Resistance in Theory and Practice

Undergraduate / Graduate

Guerrillas, liberators, and oppressed groups of all kinds have appealed to resistance as an organizational strategy, political theory, and moral justification. Resistance is violent or non-violent, active or passive, individual or collective, bodily or intellectual. Often it involves breaking the law. This course explores the diverse histories of resistance in the modern world. Readings include H. D. Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience; Angela Davis's lectures on liberation; Rosa Luxemburg's pamphlet on the mass strike; Frantz Fanon's defense of anticolonial violence; Hannah Arendt's critique of student violence; and Audre Lorde's theses on intersectional feminist resistance. To provide context, we will discuss the international labor movement; decolonization; and the contemporary politics of Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, Antifa, and climate protest. Together we will test at least one hypothesis: To resist means to manipulate a regime of oppression, to subvert it from within, but never entirely to escape it.