Exploring ‘irrational resistance’

Abstract

This article will examine irrationality in relation to the concept of resistance. Is there such a thing as an irrational resistance? While one tendency has been to irrationalise the 'other' and their resistance in order to construct a subaltern identity position, within the social sciences, an opposing tendency can also be identified; there is a trend to try to rationalise what seems to be people's irrational behaviours. In this article, however, we will take a different stance by arguing that resistance is generally both irrational and rational depending on its relation to power.

Dimensions of everyday resistance: the PalestinianSumūd

“…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). This is not only due to creations of counterforces or new oppositional alliances that explicitly try to capture the state or other entrenched power institutions, but a more fundamental paradox of inbuilt ambivalence, complexity, and even 'irrationality' within resistance (Lilja et al 2013). Resistance is as per definition related to power and since power is fundamentally plural, a combination of intersectional dominance relations (Vinthagen and Johansson 2013), we get a situation in which resistance draws on power at the same time as it undermines some other aspects of it, and with time, resistance becomes deeply entangled with power (Sharp et al 2000).…”

Untitled

“…At the opposite end of the continuum, among other political science and political sociology treatises on power are several analyses of different forms of power undertaken by resistance scholars of various social science disciplines. Some of these use power analysis as an instrument to help them develop conceptually and theoretically the newer field of resistance studies (Vinthagen 2007;Vinthagen and Johansson 2013;Johansson and Vinthagen 2014;Lilja, Baaz and Vinthagen 2013;Lilja and Vinthagen 2014). Others (Lilja et al 2013;Hoffman 1999) start from the premise that the point of resistance studies is to better understand power and challenge existing power relations, following Foucault's dictum that resistance can be used 'as a chemical catalyst so as to bring to light power relations, locate their position, and find out their point of application and the methods used' (Foucault 1982: 208, 211).…”

Power and Empowerment Meet Resistance: A Critical, Action-Oriented Review of the Literature

“…What we have in Scott (1985Scott ( , 1989Scott ( , 1990, Mitchell (1990), Hollander and Einwohner (2004), Lilja et al (2013), and Johansson and Vinthagen (2014) is a series of evolving and increasingly refined frames for resistance analysis derived from various political and sociological traditions and epistemological and empirical standpoints. From Scott onwards, resistance has been understood as a range of agency-based responses to power (or domination), but over time, the understandings of power informing these evolving perspectives on resistance have become less structural, more post-structural, and implicitly or potentially, open to notions of structuration.…”

“…A set of richly textured yet less accessible structuralist and post-structuralist accounts of power as norms, culture and discourse, associated with Foucault, Bourdieu and Hayward (Navarro 2006;Hayward 1998Hayward , 2000, although addressed in theoretical work (e.g. Lilja et al 2013;Johansson and Vinthagen 2014;Mitchell 1990;Navarro 2006), tend to get marginalised from applied research on power, in favour of those more accessible agency-based, coercive and wilful versions of power as 'power over'. Left out of the picture, too, is structuration.…”

“…Some of these use power analysis as an instrument to help them develop conceptually and theoretically the newer field of resistance studies (Vinthagen 2007;Vinthagen and Johansson 2013;Johansson and Vinthagen 2014;Lilja, Baaz and Vinthagen 2013;Lilja and Vinthagen 2014). Others (Lilja et al 2013;Hoffman 1999) start from the premise that the point of resistance studies is to better understand power and challenge existing power relations, following Foucault's dictum that resistance can be used 'as a chemical catalyst so as to bring to light power relations, locate their position, and find out their point of application and the methods used' (Foucault 1982: 208, 211).…”