Mona Lilja

Sovereign power, disciplinary power and biopower: resisting what power with what resistance?

This article links Foucaultian power forms with its corresponding resistance. If resistance is a reaction to power, then the characteristics of the power strategy/relation affect the kinds of resistance that subsequently prevail. Accordingly, it becomes interesting to discuss what kinds of resistance emanate from what kinds of power. We discuss this relationship between power and resistance by drawing on Foucault’s ‘triangle’: (I) sovereign power; (II) disciplinary power; and (III) biopower. Thus, deviating from Foucaultian studies’ preoccupation with ‘power’, we utilise Foucault in order to focus on ‘resistance’. And by connecting to empirical examples from within the emerging field of resistance studies we argue that the peculiarities of power decide how resistance can be conducted.

Exploring ‘irrational resistance’

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.

Understanding Power and Performing Resistance: Swedish Feminists, Civil Society Voices, Biopolitics and “Angry” Men

This article discusses feminist resistance in relation to different concepts of power. In particular, it analyses current debates within Swedish feminism in order to understand what perceptions of power and resistance are being harboured within these discussions. Within the Swedish feminist debate it has been suggested that the equality debate must be radicalized, creating real change instead of policy reports and political party programmes. Others, however, have argued that we must not abandon equality politics for “conflict, struggle, and revolt”. This debate is discussed from different theories of power and resistance, and we argue that different forms of power become entangled with different forms of resistance, thus creating manifold and messy forms of resistance.

Fighting with and Against the Time: The Japanese Environmental Movement's Queering of Time as Resistance

Abstract This article aims to add to the discussion on civil society, resistance, and environmental politics by departing from the concepts of affects, time, and temporality. In essence, the article suggests two things. Firstly, when theorizing civil society, we argue that we should depart from the idea that the present is not a singular, linear moment, but comprises affective relations to other times and people situated within these times. To support the argument, we will display how the ‘doing’ of various civil societies is performed in relation to people of the past as well as the future—that is, how already deceased people of the past or not-yet-born people of the future contribute to the creation of the present in various ways. Secondly, we will show how civil society actors are carrying out various forms of resistance against global warming by suggesting multiple temporalities that are operating simultaneously. By reviewing interviews with local representatives of the environmental movement in Tokyo, the promotion of another temporality prevails as a form of resistance, or as a means to resist, in order to negotiate current discourses and future prospects. To further understand this embracing of time, the article is inspired by affective theory and takes temporality in queer studies as a starting point to examine different strategies of resistance. Overall, the article highlights the importance of adding the affects/time nexus to the analysis of national and transnational civil societies.

traversing the ‘particular’ through the ‘universal’: the politics of negotiating violent masculinities in Cambodia

The article analyses programmes against gender-based violence (GBV) in Cambodia in order to understand what notions of power, agency and resistance reside within these programmes. The text relies on in-depth interviews with four different organisations in Cambodia. The interviews display a number of hands-on practices of resistance against GBV, which require a broad discussion of identity in order to be fully understood. In particular, the organisations emphasize the importance of approaching men—in mens groups, as trainers and role models—in the resistance against GBV. In their approach to Cambodian men, the trainers mixed representations of a more ‘particular’ character with representations of a more ‘universal’ appearance. Both in the establishment of new subject positions and new discourses, the Cambodian trainers leaned upon and alternated between universal and particular notions. In addition, mens ‘particular’ subject positions became the very lens through which they considered ‘universal’ notions of violent masculinities. New aspects of the resistance against GBV thus become visible as the concepts of universalism and particularism are put in use. It is in the nexus between ‘universal’ and ‘particular’ representations that a non-violent masculinity is fostered.

Resistance, rupture and repetition: Civil society strategies against intimate partner violence in Cambodia.

This paper offers a new interpretation of the ‘resistance’ carried out by local civil society organisations in Cambodia against intimate partner violence (IPV). In this, the paper explores the nexus between ‘rupture’, ‘resistance’ and ‘repetition’ and concludes that different ‘repetitions’ can contribute to acts of violence while simultaneously creating possibilities for resisting IPV. In regard to the latter, the concept of ‘rupture’ is investigated as a performative politics through which organisations try to disrupt the ‘repetitions’ of violent masculinities. Furthermore, it is argued that the importance of ‘repetitions’ and the concept of time should be acknowledged. The French criminal defence lawyer Jacques Vergès’ understanding of ‘rupture’ and the French philosopher Gilles Deleuzes notions of ‘repetition’ inform the analysis. To exemplify our discussion and findings, the paper embraces stories of a number of civil society workers who facilitate various mens groups in Cambodia in order to negotiate the practice of IPV.

Theorising ‘Peace-building’ resistance: constructions of time and different temporalities at play in the Preah Vihear Temple conflict

ABSTRACTThis paper explores civil-society mobilisations around the Preah Vihear Temple, today a world heritage site located in Cambodia, on the border with Thailand. More specifically, the paper seeks to increase our understanding of the ‘peace-building’ resistance that is played out by different civil-society actors with regard to the Temple. This case displays how both the governments and civil societies in each of the two countries bend relationships between the ‘past’, the ‘present’, and the ‘future’ in general, and in relation to ‘identity’ in particular, in order to construct narratives of nation-building. The Temple has been used in discursive constructions of national collective identity in Cambodia and Thailand, respectively; constructions that, among other things, embrace shifting notions of time and temporality. Whereas much analysis of peace-building resistance concentrates on larger-scale actions, this paper adds to previous research by giving priority to more subtle forms of resistance and d...

Discourses of Hybrid Democracy: The Case of Cambodia

Abstract When implementing democracy, local discourses of decision-making affect the ways in which the liberal democracy is comprehended, realized and practiced. One problem with the so-called ‘transition paradigm’ is then the neglect of local cultures and institutions and their impact on implemented democratic systems. Given this, the aim of the article is therefore to give a deep(er) understanding of the processes of change in implemented democracies through a close empirical reading of interviews with Cambodian politicians and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). A critical examination of the conditions in Cambodia reveals how liberal democracy is not only re-interpreted and hybridized but also occasionally resisted in line with the local discourses of power.

How resistance encourages resistance : Theorizing the nexus between power, ‘Organised Resistance’ and ‘Everyday Resistance’

ABSTRACT Lately, the concept of ‘resistance’ has gained considerable traction as a tool for critically exploring subaltern practices in relation to power. Few researchers, however, have elaborated on the inter-linkage of shifting forms of resistance; and above all, how acts of everyday resistance entangle with more organized and sometimes mass-based resistance activities. In this paper, these entanglements are analysed by taking into consideration the connections between articulations of resistance and technologies of power. Empirical observations from Cambodia are theorized in order to provide better theoretical tools for searching and investigating the inter-linkage between different resistance forms that contribute to social change. In addition, it is argued that modalities of power and its related resistance must be understood, or theorized, in relation to the concepts of ‘agency’, ‘self-reflexivity’ and ‘techniques of the self’.

Resistance against material artefacts: university spaces, administrative online systems and emotions

Abstract This article traces some of the attempts that have been made to analyse time and emotions in order to gain a broader understanding of how power and resistance entangle in online administrative systems in university spaces. Rising levels of Internet usage in the university sector, and society in general, imply a new era for public administration. Online administrative systems have moved into the university sector, creating different reactions, new practices, temporalities and emotions. The administrative online systems, which govern through, as our respondents understand it, various time-consuming scripts (for example, the travel expenses programmes or programmes regulating working hours or duty periods) or through online communication systems (for example, emailing), give rise to a rich and varied resistance against the different systems, which informs the employees’ temporalities and spent time (clock time). Among other things, people reacted emotionally with avoidance, time-travel, manipulations, ignorance and by exact rule following.