https://theloop.ecpr.eu/democracy-as-dissent-lessons-from-outside-the-west/
"What might resistance look like, and why is it vital for democracy? To tackle these questions in tandem, we can take a cue from Jacques Rancière’s elaboration of dissent. This involves processes that disrupt the juridical order by introducing new forms of appearing, thinking, and acting against it. Rancière conceptualises dissension as a way of expressing difference and otherness to intervene in the 'distribution of the sensible,' or what a totalising regime tries to circumscribe as acceptable thought and behaviour."
This quote is from Nojang Khatami's essay linked above. Khatami includes "artistic interventions through poetry, literature, music, visual art and cinema, as well as corporeal interventions through protests, strikes, and other modes of appearance and publicity" as examples of resistance. Crucially, Khatami states that resistance is politics itself: to accept, without thought, the rules of, for example, a state or a society, is anti-political and non-democratic.
The three examples that stand out most for me at this moment are:
1) The Tishreen Revolution in Iraq which has been characterized as a women's and girl's movement (see some of Ruba Al-Hassani's work for instance) that is challenging a legal order that protects/reinforces Gender-Based Violence;
2) The brave advocacy of people who are labelled or medicalized as obese or fat (e.g. Martinus Evans' rebellion against his doctor's orders or many people through social media who are working to normalize their bodies);
and
3) The 600 peoples, many young (including 3 seven-year-olds), who formed the Aurora Group and are suing the Swedish Government through class action for failing to meet specific environmental targets.
I see each - the Tishreen Revolution, "Fat" activists, and the Aurora Group - as crucial examples of democratization. In each case there are peoples fighting against a power, or powers, that are oppressing them. Often these powers are state-driven, expert-driven, patronizing, and even entrenched in the very social structures (or context) these peoples are living in. It takes bravery, initiative, foresight, organization, and tenacity to do what they are doing. In Iraq, many women and girls and their allies have sadly died or had their reputations tarnished by those who seek to maintain their (typically male or conservative) power over them.
What example(s) of resistance, rebellion, mutiny, dissent, etc., do you have in mind? And why do you think they promote democracy?
https://theloop.ecpr.eu/democracy-as-dissent-lessons-from-outside-the-west/
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