Maze of Resistance: Crowd,Space and the Politics of Resisting Subjectivity

Abstract

In 1968 the streets around the world saw a rise of a mass political movements. Nowadays, 46 years later, a nostalgic revolutionary aura surrounds that time; as since, such is the impression, the street is yet to emerge as a strong political actor or an effective practice of resistance is yet to take form. It seems as if the old ways of resistance have met their end, and new ways have not quite come in place. However, the most recent protests, as this paper aims to show, might have started a new path of resistance at the centre of which is a particular political subjectivity gaining its power from a space of resistance and appearing in a form of a ‘crowd’. By looking at the power of the crowd as a particular embodiment or a cross between a political subject and a multitude this paper explores the constituent power of political gatherings by rejecting race, ethnicity, religion, class or gender as their mobilizing force and instead focusing on the power of coming-together (common) in a particular space. The political capacity of such ‘common’ mobilising force was fully exposed in the recent protests across Europe and the Arab world (the two examples on which this paper draws). The paper opens with a discussion of the distinct relationship between the sovereign (or state) and political subjectivity. The constitutive moment of subjectivity (the self-other relation) is placed in a political context and by drawing on the examples of sans papiers and Bouazizi's act of self-immolation the difficulties of the act of resistance and their inherent and unavoidable violence are highlighted. These two recent acts of resistance expose the need to think political subjectivity otherwise, and point to vistas (the crowd), which can facilitate such a different thinking. By drawing on the constitutive idea of the common as logic of subjectivation the intricate relationship between the body and the political space as manifested in the most recent against austerity and oppressive political regimes protests is interrogated. In the hope of placing the political subject closer to the driving seat of politics a case is made for a rather distinct relationship between political subjectivity of the crowd and the emerging space of resistance. This is a relationship that amounts to a new ‘resisting political subjectivity’ and that can bring about a new way of engaging with the politics of oppression and begins to think political contestations otherwise.     

Existentialism and Constructivism: A Bi-Polar Model of Subjectivity

The philosophical systems of existentialism and constructivism have generated distinct clinical approaches based on seemingly incompatible conceptions of subjectivity and its role in clinical work. The premise of this paper is that, taken together, existential and constructivist perspectives provide an essentially dialectical view of personal identity, suggesting that a bi-polar model of subjectivity may yield a broader therapeutic gain than either/or positions. I demonstrate this premise by illustrating the central tenets of each approach using clinical vignettes, then further elucidate each position by drawing upon its philosophical underpinnings. Finally, I present a longer clinical illustration that contains both an existential and a constructivist phase.     

Diversification as a New Disciplinary Power: Gender and Sexual Subjectivity in Postmodernity

Nowadays, the power of gender and sexuality works not only to reinforce and reconstruct the essentialized norms but also, in direct opposition, to deconstruct these norms. The new disciplinary power and its discourse encourages people to have diverse and fluid self/body images. This article aims to discuss the new characteristics of gender and sexual self-image, body, discourse, and social images in postmodern society through a comparison with Foucault's arguments. This article also briefly mentions how these phenomena have spread through society and questions whether recent social movements really go beyond the style of the former one, which is based on sharing the same identity.     

Negotiating Gendered Subjectivity in the Enterprise Culture: Metaphor and Entrepreneurial Discourses

An enterprise culture is one in which ‘certain enterprising qualities — such as self reliance, personal responsibility, boldness and a willingness to take risks in the pursuit of goals — are regarded as human virtues and promoted as such’. Work is not seen as a constraint upon the individual but rather as an opportunity for self‐fulfilment. The pervasiveness of enterprise culture has led to observations that it influences aspects of social life beyond the workplace. However, the kind of self that is imagined in enterprise culture is also a male self, with female entrepreneurship measured against a male norm. In this article, then, we present evidence of metaphor as a strategy for coping with the gendered expectations embodied by life in enterprise culture. We show how metaphor is simultaneously an index of and a resource for understanding gendered subjectivities in enterprise culture.     

Occupying Subjectivity: Being and Becoming Radical in the Twenty-First Century: Introduction

Abstract

Critical theory has long concerned itself with the exploration of radical political subjectivities, of the various ways in which social movements, revolutionary classes and everyday communities reshape themselves and their relations in order to survive, transform or defeat oppressive forces. This special issue brings together a series of articles examining different forms (and spaces) of contemporary radical subjectivities, situating them in a global context. This short editorial introduction highlights the major themes of the special issue (placing particular attention on the relationship between theory and the subject), and outlines the eight pieces that follow.     

Beyond the Binaries: Depolarizing the Categories of Sex,Sexuality, and Gender*

Most sociological research designs assume that each person has one sex. one sexuality, and one gender, congruent with each other and fixed for life. Postmodern feminists and queer theorists have been interrogating bodies, desires, and genders, but sociology has not. Deconstructing sex, sexuality, and gender reveals many possible categories embedded in social experiences and social practices. As researchers, as theorists, and as activists, sociologists have to go beyond paying lip service to the diversity of bodies, sexualities, genders. The sociologist's task should be to deconstruct the conventional categories of sex, sexuality, and gender and build new complex, cross-cutting constructs into research designs. There are revolutionary possibilities inherent in rethinking the categories of gender, sexuality, and physiological sex. Sociological data that challenge conventional knowledge by reframing the questions could provide legitimacy for new ways of thinking. Data that undermine the supposed natural dichotomies on which the social orders of most modern societies are still based could radically alter political discourses that valorize biological causes, essential heterosexuality, and traditional gender roles in families and workplaces.     

知识城市：中心城市发展与转型的选择

在知识经济的兴起和城市危机发生的宏观背景下,知识城市的发展模式诞生并迅速在世界范围内推广。本文首先介绍知识城市的先进理念,引进知识城市的完整框架,在此基础上,以国外著名的中心城市墨尔本、伦敦、曼彻斯特等为案例介绍其向知识城市转型的成功经验,并结合我国大城市的实际情况和发展阶段,讨论我国大城市转型和可持续发展的道路,并提供相应的对策建议。     

Gender and the Meaning of Power and Politics

This paper examines the extent to which women as a group have a distinctive understanding of politics and power. Using the theoretical framework of the perceptual-representational system and the Associative Group Analysis (AGA) methodology, the study examines the subjective differences in political meanings of 148 male and female delegates attending their respective Democratic and Republican national conventions in 1984. The data do not indicate that a unique male or female subjective political culture exists. Both Republican men and Democratic women comprehend a politics of connectedness. They differ in terms of the nature, purposes, and type of connectedness.     

Beyond anonymity: temporality and the production of knowledge in a qualitative longitudinal study

Anonymisation processes are an embedded, if contested, element of ethical research practice. Current debates, highlighting various challenges to anonymity, suggest the importance of situated ethics and negotiated solutions. However, the strategies adopted are necessarily mediated by the researcher’s epistemological positions. Longitudinal studies with their extended timeframes and intensive research relationships tend to amplify ethical dilemmas and highlight the contingency and fluidity of ethical processes. Here we explore how temporality intersects with epistemology in a qualitative longitudinal (QL) study of organisations located in a contemporary policy context. We reflect on the confidentiality and anonymity dilemmas that develop and change over time, the strategies adopted and the implications of these for the type of knowledge produced. We suggest that QL studies entail flexibility within epistemological frameworks. These issues have particular resonance and consequences for researchers in light of contemporary pressures around public scrutiny of academic performance and wider debates around public sociology.     

Knowledge work and practices of seeing: Epistemologies of the eye,gaze, and professional vision

Much practice within organizations is to some extent embodied in and centered on the visual capacities of the agent, the acting subject. Distinguishing between ‘epistemologies of the eye’, i.e. theories of how knowledge is acquired through visual practices, and ‘practices of seeing’, i.e. theories and studies of how vision and visuality are actually used in everyday working life, the paper points to the need to understand vision and visuality in organizational practice. Using the case of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), it is suggested that professional vision, i.e. practices of seeing that are shared within epistemic communities, is firstly technologically mediated and, secondly, based on the ability to combine vision, speech, gesture, and other embodied and cognitive resources in order to make sense of the images produced by fMRI technology. The paper concludes that organization theory should examine practices of seeing in greater detail and as part of the project in order to understand how knowledge is constituted and used as a collectively constituted resource within organizations.     

The ignorance contract: recollections of apartheid childhoods and the construction of epistemologies of ignorance

Working with the recollections of everyday experiences of apartheid collected by the Apartheid Archives project, and drawing on the emerging theorization of ignorance in the critical philosophy of race, this article explores how an ‘ignorance contract’ – the tacit agreement to entertain ignorance – lies at the heart of a society structured in racial hierarchy. Unlike the conventional theorization of ignorance that regards ignorance as a matter of faulty individual cognition, or a collective absence of yet-to-be-acquired knowledge, ignorance is understood as a social achievement with strategic value. The apartheid narratives illustrate that for ignorance to function as social regulation, subjectivities must be formed that are appropriate performers of ignorance, disciplined in cognition, affect and ethics. Both white and black South Africans produced epistemologies of ignorance, although the terms of the contract were set by white society as the group with the dominant power.     

The Formative Context of Organizational Hierarchies and Discourse: Implications for Organizational Change and Gender Relations

Society as artifact, meaning society as a thing that is made and imagined, is a central aspect of Roberto Unger's constructive social theory. This article develops Unger's social theory, specifically his notions of organizational hierarchy, discourse, and organizational change, and applies it to an understanding of gender relations at work. Constructive social theory is defined with a focus on the instrumental concept of formative context. A critical perspective of Unger's constructive social theory is also presented to illustrate its strengths, challenges and limitations. Drawing on literature from a variety of sources and perspectives, organizational hierarchy, organizational discourse, organizational change and gender relations are viewed through a formative context lens. The concept is then applied as a framework for organizational change through change in organizational discourse, specifically language. Change in organizational discourse through language is utilized as a means of improving gender relations: in particular, the advancement of women in organizations.     

Promoting Gender Equality without a Gender Perspective: Problem Representations of Equal Pay in Finland

The current locus of promoting equal pay in Finland is the workplace. Legal instruments, like gender equality planning and its pay surveys, are to be implemented in workplaces. This development raises important questions about the central role of the local trade union representatives as promoters of equal pay. This article analyses how local trade union representatives construct the problem of unequal pay and their role in narrowing the gender pay gap and their possible agonistic adversaries in negotiations on equal pay. Different problem representations concerning equal pay are analysed and evaluated on the basis of their potential to fracture the gender‐blind wage bargaining culture and ability to cash in on the promises made towards narrowing the gender pay gap.     

Gender,Equality and the Culture of Organizational Assessment

In spite of years of equal opportunities legislation and guidelines, a marked gender imbalance at the apex of organizational career structures persists (Carrier 1995). The predominant liberal model of equal opportunities (EO) seeks to alleviate sex-discrimination through advocating gender-neutral or ‘same’ treatment (Meehan and Sevenhuisjen 1991; Gatens 1991; Bock and James 1992). However, the present study suggests that ostensibly gender-neutral organizational practices may exclude characteristics, values and concerns more typically associated with women. This paper draws on a study of gender in selection to corporate management and raises questions about whether and how characteristics, values, goals and concerns which have been perceived as ‘female’ or ‘feminine’ may be excluded from ostensibly gender-neutral equality practices. Findings suggest that EO theory and practice need to move beyond limited either/or debates around ‘equality’ and ‘difference’. In order to do so, it may also be necessary to challenge dichotomous thinking about gender which currently informs much of that debate. In order to facilitate the development and progress of women in organizations it is not enough for EO initiatives to treat gender as a category of difference that can be overcome through superficial changes, for example in interview procedures, which merely seek to exclude issues perceived as gendered. Instead, a longer agenda for equality must move beyond the debate about women’s ‘sameness’ or ‘difference’ from men to include a deeper understanding of the gendered nature of organizational positions, structures and practices.     

An Examination of the Perceptions of Organizational Politics Model: Replication and Extension

This study examined the Perceptions of PoliticsModel (Ferris, Russ, & Fandt, 1989) in a three-phaseprocess. In the first phase, the model was examinedusing Anderson and Gerbing's (1988) two-step approach to structural equations modeling. Themodel was tested on data collected from 786 employees ofa state government agency and 469 employees of anelectric utility cooperative. Results from this phase indicated that the model had acceptablefit and was more parsimonious than any of the competingmodels to which it was compared. In the second phase,understanding as a moderator of the relationships between perceptions of organizational politicsand several outcome variables was examined. Resultsindicated that understanding only moderated the outcomerelationship between politics and job satisfaction, not intent to turnover or job anxiety. Finally,in phase three, the additional outcome variables oforganizational satisfaction, supervisor effectiveness,and self-reported individual performance were included in an effort to expand the Ferris et al. (1989)framework. Additionally, the moderating effects ofunderstanding on the relationships between perceptionsof politics and these new outcome variables were explored. Results from the final step indicatedthat adding the new outcome variables increased theparsimonyof the model without decreasing model fit. Withrespect to the moderating effects, only thepolitics-performance relationship was moderated byunderstanding.Allof these results are discussed in light of theirimplications for future research.     

Gender and Sexuality in Discourses of Managerial Control: The Case of Women Miners

Mining scholarship has focused chiefly on capital developments, labour relations, changing technology, and global markets, ignoring the equally critical aspects of gendered organizations and their role in shaping the subjectivities of workers and managers. This article probes how gender and sexuality organize a mine site through organizational design and productivity management. It looks behind the rhetoric of equal opportunity, glamour mining and human resource techniques to explore the sexual politics of employing women as miners. In particular it scrutinizes the discourses of masculinity that produce ‘the woman miner’ in a context where the barriers between work and personal life are particularly mobile and highly contested. Equally crucially, it recounts some of the ways in which women have mobilized against systemic male dominance and privilege. The workplace in question is the world’s largest gem mine of its kind, a state–of–the–art computerized operation set in the remote Australian outback.