Resistance and Freedom

In Chapter 20, “The Political Affects of Plural Performativity,” of their book Dispossession: The Performance in the Political Butler and Athanasiou discuss revolt: “…revolt emerges as a reconfiguration of the normative operations of power that regulate the limits of this context, signifies affecting and being affected by the corporeal dynamic of relatedness, mutual vulnerability, and endurance” (177). This one quote, seems to imply many of the key aspects of personal revolt discussed by Kristeva in “The Forms of Revolt” including the purpose of revolt—to question norms on a societal and individual level, and that this questioning results from identity and relations to these norms—as well as the ideal of revolt as a never-ending necessity for humanity.

The revolt that Kristeva and Butler and Athanasiou discuss is not purely individual, it is public and it is not just one individual and one act. While some acts of political protest may seem connected, “this does not mean that everyone acts together and in unison, but that enough actions are interweaving that a collective effort is registered. The ‘I’ is not dissolved in such collectivity…” (180). This reminded me of the discussion of the individual identity in relation to other—a discussion which has been prevalent since the beginning of the semester—and this passage provides what seems to be the clearest version of how an being can be both individual and relational, as we all are.

Ending the chapter in a discussion of freedom—what and why and how—Butler and Athanasiou conclude that freedom needs to expand beyond “liberal individualism” (179), and revolt is ultimately a struggle for the survival of freedom. Revolt (and the questing of norms that coincides) should be an instantaneous action to maintain freedom and continually open the platform for new forms of the “other” to protest oppression. Freedom requires the power of resistance; resistance is the power of freedom.