Resistance (was cultural politics/"real" politics)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Thomas Kruse replies to Catherine and Doug:
>>>Are all hierachies formed by the exactly the same forces?
>>
>>Hmm, no, but not completely different forces either. That's the sort of
>>thing I'm trying to figure out.
>
>In trying to figure this stuff out, I have found much help in studies that
>try to explain and analyze the concrete machinations and interactions of
>various stratification/heirarchicization processes.
>
>I might suggest Beneria and Roldan's 1987 book _The Crossroads of Class and
>Gender: Homework, Subsonctracting and Household Dynamics in Mexico City
>(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press) as a starter.  Herein some of the varied
>and intersecting processes of heirarchy-making are laid out pretty clearly
>(i.e. how the never-in-real-life-separable experiences of class and gender
>can none the less be analytically separated to understnd certian outcomes,
>orientations, etc.).
>
>Also, in a VERY suggestive development are the works of what I might call
>historians with an anthropoligist's attentiveness to detail, or
>anthropologists concerned with history and breaking out of the ahistorical
>"ethographic present" too often constructed around their representations.
>
>In these works (cites to follow) we can see an embrace of the micro and
>marco in ongoing, power-laden processes.  And along the way, they
>demonstrate how various interacting forms of empowerment/disempowerment
>(heirachicization) produce specific outcomes -- sometimes ruptures though
>more often accomodation and getting-by.
>
>Note also: central to all this is a redefinition of the state and
>"state-making" processes, that involve the day to day activities of folks.
>Taking Corrigan and Sayer's 1985 book _the Great Arch: English State
>Formation as Cultural Revolution_ as their point of deperture, some of these
>researchers seek to show how state-making is a process of managing and
>negotiating these processes of heirarchicization.  The nifty part is that
>producing and reproducing these "hegemonies" is shown to be intimitely
>related to specific, interacting heirachies (class, gender, ethnicity),
>played out in specific ways in concrete people's lives.  Note too: they also
>indicate fissures, instabilites, etc. in those processes.
>
>At the end of the day is all this any more than "shedding light on
>processes" as political act?  No, not really.  There's precious litte to
>suggest what might be done  -- except for more research along the lines
>outlined.  BUT -- big but -- the suggestion is a good one for a left too
>often ignorant of (or worse: disparaging of) forms of opression that don't
>turn on alientaion/exploitation.

Beyond the production of more useful knowledge for the left, I think that
there are several important reasons for examining everyday acts of
resistance, revolts & rebellions that do not result in social revolution,
etc.

(1) One of the ways in which the subordinated races, gender, etc. are
oppressed is for us to be identified with _passivity_. As long as women,
people of color, etc. are thought of as 'more passive' (hence more
contemptible) than white males, there is no hope of building true
working-class solidarity.

(2) Resistace, revolts, etc. often reveal the content of latent class
consciousness. The left need to learn to identify, speak to, and/or correct
& refocus such latent class consciousness, so that what is latent can
become conscious and explicitly political.

Yoshie