The Ends of Resistance

Making and Unmaking Democracy

Alix Olson, Alex Zamalin (Autoren)

Buch | Softcover

200 Seiten

2024
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-20499-6 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

Since the rise of Donald Trump and other right-wing authoritarians worldwide, we have been told to “resist.” But this kind of opposition looks surprisingly like restoring the status quo. Under the banner of resistance, liberals and progressives have encouraged voting for Democrats, reading the mainstream media, trusting the science, putting up yard signs, buying the right products, and celebrating a “return to normal.” How was “resistance” diluted, and where can we find alternative forms of resistance for present and future struggles?

Alix Olson and Alex Zamalin offer a clear-eyed critical account of how neoliberalism has redefined resistance to thwart social movements and consolidate power. Elites have domesticated and coopted some once-radical concepts and practices into “restorative resistance” that bolsters support for an unjust social order while marginalizing, racializing, and criminalizing many others. Olson and Zamalin argue that true resistance to racial neoliberalism must instead be deeply antirestorative: collective, horizontal, counterhegemonic, radically democratic insurrectionary movements that cannot be redirected into shoring up the existing order. This “unruly world-building”—exemplified by Occupy Wall Street, the Movement for Black Lives, Indigenous activism at Standing Rock, and more—pushes us to live, think, and dream beyond profit maximization, democratic civility, and individual freedom. Powerfully and accessibly written with manifesto-like urgency, The Ends of Resistance shows how marginalized voices and social movements deepen our thinking for confronting power.

Alix Olson is an assistant professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Emory University’s Oxford College. Before her academic career, she toured internationally as a spoken word artist. Olson is the editor of Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution (2007) and is a widely published poet. Alex Zamalin is professor of Africana studies and political science at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. He is the author of six books, including Struggle on Their Minds: The Political Thought of African American Resistance (2017) and Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism (2019), also with Columbia University Press.

Acknowledgments
1. The End of Resistance: Reformation Over Transformation
2. Neoliberal Resistance: Privatizing Rebellion
3. Democracy Domesticated: Resistance as Restoration
4. Making Suspicious Citizens: Racializing and Criminalizing Resistance
5. Unruly World Building: Toward a Critical Infrastructure of Demanding Hope
Notes
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	22.11.2023
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	140 x 216 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Systeme
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Theorie
ISBN-10	0-231-20499-X / 023120499X
ISBN-13	978-0-231-20499-6 / 9780231204996
Zustand	Neuware