis occupy different time/space zones defined by walls, checkpoints, bypass roads and permit systems and concludes: “Hierarchy is thus written in both time and space” (2008). Political scientist Jamal has proposed the concept of “racialized time” as a characterization of Israel’s differential treatment of its Palestinian citizens and those who live in the OPT ( Jamal in Zureik 2011, 18). According to Jamal, one way Israel is marginalizing both groups of the Palestinians is by seizing control over their time. The Zionist narrative represents time in the Jewish experience as dynamic and eternal, while Palestinian time becomes socially constructed as empty, static and discontinuous. Israeli and Jewish time becomes distinguished from Palestinian time by deployment of methods aiming to “suppress, block, delay or keep still Palestinian time”. “Palestinian space shrinks, time slows and mobility is constrained while Israeli occupiers on the other hand have freedom of movement and expansion through space and control of time” (Peteet in Zureik 2011, 18). Several scholars have also pointed out that life in refugee camps means living the present time as a “time within time” in contrast to the “normal time” of non- refugees (Schiocchet 2012).

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That is, the present is a disturbance of the normal historical development of the Palestinian nation, since it does not allow Palestinians to live the plenitude of their Palestinianness. Only in the future, when a corrective measure resets the national calendar, will Palestinian time be back to normal and Palestinians will be allowed to be Palestinians again as they once were (before 1948) (Schiocchet 2012 , 79).

The Temporalization of Sumud—Past, ˉ Present and Future As we discussed earlier, temporalization of everyday resistance may be about creating and embodying a different or alternative conception of and relation to time than the dominant one: for example “queer time” in non-heteronormative subcultures (Freeman 2005; Halberstam 2005). While we at this point are not able to fully grasp or analyze a conception of “Palestinian time” connected to sumūd as a repertoire of everyday resistance, we wish to point out that these repertoires always have a temporal aspect. Included in sumūd are forms of experiencing and remembering that are made invisible and are marginalized by dominant discourses, what Foucault defines as “subjugated knowledges” (Medina 2011). Memory is part of sumūd, for example remembering the names of the cities, villages, streets and places that now have Hebrew names, can preserve Palestinian identity and history ( Van Teeffelen, Biggs, and The Sumud Story House in Betlehem 2011). This is an example of practices of remembering as resistance, creating “counterhistory” and “counter-memory” (Medina 2011). Schiocchet (2012) identifies a Palestinian time conception made up of several elements, the two fundamentals being the notion of “Al-Nakba”, as a mythologized event, stating the origins of Palestinian refugeeness, and Al-’Awda (the return). The Palestinians share a common commitment to search for the living of ideal Palestinianness that can be found in a future—a future that includes a return to a past as it was before the Nakba (the catastrophe). Taking his point of departure in the conception of the “tempo of daily life”, Schiocchet (2012) elaborates on the ritual properties of this “tempo”, which are seen in the pace, the context and the daily rhythm of everyday life. Camp life follows a calendar divided by fixed yearly celebrations, frequent national events and personal celebrations: birthdays, marriages, and funerals. All these celebrations are marked by ubiquitous symbols of Palestinianness, such as the Palestinian flag, images of the fighter and the martyr, the key and the map of Palestine. This ritualization of daily life, he argues, is the most pervasive “instilment and spreading of Sumud within the refugee camps, and its frequent attribution as a measure of Palestinianness” (2012, 75). Although Schiocchet’s analysis is fascinating and valuable, he regards sumūd more as a practice of coping with an existential condition aimed at maintaining a Palestinian identity, rather than (also) being a repertoire of resistance. He argues that it is the experience of

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living in “time within time” that compels the refugees in a collective manner to articulate and rearticulate their existential condition and ritualize their quotidian routines (Schiocchet 2012). However, these practices may also be understood as everyday resistance. Scholars such as Hammami (2005) and Richter-Devroe (2010) have pointed out that some years ago a “new” type of sumūd became noticeable. RichterDevroe has noted these “new” practices among the women she studied from Ramallah who, in their defiance “not to be locked up in Ramallah”, instead embark on unpredictable trips through the West Bank ( Richter-Devroe 2010, 26). As she emphasizes, these acts of resistance are not only directed against and restricted by Israeli control of time and movement, but also shaped by and shaping internal Palestinian power structures. During the first Intifada, women were expected to suspend all enjoyment and sacrifice their social lives for the national cause. Today, women are increasingly insisting on the right to have leisure time and to “have fun” ( Richter-Devroe 2009). Thus, again, it is in the steadfastness, the sumūd repertoire, that we can see both the spatialization and temporalization of everyday resistance, and also how this resistance is gendered. Even so, for many of the young Palestinians, resistance cannot be “only” about keeping up a sense of normality in everyday life, but also needs to be about creating a future. Both children and young people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, particularly young women, stress the role of education in promoting their ability to survive the effects of militarization (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2010b). As Afnan, a 15-year-old female student in the OPT explains: All they want is to imprison us, close our schools, block us from reaching our universities, and for Palestinian youth, educational institutions are the only source of support and solidarity. To summarize it to you, all they want is for us to die, slow death. (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2010b, 13) To attend school and finish education despite all the numerous obstacles is a way of performing everyday resistance and being steadfast. Not only do they resist restrictions on movement but also the slowing down of their time, the shrinking of their time horizons and the denial of a future. Their way of insisting on building a future for themselves and the Palestinian nation and to promote hope and life is a way of defeating the politics of death practiced by the Israeli occupation. As a young Palestinian woman in the West Bank says: “Ambition is a way of coping and adapting. The occupation wants youth to give up, get depressed, stop being productive and stay in the house. No. We cannot fall victim to this. Create anything!” ( Baumung 2012 , 78). Everyday acts of being productive and creative, are defined as resisting the occupation. Some activist projects in Israel/Palestine involve a profound transformation of everyday life in a way that embodies a future-oriented temporality. Both

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the bi-national organization Combatants for Peace that mobilizes ex-soldiers from the Israeli military and Palestinian former armed fighters in a nonviolent struggle for peace and justice and the intentional community of Israelis and Palestinians, that live together in the village of Wahat al-Salam—Neve Shalom, form a kind of “utopian enactment” ( Vinthagen 2015, chap. 6) of everyday resistance in a violent conf lict filled with hate rhetoric, enemy images and militarist discourse. By nonviolently living together and working for social change, these Israelis and Palestinians embody and literally show that a peaceful co-existence is possible. In this way their everyday behavior is enacting the utopian vision here and now. Part of the repertoire of sumūd is also to imagine a future Palestine. Returning to Muñoz’s theorization of queer utopia, it is about potentiality and futurity, and “a moment when the here and the now is transcended by a then and a there that could be and indeed should be” (2009, 97). As Aisha, a young Palestinian girl answers when being asked by a researcher about her picture of a future Palestine: I want, I want to see Palestine one time like this. Err . . . It’s free, roads can go anywhere without having any checkpoint and so on. You can reach the sea that you can’t reach now. And all people from all religions are living beside each other in peace. They are living a peaceful life. You can go to anywhere without having any checkpoints, without seeing any wall. (Phoenix 2016, 310–311) As a reminder of the role of the observer, Phoenix (2016) highlights how the narrative by Aisha, as well as other narratives by young Palestinians, implicitly suggests that participating in research destined for a foreign audience is part of their efforts to help secure a “different future”. Hence, giving the interview to a researcher becomes an active part of resisting Israeli necropolitics, aimed to deprive Palestinian youth dreaming of and living in a future Palestine. In the next and final section, we put forward examples of sumūd where the intertwining of several dimensions is visible.

The Combined Dimensions of Sumud—The ˉ Practice of Sumud ˉ at the Checkpoints Previously, we cited Aisha, who dreams of a future Palestine without the wall and the checkpoint system—mechanisms of surveillance and control that are at the heart of Israeli spatial domination and the everyday reality of occupation. The systems of checkpoints are organized around and exercised through configurations of sovereign power, disciplinary power and biopower (and necropower). This might be illustrated by the combination of constant militarized threats at checkpoints, the need to learn elaborate behavior rules if you want to pass through the system successfully and the demographic knowledge

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generated by information gathered from the thousands of Palestinians passing through every day (information on persons, fingerprints, times, places, CCTV images and documents are stored in databases and utilized for control management of the population, i.e. “biopower”). However, the repertoires of resistance to these power configurations are also equally complex and plentiful. They include strategies and techniques of conventional resistance which are organized, formal, and with clear intentions, but also, many are informal and without clear political goals. Hammami (2010), who has carried out extensive studies of life at the checkpoints, identifies micro strategies of resistance that she calls “the individualized psychological strategies”. Such strategies are applied, for example, in the moment of actual interaction with Israeli soldiers—at the identity card check. As she emphasizes, this situation is characterized by “arbitrariness and potential for violence” (48). There is no way for the commuters standing in line to predict what mood the soldiers will be in or how long it will take, nor to control what will happen around them. They are essentially powerless and have no real possibility of developing a collective strategy. This is the extremely charged moment when as a single individual you are confronted with the bare face of the occupation and it becomes embodied in a person, a soldier who has immense power over your immediate destiny. ( Hammami 2010, 48) Two of the “micro-strategies” Hammani identifies are: “I never take out my I.D. card—I always make them ask for it” and “I take my I.D. card out before they have a chance to ask for it” (48). Neither of these two opposing strategies is organized, formalized, nor a conscious effort to promote change, but rather, they are informal, subtle and individual strategies to indirectly challenge the control exercised by the Israeli soldier in that specific situation. It is here, in this moment of interaction between pure power and powerlessness that we see individual subjectivity at play in attempting to recode the dynamics and meaning of the interaction and take back some sense of control and its correlate—dignity. ( Hammami 2010, 48) These strategies are part of the repertoire of sumūd that has developed within and out of the particular circumstances of the Israeli/Palestine conflict. They are also shaped by the different social positions of the commuters/actors that pass, such as class, gender, age and sexuality. Hammami (2010) defines young Palestinian men as the category of commuters holding the least favorable position in negotiation with the Israeli soldiers. Not only are they considered by

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Israeli soldiers as potentially the most dangerous, but their norms of masculinity are in opposition with the patient and submissive role that has to be taken in relation to the soldiers. This is a valid explanation for why the Palestinian male body is exposed to particularly humiliating and terrorizing checkpoint surveillance, which among other things includes forced nudity (Hochberg 2010, 81). However, as Puar argues in Terrorist Assemblages, the Muslim man defined as terrorist is racialized as well as sexualized: “Muslim masculinity is simultaneously pathologically excessive yet repressive, perverse yet homophobic, virile yet emasculated, monstrous yet f laccid” (2007, xxv). Thus, one question to attend to is how male-identified Palestinian bodies that might be defined as “perverse” and/or “emasculated” are treated by the Israeli soldiers at the check points, as well as elsewhere. In an attempt to queer the checkpoint system, it is argued that it is a mechanism to control and prevent both “sexual deviance” and transgressions of ethnic and national borders (Hochberg 2010). Ritchie (2015) points out that most queer Palestinians account for their experiences at checkpoints (and with Israeli police and soldiers generally) in consistently negative terms. Their queerness seems to “constitute an additional source of abuse” (624). One Palestinian gay man tells about how: “Every time I cross a roadblock, even the women soldiers ask me if I am gay. Once she asked me in Arabic in front of my mother. After that she let me pass” (623, emphasis added). According to Hammami (2010, 48–49), the more assertive (or covert) strategies at the checkpoint, such as engaging in verbal interaction and even arguing with the soldiers, are used only by certain groups of commuters who can take the risk, such as Palestinians with Jerusalem identity cards, who, in principle, always are allowed to cross, and particularly older professional women. As one of these women explains: “I always take the opportunity to argue with them, tell them what they’re doing is inhumane—I don’t want them for a moment to feel that what they’re doing is right or normal” ( Hammami 2010, 49). This can be viewed as an example of “talking back” ( hooks 1989), as everyday resistance by groups or individuals. In the context of the Israeli checkpoints, this technique is given a specific meaning. To talk back becomes a part of the particular repertoire of everyday resistance of being steadfast. In her exploration of the everyday resistance enacted against this checkpoint regime, Hammami (2005) also attends to the practical organization of life at the checkpoints. As she posits, the checkpoint system makes life difficult in many ways. Apart from making it difficult and sometimes impossible for people, goods and services to reach their destinations—they also break “the myriad circuits through which a host of social and economic relations flow in order to make life possible” (18). To be able to survive, these circuits have had to be continuously reconstructed. In the absence of strong organizations, networks of informal sector workers with skills and motivation have stepped in and created their own transportation system; the Ford transit van drivers—the

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men driving the “mini-buses”—become the backbone of public transportation in Palestine. They represent “aza’r” or thuggishness, what Hammami (19) describes as a “constant force of resistance”, not only a necessary means of practical organization in the military environment of checkpoints. While there is some debate whether or not these drivers are actually complicit with the Israeli army, rather than resisting them, Hammami defines this group of “subproletariat” as a symbol of a new steadfastness, sumūd, after the second Intifada. Whether this would be considered true today, after more than a decade, is doubtful. Nevertheless, considered a menace on the roads and lawbreakers during normal times, Hammami convincingly argues that the drivers’ anarchic, semi-criminal bravado subculture (exemplified by the ubiquitous Nike “No Fear” stickers they place on their back windshields) became a testament to the ethic of getting through anything, past anything and to anywhere despite all obstacles (18). This practice of sumūd represents a somewhat different “life must go on” approach, compared to “remaining on the land”. It is about refusing to be enclosed, but also a refusal of being slowed down, thus in our perspective, a practice of resistance clearly related to both space and time. While the consequences of the first Intifada destroyed businesses and workplaces, and closed down universities and schools, this time there is a collective commitment to keeping everything open and to go on with life. “Sumūd has become about resisting immobility, the locking down of one’s community, and refusing the impossibility of reaching one’s school or job”. It is “an individually-achieved daily resistance of simply getting there” (Hammami www.jerusalemquarterly. org). From what we are able to gather, the approaches of “remaining on the land” and “life must go on” are not contradictory or mutually exclusive but are rather practiced simultaneously. We will end this section by bringing up research by Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2015) on biopolitical violence against Palestinian women in occupied East Jerusalem. Through interviews with the women on their experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, she highlights the terror and hardship linked to the navigation through and within militarized spaces and explores how colonial power is “inscripted” onto their birthing bodies. The majority of the women interviewed had experienced that their movement was restricted during pregnancy and had feared, among other things, being forced to wait at checkpoints, not being able to get medical attention in time and at risk of losing their child. As twenty-nine-year-old Aida tells the researcher: At the checkpoint they questioned my pain . . . do you think they count us as humans? To question my pain, when I am wet . . . all wet . . . and they can see it . . . my water broke, the baby is drying up. . . . They just look at us . . . they have stopped [thinking of ] us as humans . . . we are all imprisoned . . . we were held at the checkpoint without anyone even

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looking us in the face, talking to us . . . they did not talk, touch or look at us . . . as if we are animals. . . . (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2015) Drawing on Mbembe’s notion of necropolitics, Shalhoub-Kevorkian argues that the women are subjected to settler-colonial thinking and logic which determines who will live and who will die. She contends that the Israeli state’s strong interest in controlling women’s time and spaces, is directly motivated by the biopolitical project of decreasing Palestinian births in Jerusalem. However, the women also tell narratives of resistance, about how they choose to unveil to pass through a heavily militarized area and how they borrow their sisters’ IDs to cross a checkpoint to get to where they need to be. Aida tells a dramatic story of how she stopped herself from giving birth until she reached the hospital in Jerusalem, where her newborn could be granted a Jerusalem resident card. She concludes: You might think I am crazy . . . but it is better to take the bus, wait at the checkpoints, be humiliated on the way, be threatened by their rif les, be worried and scared . . . it is better to go through all this than to end up having a child who is undocumented, unrecognized, and most of all deprived of his family, his support, his eizwi [extended community’s support]. . . . What do I feel? I feel tired, happy, sad, terrorized by their policies and threats . . . but I also feel like I did it. (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2015) As a Palestinian birthing woman Aida resisted Israeli necropolitics with all the tactics she could come up with. To borrow Abraham’s expression “bio-political force of resistance”, which he applies to the suicide bomber who uses his/her body as a weapon to produce death (2014, 119), Aida’s actions, as well as the actions of other Palestinian birthing women, might be understood as a nonviolent version of a biopolitical force of resistance, using their bodies as weapons to celebrate and produce life. Despite the lack of control over her movements, the forced waiting at the checkpoints, the direct violence and the intense fear she felt, Aida reached her goal. Through a myriad of acts of resistance, she managed to give birth, in a place in which her child would be granted an existence and future. She was practicing steadfastness, as “simply getting there” and also “remaining on the land”, in the sense of remaining alive herself and protecting the life she was carrying. She “did it”. In our application of the suggested framework on sumūd, the concept for Palestinian everyday resistance, in the context of Palestine/Israel, it has, we think, been possible to show how everyday resistance needs to be understood in its historic and dynamic relation with contextual configurations of power(s). Simultaneously, we have shown how the combination of time and space matters

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in terms of how everyday resistance is articulated. Our choice of case has a pedagogic value, since it is perhaps an unusually clear example of the interplay of the four dimensions. There are a number of issues that have been touched upon that need further examination. One of them is to further explore the different types of sumūd that emerge in relation to the configurations of power. Another is the challenge of understanding the acts of everyday resistance practiced in a context with multiple and hybrid sovereignties and multiple and hybrid agents of resistance. Yet another would be to analyze the resistance culture of sumūd as it creates and queers time and space, that is, departing from the broad definition of queer. A significant issue that we have not touched upon at all in this text is how sumūd, as a certain repertoire of resistance, also has become the norm in the context of the Israeli/Palestinian conf lict, and hence, also could serve as an example of how power and resistance are entangled. As posited by Phoenix (2016), by performing sumūd you are being accorded a higher status as Palestinian. In her analysis of narratives by young Palestinians Phoenix distinguishes between narratives that express a commitment to remaining in Palestine, to stay put, and others that express a desire to leave Palestine, or where Palestinians said they were thinking about leaving because of the effect of the occupation on their lives, societal factors and/or personal aspirations. She argues that by expressing a desire to leave Palestine, the narrators’ claims to Palestinian belonging are questioned. Thus, sumūd might also be used as means of control and exclusion. We suggest that research on the kinds of daily resistance practices that are included in the repertoire of sumūd is so limited that we are only at the outset of understanding the extent of this daily and silent, anti-colonial struggle. Future research has the potential to reveal much more of this informal, individualized myriad of activities, and eventually also assess its cumulative impact on the occupation. The gains for those individuals practicing sumūd might be very limited, temporal and partial. Nonetheless, their resistance makes them into active citizens in a situation where overwhelming occupation forces strive to achieve pacification. Their self-empowerment in a situation of daily humiliation and dehumanization is in itself a victory.

Notes 1. Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation is usually understood within the framework of two major “uprisings”: the first (1987–1991) and second (2001–2003) “Intifada”. 2. The 1948–1949 Arab-Israeli War resulted in the displacement of more than 750,000 Palestine refugees ( Bohman 1991) By 2005, this population had grown to more than 4.4 million. During the 1967 war, Israel occupied the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip (occupied Palestinian territory—OPT). 3. The concept sumūd was coined at an Arab conference in 1978 as a fund was set up to support those who were steadfast in Palestine ( Van Teeffelen 2006).

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4. Sayigh (2012) finds that in her research among Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, the category of “refugee” has an ambivalent significance. Some Palestinians reject the term refugee altogether as humiliating, but others argue that it signifies that they belong in Palestine and not in Lebanon. 5. The generation of those who experienced the Nakba (as young adolescents or children) call themselves jeel al-nakba (the Nakba generation), while the subsequent generation, given the prominent role of the PLO and the Resistance from the 1960s to the 1980s, is often referred to as jeel al-thawra (the generation of the Revolution), particularly in Lebanon. In the West Bank, those who were active as youth and young adults in the first Intifada, are often called jeel al-intifada (the Intifada generation) ( Richter-Devroe 2012).

CONCLUSION Towards a Transdisciplinary Social Science Analysis of Everyday Resistance

We have assessed the existing literature on everyday resistance and distilled a robust and productive definition and set of core theoretical propositions about everyday resistance. And we have developed a systematic analytical framework that can guide research, suitable for different contexts and types of everyday resistance, which we also demonstrated through the help of a case study of Palestinian everyday resistance (sumūd). All of this is suitable for dealing with the existing literature in this emerging field, as well as in the orientation within other fields relevant to a broader understanding of everyday resistance. In this concluding chapter we make a summary of and ref lections on the core findings of our exploration of everyday resistance, and we discuss the theoretical challenges or remaining questions with which future research needs to deal.

Our Core Findings Literature Overview It has become clear from our literature review of the field of everyday resistance that despite a high number of studies within a wide range of research areas that “everyday resistance” is still under-researched. There are for example very few studies that take an interest in how everyday resistance varies between contexts, how it connects to collective actions or social movement activism, how it might scale-up and spread, how it impacts social change, etc. Furthermore, there is no agreement on the available definitions of the phenomenon, such that different authors discuss very different kinds of practices under the same name, creating very different categories of “everyday resistance”, or, in the worst case, not being explicit about their own use of the concept.

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And, perhaps most problematic, the range of theories is very limited. While all refer to the founding perspectives of Scott, there is no agreement on which other theories are relevant alternatives or supplements. Also, the self-awareness of the field as a field is weak. This makes it more individual which theoretical assumptions or perspectives a certain author will relate to, which in turn makes the communication within the field weak. Thus, there is very little of interrogation of models, perspectives, findings, or concepts, or dialogue between authors writing on the same subject. Some will discuss Scott, Gramsci and E. P. Thompson and relate to a Marxist discussion of hegemony, others will discuss Scott and Bayat and their different approaches to “the poor”, while yet others will relate Scott to “Subaltern studies” (Spivak, Guha, etc.) or peasant studies. Since Scott himself does not discuss Foucault, there is a whole world of discussions related to everyday forms of resistance where poststructuralists engage with the subject of everyday resistance without relating to Scott at all (see, e.g., Butler, Zizek, Hardt and Negri). At the same time, those within cultural studies inspired by de Certeau will discuss almost the identical concepts (such as “tactics of the weak”) without even being aware of Scott and “everyday resistance”, while Scott himself builds heavily on de Certeau. Note that we do not think disagreement or difference are problematic, quite the opposite, they are part of a healthy research environment. But lack of communication, translation between theoretical strands and awareness of each other, are a problem. It makes higher quality research more difficult. Therefore, our conclusion is that the “field” of everyday resistance is fragmented and loosely connected, where different related sub-fields have very little of communication and exchange of discussions. Basically, the field of everyday resistance is still emerging, despite Scott’s pioneering work in the 1980s. This book is one attempt to create more interdisciplinary dialogue, particularly with the poststructuralist traditions. The interdisciplinary and international peer-reviewed Journal of Resistance Studies is another key attempt to create a self-ref lective and self-conscious field of research. Yet another is the global Resistance Studies Network (www.resistancestudies.org). We think transdisciplinary communication is necessary since it would be mutually beneficial to have more interaction between disciplines and fields engaging with similar phenomena. It would create more theoretical variation for researchers, more critical ref lections on taken-for-granted assumptions about everyday resistance and more systematic research. And, it would make comparative case studies more likely, something that is almost totally lacking.

Theoretical Framework Based on our readings we have drawn out a couple of core components of our own theoretical position regarding everyday resistance. We have tried to take up key contributions from different authors within the field, as we understand it (mainly Scott, de Certeau, Bayat and Foucault). From this we have developed a position regarding the definition and the phenomenon of everyday resistance

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that we hope can serve as a bridge between different theoretical traditions, particularly those that subscribe to the neo-Marxist and peasant focused approach of Scott, and those that build on a Foucaultian poststructuralist approach. We also hope to bridge to urban studies of the poor in line with Bayat, and cultural studies of subversive tactics in the tradition of de Certeau. Our proposal is to understand “everyday resistance” as resistance that is: (1) done in a regular way, occasionally politically intended but typically nonpolitically intended as needs- or desire-oriented, habitual or semi-conscious; (2) in a non-confrontational, non-dramatic, or non-recognized way that (has the potential to) undermine some power relation, without revealing itself (concealing or disguising either the actor or the act), or by being defined by hegemonic discourse as “non-political” or otherwise not politically relevant; and is (3) done by individuals, or small or loose groupings without a formal leadership or organization, but typically encouraged or motivated/informed by some community norms, subcultural attitude or “hidden transcript”. Therefore, everyday resistance is a matter of mundane forms of scattered and regular resistance with a potential to undermine power without being understood as resistance (or without the actors being detected). Everyday resistance is a different kind of resistance compared to more sustained, organized and political resistance, but might be utilized by the same actors at other times or in other spaces and relations.1 This definition is aiming to be delimited and clear, yet broad enough to include many different forms of tactics in varied contexts, done by different groups and guided by a broad range of norms, intentions or motivations. We are especially keen to not limit the subtle tactics, dynamic changes and innovations of everyday resistance in its changing environment of sophisticated and plural forms of power relations. It is our hope it can be unifying for very different research traditions, disciplines and types of projects. At the same time, we are not suggesting this as the only definition. In no way are we suggesting a field should aim for one unifying definition. Instead we encourage other authors to develop other definitions, for particular purposes. Since definitions are like tools, we need to develop a suitable toolbox for the field. However, discussing a definition without relating it to other proposed definitions, is not helpful and should be discouraged. In line with this definition, we suggest some key theoretical assumptions about how to understand the phenomenon of “everyday resistance”. Our core theoretical propositions are few but have, we think, major consequences: (1) Everyday resistance is a practice (not a certain consciousness, intent or outcome) that is countering power; (2) It is historically entangled with (everyday) power (not separated, dichotomous or independent); (3) Everyday resistance needs to be understood as intersectional with the powers that it engages with (not one single power relation); and (4) It is heterogeneous and contingent due to changing contexts and situations (not a universal strategy or coherent form of action).

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In contrast to much of the research on “everyday resistance” that is going on in the Scottian tradition, our approach makes it necessary to focus on the practice of the resistance, and to always analyze it in relation to power/domination. It is not possible to understand it as a separate practice in and of itself. It will always have to be understood within its changing context. And within that contextual and contingent nature of “everyday resistance” it becomes necessary to follow its dynamic relation with the specific configurations of powers/dominations (in the plural). During our theoretical work on everyday resistance it has become clear that there are many remaining challenges to ref lect on, develop new concepts for and construct theoretical models and frameworks that can be fruitful for research on resistance.

Some of the Theoretical Challenges for the Future The relationships between different subject positions and resistance have not been explored enough. In the literature it is clear, of course, that the subject positions of actors matter, and there has been a focus on different subordinated or subaltern positions, but we need to know more about the differences between positions. In what way does it matter if the resistance actors are not subaltern but belong to a middle-level position in a hierarchy or an organization? What qualities or differences are articulated with “proxy resistance”, or to act on behalf of subordinated people? What about elites that resist aspects of power, and the differences between differently subordinated positions? What about the differences between everyday resistance as conceptualized here as simply patterned practices, where the intention of actors is not analyzed, and practices that are done with ideology, consciousness and political intent? Sometimes the consciousness of actors is key, for example when we look at political lifestyles such as veganism, anarchism or pacifism. Is it only then that strategy and long-term planning seem possible? Is that a different kind of everyday resistance, or just everyday resistance done with political intent? Furthermore, there is an area we have not really discussed at all. Is it meaningful to discuss different “qualities” and impacts of resistance? For example, resistance as “progressive”/“reactionary”, or effective/ineffective, different types of impact (e.g. political, economic, psychological, etc.), various ethical qualities, etc. And, resistance might be productive, and give rise to new subjectivities or ways of life, or it might just try to avoid or mitigate the effects of power. Since resistance can be so many different things in different contexts, it is obviously important to discuss to what extent we can talk about different categories of everyday resistance, and then what distinguishes them. We also do not know much about what functions resistance plays within larger social dynamics and systems of societies and organizations. Such functions of resistance seem necessary to study more in-depth. Some of the debates in the

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literature deal with resistance as an emotional and cultural outlet, which simply diverts dissenting tendencies, like some assessments of the Medieval tradition of Carnival (when the subordinated turn the world upside down in playful theatrical performances and for a short time are able to mock and critique powerful elites). Other related debates focus on resistance as related to “rationality”, where it might sometimes even be “irrational” in the meaning of unintentionally producing more domination (as with much of the resistance against surveillance). Moreover, while we have referred to the call by resistance scholars to include materiality in the study of power and resistance, and used studies informed by new materialism, we have not taken on the challenge to incorporate posthumanist theory / new materialism into our frameworks and, for example, set out to explore how the intersections between the discursive and material inform everyday resistance. At the present, we are not clear on what would be the theoretical implications of such an incorporation. What would it mean to understand materialities (built environment, cultural artefacts, nature and bodies) as agentic forces in the practice of everyday resistance? Would it, for example, be enough to expand the model of everyday resistance as a process of interaction between different agents by adding non-human agents to it, as mobilized to align action with the goals of the human agents, or does it call for a more radical theoretical shift? Within this emerging, loosely connected, unsystematic and fragmented research field, there are many questions that remain. The themes suggested previously, are just some of them. Our attempt to develop a definition and theoretical platform that can serve to bridge between different sub-fields of what we see as a potentially much larger field of everyday resistance studies, have led us to develop an analytical framework that, we hope, can help to guide more systematic research on “everyday resistance”.

Analytical Framework In Chapter 5, we introduced Tilly’s concept of “repertoires of contention”, to capture the multitude of forms, strategies and tactics of everyday resistance, and we connect it to contextual configurations of power. In contrast to Tilly, however, it is argued that agents sometimes are genuinely culturally creative, and perform innovative repertoires (not just repeating historical master repertoires), in relation to local manifestations of power (not just the state). Chapter 6 investigated how the practice of everyday resistance emerges out of a series of relationships and processes of interaction between different agents. We argue that the position of the actors should not be seen as fixed or stable, but rather as shifting and might even be understood as an in-between or ambivalent position. We kept returning to the need to always examine the context of power configurations—the relationships between the different actors—to attend to the social process in which an agent of resistance is shaped.

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In Chapter 7, we examined everyday resistance as spatially organized and how everyday resistance is practiced in and through space as a central, social dimension. Space is seen as central in any exercise of power, as well as of resistance. Several types of sites are recognized as both sites of power as well as of resistance, such as cyberspace and the body. In Chapter 8, the dimension of time was attended to, as linked to power and resistance. Everyday resistance is seen as, and analyzed, as temporally organized, and as practiced in and through time. The practice of time theft is seen as an example of everyday resistance against time control in work life. Spatialization and temporalization of everyday resistance are interlinked in the everyday resistance carried out by, for example, fat “cyborgs” who contest dominant discourses on fatness and create alternative images of fatness. In each chapter, we have given example of some theoretical concepts that link to the dimensions, concepts we believe are fruitful in the study of everyday resistance, and with the potential to move the research field forward. Nonviolence captures very particular repertoires of a struggle against violence with means other than violence. Disidentification can be used to undermine the stronghold of hegemonic identity positions prescribed by dominant forces in society and third space conceptualizes a space of ambivalence that opens up new possibilities, just to mention two of the key concepts. In Part II, we also systematically included sections in which we have queered each dimension of analysis. We have brought forward the importance of queering everyday resistance both as theoretical and empirical endeavors contributing to social science in general and, more specifically, to resistance studies. Through the queering of repertoires of everyday resistance, the reevaluation of queerness is highlighted as a significant reverse discourse articulated and practiced by the LGBTIQ movement. The queering of relationships acknowledges new ways of shaping and constituting relationships, for example the relationships by trans persons and their cisgender partners, make it possible to discover creative and original ways to resist heteronormativity. Through queering time and space, we explore and discuss the emergence and construction of alternative temporalities and spaces that disrupt and contest the dominant ones. Throughout the sections on queering, we have emphasized and discussed how sexuality is also intertwined with class, gender and race. We acknowledge that what is defined as queer space and queer time is predominantly associated with, and developed by, a certain dominant group among LGBTIQ people: white, cis, male, urban queers. In Chapter 9, we applied all the dimensions of the suggested framework on sumūd, the concept of Palestinian everyday resistance, in the context of the Palestine/Israel conf lict. Sumūd is practiced both as a public and intentional political strategy and as a repertoire of everyday acts of resistance, interdependent and interwoven in complex ways, historically as well as in today’s resistance practices. Through this application we show how everyday resistance needs to be understood in its historic and dynamic relation with contextual

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configurations of power(s). Simultaneously, we have shown how the combination of time and space matters to how everyday resistance is articulated. Together with the intersectional dimensions of power—dimensions that might be expanded depending on the context, but at least consist of gender, sexuality, class and race—this theoretical framework of everyday resistance might help us to conduct more systematic, comprehensive, coherent, nuanced and critical empirical studies of how everyday resistance manifests in various ways, and how it interacts dynamically in relation to historical social change, configurations of power and contextual differences. That is our hope. However, there are several remaining issues with the analytical framework that need to be mentioned.

Some of the Challenges for Future Analytical Work We claim that our theoretical framework for the analysis of everyday resistance is a step forward that helps the field develop more coherent and systematic research, but it is not suggested to be a final version. There is a need to ref lect further on the implications of our suggested analytical framework, in particular, how the four dimensions and their illustrated use in relation to theories, concepts and empirical case-illustrations discussed in Chapter 5 –9 reveal its strengths and weaknesses, and how that motivates further research and developments of a framework for the studies of everyday resistance. In working with this analytical framework, we have been facing a number of challenges, some of them related to the development and application of a multi-dimensional framework. How do we attend to every dimension at the same time as we make in-depth analysis of how they are interwoven? How then do we discover, make sense of and represent the connections, the interactions and the links between different dimensions? How do we attend to the complexities within a dimension, at the same time as capturing the interaction between dimensions? How do we avoid purely descriptive accounts? How do we detect and evaluate the impact or various effects of everyday resistance? The framework needs further development through application to various contexts and in relation to different prevailing discourses. It is possible the dimensions need to be further elaborated and/or reformulated (that process we have begun by adopting certain “core concepts” in each of the dimensions), and that more dimensions need to be added and that some dimensions are more context-dependent than others (i.e., where perhaps not all four dimensions are equally relevant to use). That is hard to know, but for our main argument it is not decisive. Our framework is—as a tentative tool for improvement of the research—a step forward. It will make the study of everyday resistance more systematic and nuanced. The framework we outline builds on an assumption that power(s) relates to resistance(s), and that the couplet power(s)/resistance(s) is shaped by interactive relationships among actors, as well as its relation to time and space. Fundamentally, we believe all of the dimensions are at play at the same time. As per definition, we

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do not think it is possible to talk about practices of resistance without relating them to technologies of power. Still, perhaps not all dimensions matter in all contexts. On occasions when, for example, power does not explicitly structure relative to time, then, perhaps it is not necessary to include temporalization of resistance. This interplay of power(s)/resistance and its dimensions is, however, something that future empirical investigations will reveal. The complexity of these four fundamental sociological dimensions of everyday resistance (repertoires, time, space and relationships), together with (at least) a number of power relations, is demanding for any research agenda. However, complexity is no real argument against such research. Sometimes, of course, focused research projects might select some dimensions and do in-depth studies of them, as long as the other dimensions are regarded as relevant and necessary to incorporate, at a later stage. This complexity of the analytical framework is elaborated from the assumption of everyday resistance as historically entangled with (everyday) power (not separate, dichotomous or independent from it) in an ongoing interaction; they are intrinsically “stuck together”. This presumption of entanglement has guided the development of the dimensions in the analytical framework. However, for analytical purposes we need at times to momentarily untangle them and follow one thread. Even though we made the pedagogical choice to begin with the configurations of power / repertoires of everyday relations, one might actually begin the investigation at any point of entry (as long as the power analysis is part of that and gives the dimension meaning, since “resistance” does not make sense without being related to power). While the dimensions are fruitful in that they capture and encompass crucial social categories and processes relevant to everyday resistance, they are also too broad and, in some ways, too encompassing. To be able to develop a more distinct analysis, there is probably also a need to make further distinctions within the dimensions. Throughout our discussions in Chapter 5 –9, we have encouraged this by suggesting a number of core concepts. That work needs to continue, and we welcome other elaborations. Moreover, we are not arguing that these dimensions are the only ones, but that these seem fundamental and necessary in order to develop a comprehensive research agenda on everyday resistance. More dimensions could perhaps be necessary to include. We would appreciate it if others, when applying this framework, would continue the development, specification and addition of dimensions. We see it as natural that adjustments will happen, from others and us in future. We have discussed several alternatives of a “fifth dimension” but do not see how to add them at this point; we see the potential of other dimensions focusing on the symbols, language, interaction, emotions/affects or materiality of everyday resistance. Finally, despite our encouragement of adjusted applications and critical developments of this framework, as well as our openness to alternative frameworks, we argue for the importance of upholding what we consider the main foundations for a promising future of everyday resistance research: (1) the

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transdisciplinary ambition of bringing in advanced theories from other social science fields (to avoid reserving the concept for particular research fields, such as peasant studies or anthropology); (2) the focus on oppositional practices and dynamic relations of everyday resistances/powers (to avoid limiting the concept to particular kinds of—preferred—political intentions or consequences); and (3) the intersectional condition of resistance/power (to avoid limiting the understanding of the concept to one main/particular relation with power despite power always being plural and diverse in nature). Any analytical framework needs, we claim, to take these foundational assumptions seriously. Taken together, our theoretical claims about how to understand “everyday resistance” and our analytical framework for studying it within particular contexts constitute the basis for our suggestion of a transdisciplinary social science of everyday resistance. Let us end our conclusions by brief ly touch upon both these themes.

Moving the Research on Everyday Resistance Forward We hope it has become clear that the studies of everyday resistance are of central importance to many social science fields, fields that today are not engaged in resistance studies. It is our hope that this book is a step towards a more general understanding of the importance of everyday resistance. Everyday resistance is a particular form of social phenomenon, with political significance, that is elusive and embedded in a complex social environment that matters, but possible to study. If we make more systematic research on everyday resistance, we will understand better (1) how everyday power operates (both its pervasiveness and limitations), (2) how subordinated subjects’ agency in relation to power is articulated (beyond the obvious, verbalized and public forms focused so far) and (3) how everyday life/experience and (core parts of ) communities change as a result of subordinated agency that transforms everyday power. Therefore, we think, systematic research on everyday resistance is vital and will have profound consequences for social science and our understanding of power, agency and social change. Any systematic research on everyday resistance will have to engage with two fundamental challenges we have not discussed in this book: (1) how different practices of everyday resistance link to each other, to more collectively organized forms of resistance and to social change, and (2) how our ethics, research methodology and methods within academia need to transform in order to fit the needs of everyday resistance studies and the political-ethical circumstances in which such academic work is done.

Scaling Up Everyday Resistance Single and scattered practices of everyday resistance done by individuals or small groups do sometimes evolve into a culture of more frequent resistance, erupt into

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massive rebellions or feed into formal and collective organizing of resistance. When that happens a number of related questions and aspects are actualized. Is it meaningful to talk about the frequency or continuums of doing everyday resistance? Resistance acts might happen only rarely, or they might be done regularly or integrated within cultures, in hidden or more public forms (as quiet encroachments/non-movements). Here we might have to develop continuums or categories of resistance where the practices are varied as being more or less violent or nonviolent, hidden or public, individual or collective, or more or less formally organized. This world of variation is basically uncharted, and we do not know if it makes more sense to talk about if the practices are more or less, or distinct types or categories. It would be even more complex to explore the relationship between such variations of everyday resistance and other forms of resistance, for example in social movements, revolutions or collective and organized actions. One fundamental question is how everyday resistance can “scale up” into resistance in many instances, or into open, collective and organized resistance into a regional, national or transnational scale. Is it a matter of communication, organization, strategy, leadership or emerging system complexity? How does “scale” fit or matter in the suggested analytical framework? Is, for example, increased communication between individuals conducting everyday resistance a step towards increased scale? Since we do not have much of empirical material that shows how this happens, we need to gather that data. In one experimental way, that might help, the Resistance Studies Initiative at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is collaborating with Settings.se to develop a smart-phone App that encourages individuals to practice and link their everyday actions to each other, building movements (the “MicroActionMovement” App). Related to scaling up is the concept of “resistance culture”. As we have seen in the case of sumūd, there are contexts in which articulations of everyday resistance are more common, developed and more creative/innovative, and form a kind of “resistance culture” (where repetition, diffusion and plurality are key), which might lead to them scaling up in the form of collective rebellions or other mass mobilizations. We know very little about the conditions and contexts essential for this to happen or how it effects everyday resistance. Fundamentally, these questions around scaling up and resistance cultures are related to an even larger research challenge: to understand how everyday resistance can contribute to social change in society. We know very little of how resistance impacts or affects social structures and systems in society over a longer time period. Studying the outcome of one phenomenon on the whole society is a tremendous challenge for any research field, but here, when we discuss mundane, often hidden and scattered practices in the everyday by subordinated people, it becomes even harder to research. Therefore, one key challenge for the studies of everyday resistance is to develop a battery of research methodologies and methods that fit the needs of this study.

Conclusion

191

Researching Everyday Resistance In researching everyday resistance, several challenges for our research methodology and ethical-political choices arise. Others have developed thoughts on this (see Baaz, Lilja and Vinthagen 2017), but in general very little has been written on this topic. Even though it has been beyond the scope of this book to delve into these issues, we do wish to stress the importance of acknowledging and attending to the ethical dilemmas that arise when studying everyday resistance, and that at the core of these dilemmas we find the “knowledgepower-resistance nexus”. Thus, we need to take into consideration how the researcher / research of everyday resistance is part of the entanglement of power and resistance ( Baaz, Lilja, and Vinthagen 2017, chap. 9) and how the knowledge about forms, strategies and dynamics of resistance simultaneously and unintentionally will create new possibilities for repressive forces to undermine resistance and authoritarian institutions to control it. To do so involves being willing to disrupt the rules of dominant research practices and develop practices that take into careful consideration inequality and the reproduction of power. ** There is much more research necessary to do before we have even a basic understanding of the innovative and creative practices of everyday resistance, its variation in different contexts and its dynamic relations with specific forms of power and domination. This is both a challenge and an exciting adventure. There is no reason to think that resistance would be less complex (or contested) than power. However, it is necessary to take a step back from the somewhat asymmetrical relation between, on the one hand, a limited and compartmentalized study of (everyday) resistance and, on the other hand, the large, global and heterogeneous field of power research, and instead draw them together. Fundamentally, it is not possible to understand power without also looking at resistance, and vice versa. Research on power(s)/resistance(s) will be necessary if we want to understand human agency and its limitations, if we want to understand the links between structure and agency and how the combinations of power(s) and resistance(s) shape historical social change. We hope our suggested research agenda might inspire further development of the theoretical and empirical framework for systematic everyday resistance research. It is urgently needed.

Note 1. For a different take on how to define this, see Lilja and Vinthagen 2018. Here, a collected concept of “dispersed resistance” is discussed. Inspired by Foucault’s networked power, they suggest a concept that collects different forms of everyday resistance (e.g. hidden, as well as glaring ones).

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INDEX

Note: Entries followed by ‘n’ refer to endnotes. accommodation 2 , 30, 36, 55, 57–58, 60, 63 analytical framework, of everyday resistance 6, 6 – 8, 10 –14, 20, 44, 82 , 83, 106, 185 –191 avoidance/escape 19, 29, 56 –57, 60, 93, 126 Bayat, Asef 17–18, 20, 21, 46 – 47, 52 –55, 58 –59, 182 –183 BDSM 116, 134, 144, 148 binary/dichotomy 9, 78, 102, 127, 131, 135, 141, 145 –146 biopower 65 – 67, 82 , 89, 91, 95 –97, 103, 104n3, 156, 160, 174 –175 Butler, Judith 57, 63 – 64, 76, 100 –101, 103, 113, 127, 170, 182 class 21, 38, 48, 49, 55, 64 – 65, 70 –71, 73 –74, 113, 133, 160, 175, 186 –187 class war 2 , 20, 34, 68 context 2– 4, 6, 9–11, 14, 21, 23, 27, 36, 41, 43, 47, 58, 60, 62– 63, 67– 68, 73, 75, 77, 82 , 88, 90 –95, 100, 104, 110 –113, 115, 117, 118 –119, 131, 135, 146, 153 –155, 165, 168, 184, 187 continuum 24, 27, 145, 190 contingent 10, 95, 184 coping/survival 31, 43, 54, 55, 58 – 61, 119, 167, 172, 173 counter-conduct 79n1

de Ceteau, Michel 12–13, 20, 20 –23, 33, 39 – 45, 49 –52 , 138 –139, 147, 182, 183 dimensions, of everyday resistance 12 , 14, 22 , 82 , 83 – 84, 149 –179 discipline 7, 8, 11, 18, 42–43, 65–69, 81–82, 89, 91, 95, 99, 114, 122, 126, 137–139, 144, 145, 156, 182, 183 discourse: discourse analysis 95 –96; discursive power 29, 70; reverse discourse 88, 100 –104, 186 disguise 5, 19, 21, 24, 25 –27, 49, 52 , 57, 68, 138, 155 dissident subcultures/culture of resistance 2 , 25, 152 , 153, 159 Einwohner, Rachel L. 6, 7, 19, 45, 47, 48, 70, 77, 87, 106 –110, 136, 161–162 entanglement, of power and resistance 7, 12, 20, 63, 72, 74, 78, 70, 104, 111, 161, 188, 191 ethics 22 , 121, 130, 189 everyday, concept of 8, 66, 157 fat: critical fat studies 4, 95; fat acceptance 95 –97, 103, 113, 145 folk culture 26, 34, 36; see also vernacular Foucault, Michel 4, 9, 14n2, 18 –20, 21–22, 33, 42 – 44, 54, 63, 65 – 66 , 69,

Index

76 , 79, 79n1, 89, 91–92, 101–102, 113, 123, 125, 126, 137–138, 155, 157, 172, 182–183, 191n1 gender: feminism 10, 11, 74, 80, 148; masculinity 64, 73, 78, 96, 97, 101, 113 –114, 127, 163 –164, 176 Gramsci, Anthony 19 –20, 32n3, 54, 70, 182 hegemony/counter-hegemony 20, 22 , 27, 31, 34, 39, 45, 99, 182 heterogeneous 10, 54, 76, 96, 120, 183, 191 hidden transcripts 9, 25, 33, 55, 69, 151, 183 history from below 4, 19 Hollander, Jocelyn A. 6, 7, 19, 45, 47, 48, 70, 77, 87, 106 –110, 136, 161, 162 , 169 infrapolitics 5, 9, 19, 20, 25, 30, 33, 34, 55 intent, of resistance 49 interaction, between power and resistance 55, 76, 77, 118 intersectional/intersectionality 4, 9, 13, 63, 70 –73, 77, 79 – 80n2, 82 , 111, 113, 142 , 160, 162 , 187, 189 Iran 17, 31n1, 54 LGBTIQ 100, 101, 103 –104, 105n5, 132 , 142 , 186 Lilja, Mona 89, 95, 140, 142 , 160, 191n1 material domination 25 material interest 38, 129 men 47, 48, 72, 78, 96, 110, 114, 116, 127, 132, 134, 163 –164, 167, 170, 175, 177 methodology, of research 22 , 189, 191 oppositional, against power 12 , 34, 45, 62 , 63, 69, 76 Palestine 2, 67, 73, 149, 151, 153, 155 –160, 163, 165, 167, 171–172, 174 –179, 179n2, 179n3, 180n4, 186 –187 peasants 19, 21, 26, 28, 34, 35 –39, 48, 56, 106, 111, 136 posthumanism/materialism 14n3, 61n3, 107, 185 poststructuralism 4, 9 –11, 13, 22 , 54 practice, of resistance 13, 72 , 83, 94, 112 , 117, 166, 170, 177 power: power configuration 82 , 91, 94, 104, 118, 121, 166, 175, 185–187; power theory 21, 45, 63, 89

211

queer (-time, -space) 133 –135; see also LGBTIQ queering 83, 84, 100, 104, 107, 115 –119, 123, 131, 134, 137, 140, 147, 186 queer space 19, 123, 131–135, 140 –143, 145, 148, 186 quiet encroachments 52 , 190 race: racism 51, 90, 111, 116, 162 relations, social, of agents 13, 18, 34, 82 , 83, 116, 122 , 136, 147, 152 repertoires, of power configuration and resistance practices 82 , 91, 104, 121, 166, 175 resistance: and critical resistance 22; definition of resistance 37, 47, 109; direct resistance 25; embedded 31; offkilter 9, 31, 52, 129, 130; “paired forms of resistance 25, 27”; real resistance 19, 35 –36; rightful resistance 39; targets of resistance 47 resistance studies, as academic field 24 –25 sexuality: heterosexuality 102 , 116, 133; homosexuality 101; transsexuality 41–42 Scott, James C. 4 –5, 18 –27, 29, 34 –39, 46 – 48, 54 –55, 57–59, 68, 70, 88 – 89, 109, 119, 138 –139, 182 –183 sovereignty 66, 89, 91, 156 –158 space: queer space 19, 123, 131–135, 140 –143, 145, 148, 186; spatiality 23, 82 , 119, 122 , 123, 167; spatialization 10, 13, 83, 122 , 123, 132 , 136, 137, 168, 170, 171, 173, 186; third-space 32n2, 123, 128 –131 status domination 25 stigma 19, 27, 28, 57, 64, 88, 95 –97, 104, 110 –111, 145 subaltern 4, 8, 19, 26, 28, 32n3, 34, 37–39, 46, 55, 59, 60, 64, 68, 70, 112 , 128, 182 , 184; and vs. “subordinated” 21 subaltern studies 8, 19, 21, 32n3, 182 subordinated 6, 9, 19, 21, 22 , 25 –31, 33, 39, 46, 54, 58 – 60, 63, 68, 69 –70, 74, 109 –112 , 130, 184 –185, 189, 190 sumūd (Palestinian everyday resistance) 2 , 14, 83, 148, 149 –155, 157–160, 165 –167, 171, 171–175, 177–179, 181, 186, 190 tactics, as opposed to strategy according to de Certeau 39 – 44 technology of the self: self-constitution 66; self-formation 66 – 67

212

Index

theoretical framework, of everyday resistance 33 – 45 third-space 32n2, 123, 128 –131 Tilly, Charles 13, 83, 88, 90 –91, 99 –100, 103, 185 time: clock-time 137–138; ecstatic time 144, 147–148; temporality 23, 52 , 82 , 137, 140, 141–144, 147–148, 173; temporalization 10, 13, 83, 115, 136,

137, 142 , 170, 171–179, 186, 188; time-theft 137–139, 186 two-step identification, of resistance 30 vernacular: and the “little tradition” 34 women 19, 20, 47, 48, 51, 72 , 74, 78, 96, 109 –110, 116, 126 –127, 136, 150 –152 , 154, 157, 162–164, 166–170, 173, 176–178