Resistance

At 9:29 AWST, one of the presenters said, “The young women researchers used their stories about their communities to resist.”  and we responded.

EDITH: Hmmmm, what does it mean to resist? What is resistance? Is it a passive feminist practice? Or, is it affirmative and generative?

EDITH: When we talk about feminist participatory research (FPAR), it seems to be  about visibility.

EDITH: It certainly is resistance. And how the women are resisting is not passive, it is active, generative, and productive. Hey, didn’t bell hooks write about resistance? In her book, Yearning? 

EDITH: Yes, she talks about resisting from the margins.

PAUSE

EDITH: Oh here it is, listen to this where she is talking about the margin not as a place of deprivation but as ” a site one stays in, clings to even, because it nourishes one’s capacity to resist. It offers to one the possibility of radical perspective from which to see and create, to imagine alternatives, new worlds.”

EDITH: When was that written? The bell hooks?

EDITH: This subversive openness. What she is talking about is…

EDITH: It was the late 80s.

EDITH: Wow. I love that stuff. But hooks is writing about sites of resistance, rather than locating resistance within the individual. This is important and instructive. Maybe the site is the collective. Resistance happens with others? Or a feminist resistance is always with? Of course, we know that others could include animals, plants, ancestral knowledges, etc., but not everyone will take this into consideration.

EDITH: What about Yusoff, and her conversation in A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (2018), “the articulation of resistance is not a romantic appeal but a structural reorientation to the rifts of colonialism”. I’m remembering a walk and this photo I took of a plant and split concrete and pipes – both resisting structure and thinking about power relations.

EDITH: Yes, the nonhuman resists as well.

EDITH: What about resisting rather than resistance as a feminist practice. It has more action, and is more generative. What about resistancing?

PAUSE

EDITH: What is the difference between resisting and resistancing?

EDITH: I think they are different.

EDITH: Hmmm…

EDITH: Hey, I’m reading this conversation between filmmaker John Akomfrah, bell hooks, and Stuart Hall about resistance which makes me think about the form of conversation as collective action.

EDITH:  If you’re going to resist you don’t have to join the middle or the dominant.

EDITH: In Naomi and Kavita’s work, participatory research became multiple sites of resistance – collectivity.

EDITH: Collectivity is a feature of feminist resistance.

EDITH: Just because there are multiple people doesn’t mean it is a collective.

EDITH: True, true.

EDITH: I’m wondering what we might be erasing in the conversation? How do we keep the lineage of the conversation and what does that contribute regarding the collective and participatory nature of resistance?

EDITH: I’m not sure I understand? What do you mean?

EDITH: What was so interesting in their research was the ways in which governments often ask for statistics and these women were pushing back with stories. When the stories of the women are presented, and often through photos and video,  to organisations such as the UN, the visibility of their stories makes it hard(er) for people to deny.

EDITH: This conversation has brought us to the collective!

…to be continued…

(This entry was co-authored by The Ediths, Mindy Blaise, Jane Merewether, Jo Pollitt, and Vanessa Wintoneak and inspired by the presentation: Activism for climate justice through feminist participatory action research by Dr. Naomi Godden and Kativa Naidu at the Ediths Roundtable Series 2021)

References

Akomfrah, J., Jayamanne, L., Hooks, B., Fusco, C., Hall, S., Fair, A., . . . Lovell, A. (1989). The Morning Discussion. Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, (36), 24-28. Retrieved April 6, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44111661

hooks, b. (1989). Yearning: Race, gender and cultural politics. South End Press.

Yusoff, K. (2018). A billion black Anthropocenes or none. University of Minnesota Press