Resistance and the Practice of Rationality [1 ed.] 9781443869669, 9781443846264

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Resistance and the Practice of Rationality

Resistance and the Practice of Rationality

By

Martin W. Bauer, Rom Harré and Carl Jensen

Resistance and the Practice of Rationality, by Martin W. Bauer, Rom Harré and Carl Jensen This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2013 by Martin W. Bauer, Rom Harré and Carl Jensen All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4626-0, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4626-4

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Boxes ............................................................................................. vii List of Figures........................................................................................... viii List of Tables .............................................................................................. ix Acknowledgement ....................................................................................... x An Introductory Note ................................................................................. xi Part I: Resistance in the Natural-biological Sciences Resistance as a Concept in Physics Rom Harré ................................................................................................... 2 Resistance and Rationality: Some Lessons from Scientific Revolutions Dean Peters ................................................................................................ 11 “Resistance” in Biomedicine John Grimley Evans .................................................................................. 29 Part II: Resistance in the Psychological Sciences The Issue of Resistance in the Literary Works of Peter Weiss (1916-1982) Beat Mazenauer ......................................................................................... 42 Resistance in Psychotherapy: From Freud to Lacan Derek Hook, Parisa Dashtipour and Owen Hewitson ................................ 55 New Technology: A Social Psychology of Disinhibition and Restraint Martin W Bauer ......................................................................................... 79 The Role of a Cultural Immune System in Resisting Expert Explanations of Infectious Disease Adrian Bangerter and Véronique Eicher ................................................. 101

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Table of Contents

Part III: Resistance in the Socio-historical Sciences Resistance in the Historical Context of United States Slavery Dorothy Cooper Owens ........................................................................... 126 Forms of Resistance during Stalinism Ivana Marková ......................................................................................... 137 Perennial Resistance: The Meaning of a Term after World War II Doron Rabinovici .................................................................................... 157 Resistance against Experiments: Positioning and Rationality in Medicine Uffe J Jensen ........................................................................................... 180 Part IV: Resistance in the World of Politics and Law Clausewitz and Lawrence Examining Resistance in Warfare R E Schmidle ........................................................................................... 208 Crime as Resistance: Theoretical and Practical Considerations Carl Jensen .............................................................................................. 225 High Cost Resistance: Student Activism in the First Intifada Francesca Burke ...................................................................................... 243 Ius Resistendi: Resistance as Reflexivity Alain Pottage ........................................................................................... 262 Afterword ................................................................................................ 282 Martin W Bauer, Rom Harré and Carl Jensen Contributors ............................................................................................. 298 Index ........................................................................................................ 299

LIST OF BOXES

Box 6.1 A rationally delayed diffusion: gm crops in Brazil Box 11.1 Collecting tissue samples Box 11.2 The Tuskegee Syphilis Study Box 11.3 Talbutamide and Diabetes

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 Retrograde motion of a planet relative to the fixed stars (Reproduced from Kuhn, 1957, p. 48) Figure 2.2 The deferent-epicycle system (Reproduced from Kuhn, 1957, p. 61) Figure 6.1 Effects of resistance in a diffusion process Figure 6.2 Differential rate of penetration of GM soya in Argentina, US, Brazil and the world; Source: Bauer (2006) Figure 6.3 Index of soya production in USA and Brazil. Source: Bauer (2006) Figure 7.1 Timeline of events and explanations related to AIDS Figure 13.1 Routine Activity Theory; Source: Burton (2012) Figure 14.1 Maps of Palestine; Source: PASSIA Figure Ad.1 Number of publications responding to the search term ‘resistance’ in two archives

LIST OF TABLES

Table Ad.1: The topical results of three Google searches conducted in January 2008 Table Ad2: Sloterdijk’s characterisation of two world historical periods

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editors would like to thank the LSE Annual Fund, LSE’s CPNSS (Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science) and ISP (Institute of Social Psychology) who supported the conference ‘Beyond rationality III – Resistance and the Practice of Rationality’ held at LSE, on 19-20 November 2010. The publication of this volume was additionally supported by the journal Public Understanding of Science. And nothing would be forthcoming without Sue Howard, who did a splendid job in keeping the production going and streamlined the English text into the finally acceptable format. London, November 2012

AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE

In a series of workshops at the London School of Economics, sponsored by the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS) and the Institute for Social psychology (ISP) we aimed at tackling one of the longstanding problems of our age. What are we to understand by the concepts of ‘rationality’ and ‘irrationality’ as they are used in our time? They figure prominently in critical discourses in which the follies of all kinds of people are offered in explanation of social disasters. After the examination of a wide range of material in which these concepts figured it became clear that there is no such thing as a context free concept either of rationality or of irrationality. Nor do they form a neatly opposed pair of antithetical partners. These concepts appear in a variety of discourses some of which have been much in evidence recently in what one might call the era of accusations. The claims by those who believed that extraterrestrials had visited earth recently have been popular, and popularly derided as ridiculous, that is irrational. The same sort of rhetoric has surrounded discussions of global warming–is the earth actually warming– those who deny are the irrationalists, but only to the scientific establishment. But is that warming once conceded the result of human behaviour? Those who resist this uncomfortable conclusion join the ranks of the irrationalists. Those who deny the reliability of thermometers are very different from those who emphasise the possibility of natural processes of warming of the planet. What would we say about those who fail to be convinced of the idea that it is human folly that is responsible for the changes in the climate? We might well say that they resist these ideas. So the discussion of rational and irrational responses to many situations and claims is tied in with the idea of resistance. But that too is a polysemic concept. Just as one person’s incompetent bank manager is another person’s cautious investor, so one person’s resistance is another person’s stubbornness, and, in another context and with respect to another contrast, wisdom! This insight suggested the project of a wider study of the concept of ‘resistance’ and its uses in contemporary discourses from physics and engineering to the phenomena of non-compliance to military, legal and political imperatives or to failure to adjust one’s beliefs to the available evidence or even to common sense.

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An Introductory Note

This present collection of essays was a development of the Beyond Rationality program set up in the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS) at the London School of Economics. This project involved many and diverse studies of the how the concepts of rationality and irrationality are and have been used in many contexts. For many philosophers the ‘gold standard’ of rationality has been conformity to the laws of logic. However, assessments of discourses and practices with respect to their rationality or irrationality turn on matters far removed from the strict rules of logic. Even such archetypal rational practices as scientific research and theorizing and the practice of the law do not conform to these rules. The research topics that form the content of the first volume of the Beyond Rationality studies (2012) took up the challenge of sketching the domain relative meanings of categorizing practices and discourses as rational or irrational. How if at all are these meanings related and upon what are they based? The project involved the description and discussion of such assessments in an array of studies, including climate change debates, business models, and many others. There was no attempt to pull out a definition of what ‘rationality and ‘irrationality’ really mean. The work was simply aimed at mapping patterns of use with different degrees of similarity and dissimilarity in the criteria for their acceptable application. Missing from the volume was the question ‘When is it rational to resist social pressures, fait accompli, authoritarian diktats, emotional blackmail, invading forces, and so on?’ And that raises the question of what might be meant by ‘resistance’ in this and other contexts. This led to the attempts to unravel the question of the context relative meanings of the word ‘resistance’ as it appears in all sorts of contexts as are presented in this volume. Is there a core meaning of ‘resistance’, and if not, what are the significant uses of the world and how are they related? What roles do they play in the management of our lives? Though we offer no solutions to these vexing questions there may be valuable insights to be reached on a case-by-case basis. Rom Harré, (Oxford) Carl Jensen (Mississippi) Martin W Bauer (London)

PART I: RESISTANCE IN THE NATURAL-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

CHAPTER ONE RESISTANCE AS A CONCEPT IN PHYSICS ROM HARRÉ

We can make a beginning in the study of the concept of ‘resistance’ prior to detailed studies of the many kinds of resistance we encounter in modern life, by setting out some of the ways the word is used in a variety of contexts. A casual survey of the uses of the word ‘resistance’ in English yields a diverse list of linked but different senses. The word appears in medical discourse, ‘resistance to disease’; in political/military discourse, ‘resistance to occupation’; in scientific discourse, ‘electrical resistance’ and ‘frictional resistance’; in engineering, ‘air resistance’; in psychological discourse, ‘resistance to reason’, and no doubt there are many more. Is there a core of meaning common to the use of the word in these contexts, and if so, are there any significant cross-fertilizations among the various domains?

Some Preliminary Lexicography In this chapter the task will be examine the way the concept of ‘resistance’ is used in physical sciences. Laying out a field of family resemblances for the uses of the word ‘resistance’, the default position as our working assumption will be that in these contexts ‘resistance’ is morally neutral. There are no implications of valuations with respect to resistance as a natural phenomenon. However, in some material contexts the use of ‘resistance’ is linked by metaphor and simile to psychological and moral concepts, such as ‘laziness’. Nevertheless, as metaphor, it hardly needs remarking that the use of the word for the tardiness of the response of a magnetic field to changes in the current that animates a magnetizing coil, is shorn of any implications of blame. This has some importance however, for our studies, because the question of which contexts are the basis of the meanings we assign to ‘resistance’ is important. If the psychological and moral contexts are the source of the meanings of resistance in mechanics, electromagnetism and

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so on we must assume that resistance in these contexts is a clear enough notion to determine meanings in material contexts by metaphor or simile. Fields of family resemblances have structure–historical, analogical and no doubt other inter-relations. Where do the core meanings lie, if there are any? In this paper I propose to confine myself to the uses of the word ‘resistance’ in scientific and engineering discourses. In the course of this volume, the links between these uses and the concept of ‘resistance’ in moral, political, psychological, psychiatric and social contexts will no doubt emerge. In the end we may be able to see how far these uses of the word (concept) are derivative from the way it is used in the sciences and engineering. Medicine may straddle the seeming differentiation between material and moral meanings of ‘resistance’.

The Program of Study We can begin with a glance at the dictionary.1 Three main uses are recorded. 1. Resistance as the action of withstanding an assault of whatever sort. ‘This crop resists drought very well’, ‘Straw offers hardly any resistance to combustion’. 2. Power or capacity of resistance. ‘Concrete has little resistance to shearing forces’; ‘Porcelain offers a great deal of resistance to the passage of a current.’ 3. Opposition to pressure or movement of another body. ‘The wall resisted the force of the wind’; ‘Water resists the movement of one’s hands. An obvious working assumption in the uses of ‘resistance’ in these contexts is that the concept is morally indifferent. It makes no sense to praise the wall for resisting the flood waters or to condemn the river for resisting the free movement of one’s limbs. However, in some physical contexts the etymology of the use the word discloses a metaphorical link to psychological and moral concepts such as ‘laziness’. In the context of the natural sciences this aspect of the root meaning is, I suggest, completely lost.

 1

A good place to begin: ‘Freely fair and fairly free, divinest Etymologie’, as J.L. Austin once put it.

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Chapter One

Method of Analysis I will be drawing on Wittgenstein’s concept of resemblances and differences in the uses of a certain word, symbol or sign, uses that are not linked by neat synonymies but by similarities and differences in the conventions that express contextually but relative meanings. Discussions of this sort can be shaped by thinking in terms of a ‘field of family resemblances’. By that Wittgenstein meant an array of uses of a word or phrase that are linked by similarities and differences in rules of correct application in their semantics (Wittgenstein, 1953). He made use of this idea to illustrate a common error in thinking–that of presuming that because a certain word is used across many contexts, there must be a common something in all of these contexts to which it refers. We use the word ‘guide’ in many ways. Is there a common meaning to ‘being guided’–along a path, by a text or a score and so on? In this series of studies we are unlikely to fall into what is now a familiar philosophical trap. Instead we can use the idea of the field of family resemblances positively to track uses the concept of ‘resistance’ in contexts in the material world and the sciences that are devoted to material phenomena; to the medical concepts of ‘resistance to disease’ and ‘resistant to infectious agents’; to psychological concepts around conversion and rational and irrational thinking; to social and historical contexts in which we encounter uses such as ‘resistance to tyranny’ and the like.

Shaping a Family Resemblance Study The overall project of the work presented in this volume could be described as an attempt to locate the concept of ‘resistance’ in a great many contexts, including those of importance in everyday life in our time. We have many uses for the idea of ‘resistance’, in psychology, political and intelligence studies and so on. However, the ranges of uses of an important word like ‘resistance’ is very large and diverse. We can use the way a specific vocabulary is used in a technical context in order to sharpen our appreciation of the multiplicity of meanings in the wider scope of meanings, technical and vernacular. The discussion to follow in this chapter is aimed at laying out a field of family resemblances of uses in contexts in which the discourse is about the material world and expresses the knowledge we have of material phenomena in mechanics and electromagnetism. Physics and engineering have given the concept of ‘resistance’ a small range of sharply defined uses which we can use as scaffolding with which



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to begin the wider study of resistances bringing in political, psychological, theological, military, medical and everyday uses.

Resistance as a Concept in Physics The study of resistance to motion in physical systems, the root idea in the physical sciences, is ‘Tribology’ (Kragelski and Alisin, 2001). Resistance is a force preventing a process from starting, or once started from intensifying beyond a certain threshold. The main example in elementary physics is ‘friction’. This concept is tied to the idea of ‘opposition’ or ‘opposing’.

Active Opposition This meaning is illustrated in the examples to follow: Dry friction: This is the resistance opposing a force that would otherwise have set a body in motion or opposing those forces that tend to maintain it in motion while a moving or potentially moving body is in contact with its surroundings. We can imagine a rock sitting on a sloping surface, immobile until struck by an avalanche. There are two cases of dry friction. i. Static friction: the force equal and opposite to the force exerted on one body in contact with a surface before the body starts to move. We shove at the rock but at first it does not slide across the road. ii. Kinetic friction: the force equal and opposite to the force acting on the moving body when there is relative motion between body and surface. Once we have got the rock to move we must keep on pushing to keep it sliding. Once motion has begun and resistance is overcome by a greater impressed force, the residual force opposing motion, the kinetic friction, is less than the static friction. A glance at elementary textbooks shows that the word ‘resistance’ is used in mechanics as part of the definition of the concept expressed by the technical definition of ‘friction’ in terms of forces. A common understanding of ‘resistance’ is presumed in the foundations of elementary physics. We do not learn what ‘resistance’ means by making use of a prior understanding of ‘resistance’. Rather we learn what concepts such as ‘viscosity’ mean by drawing on the common meaning of ‘resistance’.

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Chapter One

Amontons’ Laws The laws relevant to dry friction as resistance to motion were anticipated by Galileo and Newton but first fully formulated by Guillame Amontons (1663–1705). First Law: The force of friction opposing motion is directly proportional to the applied force. The greater the force exerted the greater the frictional force that opposes it. Second Law: The force of friction is independent of the apparent area of contact. Fluid Friction: or viscosity: the resistance of a fluid to the free movement of an immersed material body, the force we call ‘drag’. This is illustrated by the energy required from the motor to maintain the speed of a car when it is being propelled through the air, of a boat as it goes moving through water, or a drill boring through a wooden block. Turn off the ignition and the car comes to rest thanks to ‘air resistance’. In physics and engineering this concept refers to a species of force.

Stokes’ Law As is usual in physics a law is enunciated in a simple case, with refinements in different contexts of application. Stokes’ Law links ‘drag’ or fluid resistance to attributes of the medium in which a body moves and relevant properties of one kind of moving body. The law links the force needed to move a small sphere at a certain velocity through a fluid of a certain viscosity against the resistance to motion exerted by the fluid. We have then an understanding of resistance to motion of a solid in contact with another solid, and when immersed in a fluid. There are also analyses of the motion of one lamina of a fluid with respect to another horizontal slice of that same fluid or at surfaces of contact between two different fluids, such as oil and water. In all cases motion meets with resistance.

Electrical Resistance Electrical resistance is a property of conductors. It appears in a simple form in Ohm’s Law–that the voltage in a circuit is the product of the current by the ‘resistance’–‘V=IR’. We have the well-defined metrical concepts of ‘volt’, ‘amp’ and ‘ohm’, respectively. The form of this law is explained in terms of the hindrance to motion of current bearing electrons driven through a conducting medium by a



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potential difference across the terminals of the conductor, anode and cathode. There are conditions when it has been found that electrical resistance in a conductor to the flow of a current is zero. This is the phenomenon of superconduction. These conditions can be realized only when the conductor is cold enough, so far as we know. Engineers and material scientists work towards finding materials in which superconduction occurs at higher and higher temperatures. Theoretical analysis of each of these examples–mechanical and electrical resistances–makes use of the concept of ‘force’. However these ‘forces’ are not fundamental but depend on electromagnetic interactions between molecules of the interacting bodies. For example, there are bumps and hollows in the surfaces of solid bodies that explain dry friction at a first level, but these are effective as resistance to motion because there are more fundamental electromagnetic forces shaping the surfaces of solid bodies. Similarly, the resistance to the motion of electrons through a conductor can be explained in terms of forces of attraction and repulsion between unlike and like charges. Negatively charged electrons interact with the electric charges of the molecular and atomic constituents of the solids through which they flow (Coey, 2010).

Inertia Inertia is an attribute of material things, a tendency to resist an accelerating force. This is an intrinsic property of material things that is not due to any interaction with the surroundings. Even in a vacuum a force acting on a material body produces only a finite and proportional acceleration according to Newton’s Second Law–‘F = MA’–where F is the impressed force and M is the mass of the body acted upon. No explanations of inertia are or could be forthcoming in Newton’s Mechanics–it is a fundamental and unanalyzable basic feature of the material world. However, in the late nineteenth century an attempt was made to account for inertia in terms of something else. According to Mach’s Principle the inertia of a single material body is the result of its relationship with all the other bodies in the universe. Contrary to what Newton presumed in his famous thought experiment of the pair of globes rotating in an immense vacuum a body in a universe devoid of any other material stuff would have a vanishingly small inertia. Newton concluded that if the globes were connected by a string in which a spring balance had been inserted, the balance would register a force of mv2/rg where m is the mass of the globes, v is the tangential velocity of their rotary motion, r is

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Chapter One

radius of the circle of rotation and g is a constant. Since the force is proportional to the square of the velocity of rotation, it should vary with that velocity–regardless of the absence of all other matter in this stripped down universe. In this way Newton thought he had established the meaningfulness of absolute rotational motion. Mach pointed out that this thought experiment depended on the assumption that the globes would retain their inertia in the absence of all other material things. This assumption could be queried. There was no necessity that inertia should be an intrinsic property of all material bodies.

Hysteresis The word derives from the Greek ‘hustersis’ meaning a shortcoming or deficiency, having nothing to do with ‘hysteria’, the Greek word for ‘uterus’, and thus nothing to do with gynaecology or the much later context of psychopathology, in the treatment of which Sigmund Freud made his name. In physics and engineering the word refers to a situation or process in which changes in some property of a physical system lag behind changes in the process which is causing these changes. For example: the application of an increasingly strong magnetic field induces increasing magnetization of the body to which it is applied, say an iron rod. But as the applied magnetic field decreases the magnetic flux in the magnetized body declines more slowly, so that when the applied field is zero the body retains some residual magnetization. This tardiness of response is ‘hysteresis’. It can also occur in stretching elastic bodies, such as springs and even motor tyres. We can see hysteresis as a kind of resistance to change in an induced physical state, such as magnetization and elasticity. The metaphor of ‘laziness’, stripped of it moral connotations, seems apt. In the various contexts I have described resistance is related to energy– generally energy lost in a process in which motion is inhibited and dissipated as heat. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics that energy can never be completely recovered in a reversal of the cycle.

Complementary Concepts We must also recognise ‘anti-resistances’–the negative complements of the concepts we have been describing. For example the negative complement of friction would be something that facilitated motion. The negative complement of inertia would be something that overcame the tendency to resist mechanical force, while the negative complement of



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hysteresis would be something that dissipated the energy stored in the spring or magnet.

Lubrication Fluid friction can be substituted physically for dry friction by inserting a liquid between the interacting solid surfaces. Laminas in fluids suffer less mutual frictional resistance than do solid surfaces in contact. Oiling the bearings does not eliminate friction but facilitates motion by introducing surface to surface contacts with lower frictional forces.

‘Polishing’ The explanation of why there are frictional forces between contacting surfaces refers to bumps in the surface of solids and intermolecular forces in the contact surfaces. Changes can be brought about in the state of interacting solid dry surfaces by polishing, washing and so on to remove unevennesses and contaminants in the surfaces in contact. Elbow Grease is the process by which our manual labour facilitates such change in the nature of the interacting bodies, using the energy of the impressed force to bring about a change in the configuration of molecules in the surface of the body being worked on. Rubbing two sticks together can help a traveller in the wilderness to make a fire, when production of heat is derived from the energy used to overcome friction. Changes can be brought about in physical state of fluid friction for example by heating the fluid.

Summary In the physical sciences ‘resistance’ appears in a field of family resemblances, with two subfields: 1. Where ‘resistance’ comes into being as a force in opposition to an impressed force whether the body acted on has or has not yet begun to move or where it is in motion. The laws of these kinds of resistances are well known, and scarcely more than tidied up common sense. Later, molecular theory provided an explanation in the nature of the contacting surfaces. 2. Where ‘resistance’ appears indirectly in limitations in the efficacy of an impressed force or forceful process as in ‘inertia’ and ‘hysteresis’. In these contexts energy considerations are relevant,

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Chapter One

but on the cosmic scale the debate between Machians and Newtonians continues. 3. Sometimes ‘resistance’ can be reduced by altering the nature of the contact interaction, and in the case of electrical resistance in some circumstances it can be eliminated entirely. We have now laid out some of the patterns of use that make up the field of family resemblances of the uses of the ‘word ‘resistance; and some if its technical synonyms. The next step will be carry out similar studies of the way the word is used in other contexts, to display other fields of family resemblances. In the end a grand overall semantic map may be able to be created as we link the various specialised fields with one another and with the map presented here. Abstracting from these various concrete exemplars of the use of the concept of ‘resistance’ we can lay out a triad of cases which we would recognise as examples of resistance: 1. Strongest: doing the opposite of what was expected–when expected to attract the resistor repels. 2. Intermediate: doing what is required or expected but reluctantly or with delays. 3. Weakest: doing nothing at all in circumstances where some sort of response is called for.

References Coey, J. M. D. (2010) Magnetism and Magnetic Materials. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Kragelski, I and Alisin, V. (2001) Tribology: Lubrication, Friction, and Wear. London: Professional Engineering Mach, E. (1960[1904]) The Science of Mechanics: A critical and historical account of its development. Trans. T. J. McCormack, LaSalle, III: Open Court Wittgenstein, L. (1953) Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell



CHAPTER TWO RESISTANCE AND RATIONALITY: SOME LESSONS FROM SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS DEAN PETERS

1. Resistance and Rationality The theme of this book is “Resistance and the Practice of Rationality”. “Resistance” brings to mind the extensive literature analysing scientific “revolutions”. These are instances in the history of science where an apparently radically new theory is proposed and eventually overthrows its predecessor to become the consensus or near-consensus view of scientists working in the field. A new theory is not, of course, typically accepted immediately. Indeed, the majority of working scientists may refuse to accept the new theory. This is the form of “resistance” that I focus upon in this chapter. It is a matter of longstanding dispute whether or not the key players–both proponents and opponents of new theories–in these episodes are to be counted as “rational”. In keeping with the themes of “resistance” and “rationality”, in this paper I will attempt to shed some light on this issue. The term “rational”, of course, is used differently in different disciplines, and its precise content remains contested in each. I focus on the use of rationality as a word to describe the proper way of deciding between scientific theories on the basis of empirical evidence. Rationality in this sense is primarily a normative term, a means for picking out the correct way of doing things. Any ascription of rationality must therefore be generalisable. That is, we cannot say an agent behaves rationally simply on the grounds that she reaches the correct conclusion on some particular occasion. We must be able to say that that she follows a certain pattern of reasoning which can be replicated on multiple occasions. Moreover, we

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Chapter Two

cannot simply observe that she regularly applies the same pattern of reasoning: we should be able to articulate a corresponding rule that other agents would in principle be able to follow in carrying out their own reasoning. Another way of putting this is that, if challenged on her decision, the agent could in principle state the rule that she followed as the reason for behaving as she did. Finally, to be described as “rational” an agent must not only be following a rule but a “correct” rule (I will, make this notion a little less vague later). I shall use “arational” to describe any factor that influences an actor’s behaviour, but fails to be general-rulegoverned. Preserving its connotation of disapproval, I shall use “irrational” to describe a factor that involves an incorrect way of reasoning. Were the scientists involved in episodes of theory change rational in the sense I have described? In section 2, I examine four broad answers to this question that have been offered in the literature. I dismiss two of these, and focus on the two that I regard as most plausible: I term these “Kuhnian” history and “rationalist” history. I then discuss briefly the particular form of rationalism I regard as the most promising. In section 3, I apply this rationalist account to a well-known instance of theory change, the “Copernican revolution”, and find that its depiction of the collective decision astronomical community as rational is convincing. In section 4, I examine another famous case study, the “chemical revolution”. I find here that it is less plausible to regard the scientific community as rational, given the account I have adopted. In the conclusion (section 5), I spell out the implications of these case studies for the question motivating this paper, whether or not the key actors in episodes of theory change should be regarded as rational.

2. Four Kinds of Scientific History The first approach to the history of science, termed “Whig history”, is more a foil for further discussion than a viable position, since few or no historians deliberately endorse it. Butterfield’s (1931/1965) aim in coining the term, in the context of political history, was to diagnose and criticise what he saw as a pernicious tendency among historians to project their own concerns and beliefs anachronistically on to actors in the past. This tendency results in historical actors being cast either as heroes or villains, depending on whether their actions tended either to bring about or avert the current state of affairs. In the history of science specifically (see Jardine, 2003), “whiggishness” results in the ascription of epistemic virtue to historical scientists who supported theories that are approximately correct from the perspective of our current theories. So, in instances of

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theory change, whichever scientists supported the theory closest to our own are automatically described as rational. And, since newly-proposed theories have typically been closer to ours than their pre-existing rivals, this usually amounts to a judgement in favour of the proponents of novel theories. Their opponents, in contrast, are usually viewed either as irrational–mistaken about some factual matter, or in the grip of some cognitive illusion–or arational, perhaps acting to preserve their positions of power and social influence. This asymmetric treatment of proponents versus opponents of novel scientific theories is extremely difficult to justify as an a priori attitude. While we are certainly entitled to judge that past actors were incorrect in their scientific judgements, it seems entirely unwarranted to judge that they were irrational simply on that basis. The task of any criterion of rationality is to warrant certain inferences against a background of beliefs and observations already accepted by the actor concerned. A Whiggish criterion of rationality fails in this task, as it takes as its starting point beliefs and observations available to the later historian, but not to the historical actor being judged. We may, of course, legitimately conclude that one or other party is less rational than another, but this can only be done after examination of the information available to each of them. The “asymmetry” of Whig history is tackled directly by a second approach to the history of science, namely the “Strong Programme”, most famously associated with Barnes and Bloor (Bloor, 1976; Barnes and Bloor, 1982; 1996). For our purposes, the primary doctrine of the Strong Programme is the so-called “equivalence postulate” which states: “that all beliefs are on par with another with respect to the causes of the credibility… This means that, regardless of whether the sociologist evaluates a belief as true or rational, or as false and irrational, he must search for the causes of its credibility.” (op cit 1982, p. 23).

In light of the criticisms of Whig history, it seems that few could object to this view, as stated. In fact, however, the Strong Programme is controversial because of the emphasis that its adherents have placed on arational factors in influencing the course of scientific history. For example, in one highly-regarded product of the movement, Shapin and Shaffner’s (1985) Leviathan and the Air Pump, the authors examine the struggle between the competing scientific approaches of Boyle and Hobbes in Restoration-era England. They argue that it was ultimately because the complex of ideas associated with Boyle was politically successful that his scientific ideas triumphed. This conclusion is stated explicitly in the closing chapter of the book:

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Chapter Two “We have attempted to show … that the contest among alternative forms of life and their characteristic forms of intellectual product depends upon the political success of the various candidates in insinuating themselves into the activities of other institutions and other interest groups. He who has the most, and the most powerful, allies wins.” (op cit, p. 342)

So, whereas Whig history casts one side of a scientific dispute as rational, and its opponents as a- or irrational, the Strong Programme refuses to attribute rationality to either side. Political ideologies, personal interests and other “sociological” factors essentially decide the outcome of these disputes. In my view, the Strong Programme’s initial diagnosis is entirely correct–that the truth of some scientific theory (from the perspective of a later theory) is not by itself a sound explanation for the success of that theory at an earlier point in history. But an explanation by reference to truth is not the same as an explanation by reference to rationality. To say that the proponents of some theory were “rational” is simply to say that they had good arguments in their favour. And a theory having good arguments in its favour is a perfectly acceptable explanation for its success. Human beings do, at least some of the time, behave in certain ways because they were convinced by argument to behave in those ways. Moreover, given the large amount of time that scientists spend presenting arguments for and against theories, it is implausible to claim that all this activity is merely a sideshow to the political manoeuvres which actually decide the issues. So considerations of rationality must play some role in episodes of theory change. The two remaining views I shall consider differ over exactly what this role is. The third approach to the history of science emerges from the work of Thomas Kuhn (1962/1996; 1977). In his later work, Kuhn articulated a view about the rationality of scientific revolutions that is a hybrid of rationalist and anti-rationalist accounts. He argues that scientists apply “values” or “objective factors” in choosing between scientific theories. These include the accuracy with which the theory matches phenomena; the theory’s consistency, both internal and with reference to other theories; its scope; its simplicity; and how fruitful it is in generating further research. These criteria may conflict in particular cases, and even the application of a single criterion can lead to conflicting judgements. One theory may, for instance, be highly accurate in accounting for a given class of phenomena, but less accurate than its rival in another domain. Kuhn holds that applying these criteria is simply what it means to count as rational, but also that there is no general means of ranking the demands of these values when they conflict. The demands of rationality are therefore

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indeterminate. Kuhn believes that it is arational factors which ultimately close the gap between rationality and theory choice. Individual scientists may prefer one or other epistemic value for aesthetic or otherwise idiosyncratic personal reasons. Each may prefer a theory that accounts adequately for the phenomena that they happen to be regard as important. Indeed, they may even be drawn to theories favouring their political ideologies or personal interests. And all of this counts as rational for Kuhn, so long as these other factors do no more than narrow down the range of possible answers that are compatible with the basic values of rationality. The fourth approach to the history of science, finally, is what I call “rationalist”. This view is somewhat aligned with Kuhn’s account, in that it suggests that there are scientific values or “virtues” which theories might fulfil and that fulfilment of these virtues makes it rational to choose them over their competitors. However, where Kuhn argues forcefully against the notion of an “algorithm” that will uniquely choose the best theory amongst several contenders, rationalism claims that there is a hierarchy among the virtues, or some other general principle that will at least sometimes render accepting one theory, on balance, more rational than accepting its competitor. Along these lines, I follow a suggestion made by Worrall (1990, pp. 333-4): “[Kuhn’s] argument against the objectivist nonetheless goes through only if we accept the initial assumption that the objectivist can do no better than supply a “laundry list” of objective factors, and is therefore left entirely without recourse when two factors from the list pull in opposite directions. But I know of no objectivist who would accept Kuhn’s list as it stands and none who would be happy to leave any such list unstructured. For example, for Duhem, Poincaré, Lakatos, and many others, there is a basic criterion: that of predictive empirical success. When this criterion is properly understood, it informs most of those on Kuhn’s list.”

For Worrall, “predictive empirical success” does not necessarily require the prediction of a hitherto unknown phenomenon. The point is not literal temporal novelty, but “use-novelty” (Zahar, 1973; Worrall, 2002; 2006). That is, the theory must have empirical consequences other than those it was designed to explain. This concept is easily explained by use of a simple example. Imagine theory T with a single free parameter k. This need not be understood as a numerical parameter, but more generally as some aspect of the theory that can be modified to yield different empirical consequences. As it happens, T correctly predicts the outcome of two experimental measurements if and only if k is fixed to a particular value k1. Starting with T and having made both measurements, we can now “accommodate” one of them by setting k=k1. Whichever measurement we

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accommodate, the other is now predicted; even though we were aware of it, we did not use it in designing the theory. So, under Worrall’s usage, we can think of a theory with lots of predictive success as one with a large number of confirmed empirical consequences in excess of those required to fix all the free parameters. And, rather elegantly, predictive success described in these terms functions as a sort of composite epistemic virtue, incorporating various items on Kuhn’s list. If a theory accurately matches phenomena and has wide scope, it has many confirmed empirical consequences. A simple theory is one with few free parameters. Moreover, Worrall denies that some of Kuhn’s listed virtues are in fact virtues. Notably, he claims that consistency with already existing theories is not to be prized at all, as the conflict between the new and old theories “supplie[s] interesting and demanding problems for further research.” (Worrall, 1990, p. 335). With Worrall’s particular version of rationalism in hand, we can now see what assessment it gives to some concrete case studies. I shall outline the broad historical facts in each case, and provide some analysis, but leave for the conclusion the final analysis of how these cases fit the rationalist picture.

3. The Copernican Revolution For the historical details of this section, I follow Kuhn’s (1957) detailed study of the “Copernican revolution”. Ptolemy’s Almagest, produced around 150 AD in Hellenistic Egypt, proposed a detailed geocentric model of the universe. Despite some innovations accumulated during the Middle Ages, this was substantially the system to which Copernicus was introduced in the late 15th century. It envisages a universe contained between two concentric spheres. The surface of the earth is the inner sphere, and the much larger outer sphere holds “fixed stars”. The outer sphere rotates around the inner, with the period of rotation defining a day. In between these two spheres move the planets, a term which applies to the sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The sun and moon appear as discs, whereas the other planets, like the fixed stars, appear as mere points of light. All the planets move with the outer sphere, circling around the earth each day, but also move slowly across it along a path called the ecliptic. The period of the sun’s path once through the ecliptic defines a year, whereas that of the moon defines a lunar month. The motion of the remaining planets is more complex, and accounting for this behaviour was the major task of astronomers in both the ancient and early modern periods. Like the sun and moon, they progress along the ecliptic, but are not strictly tied to it and may be found as much as 8° away

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from it on either side. Moreover, while each planet has a characteristic period of movement around the ecliptic, this is only an average; the speed of progression varies over time. In addition to varying in speed, the planets will occasionally reverse course entirely in a so-called “retrograde motion”, before continuing in their usual direction along the ecliptic (see Figure 1). The two “inferior” planets, Mercury and Venus, are each to be found within a limited angular distance from the sun, progressing and then retrogressing back and forth across its position in the sky. The remaining “superior” planets may be any angular distance from the sun, but only retrogress when they are on the opposite side of the ecliptic to it (“in opposition”).

Figure 2.1. Retrograde motion of a planet relative to the fixed stars (Reproduced from Kuhn 1957, p. 48)

Ancient and medieval astronomers devised various mathematical devices to account for these complex observed motions. Probably the bestknown of these is the deferent-epicycle system. This posits that each planet is carried not just on a great circle centred on the earth (the deferent), but on a smaller circle (the epicycle) carried on the larger circle. The combination of the motion of the two circles produces the motion of the planet. Importantly, the motion of the planet along the epicycle

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contrary to the overall direction of motion along the deferent gives rise to retrograde motion (see Figure 2). Fixing the speed of rotation of the epicycle fixes the frequency of retrograde motion.

Figure 2.2. The deferent-epicycle system (Reproduced from ibid, p. 61)

The Copernican system, introduced with the publication of De Revolutionibus in 1543, remained substantially in the Ptolemaic tradition of astronomy in terms of its mathematical techniques and of the basic data set it took as evidence. Its key innovation is that it placed the sun at the centre of the universe, with the earth and other planets revolving in circles around this fixed point. It placed the known planets in the order we now accept today: Mercury innermost, followed by Venus, then the earth, Mars, Jupiter and finally Saturn. The motion of the moon remained centred on the earth. The key advantage of this system is that it accounts for many of the basic features of the observations very naturally, without the need for epicycles. The retrograde motion of the planets is explained very simply by the fact that the earth itself is a moving observation platform that will occasionally “overtake” the other planets, making them appear to reverse their direction of motion. The distinction between inferior and superior planets also emerges naturally–the former are simply within the orbit of the earth, whereas the latter are further out. It also explains why the superior planets should only undergo retrograde motion when in opposition to the sun, while the inferior planets pass back and forth regularly across its position. However, while Copernicus easily accounts for these gross qualitative features of the data, his system does not yield precise quantitative prediction any more easily than does Ptolemy’s. Indeed, Copernicus’

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system needed to employ just as many epicycles to achieve roughly the same level of accuracy as contemporary geocentric systems did. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly for the reception of the theory, Copernicus’ system contradicted several claims that were thought to be established pieces of knowledge at the time. One problem which was especially pertinent to professional astronomers was that Copernicus’ model required a vastly larger universe than had hitherto been postulated. The easiest way to see this is to imagine observing a particular star from the earth. As the earth moves in a large circle around the sun, the position of the observer changes and so the observed relative positions of the stars ought to change as well. This phenomenon is known as parallax and is easily observed, for instance, by observing some scene first through one’s left eye only and then through the right eye only. One should notice that the relative positions of objects appear to change, and that the effect is more noticeable for objects closer to one’s vantage point. That there was no parallax observed for any of the fixed stars at that time (and was not measured at all until 1838) implied either that the earth did not move, or that the sphere of the fixed stars was many thousands of times larger than the orbit of the outermost planet. It may be noted that there was, in Copernicus’ time, no direct observational evidence for accepting any particular value of the distance to the fixed stars. Yet the existing cosmology posited that the motion of the entire system originated with the rotation of the fixed stars, which was thence mechanically transmitted to the spheres of the planets. Since such a mechanism would require direct contact between successive spheres, it obviously could not be at work if a vast distance separated the fixed stars from the planets. Many of the objections to the heliocentric system were quelled by subsequent astronomers. In 1609, Kepler was able to produce remarkably accurate predictions of planetary positions by positing elliptical orbits. He thus discarded altogether the system of perfect circles and the associated requirement of ever-more-elaborate epicycles. In the same year, Galileo began making telescopic observations of the heavens. These observations produced powerful new arguments in favour of the heliocentric model. The satellites of Jupiter, for instance, provided concrete evidence of bodies that orbited something other than the earth. And the observation of the phases of Venus showed that this planet could not possibly orbit around the earth. These developments changed the terms of the debate decisively in favour of the heliocentric universe, and scientific opinion came around relatively rapidly. As Kuhn puts it, “By the middle of the seventeenth century it is difficult to find an important astronomer who is not Copernican; by the end of the century it is impossible.” (op cit, p. 227)

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However, it is noteworthy that Kepler and Galileo were convinced of the virtues of Copernicanism by the evidence available before they made their contributions, notwithstanding the difficulties with the theory mentioned above. How are we to assess the rationality of these scientists and their opponents? For Kuhn, the “Copernican revolution” is the primary illustrative case for his thesis that rationality is underdetermined. There are several theoretical virtues in play. Because their detailed quantitative predictions match the observations about equally well, empirical accuracy does not support either system. Simplicity tends to favour the heliocentric hypothesis, since so many of the broad qualitative features of the data fall out of it naturally. Consistency, on the other hand, favoured the heliocentric model, since it does not require any major modifications to either the physics or the other astronomical beliefs of the time. If the virtues give conflicting judgements, there is nothing intrinsically rational or irrational in preferring one hypothesis over the other. So both the Copernicans, like Galileo and Kepler, and their Ptolemaic opponents count as rational. For a rationalist wielding the use-novelty account of prediction, however, acceptance of the basic Copernican model is clearly more rational. The Ptolemaic model achieves a fair degree of empirical accuracy, but only at the expense of great theoretical complexity. Fixing all the free parameters corresponding to deferents, epicycles and so on “uses up” virtually all the empirical content of the theory, leaving few “leftover” empirical observations that the theory could be said to predict. In contrast, with relatively few posits, the Copernican model entails a great many of the features of planetary motion that had been observed by that time. Moreover, Kuhn’s suggestion that the Copernican model sacrifices credibility by contradicting existing scientific theories is forthrightly rejected by the use-novelty criterion. Indeed, Worrall argues, a theory that is supported by novel predictions should be viewed as even more promising if it contradicts existing doctrine. A rationalist in this mould, therefore, can claim the Copernican revolution as an example in her favour.

4. The Chemical Revolution The chemical revolution is another case study frequently appealed to in discussions of theory change in science. It refers to a period in the late eighteenth-century when the phlogiston theory was rapidly displaced as the dominant approach in chemistry by Lavoisier’s oxygen theory. I rely

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largely on Musgrave (1976) and Hoyningen-Huene (2008) for details of the historical picture. It is somewhat misleading to talk of “the” phlogiston theory, as several variations existed and were developed around the period in question. The core tenets can be traced to the writings of Becher and Stahl in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and are as follows. There exists a chemical “principle”, called phlogiston. This principle affects the observable properties of the substances in which it is found, and is able to move from one substance to another. Substances that contain a large quantity of phlogiston include sulphur and carbon (charcoal); whereas metal ores, also called calxes1, and ordinary air contain comparatively little phlogiston. One of the major manifestations of phlogiston transfer between substances is seen in combustion. Here, a phlogiston-rich substance, such as sulphur, gives up phlogiston to the air. Another characteristic process involving phlogiston transfer is the smelting of metal ores. When an ore is heated in the presence of charcoal, it acquires some phlogiston from the latter, resulting in a metal2. In the late eighteenth-century, various experiments were conducted by phlogiston theorists, which led them to propose novel forms of the theory. One particularly significant example was Cavendish’s 1766 production of “inflammable air”3 by reaction of the metals zinc, iron and tin with sulphuric and hydrochloric acids. Inflammable air was described as extremely rich in phlogiston, and Cavendish even suggested at the time that this newly discovered substance was phlogiston. In any case, several accurate novel predictions emerged from this discovery. The first was made by Cavendish as an immediate result of these experiments. He reasoned that, since the reaction of an acid with a metal results in a salt plus phlogiston-rich inflammable air, the reaction of that acid with the (phlogiston-poor) calx of the same metal will result in the same salt but without the inflammable air. Moreover, in 1783, Priestly correctly predicted that a calx could be reduced to the corresponding metal by reaction with inflammable air and thereby consume this air. One major problem with phlogiston theory is that, if phlogiston is understood as a substance with mass, the release of phlogiston in combustion should (all else being equal) be associated with reduced 1

Metal oxides. Under the now-familiar oxygen theory, combustion is the combination of oxygen in the air with a combustible substance such as sulphur. Smelting involves the transfer of oxygen from metal oxides in the ore to carbon in the charcoal to form carbon dioxide, which escapes to leave a residue of pure metal. 3 Hydrogen gas. 2

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weight. But most solid substances are observed to gain weight as they undergo combustion. This observation motivated Lavoisier’s development of the oxygen theory. In 1772, he proposed that combustion and calcination4 were the result of the air combining with the solid to form a compound. To account for the fact that combustion always ceases when only a fraction of a trapped volume of air has been depleted, he argued that it was only “the purest part” of the air that was involved in this process. Following this logic, the reversal of metal calcination should result in the release of this “pure air” along with the formation of the metal. But it was known that the reduction of metal calxes, as in smelting, typically resulted in “fixed air”5, which has very different properties to ordinary air. Lavoisier explained this by proposing that fixed air was in fact a combination of pure air and carbon from the charcoal usually used in smelting. The reduction of a calx in the absence of charcoal should therefore result in pure air. Indeed, shortly before this, Priestly had heated the calx of mercury to yield a substance he termed “dephlostigated air”6 because it had a higher capacity to support combustion than ordinary air. Although this experiment preceded Lavoisier’s prediction, because his reasoning did not rely on this result, this episode counts as a predictive success for Lavoisier’s theory. Another significant episode came in 1783, when Cavendish discovered that, when inflammable air and dephlogisticated air were exploded together, the result was pure water. Hearing this news, Lavoisier inferred that water is in fact a compound of these two substances, and named inflammable air “hydrogen” in honour of its aqueous origin. This led him to predict that the reduction of a calx in hydrogen would also result in water, since oxygen was also available in the calx. Moreover, and perhaps more impressively, Lavoisier also correctly predicted that, since the formation of iron calx (rust) in water would remove the oxygen component of the water, the process should result in the production of inflammable air. At the same time, Cavendish’s 1783 discovery led him to propose a new version of phlogiston theory. He proposed that dephlogisticated air was none other than dephlogisticated water and inflammable air phlogisticated water. This easily explains the initial observation, as one would expect the excess and deficit phlogiston to cancel out when the two combine, leaving only water. This new theory also aimed to tackle the problems of mass balancing that motivated Lavoisier’s theory, and was 4

The formation of a metal oxide. Carbon dioxide. 6 Oxygen gas. 5

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quite successful in these terms (see Musgrave 1976, p. 204). For instance, in calcination, the metal gives up phlogiston to dephlogisticated air and water is formed. This water now combines with the solid, which adds to its mass. The reduction of a calx under inflammable air (phlogisticated water) results in the corresponding metal plus water, the latter resulting both from the air that has been dephlogisticated and from that locked up in the calx. The formation of water from the reduction of a metal calx is thus predicted independently by both Cavendish and Lavoisier. Nevertheless, shortly after this, chemists began to defect en masse to Lavoisier’s oxygen theory, and this theory was almost entirely dominant by the beginning of the nineteenth century. Can the rationalist account for this rapid shift, despite the empirical near-equivalence of the two theories? In Musgrave’s view, the answer is decidedly “yes”. For him, the state of play at this point in the controversy is summed up by Lavoisier’s 1783 remark: “Chemists have made a vague principle of phlogiston which is not strictly defined, and which in consequence accommodates itself to every explanation into which it is pressed... It is a veritable Proteus which changes its form every minute.” (quoted in Musgrave 1976, p. 203)

The phlogiston theory and its variants, in other words, were no longer able to produce novel predictions. Instead, its proponents were simply making ad hoc modifications to accommodate the phenomena. In the language of the use-novelty account presented above, the confirmed empirical content of the theory no longer exceeded that needed to fix its free parameters. Musgrave’s assessment is faulty. In 1783, shortly before Lavoisier’s damning remark, Cavendish’s discovery prompted both of these scientists to make alterations in their respective theories. Lavoisier posited that water was a compound of the elements oxygen and hydrogen; Cavendish left water as elemental, but posited that it could be phlogisticated to yield inflammable air or dephlogisticated to result in pure air. Moreover, in each case, the alteration to the theory yielded empirical consequences going beyond the observation that prompted the change. Both men actually predicted that water would be produced in the reduction of a calx by inflammable air. And, while only Lavoisier actually stated it, it follows equally well from either theory that inflammable air/hydrogen will result from the calcination of metallic iron in water. In addition, phlogiston theory highlighted empirical regularities that were beyond the reach of Lavoisier’s oxygen theory. The case has been made by several authors (see for instance Ladyman, 2009; Schurz, 2008)

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that there is a strong functional overlap between the notions of phlogistication-dephlogistication on the one hand, and reduction-oxidation on the other. Indeed, practising chemists have noticed this connection: “If [the phlogistonists] had only thought to say ‘The substance burning gives up its phlogiston to, and then combines with, the oxygen of the air’, the phlogiston theory would never have fallen into disrepute. Indeed, it is curious now to note that not only their new classification but even their mechanism was essentially correct. It is only in the last few years that we have realized that every process that we call reduction or oxidation is the gain or loss of an almost imponderable substance, which we do not call phlogiston but electrons.” (Lewis, 1926, pp. 167–168; quoted in Chang, 2009)

As an example, consider the simple combustion reaction between charcoal and oxygen. A modern chemist would say of this reaction that the oxygen is reduced and the charcoal oxidised, or equivalently that electron density is transferred from charcoal to oxygen. A phlogiston theorist, analogously, would say that phlogiston is transferred from charcoal to dephlogisticated air. This underlying similarity is replicated throughout the chemical domain: all the substances that were classified as “phlogiston-rich” or “phlogistonpoor” are now thought of as electron-donors/reducing agents or electronreceivers/oxidising agents, respectively. The modern classification, together with the assumption that reactions will tend to occur when electron donors and receivers are brought together, generates accurate predictions about which substances will react with which. A substance which is known to accept electrons with high avidity can reasonably be expected to react with a known electron-donor, even if their reaction has never before been observed. And since the phlogistonists’ classification of substances mirrors modern chemistry’s, their predictions about which substances would react with which are also broadly borne out. The most striking example of this is Priestly's successful prediction that a calx can be reduced to the corresponding metal by the action of inflammable air. He was able to make this prediction because he posited some basic chemical similarity between inflammable air and charcoal (which was already known to reduce metal calxes). And, when we understand phlogiston as playing a similar functional role to electron density in modern chemistry, we see that this posit was (from our perspective) essentially correct. This is not to argue that phlogiston theory was unjustly abandoned simply because it replicates features of our modern, “correct” theory. The point is that the phlogiston theoretical framework and modern

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electrochemistry both entail more confirmed empirical content than that required to “fix their free parameters”. And they are both predictively successful in this sense because they share the same basic idea: that there is a chemical principle which various chemical species contain to greater or lesser degree and chemical reactions tend to occur when there is scope for this principle to be transferred from a species containing more to one containing less. So phlogiston theory was predictively successful up to and including the period where Lavoisier’s oxygen theory was gaining dominance. This refutes Musgrave’s claim that phlogiston was a “degenerating research programme”. However, this is also not a case of “the wrong theory won”. Lavoisier’s oxygen programme was also predictively successful. From a modern perspective, the two approaches are complementary–Lavoisier’s oxygen chemistry keeps track of the different kinds of basic elements and their combinations; while the phlogiston chemistry deals with electron transfer and energy considerations. The question, then, is why the two theories were not able to coexist around the end of the eighteenth century. Chang (forthcoming) argues that the chemical revolution should be viewed as part of a larger trend in chemistry, the ascent of “compositionism” at the expense of “principlism”. Principlism, of which phlogiston theory is a subtype, understands chemical reactions as the transformation of basic elements by the addition or removal of special substances called “principles”. Mass is not necessarily conserved, but is simply another property which may be transformed by a reaction. The most important experimental evidence concerns the qualitative features of substances. In contrast, compositionism understands chemical reactions as rearrangements of basic constituents. It follows that the most important sort of experimental evidence is found in precise quantitative measurements of mass, which reflects the distribution of these constituents. Chang argues that it is the growing dominance of these experimental practices associated with compositionism that drove the chemical revolution, rather than any theoretical argument in favour of Lavoisier’s view. In any case, whatever explanation we favour for the decline of the phlogiston theory in favour of oxygen, it seems that the rationalist explanation is insufficient. Some arational factor must fill the gap.

5. Conclusion We began with the question, “Are participants in scientific revolutions rational?” I discussed four basic types of answer to this question. Whig history takes the view that those who resist new scientific theories are

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generally less rational than proponents. This view is obviously defective, in that it fails to acknowledge that any judgement of (ir)rationality must be relativized to the background knowledge of those being judged. The Strong Programme, while denying a distinction between resisters and proponents, is rendered implausible by denying any substantive role to rationality at all. The remaining two approaches are similar in that they attribute some degree of rationality to both those who resist and those who advance theory change. Kuhnian history, however, argues that rationality may not completely determine theory choice, and that the ultimate dominance of one or other theory is driven by arational factors. Rationalist history claims that there have generally been better arguments in favour of the theory that eventually wins out, and that its proponents can therefore be counted as more rational than their opponents. The rationalist view can be broken down into two separate claims. First, it is possible to give a determinate ranking of better and worse reasons for accepting a theory. Second, proponents of theories that attained dominance generally have had better reasons than their opponents. The first claim, I believe, must at least be qualified. Worrall’s view that predictive success is the most important epistemic virtue is certainly appealing, and it represents a pleasing synthesis of the virtues that have been proposed by other authors. From the historical evidence, however, it is clear that this “trump virtue” will not give a determinate ruling on all scientific disputes. It may be that, as in the chemical revolution, two theories are both predictively successful, but in respect of non-overlapping or complementary classes of phenomena. In cases like this, a sensible reading of the basic rationalist demands would suggest synthesis or coexistence rather than choice between the theories. On this reading, the claim of the contemporary scientists that the two are in competition and only one can emerge victorious is simply an error. Regarding the second claim, I have argued that the rationalist view is supported by the Copernican revolution case. Although both geo- and heliocentrists proposed arguments in favour of their views, the heliocentrists unequivocally had the better side of the argument by the rationalist standard. And the heliocentric system did, in the end, displace the geocentric model of old. The case of the chemical revolution, however, for the reasons stated above, does not support this claim. There is therefore at least one example where rationalism does not fit the actual course of scientific history. There are two possible responses to this outcome, however. The Kuhnian will likely say: “So much the worse for rationalism!” The rationalist, on the other hand, may well be inclined to say: “So much

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the worse for the foolish scientists (in this particular case)!” I leave it to the reader to judge which response is wisest.

References Barnes, B., D., & Bloor, J. H. (1996). Scientific Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Barnes, B., & Bloor, D. (1982). Relativism, rationalism and the sociology of knowledge. In M. Hollis and S. Lukes (Eds.) Rationality and relativism (pp. 21–47). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Bloor, D. (1976). Knowledge and Social Imagery. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Butterfield, H. (1965). The Whig Interpretation of History. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Chang, H. (2009). We Have Never Been Whiggish (About Phlogiston) Centaurus, 5(4), 239-264. —. (forthcoming). Is Water H2O? Evidence, Pluralism and Realism,. Dordrecht: Springer. Hoyningen-Huene, P. (2008). Thomas Kuhn and the chemical revolution. Foundations of Chemistry, 10(2), 101-115. Jardine, N. (2003). Whigs and stories: Herbert Butterfield and the historiography of science. History of Science, 41, 125-140. Kuhn, T. S. (1996). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —. (1977). Objectivity, Value Judgement, and Theory Choice. In The essential tension (pp. 320-339). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —. (1957). The copernican revolution: planetary astronomy in the development of Western thought. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Ladyman, J. (2009). Structural realism versus standard scientific realism: the case of phlogiston and dephlogisticated air. Synthese, 180(2), 87101. Lewis, G. N. (1926). The anatomy of science. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. Musgrave, A. (1976). Why did oxygen supplant phlogiston?: Research programmes in the chemical revolution. In C. Howson (Ed.), Method and appraisal in the physical sciences: the critical background to modern science, 1800-1905 (pp. 181-210). Cambridge University Press.

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Schurz, G. (2008). When Empirical Success Implies Theoretical Reference: A Structural Correspondence Theorem. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 60(1), 101-133. Shapin, S., & Schaffer, S. (1985). Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Worrall, J. (1990). Scientific revolutions and scientific rationality: The case of the “elderly holdout.” In C. W. Savage (Ed.), Scientific theories (pp. 319-354). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. —. (2002). New evidence for old. In P. Gardenfors, J. Wolenski, & K. Kijania-Placek (Eds.), In the Scope of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (pp. 191-209). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. —. (2006). Theory-confirmation and history. In C. Cheyne & J. Worrall (Eds.), Rationality and Reality: Conversations with Alan Musgrave (p. 31–61). Dordrecht: Springer Zahar, E. (1973). Why did Einstein’s Programme supersede Lorentz’s? The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 24(2), 95-123.

CHAPTER THREE “RESISTANCE” IN BIOMEDICINE JOHN GRIMLEY EVANS

The scope of biomedicine is rarely fully acknowledged. Though less subject than the humanities to the gales of fashion, science has its trade winds. The current entrepreneurial view of biomedicine focuses almost exclusively on the intersection of molecular genetics with nosology and pharmacology. Yet its meaningful scope embraces the whole range of human activities seen in the context of modern understanding and insights of biology. Whatever else it may be, or think itself to be, Homo sapiens is an animal, its tissues and organs – including its brain – are those of an animal, and their workings have to be understood in continuity with the 3.5 billion years of evolution that produced them. Like many other species H. sapiens is a social animal, but outdoes all other species in its powers of communication and range of adaptive behaviour. One manifestation of this combination of attributes is the species’ development of the art and sciences of medicine.

“Resistance” as a Label Medical science encounters forms of resistance in the biomechanics of the human body, not least in the resistance to the flow of liquids through tubes. Blood pressure is the product of the volume rate of ejection of blood in the cardiac output and the peripheral resistance to the flow of that blood through the circulation. The resistance reflects the number of blood vessels open, their diameter and elasticity, and the viscosity of the blood. Through variation in the diameter of blood vessels blood is directed to where it is most useful at a particular time, perhaps the gut after a heavy meal, the muscles during exercise, or the skin in hot weather. Electrical resistance, impedance to the flow of electrons through materials, is of less direct relevance to medicine except in the use of electrical conductivity measurement in some diagnostic techniques.

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Biologically, however, the high resistivity of lipid molecules is of importance in the saltatory conduction of myelinated nerves. These nerve fibres are insulated by segments of a lipid coating and impulse conduction occurs by electrical “shorting” between gaps in the insulation. This is faster than if impulses were to follow the nerve fibre itself since conduction in a nerve is mediated by exchange of ions across cell membranes, not by a simple flow of electrons as in an electric wire. Here evolution has come to deploy one form of resistance to overcome another. Mechanical resistance to movement is a pathological feature of diseased joints and aged muscles, reflecting friction between tissue planes and lack of elasticity in joint capsules, but also arises from reflex or conscious muscular resistance to movements that cause pain. More positively, muscular resistance to movement is crucial to coordinated activity in fixing a base from which other muscles can work. In “resistance training” muscles can be increased in strength and size by being tensed without being contracted. Inappropriate resistance of muscles to passive movement is a sign of various forms of neurological disease or damage.

Resistance as a Concept In the broader biomedical context, resistance to actual or potential perturbation is a fundamental and necessary property of living organisms. Living organisms are low entropy isolates in a high entropy cosmos. Life depends on unceasing resistance to increasing entropy; the processes of senescence map an organism’s inevitable and progressive failure in the struggle. In the ultimate triumph of entropy, death reduces complexly structured molecules, organelles, tissues, and organs to states of greater simplicity and dispersion.

The Liberating Fetters of Evolution The mechanisms whereby living organisms resist increase in entropy are to be viewed within the context of their origin through evolution by natural selection (hereinafter “evolution”). This is the fundamental force that has determined the structures of organisms and their patterns of interaction with their environments. The success of an organism lies not in mere survival but in its evolutionary “fitness”, broadly its proportional contribution to the future genetic pool. This explains such apparent paradoxes as parental sacrifice, altruistic behaviour (Hamilton, 1964) and the male spider’s lack of resistance to being devoured by the female after

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copulation. The father's offspring are more likely to do well if their mother has enjoyed a healthy meal. Advances in molecular genetics now tell us about the mechanisms of evolution, elucidating its history and, particularly, the fundamental constraints it imposes on the development and organogenesis of individual organisms. We lost our chance to be photosynthetic 800 million years ago when we parted from the plants, and the potential spontaneous future of animal evolution is restricted to the basic body plans that survived the “Cambrian explosion” in speciation some 540 million years ago (we need the word “spontaneous” in the sentence as we cannot guess how far the skill of H. sapiens – as demiurge in genetic modification – will develop).

The Two-Environment Model Biomedicine conventionally distinguishes between an organism’s internal and its external environment. Claude Bernard’s (1878) observation "La fixité du milieu intérieur est la condition d'une vie libre, indépendante" is widely quoted as the first recognition of the importance of homeostasis in the physiology of living organisms. A basic mechanism of homeostasis, representing resistance to perturbation, is negative feedback in which a sensor detecting change in some important variable connects to an effector mechanism that restores the status quo ante. The negative feedback loops controlling any particular physiological variable in higher animals are typically multiple and hierarchical, with differing parameters. This arrangement provides for increased precision, wider range and, through cross-linkage with systems controlling other variables, potential for coordination. Studies of the internal environment have led to a range of disciplines, including physiology and biochemistry, and the various branches of medicine. While study of the external environment per se is the stuff of geology and climatology, biomedicine’s interest focuses on the interactions between organisms and their environments. Animals move and plants grow to avoid extremes of temperature or other threats; they may ensure adequate nutrition and water by searching for new supplies or by reducing needs, and they must avoid, repel, or destroy predators and parasites. The parasites and predators are of course playing in the same game of a constantly evolving arms race. At a higher level of complexity, organisms can also manipulate their environment by activities such as the nest building of birds and insects, the dam building of beavers, and the farming of other organisms by some species of ants and by H. sapiens. Clinical science focuses on H. sapiens’ internal environment and on ways of



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manipulating it through drugs or surgery, while the disciplines of Public Health probe aspects of the external environment and human interaction with it relating to illness or good health. There can be a tension in evolution between adaptation and adaptability. Highly adapted organisms can exploit their environment with great efficiency but if too tightly adapted, and lacking in genetic variation, can be doomed if the environment changes. H. sapiens has shown itself the most adaptable species in the Holocene world in successfully colonising the widest range of habitats. This adaptability is mostly due to intelligence and dexterity – probably co-evolving in the early history of the genus. Living lineages of H. sapiens show genetic differences in physical attributes reflecting more recent selection pressures. Examples include the advantageous traits of intestinal lactase persistence and pale skin colour in Northern Europe, the former allowing for digestion of dairy produce and the latter for more efficient generation of vitamin D by sunlight absorption. The “thrifty genes” (Neel 1962) of Polynesia, India and elsewhere have provided body fat for survival in past times of famine but in the environments of developed economies predispose to diabetes and vascular disease. Not all one’s genes are necessarily active; they can be switched on or off by epigenetic control mechanisms. Early life experiences can, for good or ill, mark an individual epigenetically for the environment in which he or she appears likely to live (Grimley Evans 1993). One characteristic of evolution is accretion, whereby new processes can appear alongside earlier processes subserving similar functions. The hierarchies of negative feedback loops mentioned above are one example, while another lies in the complex immune systems of higher animals. An earlier less efficient process may fall into desuetude and will be lost if its persistence carries some evolutionary penalty, through inefficient use of food resources for example. Other modes of adaptive response will be under similar evolutionary pressure. A significant area of controversy is the extent to which H. sapiens is limited by modes of thought and behaviour established during its evolutionary history. Modern Western observers deplore the polygyny and subjugation of women institutionalised in some Eastern communities. A claim that such practices are relics of earlier history of the species would be spurious. Comparative anatomy suggests indeed that H. sapiens evolved from a primate species that, like the gorilla, had a harem type of social organisation. A key feature of that organisation, however, is that while the males compete for dominance and territory, the females are free to choose which harem to join and when to move on, hardly the Islamic model. A more plausible hypothesis of

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evolutionary persistence would be a Mesolithic origin to the contrast between the greed, aggression, and territorialism of intertribal behaviour and the cooperation and conditional altruism of intratribal life; in the contrast lie the seeds of war.

Resistance to Disease The constancy of the internal environment depends on effective measures for resistance to physical attack. Toxins in plants originated as passive defences to deter insects and browsers. Such toxins interfere with specific body systems of an animal and so in appropriate dosage some can have medicinal properties. Some animals also secrete defensive poisons while others, by imitating the colour patterns of toxic species, pretend that they do. Some poisons deter by unpleasant taste or smell, others kill, with resultant selective survival among the attacking species. Invasion by parasitic organisms is a particular challenge to the integrity of the internal environment. One of the advantages of sexual reproduction is that the associated genetic reassortment in a target species prevents perfect adaptation by its parasites. In higher animals, especially mammals, evolution has elaborated highly complex mechanisms of defence and attack in responding to invading organisms. As described earlier, some mechanisms have persisted from earlier life forms, and may manifest in H. sapiens mainly in malfunction, as in the release of histamine in allergy. For effective defence, invading organisms have to be recognised as foreign, usually by their protein structure, and after destroying them the body keeps a record of the proteins in its “memory cells” so that appropriately targeted defences to any subsequent invasion can be more quickly mobilised. This is a highly efficient system and comprises a “humoral” response of secretion of proteins that stick to the invaders identifying and disabling them and a “cellular” reaction of direct attack by specialised cells. The system is complex and can make mistakes; “autoimmune” diseases are a consequence of an immune system identifying components of its own body as “foreign”. The effect of immunisation by previous exposure to an infective disease or one of its close relatives has been explored since it was first realised that the fair faces of milkmaids were due to their owners' immunity to smallpox through previous infection by non-disfiguring cow pox. Effective immunisation programmes are now deployed to reduce infection by several infections that previously caused deaths and disability especially among children. Unfortunately there are some individuals who for various reasons are antipathetic – one might say resistant – to the idea



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of immunization and by reducing the levels of immunity in the population (“herd immunity”) are a danger to the children of others as well as to their own. Other processes may lead to an individual being resistant to a disease. The fact that some people seem to be less susceptible than others to a previously unencountered disease has been known since early observations of epidemics. One of the most recent observations of this kind is the failure of some African prostitutes to catch AIDS from their undoubtedly infected clients. The heterozygote benefits of some haemoglobinopathies in conferring a degree of resistance to malaria have in the past of some world regions outweighed the usually disastrous effects of the homozygous state. The high prevalence of the recessive gene for cystic fibrosis in European populations is similarly thought to reflect heterozygote advantage in surviving infant diarrhoeal diseases in our evolutionary past. An apparent disease resistance may have environmental origins. An early clue to a nutritional element in the aetiology of scurvy was an incidence lower than expected in Royal Navy ratings among the sailors who served in the officers’ mess. They presumably gathered, one way or another, the crumbs of fresh fruit that fell from their masters’ table. Poverty, malnutrition, and overcrowding are well documented as reducing people’s resistance to infections as well as increasing their exposure.

Resistance to Treatment Some patients are categorised as resistant to treatment. In all higher animals, foreign and therefore potentially toxic chemicals can induce an increase in the activity of enzymes that destroy or degrade them. In H. sapiens, this can be counterproductive if the chemical toxin is being given as a medicine. Many such enzymes are concentrated in the wall of the gut or in the liver which is a major defence against ingested toxins. Anything absorbed into the bloodstream from the gut has to pass through the liver before reaching the rest of the body’s circulation. A carefully titrated increase in dosage of a medicine may overcome this growth in resistance to its effectiveness. A more common explanation for apparent resistance to treatment is that the patient is not actually taking the tablets. The reason may be simple forgetfulness, or not liking the medicine's taste or side effects but with a good-mannered unwillingness to hurt the doctor’s feelings by complaining. There may be other reasons; schizophrenics, for example, may prefer the experience of their illness to that of the more “normal” state induced by treatment. Both the effectiveness of treatment and the frequency and

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severity of adverse effects can be affected by interactions with food or other drugs being taken. Grapefruit juice has a well-recognized influence on the metabolism and effectiveness of several commonly prescribed medicines. Of recently increasing interest to clinicians and to drug firms are the genetically determined factors in the absorption, metabolism, and excretion of medications that affect their potency and toxicity. Identification of the relevant genes could provide for more effective choice and dosing of drug treatments for individual patients (as well as increased profits for drug companies). Any medication that is effective will also have a potential for undesirable side effects because it works by altering the function of body systems. The clinician must search for the “therapeutic window” between a dose that is too small to do any good and one that is high enough to poison the patient. Knowledge of a patient’s metabolic genes could greatly aid such fine tuning.

Homo Sapiens and The Third Environment In addition to the two physically defined environments of biology it is convenient for many purposes to treat human individuals as – in some sense – living in a third, mental, environment. This third environment is a product of the central nervous system (CNS) functioning within the internal environment, and includes a symbolic and variably accurate representation of the external environment and the experiencing individual’s interaction with it. There is no reason to suppose that the human brain's ability to create private worlds of consciousness represents any kind of discontinuity in the trajectory of evolution. At a physical level we have to assume that a sufficient number of neurons connected in a particular way will automatically generate sentience, but the necessary experiment with artificial neurons still awaits our ability to match nature’s nanotechnology. In a kind of analogy with Gödel’s theorem we may never be able truly to comprehend the mechanism of the consciousness of our own minds. It may join quantum mechanics as something to be observed, measured, and its effects formulated and predicted, but not to be comprehended as we can comprehend the Newtonian world. The origin of intelligence leading to consciousness is understandable in evolutionary terms. There is palaeontological evidence that the development of intelligence was associated with a lengthening of lifespan and increased time for repeated reproduction. In addition, longevity gave scope for longer parental and grandparental care, so increasing the likelihood of survival of offspring and providing for the development of cumulative



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culture, especially enhanced by speech. Once launched by chance mutations and carrying such advantages, intelligence-associated genes will have spread through a population. Education and experience will have an effect on the measured intelligence of individuals, but current estimates of the heritability of intelligence are around 70%. H. sapiens was favoured also by possession of an opposable thumb that enabled the conceptions of intelligence to be made immanent through the creation of tools. Memory and learning ability were important to the Bernardian maintenance of constancy in the internal environment through making the external environment so much more predictable. The biological function of memory is not to dream over the past but to suggest what is about to happen next. Speech extended the basis for cumulative culture and the elaboration of genetically based kinship behaviour into wider social networks. Such networks in turn led to the spread of successful technologies and their social consequences. If you have farms, you will need soldiers, and in attempts to control or predict the weather you are likely to get priests. The predictability of the external environment is fostered by living in organised societies equipped with agreed codes of behaviour. These codes are essentially games, and succeed only as long as members play according to the rules. Forces of social control will arise or be created to resist change and foster conformity; in simple societies cheats only cheat once. Individuals and groups, some with more power and influence than others, will resist changes to an external environment, physical and social, to which they have become satisfactorily and profitably adapted.

Resistance to Reason Irrationality can reflect illogical conclusions from rational premises or logical conclusions from irrational premises. These are areas of concern to philosopher and mathematician studying the conscious mind. Biomedicine, from psychiatry to neurophysiology, is more concerned with the effects of unconscious processes. Even at best, the conscious mind is only conditionally rational. One major use to which we put our conscious minds is to find plausible and respectable reasons for doing what we were going to do anyway. Failure to declare one’s premises is a common device in debates on medical ethics. Typical instances occur where acknowledgement of rights for the poor or disadvantaged might bring the threat of an increase in middle class income tax. But “resistance to reason” can arise because the offenders genuinely lack insight into the values and priorities that underlie or distort their arguments. Here medicine has contributed

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through its analysis of illness to illuminate normality; the “mad” are partly sane, often to the extent that the “sane” are partly mad. Mental illness is traditionally partitioned between psychosis where the brain hardware is malfunctioning and neurosis where the problem lies in the software. This distinction is primarily conceptual rather than empirically established, and at best can only be a polarity not a dichotomy, since an inevitable component of any illness, mental or physical, is the mental and emotional response to it. As an extreme example, the primary delusions of a schizophrenic are thought to arise from chemical processes in the brain that do not occur in the brains of normal people. The schizophrenic then develops explanation and rationalisation for the content of the often apparently revelatory (“apophanous”) delusions that have brought their own certitude. Conscious experience reflects only a small part of the total informational environment of a human’s central nervous system. Many tasks that are initially learned by conscious effort become “automatic”, and consciousness is only alerted if something unusual occurs during performance. In neurological terms, this may partly involve delegation of processing to areas of the CNS not directly subserving consciousness, for example the spinal cord and cerebellum. Walking, riding a bicycle and driving a car are banal examples. But many tasks conventionally regarded as “thinking” also depend on unconscious processing. Most logical problems are solved “intuitively” rather than through visualized Venn diagrams. The first symptom of dementia in philosophers can be the need for them actually to think when confronted with such a problem. For the crossword addict anagrams seem to solve themselves; skilled players of Association Football accurately predict the immediate future of a ball without conscious calculations of trajectories and wind direction. Given the neurosurgical observation that our cerebral motor neurons are activated some microseconds before we are conscious of initiating a movement, even the notion of “free will” as originating in the conscious mind may be an illusion (Libet, 1985). Consciousness may be no more than an echo chamber or publication site for processes with their own dynamic, though not necessarily any less “free” in at least some useful senses of the word. An additional dimension of complexity is postulated in various theories of bicameralism in which the two cerebral hemispheres process information in different, and to some degree incompatible ways, but only the dominant hemisphere has the power of speech to give an account of itself (McGilchrist, 2009). Intelligence and associated learning abilities have offered H. sapiens liberation from whatever past patterns of behaviour had become rooted in



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its genes. Such liberation has been patchy; we have not evolved out of greed, aggression, and territorialism but we have evolved the means to subordinate them to visions of alternative futures, and to discount future profit and loss. Resistance to reason can be a consequence of inability or unwillingness to learn. As an example of inability, older people may never have learnt the paradigms needed for dealing with the challenges of new technology. More generally, in the mental internal environment, as in the physical, the peace of the familiar may be preferred to the perturbation of the new. Some particular types of learning can distort rationality. Our methods of learning determine both our knowledge and how to process it. Exploitation and manipulation of human learning are important elements in social control so that individual citizens will “interiorize” resistance to changes that might challenge the élite. Early life learning is especially significant, partly because it may be pre-verbal and so difficult to integrate into later, differently structured material, but also because the earliest learning includes how to learn. There is experimental evidence that young children faced with problems will preferentially imitate adults rather than think for themselves. Very young children faced with a task such as retrieving a sweetmeat from a complex looking but basically simple plastic container can solve it easily enough if left to their own devices. If, however, they first see an adult going through an irrelevant charade such as tapping the box with a pencil they will imitate the adult instead of solving the problem in their own way (Lyons et al 2007). Imitative behaviour serves other primates well in solving problems and spreading technology but can have perverse effects in the human context. Religions are notoriously active in exploiting such vulnerability of young children to the implantation of pervasive and difficult-to-eradicate modes of thought and learning. Moreover, “belief”, even of ideas that to a rationalist are manifestly absurd or arbitrary, is deliberately linked by priests to a convert’s self-image and social persona. Victims cannot later acknowledge the absurdity of their creeds without loss of “face” and self-esteem. Psychoneurosis is the unfortunate consequence for some individuals in whom unconscious influences on CNS information processing lead to irrational outcomes in terms of objective wellbeing. To a degree this reflects the evolutionary paradigm of responses being adaptive rather than necessarily rational. The phobic or anorectic patient’s self-damaging behaviour is irrational to an outside observer but adaptive for the individual in reducing intolerable angst. The angst may be produced by particular memories and fears or by situations that threaten to arouse such memories or fears. The natural response to such memories is to try to

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exclude them from consciousness by the process of repression. Repression has been given a bad reputation by Freudians but, whatever its ill effects for the Viennese middle classes of the late 19th century, it evolved because of its generally beneficent function. Many sons of First World War veterans have complained that their fathers never responded to “what did you do in the Great War Daddy?” There are experiences that are best forgotten, or at least not willingly recalled, if equanimity is to be maintained. They would distort the frame of reference for the life of peacetime, and must be excluded from normal life as, in the physical body, a nidus of infection is isolated in an impermeable fibrous capsule. The proper reaction to a sudden surprise at night on the Western Front is not appropriate to a grandchild playing “boo” on the home stairway. Michael Williams, Shakespeare’s 16th century Tommy Atkins, commented that few men die well that die in battle. He might have added that few men live well that live in battle. In war one not only sees things that are horrifying and shameful, one does things that are horrifying and shameful. They are best locked well away from the light of the peacetime day. It can be argued that the modern epidemic of post-traumatic stress disorder is due to a culturally induced deterioration in the skill of repression. But repression is only effective if the hidden material is surrounded by a barrier zone that prevents reawakening of the dragon in the cave. Ideas and thoughts that might take paths to the cave have to be resisted. The consequences of inadequate repression for some individuals, perhaps including Dr Samuel Johnson, include neurotic behaviour to prevent thoughts moving towards disagreeable memories. One sufferer described his mental landscape as in no way representing the level playing field of idealized rationality, but more a space-time continuum distorted by black holes of unwelcome memories into which, without ceaseless vigilance, his thoughts would inevitably gravitate (Grimley Evans, 2010). Psychotherapists, or well-meaning friends, are often faced with the resistance of an individual to good advice. Through the ages this has been a challenge to inquisitors and missionaries as well as to therapists. Torture and the threat of death can be quite effective in changing people’s views, as demonstrated often enough in the world past and present. Nor do violent methods necessarily lead to mere nominal conformity. The Stockholm syndrome is evidence that people can be coerced into true change of belief. The mental processes underlying the syndrome include the challenge of cognitive dissonance. Victims of pain, humiliation, or simply fear, may embrace conformity as a means of stopping the unpleasantness but then have to reconcile the dissonance between such pusillanimous behaviour and their self-esteem as resolute, rational, and



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dignified beings. The dissonance is resolved by becoming true rather than merely simulated converts. This mechanism, rather than convincing by logical argument, probably underlies most instances of successful “brainwashing”.

Conclusion The concept of “resistance” carries implications of obstructions, barriers and the sheer cussedness of people unwilling to entertain new ideas. In the biological and especially the biomedical world, however, it is seen also as a fundamental property of life and as a complex of active and passive determinants of individual and collective behaviour. In the interest of human progress we need to recognize and analyse resistance both in order to profit from it and, where necessary, circumvent it. This can be done; but who can be trusted to do it?

References Bernard, C. (1878) Leçons sur les phénomènes de la vie communs aux animaux et aux végetaux. Tome 1. Paris. J.B Baillière et Fils. p113. Grimley Evans, J. (1993) Metabolic switches in ageing. Age and Ageing 22:79-81. —. (2010) Psychogenic pseudo-Tourette syndrome: one of Dr Johnson’s maladies? Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 103:500-502. Hamilton, WD. (1964) The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour I and II, Journal of Theoretical Biology 7:1–16, 17-52. Kirkwood, TB. (1977) Evolution of ageing. Nature 270:301– 304. Libet, B. (1985) Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8:529–566. Lyons D. E., Young A. G., Keil F. C. 2007 The hidden structure of overimitation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 104:19,751–19,756. McGilchrist, I. (2009) The Master and his Emissary. New Haven and London. Yale University Press Neel JV (1962). Diabetes Mellitus: A “thrifty" genotype rendered detrimental by "progress"? American Journal of Human Genetics 14: 353–362.

PART II: RESISTANCE IN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES

CHAPTER FOUR THE ISSUE OF RESISTANCE IN THE LITERARY WORKS OF PETER WEISS (1916-1982) BEAT MAZENAUER

In a literary context resistance is a repressive force as well as a source for creativity. The refusal of political regimes or aesthetic doctrines carries the seed for an artistic effort. Arts and literature first make changes to ourselves and then to the world around us. During his ten years of work on the three-volume novel “The Aesthetics of Resistance” the author Peter Weiss intensively looked into the issue of political aesthetics. “Arts represent the threshold through which consciousness changes social existence” (Weiss, 1981, 421) he programmatically writes. Arts and resistance are one. But Weiss knows from experience that such an equation does not change much. Much more important is the fine-tuning between the two categories.

Resistance to His Own Biography In the second volume Peter Weiss describes how his fictive firstperson narrator after having escaped the Spanish civil war arrives in Paris. Here he wants to visit the Louvre to see Théodore Géricault's “The Raft of the Medusa”, a painting which he knows from reproductions. Now the horror which he just has gone through gains artistic evidence. On his way to the Louvre he imagines how he joins the Communist Party: “the political decision, the irreconcilability towards the enemy, the effect of the imagination, all this merges into one” (Weiss, 1978, 19) of which “The Raft of the Medusa” is a symbol. But standing in front of the painting the narrator suddenly notices its loss of colors and freshness. In the course of time it has darkened. “Suddenly I got stuck with my efforts to understand

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the picture, it seemed to contain too much of the painter’s personal character, of his agitation, his corroding unhappiness.” (Weiss, 1978, 22) The beholder recognizes his own situation. “Through an abundance of sediments” (Weiss, 1978, 14) he (and the author) abruptly views his own artistic agonies. In this way “The Aesthetics of Resistance” raises questions which were at the core of Peter Weiss’ thinking from the beginning of his artistic career. The image of raft and island turns up very early in his paintings of the thirties. It is an ambiguous symbol for creative peace but also for abandonment. It mirrors the intense conflict between rebellion and submission as Weiss expresses in a public talk in 1971: “it is always the same conflict – the dualism between utopia, ideal, dream, poetry, humanism, drive for change versus the outside reality, dogma, consolidation, constraint, compromise, repression. It always deals with human beings who engage themselves wholeheartedly for a fundamental change of the existential circumstances and who are finally cornered by reality and driven to the verge of annihilation or even to entire annihilation.” (Gerlach, 1986, 185). This statement is echoed in an excerpt from the play “Hölderlin” published in 1971. Here the early Marx says: “Two paths are viable for the preparation of basic changes One way is the analysis of the given historic situation The other way is the visionary shaping of the most profound personal experience” (Weiss, 2010, 410)

The poet Hölderlin agrees: “imagination and action have to be in the same room that’s how poetic substance becomes universal fighting everything used and stale” (Weiss, 2010, 416)

Peter Weiss was born in Nowawes, a place close to Berlin, in 1916. He grew up in a bourgeois milieu in a family which had only one “flaw”: his father was a Jew who had converted to Protestantism, something which drove his family to move home several times in the thirties. They moved to Berlin, London, Warnsdorf (in Bohemia), and finally in 1939 to Alingsås, Sweden. These numerous relocations produced a feeling of

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homelessness within the young Peter. At the same time they nourished his dream of a universal artistry as he saw reflected in the works of Hermann Hesse. Weiss decides to become an artist in spite of all opposition. In his new Swedish home he begins–besides painting–writing in Swedish and making movies. He meets with little success. The “great mercy of being an artist”, as he wrote in a letter to his friends Hermann Levin Goldschmidt and Robert Jungk in 1939 (Weiss, 1992, 92), alternates with the feeling of “being an unhappy man”. Seemingly from nowhere the prose “The Shadow of the Coachman’s Body” was published by the renowned publishing house “Suhrkamp” in 1959. Thus encouraged, Weiss published two further books which were both surprise successes: “The Leavetaking” (1961) and “Vanishing Point” (1962). They constitute an important turning point. In these two books Weiss processes his own past. At first glance they seem to be of a mere autobiographical nature, but foremost they are literary constructions. Peter Weiss stages himself in the role of a young writer as a rebel. Under this premise he was not interested in whom he loved, what he liked, whom he trusted. He omitted all the positive experiences of his youth. In “The Leavetaking” and “Vanishing Point” only the overcome resistance was of interest. Weiss describes “the situation of a citizen who wants to become a revolutionary and who is hampered by the weights of old norms” (Weiss, 1962, 111). Literature thus signals a resistance to his own biography with the goal to overcome it. Weiss believed that only by doing so he could achieve a liberated and self-determined artistry and–at the same time–an increased awareness for his social and political environment.

The Fundamental Antagonism With the play “The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of The Marquis de Sade” Peter Weiss celebrated his first stage success in 1964. This spirited and complex “Weltanschauungstheater” essentially displays a dispute between the extreme individualist Marquis de Sade and the revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat. Sade is an inmate of the lunatic asylum in Charenton. In 1808 he stages together with the patients a self composed play which depicts the assassination of Marat. The performance advances, sometimes slowly and all of a sudden tumultuous. The players–from time to time–fall back into their psychotic states. Among the actors however we also find political prisoners like Sade himself or the revolutionary Jacques Roux.

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Weiss uses the antagonism between Sade and Marat to juxtapose two “revolutionary” perspectives: SADE You wanted to meddle with reality Now reality has you cornered I have stopped meddling with it my life is Imagination The Revolution no longer interests me MARAT Wrong, Sade, wrong No restless ideas can break down the walls I never believed the pen alone could destroy the existing order However hard we try to bring in the news it comes into being only in the midst of clumsy actions. (Weiss, 1998, 63f.)

A political debate develops among the two contrary positions. It aims at the core question of all social change. What must change first, the individual (Sade) or the society (Marat)? Peter Weiss remains cautious. When analyzing the structure of the play it becomes obvious that Sade and Marat do not have an equal standing. The sane Sade has made up a piece in which the madman Marat plays the protagonist. Therefore Sade dominates the game and Marat is only a pawn of Sade’s imagination. This hierarchical configuration pours doubt on Weiss’ future assertions that he would actually favor Marat’s position. In the play Sade’s cynicism seems to win over Marat’s revolutionary pathos. But the antithesis between individual and social revolution is grounded by a noisy insanity. The film version of “Marat/Sade“ by Peter Brook (GB, 1967) demonstrated this in an enervating and haunting way. Peter Weiss knows the situation well. Was it not he who tried to overcome his biography in order to reach a political standpoint? In this respect he would soon abandon all doubts and in 1965 give up his “position of wait and see” and advocate “ten working points of an author in the divided world”. Here he would unmistakably define in point 1 that “each word that I put down to be published is political” (Weiss, 1971, 14). As a conclusion he notes in point 10 that from now on socialism would be his guideline “for the valid truth” (Weiss, 1971, 22). Thus Weiss established a new basis for his artistic work: here I stand, a

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socialist, and from here I won’t move back. But his characteristic attribute of resistance also had an impact on this compulsive political commitment. For Weiss, the individual must not give in when facing ideological dogma. Self-criticism and dispute are integral “elements of socialism” (Weiss, 1971, 22). That is why Weiss at the time vehemently protested against the doctrinaire attitude in the “Biermann case”. “We cannot be engaged for the freedom of the word without claiming it in the domain where it definitely should be granted: in socialism.” (Weiss, 1971, 30) Let us go back to Marat/Sade. The polarity of the short title conceals the third protagonist in the play: Jacques Roux. In opposition to Marat he is not played by a forgetful neurotic who needs prompting but by a vital revolter, an inmate of Charenton “because of his political radicalness” (Weiss, 1998, 46). While Marat is clearly dependent on Sade the hierarchy between director Sade and Roux is not defined at all. Did Sade write the phrases declaimed by Roux? Or does Roux declaim them independently? In any case Roux radicalizes and substantiates Marat’s position. Roux is the true agitator of the crowd. He makes clear, that henceforth it should not any longer be theoretical ideas of revolution but concrete resistance: “Pick your arms / Fight for your rights”, he shouts (Weiss, 1998, 70) . And it is Roux who at the end keeps declaring: “When will you learn to see / When will you finally understand” (Weiss, 1998, 113). This revolutionary and rebellious character forebodes the plays in which Peter Weiss would stage his idea of “documentary theatre”. While “The Investigation” was a resistance to falling into historic oblivion–the play commemorates the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials in 1965 against officials in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex–the pieces that followed decidedly call upon us to act against exploitation and imperialism. Weiss takes sides and actively tries to influence the ruling discourses. In “Song of the Lusitanien Bogey” (1967) he turned to the topic of exploitation and oppression of the colonized countries of the south. By theatrical means he analyzed the existent inequality. Lack of education and culture is the soil for slavery; their availability however stimulates emancipatory forces and allows for liberation. In “Viet-NamDiskurs” (the short version of a long title) Weiss heaved his operative aesthetics to a new level by reducing the plot in favor of analytical abstraction, but this theatrical game of chess lacked emotional power.

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The Aesthetics of Resistance In 1975 the first of the three volumes of “The Aesthetics of Resistance” was published. The cover was an eye-catcher. The book was large and of a simple grey with an imprint of black letters. It emphasized the title which created a tension between arts, perception, liberation, analysis, and literature. What is “The Aesthetics of Resistance” about? In three volumes and on 1000 pages Weiss describes the anti-Fascist resistance of the years 1937-1944. It focuses on a first-person-narrator who combines fictional narration with description of historic facts. The protagonist travels from Berlin to Spain to take part in the combat against Franco. After the demobilization of the international brigades he visits Paris and the Louvre. Then he moves on to his Swedish exile. Here he makes contacts with exponents of the resistance, Max Hodann and Bertold Brecht, and gets involved with the Communist Party. Meanwhile in Berlin his friends Coppi and Heilmann have joined the resistance group “red chapel”. In 1942 they are arrested, tortured and finally executed as the novel painstakingly describes. Lotte Bischof is the only one of the group who manages to escape by ship to Sweden. With the exception of the narrator and his parents these incidents and the persons involved are authentic. So the novel describes a genuine fiction; as Weiss puts it: “Everything is freely dealt with as a novel requires”, but always with an effort “not to invent anything which could not have been said or done by the persons described”. (Weiss, 1981, 926f.) Weiss later revives the “red chapel” in a context which combines the anti-Fascist resistance with debates over a just socialist future. The title “The Aesthetics of Resistance” condenses this energy. It is a programmatic claim on the interdependence of arts and politics. Its genitive construction can be interpreted in three different ways: a. an aesthetics which springs up from resistance, the resistance entails the aesthetics, b. an aesthetics which produces the resistance, the aesthetics entails the resistance, c. aesthetics and resistance are on the same level, shown by the equation aesthetics = resistance. Thus Peter Weiss intends an aesthetics which covers everything “which complies with the human struggle, namely the struggle for a higher level of conscience”. (Arnold, 1983, 52) In his notebooks he persistently wrestled for such clarity: “We talk about an aesthetics which is needed in a situation of resistance to brutal suppression.” (Weiss, 1981,

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423) Or: “What is beauty? Beauty is action. It can be perceived in a gesture, in an act.” (Weiss, 1981, 315) And from another perspective: “the politic action as a piece of art.” (Weiss, 1981, 713) The aesthetics calls upon us to act against “the ruling ideas” (Weiss, 1981, 613) and at the same time resistance is seen as a creative act. To convey these two aspects Weiss uses two narrative strategies in “The Aesthetics of Resistance”.

A. Debate and Contradiction Throughout the novel, detailed descriptions are given of how the protagonists argue over political issues–for example in the Spanish Civil War when the opposing Stalinist and Anarchist ideologies are discussed. Even though the novel decidedly takes sides in the struggle against Fascism it resists any ideological orthodoxy. Debate, contradiction and doubt are at the core of a “struggling aesthetics” (Weiss, 1981, 420). All positions must be permanently at stake. “We must take care against adopting prefabricated concepts”, the narrator’s father exclaims, while “Protagonists of a new order” have been defeated “in the name of the Party”, for example in the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921. (Weiss, 1975, 123) By leaving unresolved the opposing views and contradictions Weiss leaves it up to the reader to make the choice between the different positions. This is the reason why Frederic Jameson calls the book a “Bildungsroman” (coming-of-age story): “yet ‘The Aesthetics of Resistance’ is not so much a contribution to aesthetic theory as rather the working out of an aesthetic pedagogy” (Weiss, 2005, X). Aesthetics and education are the prerequisites to any liberation, as the typographer Münzer states: “Liberation cannot be transmitted, it must be seized by us. If we don’t seize it ourselves it will be of no consequences for us.” (Weiss, 1975, 226) This statement echoes similar arguments in “Marat/Sade”.

B. Discourse on the Arts The arts play a crucial role. The narrator and his friends study works like Dante’s “Inferno”, Kafka’s “The Castle”, Géricault’s “Raft of the Medusa”, Picasso’s “Guernica” or Brecht’s “Engelbrekt” project. The examination of aesthetic strategies forms a reflective space in which the individual is set free from political activism in order to search for new ideas and to shape and sharpen a future perspective. This means a “moment of reflective consciousness” as Jean-Paul Sartre puts it in “What is literature?”. (Sartre, 1949, 159)

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Right at the beginning of the novel Coppi, Heilmann, and the narrator immerse themselves in the contemplation of the Pergamon Altar in Berlin to conceive it from their own perspective. The more closely they look the more the borders between imagination and reality are blurred. “The Cornice was the ground for the warriors: from its narrow, even strip they threw themselves up into the turmoil, the hooves of the horses banged upon the cornice, the hems of the garments grazed it, and the serpentine legs twisted across it, the ground was perforated at only one place: here, the demoness of the earth rose up, her face hacked away under her eye sockets, her breasts massive in a thin covering, the torn-off clump of one hand lifted in a search, the other hand, asking for a standstill, loomed from the stone edge, and knotty, long-jointed fingers stretched up to the profiled corbel as if they were still underground and were trying to reach the wrist of the open thumbless female hand, they moved along under the cornice, seeking the blurred traces of incised script, and Coppi's face, his myopic eyes behind glasses with a thin steel frame, approached the letters, which Heilmann deciphered with the help of a book he had brought along. (...) Heilmann, the fifteen-year-old, who rejected any uncertainty, who tolerated no undocumented interpretation, but occasionally also adhered to the poetic demand for a conscious deregulation of the senses, who wanted to be a scientist and a seer, he, whom we nicknamed our Rimbaud, explained to us, who were already about twenty years old and who had been out of school for four years by now and were familiar with the world of labor and also with unemployment, while Coppi had spent a year in prison for circulating subversive literature – Heilmann explained to us the meaning of this dance round, in which the entire host of deities, led by Zeus, were striding toward victory over a race of giants and fabulous creatures.” (Weiss, 2005, 4f.)

The contemplators suddenly become part of the contemplated work. They jump into the battle of the Gods, take sides for the giants and fight against the superiority of the Olympians–the fascists. In his narration Peter Weiss combines the two levels by a simple “and”. His descriptions are of a painstaking accuracy. This gives his prose a hermetic wholeness. The form itself resists. For Weiss one thing is not allowed in the arts: harmony. “Arts develop from paradoxical situations, from conflicts”, claims Weiss in his notebooks. (Weiss, 1981, 219) And Frederic Jameson remarks in the foreword to the English edition: “A true 'aesthetics' of resistance therefore will not seek to 'correct' bourgeois aesthetics or to resolve its antimonies and dilemmas: it will rather search out that other social position from which these dilemmas do not emerge in the first place.” (Weiss, 2005, XIL)

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Resistance of the Aesthetic Form The original name of the project was “The Resistance”, but in the course of writing he changed the plan. “In a conglomerate of impressions and ideas the topic broadened and it no longer involved only this definite political fight”. (Gerlach, 1986, 150) Weiss struggled with the question of how a tight entanglement of politics, arts and resistance could be narrated. The abundance and complexity of the topic were not the only aspects of concern. Weiss extended the issue to a basic problem which in 1951 Adorno had already described in the essay “Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft” in the form of a proposition: “To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric”. Adorno himself would qualify this statement later on, but for Peter Weiss it was of great importance. He found a monstrous form for this monstrous task. In “The Aesthetics of Resistance” he operates with long and intertwined sentences and with compact text blocks without any paragraphs. Only blank lines after each 10-15 pages mark small breaks. In this way the complex verbal structure is tamed by a tight form. It shows the resistance which the author himself had to overcome when writing and which his readers have to struggle with when reading. The novel thus appeals to an “applied reading” as described by Roland Barthes: this “reading skips nothing; it weighs, it sticks to the text, it reads, so to speak, with application and transport, grasps at every point in the text the asyndeton which cuts the various languages–and not the anecdote” (Barthes, 1975, 12). The form resists. This recalls a passage in Adorno’s essay “The Essay as Form”. Additional to “freedom of expression” the essay claims to have an “autonomy of form”. This sets it apart from scientific orthodoxy and pseudo-scientific simplification–those two manifestations of an unfree thinking led by interests. The essay rebels against both and coins its own logic of discourse. “It co-ordinates elements, rather than subordinating them”–consequently: “The slightly yielding quality of the essayist's thought forces him to greater intensity than discursive thought can offer; for the essay, unlike discursive thought, does not proceed blindly, automatically, but at every moment it must reflect on itself.” (Adorno, 1984, 170). By blowing open concepts and by making inconsistencies visible the essay itself is a form of “heresy” (Adorno, 1984, 171). Experimental art has a similar function. It reflects itself and shows resistance to a premature appreciation. The OULIPO author Georges Perec gives an accurate example in the novel “La disparition” (“A Void”, first published in 1969). Perec here completely omits the vowel “e”. As a consequence his

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language achieves an unusual and artificial quality. “Incurably insomniac. Anton Vowl turns on a light. According to his watch it's only 12.20. With a loud and languorous sigh Vowl sits up, stuffs a pillow at his back, draws his quilt up around his chin, picks up his whodunit and idly scans a paragraph or two; but, judging its plot impossibly difficult to follow in his condition, its vocabulary too whimsically multisyllabic for comfort, throws it away in disgust.” (Perec, 1984, 3).

The translation seems to be the result of a playful experiment but the original text in French opens up an existential dimension. The loss of the vowel “e” mirrors Perec’s loss of “père” (father) and “mère” (mother). His father died in 1940 during the war, his mother was killed–he believed–in Auschwitz in 1943. The language itself mourns its blank spaces and– sentence by sentence–offers resistance to the reading. “Aesthetic issues are always political issues” (Weiss, 1981, 423). Arts and literature have to disengage themselves from the political instrumentality in order to keep their emancipatory power. An encounter with politics is never without conflicts. In March 1970 Weiss wrote: “Artwork is never a weapon in the sense of a political campaign. It only conveys activity. It communicates qualities which we have to find in our selves. It is us who–by approaching it–release the captive forces within a piece of art.” (Weiss, 1982, 714f.). In “The Aesthetics of Resistance” there is an encounter between Lenin and the Dadaists (Weiss, 1978, 57ff.), and in the play “Trotsky in Exile” (1970) Trotsky and Breton lead discussions. There Breton dismisses subordination under the doctrine of the Party and counters with “a superior demand, a demand for truth” (Weiss, 1972, 512). Trotsky agrees by appealing to the common good, “to human solidarity” (Weiss, 1972, 514). Nevertheless a basic dissent remains as it is described in Camus’ essay “The Rebel”: “André Breton never, actually, wavered in his support of surrealism—the fusion of a dream and of reality, the sublimation of the old contradiction between the ideal and the real. We know the surrealist solution: concrete irrationality, objective risk.” (Camus, 1991, 99).

Precisely because Marcel Proust understands the world as a unity he revolts with the (nonpolitical) novel “A la recherche du temps perdu”–“his rebellion is creative”. (Camus, 1991, 268) Peter Weiss’ passionate appeal unfortunately met surprising opposition.

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Radical students raided the rehearsal of “Trotsky in Exile”. Weiss was deeply hurt. He suddenly found himself in a threefold crisis: political, literary, and physical. He was learning the hard way that the truth he had been looking for could only be a throughout subjective truth. It had to be a part of an “individual responsibility” as Hodann notes in “The Aesthetics of Resistance” (Weiss, 1981, 246). A purely operative aesthetics can never be effective. It must fade together with the incident it depicts. Only in contradiction arts can become creative and–consequently–resistant.

Conclusion Resistance literature and art (be it in the sense of a political or experimental aesthetics) are subject to cycles. Yesterday’s avant-garde is possibly today’s mainstream. The fast cuts which in the sixties were characteristics of Jean-Luc Godard’s early movies today define the rhythm of any TV show. The same is true for the categorical nonsense with which Monty Python's Flying Circus (“spam, spam, spam”) once was insulting its audience. Therefore each generation develops its own strategy for its aesthetics of resistance to orthodoxy and premature appreciation. Antonin Artaud in the stage directions to a radio play in 1947 claimed that everything must be brought “exactly into a raging order”. In their manifesto of 1956 the situationists Debord and Wolman called for an aesthetic “ultra-détournement”. The American author Raymond Federman, who lost his family during the Holocaust, advocated a playful but serious “pla(y)giarism”. He had ceased to believe in a concept of aesthetic originality. Nouveau Roman, Nouvelle Vague, Postmodernism, Agit-prop, Feminism, Experimental Prose–resistance has many names in all the different genres of the arts. Of course the present time offers its aesthetic resistance even though this is often denied. We just need to go beyond bestseller lists and the breaking news: In the novel “Zone” (2008) the French author Mathias Enard implements a similar literary concept to Peter Weiss in “The Aesthetics of Resistance”. In a stream of consciousness a secret service agent remembers his missions to the Balkan States–one sentence lasts for 500 pages. In the multi-novel-saga “The toothless Time” the Dutch author A.F.Th. van der Heijden investigates the present from a drugged perspective. Donna Haraway links gender, cyborgs, and biopolitics. Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison shape the female perspective with literary mastery. With his graffiti the anonymous artist Banksy shows a mirror to society. And the art campaign by the “K Foundation” fiercely aimed at the heart of our society: on August 23rd 1994 they burned a

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million Pounds in new £50 notes and filmed the happening. It lasted 55 minutes. Peter Weiss always insisted on socialism which is committed to truth, freedom, and humanity. This would be a socialism open to dreams and visions. This is what his work is about. Ultimately–and in the spirit of early Marx–it is always “an individual experience which is at the bottom of all commitment” (Gerlach, 1986, 128). In the arts Peter Weiss found a place where his individual and political position could unfold. His personal aesthetics stand for the release of personal constraints, for independence of thought, and for the freedom of artistic work. These three elements form the source of political power for the aesthetics of resistance in all its variations.

References Adorno, T W. 1984, “The Essay as Form“, translated by Bob HullotKentor and Frederic Will, New German Critique, 32, 151-171. Arnold, H.L. 1983 “...ein ständiges Auseinandersetzen mit den Fehlern und mit den Missgriffen...”, Die Ästhetik des Widerstands, hg. von Alexander Stephan. Frankfurt, pp. 11-58 Artaud, A. 1974 “Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu“, Œuvres complètes, XIII, Paris Barthes, R. 1975, The Pleasure of the Text, Translated by Richard Miller, Hill and Wang Bork, C. (Editor), 1997, K Foundation burn a million quid, Ellipsis, London Camus, A. 1991, The Rebel. An Essay on Man in Revolt, Translated by Anthony Bower, Vintage Debord, G-E. and Wolman, G J. 2006 “A User’s Guide to Détournement”, Situationist International Anthology, edited and translated by Ken Knabb, Bureau of Public Secrets Enard, M. 2010, Zone, translated by Charlotte Mandel, Open Letter Gerlach, R. and Richter, M. (editors), 1986, Peter Weiss im Gespräch, Frankfurt Perec, G. A Void, 1994, translated by Gilbert Adair, The Harvill Press Sartre, J P. 1949, What is literature?, translated by Bernard Frechtman. Philosophical Library New York Weiss, P. 1962, The Leavetaking, translated by Christopher Levenson. Harcourt, Brace & World —. 1971, "Zehn Arbeitspunkte eines Autors in der geteilten Welt", Rapporte 2, Frankfurt, pp. 14-23. —. 1972 Trotsky in Exile. A play, translated by Geoffrey Skelton,

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Atheneum (Citation after german edition: Trotzki. In: Stücke 2. Frankfurt 1977, pp. 417-518.) —. 1975, 1978, 1981 Die Ästhetik des Widerstands. Roman, 3 volumes, Frankfurt —. 1981, Notizbücher 2. 1971-1980, Frankfurt —. 1982, Notizbücher 1. 1960-1971, Frankfurt —. 1992, Briefe an Hermann Levin Goldschmitt und Robert Jungk. Leipzig —. 1998, The persecution and assassination of Marat as performed by the inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the direction of the Marquis of Sade, translated by Geoffrey Skelton, ed. by Robert Cohen. Continuum —. 2005 The Aesthetics of Resistance. Novel, volume 1, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, with a foreword by Frederic Jameson, Duke University Press Weiss, P. and Hesse, H. 2009, “Verehrter großer Zauberer”. Briefwechsel 1937-1962, Frankfurt Weiss, P. 2010, Hölderlin. A Play in two Acts, translated by Jon Swan, Chicago

Thanks to Adi Blum for translating the German original into English, and to Jürgen Ritte for A Void.

CHAPTER FIVE RESISTANCE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY: FROM FREUD TO LACAN DEREK HOOK, PARISA DASHTIPOUR AND OWEN HEWITSON

The resistance accompanies the treatment step by step. Every single association, every act of the person under treatment must reckon with the resistance and represents a compromise between the forces that are striving towards recovery and the opposing ones (Freud, 1912a, p. 105).

Introduction A distinctive and varied conceptualization of resistance emerges in the literature on psychotherapy. Such conceptualizations are largely indebted, and developed in response to, psychoanalytic theorizations. In what follows we will outline a series of characterizations and qualifications that have proved important in the history of the idea of psychotherapeutic resistance, paying particular attention to the initial formulation of the concept in Freud and how it has been variously conceptualized and applied as a crucial technical aspect of psychotherapeutic practice. Clearly, the key characterizations we have picked here are, although instructive, necessarily selective. There is a broad literature on resistance in psychotherapy–much of which is sampled here–which we aim neither to supersede nor merely to duplicate. Our objectives differ from those of many psychotherapeutic practitioners’ writing on the term with the practical aim of improving clinical practice. We are more concerned with the philosophy of resistance that emerges from technical deliberations on how a persistent problem of practice should best be understood and responded to within the clinical domain. Let us turn then, by way of beginning, to Freud.

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In the early days of his groundbreaking clinical work, Freud observed that although patients definitely wanted to be rid of their symptoms, they would nevertheless resist expressing their thoughts, and they would resist Freud’s interpretations. There was also a refusal on the part of the patients to explore their developing emotional relationship with Freud himself. The origin of psychoanalysis is thus very closely linked to this problematic of resistance. Patients’ resistance to cooperation in the therapeutic process was unexpected, but as we shall see, Freud soon began to theorise this issue in a variety of ways.

Whatever Interrupts How then is the topic of resistance broached in Freud’s (1900) magnum opus, The Interpretation of Dreams? By way of a definition which is as effective as it is blunt: “whatever interrupts the progress of analysis is a resistance” (Freud, 1900, p. 662). Two observations should be made of this early operational definition if we are to adequately contextualize Freud’s meaning. Firstly, resistance here is a technical term– part of a psychotherapeutic technology–that applies precisely to the psychoanalytic work of engaging the unconscious. This will have important implications for how we think about the prospective agency of resistance. Secondly, the term is used here as an open category: anything can be part of a resistance. In order to emphasize the breadth of resistance– the variety of its forms–it helps to turn to later descriptions of the term. “Anything can be resistance, and any skilled analyst knows it” (1957, p. 320) says Munroe before listing the following as instances of resistance: coming late, forgetting appointments, periods of blockage in free association, the abrupt failure to dream, argumentativeness, not talking, or talking too much. She notes that such active resistances should be complemented by more insidious forms such as the desire to please the analyst; excessive libidinal attachments to the clinician; or attempts to escape true interpretation by using analytical concepts and familiar symbols in an intellectualized manner. Greenson’s (1967) more exhaustive inventory includes: being silent, not feeling like talking or having nothing to say, talking with absence of affect, rigid or unvarying posture, talking inconsistently or only about trivia or in clichés, stereotyped or routine behaviours (such as unvarying punctuality or lateness), boredom, forgetting dreams, keeping secrets, lack of apparent change in symptoms or behaviour. What the above lists make apparent is that, simply put, there’s no escaping resistance, or perhaps more to the point, that the treatment itself

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seems to occasion it, particularly so when both a given behaviour (being late) and its apparent antithesis (being punctual) can be classified as resistant. Resistance is omnipresent and it may be conscious, preconscious or unconscious. It is also important to register the idea that resistance often entails a change in form, such that the patient is seemingly cooperative at one level and entirely resistant at another. A characteristic of the phenomenon is precisely this; that we can expect to witness a dynamic exchange between registers or modes of resistance. Resistance, note Anderson and Stewart (1983) “usually moves from overt to covert states, and moves from one part of the system to another” (p. 206) Aware no doubt of potential objections to his brief definition of resistance–which for many is as counter-intuitive as it is over-inclusive– Freud adds a qualifying footnote. The definition he has put forward is only to be taken as a technical rule…a warning to analysts…in the course of an analysis various events may occur responsibility for which cannot be laid upon the patient’s intentions…But behind its obvious exaggeration the proposition is asserting something both true and new. Even if the interrupting event is a real one and independent of the patient, it often depends on him how great an interruption it causes…resistance shows itself unmistakably in the readiness with which he accepts an occurrence of this kind or the exaggerated use he makes of it (1900, p. 662)

This clarification seems more aimed at ostensibly extra-psychotherapeutic events and circumstances which impede participation in the psychotherapeutic work. That being said, and as the quotes from Munroe (1957) and Greenson (1967) make clear, such interruptions–or indeed absences–are also apparent within the fabric of analytical procedures themselves.

Resistance Beyond Intentionality What are we to make of Freud’s qualification? Well, firstly, we may draw from it the important clarification that resistance is a technical term for specific use within the clinical psychotherapeutic domain–it is only once a treatment has been established that we can properly speak of resistance. Freud’s qualification means, secondly, and perhaps more importantly, that we cannot situate resistance exclusively within the confines of a given subject’s intentions. That is to say, strategic as resistance may indeed be–occurring typically at crucial junctures within the psychotherapeutic work–it is clearly not to be equated with conscious agency. We need thus be alive to the fact that resistance is a composite

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formation, a hybrid of the subject’s best intentions, of their conscious commitment to the process, on the one hand, and of unconscious factors of avoidance, disruption, and non-engagement, on the other. This suggests–a point we will return to–that a constitutive ambivalence qualifies resistance, that co-operation and sabotage are often coterminous in the analysis, existing in thoroughly interdependent forms. A second clarification of Freud’s definition is as important: resistance is a ‘distributed’ phenomenon; it represents the subject’s utilization of events, occurrences, circumstances, some of which they genuinely have little control over. Resistance, we might say, exists in articulations, in connections between a desiring subject and circumstances. There is an important sense here in which resistance cannot be reduced–perhaps contrary to what many would assume of a psychoanalytic perspective–to the (intra-) psychological world of the individual, to a psychological function. Or, to signal the terms of a debate that will play out in much of what is to follow, resistance is not merely an ego function.

Less Agency Than Condition Importantly, however, although we are arguing that resistance should be understood as conjunctions of subjects and circumstances, Freud’s description nevertheless effectively pin-points what we should be looking for in attempts to deal clinically with resistance: not impeding events or circumstances, but the subject’s relation to such circumstances, or, differently put, the use they make of such disruptive events. Our first postulate then is that resistance should be thought in relation to the subject’s desire. For psychotherapeutic practices influenced by Jacques Lacan’s theory, “resistance…blocks the route to acknowledging unconscious desire” (Frosh, 2003, p. 87). We will return to this important assertion that resistance should always be approached as a function of desire; it helps clarify certain of the problems arising from the reduction of resistance to an ego-property. Suffice here to add the crucial caveat: desire is not here to be understood as a simply intra-subjective factor; it must rather be viewed inter-subjectively, via a series of relations to the desires of others. The question of agency that is posed by this notion of resistance is an interesting one. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud constantly repeats the same phrase, namely, the ‘resistance of the censorship’ in respect of the distortions and disguises of the dreamwork. One may well have expected the relationship to be reversed. Had Freud repeatedly spoken of ‘the censorship of resistance’–a phrase he does use once in the book–one may have been assured that resistance attains the status of a dominant

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agency of which censorship is but a sub-category, a subsidiary tool. The consistency of Freud’s use of ‘resistance of the censorship’ however suggests something different: that censorship is where the agency lies, that there are multiple forms of resistance, and that resistance is instead a condition. ‘Resistance’ here then would be less a type of agency than an ongoing condition of practising psychoanalysis, an idea which extends the above thoughts on resistance as distributed, as variable in form, as irreducible to a type of singular agency. Or, as Schlesinger (1982) puts it, resistance is not irregularly present–a ‘sometimes thing’–nor is it a series of isolated events; it is a process constantly operative in ways that do not usually call attention to its presence. A brief word is in order here so as to anticipate those critics who oppose Freud’s definition of resistance on the grounds that it grants too much power to the clinician. The ostensibly ethical critique here is that the therapist is granted a position of unquestionable authority on the basis that any apparent non-cooperation or disagreement on the part of the patient can be labelled as resistance (Hook, 2001; Spinelli, 1994). Any lack of obedience–even legitimate forms of opposition or disagreement–may thus be neutralized or dismissed as an incidence of resistance. While such criticisms should not simply be ignored–designations of resistance most certainly can be used by psychotherapists to mask poor clinical technique– it is worth pointing out that Freud’s insistence on the breadth of resistance itself entails an important ethical dimension. To insist that resistance is ‘whatever interrupts the progress of analysis’ is to imply that there can be no excuses for the work of the treatment being hindered. It means that the aims of the psychotherapeutic cure–indeed the analyst’s and patient’s dedication to the treatment–should be prioritized above the innumerable potential reasons for compromising the analysis of one’s desire. This gives an ethical loading to how resistance is understood in the psychotherapeutic realm: not giving way to resistance, continually working within and against resistance itself maintains an ethical weight, and ethical impetus. We may connect two of the above points. There is an ethical imperative to work with and through resistance precisely because it impedes that which Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis treats as a priority of treatment: accessing unconscious desire.

Passive Resistance and Defiant Obedience We noted above how the co-operation of the patient might itself provide formal opportunities for subtle modes of resistance. A clinical guideline follows on from this assertion: the psychotherapist need be

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continually aware that every co-operation on the part of the patient brings with it a prospective form of resistance. Resistance may exist precisely in the guise of over-cooperation, a point made wonderfully by Reik (1915), in his description of patients who, slavishly adhering to the directions of the analyst, nonetheless exhibit all the features of ‘defiant obedience’: The patient…behaves like railwaymen…in their ‘passive resistance’….[I]n the railway there are a number of rules and orders which, if put into actual practice, would result in a paralysis of the whole system. It is therefore an understood thing, agreed upon between managers and subordinates, that these orders should be disregarded and the traffic carried on according to arrangements found in workable practices. Now if our railways officials and employees believe they have reason to be discontented with their pay…they begin a ‘passive resistance’, that is, they keep strictly to the regulations laid down; and by this grotesque and insolent form of strike within the official regulations they create considerable disturbance in the usual traffic (Reik, 1915, pp. 147-48).

Resistance here takes the paradoxical yet sabotaging form of no apparent resistance at all–a lesson thus in the apparent passivity of much resistance which more often than not takes the form of absence, omission, rather than that of direct or confrontational actions of opposition. Two particularly pertinent cases in point that Freud returns to repeatedly in his discussion of resistance are those of doubt and forgetting. Doubt and disbelief produce an interrupting and minimizing effect, they are able to capsize the curative efforts of the analyst. Rather than accepting such responses as evidence of the critical faculties of his patients, Freud views them as the inevitable consequence of attempts to read the unconscious, and, more than just this, precisely as evidence that unconscious material is close at hand. Like denial and negation, responses of doubt and disbelief alert Freud to the importance of what is being spoken of.

A Force Opposed to Memory Freud tells us that “…the forgetting of dreams…depends far more upon resistance than upon the fact…that waking and sleeping states are alien to one another” (1900, p. 666). Forgetting in fact is a somewhat privileged topic in Freud’s early discussions of resistance. It was during his clinical work pre-dating procedures of free association (prior to the advent of psychoanalysis proper as one might put it), when Freud was experimenting with ‘associative coercion’ that he understood how formidable a force forgetting itself could be. Associative coercion denoted

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Freud’s active technique of stimulating his patients to remember, provoking memories and accounts of their early life. Associative coercion confirmed for Freud that things are forgotten if…they are painful…disagreeable, contrary to ethics… This process, this forgetting, was reproduced before his eyes during treatment… [when patients] did not want to remember….there existed a force opposed to memory. In this way Freud discovered resistance… What had at the time of the trauma conditioned forgetting is what at [the moment of treatment was] conditioning resistance: there was a play of forces, a conflict between the desire to remember and the desire to forget (Etchegoyen, 1999, p. 9).

What this means was that an active, coercive treatment modality could not work; it would be met by defeat at the hands of resistance. It would be better thus simply to let the patient speak freely: Thus a new theory, the theory of resistance, lead to a new technique, free association, which was proper to psychoanalysis and introduced as a technical precept, the fundamental rule (Etchegoyen, 1999, p. 9).

Resistance thus plays a crucial role in the formation of psychoanalytic practice. It is not simply the case then, as in many commonplace depictions, that later forms of psychoanalysis needed to adapt in response to the belated discovery of the persistence of resistance; the very founding of psychoanalysis is conditioned by resistance initially conceptualized as a force of forgetting.

Site of Repetition and Means of Communication Forgetting is an aspect, one result of, resistance, but a further consideration needs to be added here, that of acting-out, which occurs in proportion to the blocking of memory. Freud states: “the greater the resistance, the more extensively acting out (repetition) will replace forgetting” (1912b, p. 151). That is to say, resistance bears a relation to repetition: when resistance is present, most typically in the form of forgetting, we should expect to find multiple echoes, repetitions–even if in varying forms–of what is not explicitly being recalled. This reflects the historical dimension of resistance: the fact that it includes repetitions of all the defensive operations used from early childhood and throughout the patient’s life. What follows from this is the idea that resistance should be valued, and indeed, is crucial to psychotherapeutic practice:

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Chapter Five The 1st step in overcoming the resistance is made…by the analyst’s uncovering the resistance, which is never recognized by the patient, and acquainting him with it…One must allow the patient time to become conversant with this resistance to which he has become acquainted, to work through it, to overcome it, by continuing, in defiance of it, the analytic work according to the fundamental rule of analysis. Only when the resistance is at its height can the analyst, working in common with his patient, discover the repressed instinctual impulses which are feeding the resistance…[this is the] working through of resistances…which effects the greatest changes in the patient (Freud, 1912b, p. 155).

We should add a crucial caveat here: what is required by way of treatment then is not merely a didactic demonstration of resistance. Resistance must be drawn out–in both senses of the phrase–and then exhaustively repeated, again and again until they are seemingly drained, no longer fully operative. Such is the labour of what psychoanalysts refer to as ‘working though’. Resistance is therefore the path to change via the experience of the psychotherapeutic relationship. Speaking of the treatment of adolescents, Anthony (1977) makes clear that the analyst’s attempts to point out, in a confrontational manner, the presence of a resistance in the patient will only harm the therapeutic process. Rather than rushing into the interpretation of resistances, he tells us, the therapist needs to acknowledge that “resistances can only be resolved by the patient process of gradualism” and thus “the analyst must make sure that a particular resistance has been worked through by means of repetition and elaboration until insight is permanent” (Anthony, 1977, p. 453). Clearly then, for psychoanalytic practice resistance is both an impediment and yet also a crucial indicator of where change needs occur. For Freud, says Frosh: resistance became the key to analytic progress: spot the area of resistance and one knows what is most defended against, and hence not only what is most threatening, but also what is most significant in a person’s psychic life. The hiding place of repressed material is given away by what happens in analysis, by how the patient goes quiet at certain points, denies the significance of things she or he does, refuses to accept the analyst’s interpretations (Frosh, 2010, p. 167).

Once again the ambivalence connoted by resistance is apparent. As Frosh (2010) notes, while perhaps genuinely pursuing a cure, the patient will undoubtedly also sabotage the prospect of therapeutic progress, capsizing attempts to access the unconscious or understand symptoms.

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The problematic of resistance is thus reframed: rather than that which is to be eradicated, fought against, dissipated, it is an invaluable instance of communication. Schlesinger (1982) puts this well by means of a mock quandary. ‘What must we do about resistance?’ he asks, only to respond by saying that such a question is misleading inasmuch as it implies that resistance is something the clinician must prevent, oppose or undermine. Recognizing that resistance has happened brings with it a vital communicative potential: something has happened that intimates threat. Thus, he insists, to the therapist resistance should be no more an inconvenience than it is pain to the physician: Note the paradox: Although the resisting patient may be attempting to thwart us, to withhold information, to deny cooperation, or more subtly to avoid collaborating in the therapeutic task, the resisting patient is also conveying a good deal of information and in a larger sense is fully cooperating in the treatment… [O]ur major premise is that the patient does not fully know what the problem is, cannot remember but is forced to repeat, the behaviour we call resistance is part of that repetition and is his way of communicating with the therapist through re-enactment. Rather than being dismayed by resistance, the therapist might well welcome it. The technical problem is how to help the patient communicate more effectively whether through resistance or otherwise (Schlesinger, 1982. p. 27).

What we might then call the irreducibility of resistance is nicely emphasized by Reik: In a psycho-analysis in which everything runs smoothly, in which no resistances disclose themselves, one should always be suspicious; and one may equally be suspicious of all those attempts at modifications of the analysis which boast of having weakened or even abolished the resistances. Psycho-analysis resembles the work of a machine which necessarily requires friction for its effective operation (1915, p. 144).

Before we move on to post-Freudian psychoanalytic perspectives that emphasize the ego and view resistance most fundamentally as mode of defence with reference to the transference, we need to make one last allusion to Freud and his late categorizations of resistance, which are the following: 1. Repression resistance (preventing the emergence of unpleasant or dangerous concepts) 2. Transference resistance (in relationship to the analyst)

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Chapter Five 3. Resistance of secondary gain (resistance of having to give up secondary gains of symptom) 4. Id resistances (reluctance of drive impulses to change their mode of expression; inertia towards maturational change) 5. Superego resistances (deep-seated guilt and need for punishment; a sense of not deserving to recover) (Freud, 1926).

He presented thus a very complex understanding of resistance that involved not only the ego–the focus of many post-Freudian analysts–but also the id and the superego. Freud particularly pointed out the “resistance from the id” (Freud, 1937, p. 242). Indeed, Munroe (1957) tells us that Freud, before moving on to contemplate on the resistance of the ego and the superego, first viewed resistance as a factor of the dynamics between the id impulses. These are resistances of another kind, which we can no longer localize and which seem to depend on fundamental conditions in the mental apparatus…a special ‘adhesiveness of the libido’…they cannot make up their minds to detach libidinal cathexes from one object and displace them on to another (Freud, 1937, p. 240).

Being constituted by fixed and rigid mental processes, these resistances are expressed in analysis as “psychical inertia” as they hinder change and development in treatment (p. 242). Freud is thus highlighting an impediment to the therapeutic treatment that comes from deeper roots than just the ego. He views this as a “force which is defending itself by every possible means against recovery and which is absolutely resolved to hold on to illness and suffering” (p. 242). Some of this ‘primal force’, he tells us, end up in the superego as the sense of guilt and as the need for punishment, but other portions appear elsewhere. Therefore, for Freud, this force has an impact on the whole mental structure. What is striking about the id is its gratifying nature–even as it causes the suffering of the patient–and this gratification is one of the major factors that produce resistance to psychotherapeutic interventions. As Munroe (1957) states: “the analytic process may threaten a source of disguised gratification” (p. 321). The ‘id resistance’ consists then of an attempt to keep in place this source of libidinal gratification. What comes to mind here is the way in which resistance can appear as ‘flight into health’. This is when the patient would rather make one or two minor changes to their life than give up their underlying libidinal patterns of gratification.

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Resistance as Defence Expressed through Transference In the psychotherapeutic practices and theories influenced largely by ‘ego-psychology’, the resistance emanating from the id is disregarded as the focus is on the analysis of the ego and its defences. Indeed, resistance and defence are often treated as one, as demonstrated by Greenson’s (1987) definition: “The term resistance refers to all the defensive operations of the mental apparatus as they are evoked in the analytic situation” (p., 135). Resistances to the treatment are then perceived as “defense mechanisms served to protect patients from the intense anxiety inherent in becoming aware of their unresolved intrapsychic conflicts or unacceptable thoughts and impulses” (Anderson and Stewart, 1983, p. 5). Resistance thus defends against unpleasurable or painful feelings, such as shame and guilt, that may arise if the content of the repressed were to be brought up to the surface. Sterba (1977), however, notes a difference between resistance and defence. Resistance, he argues, is against the unlocking of psychic defences, including repression. It works thus as a safeguard for the defences, and makes sure that they are kept in place. Resistance is hence the primary force, and it ensures the defences are doing what they are set up to do, namely, maintaining the status quo. Langs (1981) elaborates further on this nuanced difference between defence and resistance: Resistance may be distinguished from defense in the finding that the former may be relatively absent on a communicative level in the presence of continued defensive operations within the patient which disguise his communications even at a point when they are easily understood and interpreted (Langs, 1981, p. 747).

In other words, communications that operate under the rules of defences can act to disguise resistance to the treatment. One of the most powerful ways through which resistance does find expression, however, is in the transference, and in some therapeutic practices “dealing with this form of resistance is the most important function of the analyst” (Sterba, 1977, p. 450). Transference phenomena are, according to this perspective, not only the source of the greatest resistances, but also the most effective vehicles for the treatment (Greenson, 1987). Transference resistance implies that feelings and desires that caused shame, guilt or fear, and which were related to significant others in the patient’s early childhood, are re-experienced with the analyst. This does not need to take an adversarial route though–although it frequently does. An erotic transference, for example, can also be a form of resistance. For

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Greenson (1987) “sexual and hostile transference responses are particularly prone to be the source of important resistance” (p. 141). In transference resistance, rather than remembering an unconscious conflict or fantasy, the patient acts it out with the analyst (Schlesinger, 1982). Transference becomes the means through which the patient defends himself against the efforts of the analyst to uncover his or her neurosis (Sterba, 1977). Re-enacting affects with the therapist is, we could say, a resistance against analysis proper, because it hinders examination of the repressed material. However, from the perspective of the psychotherapeutic approaches influenced by ego-psychology, the transference does not only offer clues to what is repressed, but it may also provide the motive for the analytic process. Focusing on the analysis of transference resistance can, nevertheless, be a risky strategy. Not only is this method capricious, but it can also lead to superficial ‘transference improvements’ which may be deceptive. Another serious shortcoming of this method is its downplaying of the resistances that are on the side of the therapist. Transference resistance can hence be less of an impediment than ‘countertransference’ resistance: all…resistances may receive unconscious contributions from the inappropriate interventions of the therapist, including misinterpretations and mismanagements of the framework. The analysis of all types of resistance requires the rectification of the therapist’s contribution and interpretations in which both unconscious perceptions and/or introjections and distorted fantasies and/or projections are considered (Langs, 1981, p. 748).

For Langs, ‘counterresistance’ may entail the following: therapist’s behaviours (absence, lateness, inappropriate physicality, premature terminations, acting out); failures to maintain the therapeutic framework (self-revelations, nonneutral interventions, erroneous interpretations, irrelevant comments); communicative counterresistances (failures to appropriately or effectively interpret, inappropriate responses to the patient’s material, efforts to effect misalliance, and, notably all aspects of the therapist’s intervention “not derived from the patient’s material” (1981, p. 712)). Certain types of resistances are thus driven more by the therapist’s countertransference interventions than the patient, and therefore, according to Langs, a significant element of the analysis involves the examination of the analyst’s unconscious. Langs shows us that what can be called ‘relationship resistance’ are the impediments in the patient that are the result of his or her relationship with the therapist. It is thus significant to acknowledge that both the patient and the therapist can

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contribute to the resistance, an issue we will be returning to later in this chapter.

Resistance Analysis In psychotherapeutic practices influenced by ego-psychology, resistance is not something to overcome to get to the ‘real’ issues of therapy. Rather, working through resistance is the task of therapy. As Greenson (1967) states, “it is the task of the psychoanalyst to uncover how the patient resists, what he is resisting and why he does so” (p. 133). Psychoanalytic therapy is in effect reduced to systematic analysis of resistances, which according to Greenson may entail first differentiating between two types of resistances: the ego-syntonic and the ego-alien ones. If a resistance is ego-alien, the patient is more ready to work on it. If it were ego-syntonic, the patient would either refuse to accept its existence or minimize its importance. The analysis of resistance involves therefore the transformation of such resistances into ego-alien ones. This will make the patient more willing to analyse the resistance and it will encourage him or her to “form a working alliance with the analyst” (1987, p. 134). Greenson’s method suggests that after identifying a resistance the therapist allows it to become demonstrable, waiting, that is, for it to be repeated–to be as one might put it ‘fixed as evidence’–even intervening so as to increase the resistance before it is pointed out to the patient. One then aims to clarify what the resistance seeks to achieve, to explore its various forms, a task which involves attention to its underlying affective currents and instinctual impulses, alerting the patient thus to its precise methods and modes. At this point the resistance should be interpreted, linked both to fantasies and memories, to historical antecedents and unconscious purposes. It is only subsequent to such didactic psychotherapeutic goals– which clearly aim to make an ally of the patient’s ego–that typical patterns of resistance are linked to a more expansive field of everyday behaviours towards the ends of a progressive ‘working-through’ in which the resistances are played out, exhausted, eventually abandoned. The focus of this type of psychotherapy is therefore on the resistance of the ego. This is an approach to resistance and analysis that pays little attention to the subtleties of Freud’s ideas, and in particular, to what we highlighted earlier: the id resistances. For Freud, psychoanalysis needs two routes forward: one focused on resistance of the ego, and the other on eliciting the unconscious. Ego-psychology centres only on the former. Freud (1937) states, however, that psychoanalysis also involves extricating the id: “During the treatment, our therapeutic work is constantly swinging

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backwards and forwards like a pendulum between a piece of id-analysis and a piece of ego-analysis” (p. 237). According to Freud, the defences that spring up against the analyst’s attempt to unmask the id appear as resistance against recovery. These are ego-defences operative whenever there is the attempt to make conscious the material which is repressed in the id. For Freud (1937), however, “although [these resistances] belong to the ego, [they] are nevertheless unconscious and in some sense separated off within the ego” (p. 238). There is therefore no clear separation between the registers of the ego and the unconscious id: The “distinction between what is ego and what is id loses much of its value” (Freud, 1937, p. 240). Although the ego resists against the analyst’s attempt to expose the unconscious id, it gains some force from the resistances that emanate from the latter, namely the “portions of the id” (p. 238). As we have already pointed out, Freud views resistance as more complex than merely emanating from the ego. He perceives the content of the id as a source of resistance. The ego-resistance should therefore be understood as the “resistance against the uncovering of resistances” (p. 238). Taking Freud’s thoughts into account obviously has implications for the work of analysis. It suggests that analysis should insist on the unmasking of the unconscious, rather than–as implied by egopsychology approaches–aiming to make the ego an ally by trying to attack the ego-resistances, and viewing this as the dominant task of analysis.

Anticipating and Avoiding ‘Non-Compliance’: The Behaviourist Approach We have tried to emphasize certain of the nuances of Freud’s description of resistance so that it can be contrasted with what was–and perhaps still is–the predominant reading of Freudian psychoanalytic therapy in the US, certainly so in those schools of practice associated with ego-psychology. As much as today it might seem of little more than historical interest, it is also worthwhile touching on the topic of behaviourist conceptualizations of resistance. Although we may not expect to find many parallels in the history of psychoanalytic and behaviourist approaches to the psychotherapeutic, some similarities can be found. The psychoanalytic approach of Langs (1981), for example, offers a classification which includes gross behavioural resistances. These include undisguised and “direct behaviours and associations of the patient”, such as “silences, gross disruptions of the session, thoughts about or efforts directed towards the

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premature termination, absences, direct but inappropriate opposite to the therapist and repudiation of his interventions” (p. 748).

Although in and of itself, behaviourism has ceased to be an important paradigm of psychotherapeutic practice, it nonetheless exerts an important influence in various modalities of cognitive behavioural therapy. The first observation we might make here can be bluntly put: resistance does not feature as a prioritized technical concept in the behaviourist literature on psychotherapy. Given that the idea of irrational and/or unconscious sabotaging of one’s treatment makes no real sense from this perspective– where, after all, rationality must be a baseline assumption, and ambiguities and ambivalences of the mind are not considered–failings of treatment need be seen rather as a problem of inadequate ‘reinforcers’ of changed behaviour, or as stemming from a lack of competencies on the part of the therapist (Hersen, 1979). So, what would count elsewhere as problems of resistance are for such approaches to be chalked up most typically as failures of motivation, misunderstanding or of inadequate training and or ability of the clinician. In this respect it is worthwhile noting the basic 5part behavioural typology of resistance proposed by Munjack and Oziel (1978). Resistance they say includes misunderstanding or skill deficits on the part of patients (problems of uptake, we might say); lack of motivation or low expectations of therapeutic success; feelings of anxiety or guilt associated with previous attempts at therapy; the factor of secondary gain, that is, the benefits that come the patient’s way by virtue of their symptoms. Some of the notions broached here, such as the idea that resistance may exist on the part of the clinician and the secondary gain of symptoms, have important psychoanalytic correlates. The problematic of resistance is, however, almost entirely recast in cognitive behavioural approaches, where it becomes more of a question of disposition towards the therapy itself. Anderson and Stewart (1983) explain that in cognitive therapy, therapists “challenge the patient’s selective perception of the world by examining the evidence the patient uses to make judgements about self or environment” (p. 11). Cognitive therapists thus conceptualize resistance as “negative cognitions” about the therapy itself. What follows from this is the need for the clinician to pay close attention to patients’ self-statements about therapy, remaining attentive to declarations such as “therapy has never worked for me before”, “I doubt this will help me” and suchlike. “To avoid the development of noncompliant behaviours, the therapist refutes such statements and replaces them with more positive attitudes about therapy” (Anderson and Stewart, 1983, p. 11).

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Resistance then is not so much an ongoing and irreducible condition of the psychotherapeutic work; it is rather a question of disposition, an unhelpful ‘mindset’ that needs to be identified and transformed before the therapy really begins. It features in fact as part of the initial selection of patients who are overtly and demonstrably committed to change. Again however the concern with the therapist’s own abilities and skills must be emphasized, as in the insistence that the good cognitive therapist must be capable of responding to the patient not only with concern, empathy and acceptance, but be astute in dealing with transference reactions (Beck, Rush, Shaw and Emery, 1979). The technical challenge of avoiding resistance has much to do with the establishment of a properly collaborative relationship, in which the clinician adequately involves the patient and appropriately structures the therapy. The psychotherapeutic domain must not slip into a top-down or authoritarian relationship of power–the allusion to psychoanalysis here is difficult to miss–in which the patient (or, in here, more typically, the ‘client’) has their sense of agency reduced. Should this happen one ends up with the problems–and the terminological switch from ‘resistance’ is here instructive–of noncompliance and counter-control, in which clients do not adhere to the objectives and tasks of the therapeutic process, or prefer, alternatively, to find a sense of agency that counters the direction of the therapy. The way that noncompliance and counter-control are best avoided is by encouraging clients, wherever possible, to set their own tasks and homework exercises, their independent activities outside of the therapeutic domain (Beck, Rush, Shaw and Emery, 1979). Anticipation of potential problems and the framing of the therapeutic work is crucial, as is the question of empathy. As Anderson and Stewart (1983) note of this approach: “The emphasis on…acceptance, careful indoctrination, and anticipation of problems with compliance imply that without it, the therapist will fail to engage the patients and the therapy will fail” (p. 11).

Resistance in Speech One of the most significant post-Freudian psychoanalytic contributions to the notion of resistance is to be found in the work of Lacan. Lacan takes up this topic via a careful re-reading of Freud stressing the role of language, speech and symbolic forms, and offering some interesting speculations in response to the questions of where resistance comes from, and precisely whose resistance we should concern ourselves with, an issue we have kept referring to above.

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Lacan (1988a) observed that the resistance of Freud’s patients came not just from their unwillingness to confront the cause of their suffering; it appeared instead to be linked to the process of speech itself. Resistance seemed to manifest itself when the patient was called upon to speak about the experiences they associated with their suffering. Lacan stresses that Freud’s way of first conceptualising resistance envisaged the patient’s speech to be arranged in concentric layers, wound around a repressed nucleus of pathogenic, often traumatic, material which lay at the root of neurotic symptoms. Resistance occurred, says Lacan of Freud, when the patient approaches this nucleus by penetrating successively the different layers of speech amassed around it (Freud, 1891, p. 288-290). Reading Freud, Lacan (1988a) summarizes that resistance appears to be met “by approximation in the radial direction…of the subject’s discourse, when it finds itself closer to…the pathogenic nucleus” (p.39.) On this model, resistance is encountered in speech itself, and indeed Lacan states in his reading of Freud’s texts of this time that “resistance stems from the very process of the discourse, from its approximation” to the pathogenic material (p.39). Speech or discourse may well then be the battlefield upon which we meet resistances; this however, importantly, is not to say that resistances are inherent in speech itself. The phenomenon of resistance is not necessarily the same as its cause or point of origin. Lacan (1988a) states that resistance comes from the repressed: “From the repressed nucleus a positive repulsive force is exerted, and when one strives to reach the threads of the discourse which are closest to it, you feel resistance” (p. 22). He likewise maintains that Freud “would say that one encounters greater and greater resistance the closer the subject comes to a discourse which would be the ultimate one, the right one but one which he absolutely refuses” (p. 22). These latter remarks, in their privileging of speech, imply that for the patient the problem is not the repressed as such, but the speaking of the repressed. What is at issue psychotherapeutically is the integration of repressed material into a discourse or narrative that the subject can assume. Lacan (1988a) thus believes “we will only be able to resolve the question of resistance by deepening our understanding of what is the meaning of this discourse” (p.36). The implication here is that psychoanalysis does not operate on the cause of resistance as such–the pathogenic nucleus which persists as an un-analysable kernel of the symptom and is effectively out of reach–but on the discourse or speech through which it can be detected. However, if speech is a way of approaching the unconscious kernel in a radial or roundabout direction– through various stratified layers–what, then, is resisting? Freud is very clear on this point: the unconscious does not resist (1920, p. 18). Lacan

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(1988b) follows Freud’s assertion: “On the unconscious side of things, there is no resistance, there is only a tendency to repeat” (p.321). In other words, although resistance may be originated in the repressed unconscious, it is not the unconscious that resists. The unconscious material ‘insists’: it pushes towards expression. The agency that resists is the ego.

Resistance as Imaginary Function For Lacan, Freud’s clinical experience of resistance and his early metapsychological description of its process give way later to the idea that it is the ego that is responsible for resistance (Freud, 1920, p. 20). Finessing his metapsychological opposition from one of consciousunconscious to one of ego-repressed, Freud writes that “the patient’s resistance arises from his ego” (Freud, 1920, p. 20). Retracing Freud’s steps, Lacan believes that Freud’s notion of the ego developed as a response to the therapeutic difficulties Freud was experiencing in confronting his patient’s resistances; that Freud’s initial difficulties conceptualising resistance can be seen as difficulties in forming the concept of the ego. Repeating in his Ecrits that “resistance is essentially an ego phenomenon” (p. 374), Lacan (1988a) states “one realises that the notion of the ego already foreshadows for Freud all the problems that it now presents for us. I would almost say that it is a notion with retroactive effect” (p.23). So what is it about the ego that makes it the source of resistance? Lacan’s answer to this question starts with the situation of the ego in the register he calls ‘imaginary’. This is not imaginary in the sense of makebelieve, but rather the realm of images which Lacan believes lure and captivate the subject, freezing him in an alienation that falsely binds his sensation of subjectivity to his body-image. Throughout his work in the 1950s, Lacan presents the imaginary register as fundamentally incompatible with the unconscious, which he characterises as operating on the basis of symbolic processes, as structured like a language. By its very nature, the imaginary blocks or ‘jams’ the message that ‘insists’ from the unconscious. We can see the ego as the agent of this jamming of repressed material in its push towards consciousness. As Lacan puts it in the Ecrits: To know what resistance is, one must know what blocks the advent of speech, and it is not some individual disposition, but rather an imaginary interposition which goes beyond the subject’s individuality (p. 461).

Rather than being a result of the patient’s own unwillingness to countenance the repressed, resistances in psychoanalysis are inherent to

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the composition of the ego itself. This resistance cannot therefore be attributed to the intentions of the patient to sabotage his or her psychoanalysis. This view sets Lacan apart from other psychoanalysts of his time many of whom–as we have seen–conceived of resistance as a defence employed by the ego. Rather than being seen as a defence, resistance should be seen as a fundamental, constitutive quality of the ego as imaginary. With the ego as its agent, resistance itself is then conceived of by Lacan as a fundamentally imaginary phenomenon: “For it is in so far as it is imaginary…that the ego is, in analysis, the mainspring of the interruptions of this discourse” (1988b, 325). In his Écrits Lacan describes the ego in similar terms, referring to “the imaginary inertias it concentrates against the message of the unconscious” in the subject’s discourse which attempts to find expression (2006, p. 520). This attempted expression is that of a message that carries a meaning about the subject’s history; the job of the psychoanalyst is to enable the subject to produce this message and assume it as part of his history (Lacan, 2006, p. 301-302). Assuming what is ‘Other’ about the unconscious means recognising that the material of the unconscious has a symbolic resonance. What we experience as resistance is the tension exerted at the junction of the imaginary and the symbolic. The presence of imaginary referents, of which the ego of the patient is one and the ego of the analyst another “may be an obstacle to the progress of the realisation of the subject in the symbolic order....And that is indeed why we are always faced with some sort of resistance” (Lacan, 1988b, p. 319). We can summarise our conclusions on the question of where the resistances come from. The question should be split into three, separating the origin, agent and effect of resistance. Whilst the origin of the phenomenon of resistance as we experience it in psychoanalysis may be in the unconscious nucleus of pathogenic material, rather than resisting, this material seeks expression. The agent of resistance that jams or impedes the realisation of this expression is the ego insofar as it is an imaginary construction. Finally, the effect of this jamming is felt at the level of discourse, the almost tangible sense–either of inertia or circumlocution– that both the analyst and analysand experience as the latter’s speech approaches the repressed material.

The Resistance of the Analyst Even if we have answered the question of what is resisting, Lacan is careful to discourage his students from being lured into the convenient assumption that it is the ego of the analysand which produces resistance.

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Instead, he encourages us to ask a deceptively simple question: who is resisting? For Lacan (2006), there is no doubt as to the answer: “There is no other resistance in analysis than that of the analyst” (p.377). Lacan’s contention is that the way in which the analyst targets his or her interventions against the patient’s resistances can themselves generate resistance. We can highlight three ways in which this might happen. The first form of the analyst’s resistance is manifested through the analyst’s eagerness to simply reveal, in the form of an interpretation, the analysand’s hidden sexual desire. Lacan is concerned here with highlighting two pitfalls of psychoanalytic technique. He is wary, firstly, of the error of reducing all desire to the search for sexual satisfaction, to lust. “If the analyst…forces a sexual explanation on the patient, he will encounter resistance” (1988b, p.228). Secondly, the rush to a sexual interpretation petrifies the analysand’s desire by too readily affixing it to an object. Rather than using it as a motor for treatment, something to be explored and questioned in the course of analysis, the analysand’s desire is forestalled, and it is in this sense that the analyst can be said to be introducing resistance into the treatment. A further way in which resistance can be attributed to the analyst is through his or her appeal for the analysand’s agreement on the ‘correctness’ of the interpretations offered. In the Écrits Lacan (2006) bemoans the fact that analysts all too often “seek out the phenomenon of well-foundedness in the subject’s assent” (p. 595). “This is how…resistance is engendered in practice”, he adds, noting also that this is “what I am trying to convey when I say that there is no other resistance to analysis than that of the analyst himself” (p. 595). Finally, resistance can be said to be on the side of the analyst when the latter attempts to challenge it directly. From the outset the psychoanalyst should respect the fact that resistance is there for a reason; attempting to counter it through force of will would be not only futile, but met with an exacerbation. Lacan thus questions the assumption that the removal of resistances should be considered analytic progress. As we have stated already, many analysts are convinced that an ‘analysis of resistances’ is requisite to any successful psychoanalytic therapy. So what does it mean to ‘analyse resistances’? Why exactly does Lacan oppose such an approach? Firstly, he saw it as suggestion rather than analysis. In simple terms, this form of suggestion is the result of persuasion. Furthermore, it is also brought to bear through the imposition of the ego of the analyst as a model on which the patient can refashion himself: “Intervening by substituting oneself for the ego of the subject, which is what is always done in one way of practising the analysis of resistances, is suggestion, not analysis” (1988b, p.43). To reify what we have already

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alluded to, opposing the resistance can smother the subject’s desire and thwart its development as a motor to the treatment. Lapping’s (2011) perspective on this issue is illuminating. It is, she notes, the heavy-handed imposition of the theory of psychoanalysis itself and the factor of the over-eager interpretations of the analyst which impedes the flow of material in the clinic. By relying too heavily on the discourse of psychoanalysis and utilizing it to produce interpretations, the analyst in fact closes down the prospect of further meanings and – within the clinical domain, the patient’s own interpretations. Addressing an audience of analysts, Lacan (1988b) comments: [I]t’s you who provoke the resistance…. [There is] resistance… because…you are pushing… What Freud himself calls inertia…isn’t a resistance… Resistance only starts once you try to make the subject move on from this point…[when] he cannot move any faster… There is only one resistance, the resistance of the analyst. The analyst resists when he doesn’t understand [and] when he thinks that interpreting is showing the subject what he desires…In contrast, what’s important is…[for] the subject to name, to articulate, to bring this desire into existence (Lacan, 1988b, p. 228).

Lapping (2011) crystallizes the point: resistance is the product of the analyst’s interpretation. Inertias of analysis, resistances in analysing, are typically the result of the analyst’s impositions. The preferred clinical strategy here would be to align oneself with whatever opens the horizon of the patient’s own further interpretations, to encourage and facilitate the expression of their desire, rather than close it down by virtue of the need of the analyst to impose authority, mastery, understanding.

Conclusion We have sketched a number of qualifications that have been important in the history of the idea of resistance in the psychotherapeutic. We outlined a variety of Freud’s shifting thoughts on the subject and the diverse ways some post-Freudians have applied the concept in their psychotherapeutic practice. We wish to conclude this chapter with the following quote by Phillips (2006) that emphasises resistance in the theorization of and belief in psychoanalysis itself: the understanding of psychoanalysis involves a continual resistance to it. To accept psychoanalysis, to believe in psychoanalysis is to miss the point…you cannot believe in the unconscious, you cannot believe in

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What this statement brings to mind is the contradictory nature of genuine psychoanalytic comprehension. Grasping psychoanalysis involves, paradoxically, a rejection of it. Given that psychoanalysis theorizes subjectivity and attempts to get at the root of the human subject, this rejection is inevitable. In other words, if psychoanalysis is the discourse that comes closest to the ‘nucleus’ of the human being, there will be resistance. Therefore, the only way to acknowledge psychoanalysis is through this continual resistance to it. This is one among many of the contradictions that are brought to light by psychoanalytic theory and practice.

References Anderson, C.M. and Stewart, S. (1983). Mastering resistance: A practical guide to family therapy. New York and London: Guildford Press. Anthony, E.J. (1977). Resistance and defense in adolescent psychoanalysis. In B.D. Wolamn (Ed.), International encyclopaedia of psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis and neurology. New York: Herculapin Publishers. Beck, A.T., Rush, A.J., Shaw, B.F. and Emery, G. (1979). Cognitive therapy of depression. New York, N.Y.: Guildford Press. Etchegoyen, R.H. (1999). The fundamentals of psychoanalytic technique. Karnac Books: London. Freud, S. (1891) Psychotherapy of hysteria. In Strachey, J. (Ed.), Standard edition of the complete works of gmund Freud. (Vol. 2, pp. 253-306). London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. —. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. In Strachey, J. (Ed.), Standard edition of the complete works of Sigmund Freud. (Vols. 4 and 5). London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. —. (1912a). The dynamics of transference. In Strachey, J. (Ed.), Standard edition of the complete works of Sigmund Freud. (Vol. 12, pp. 97-108). London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. —. (1912b). Remembering, repeating and working through. In Strachey, J. (Ed.), Standard edition of the complete works of Sigmund Freud. (Vol. 12, pp. 145-156). London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. —. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. In Strachey, J. (Ed.), Standard edition of the complete works of Sigmund Freud. (Vol. 18, pp. 7-66). London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis.

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—. (1926). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety. In Strachey, J. (Ed.), Standard edition of the complete works of Sigmund Freud. (Vol. 20, pp. 87-178). London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. —. (1937). Analysis terminable and interminable. In Strachey, J. (Ed.), Standard edition of the complete works of Sigmund Freud. (Vol. 23, pp. 209-254). London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. Frosh, S. (2003). Key concepts in psychoanalysis. New York University Press. New York. Frosh, S. (2010) Psychoanalysis outside the clinic: Interventions in psychosocial studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Greenson, R. (1967). The technique and practice of psychoanalysis (Vol. 1). New York: International Universities Press. —. (1987). Resistance analysis. In D.S. Milman and G.D. Goldman (Eds.), Techniques of working with resistance. Northvale, NJ and London: Jason Aronson. Hersen, M. (1979). Limitations and problems in the clinical application of behavioral techniques in psychiatric settings. Behavior Therapy, 10, 65-80. Hook, D. (2001). Therapeutic discourse, co-construction, interpellation, role-induction; psychotherapy as iatrogenic treatment modality? The International Journal of Psychotherapy, 6, (1), 47-66. Lacan, J. (1988a) The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book I: Freud’s Papers on Technique, 1953-1954. (J. Forrester, Trans). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. (1988b). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book II: The ego in Freud’s theory and in the technique of psychoanalysis, 1954-1955. (S. Tomaselli, Trans). New York and London: W.W. Norton. —. (2006). Écrits. (B. Fink, Trans.). New York and London: W.W Norton. Langs, R. (1981). Resistances and interventions: The nature of therapeutic work. Aronson: London and New York. Lapping, C. (2011). Psychoanalysis in social research: Shifting theories and reframing concepts. London and New York: Routledge. Munjack, D,J. and Oziel, L.H. (1978). Resistance in the behavioural treatment of sexual dysfunction. Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 4. 122-138. Munroe, R.L. (1957). Schools of psychoanalytic thought. Hutchinson Medical Publications: London. Phillips, A. (2006) Side effects. London: Penguin Books. Reik, T. (1915). Some remarks on the study of resistances. Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse, 3, 141-154.

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Schlesinger, H.J. (1982). Resistance as process. In P. L. Wachtel (Ed.)., Resistance, psychodynamic and behavioural approaches, pp. 25-33. New York: Plenum Press. Spinelli, E. (1994). Demystifying therapy. London: Constable. Sterba, R.F. (1977). Resistance: Freud’s view. In B.D. Wolamn (Ed.), International encyclopaedia of psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis and neurology. New York: Herculapin Publishers.

CHAPTER SIX NEW TECHNOLOGY: A SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF DISINHIBITION AND RESTRAINT MARTIN W BAUER

Techno-scientific innovations seem to be the pinnacle of the pursuits of efficiency and rationality. However, the adoption of a technically enhanced practice is less than rational, often a sub-rational or even irrational affair. Therefore, resistance to innovations can be as rational as it is often thought to be irrational. It could be that much of the ‘rationality’ of new technology is an ex-post embellishment of a fait accompli. In an attempt to elucidate this apparent paradox, I explore three families of models of technological change and their respective take on a social psychology of resistance. Historians have tinkered with ideas of a mentality or a ‘Zeitgeist’, the symbolic conditions that are favourable or unfavourable for the adoption of new technologies. The family of diffusion models considers the spread of new ideas, tools and procedures in analogy to a viral contamination, modelled on the regularity of a logistic function (the S-curve). It is fair to say that diffusion ideas are still the commonplace of technological thinking. An alternative language is offered by the family of ideas that takes issue with the unrealistic assumptions of the diffusion approach. Resistance is not a prominent topic in science and technology studies, at least not at present. Awareness of difficulties in the process of progress is widespread, but the naming of these difficulties as ‘resistance’ is tainted with attributions of irrationality. Also, the distinction between science and technology is controversial, and depending on the context of the argument, more or less relevant. For our present purposes it might suffice to state that a) technologies of taking, making and enhancing life historically precede any formalisation of the sciences in physics, chemistry or biology, b) scientific research and technological practice move closer together over

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the past 200 years, to such an extent that, despite differences between theoretical and practical logics, it is at times difficult to separate the two, and c) while according to linear stereotypes scientific research precedes technical development, it is nowadays evident that most science depends on technological devices, sine qua non. Without machinery there would be no science; this has become a chicken and egg issue. These days, hardly anything goes without computing facilities; and instrumentality is the heuristic of much modern science. As others do, I refer to this modern complex as ‘techno-science’. In this chapter, the focus is on resistance to techno-scientific developments and how this might be thought of. Note, resistance to new scientific paradigms is treated elsewhere in this book (see Peters, this volume).

Historical Thinking about Resistance to Technology While the importance of technological innovation for economic growth is uncontroversial, the attribution of rationality exclusively on the side of innovators is however not. Historians of the Annales School consider ‘resistance’ to new technology to be a characteristic of the ‘Zeitgeist’, of the mentality of the particular time and place. According to this view, there are longer periods in history when ‘innovators’ are admired as heroes of efficiency improvements, and there are other times when ‘innovators’ are villains despised for disrupting the social order (see Bloch, 1948). The historian though hesitates to identify any period as ‘rational’ or ‘irrational’. It is far from clear whether welcoming innovation is ‘rational’, while opposing them is ‘irrational’; it might well be the reverse. Historical conditions can make it irrational to adopt expensive new technology; only the high wages of a literate population make labour-saving technology economically viable (Allen, 2011), under different conditions innovations seem a strange and dubious obsession. Furthermore, the history of the notion of ‘innovation’ testifies to a large semantic shift; to be an ‘innovator’ amounted to a death sentence during the 17th century English Civil War, when Puritans and Anglicans accused each other of ‘innovation’ either on the literal text of the Bible, or on tradition (Godin, 2010). The term ‘projector’ for those seeking a Royal patent for practical ideas connoted fraudster, imposter and maker of false promises in Restoration Britain (Yamamoto, 2012). This shift of ‘innovator’ from an embodiment of fraud and irrationality to the personification of rationality is an extraordinary change of semantic.

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Other scholars point towards shifting objections of resistance in the labour process. Objections to innovations move from a concern over labour-saving machinery such as a medieval bucket elevator, to labour enslaving installations such as a 19th century Jacquard loom, to labour replacing technologies in 20th century robotic production lines. Innovations move from easing the physical burden, to the deskilling, intensification, subjugation and substitution of human activity (Carloppio, 1988). The machine-breaking Luddites were less worried about the new textile technology per se, but about the changing nature of their work and community life that was introduced with it (see Randall, 1995). Long-wave models of economic growth recognise cycles of collective moods. During prosperity alienation and anxiety rise, while progressive learning and risk taking fall, prompting conservative attitudes to technological innovation during recessions; the situation reverses during depression and recovery when engagement, progressive learning and risk taking prevail (e.g. deGreene, 1988). The economic historian Mokyr (2000) pays attention to micro issues of ‘resistance’ to new technology. He shies away from dismissing resistance as futile and irrational machine breaking. Recognising the differences between irrational resistance, resistance of vested interests, and resistance to the perverse effects of good intentions, it seems hazardous to dismiss resistance as irrational; the danger lies in misdiagnosis and erroneous analysis of the problem. Resistance can be a source of functional information for the technological process. The assumption that the ‘new’ is superior to the ‘old’ is often difficult to sustain; the evidence is likely the outcome of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Resistance is necessary when there are no alternatives; and in the case of choice, society resists both old and new options. In this sense, resistance calls for choice (Edgerton, 2008, 9).

Resistance and The Diffusion Model of Technology Still prominent in the social analysis of new technology is the diffusion approach (see Ryan and Gross, 1943; Rogers, 1983; Wejnert, 2002). The diffusion approach assumes that innovation spreads like a virus through contagion; one person stimulates the other to change their mind and to adopt a new premise, practice or product. After contact, akin to a viral transfer, the person makes a putative choice: adopt or reject the novelty. The mathematical model plots the adoption rate, i.e. the number of adopters at time t (ft1) divided by the number of not-yet-adopters in the system (ft1/N-ft1): the odds of being an adopter is a weighted function of time. This leads to a logistic function with an s-shaped curve: slow start,

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acceleration to the tipping point, then deceleration and approximation of a sealing. The basic formula is a logistic regression [F1]: [F1]ln(f/1-f) = c + bt The odds of adoption over non-adoption are a function of time and two parameters. Parameter c refers to the impact of communication, a system constant, and the parameter b stands for the suggestibility of individuals. The mass media raise awareness and personal contact pushes the adoption decision. In this model, resistance manifests itself in three effects as shown schematically in Figure 6.1. First, the size of the overall system (N), the market size, is reduced; second it delays the onset of an otherwise identical process; and third, the speed of diffusion is slower as the take-off takes longer to reach the 50% tipping point. The analysis seeks to uncover the factors of any of these effects of resistance, and that is as far as it goes. Everybody in the system is considered a not-yet adopter; adoption is only a matter of time, and speed comes at a premium. Hagerstrand (1967) added space to the time-series models of diffusion. Resistance is introduced as a characteristic of individuals moving in space and time. He states: …few people can be expected to accept an innovation upon initial contact with it. The barriers may be many, all the way from rational economic considerations to a more unreasoned aversion to change. In this context, one must not forget that many innovations cannot be accepted until a whole series of other conditions are adapted to the new phenomenon (ibid, p263f).

Resistance is defined as the number of contacts with previous adopters that are necessary to reach an acceptance decision (p265). Two kinds of information are at stake: information about the innovation, and about peers already making use of it. A person may be in direct contact with peers who engage the new practice. Or the person obtains cues of such usage from rumours, mass media and other indirect observations. A number of hypotheses are thus gained: H1: resistance causes delay; high resistance requires more contacts and more information flow to achieve a similar adoption rate (Hagerstrand, 1967, p271). H2: the higher the resistance, the more clustered the innovation in space (p272). H3: the lower the resistance, the shorter will be the first phase of the diffusion process (p273 and p285). H4: resistance is inversely correlated to size of the adoption unit (e.g. farm size). H5: the initial personal contact precedes acceptance

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of an innovation in most cases (p282). Significantly, the Hagerstrand model adds the spatial concentration of innovations as a fourth effect of resistance. Much is done to promote geographical regions as strategic clusters of techno-scientific innovation.

Figure 6.1: Effects of resistance in a diffusion process. X-axis is time, and y-axis is ratio of adopters on a scale of 0-1. The curve is the cumulative distribution of the frequency of adoptions for each time point. This distribution will be a normal distribution, with few adoptions in the early period, most in the middle period, and fewer again toward the later period. People adopting at different periods are often labelled into four groups as innovators, early adopters, later adopters, and laggards. Resistance is identified with the dispositions of the late adopters and laggards.

The model is ultimately built in analogy to ‘contamination’, though an intended contamination, with virulence, host and milieu as key variables that affect the likelihood of ‘infection’ and ‘disease’ (see Grimley Evans in this volume). Translated into the language of innovation, the aim is not the containment of the virus or immunisation against it, but total ‘herd infection’. The ‘virulence’ resides in the cost-benefit characteristics of the new practice, e.g. its private or public utility. An iPhone requires only a low-cost private decision, while a nuclear power plant is high cost that needs a public decision. Innovators are the ‘hosts’ of novelty, and their

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disposition depends on their status as private or public actors, their familiarity with innovation, their network position, attitude to risk and socio-economic status. Finally, the ‘milieu’ points to relevant contexts of geography, culture, politics and global competition (see Wejnert, 2002). The timing of adoptions is modelled as a regression problem on a linear combination of factors including their statistical interactions. Resistance explains the delayed timing of adoptions and points to levers for managing that resistance. The promoter will want to create a climate for innovation by increasing the virulence, preparing the host, and cultivating an innovative milieu. It sounds like Euro-Speak from Brussels.

Limiting Assumptions of the Diffusion Model: Rationality without Reasoning Diffusion research assumes that people imitate others in direct contact and keep a cumulative memory of these encounters together with other cues to wider adoption around them. For some only a few encounters suffice, others need more to change minds and behaviour (Hagerstrand, 1967, 266). The assumption is, given time, all members of the system will succumb, everybody is a not-yet, and only a not-yet. Resistance melts away, inversely related to the number of contacts with persons who have already adopted the novelty (ibid, 264). According to Gabriel Tarde (2001 [1890], p203), a 19th century French social psychologist, invention and imitation are elementary social acts. Invention is a random process or a stroke of genius; it does not lend itself to scientific and lawful enquiry: ‘an invention simply appears’ (p213; my translation). On the other hand, imitation does not add new features to the imitated practice, but is subject to discernible ‘Laws of Imitation’. People are similar because of imitation (p103); people imitate to avoid the burdens of invention because they are lazy (p110). Tardean imitation builds on the ‘doctrine of suggestion’ (Asch, 1952, 394; Ginneken, 1992) and of ‘general somnambulance’ (p136): humans are subject to the laws of imitation because in everyday life our rationality is dimmed and we ‘sleep walk’ through life. Late 19th century writers generalised the clinical potential of hypnosis and trance to an everyday fact. Normal life means thoughtless sleep walking where rationality is exceptional and unhinging the laws of imitation (p136). Furthermore, the diffusion approach incorporates a bias for innovation (Rogers, 1983, p92) that entertains several propositions without scrutiny: a) the innovation should be adopted by all members of a social system (good for all), b) the faster the diffusion process the better (speed is good), and c)

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the innovation is rejected only temporarily not for ever (no final rejections), d) innovations are never rescinded, but for good (never rescinded), and e) innovations do not change during diffusion; they are ‘ready-made’ and fixed from beginning to the end of the process (no alterations). The innovation is already perfect. If innovation is viral, it is a process without mutation. The first and the second of the above propositions, good for all and speed is good, are moral commitments that might inspire to work with a ‘diffusion approach’. The latter propositions (no final rejections, never rescinded, no alterations) are empirical claims that are unlikely to match the historical facts of technological change. This suggests that the diffusion approach, instead of being a general theory of innovation, is a rather special case with strict moral and factual boundary conditions. Rogers (1983, 92ff) recognises unrealistic assumptions of diffusion research that arise from case selection, from reconstruction of success stories after the fact, and from funding sources with an interest in speeding up the process. More recently, Hannemyr (2003) has shown, on the example of the Internet, that the very reporting of diffusion rates is strategic hyperbole to promote the new development. Rogers (1983, p95 ff) urged a number of revisions to the approach in order to correct these inherent biases. These include the move from retrospective to continuous observations of a process-in-the-making, to study failed and failing innovations in order to balance the success stories, to study opting-out after adoption, to study the (re)invention process before, during and after adoption, and finally to keep an open mind as to the motives for or against adoptions. Keeping an open mind means that we allow for motives other than susceptibility to contagion (irrationality). The bias of the diffusion approach is risky; it takes ‘technological fix’ and ‘over-confident social engineering’ for real understanding of social and historical realities.

Resistance in Alternative Models of Technical Innovation A number of alternative languages have been proposed to talk about techno-scientific progress. I will briefly review four of these, which I consider part of a family with overlapping concerns. My argument ultimately argues for a functional analysis of resistance: the analogy between ‘pain’ and ‘resistance’, in relation to movement and collective mobilisation.

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Supervening Necessity and the Law of Suppression of Radical Potential A model of the progress of communication technologies from the telegraph via television to the tablet computer has been proposed by Brian Winston (1998). Winston accepts a linear model of discovery, invention, innovation and diffusion. New technologies are ‘storms from paradise’, offering potentials that are curtailed by societal resistance. The transition from science to technology, from competence to performance, from discovery to diffusion, is mediated by society. The ideations of science bring about technical prototypes, some of which transform into innovations that diffuse into markets. New competences are predictably constraint by two laws: the ‘law of supervening social necessity’ and the ‘law of suppression of radical potential’. This dynamic is illustrated by a clock that is put to ‘zero’ for every novelty. In each case, the revolutionary timetable runs far ahead of reality, and for each innovation the clock needs to be turned back as it falls behind schedule. Every communication technology ends up with a yawning gap between scheduled expectations (e.g. the paperless office by 2000) and the actual performance (e.g.the massive increase in paper consumption in office work). Supervening social necessity operates on competences and incomplete prototypes. Most prototypes are rejected; some are accepted to satisfy an immediate need; others become spin-offs that solve parallel problems for which they were never invented; others solve problems for which they were invented, but do so only partially and inefficiently. Supervening social necessities ‘transform the circumstances in which technologists labour …’ (p9) ‘ …on these prototypes to move them out of the laboratory into the world at large’ (p6). Edison’s phonograph, developed to support telephone conversations in the emerging office world, became a recording tool for blind people, and later the basis of a new industry distributing the sounds of music (Winston, p60ff). Supervening social necessities are accelerating the transition from invention to diffusion, which is decelerated by the ‘law of suppression of radical potential’ that selects paths, arrests flow, and tends towards dissipation and retardation. The final outcome is a dominance of gadgets, spin-offs and redundancies that only re-invent the wheel. Innovations are selected for the survival of existing institutions rather than their revolution. Technological structures are determined by a conservative function; technology buttresses the status quo. This model throws new light on resistance in two ways. First, resistance curtails the potentials developed by scientific research by selecting prototypes under limiting criteria: to buttress existing institutions

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and to satisfy immediate concerns. Resistance is thus a paramount social reality to which developers must face up to, and which the two laws make predictable. We might see nuclear power as an instance: potential energy too cheap to meter, is curtailed by early unsafe and dual-use reactor designs which at the time satisfied military requirements for fissionable materials and commercial imperatives (Radkau, 1983). Secondly, resistance to existing technology manifests itself in challenges of the constraints that is expressed by these two laws: knowing the laws keeps the utopian appetite alive; hence ‘storms from paradise’. Implicit in Winston’s argument is what social psychology calls an ‘enlightenment effect’ (see Gergen, 1973): the reflexive awareness of social regularities allows actors to transcend this very reality by undermining the self-filling prophecy which blind adherence to ‘the law’ would produce. Resistance against existing solutions helps to unleash the hidden potential of utopian prototypes. We might recognise this in the open access movement that resists the enclosure and privatisation of the commons: the ‘Internet’.

Extension versus Dialogue Paulo Freire’s theory of social mobilisation (Freire, 1974) arises from education work in rural Latin America during the 1960s. Freire’s focus is on how new technology is communicated to potential users and he operates with a polemical distinction between extension and communication. Extension is thereby a synonym of diffusion. Freire is concerned with the dysfunctional biases of diffusion that entrench mutual resistance and lead to unsustainable outcomes. The technocratic agronomist assumes that he or she knows best and the farmer is ignorant. Local knowledge is disqualified as outmoded and to be replaced by new knowledge of which the agronomists are the experts. In this exchange, however, the agronomist is the ignorant party, ignorant of the particular situation and lacking basic respect for the farmer. Thus according to Freire, rather than the local farmer being deficient, the expert agronomist is dually challenged, cognitively and morally. This process of ‘extending’ the world of one party onto the other party is a mono-logical imperialism of knowledge. Costly failures arise from the reliance on ‘doxa’ (mere opinion and prejudice) on both sides. We need to move from ‘doxa’ to ‘episteme’, from opinionated to grounded common knowledge. Half-knowledge ignorant of context leads to entrenched resistance and failing projects of innovation. Real progress arises from the meeting of perspectives and building of communality through knowledge exchange and mutual respect. The agronomist might bring a more productive seed from the lab, but the

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farmer knows the community and the local climate; the one cannot succeed without the other in the quest for higher farm productivity. By opening up stereotypes and opinions (doxa) on either side a new common ground is established which renders innovation robust and sustainable. The motto is: where there was doxa there shall be episteme, i.e. dialogically grounded knowledge. This process requires critical self-awareness and ‘conscientisation’ that leads to the mobilisation of collective actions for a better society (see Vaughan, 2011). Freire foreshadows the later theory of communicative action presented by Habermas (1981) with its sharp distinction between speech acts ‘oriented towards success’ (i.e. strategic action) and speech acts ‘oriented towards common understanding’ (communicative action). Habermas’ approach defines procedures that support the merging of perspectives: inclusiveness, equality, and freedom from coercion, deception and selfdelusion. Henceforth, we witness the proliferation of rule-based formats of social engagement in the context of technological debates; a flurry of event making also known as ‘technologies of humility’ (Jasanoff, 2003; Einsiedel, 2008): consultations, public hearings, citizen juries, tables rondes, café scientifique, consensus conferences, opinion polling, focus groups, or a flurry of deliberative scoping exercises at ever earlier stages of the technological development. Invention and diffusion are not stages of a linear sequence, but entangled processes. New technology is not the fait accompli that spreads, but a process of building community by fusing horizons. Potential and actual resistance is absorbed by reasoned argumentation early in the process, the so-called ‘upstream engagement’. In this context, diffusion models are high risk ideas: pushing acceptance of a fait accompli with false confidence is bound to fail. For Freire and Habermas resistance indicates the ‘colonisation of the life world’ by actors with mono-logical concerns. The imperative of efficiency fails in an task which assesses simultaneously what is good in relation to others, true in relation to the world and sincere in relation to the person who speaks. Resistance reacts to over-confidence, ignorance and disrespect. Resistance is costly, delays the process, and brings failure. Resistance is avoidable through the right procedure. Thus, the false expectation is raised that a change in style of communication makes all the difference. The solution lies in changing the mode of engagement. Currently social actors are thus weary of technocratic wolves in the dialogical sheepskin arguing for a particular future of nuclear power,

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information technology, and genetic engineering.1 It seems too easy to adopt the dialogical rhetoric, and- operate as if new technology remains a problem of extending expertise.

Theory of Social Representations Social representations theory (SRT: Moscovici, 2008 [1961]) was formulated in explicit response to the diffusion approach in the 1950s. SRT seeks to understand how knowledge circulates in modern society without social engineering presumptions. The theory is based on empirical observations on how psychoanalytic ideas were penetrating French common sense in the 1950s. In contrast to a diffusion approach that asks who adopted, when and why, SRT asks how are these new ideas appropriated differentially across socio-cultural milieus, a Roman Catholic, a Communist and an Urban-Liberal milieu in this particular case. Each milieu mobilises pre-established worldviews and cultivated them through conversations and in milieu-specific mass media outlets. A new idea encounters social territory not as empty space. To the contrary, these milieus ‘familiarise the unfamiliar’ in function of existing concerns and relevance structures. Unfamiliar notions are anchored in familiar practices, and abstract ideas are made concrete and objectified with the help of known images and metaphors. Thus, in society ‘psychoanalysis’ is polysemic: it means different things to different people: a curious superstition in liberal opinion, a type of confessional to Catholic attitudes, bourgeois ideology and false consciousness in Communist stereotype. Ideas and practices change in circulation, and this is an eminently empirical matter. SRT theory recognises that individuals of modern societies are not wedded to only one milieu, but may be conversant with several. They are ‘cognitively polyphasic’, tolerate maybe contradictory notions, and are able to mobilise them flexibly. Indeed cognitive dissonance and polyphasia are the cultural variables. SRT distances itself from models of contagion, highlights the non-linearity of, and the adaption of knowledge to context, and thus the infusion of knowledge with values, attitude and affect: knowledge changes in circulation in function of the communicative context where speakers and audiences relate in ways which are typical of the milieu. Diffusion stimulates liberal opinions, 1

This was cogently expressed at a meeting in Paris ‘Science and Society– dialogues and scientific responsibilities’, 24-25 November 2008. One of the participants, head of a large French research laboratory, summarised his learning outcome as follows: ‘I have realised that we need to have a better dialogue in order to get our point across’.

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propagation fosters Catholic attitudes, and propaganda reinforces Communist stereotypes on ‘unconscious motives’ in line with the particular form of social organisation in sympathy, communion or solidarity (Duveen, 2008). The ‘thinking society’ according to SRT includes diffusion as the special case of a social milieu that is integrated by mutual sympathy (see Bauer and Gaskell, 1999 and 2008). According to SRT resistance manifests itself in the genre (diffusion, propagation or propaganda) and in the content of communication, i.e. the particular framing, anchoring and objectifications, that resonates with a particular milieu (e.g. psychoanalysis is acceptable through similarity to the Catholic confessional, but its mechanistic model of human sexuality is not acceptable). SR enable the formation of attitudes of critical interest. Resistance emanates from a particular representation of things. Framing, anchoring and objectifying an issue affords resistance. SRT allows us to see what is being resisted and why; and how this resistance is enabled.

Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) The frameworks of Actor-Network theory (ANT) and social construction of technology (SCOT) respond critically to the assumptions of diffusion model. Rather than reconstructing events after the fact, researchers must follow people around and observe what they come up with in real time. The rallying cry is to participate in laboratory life like the latter-day social anthropologists did in remote tribal life (Latour and Woolgar, 1979, Latour, 1983). Technology is double faced: in-the-making and ready-made. A focus on the ready-made fait accompli generates narratives of the ‘Whiggish’ kind, i.e. self-serving storytelling of winners who describe a path of necessary progress up to the present, conveniently overlooking the ‘losers’ contributions to the process (see Peters, in this volume). Focus on in-the-making reveals ‘techno-science’, activities where science and engineering cannot be neatly separated; machines operate in combinations of human and non-human elements; we are already cyborgs. This highlights that no technology is purely a means-toan-end. Tools, objects, devices and procedures are mediators that influence user ends as if they were ‘actants’ with power and authority (Latour, 1994). A speed bump slows me down as a patrolling policeman would do; a heavy hotel key ‘wants’ to be left at the reception; a credit card ‘wants not to be forgotten’ before the bank teller releases the cash (a lock-in of actions). The heavy hammer builds my muscle so I can use it better (body building). Technology affords the shifting of my practice, not only in the

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means-to-ends, but also in the ends. It is difficult to apportion the agency: how shall we ex-post factum attribute my correct speeding, to the speed bump (non-human actor) or to my conscientious traffic-citizenship (human actor)? ANT highlights two processes in the development of hard facts: translation and inclusion. Progress is messy and involves balancing the enrolling of allies and the changing shape of things. Designs ‘translate’ form (the metaphor draws on geometry rather than linguistic) in order to engage other actors. The engagement of allies happens at multiple fronts. In this, the labour process has no privilege: technology is not a tool to control labour (as Marxists have it), but also citizens, materials, aliens from inner and outer space, and gods. How to think otherwise, when a voice activated device allows orthodox believers to comply with the Shabbat rule of no physical work; he will not only welcome the voiceactivated device, but also actively seek to construct it. Pinch and Bijker (1987) have shown how bikes historically translate full-rubber tyres into air tyres by gaining novel associates among speed-obsessed sportsmen and decency-concerned Victorian women. New solutions enable the enrolment of people and their concerns; new people and their concerns stimulate the search for new solutions. For SCOT researchers, designs move from initial interpretive flexibility to closure via the considerations of relevant groups and the wider context. There is no determined trajectory, only negotiated controversies, thus both success and failure deserve a closer look. In this light ‘diffusion’ is predicated on silencing all allies and one is curious how this might be achieved. Resistance receives scant attention in ANT and SCOT. The potential for resistance is part of the dynamics of negotiation. Resistance, though, is a feature of the sturdy fact that ‘resists’ challenges and is built to last (Latour, 1996). Resistance also registers in the actions of relevant groups who seek recognition and consideration of their concerns. Resistance is the recalcitrance of matters of fact, i.e. the resistance of construed and constructed reality. Full rubber tyres would had limited the future of bicycles. Gravity and aerodynamics resist human desire to simply fly away; the weight of flying machines requires a certain speed to lift off. Non-users, refuseniks and not-yet users of computer and social media applications, capture the imagination of designers (see Oudshoorn and Pinch, 2003). Word processing machines were initially designed only for secretaries to operate, but seeking to expand the user-enrolment pushed for concessions on interface and hardware design and came up with the personal computer (PC), which brought us the glamour world of APPLE. ANT and SCOT draw attention to the need for examining how resistance

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is accommodated through a balancing act between tinkering with matter on the one hand and with social associations on the other, what fancy enthusiasts call the ‘ethno-epistemic assemblage’ of inclusion and translation.

Box 6.1: A rationally delayed diffusion: gm crops in Brazil The diffusion approach assumes the advantage of ‘irrationality imitation’ to gain speed. How this is at most a special case, a counter example can show. This case study on the recent Brazilian ‘soya miracle’ arose on the back of European resistance to genetically modified (GM) foods (see Bauer, 2006). In the 1990s, large chemical corporations such as Monsanto, Bayer and Novartis sought to establish a new business model: marketing products that combine seeds and herbicide to which the seed is uniquely resistant due to genetic modification: e.g. Monsanto’s Roundup-Ready@ soya. The farmer annually buys the hybrid-seed-cum-herbicide package from the company. He becomes a ‘loyal customer’ and no longer needs to keep his own seeds for the next planting season. The discourse of progress includes ‘feeding the world’s hungry’ on ‘less cost’ and ‘less pollution’. Traditional agro-chemistry morphs into modern ‘life science’ and serves consumers from farm to fork and with ‘pharming’, bringing together the farmer and pharmacist, the baker and butcher. At least that was the ‘visioning’ that inspired stock markets for the ‘biotechnology revolution’ with the ‘life sciences’ as its vanguard. When in autumn 1996 soya arrived in Rotterdam by ship from the USA, consumer and environmental organisations saw an opportunity and raised alarm with mass media-savvy stunts (Lassen et al, 2002). Many European food retailers, sensitised by scandals over Salmonella or BSE in the food chain, were anxious not to lose customers and joined in. The protests resonated with public anxieties over food safety and environmental deterioration; and unclear rules over labelling of GM products provided a legal loophole. Perfectly legal de-iure, GM soya and other crops were de-facto banned from European markets for years to come: ‘Vive l’Europe, livre de GM!’. What emerged was a European-wide public opinion against GM, at least in function, while not yet in structure. When US and Argentine soya farmers enthusiastically shifted to genetically modified variety, Brazilian farmers held back, made aware of European qualms by local activists. Brazilian farmers did not imitate their competitors at least for 10 years, supported by a regulatory framework that declared GM crops illegal until May 2005. Brazilian complexities led to the following paradox: in the South, where local government had banned crops, farmers in defiance happily adopted the ‘illegal’ seeds that were smuggled across the border from Argentina, while further North, in Parana and Mato Grosso, where local governments had no policy on the matter, the farmers held back and produced traditional soya for a growing market in Europe, China and Japan with a price premium of 10% and more. The results of this global process can be summarised in two graphics. Figure 6.2 shows the diffusion of soya in Argentina, USA and Brazil, who jointly produce

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80% of the world’s 260 Million tons of soya (2011), most of it to feed animals. While Argentina saturated by 2000, US farmers initially took it up speedily, but responded to the European ‘Great Food Debate’ of 1999/2000 with a break in 1999 and 2001. In Brazil, GM soya showed delayed onset and lesser speed; it took 10 years to reach tipping point, whereas Argentina and the US reached it in 2-3 years. Figure 6.3 shows the global effect of this non-adoption of GM crops: Brazil gained the upper hand over US soya exports between 1999 and 2010 in times of expanding demand in Asia. After the European ‘great food debate’ of 1999, the trajectory of Brazilian and US soya production departed; Brazil multiplied its exports from below 5 Million (1995) to 33 Million tons (2011), bound to overtake the US. European consumer sentiment gave Brazil’s farmers a strategic advantage with non-GM crops. Ever since, the US has sought to break this situation through corporate campaigning, representation in international bodies such as the WTO, and as Wiki-leaks from the Paris embassy revealed in 2010, through ‘threats of retaliation’ and high level lobbying against the ‘precautionary principle’ in Brussels and other European capitals. Figure 6.2: differential rate of penetration of GM soya in Argentina, US, Brazil and the world; Source: Bauer (2006)

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Figure 6.3: index of soya production in USA and Brazil. Source: Bauer (2006) with updates for more recent years.

Resistance to Technological Mobilisation This brings me to a final take on the problem of resistance. We might ask: what does resistance do to the techno-scientific project as in the case of GM crops? My own answer to this question elaborates a ‘pain analogy’ in terms of monitoring ongoing movement (Bauer, 1991, 1995, 2002 and forthcoming). What pain does for movement, resistance does for social mobilisation: it draws attention, it delays things and calls for further thinking, thereby sharpens the self-concept and ‘body image’, which affords alterations of the project. Technological projects are based on imagining a future, a projection into times to come. Communication efforts play a huge part in the mobilisation of resources for these futures; science fiction and diegetic prototyping are part of it (Kirby, 2011). There is an irrational element of having visions, visioning and making future images, bordering on psychotic delusion (for a collections of historical examples of such ‘visions’; see Rhodes, 1999; Sloterdijk, 2005). On the other hand, these images inspire and mobilise collective action by framing a utopia (according to Bloch’s principle of hope). The quest for a ‘man on the moon’ has inspired the generation coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s. My thesis is as follows:

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Resistance operates as the reality principle for visioning projections, indicating obstacles by way of strategic feedback. The pain analogy is useful: it allows us to elaborate on this feedback process in very specific ways.

First, the pain analogy focuses thinking on consequences rather than on causes or reasons of resistance. This is intimated by the observation that pain is more specific as a motive for action than a sensation for perception; resistance is an ambiguous experience, more motor reaction than sensory register and representation. Like in pain, the relations between grievance and resistance are tenuous and show many anomalies (insensitivity, phantom risks, hypersensitivity, catastrophising). The link between resistance formation and action is more predictable and a part of the symbolic culture of resistance and what to do about it. Second, the analogy encourages a focus on consequences. Resistance manifests itself through basic functions: (1) attention allocation, (2) reevaluation of ongoing activity, (3) enhanced self-awareness, (4) alteration of movement.. When a technological projects runs into public resistance and controversy, one might want to trace any of these consequences empirically and functionally tied to the original project impetus. What does resistance do to the original project? Thirdly, we recognise the paradox of resistance: resistance is the bad news that captures attention. Like with pain, its functionality is tied to the unpleasant experience (enjoyment is possible, but only as a secondary formation). Resistance is primarily a nuisance and as such functional. The risks of project failure in the face of resistance draw attention and motivate further considerations and actions. The paradox lies in the good that comes from bad resistance. Fourth, a focus on consequences highlights the moderators of responses to resistance. How do promoters react to resistance to their project? Lack of reaction has to be considered in the light of processes of ‘endogenous modulation’. For example, strongly held future visions create commitments that shield the attention and create insensitivity. When a new technology does not encounter the expected resistance, we must ask, like Sherlock Holmes did: why does the dog not bark? (Dogs do not bark at their owners, therefore the murderer must be the owner of the dog; was Sherlock’s abductive inference). Similarly, we might hypothesise that the absence of mass resistance to information technology, as compared to nuclear power or genetic engineering, is due to mediations of youthful hero models, continuous hype over Progress writ large. The public discourse of IT is ripe with performances of immediate futures that leave little room for worries and resistance. Resistance is not apparent because

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of otherwise filled attention, and not because of a lack of concerns of which there are many be that physical, emotional or cultural; the visioning process is distracting and the resistance is muted. Fifth, moderators of responses to the challenge of resistance are symbolic in nature, including theories of resistance such as the ‘diffusion approach’. Theories are cultural resources of how to deal with resistance; they are blueprints for interventions that are culturally shared, in the same way as one shares the schema of ‘if-in-pain-go-and-find-a-pain-killer’ or ‘if-in-pain-stiff-upper-lip-and-continue’. Such blueprints are often more part of the problem than of the solution. Thus, my model of resistance subsumes concepts of resistance as special cases of symbolic resources. One might distinguish two families of concepts of resistance: resource and deficit concepts with rather different implications for interventions. Finally, with a focus on consequences we also explore the learning potentials arising from resistance. In this light, resistance is a resource rather than a problem, an asset rather than a cost. And responding to resistance is not a punctual event, but a sequence like a dance. Research must pinpoint the moderators that enable structural learning rather than avoidance learning. One would hope that resistance does not only motivate avoidance of innovation, but the search for better innovations. Structural learning brings insights, changes the framework and widens the scope of actions, while avoidance restricts the future. A clarification of the relationship between individual and collective learning is called for. It is not enough for individual to change their way, but institutions need to change their modus operandi. In light of the pain analogy, resistance to techno-scientific projects such as nuclear power, genetic modification of crops and animal, genomic medicine, and various strands of information technology is a resource. Resistance makes a functional contribution by focussing attention on unforeseen and unforeseeable issues, evaluates the achievement so far, brings to awareness the stakes and the stakeholders, and suggests alterations to the original project that render it sustainable. Such resistance to new technology is a resource, and this independent of the dignity of its motives and reasons. The real risk lies in missing the learning opportunity by prematurely disqualifying resistance as ‘irrational’ or deficient in any other way. This view is consistent with that of the economic historian, as indeed Mokyr (2000) has noted.

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Conclusion We have briefly reviewed three takes on resistance to new technology. Each take constitutes a family of concepts with overlapping concerns and analyses of resistance. Historical analysis of technological developments is appreciative of resistances, and careful with regard to the attribution of rationality and irrationality. The resistance of vested interests can be both rational and undesirable from the vantage point of technological promoters. On the other hand, resistance might be poorly informed or even irrational, but alerts the pervasive unintended consequences of good intentions. The dominant model of technological change is the linear diffusion approach. This model is an artefact of retrospective methodology and wishful thinking. And the assumptions made reveal it as a viral model with moral investment in speed and total herd infection that is empirically flawed. Adoption is considered a sub-rational process of contagion, idealising success stories in hindsight, and totally missing out on the fact that ideas and practices change and adapt to circumstances. The discontents of diffusionism brings to the fore a family of alternative models of innovation. These models stress the gap between ideation and performance with the laws of ‘supervening necessity’ and ‘suppression of radical potential’. These models stress the need for realistic methodology that allows the observation of facts-in-the-making (ANT). They stress the dignity of failure to understand the progress, and they highlight the need to stop silencing the users with attributions of ‘irrationality’. The pursuit of dialogue proliferates ‘technologies of humility’, and the idea of social representation highlights the changes that occur in circulation through reframing, anchoring and objectification of innovations in the particular context. In the final point, I developed the argument by pain analogy: resistance far from being a problem to be overcome it is a resource and an asset of the process of mobilisation of resources. Focussing on functional consequences highlights the learning opportunities that arise from the signal functions of resistance (attention, evaluation, awareness, alteration), and this independent of the dignity of its causes and reasons. Even ‘irrational’ resistance, the famous ‘yuck’ factor of moral unease, points towards the undesirable and unintended consequences of otherwise good intentions. In the beacon function subsists the paradoxical rationality of resistance, however motivated. This characterises a new common sense, what Sloterdijk (2005) diagnosed as the new age of constraint and concern for collateral effects which replaces the ‘nautical delusions’ of the age of discovery and its technocratic dis-inhibitions

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References Allen RC (2011) Technology and the great divergence, Oxford Department of Economics Discussion Paper 548, April. Asch SE (1952) Social Psychology, NY, Prentice Hall Bauer MW (forthcoming) Atoms, Bytes and Genes. Public resistance and Techno-Scientific Responses, New York, Routledge —. (2006) The paradoxes of resistance in Brazil, in: Gaskell G and M Bauer (eds) Genomic and Society: legal, ethical and social dimension, London, Earthscan, p228-249 —. (1995) Towards a functional analysis of resistance; in: Bauer, M. (ed) Resistance to new technology - nuclear power, information technology, biotechnology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 393-418. —. (1991) Resistance to change - a monitor of new technology, Systems Practice, 4, 3, 181-196 —. and G Gaskell (2002) The biotechnology movement, in: Bauer MW and G Gaskell (eds) Biotechnology–the making of a global controversy, Cambridge, CUP, 379-404. Bloch M (1948) Les transformation des techniques comme probleme de psychologie collective, Journal de Psychologie, 41, 104-119 [not in library] Carloppio J (1988) A history of social psychological reactions to new technology, Journal of Occupational Psychology, 61, 67-77. Cyert RM and DC Mowery (eds) (1987) Technology and employment. Innovation and growth in the US economy, National Academy Press DeGreene B K (1988) Long wave cycles of sociotechnical change and innovation: a macropsychological perspective, Journal of Occupational Psychology, 61, 7-23 Duveen G (2008) Social actors and social groups: a return to heterogeneity in social psychology, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 38, 4, 369-374. Einsiedel E (2008) Public participation and dialogue, in: M Bucchi and B Trench (eds) Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology, London, Routledge, p173-184. Edgerton D (2008) The shock of the old–Technology and global history since 1900, London, Profile Books Freire P (2005) Extension or communication, in: Education for critical consciousness, London and New York, Continuum, pp 87-146 [originally of 1974) Gergen KJ (1973) Social psychology as history, Journal for Personality and Social Psychology, 26,309-320

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Godin B (2010) ‘Meddle Not With Them That Are Given to Change’: Innovation as Evil, Project on the Intellectual History of Innovation Working Paper No. 6, Montreal, UQAM Ginneken J van (1992) Crowds, Psychology and Politics, 1871-1899, Cambridge, CUP. Habermas, J (1990) The theory of communicative action, Cambridge, Polity. Hagerstand T (1967) Innovation diffusion as a spatial process, Chicago, UCP Hannemyr G (2003) The internet as hyperbole: a critical examination of adoption rates, The Information Society, 19, 111-1221. Jasanoff S (2003) Technologies of humilities: citizen participation in governing science, Minerva, 41, 223-41 Kitcher, P. (2003) Infectious ideas–some preliminary explorations, in: In Mendel’s Mirror–Philosophical reflections on biology. Oxford: OUP, pp. 213—232. Kirby DA (2011) Lab coats in Hollywood. Science, Scientists and Cinema, Cambridge MA, MIT Press Lassen J, A Allansdottir, M Liakopoulos, AT Mortensen and A Olofsson (2002) Testing times–the reception of Roundup Ready soya in Europe, in: Bauer MW and G Gaskell (eds) Biotechnology–the making of a global controversy, Cambridge, CUP, pp279-312. Latour B and S Woolgar (1979) Laboratory Life, the social construction of scientific facts, Princeton, PUP. —. (1983) Science in action, Cambridge MA, HUP —. (1994) On technical mediation - philosophy, sociology, genealogy, Common Knowledge, 3, 2, 29-64 Mahajan V and RA Peterson (1985) Models for innovation diffusion, London, SAGE, Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences no 48. Mokyr J (1990) The levers of riches. Technological creativity and economic progress, Oxford, OUP —. (2000) Innovation and its enemies: the economic and political roots of technological inertia, in: M Olson and S Kahonen (eds) A not-sodismal science–a broader view of economics and society, Oxford, OUP, pp61-91. Oudshoorn N and T Pinch (2003) (eds) How users matter. The coconstruction of users and technology, Cambridge MA, MIT Press. Pinch T and W Beijker (1987) The social construction of facts and artefacts, in; Bijker W, T Hughes and T Pinch (eds) The social construction of technological systems, Cambridge MA, MIT Press, .

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Randell A (1995) Re-interpreting ‘luddism’: resistance to new technology in the British industrial revolution, in Bauer M (ed) Resistance to new technology, Cambridge, CUP, 57-80. Radkau J (1983) Aufstieg und Krise der deutschen Atomwirtschaft 19451975. Verdraengte Alternativen in der Kerntechnik und der Ursprung der nuklearen Kontroversy, Reinbek, Rowolt. (The rise and crisis of the German nuclear industry–repressed alternatives of nuclear technology and the origin of the controversy) Rogers, E. M. (1996). Diffusion of Innovation, 4th edition. New York: Free Press (previous editions 1962, 1971 and 1983). Rhodes R (1999) Visions of technology, New York, Simon and Schuster. Ryan B and N Gross (1943) The diffusion of hybrid corn seed in two Iowa communities, Rural Sociology, 8, 1, 15-24. Sloterdijk P (2005) Der Weltinnenraum des Kapitals, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp Tarde G (2001) [1890]. Les lois de l’imitation, Paris, Edition Seuil Valente TW and WM Rogers (1995) The origins and development of the diffusion of innovation paradigm as an example of scientific growth, Science Communication, 16, 3, 242-273. Vaughan C (2011) Dialogue, critical consciousness and praxis, in: Hook D, B Franks and MW Bauer (eds) The social psychology of communication, London, Palgrave, pp46-66. Wejnert B (2002) Integrating models of diffusion of innovation: a conceptual framework, Annual Review of Sociology, 28, 297-326. Winston B (1998) A storm from paradise. Technological innovation, diffusion and suppression, in: Media Technology and Society–a history from the telegraph to the internet, pp1-15. Yamamoto K (2012) Reformation and the distrust of the projector in the Hartlib circle, "Historical Journal, 55 (June 2012), 375-397

CHAPTER SEVEN THE ROLE OF A CULTURAL IMMUNE SYSTEM IN RESISTING EXPERT EXPLANATIONS OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE ADRIAN BANGERTER AND VÉRONIQUE EICHER

Introduction Infectious diseases have played a major role in the evolution and history of humankind, constituting major causes of mortality alongside wars and famine. Despite the progress of modern medicine, they remain major killers to date, accounting for more than 25% of annual deaths worldwide (Morens, Folkers, and Fauci, 2004). As a result, humans have adapted, both biologically and culturally, to the threat of disease. The most obvious adaptation is the immune system, which recognizes and destroys pathogens entering the body. Entire disciplines in medicine and the biological sciences are devoted to the study of this system. Recently, on the basis of an increasing array of evidence, evolutionary psychologists have postulated the existence of a “behavioral immune system” that has evolved to detect cues of disease threat and facilitate avoidance reactions before pathogens enter the body (Schaller and Park, 2011). Arguably, one might also conceive human groups to have developed, in the course of their history, various cultural practices designed to ward off disease threat–possibly participating in a kind of “cultural immune system”1. These may range from taboos about consumption of specific foods (Meyer-Rochow, 2009) in traditional societies to the existence of specialized groups specifically tasked with accumulating systematic knowledge about disease (e.g., medical scientists) and fighting it (e.g.,

 1

We are indebted to Martin Bauer for this suggestion.

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health protection authorities) in modern societies. A basic component in the human cultural arsenal of responses to disease threat is explanation of disease: a set of culturally shared beliefs about what factors cause a disease, how it is spread, and how to protect oneself against it. Human groups have always tried to explain diseases in order to control them and limit their negative effects. Beyond instinctive behavior like avoidance reactions to cues of disease (Faulkner, Schaller, Park, and Duncan, 2004), explanations of disease enable groups to organize collective behavior to react to a disease threat (for better or for worse, depending on the correctness of the explanation). But explanations have a wider function than reducing risk. Ultimately, they also serve a symbolic function, i.e., to interpret a disease by placing it in the context of a particular narrative or worldview, thereby making sense of the inevitable disarray wrought by a disease’s varying and often devastating effects on society, including sudden and massive death, suffering, disintegration of social structure and so on (Hatty and Hatty, 1999). In other words, if there is a “cultural immune system” that exists to deal with disease threat, such a system serves at least as much to protect the symbolic integrity of the culture it supports than to protect the physical health of the individuals composing that culture. The symbolic integrity of a culture or worldview of a particular group is protected by adapting the content of the explanation and linking it to a particular cosmology or ideology, thus enhancing its “fit” with prevailing mentalities. In this chapter, we explore the implications of the idea of a cultural immune system via the analysis of explanations of infectious disease. In particular, we explore the ways in which different explanations of infectious disease coexist or compete with each other. Using a range of cases, we show that a limited set of explanatory patterns exists and that these explanatory patterns serve in large part to symbolically make sense of disease outbreaks and thus either to legitimate the existing social order, rendering it “immune” to social change, or to contest that order, by exposing ideologies and rejecting power relations. Thus, the relations between competing explanations of disease reveal much about the topic of resistance, especially symbolic resistance to social change. In our view, much explanatory mileage can be generated from adopting a social psychological perspective, in other words by examining how socially shared beliefs or representations serve the ideological needs of particular groups. This perspective is particularly well-developed in the approach known as social representations theory (Bauer and Gaskell, 2008; Moscovici, 1984; Wagner and Hayes, 2005). We therefore first describe this theory as a general backdrop for our research.

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Social Representations Theory and Expert versus Lay Knowledge Social representations are collective beliefs shared by social groups (Wagner and Hayes, 2005) about a range of circumscribed domains. Social representations are “social” on the one hand because they are shared within a particular group or culture (Jaspars and Fraser, 1984). On the other hand, they emerge out of social interaction, e.g., everyday conversations between individuals. Social representations are elaborated when laypersons apprehend knowledge produced and disseminated by expert groups. Such knowledge is often difficult to understand by laypersons and ideologically threatening. However, in modern societies, laypersons are continuously confronted with such knowledge and need to make sense of it in order to participate in everyday life conversations and decisions (e.g., having an opinion on media coverage of stem cell therapy or biotechnology, or deciding on whether a hip new diet is worth starting) (Wagner, 2007). Psychoanalytic theory (Moscovici, 1961) is a body of expert knowledge par excellence: it is a complex network of statements, concepts, and specialized jargon. Its authoritative use is reserved to a small group of people, psychoanalysts, trained for years and officially inducted into the group. At the same time, psychoanalysis is also ideologically threatening because aspects of psychoanalytic theory go against aspects of common sense knowledge (consider the subversive nature of Freud’s claim that repressed sexual urges are the foundation of much of our behaviour and culture). As a result, psychoanalysis poses both a cognitive and an ideological challenge to common sense knowledge. Its diffusion in lay culture therefore led to its transformation. Thus, we can speak of the emergence of a social representation of psychoanalysis that is, in essence, a selective reconstruction of certain aspects of psychoanalytic theory in popular culture. Different facets of this social representation have been identified in Moscovici’s (1961) seminal study, for example the analogy between psychoanalytic therapy and the Catholic rite of confession, or the image of the couch as a symbol of psychoanalysis. In sum, then, there is often an antagonistic relationship between expert knowledge and lay knowledge in modern society. Expert knowledge is threatening (rendering the familiar unfamiliar, according to a famous aphorism of Moscovici, 1984) to common sense. Thus, social representations get elaborated when such knowledge is diffused, whose function is to symbolically “make sense” (Wagner, Kronberger, and Seifert, 2002) of a technological innovation, scientific theory or sudden



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event like a disease outbreak (Gilles et al., in press) or natural disaster. At any moment, several kinds of explanations of an event or domain may coexist. Over time, some may disappear while others may emerge or become stronger and even become institutionalized. Expert groups tend to suppress lay knowledge (Flick, 1998), which is qualified as irrational in nature. This is well exemplified in the domain of the public understanding of science, where the public is often described as being ignorant or as suffering from a deficit in knowledge (Wynne, 1991) that needs to be filled by objective knowledge. On the other hand, in reinterpreting expert knowledge, lay groups often resist its implications. In modern societies, the paradigm example of expert knowledge is science, which has gradually supplanted religion as a source of authoritative knowledge about the secular world (society, nature, and similar domains of knowledge). In other times and cultures, however, expert knowledge may stem from different sources. Given the above considerations, analyzing the relationship between expert and lay knowledge has the potential to reveal much about how socially shared beliefs serve the social, political or ideological needs of particular groups. In particular, the analysis of expert and lay explanations of the causes of infectious disease can illuminate how groups within society conserve ideological stability in the face of sudden catastrophic events like disease outbreaks. This in turn can have important implications for a range of issues, both theoretical (understanding cultural reactions to disease threat) and practical (designing better ways of communicating about diseases in the public sphere). In the next section, we therefore describe how explanations of infectious disease emerge, coexist, compete with each other, or decline, using a range of well-documented cases of disease outbreaks.

Cases in the Social History of Infectious Disease Explanations Here we present four cases of disease outbreaks. The first is the Black Death (14th century), the second is AIDS, the third is emerging influenza strains (Spanish flu, avian flu and swine flu), and the fourth is MRSA (the latter three having emerged in the 20th century). For each case, we rely on historical or social science evidence that documented the various kinds of explanations that emerged during the outbreaks, for both scientific and lay explanations.

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The Black Death The Black Death is the name given to the epidemic of plague that swept through Europe between 1347 and 1350. It probably originated in Asia, where it killed about 25 million people. It entered Europe via Constantinople, being transported from there to Mediterranean ports and then to Western and Northern Europe. The Black Death is estimated to have killed over 25 million Europeans (Kohn, 1995). It was by all accounts a catastrophe of horrific proportions that completely devastated European society, bringing normal everyday life to a halt and transforming the demographic, social, economic, and political face of the continent (Byrne, 2004 Kelly, 2005). In the face of the massive outbreak of death and suffering, experts of the day (religious and political authorities as well as practitioners of academic and folk medicine) were powerless, their remedies distrusted or even maligned (Cohn, 2003). As a result, alternative movements emerged, advocating different explanations of the plague and different means of protection. The current consensus is that the Black Death was caused by a bacterium, yersinia pestis (but see Cohn, 2003). Spread of infection was facilitated by the poor hygienic conditions prevalent in European cities during the Middle Ages, as well as by recurrent wet weather spells in the years preceding, which had led to repeated crop failure with subsequent food shortages that weakened the population. Of course, this set of explanatory factors was not available to Europeans at the time. The Black Death hit Europe during a period where orthodox naturalistic explanations of disease harked back to Hippocrates’ miasma theory. By this theory, transmitted and developed by the Roman physician Galen, disease is spread through miasmas or “bad air” that originated in wet climates, decomposing matter and the like. According to miasma theory, the plague was transported by winds (especially warm winds from the south or wet maritime winds from the west). Remedies consistent with this theory were based on inhaling aromatic substances like particular woods or herbs. With increasing desperation, various other remedies were tried, including dietary recommendations, phlebotomy (bloodletting), ringing church bells, or even consuming powdered emeralds (for those who could afford it) (Kelly, 2005). An important characteristic of medical explanations at the time is that they remained inextricably linked to religious explanations, for example seeing the plague as a form of divine punishment (Byrne, 2004). Another naturalistic explanatory theme invoked environmental factors (earthquakes) or celestial occurrences (comet sightings, astrological explanations like planetary conjunctions) (Kelly, 2005).



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Church authorities and theologians propagated religious explanations of disease, i.e., that the plague was a form of divine punishment for men’s sins. This was so in a double sense: First, the very existence of disease in the world was due to the original sin, and second, acute outbreaks of disease were punishments for specific excesses. Religious explanations of disease prioritized healing the soul rather than the body, e.g., through individual or collective acts of penitence (Hatty and Hatty, 1999). The theme of divine punishment was amplified in a popular movement of the time, the flagellants. Groups of men formed and travelled from one town to the next, beating themselves with barbed whips several times a day and exhorting townspeople to renounce their sins upon arriving in a community and engaging them in their ceremonies. The flagellants are an interesting case because they embody a power struggle between the religious orthodoxy and the people. They were critical of the Church’s authority making claims that were considered as heretical, or attacked clergy and disrupted ceremonies. The movement was eventually banned by the pope (Kelly, 2005). Another class of explanations consisted in explaining the disease outbreak by the malevolent acts of stigmatized minorities, in this case Jews, who were accused of conspiring with the Devil to poison Christian wells. This idea may have originated in the fact that Jews often used other water sources than Christians, but it progressively blossomed into fullblown rumours with information such as the type of poison, as well as complex plots featuring villainous figures. Many details were also invented by Jews themselves who confessed to a whole range of imaginary crimes under torture (Cohn, 2007; Kelly, 2005). Such beliefs led to pogroms and other forms of violence against Jewish ghettos in many parts of Europe, including Germany, France, and Switzerland. As a result, many Jewish communities were completely exterminated. There is controversy about the extent to which these were popular movements. It is known that the pope at the time, Clement VI, intervened to defend the Jews. At the same time, other political authorities often instigated violence against them (Kelly, 2005). Poisoning by Jews–especially as part of a global plot– would continue as a component theme of Anti-Semitism for hundreds of years. For example, Stalin on his deathbed is reputed to have believed Jewish doctors had poisoned him (Moscovici, 1987). The tendency to blame disease outbreaks on stigmatized groups is widespread across history and cultures (Joffe, 1999).

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HIV/AIDS In 2009, almost 2 million people died of AIDS, making it one of the leading causes of death in the world (WHO, 2008, 2009). The disease was first recognized when a cluster of cases was identified in June 1981 by the Center for Disease Control (CDC, 1981). It was first named Gay Related Immune Deficiency (GRID) and–informally–‘gay plague’, to indicate that the disease was (thought to be) limited to gay men. As new scientific evidence was uncovered and more and more cases were identified, explanations of the origins of AIDS changed. Figure 1 shows a timeline of events related to AIDS, which can serve as markers for the emergence and disappearance of different types of explanations. Although the different explanations are shown to have emerged and sometimes disappeared at specific time points in the graph below, these dates and events only represent approximate markers. We will follow the different types of explanations in the structure of this section. The term ‘gay plague’, which emerged as one of first names of the disease entailed specific expectations and stereotypes associated with the disease. First and foremost, the name implied that only a specific target population was in danger of catching and transmitting the disease. The disease was thus limited to this group and allowed the distinction between them (homosexuals at risk) and us (heterosexuals who cannot catch the disease). Additionally, the term ‘plague’ gave the disease a biblical connotation of punishment for sins. Christian fundamentalists, who saw homosexuality and sexual pleasure in general as a sin, believed the disease to be God’s punishment for hedonistic life styles (Washer, 2010). The term thus strongly connoted the sense of deservingness and attention often focused on scapegoats: individual cases like the Canadian air steward who was supposedly responsible for infecting many of the first men diagnosed with AIDS in the U.S. Conveniently, he fulfilled both the stigma of being a foreigner and gay. Although it was already cautioned by health practitioners in the early 1980s, that HIV could be transmitted by heterosexual sex, it was the death of Hollywood actor Rock Hudson in October 1985 that raised the public’s awareness of AIDS as a threat to heterosexuals. In a press conference in 1986, the U.S. Surgeon General Everett Koop denounced AIDS as a “disease, which strikes men and women, children and adults, people of all races” (Koop, 1986, p. 3) and in January 1987 the US News and World Report published the headline ‘Suddenly the disease of them is the disease of us’ (Washer, 2010). In 1988, the first official recommendations for



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Figure 7.1: Timeline of events and explanations related to AIDS

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protection against AIDS were sent out to all households in the U.S., thus emphasizing the fact that everyone was potentially at risk. With the realization that HIV was not limited to gay men and that transmission was possible through heterosexual sex, the search for explanations and culprits was renewed. In 1985, U.S. scientists claimed that 50% of African blood samples stored from the 1960s and 1970s were infected with HIV, thus leading to the assumption that the disease was imported from Africa (the tests were later replicated and this conclusion discounted) (Washer, 2010). This lead to a wide array of Western explanations for the emergence of AIDS in Africa like promiscuity, ritual scarification or bestiality, all serving the purpose of contrasting the civilized Western world with primitive African countries. These theories caused resentment in Africa, resulting in Africans’ own explanations of AIDS. Research conducted in Zambia (Yamba, 1997) and South Africa (Kalichman and Simbayi, 2004) has shown that people often see AIDS to be caused by supernatural forces, witchcraft, or God (Joffe and Bettega, 2003). On the other hand, conspiracies about AIDS being a man-made disease are prevalent in Zambia (Joffe and Bettega, 2003), as well as South Africa (Niehaus and Jonsson, 2005), where people believe that AIDS was produced either by the former apartheid government or the U.S., in order to control the Black African population (AIDS thus stands for “American Ideas to Destroy Sex”). Africans thus resist the official explanations of Western science and explain the disease by incorporating their former experiences of colonization from the West. Conspiracy theories were, however, not limited to Africa. As early as 1983, conspiracy theories regarding the origin of HIV were spread, varying in the degree of malicious intent, culprit, and targets. All theories are based on the assumption that HIV is “a human-made virus and was either accidentally, or more likely deliberately, introduced into the human population” (p. 42, Bratich, 2003). In 1984, an Indian newspaper claimed that AIDS was genetically engineered by the U.S. Army for biological warfare purposes, a story that was picked up by Soviet newspapers and led to a pamphlet published by East German researchers that HIV–produced by U.S. scientists–was tested on prisoners, from whom it then accidentally spread to the gay community (Bratich, 2003). The theory that AIDS is an orchestrated genocide against gay men and Blacks was first introduced in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Alan Cantwell, amongst others (Cantwell, 1993). Today, a significant percentage of Americans believe in some type of conspiracy theory regarding AIDS, although the prevalence is much higher among African Americans: Approximately 30% of African Americans believe that “AIDS is an agent of genocide created by the US



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government to kill off minority populations” (Ross, Essien, and Torres, 2006), and 16% believe that it was created by the government to control the black population (Bogart and Thorburn, 2005). These theories are, typically, more strongly endorsed by African Americans, due to their history of domination by White Americans (e.g., slavery, racial segregation and discrimination). Additionally, since the disclosure of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in 1972, African Americans have been distrustful of the U.S. healthcare system and its intention towards African Americans (Brandon, Isaac, and LaVeist, 2005). In that study, almost 400 African American men with syphilis were followed by a research team over a time span of 40 years with the goal of obtaining data on the course of untreated syphilis. Participants were never informed that they suffered from syphilis, thus preventing them from seeking treatment (Thomas and Quinn, 1991). These experiences, along with the discrimination African Americans face day-to-day, lead them to resist official scientific explanations of AIDS as they stem from the same source as their discrimination. A specific type of conspiracy theory is AIDS Denialism. In 1987, the renowned scientist Peter Duesberg published a scientific article claiming that HIV is a harmless retrovirus which is not able to cause AIDS, and that AIDS, on the other hand, is triggered by different causes (e.g., drug use, malnutrition, HIV treatments). This article lead to the formation of the ‘Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS hypothesis’, which served as further propagation of the message. Although the assumption is rejected by the majority of the scientific community, its positive message– HIV does not lead to AIDS –is often endorsed by exposed and risk groups (African American men living with HIV, Kalichman, Eaton, and Cherry, 2010; gay and bisexual men, Hutchinson et al, 2007). Additionally, the former South African president, Thabo Mbeki, openly questioned the HIV-AIDS link, focusing instead on poverty as a cause of AIDS. These endorsements of AIDS Denialism function as resistance against the scientifically predominant explanation–AIDS as ‘inevitable’ consequence of HIV–by challenging the ‘death sentence’ of a HIV infection. .

Emerging Strains of Influenza: Spanish Flu, H5N1, and H1N1 Influenza is caused by a family of viruses (orthomyxoviridae). Epidemics of influenza emerge seasonally. In addition, new strains of influenza emerge occasionally (a rule of thumb is every thirty years) and can evolve into pandemics (sustained worldwide outbreaks). In the 20th century, for example, there were three main influenza pandemics, in 1918

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(Spanish Flu), 1957 (Asian Flu) and 1967 (Hong Kong Flu). Although it is difficult to estimate exact causes of death, the 1918 pandemic may have killed around 100 million people worldwide (Barry, 2004). In 2005-2006, the world was alerted to the spread of a new and highly pathogenic strain of influenza, H5N1 (“bird flu”), that resulted in over three hundred human deaths as of May 13, 2011 (WHO, 2011) and has led to the culling of millions of poultry. In 2009, a new strain of H1N1 subtype of influenza (“swine flu”) emerged in Mexico and USA, rapidly spreading worldwide and resulting in the declaration by WHO on June 11, 2009 of the first influenza pandemic of the twenty-first century. We will first briefly discuss efforts to explain the Spanish Flu pandemic and then focus on the recent outbreaks of H5N1 and H1N1. The Spanish Flu struck the world shortly after the end of World War 1. At the time, attention of governments was focused on the war effort. Medical science was also in a fledgling state, with the germ theory of disease only recently conclusively proven through the work of Pasteur, Koch, and others, and the practice of mass vaccination in its infancy (Barry, 2004). The pandemic devastated many regions of the world, bringing everyday life to a halt and severely straining the social fabric. Physicians tried a wide range of treatments, including aspirin, morphine, codeine, oxygen, typhoid vaccine, or quinine. The prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association relaxed publication standards to diffuse reports of treatments. Laypersons also tried anything and everything (camphor balls, garlic, airing rooms with cold air), and charlatans tried to sell their remedies via newspaper advertising (Barry, 2004). The desperation with which both experts and laypersons resorted to these cures is reminiscent of the Black Death. H5N1, popularly known as avian flu or bird flu, emerged in 2003-2004 in Asia with the SARS outbreak as a recent backdrop. The modern world was prepared, both through the successes of medicine which included the widespread availability of vaccines and treatments for many infectious diseases, as well as an impressive record of having eradicated may previously dangerous diseases. National health authorities, researchers, and international organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) collaborated in developing early-warning systems and also shared data about progress in developing a vaccine. As a result, H5N1 was heavily monitored and anticipated (Osterholm, 2005). Given the advanced state of medical science, there is a consensus among experts that influenza is caused by a virus. Lay explanations have been documented in detail in the social sciences. For example, Joffe and Lee (2004) interviewed a sample of Hong Kong Chinese women and

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found three major types of explanations in use. First, they attributed H5N1 to various non-location-based causes like hot weather, genetic mutations, new technologies, environmental decline, and politics. A second explanatory strand attributed the disease to unhygienic practices of chicken breeders from mainland China. Participants contrasted the cleanliness and orderliness of Hong Kong with the backward nature of the mainland. A third explanation concerned hygienic conditions in the food markets of Hong Kong. Liao et al. (2009) investigated laypersons’ explanations in several sites across southern and eastern Asia, also finding a variety of causes like viruses, husbandry practices (e.g., antibiotic use, overcrowding and exaggerated commercial interest), environmental factors (e.g., the weather, pollution) and other causes (e.g., poor food and personal hygiene). Lay explanations of H1N1 (swine flu) are subtly different. A salient factor for the public was the discrepancy between the media coverage and institutional action related to the disease outbreak and the subsequent mild nature of the pandemic. Another was the mass vaccination campaigns launched in many countries. These events prompted suspicion that the pandemic had been purposely engineered (e.g., to sell vaccine). In a study of Swiss laypersons, Wagner-Egger et al. (2011) found perceptions of a conspiracy between the pharmaceutical industry and government, and also involving the media. In Turkey, Gul Cirhinlioglu and Cirhinlioglu (2010) also found that some participants (albeit a minority) viewed H1N1 as a man-made disease (e.g., developed as a biological weapon by interest groups for economic profit). Not only laypersons have raised this concern. In 2010, the Council of Europe and the British Medical Journal (Godlee, 2010) called on the WHO to disclose information about potential conflicts of interest its experts may have had (i.e., links to the pharmaceutical industry). These explanatory beliefs suggest that there is currently an increasing climate of suspicion on the part of the public regarding prevention efforts related to emerging infectious diseases. Lack of trust in medical organizations has been implicated as a causal factor inhibiting vaccination compliance (Gilles et al., 2011). A final category of explanation, religious explanation, also deserves some mention. Although religion has lost its status as an expert source of knowledge on questions of natural phenomena, as in the case of AIDS, some figures of the main monotheistic religions have pronounced emerging influenza strains to be plagues of divine origin to punish humanity for their sins. Imam Amadia Rachid, based in Salerno (Italy), for instance, claimed that swine flu confirmed the legitimacy of Islam’s prohibition of consuming pork (Adnkronos, 2009), while Rabbi Yehuda

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Levin claimed the swine flu outbreak in Mexico City to be God’s punishment for the city’s recent legalization of abortion (“God deals measure for measure”; LifeSiteNews, 2009).

MRSA With the introduction of penicillin and the subsequent invention of Methicillin–synthetic penicillin–the treatment of infections was revolutionized. Since the end of the 1960s, however, strains of MethicillinResistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) have emerged, dampening the euphoria of the golden age of medicine. Great Britain experienced the highest infection rates in Europe and the issue was heavily politicized in the 2005 elections (Washer and Joffe, 2006). Although the cause of MRSA is believed to be the over-prescription of antibiotics, this reason received little attention in the public and the media. During initial media portrayals (mid to late 1990s), the disease was described as a drug resistant condition, a portrayal that stayed close to the medical facts. From 1997 on, the term ‘superbug’ was introduced to suggest an exceptionally powerful disease, more threatening and dangerous than previous ones. While it was widely accepted that unsanitary conditions in hospitals were causing the transmission of MRSA, blame was laid on different targets (Joffe, Washer, and Sohlberg, 2011). The first targets were healthcare professionals, who were accused of being lazy, inexperienced, and unhygienic. Stories of nurses not cleaning their hands and utensils were propagated (Washer and Joffe, 2006). On the other hand, nurses and doctors were portrayed as devoted and motivated but lacking the necessary resources to complete their jobs adequately. Blame was shifted to the management of hospitals, whose financial cuts lead to chronic understaffing of nurses and cleaners. This lack of personnel was seen as the cause of the decrease in hygienic standards, thus propagating the disease (Washer and Joffe, 2006). A third source of blame was seen in the employment of foreigners as hospital nurses and cleaners. They were seen as carriers of diseases and lacking the necessary dedication and knowledge, thus further leading to the degradation of the once clean and sanitary hospitals (Joffe, Washer, and Sohlberg, 2011). A common solution for the disease was seen in the symbolic figure of the ‘hospital matron’ and nostalgia was apparent for the old days when she was in charge. Bringing back the matron with her strict hygienic rules and the authority to enforce them was believed to bring back the time of spotlessly clean hospitals (Washer and Joffe, 2006). This nostalgia for the ‘old days’ can be seen as resistance against modern



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healthcare practices in which economic interests and rationalization supposedly undermine the–until then–functioning healthcare system.

Explanatory Patterns In this section, we discuss and integrate the different explanatory patterns from the cases covered in the preceding section. As we will see, the discussion leads to a characterization of expert and lay explanations as typically antagonistic to each other.

Expert Explanations There are at least two accounts on the evolution of expert explanations over time. The first comes from the philosophy of science, the second from the social sciences, in particular social history. In the philosophy of science, scientific theories are systematic networks of propositions about causal relations between concepts. In particular, in the case of disease, theories link causes to a disorder, which in turn causes symptoms and the “course” of the disease; these symptoms can be treated by various remedies. Change in the scientific explanation of a disease comes about when new evidence leads to a reorganization of the explanatory network (Thagard, 1996). Concerning germ theory, the work of a host of scientists from the 17th century onwards led to the increasing recognition of the existence of microscopic living beings. With the development of increasingly sophisticated observational apparatuses, these organisms were progressively characterized and classified (e.g., as bacteria or viruses) and germ theory gained in plausibility (Thagard, 1996). Note that a theory that is causally wrong can still remain plausible because it might dictate preventive or curative measures that are nevertheless somewhat efficacious. For example, even though miasma theory was wrong, it was used to implement sanitation measures that had a beneficial effect on disease prevention (Barry, 2004). Social science explorations of expert explanations of disease emphasize the origins of expert explanations rather than their transformation through systematic research. They also focus on the relation between scientific and lay knowledge. The cases reviewed above remind us that scientific and lay explanations often share common origins, and that science and religion were not always separate. For AIDS, scientific explanations originally focused on gay men. For the Black Death, medical explanations had a strong religious component. And at the height of the Spanish Flu, physicians experimented with anything and everything to stop the

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outbreak. In the course of the 19th and 20th century, as the causal role of microorganisms was discovered, medical science explanations of disease threat moved progressively further away from lay explanations. In many current approaches to public health, there is little recognition of the existence of alternative explanations to disease on the part of the public and their potential significance for the acceptance of expert explanations. This reflects Flick’s (1998) observation that science tends to suppress traditional forms of understanding like myth, religion or common sense.

Lay Explanations A basic characteristic of lay explanations of disease is the focus on blame-placing (linking disease to transgressions of individuals or groups; Douglas, 1992). Explanations differ depending on how they focus blame on out-groups, on elites, and on man-made factors like environmental pollution or genetic manipulation.

Out-groups and Minorities Throughout history, minorities and out-groups have been blamed for negative events and diseases, which could not be readily explained by other factors: From the Middle Ages, when Jews were accused of poisoning wells to recent history, when gay men were blamed for spreading AIDS through their ‘hedonistic life style’. Out-groups in general have also often been blamed for diseases, like Africans in the case of AIDS, or foreign immigrants in the case of MRSA. This tendency to blame others–generally foreigners or people with different life styles and customs–is likely due to the fact that these people, who often have different customs, habits, and rituals, seem unfamiliar and thus threatening. Joffe and Staerklé (2007), for instance, argue that derogated out-groups are associated with lack of self-control over body, mind, and destiny. The lack of self-control over the body, specifically, is closely linked to the origin and transmission of diseases, as it relates to hygienic and cleaning rituals (e.g., showering, blowing the nose, etc.). As outgroups often have different rituals than the own group, they are more readily associated with unhygienic practices and as such seem to propagate diseases. Researchers in evolutionary psychology have also investigated the link between perceived vulnerability to disease and avoidance of outgroups and explain this association by the fact that–from an evolutionary perspective–it was safer for people to avoid out-groups because they might be potential carriers of diseases (Faulkner et al., 2004). Indeed, Native



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Americans, for instance, experienced several epidemics of smallpox– against which they lacked the necessary immunity–because of their contact with Europeans carriers. This shows that avoidance of out-groups is sometimes a rational strategy. Focusing the blame on out-groups can thus be seen as a defence against the unfamiliar and unknown, in favour of upholding one’s own traditions and standards, and the existing social order. This seems to be most evident in the case of MRSA, where foreigners are seen to be responsible for the degradation of the sanitary standards of British institutions. The attribution of diseases to out-groups and minorities allows people to protect their belief systems and ideologies: Green et al. (2010) showed, for instance, that people who see the world as a dangerous place strongly support anti-immigration attitudes in times of diseases. Seeing out-groups as responsible for diseases allows people to legitimate and endorse their avoidance ideologies and the maintenance of the existing social order.

Elites and Powerful Others Contrary to the previous lay explanation, the blaming of elites or powerful groups, is a more recent explanation, which can be traced back to the mid of the 19th century, where rich elites were suspected of poisoning the poor working class (Campion-Vincent, 1989). A distinction can be made between malignant elites–the case of AIDS where the government is accused of spreading AIDS in order to kill off minorities–and negligent elites, who do not act out of bad intentions, but who do nothing to stop the disease–the case of MRSA where the government is accused of cutting back finances to the extent that the sanitary standards of hospitals cannot be upheld any longer. These theories most likely stem from the resistance against the oppressor who is seen as all too powerful and are often endorsed by people with less power, i.e., minorities. In line with this expectation, African Americans who see racism and prejudice as major problems are more prone to believe in conspiracy theories involving the U.S. government than White Americans (Crocker, Luhtanen, Broadnax, and Blaine, 1999). Likewise, belief in conspiracy theories is associated with anomie and lack of trust (Wagner-Egger and Bangerter, 2007). These findings suggest that the people who are most disadvantaged are those who challenge the system the most, by questioning official explanations and in turn blaming the system for the disease. In contrast to the previous lay explanations, these theories thus serve to contest the existing power relations, by challenging powerful opponents instead of accepting their explanations.

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Man-made Factors The third–most recent–category of lay explanations focuses on manmade factors as explanations for diseases. As can be seen in the cases of influenza and AIDS Denialism, people often explain the emergence of new diseases by invoking men’s ‘meddling’ with nature: Genetic manipulation, environmental pollution, drug use, unhealthy eating habits, and poverty are just some of the factors invoked when people are asked what causes new diseases. This blame on man-made factors, and ultimately the blame on humanity itself, can be seen as resistance against modern technologies and nostalgia for the times when men did not interfere with nature. In reaction to these man-made explanations, new movements regarding health, protection of the environment, and genetic manipulation have become prominent. So-called nutritional experts advise people to take vitamins and to avoid processed food (Natural News, 2006), while ecological movements emphasize the importance of a clean environment in disease prevention (Health and Environment Alliance, 2007). Although these explanations are often not directly derived from scientific findings, there is now some evidence, that air pollution (Briggs, 2003), as well as large-scale feeding operations (Schmidt, 2009) might indeed play a role in several diseases. This type of lay explanation is different from the two previous ones in the sense that blame is not laid on a specific group or general others, but rather on conditions related to modernity (Beck, 1992).

Antagonistic Relations between Expert and Lay Explanations: Suppression and Resistance In modern societies, expert and lay explanations of disease often stand in an antagonistic relation to each other (Flick, 1998). Scientific explanations are based on theories that posit causal factors impenetrable to everyday understandings (e.g., microorganisms and their biological effects) and are thus unfamiliar and abstract to laypersons. They are also threatening, because they do not fulfil the symbolic sense making functions that lay explanations do, and indeed often oppose common sense notions. In the case of explanations of disease, modern science appeals to impersonal mechanisms, whereas the blame-placing function of lay explanations reflects a tendency to create a concrete image or even a personification of a disease. Examples of this tendency include Pestilence, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or modern-day media references to SARS as a “killer” (Wallis and Nerlich, 2005).



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The antagonistic relationship is not symmetrical. On one hand, lay explanations are often advanced by groups who resist scientific explanations. Consider the various conspiracy theories and denialist movements propagated in the cases of AIDS and emerging strains of influenza reviewed above. Also, the Flagellant movement at the time of the Black Death can be viewed as opposed to the religious authority of the Church. Science suppresses or dismisses lay explanations as being unfounded or irrational, or ignores them. In many cases, this may be completely appropriate. Explanations including the scapegoating of stigmatized minorities or out-groups as being causal agents or carriers of a disease are often unfounded and blatantly prejudiced, and have served as justifications for heinous crimes. However, in other cases, the explanations promoted by resistance movements can shift attention to neglected aspects of issues, and in the long run contribute to improving the social or institutional processes in which they participate (Bauer, 1995). The case of man-made explanations of disease is informative in this respect. They often constitute criticisms of the overly rationalized animal husbandry industry, human meddling in the natural order, or the social inequalities and poverty that form the backdrop of modern disease outbreaks. Schmidt (2009), for example, points out that industrialized swine farming is a potential contributor to the 2009 swine flu (H1N1) outbreak, but that it has been neglected by public health authorities. This connection is not as well researched as it could be, partly due to the fact that funding for epidemiological research in swine farms mainly comes from industry sources that are reluctant to explore it. In such a case, lay explanations of disease as man-made “compensate” for an official scientific or public health stance that has neglected such factors. Another, similar, case is the conspiracy theory that the H1N1 pandemic was engineered by the pharmaceutical industry to sell vaccine. The sentiment of mistrust reflected in this popular belief is consistent with an investigation commissioned by the British Medical Journal into allegations of conflicts of interest in WHO experts who had links to the pharmaceutical industry. The journal’s editor subsequently called on the WHO to disclose information about its decision-making (Godlee, 2010). Here, then, is another case where lay explanations have influenced expert and institutional processes. More generally, the science of epidemiology could benefit from expanding its theorizing to include more contextual factors like social inequalities and poverty as causal factor in disease outbreaks (Farmer, 1996; Washer, 2010). Systematic scientific research programs in the positivist spirit can advance knowledge and reduce human misery in

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this respect, but tuning in to some of the lay explanations voiced by the public may help illuminate blind spots of scientific projects.

Conclusion: On the Cultural Immune System Having explored in detail the antagonistic relations between expert and lay explanations of infectious disease outbreaks, we return to our idea of a cultural immune system. It can be speculated that such a system consists of explanatory theories or social representations about disease, either elaborated by experts through systematic analysis and research, or elaborated by lay groups. Such theories or representations serve to make sense of a disease outbreak by identifying a cause or causes as well as solutions (Gilles et al., in press), and serve to organize individual and collective preventive or curative behaviour. However, the discussion in this chapter suggests that a cultural immune system has at least two functions. The first function is shared with the physiological and behavioural immune system: Physically protecting the integrity of the bodies of individual members of a culture. The second function, however, relates to protecting the symbolic integrity of the social body. It might be that expert explanations may be better adapted to fulfilling the first function of the cultural immune system. However, as discussed above, some lay explanations can serve to focus attention on neglected aspects. It seems to be the case that lay explanations are primarily oriented to fulfilling the second function of maintaining symbolic integrity, which is not the main emphasis of expert explanations of disease. The interplay between these two explanatory forms can thus inform our understanding of the relation between disease and society.

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—. Washer, P., and Sohlberg, C. (2011). Public engagement with emerging infectious disease: The case of MRSA in Britain, Psychology and Health. Advance Online Publication. doi: 10.1080/08870441003763238. Kalichman, S. C., Eaton, L., and Cherry, C. (2010). There is no proof that HIV causes AIDS: AIDS denialism beliefs among people living with HIV/AIDS. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 33, 432-440. —. and Simbayi, L. (2004). Traditional beliefs about the cause of AIDS and AIDS-related stigma in South Africa. AIDS Care, 16, 572-580. Kelly, J. (2005). The Great Mortality: An intimate history of the Black Death, the most devastating plague of all time. New York: HarperCollins. Kohn, G. C. (Ed.). (1995). Encyclopedia of plague and pestilence: From ancient times to the present. New York: Facts on File. Koop, E. C. (1986). Statement at Press Conference on AIDS. Retrieved from http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/Narrative/QQ/p-nid/87/pdocs/true Liao, Q. Y., Lam, W. W. T., Dang, V. T., Jiang, C. Q., Udomprasertgul, V., and Fielding, R. (2009). What causes H5N1 avian influenza? Lay perceptions of H5N1 aetiology in South East and East Asia. Journal of Public Health, 31, 573-581. LifeSiteNews (2009). Prominent Rabbi: AIDS, swine flu, economic crash Spiritual cause and effect. Retrieved from http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2009/may/09050406 Meyer-Rochow, V. B. (2009). Food taboos: Their origins and purposes. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, 5, 18. Morens, D. M., Folkers, G. K., and Fauci, A. S. (2004). The challenge of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Nature, 430, 242-249. Moscovici, S. (1961). La psychanalyse, son image et son public. Paris, PUF. —. (1984). The phenomenon of social representations. In R. M. Farr and S. Moscovici (Eds.), Social representations (pp. 3-69). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. (1987). The conspiracy mentality. In C. F. Graumann and S. Moscovici (Eds.), Changing conceptions of conspiracy (pp. 151-169). New York: Springer Verlag. Natural News (2006). Interview with Dr. Elson Haas, bestselling author, pioneering doctor and nutritional detox expert. Retrieved from http://www.naturalnews.com/017064_dangerous_foods_detox.html

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Niehaus, I., and Jonsson, G. (2005). Dr. Wouter Basson, Americans, and wild beasts: Men's conspiracy theories of HIV/AIDS in the South African Lowveld. Medical Anthropology, 24, 179-208. Osterholm, M. T. (2005). Preparing for the next pandemic. New England Journal of Medicine, 352, 1839-1842. Ross, M. W., Essien, E. J., and Torres, I. (2006). Conspiracy beliefs about the origin of HIV/AIDS in four racial/ethnic groups. Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes: JAIDS, 41, 342-344. Schaller, M., and Park, J. H. (2011). The behavioral immune system (and why it matters). Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 99-103. Schmidt, C. W. (2009). Swine CAFOs and novel H1N1 flu: Separating facts from fears. Environmental Health Perspectives, 117, A394-A401. Thagard, P. (1996). The concept of disease: Structure and change. Communication and Cognition, 29, 445-478. Thomas, S. B., and Quinn, S. C. (1991). The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, 1932 to 1972: Implications for HIV education and AIDS risk education programs in the black community. American Journal of Public Health, 81, 1498-1505. Wagner, W. (2007). Vernacular science knowledge: Its role in everyday life communication. Public Understanding of Science, 16, 7-22. Wagner, W. and Hayes, N. (2005). Everyday discourse and common sense: The theory of social representations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. —. Kronberger, N., and Seifert, F. (2002). Collective symbolic coping with new technology: Knowledge, images and public discourse. British Journal of Social Psychology, 41, 323-343. Wagner-Egger, P., and Bangerter, A. (2007). La vérité est ailleurs: Corrélats de l'adhésion aux théories du complot. Revue Internationale de Psychologie Sociale, 20, 31 - 61. —. Bangerter, A., Gilles, I., Green, E. T. G., Rigaud, D., Krings, F., Staerklé, C., and Clémence, A. (2011). Lay perceptions of collectives at the outbreak of the H1N1 epidemic: Heroes, villains and victims. Public Understanding of Science, Advance Online Publication. doi: 10.1177/0963662510393605. Wallis, P., and Nerlich, B. (2005). Disease metaphors in new epidemics: The UK media framing of the 2003 SARS epidemic. Social Science and Medicine, 60, 2629-2639. Washer, P. (2010). Emerging infectious diseases and society. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. —. and Joffe, H. (2006). The “hospital superbug”: Social representations of MRSA. Social Science and Medicine, 63, 2141-2152.



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World Health Organization (2008). The top ten causes of death. Fact sheet No. 310. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/ —. (2009). Global summary of the AIDS epidemic. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/hiv/data/en/index.html Wynne, B. (1991). Knowledges in context. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 16, 111-121. Yamba, C. B. (1997). Cosmologies in turmoil: Witchfinding and Aids in Chiawa, Zambia. Africa, 67, 200-223.

PART III: RESISTANCE IN THE SOCIO-HISTORICAL SCIENCES

CHAPTER EIGHT RESISTANCE IN THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF UNITED STATES SLAVERY DEIRDRE COOPER OWENS

Ever since the institutionalization of racialized slavery in what would later become the United States some four centuries ago, people of African descent and progressive white Americans have waged resistance movements to eradicated racism and white supremacy. The focus of this chapter is devoted to highlighting the fluidity of black resistance, especially within the context of American racial slavery. It is important, even now, to continue to evidence that black resistance to slavery was acted out in intellectual and political movements, that in fact early African Americans were as diverse in their opinions about resistance and agency as they are presently. Historian and theologian Vincent Harding authored the seminal text, There is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America (1993), and in it he utilizes the metaphoric symbol of the river to describe the tumult, strength, and ebb and flow of black resistance to the practice of racism. Expanding on Vincent Harding’s motif of the river, the chapter is divided into metaphorical tributaries that flow chronologically. The first will explain how African people, who were not yet Americans, began to cobble together a trans-Atlantic identity rooted not only in race but the shared experience of subjugation due to their status as indentured servants and slaves. Disparate slave ship revolts, violent uprisings on slave farms and plantations, the creation of creolized languages like Gullah/Geechee, and the penning of new genres of literature like slave narratives forged a distinctly Afro-Atlantic racial identity for the men and women who originated from Western and Central Africa. Fundamental to these acts of resistance was a burgeoning racial consciousness that knitted together ethnically diverse groups of people who, in many instances, originally had no more in common with each other than they did with their European captors.

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It was an apt metaphor to use because American racism has been long and deep like those bodies of water. Due to this blot on the nation’s past, African Americans have had to navigate the choppy terrain of racism, informal and institutional, through their resistive measures. And they did so in the shadows of slavery outside the gaze of white Americans who were committed to black oppression. Thus the examination of the history of African-American resistance to formalized American racism within frameworks of rationality is tedious labor because the task entails tracking people’s lives and actions who moved at the margin and at least until 1865, the Civil War’s end. As a result however, African Americans’ peripheral status allowed them some autonomy as to how they would express themselves culturally, intellectually, and politically. The private realm often yielded more agency for this group of people than the public sphere could give them as members of a restricted and oppressed slave nation. The study of resistance then, in its various forms, serves as a needed point of origin and departure for how scholars can employ critical inquiry to continue research on propertied people who did not meet the conceptions and definitions of who was “citizen” and even, “human being” for three centuries. It was not until after 1865, that language and legal edicts included and placed African Americans within these classifications. As African Americans came onto American shores as indentured servants and slaves, it is not surprising that their responses to their place within colonial societies, and later the United States, had always been linked to resistance. Integrating theoretical concepts such as the everyday, rival geography, and early Black Nationalism, will hopefully shed light on the multitudinous ways that African Americans have had to grapple with their “blackness ” and slave status. These responses by the black “other” have given shape to and defined how enslaved African Americans navigated the “river” of race in America. One area that has been underserved by historians of American slavery is the history of medicine. It is important that the politics of healing, health, and power be examined alongside slavery because it was a field that was contentious from its beginnings. By the mid-nineteenth century white men began to enter into obstetrics and gynecology, in some cases, they displaced black and white midwives. Further, white slave owners and physicians and black enslaved men and women had different conceptions of health or “soundness” and both groups sought out ways for how they would heal and ultimately control sick black bodies. As reproductive slave labor depended solely on enslaved women, black women and white



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professional medical men often contradicted each other when it came to African American healing.1 In 1830s-era South Carolina, a Low Country based ninety-years old African-born enslaved woman was brought in to see Dr. John Bellinger, of Charleston County because of painful vaginal discomfort. The bondwoman complained that her vaginal area was sore especially during urination. After questioning the woman, Dr. Bellinger found that she had suffered from complete obliteration of her vagina nearly her entire life. Further, her painful urination was caused because of her very small vaginal opening. When prodded by Dr. Bellinger about how she came to suffer this fate, the enslaved woman “gave no history of the affair at all.” (Bellinger, 1874, 241-242). Thus began a nearly decade long relationship where Dr. Bellinger began regular probes to remove “small urinary concretions or calculi” that were stored inside of the bondwoman. In his medical article, Dr. Bellinger reported the enslaved woman claimed to have finally experienced some relief from her life-long symptoms (ibid). What is most striking about this case is that despite her advanced age, the bondwoman remained silent about the origins of her gynecological condition. Although she was Dr. Bellinger’s patient for almost ten years, like many female slaves, this woman held the source of her pain close to her. Although Dr. Bellinger never identified her, only her condition, historians can cobble together a biographical composite of her life. Based on the evidence provided in the 1847 medical journal article, she may have been born around the late 1740s in West Africa, as most enslaved people transported to South Carolina had been. The fact that this woman had an extremely small vaginal opening and a nearly destroyed vagina may indicate she underwent a cliterodectomy as part of a cultural ritual in her homeland. If so, she would certainly not divulge this intimate information to a white male physician. Physicians’ medical writings offered laypersons and professionals alike foundational texts for how to treat and think about black and white women and their perceived racial differences. Historian Walter Johnson (1999, 136) described medical journals as a site “where race was daily given shape.” Racial reification occurred in journals when questions emerged over whether certain diseases and behaviors were endemic to women of African descent, for example elongated labia; low hanging breasts, and lasciviousness (Gilman, 1985).

 1

For enslaved women reproductive labor dictated that biological processes like pregnancy and child birth were gendered events that were considered work that had value and created wealth. Enslaved mothers’ status was passed on to their children that ensured slavery would continue.



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Those antebellum-era persons who occupied the categories female, poor, foreign, and slave, their lives were primarily dictated by their sex and servitude. As such, black slave women could ruminate over what their class status and gender meant for them, they realized that to be a black female slave was to exist at the farthest societal margin. Enslaved women existed for myriad purposes that included: manual and reproductive labor, black and white men’s sexual pleasure, corporal punishment, and experimental medical research. Their lives were “characterized by the private being made public.” (Wallace-Sanders, 2002, 18). Scholars who write exclusively about the multifarious lives of enslaved women have correctly classified them as exemplars of the discourse on nineteenthcentury race and medicine. The systemization of bondwomen’s lives allows for an analysis of thematics like “terror, desire, fear, loathing, and longing” linked not only slavery studies but also to histories of racialized medicine (Hartman, 1997, 7). The history of black women’s medical lives is also tied to pain. Antebellum-era doctors believed black women bore pain more easily than white women. Quite tellingly, Amy Chapman remarked about these thematics in a government interview that revealed much about the multitudinous experiences she had under slavery. Chapman stated, “ . . . I could tell you things about slavery times that would make yo’ blood boil, but they’s too terrible. I jes tries to forget.” (Randall Williams, 2004, 131). In order to narrate the roles of enslaved women during the growth of nineteenth-century American women’s medicine, the history of American southern slavery must be understood in its entirety. The field of history of medicine began as an area of study that was top-down in its approach. Earlier historians had not provided for the contextualization of enslavement and usually gave little room given to the examination of women. In light of the contentious historiography that has emerged over slavery, race, and medicine, critical questions must be raised around the actual status of bondwomen in the origins of American modern gynecology. These fields of inquiry must address the complex nature of slavery and ultimately serve as counter-narratives to uncontested sociomedical histories that do not question the veracity of hagiographic topdown histories on “great white medical men.” One major question that I have attempted to answer in my work is how enslaved women responded to doctors who were creating, advancing, and legitimating gynecology on their bodies. Faced with the possibility of life or death, soundness (good health) or sickness, infertility or barrenness, and professional acclaim or notoriety, black women executed a sophisticated “methodology of the oppressed” in



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their relationships with their physicians, owners, and communities.2 U.B. Philips, considered the first historian of N. American slavery, detailed in American Negro Slavery how labor factored into black women’s quotidian experience. “The pregnant women are always to do some work up to the time of their confinement, if it is only walking into the field and staying there.”3 Born out of these experiences, enslaved women’s “methodology of the oppressed” grew out of a “labor of love and a labor of sorrow” as Jacqueline Jones has termed it4. South Carolina former slave Harry McMillan’s recollections of enslaved women’s network of care evidences the nuances of the methodology. Harry McMillan noted women “in the family way” performed the same work as male field hands. As there was only “ . . . an old midwife who attended them. If a woman was taken in labor in the field some of her sisters would help her home and then come back to the field.” (Blassingame, 1977, 380). In subtle, yet powerful ways, enslaved women supported each other under the brutalizing yoke of slavery, especially when it came to reproductive issues and healing. In other areas, black women and men “practiced quotidian forms of resistance.” Historian Stephanie Camp argues that slave resistance was a “daily tug-of-war over labor and culture that power and its assumptions were contested from below—not in formal institutions such as courtrooms or political organizations.” (Camp, 2004, 2-3). Her analysis reassigns importance to everyday occurrences and the “everyday” becomes something to be analyzed. Due to the breadth of this model, black resistance can and should be read widely. From the planned and failed slave insurrection of late 18th century Virginia bondsman Gabriel Prosser to unidentified enslaved women in the South Carolina low country who chose to name their children West African names like Aminah and Adjou. This latter act was done in spite of forceful assimilationist campaigns spearheaded by slave owners who pushed socio-cultural agendas that promoted the value systems of colonialist empire nations like England, France, and Spain. It is of no great

 2

Please see Sandoval (2000). This text positions love as a category of analysis and I assert that a major component of the methodology of the oppressed born out of enslaved women’s struggles is centred on the politicization of love. 3 Accessed http://www.fullbooks.com/American-Negro-Slavery5.html on January 22, 2012. 4 Jacqueline Jones she asserted that African Americans were confronted with having to work out of love for their family’s need during the time of enslavement and also, out of despair for their owners who reaped the economic benefit of their labor.



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surprise that the physical, socio-cultural, political, and intellectual forces that African Americans faced were daunting. As a result, African American men and women crafted resistive measures to highlight their humanity and created communities that sustained them. Likewise, small numbers of free people of color dotted in scattered communities across the country began to speak out again scientific racism through their writings, political activities, and political movement. When Thomas Jefferson, one of America’s most prominent political leaders, and the third president wrote about black biological inferiority and racial determinism, Marylander Benjamin Banneker, black mathematician, surveyor, and almanac author, vehemently and boldly contested the characterization. In 1791, Banneker used a theological-based framework that rested on Enlightenment principles to sway Jefferson. He wrote, Sir, how pitiable is it to reflect, that although you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of Mankind, and of his equal and impartial distribution of these rights and privileges, which he hath conferred upon them, that you should at the same time counteract his mercies, in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren, under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the same time be found guilty of that most criminal act, which you professedly detested in others, with respect to yourselves.5

Thomas Jefferson’s initial response to Benjamin Banneker had been positive, although by Banneker’s death, Jefferson’s own dogged adherence to racist thinking and black inferiority that caused him to dismiss Banneker’s talents and antislavery message. In the North, free men of color began to organize political conventions that called attention to the plights of black people in both the North and the South. In 1837, African American men formed the American Moral Reform Society (AMRS) and held the first meeting in Philadelphia, once the country’s capital city. In their “Declaration of Sentiment,” these abolitionists and activists interjected a narrative that ran counter to the one embedded into the minds of most Americans, that in fact, black men descended from a rich African homeland. They wrote, ... in no country under Heaven have the descendants of an ancestry once enrolled in the history of fame, whose glittering monuments stood forth as beacons, disseminating light and knowledge ... been reduced to such

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Accessed http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=BanLett.sgm&images= images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all on April 1, 201.2



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These men viewed themselves as representatives of a black nation with direct ties to Africa, even if they had not been to the continent. They knew that their freedom, or as much as they had in the North, which was still a bastion of white racism, was intimately connected to that of their brothers and sisters who lived in bondage. Like political groups before and after them, the members of the American Reform Society also staked a claim in “double consciousness” before W.E.B. Du Bois, arguably the twentieth century’s most well-known black public intellectual and scholar coined the term that spoke to black people’s dual identities as both Americans and people of African descent. They advocated for “Education, Temperance, Economy, and Universal Liberty” and admonished their “fellow citizens” to abolish slavery and racism through its conventions and writings (ibid, 200). The AMRS followed in footsteps made earlier by Benjamin Banneker, shipper, early black nationalist and emigrationist Paul Cuffee, and David Walker, fiery abolitionist, entrepreneur, and author. Black men, and black women, as much as they could be involved in formal fights against slavery and racism attempted to demonstrate black intelligence and political pragmatism. Turbulent waters characterized the second tributary as epitomized by the activities of antebellum-era African Americans. Black resistance was symbolized through “rival geographies.” Edward Said coined this term that “has been used by geographers to describe resistance to colonial occupation.” (Camp, 2004, 7). Like literal tributaries, antebellum-era African Americans lived in a constant state of influx. Historian Ira Berlin called the domestic slave trade the second Middle Passage because of the massive numbers of enslaved men, women, and children sold down South. In the midst of these movements, men and women who lived on slave farms and plantations weaved together folk tales that were didactic and demonstrated how the weak could triumph over the mighty. Negro spirituals contained terminologies that referenced Christian obedience and patience but also contained a dual message about how to locate freedom in a very real sense. Everyday, rival geographies were played out on the expanse of the plantation under the gaze of white slave owners. The cultural art forms that enslaved men and women created like the Negro spiritual, expressed their desires to be free through haunting lyrics like, “Before I’d be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord to be free.” Nineteenth-century African Americans overwhelmingly became Christian during this time and fashioned their religious faith into a tool of resistance and liberation.



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Up North, free men of color continued to form political conventions and start black newspapers, black women preached a theology of liberation that extolled women’s rights and both militant and conservative forms of early Black Nationalism. Maria Stewart, a Boston, Massachusetts based abolitionist, orator, and feminist lectured on many of these principles and used a rival geography to aid her as she navigated her position as a poor domestic worker and speaker in sites as diverse as the pulpit, the schoolhouse classroom, and medical hospitals, where she preached a message of black genius and militancy. In Stewart’s 1832 speech entitled, “Why Sit Ye Here and Die?,” she exhorted African American men and women to seek education and respect. Stewart said, Few white persons of either sex, who are calculated for any thing else, are willing to spend their lives and bury their talents in performing mean, servile labor. And such is the horrible idea that I entertain respecting a life of servitude, that if I conceived of there being no possibility of my rising above the condition of a servant, I would gladly hail death as a welcome messenger... Neither do I know of any who have enriched themselves by spending their lives as house-domestics, washing windows, shaking carpets, brushing boots, or tending upon gentlemen's tables. I can but die for expressing my sentiments; and I am as willing to die by the sword as the pestilence...

Maria Stewart’s militancy had deep roots in Boston’s free black community, like fiery northern abolitionist David Walker and Stewart’s mentor, author of the radical “Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizen’s of the World” (the title of his pamphlet, denoted that there existed a black political nation that had a Diasporic reach) and Nat Turner, who revolted against not only his masters but the moral evil of slavery, through his issuance of a call to arms for black men throughout the nation to rise up in violent protest against white slaveholders and their supporters. For most Northern African Americans, the black nation’s power was tied to the strength of its men (although there were always voices of influence and dissent, like Stewart’s, that cautioned that women’s freedom was tied to racial freedom). The early black freedom struggle was capacious enough to also include two of the century’s towering intellectuals and abolitionists New Yorker’s Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass who eschewed violence, although Douglass promoted black militancy at times. Instead, they chose to resist in ways that worked within America’s political and legal systems. For example, after Truth gained her freedom in New York, she sued slave sellers who had abducted her son and sold him into slavery. Despite the severe racism she faced as a poor woman of color, she won her case and



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regained custody of her child. While Douglass created a leading antislavery newspaper, became an author, and internationally recognized public speaker, he urged Americans to live up to the ideals established within the U.S. Constitution. During this time, the river of justice seemed to stand still at times but it still flowed. Seventeen years prior to America’s bloodiest civil war in August 1843, black nationalist and emigration activist, Henry Highland Garnet, spoke to a group of northern free blacks gathered to discuss the future prospects of black America. Frustrated at the lack of progress, he advocated action: Strike for your lives and liberties....Let your motto be Resistance! Resistance! RESISTANCE!....What kind of resistance you...make you must decide by the circumstances that surround you....6

As the physical geography of the United States was rent into two warring sides, North and South, African American freedmen and women and the enslaved removed themselves from their homes and communities and inserted themselves into the national debate and fight over slavery. For them, only they could win freedom for themselves. Like men and women during the American Revolutionary War fought almost a century before, African Americans deserted slave plantations and served in colored battalions like the famous Massachusetts 54th Regiment to bring about the defeat of a Confederacy. A government emboldened by states like Mississippi that declared in its secession statement at the start of the war in 1861, Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.7

In response to this sort of entrenched institutional racism, abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass stated, Once you let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in

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Accessed on April 1, 2012: http://www.blackpast.org/?q=1843-henry-highlandgarnet-address-slaves-united-states 7 Accessed on November 1, 2011: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp



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his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.8

For black men and women, manhood was dependent upon freedom and citizenship. These folk had no room to debate the merits of states rights and western expansion, slavery had to end. During the Civil War, there was an overflow of men and women who churned the waters when they became refugees for the Union Army. Left to rear children alone in refugee camps, enslaved black women raised their children, black and mulatto, in battlefields because they simply refused to be in bondage anymore. The passage from slavery to freedom was shaped by loss, death, violence, resiliency, and later, liberation. Frederick Douglass’ belief that the U.S. Constitution stood for the freedom of all Americans was actualized through the passage of the 13 through 15th Amendments. With the inclusion of these amendments American ended slavery, guaranteed citizenship for African Americans irrespective of previous servitude, and created universal suffrage for men. The promise of an American government devoted to the Reconstruction of the country, especially the South, held special appeal for four million newly freed African Americans. They legally married each other; black families began official searches for loved ones sold into an earlier domestic slave trade, and African Americans built churches and schools throughout the South. Education, considered a revolutionary act for most of the 18th and 19th centuries was now regarded as essential for the elevation of the black race. The Civil War linked diverse groups of people of African descent who were separated by region, status, and even color/hue and defined them as black. A powerful racialized political nation had been born that white Americans recognized and resisted against. After slavery, black men served their country through voting and in office throughout the South. Later, these men and women would establish black schools and colleges so that they could become educated. It was a period of paradoxes, one shaped by hopes of the enslaved and their allies and also marred by the failure of black political and social equality. Although another form of wage slavery, sharecropping, emerged in the South to entrap millions of black men and women into grinding poverty, these men and women continued to choose “resistance” as their motto. The third tributary that streams into the larger river of black resistance and agency is characterized by the ebb and flow of racial progress and retardation. The last two centuries have born witness to the massive



8 Frederick Douglass. “Should the Negro Enlist in the Union Army” speech published in the Douglass’ Monthly, August 1863.



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pouring in of over a million nearly broken black Southerners fatigued by racially restrictive Jim Crow laws into Northern, Midwestern, and Western urban “promised lands.” African American responses to their place within colonial societies and later the United States has always been linked to resistance. Integrating theoretical concepts such as the everyday, rival geography, and black nationalism, hopefully sheds light on the diverse ways that African Americans have had to grapple with their blackness and all that blackness entailed for them in a nation where, until recently, blackness was legally defined as the “Other.”

References Bellinger, John, M.D. “Art. I.–Operations for the Removal of Abdominal Tumours. Case I.–Extirpation of an Ovarian Tumor, complicated with Hydrops Uteri- Recovery,” The Southern Journal of Medicine and Pharmacy 2, No. 3. (May 1874), 241–2 Blassingame, John W. editor. Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977) Camp, Stephanie. Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004) Gilman, Sander L.. “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward and Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine and Literature.” Critical Inquiry 12, Autumn 1985, pp. 204–242. Hartman, Saidiya. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999) Jones, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow Black Women, Work, and Family from Slavery to Present, (Basic Books, 1985) Porter, Dorothy. editor. Early Negro Writing, 1760–1837. (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1995), 200 Randall Williams, Horace. ed. Weren’t No Good Times. (Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair Publishers, Inc., 2004) Sandoval, Chela. Methodology of the Oppressed: Theory Out of Bounds. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000) Wallace-Sanders, Kimberly. ed. Skin Deep, Spirit Strong: The Black Female Body in American Culture. (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2002)



CHAPTER NINE FORMS OF RESISTANCE DURING STALINISM IVANA MARKOVÁ

Introduction After Lenin’s death in 1924, Leon Trotsky was assumed to become his successor as the leader of the Soviet Communist Party. However, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, through his position as a General Secretary, managed to gradually eliminate all his opponents and collaborators becoming Head both of the Party and of the Soviet State. By the late nineteen twenties he introduced a brutal political coercion and the rule of secret police; millions of people died in concentration camps or were executed; others perished as a result of persecution, famine and pogroms. ‘Stalinism’ is the term that refers to the period associated with this regime of terror and totalitarian rule. It started approximately in 1929 and lasted until 1953 when Stalin died. One might presume that such a regime of terror in the 20th century would incite a massive resistance of citizens of the Soviet State, as well as a vigorous opposition to it from abroad. Yet it would be wrong to make such a simple assumption. Inside the Soviet Union, there was a wide knowledge of Stalinist trials as well as rumours surrounding them; strain on individuals and groups stirred up apprehension and fear. Political trials were presented as evidence that internal enemies of the Soviet Union were agents of the Western imperialists trying to destroy the Soviet State. Outside the Soviet Union, any coherent view on the Soviet system was prevented by the mixture of belief, disbelief, and even the inability to grasp the nature of political repression by significant political figures including Winston Churchill (e.g. Medvedev, 1976). Any totalitarianism triggers different forms of resistance, some opposing the system while others support it and so actively perpetuate its existence. Thus it would be a vast simplification to assume that resistance during Stalinism could be characterized by the term ‘resistance to



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Stalinism’, i.e. the resistance to persecution and terror, or the opposition to the ruling of the single Party. Instead, we find various forms of resistance that were not forms of resistance to Stalinism, but to the phenomena that characterized Stalinism, like the resistance to rational thinking, and even resistance to the knowledge of events that took place in front of citizens’ eyes. While I shall focus here on the forms of resistance that largely evolved from historical, religious and cultural traditions in Russia and from Marxist ideology, some of them are not particular to these traditions and ideologies. Rather, they are specific expressions of social psychological tendencies: worshipping idols, self-defence and self-justification, among others. The expression ‘resistance during Stalinism’ therefore covers a family of meanings with some aspects resembling those of other meanings of resistance, and with some aspects being absent, or appearing in different guises (Wittgenstein, 1953; Harré and Tissaw, 2005). If we relate these multiple meanings of ‘resistance’ to rationality and irrationality in thinking and in daily activities, the pattern of a social scientific inquiry would refer to widely heterogeneous phenomena in which ‘craving for generality’ (Wittgenstein, 1958) or the search for a common core becomes fruitless: it simply will not be found. Instead of such a search, we shall better raise numerous questions, such as, who were the participants in these resistance encounters, and with what justification can we refer to these encounters as ‘resistance’? Were there any specific forms of resistance during Stalinism that distinguished them from those in other despotic systems? Which periods of Stalinism were characterized by which forms of resistance? For example, the most repressive periods of Stalinism would destroy any open resistance to the regime; instead, these periods might provoke strong forms of resistance to rationality.

Rationality and Irrationality in Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism It would be far beyond the scope of this essay to address the question of rationality and irrationality in its broad philosophical or social science context. Instead, I shall restrict my discussion to Marxism as the supreme ideology of Stalinism and of the Soviet Communist Party. Building largely on the values of the Enlightenment, Marxism promoted the concept of universal rationality in the pursuit of a scientific route towards progress. Values of the Enlightenment included assumptions about human nature, behaviour, culture and organization of society, as well as about rationality and the normative character of people’s daily activities. Nevertheless, some social scientists, like Thomas Carlyle,



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considered that only under the guidance of charismatic leaders, were people in most societies capable of purposeful and rational conduct. Lenin played the role of a charismatic leader, carefully attending Carlyle (Service, p. 202). He was a revolutionary who incited masses; he argued for materialism and rationalism. From Lenin’s point of view, Russian people had been for many centuries mystical and irrational, being mostly peasants influenced by the Orthodox Church. Both Marx and Lenin were convinced that any form of religion was irrational and dogmatic. Marx (1843) expressed this conviction particularly clearly in ‘Contribution to the critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right’ in the well-known phrase: Religion is opium of the people. Therefore, it was important to guide them towards rational thought. The substitution of religious and unscientific ideas by rational ones became fundamental in the new scientific disciplines of historical and dialectical materialism. Historical materialism was defined in Marxism as a science describing and analysing the gradual stages through which society passes on its way towards a prosperous future. This journey will be accomplished in communist society and at ‘the end of history’, the final triumph of communism over capitalism. But in order to achieve this, one has first to fulfil a sub-goal: to teach people to substitute unscientific thinking for scientific reasoning, that is, to replace irrationality by rational thought. In other words, it was necessary to exchange the spontaneous and arbitrary activities of the masses for those activities guided by the instruction of the Party (Lenin, 1913/1977). Lenin viewed the accomplishments of the natural sciences as comparable to great achievements of scientific thought in historical and dialectical materialism. Specifically, he considered discoveries of natural sciences, like those of radium, electrons and the transformation of elements, as ‘a remarkable confirmation of Marx’s dialectical materialism’ (Lenin, 1913/1917, p. 21). He emphasized the dynamic and provisional nature of knowledge: it is never a ready-made dogma but is always on a journey towards progress and a more exact understanding of nature and society (Lenin, 1908/1972). Yet while for Lenin science was not a ready-made dogma, any doubts about the correctness of Marxist thinking would threaten the unity of the Party line. We therefore find something of a paradox: the co-existence of the mystique of the Party and of Marxist scientific thought. This paradox was apparent from the start of the Soviet Communist Party, and above all it characterized the thinking of its intellectual leaders. We can find countless examples of the mystique of, and incontestable faith in the Party (Marková, 2012) and I shall restrict myself to a few illustrations. Leon

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Trotsky expressed his faith in the Party as early as 1924, despite his awareness of the Party’s undemocratic management: “None of us desires or is able to dispute the will of the Party. Clearly, the Party is always right ... We can only be right with and by the Party, for history has provided no other way of being in the right” (Souvarine, 1939, p. 362). Another example is that of Yuri Piatakov, a revolutionary leader during the Soviet revolution, who was later executed. He thought that a real Communist is so deeply absorbed in the spirit of the Party that he becomes a kind of a miracle man (Abramovitch, 1962, p. 415). Such perspectives were synthesised by Arthur Koestler (1940/2005) in Darkness at Noon. The fictive hero Rubashov encapsulates the mythical faith in the Party of those who had perished in Stalinist trials: “The Party can never be mistaken.[...] You and I can make a mistake. Not the Party. The Party, comrade, is more than you and I and a thousand others like you and I. The Party is the embodiment of the revolutionary idea in history” (Koestler, 1940/2005, p. 40).

Stalin, although not trusted by his collaborators, was nevertheless seen as the symbol of the Party. Bukharin expressed this view shortly before he was executed, while explaining his representation of Stalin: “You don’t understand … It is not him we trust but the man in whom the Party has reposed its confidence. It just so happened that he has become a sort of a symbol of the Party” (Abramovitch, 1962, p. 416). Perhaps it is not surprising that totalitarian regimes would use any means to establish their power. What we find in Stalinism is the strong emphasis on the Marxist science–or proletarian science–and at the same time the use of symbolism, ceremonies and rituals echoing those of the Orthodox Church. Among the profound analysts of this mixture of science and Orthodoxy was the Russian religious and political philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev. His ideas re-appeared in and were expanded by later historians and analysts of the period (e.g. Medvedev, 1972; Bonnell, 1997; Gentile, 2000; Riegel, 2005, among many others). Let us first recall that in European history, conflict between religious dogma and scientific knowledge played a fundamental role in the persecution of scientists and in witch-hunting of heretics. In modernity, the rising number of atheists can be seen as a continuing resistance to religious dogma in the search for scientific knowledge. According to Berdyaev, the situation in Russia was very different. The Russian intellectual Nihilism of the 19th century was preoccupied with human suffering and injustice, which, Berdyaev argued, had in part its source in the consciousness of guilt, contrition, feelings of offence from others, and of oppression.



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Russian philosophy and literature from Bielinsky and Chernyshevsky through to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky is dominated by the analysis of these mental states and social feelings. Intellectual Nihilism called for a total restructuring of society; ideas of socialism in 19th century Russia became the main intellectual force of religious faith based on moral sentiments. Berdyaev (1931/1961, p.9) explains: ‘The Russians’ interpretation of Saint Simon, Proudhon and Karl Marx was a religious one; they took to materialism also in the same religious spirit’. Importantly, Russian intellectuals were not troubled by the conflict between Christianity and science, but by their conviction that religion supported injustice and social untruth. As a result, Russian intellectuals transformed the concept of science by adapting it to social feelings. Nihilism and atheism in science became ‘an object of religious faith and idolatry, and … this only confirms the fact that it is not a question of mere objective science’ (ibid.p.20). Whatever one makes of Berdyaev’s analysis, his point of view proposes an explanation as to why for the Russian Marxists the fusion of ‘the science of religion’ was not viewed as an inconsistency. Berdyaev suggests that in Russia, religious motives and religious psychology were transformed into non-religious and indeed anti-religious positions and that these became a special form of idolatry. While normally science is subjected to doubt, reflection and uncertainty and so it enables the creation of new knowledge and change, ‘in Russian Nihilism science was never a wholly objective research; it became an idol, an object of religious faith’ (ibid. p.41). While Marxism called itself a scientific theory, Berdyaev argues, it adopted religious symbolism. The irrational gained the power and irrationality in masses was widely exploited and encouraged by the regime.

Forms of Resistance during Stalinism and their Relations to Rationality/Irrationality But what criteria shall we use in making judgements as to what counts as rational and irrational forms of resistance? Should rationality and irrationality of resistance be judged with respect to the consistency of beliefs and knowledge, as a philosopher suggests (e.g. Davidson, 2004)? Is it rational to resist the regime at the price of death? Can answers to such questions be guided by formal logical criteria when emotional, ethical and moral criteria are at stake?

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Active and Passive Resistance to Totalitarianism The most visible form of resistance throughout the history of humankind is either an active, violent revolt, or a passive, non-violent opposition and non-cooperation with the regime. Scholarly works written about these forms of resistance among peasants, intellectuals, military and factory workers in the Soviet Union during Stalinism present a variety of observations and of contrasting views. In her book on ‘Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village After Collectivization’ Fitzpatrick (1994) showed that Russian peasants viewed the collectivization of agriculture at the beginning of the 1930s as the imposition of a new serfdom and that they resisted collectivization by short-lived disturbances, slaughtering their livestock and committing acts of violence. Other forms of resistance involved passivity, like apathy, inertia and avoiding fulfilments of obligations to the State (Fitzpatrick, 1994, pp. 65ff). Equally, Souvarine (1939, p.507) refers to peasants who repeatedly destroyed their belongings and killed their stock rather than handing them over to the State. Only the poorest, who had nothing to lose, agreed to five-year plans for the promise that they would get tractors. Bonnell (1997) discusses the vigorous involvement of women in resistance during the enforced collectivization of 1929-30. Traditionally, in Russian villages women supervised the management of livestock, and in particularly of cows providing milk for children. Collectivization also coincided with closing churches and attacks on religion in villages and here, again, women were in the forefront of resistance. Resistance of peasants took different forms as the collectivization progressed, as social and political changes were introduced, and as peasants found that in some ways they could benefit collective farms and use them for their own purposes. Gradually, minimal social security improvements were introduced and the State invested significant resources into the totally inefficient agriculture. Fitzpatrick (1994, p. 319) concludes that when, after the collapse of Communism, ‘the call finally came for peasants to leave the shackles of the kolkhoz and strike out for the new brave world of independent capitalist farming, the response was a dull silence’. Peasants continued living with the assumption that they had the right to work, salaries and social security regardless their contributions and they waited for retirement and state pensions. Fitzpatrick wraps up her findings: ‘The kolkhoz outlasted the Soviet system that produced it … and the ‘serf’ mentality of kolkhozniks survived after the state coercion that generated it had been replaced by state handouts’ (ibid. p. 320). The work ethic, rhetorically promoted during Communism, had never existed, and it



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did not emerge when political changes took place. Fitzpatrick’s observation echoes the idea that scholars have expressed in relation to collapse of other regimes. For instance, James Billington (1966) argued that while political and economic changes can take a quick turn, changes in human and social relations and in patterns of behaviour take a long time. Billington showed how Russia, after the Revolution of 1917, continued to be ruled by Byzantine rituals based on worshipping and bowing to the tyrant. Analyzing a similar issue, Moghaddam and Harré (1996) drew attention to the difficulty of changing human relations following political and economic revolution in Iran after the revolution in 1978-9. In the case of Russian peasants, however, one may question as to whether their inactivity was learned during collectivization or whether one could go even further back in history and suggest that passivity was a habitual feature of peasant life inherited from the pre-Soviet serfdom–and which the Soviet collectivization only reaffirmed. The sociologist Shlapentokh (2001, p.144) concludes that popular ‘resistance during Stalin’s regime was minimal’. He refers to incidental factory strikes in the late nineteen twenties that were recorded in various branches of industry; protests against collectivization of agriculture did take place but they were largely unorganized or limited to ‘passive resistance’. Shlapenkokh insists that local riots did not go beyond tearing down pro-collectivization posters and leaflets. There was no organized list of objectives; people expressed their grievances by millions of letters KGB. Thousands of people were punished even for sending letters of complaint. The detailed analysis by Shlapentokh (2001, p. 147f) of life under totalitarianism in the nineteen thirties shows that small resisting groups of students and intelligentsia rarely ‘did anything more than talk’. If such groups were discovered, they were destroyed with all the Soviet brutality. Only personal diaries and private discussions documented frustration and discontent with Stalinism. The death of Stalin allowed the emergence of dissidents although, even in the 1980s, Shlapentokh (2001, p. 151) comments that ‘[r]esistance groups existed in Russia only as long as the Kremlin tolerated them’. But what did these groups and dissident individuals tried to achieve? Their activities did not resist socialism and the majority of dissidents aimed at humanization of the Soviet system, building on the ideas of the Russian intelligentsia of the nineteenth century, calling for a moral sensibility and rational thought (e.g. Bergman, 1992). To that extent their aims were compatible with those of dissidents in Czechoslovakia, and in particular with Václav Havel and Jan Patoka, for whom the purpose of dissidence was above all ethical and moral.

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Resistance to Rationality While individual dissidents called for rational thought and a moral stance, social scientific studies of the masses show that individuals in collectives are prone to submitting themselves, consciously or unconsciously, to attitudes, activities and language held by others, be they leaders, friends, the Party or otherwise. Caught up in collectives, the majority of people passively and unreflectively adopt behaviours that are required from them, whether bowing to their masters or accepting injustice or even violence from their superiors. In other words, social processes, which turn people into crowds ‘make them more irrational and mean that they cannot be governed by the use of reason’ (Moscovici, 1981/1985, p.35). Above all, politics ‘is the rational form of exploiting the irrational substance of the masses’ (ibid. italics in original, p.37). It was probably Boris Souvarine (1939) who coined the notion ‘State religion’ in his book on Stalin. Analyzing Stalinism, he showed that theoretically, Bolsheviks appealed to Marx’s credo about religion being the opium of people. Their victories, however, were achieved by the methods that were used by religions: Bolsheviks turned the Leninist dogma into the State religion. Religions thrive on symbolism, miracles, magic and myth and these are transmitted through the reading of biblical texts and through oral diffusion. Yet the difficult and dry texts of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin could hardly capture the imagination of masses of non-specialist readers who, as Berdyaev (1931/1961) maintains, had only a rudimentary knowledge of Marxism. Therefore, rather than viewing it as a scientific theory, the masses adopted Marxist symbolism and mythos. The State religion of Marxism was transmitted to the masses above all through coercive propaganda, ceremonies, public gatherings, songs and marches, and the cult of personalities of their leaders. Propaganda perpetually restated the dogma in various forms of written and visual communication using vocabulary and images with emotional and passionate meanings. The emphasis on ‘the primacy of faith’ and the ‘primacy of the myth’, appealed explicitly to irrationality of crowds (Gentile, 2000). Gentile observes that ‘the fascination and power … was emitted by irrational totalitarian myths. Irrationality and myth had become a potent political means of mobilising the masses in that they conferred upon totalitarianism the suggestive power of a new religion’ (Gentile, 2000, p. 46).

The emphasis of the primacy of faith and of the myth became the main strategies of both grandiose totalitarian systems of the 20th century, Nazism



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and Communism. Aiming at restructuring the society, both totalitarian systems used politics, daily life, culture and all forms of art in order to transform the world by changing human minds and creating ‘a new man’. The means that were used to create such humans did not require any reflection or analysis; a total devotion to the dogma, to the leaders who created the dogma and to the vision of heaven on Earth, were the necessary and sufficient conditions for the construction of ‘a new man’. Let us consider some examples of this effort to change the human minds. The Sacralised Art In 1995, Nazi and Communist art were exhibited, side by side, in Berlin and in Moscow. In a publication accompanying the exhibition, Polevoj (1995) analyses the major drama fought by the two contrasting tendencies in the art of the 20th century: avant-garde and totalitarian art. The pre-Nazi Germany and pre-Soviet Russia were among those countries that led the development of a rich variety of avant-garde artistic trends, ranging from constructivism and formalism to abstraction and symbolism, with each of these searching for new ideas and their intense expressions. However, in the late nineteen twenties, as totalitarian regimes in Germany and the Soviet Union were establishing their powers, the nature of daily life and arts was progressively changing. The rich variety of styles, music, theatre, cinema and architecture was transforming itself into a totalitarian art characterised by a unitary vision of the world so that the masses could understand the regimes’ simple messages: social nationalism in Germany and Marxism in the Soviet Union. In contrast to avant-garde art, totalitarian art did not bring anything new. Using traditional genres, like concrete pictures of the countryside, still life, the pathos of collectives–all these provided deceptive historical perspectives to mobilize and influence the masses. They not only used kitsch elements from the past, but also these forms of art were strictly selective; they presented these elements in the order and structures that corresponded to the vision of these ideological systems. While Nazi art used neoclassical genres and national romantic images, Communist art emphasised socialist realism using traditional folk art and images recalling Orthodoxy. Both kinds of totalitarian art were accompanied by monumental idols, slogans, marches and songs, influencing the masses not by beauty, but by their political messages. They turned into ‘sacralised art’ (Polevoj, 1995). Concrete images expressed single meanings: like photographs, they allowed no space for interpretation, reflection or doubt. They were simple restatements of ready-made images.

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The Sacralisation of Communist Vision of Reconstructing Society and Culture Just like in arts, the sacralisation of politics involves an intentional and systematic use of dogma, religious myth and rituals, ceremonies and the cult of personality. Critics of Lenin’s Party drew attention, from the early years, to hidden religious dimensions of his politics. For example, Riegel (2005) refers to a number of authors who were critical of the intense selfdeification of the Party, dreaming of a paradise on Earth (R. Fülöp-Miller, 1926) and imitating the images of the Orthodox Church (F. Stepun, 1934). These means were effective in providing the masses with new idols and giving evidence to Berdyaev’s (1931/1961) claim that the human craving for idolatry cannot be easily uprooted. Idolatry manifested itself by conferring sacred status on any entity (e.g. nationality, morality, social justice, the Party, the country) or person (e.g. Lenin, Marx, Stalin). Once the sacred entity or individual turned into a collective value and excluded any alternative sacred entity, any resistance became a heresy and was to be punished. Writing against political blackmailing, Lenin emphasised that the members of the Party must ‘submit slightest doubts for the classconscious workers, for our Party, to judge. We trust our Party. We see in it the intelligence, honour and conscience of our times’ (Lenin, 1917/1977, p. 263). From the Party, the sacred status was conferred on Lenin himself, who had ‘qualities of a saint, an apostle, a prophet, a martyr, a man with Christ-like qualities (Bonnell, 1997, p. 146). And finally, Stalin, too, became sacralised. Eugenia Ginzburg (1989), who, in the nineteen thirties was falsely accused of terrorism, described the worshipers of Stalin surrounding her : “Fydor Gladkov, by then an old man, was walking beside me, and every time he looked at Stalin an expression of religious fervour came into his face. And on my other side was a young woman writer from Vologda. I remember the awe and ecstasy in her voice as she murmured: ‘I have seen Stalin. Now I can die...’’ (Ginzburg, 1989, p. 27).

Semantics of Marxism as a Religion and the Use of Symbols Language and images of the sacralised Party encouraged irrational thinking in a number of ways. First, language was used to eliminate differences between words and actions. For example, it abolished the difference between ‘ought’ and ‘is’. Andrey Vyshinski, the most infamous State prosecutor during Stalin’s political trials, gave instructions about



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confession proceedings that erased the difference between ‘terrorist statements and terrorist acts’. (Halfin, 2003, p.267). It was not necessary to define precisely what were ‘terrorist statements’ and ‘terrorist acts’. It was sufficient to label someone and the label then became a proof of the ‘real event’ (Tucker, 1990, p.398). But labels could also obtain a religious meaning and their use was forbidden by the accused. Political prisoners and those charged with espionage were explicitly prohibited to use certain words, for example, ‘Party’ and ‘comrade’. Such words were the privilege only of the faithful (e.g. London, 1970, p.57). Second, explicitly religious or symbolic meanings became incorporated into the terminology of the Party. Stalin spoke of the Communist Party as a sort of Order of Knights of the Sword within the Soviet State (Stalin, 5, p.73). Zinoviev spoke about Lenin as the ‘apostle of world communism’ and ‘the leader by the Grace of God’ (Tumarkin, 1983). Third, Bonnell (1997) in her book on ‘Iconography of Power’ analyzes the use of visual and verbal images in Soviet posters during Stalinism. Political art created a special semantics in which a mixture of words and images aimed at a strong impact on masses. She comments that visual images were of the utmost importance in Soviet propaganda because the general level of literacy was very low, in particular in villages. In contrast, where there was a strong visual tradition among Russian people coming both from folk culture and from the Orthodox religion. Bolshevik artists produced images that matched religious images of the Orthodox Church– or even better, they produced patterns of true religious art. Moshe Lewin (1985) remarks how the State religion absorbed the traditional Orthodox religion: The traditional devotion to and worship of icons, relics of saints, and processions was apparently being replaced by a shallow imitation of icon like imagery, official mass liturgy, effigies, and especially, processions and pilgrimages to the mausoleum sheltering an embalmed atheist (Lewin, 1985, p. 165).

Lewin’s notion of ‘a shallow imitation’ of folk culture and religious rituals, hints that this devotion was not based on an original system of beliefs of the State religion. The effort of the State to transform mass consciousness was based on consistent and incessant repetition of images in such a manner that it could be understood by the audience at which it was targeted in order to formalize thinking and solidify particular social representations (on similar issues see Moscovici, 1976/2008). In her analysis of posters Bonnell abundantly illustrates these points. For example, Lenin was represented in distorted perspectives as a

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superhuman leader. His image was larger than the sun or the globe and he was presented as flanked by worker and peasant, just as Christ was sometimes flanked by two apostles. The circular frame surrounding Lenin recalls Christ often situated in an oval frame, among other images that were reminiscent of religious icons (Bonnell, 1997, p.146). After Lenin’s death, artists and writers produced new images and symbols that integrated traditional folk culture and the Russian Orthodox religion, carrying ‘Lenin’s portrait on tall sticks, like religious banners in a Russian Orthodox procession’ (Bonnell, 1997, p.148). The colour red, a favourite in Russian icons going back to the Middle Ages (Marková, 2003/2005), was extensively used in these images. The cult of Stalin followed later on alongside the same logic, as he became ‘the infallible pope of the Comintern’ while Trotsky created a cult of the anti-pope (Medvedev, 1976, p.61). Stalin’s (1928) Leninism was the authentic interpretation of Lenin. Souvarine (1939, p.357) remarks, that ‘Leninism’ became ‘a complicated theology with its dogma, its mysticism and its scholasticism’. People were prepared to believe that their problems were caused by enemies who penetrated their mystical Party; therefore identifying enemies, acknowledging their guilt and having them publicly confess to their crimes became yet another ritual. Halfin (2009, p. 367) summarizes the importance of confessions: ‘Without confession, what remained was prosecution and guilt-finding. With confession, however extorted, what remained was exposure for the greater glory of Communism’. It was even more important that by acknowledging guilt or heresy, the accused confirmed not only the personal belief that he/she committed a crime, but that this acknowledgement served as a reaffirmation of collectively held beliefs and so stabilized the relevant social representations perpetuating the status quo. In and through this double recognition of the belief, personal and public, the punishment served as a purgation of the individual and cleansing and renewal of society (Marková, 2012).

Resistance to Knowledge of Stalinist Murders In contrast to resistance to rationality, the resistance to knowledge concerns opposing the acknowledgement of the truth of Stalinist murders. As with other forms of resistance, the resistance to knowledge is not a unitary phenomenon. First, the resistance to knowledge follows from the unshakeable faith in the sacred status of the Party dismissing any available evidence to the contrary. For example, Artur London (1970) describes in his book ‘Confession’ how he, as a devoted Communist, was horrified by the



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crimes that had been confessed by his former colleagues in the Soviet Union. He remembers the trials of Zinoviev and Kamenev and the lengthy discussions that he held with his colleagues, wondering how men with such a past commitment as Communists could sink so low, become agents of imperialism and abominable traitors of the country and the Party. Having witnessed accusations of a number of similar cases, London’s faith in the Party was unwavering: ‘I could also remember Bucharin’s last words which had upset me at the time, although they had never let me to doubt the authenticity of the trial’ (London, 1970, p. 256). London pondered about all these past events only when he, himself, was subjected to the same fate and could now see the Moscow trials as a precursor to his own trial. Second, resistance to knowledge of real crimes committed during Stalinism ranged from the sheer disbelief of such breaking laws of humanity to ‘not-knowing’ as a form of self-defence. The self could not admit of being involved in supporting indefensible and immoral activities of the Stalinist regime and so denigrating oneself. Concerning the former, the mass repression during the years 1937-38 was such an incomprehensible disaster that, as Medvedev (1976, p.289) maintains, rather than searching for truth, people resisted knowing in order to escape the reality and ‘to find some formula that would preserve faith in the Party and Stalin’. Even if they ‘knew’, many people believed that Stalin did not know about the huge numbers of arbitrary killings and unlawful processes. Still others depicted these monstrous crimes as ‘mistakes’. When someone, like Joseph Stalin, creates such a monumental historical task as building a socialist country, it is inevitable that mistakes happen (ibid.p.561). For yet others, ‘knowing’ and conscious awareness of what was happening was personally threatening. It endangered the integrity of the self and others; and it might also jeopardize comfortable habits and an established lifestyle. Therefore, knowing was suppressed. For still others, resistance to knowledge was a struggle between two or more incommensurable beliefs with the individual resisting them simultaneously. Let us illustrate this by the case of Artur London’s wife Lise, a dedicated Communist, loving and trusting of her husband. When Artur was imprisoned and accused of being an imperialist agent, Lise implicitly ‘knew’ that what was happening to him was unjust, but she was unable to raise her implicit knowledge to consciousness: ‘The more I doubted your guilt ... the more I tried to keep on the Party’s side… It was not possible for me to be right and the Party wrong” (London, 1970, p. 345). The belief in her husband’s innocence and at the same time the unshakable trust in the Party permeates the whole book of ‘Confession’.

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Lise has never given up her faith in the Party, being a member of the Party until today. However, she had to find a way how of coping with her faith in the Party while also believing in her husband’s innocence, which was legally acknowledged soon after Stalin’s death. But we can raise the same question about the resistance to knowledge of Stalinist trials by Western intellectuals, jurists, politicians and writers. In fact, we can find the broad range of beliefs, on the one hand those totally rejecting Stalinist murders and on the other, those defending them as a necessary step on the road to socialism. Writers like Bertold Brecht and Bernard Shaw refused to believe in the Stalinist murders and continued to worship Stalin and his construction of socialism. With the full knowledge of Stalinist trials, the French poet Paul Eluard wrote a love-poem to Stalin at his 70th birthday. The sociologist Edgar Morin, in his book on Autocritique (1959) points to cautious and deferent left intelligentsia in France who did not advance any basic criticism of these trials. Many members of intelligentsia not only did not protest against Stalin’s executions but also actively supported them in the name of the future victory of communism.

Conclusion Issues discussed in this chapter show that the phrase ‘resistance during Stalinism’ formed a heterogeneous family of activities that referred to different phenomena and mental processes. Their dynamics are related to historical epochs in which a particular form of resistance took place, to political, economic and symbolic forces of the time, in specific locations, and to what exactly citizens were resisting: terror, the truth, fear or simply anything that would compromise their daily life. The degree of resistance to Stalinist totalitarianism was largely determined by the high risk of severe punishment for any dissent. Understandably, only exceptionally was there any strong and organized resistance during the most severe periods of Stalinism, in particular in the nineteen thirties. Personal notes and diaries produced during that time are the most common visible witnesses of people’s fear and desperation. What I call here the resistance to rationality is a different phenomenon. Although resistance to rationality is part of human life, the specificity of irrationality during Stalinism is the paradoxical mixture of idolatry coming from the Orthodoxy and from Marxist ideology. Historians and scholars studying this phenomenon have identified concrete sets of occurrences in which rituals, images, ceremonies, semantics and symbolism of the religious ideology were substituted by similar rituals and symbolism of the



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Marxist ideology. Yet I wish to emphasise that what I have been talking about in this chapter is only the substitution of one kind of idolatry by another one, rather than about a substitution of one system of belief by another one. With respect to the latter, we would have to analyse the nature of religious beliefs established in Orthodoxy during centuries of its existence, and the nature of beliefs developed during the short flourishing of Marxist ideology. We would also need to analyse the degree of interiorisation of each of these belief systems in the masses. What I have been talking about here is the exterior and superficial similarity between these two ideologies; it plays on the human fascination by deification of one kind or another. Artists, poets, writers and journalists were engaged in imitating images of religious idols and placing them in contemporary contexts so that they could be understood by their intended audience. In the case discussed here it is the idolatry of the leaders of Marxism, particularly of Lenin and Stalin, of the collectivity of the Party, the proletariat and the future myth of the end of history in Communism. The resistance to knowledge during Stalinism is yet another phenomenon. As we have seen above, the broad range of resistance to knowledge has a multitude of sources. Humans acquire new knowledge through learning from others and from experience, which, to various degrees, is significant for the individual or the group. Depending of its significance, such knowledge can be taken up, developed, changed, suspended or completely abandoned. For example, the knowledge of healthy food changes over time with new scientific discoveries and with their diffusion and propaganda. What was true can easily become untrue and vice versa. In such cases we can say that humans possess or dispossess rational beliefs or knowledge. They can be more or less committed to rational knowledge depending on how much it matters to them personally, what they are interested in, whether it is disturbing or even fearful knowledge or belief, and so on. If humans represent knowledge as more or less neutral, they may acknowledge it with ease or change it into the new knowledge when that becomes available. Moscovici (1993) calls this kind of knowledge or beliefs resistible. This means that humans possess rational beliefs or knowledge just like they possess other kinds of things. If they do not need them, either because they are no longer relevant or because they are replaced by new rational beliefs, they can dispose of them. In contrast, there is another kind of belief, the irresistible kind, that are not in our possession: on the contrary, they possess us: they ‘are like perceptual illusions: we are not a liberty to dismiss them, to have them or correct them if need be’ (Moscovici, 1993, p.50). For example, collective memories, ceremonies or political convictions

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could be so deeply grounded in our thoughts, whether consciously or unconsciously, that we cannot dismiss them by means of rational arguments; they are largely independent of reasoning. They control humans rather than being controlled by them. Irresistible beliefs, whether religious, political, health related or prejudices of one kind or other may last throughout the whole life of an individual or are passed from one generation to another one. Nevertheless, one set of irresistible beliefs may be in conflict with another set. For example, Yuri Piatakov, one of the leading figures in the Soviet Communist Party during the period of the Great Terror in the Soviet Union during the 1930s, expressed the possibility of a swift change of beliefs as follows: ‘If the Party so demands, and if it is necessary and important for the Party, I can by an act of will expunge from my brain within twenty-four hours ideas that I have cherished for years[...],reorient myself and come to agree with the Party inwardly, with my whole mind’ (quoted by Halfin, 2009, p. 2). While such an instant change of beliefs would indicate a phenomenon difficult to explain, the sacred status of the Party in Piatakov’s mind makes such an abrupt change of beliefs understandable in the context of two sets of irresistible beliefs. Each of the forms of resistance during Stalinism is based on different criteria of rationality and irrationality and moreover, within each form we find their heterogeneous sub-forms. If we take the resistance to Stalinist totalitarianism oppression, we uncover at one end of the spectrum an intentional and systematic strategy of an individual or a group to oppose the regime with individuals or groups risking their lives in order to fulfil higher goals. In this case, individuals or groups act in accordance with their beliefs. To that extent we can talk about resistance as being rational using Davidson’s (2004) criterion of rationality. At the other end of the spectrum there could be an individual’s or a group’s unorganized, spontaneous action resulting from desperation and emotions which will lead to the destruction of that individual or a group. In this case, while for the individual or group, life may count as the primary value, by acting spontaneously, they do not consider the consequences of their action and therefore, there is no synchrony between beliefs or values and action. In this case, we could say that resistance is irrational. The resistance to rationality may, at first glance, imply an adoption of irrationality. In the case discussed in this chapter, if the Marxist ‘scientific’ ideology claims that religion is the opium of mankind and at the same time replaces it by the State religion and idolatry similar to that in religion, no doubt, we could view it as irrationality. However, one may take a different



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perspective. Emile Durkheim, just like Karl Marx, rejected God; in contrast to Marx, however, religion for him exists: ‘it is a system of given facts; in a word, it is a reality’ (1912/1976, p.430). Religion is an activity that is part of human life and as such, it cannot be replaced by science. For Durkheim, there is no essential difference between religion and science, indeed, they both pursue the same goal: to make the human society more perfect–and to that extent–‘scientific thought is only a more perfect form of religious thought’ (ibid, p. 429). Thus it follows that collective representations of religion are rational, at least to some degree; they form a logical path to science. With the growth of science throughout history, people get rid of less rational collective representations and substitute them gradually by more rational ones. Finally, rationality and irrationality of the resistance to knowledge of crimes during Stalinism raises questions about competing belief systems, self-defences and self-justifications and about the cruelty of human nature and disengagement with others. If we take London’s irresistible belief that the Party is never wrong, then his trust that the Party’s action is not wrong is consistent with the criterion of rationality. But at the same time, if his belief in the Party is an irrational idolatry in the first place, can he reach a rational judgement even if the Party’s action is consistent with his belief? The phenomenon of resistance, therefore, refers to heterogeneous activities and the concept of resistance is embedded in a large semantic network of concepts with similar as well as dissimilar characteristics. These characteristics can hardly be captured by lists of categories or typologies of resistance, because these do not assume, or at least do not draw attention, to resemblances and transformations of particular features of meaning. However, these are well captured by Wittgenstein’s expression: ‘family resemblance’, which provides a more pertinent description of ‘resistance during Stalinism’. Focusing on resemblances and differences among clusters of related meanings makes it possible to understand the forces and representations that bind these meanings together, as well as opening up possibilities for comprehension of actions and inactions that are referred to by ‘resistance during Stalinism’.

References Abramovitch, R. R. (1962). The Soviet Revolution 1917-1939. London: George Allen and Unwin. Berdyaev, N. (1932). The Russian Revolution, Essays in Order. New York: The Macmillan Company.

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Bergman, J. (1992). Soviet dissidents on the Russian intelligentsia, 19561985: the search for a usable past. Russian Review, 51, pp. 16-35. Billington, J. (1966). The Icon and the Axe. The Interpretative History of Russian Culture. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Bonnell, V.E. (1997). Iconography of Power: Soviet political posters under Lenin and Stalin. Beverley and London: University of California Press. Davidson, D. Incoherence and Irrationality. Reprinted as Chapter 12 of his collection Problems of Rationality (OUP, 2004). Durkheim, E. (1912/1976). Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Introduction by R. Nisbret, trsl. J. W. Swain. Guildford: George Allen & Unwin. Ginzburg, E. (1989). Into the Whirlwind. Trsl. P. Stevenson and M. Harari. London: Collins Harvill. Halfin, I. (2003). Terror in my Soul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. (2009). Stalinist Confessions. Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press. Harré, R. and Tissaw, M.A. (2005). Wittgenstein and Psychology: A Practical Guide. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate. Fitzpatrick, S. (1994). Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fülöp-Miller, R. (1926). Geist und Gesicht des Bolschewismus: Darstellung und Kritik des kulturellen Lebens in Sowjet-Russland. Wien: Amalthea. Gentile, E. (2000). ‘The Sacralisation of Politics: Definitions, Interpretations and Reflections on the Question of Secular Religion and Totalitarianism’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 1, (2000), pp.18–55 Koestler, A. (1940/2005).) The Darkness at Noon. London: Vintage Books. Lenin, V.I. (1913/1977). Three sources and three component parts of Marxism. Collected Works, Vol. 19, pp. 21-28. Moscow: Progress Publishers. —. (1908/1972). Materialismus and Empirio-Criticism. Collected Works, Vol. 14, pp. 17-362. Moscow: Progress Publishers. —. (1917/1977). Political blackmail. Collected Works, Vol. 25, pp. 261264. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Lewin, M. (1985). The Making of the Soviet System. Essays in the Soviet History of Interwar Russia. New York: Pantheon. London, A. (1970). The Confession. New York: William Morrow and Co.

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Marková, I. (2003). Dialogicality and Social Representations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marková, I. (2012). Confession as a communication genre: the logos and mythos of the Party. In: I. Marková and A. Gillespie: Trust and Conflict: Representation, Culture and Dialogue. Pp. 181- 200. London and New York: Routledge. Marx, K. (1943/1970). Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Theory of Right. Trsl. A.Jolin and J. O’Malley. Ed. J. O’Malley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Medvedev, R. (1976). Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism. Manchester: Nichols & Co. Spokesman Books. Moghaddam, F.M. and Harré, R. (1996). Psychological limits to political revolutions: An application of social reduction theory. In E.H. Hasselberg, L. Martienssen and F. Radtke (eds.). Der Dialogbegriff am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts. Pp. 230-240. Berlin: Hegel Institute. Morin, E. (1959). Autocritique. Paris : Editions du Seuil. Moscovici, S. (1976/2008). La Psychanalyse: son image et son public. PUF ; 2nd éd. Translated by D. Macey as: Psychoanalysis : Its Image and Its Public. Cambridge: Polity —. (1981/1985). The Age of the Crowd. Trsl. J.C. Whitehouse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. (1989/1993). La Machine à faire des dieux: sociologie et psychologie. Paris: Fayard. Trsl. by W.D. Hall as The Invention of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993. —. (1993). The return of the unconscious, Social Research, 60, pp. 39-93. Polevoj, V. (1995). Realities, utopias and chimeras of the 20th century. In I. Antonova and J. Merkvert: Berlin-Moscow. Pp. 15-20. Moscow: Galart. (in Russian). Riegel, K.-G. (2005) Marxism-Leninism as a political religion. Politics, Religion & Ideology, 6, 97- 126. Service, R. (2000). Lenin: A Biography. Basingstoke: Macmillan Shlapentokh, V. (2001). A Normal Totalitarian Society. Armonk and London: M.E. Sharpe. Souvarine, B. (1939). Stalin - A Critical Survey of Bolshevism. New York: Alliance Book Cooperation. Stalin, J.V. (1921-1923). The political strategy and tactics of the Russian Communists, Works, 5. Pp. 63-89. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. 1953 —. (1928). Leninism. Moscow: International Publishers Stepun, F. Das Antlitz Russlands und das Gesicht der Revolution (Berlin and Leipzig: Gotthelf, 1934).

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Tumarkin, N. (1983). Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983). Tucker, R. C. (1990). Stalin in Power. New York: Norton. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein, L. Transl. G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell. —. (1958). The Blue and Brown Books. Preliminary Studies for the ‘Philosophical Investigations’. Oxford: Blackwell.

CHAPTER TEN PERENNIAL RESISTANCE: THE MEANING OF THE TERM AFTER WORLD WAR II1 DORON RABINOVICI

[Translation by Anuschka Rees, May 2012] The choice of words is part of the struggle. The term resistance is contested in many ways. It has become an honorary title, a slogan, an invocation and a demand, all at the same time. The term is used to justify violence and to camouflage power. The word “resistance” depicts a counterforce and assumes an established order that needs to be overcome in light of a more fundamental primacy. It starts out as a reaction, describes a boundary, which if transgressed, compels a “No”, whose infringement elicits a defence. Unlike “disobedience”, “resistance” against a regime attributes the act of transgression to the authority. As opposed to a revolution, the main theme of resistance against authority is not utopia, but a return to a higher order that is superior to the law. Rebellious and conservative motifs are closely related in this context. The term “resistance” is not new and has been used by theorists and political forces for several centuries. It existed before the Second World War and the so-called Third Reich. Resistance: The term appears when matter withstands a force. Unlike “uprising” and “revolt”, “resistance” expresses a defensive position that is resisting an intervention. A discussion of resistance must not omit the history of National Socialism. In other places, such as in India or in Algeria, the term may evoke anti-colonialist movements; in eastern parts of Europe the notion is connected to the opposition against Stalinism; in many countries resistance 1

Text based on: (2008) “Der ewige Widerstand. Über einen strittigen Begriff” Styria: Graz.

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is not even directed against the state. People are risking their lives to fight for freedom that is not restricted by authorities but by cartels of power and war lords; within Europe, however, the word is primarily associated with the struggle against the Fascist regime, and adjectives such as “heroic” or “courageous” come to mind. “The resistance against National Socialism increases since 1945 from day to day”, said the German journalist Johannes Gross 2. Remembering the resistance has turned into a ritual. At the same time, the National Socialist past demands similar movements to be nipped in the bud, before they become tantamount to a death warrant. This lesson has been restated by thousands of survivors during the last decades. Franca Magnani, an Italian journalist and correspondent for German television, once said: “A country whose citizens possess a high level of moral courage will need less heroes.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2003). What is left of the struggle against National Socialism when it is used as a slogan for any kind of protest? There are protests against power stations, pay cuts and tuition fees; anyone who writes a pamphlet may feel like a partisan. By exaggerating one’s own commitments, the charge against National Socialism is devalued. What if those who see the potential catastrophe in every risk, and those who see only a risk in every catastrophe, simply represent two sides of the same coin? Aren’t both positions an expression of the same historical fixation? Some see Hitler in every evil and others cannot recognise evil, unless it is Hitler himself. Should we even conflate the various forms of resistance that operate differently within a Nazi dictatorship, and a democracy? May they not each be recognised as a distinct variation of resistance? Resistance must always consider the proportionality of its means, as it must not cause more harm than the evil it resists. Means that are appropriate when fighting a dictatorship are not appropriate within a democracy. However, if we only had the right to call for resistance against Hitler, we would be condemned to injustice. We would not be able to object to anything as long as the worst case scenario had not occurred, and would not be able to resist anymore, once that worst case had come to pass.

Of Resistance in History “Tis not my nature to join in hating, but in loving”, said Antigone. Even though written in 442 BC, the right to rise above the law is a central theme in Sophocles’ tragedy. (Sophocles, 442 B.C.E) 2

As cited in: Fest (2003) 81.

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Already in ancient Greece people were deliberating the boundaries of the law and whether it legitimises tyrannicide. Harmodius’ and Aristogeiton’s assassination of the tyrants and brothers Hippias and Hipparchos is considered the earliest tyrannicide and was celebrated as the birth of the Athenian democracy. Plato and Aristotle recognised that the assassination had been provoked by the tyranny. Cicero also justified tyrannicide, approving the murder of Caesar and Antonius. According to these writings, a tyrant is any ruler who mistreats his citizens. Other ancient writers report injustice that stems not only from the tyrant, but from citizenries that formed a Demos to evade autarchy. Even then it had become clear that democracy can revert to tyranny, if it is nothing but majority rule without minority rights. Socrates’ death is proof of this danger. Within the feudal system on the other hand, both ruler and citizens are bound by divine law. Thus it is not just the right of citizens, but their duty to disobey, when the orders of their ruler conflict with the principles of higher justice. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) argued that the “tyrannus usurpationis” may be killed by anyone to prevent him from reaching a position of power. In the 16th century the monarchomachs also discussed the right to murder tyrants. Perspectives changed with the emergence of absolutism under Louis XVI., in the second half of the 17th century. Jean Bodin (1529-1596) stated that once the citizens had passed the power to the king, it remained his irrevocably. 3 Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacque Rousseau and the Baron de Montesquieu developed liberal-democratic or radical-democratic schools of thought.4 In 1640, Thomas Hobbes wrote his book on the elements of law, nature and politics. He used the English term “resistance” when writing about rebellion, but also to illustrate the brain’s reaction in response to light. (Hobbes, 1640) Many philosophers of enlightenment assumed an interdisciplinary approach; examples are the experimental physicist and author Georg Christoph Lichtenberg or Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose poetic creations superimposed his work as a scientist and statesman. In the mid18th century, the scientist, diplomat and politician Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod. During the Age of Enlightenment, electricity was a hot topic within the realms of Physics. From as early as 1740, light fixtures, mysterious apparatus and magnetism had caused quite a stir (Hochadel, 2003). Is it possible that the discovery of resistance in 3 4

As cited in: Steinbach (1987) 16. Compare: Oberreuter (1987), 293. – 297.

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electricity contributed to the popularisation of the term in political science? Or did the effect work the other way around? Did the debate about resistance influence the terminology of electricity? And does political resistance thus reside within every power, just like electrical resistance within electrical power? In the German discourse, the right to resist became increasingly discredited. Immanuel Kant–marked by the cataclysms of the confessional wars in Germany–argued that nobody should rebel against the judicial system. According to Kant, attempting to rise above the law would result in a relapse into a “natural state”, to which the “legal state” is preferable in every case. Paradoxically the positivist concept of constitutional law became accepted in German-speaking countries at the same time as the beginnings of the liberal bourgeoisie and the constitutional state. In this case, the formation of the constitution and democracy did not increase willingness to defend them against the government, as these political achievements had not been won in a war against the authority. Pre-modern theories about the right to disobey and tyrannicide had fallen into disrepute. Not even blatant injustice might be combated beyond lawful means. The state and the law seemed more important than the values they were meant to protect.

On the ‘Resistance’ and ‘Resistenz’ against National Socialism There has never been a single prototype of resistance; it can occur in various forms. The term’s definition depends on the political and, more importantly, the national context. In France, Yugoslavia or Greece resistance used to be a patriotic objective against German foreign rule. After 1945, it became impossible to doubt the existence of a French resistance. It became a national myth and has remained stable despite– even because of–much critical discussion in the last two decades. The revolt against Hitler during the Third Reich was viewed differently. In the Western succession state, the Federal Republic of Germany, it was often met with open disapproval. Many citizens saw the resistance fighters as traitors. German resistance not only failed to gather a broad coalition against Hitler; slander continued even after the military defeat of the Third Reich.5 The communistic resistance was suppressed in its entirety. In the GDR, 5

Compare: Mommsen (1994)

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National Socialism was dismissed as the manifestation of the overcome capitalism. In Austria, the situation was more complex. In line with the Moscow Declaration of 1943, Austria did not want to be seen as Hitler’s first victim. Was the “Anschluss” a threefold process that occurred from outside, but also from above and from below (Botz, 1978, 107-112)? German troops were met with exultation in Austria on the 12th of March, 1938. Never again did the Wehrmacht receive such a warm welcome when crossing national borders. The March of ‘38 began in February. From the 19th of that month the streets were filled with hoards of Nazi supporters (Hanisch, 1994, 338). Graz had become a stronghold of National Socialism long before the invasion of the Wehrmacht. In those days, thousands marched through the city centre with torches or swastika banners. Even the city hall flagged the banner of the so-called Third Reich. Even more: the victims did not realise what was happening to them. Anyone who was able to travel to the German Reich, considered himself lucky to have escaped the battue in Vienna. While the November pogrom represented a significant turning point for German Jews, in Austria it resembled previous acts of violence in quantity and quality. One might argue that while in March 1938 the “Anschluss” linked Austria to the German Reich, the Novemberpogrom 1938 represented the Anschluss of the “Old Reich” to the “Jewish policies in the Ostmark”. In Germany and Austria expressions of discontent were considered clear signals against the authority. However, in France or Poland these were not seen as part of a war of liberation, rather, as grumbling at German occupation. Who would be surprised if Frenchmen or Poles were unhappy about Germany’s dominance. No one can deny the bravery it took for a Viennese baker to provide bread for so-called “U-boote”, Jewish fugitives living in secrecy (Löw, 1991; Löw, 1992, 187). Can we consider it an act of resistance when German priests forged baptismal certificates? (Löw, 1992, 188-190). It also demanded resistance to wiretap so-called hostile channels or sabotage the production of an arms factory. Acts that were not considered to be oppositional in other systems, were enough to receive a death sentence during National Socialism. In his definition of anti-Nazi resistance the historian Karl Stadler pointed out that individual and apolitical opposition was also a form of important and courageous resistance (Stadler, 1966). In Totalitarianism, as defined by Hannah Arendt (2005), the resistance fighter is always isolated. In such a system there exists only residual opposition. The collective hunts for the resistance fighter and wants to annihilate him. His fellow human beings turn into a mass of followers. His very homeland becomes an enemy country. The everyday life of the Nazi

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regime was terror. For Jean Améry torture was the essence of Nazism (Améry, 1988, 40. and 47). In 1943, while the “Fabric-Action” transported the remaining Jews out of Berlin, so-called Arian women protested against the deportation of their Jewish husbands in the Rosenstrasse (Rose Street). This heroic mission eventually led to the husbands’ liberation. The event is often cited as an example of successful civil resistance during Nazism. (Stoltzfus, 2002) However, according to Wolf Gruner6, what has been cited as successful resistance was in fact action resisting nothing but a ‘straw man’. These men were wrongly targeted in the first place; they had just been mistakenly arrested with other Jews. The women’s protest was doubtlessly courageous, but did not change the murderers’ objectives. As planned, the Jews were sent away, while men that were married to non-Jewish women stayed in Berlin. Civil disobedience of a small group never proved to be successful tactics against the Holocaust. The Nazi regime did consider the mood of the citizens, but a protest of a few hundred people would have been broken up, if necessary. When speaking of resistance, where do we need to draw the line? What should we make of the fact that a Wehrmacht official who was found to be part of a resistance group, later turned out to have partaken in a mass execution in 1941 in Serbia and had consequently been placed on the Yugoslavian wanted list? (Neugebauer, 1986, 63). Perhaps this man was both: a perpetrator and a resistance fighter. It is possible that he changed his attitude after having taken part in the horrible war crimes. But the fact that he disguised his former guilt makes it more plausible to assume that he was a cynical opportunist who changed sides as soon as the defeat of the “Third Reich” was foreseeable. Many of the perpetrators deliberately lied about their past after 1945. The number of those who after 1945 claimed to have rescued Jews exceeds even the number of the Jews that lived in Germany and Austria before the National Socialist era. Over the years the study of resistance expanded its field of interest. New generations of historians in the FRG dealt with smaller, left-wing groups and regional forms of resistance. The general shift towards everyday history promoted the discussion of opposition from below, with expressions of disapproval, with whispering jokes, and with regional, unruly youth culture, such as the Viennese “Schlurfen” who dressed casually, eschewing military style, and were fond of Jazz. The term “Resistenz” was formulated separately from resistance and introduced to the debate by Martin Broszat: 6

Gruner, 2005. See also: Meyer, 2004 and Meyer, 1999

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Such “Resistenz” could be motivated by the continued existence of relatively independent institutions (church, bureaucracy, Wehrmacht), the enforcement of moral-religious norms despite the NS’ reluctance, the support of institutional competencies, economical and social interests or legal, intellectual and artistic standards; successful ”Resistenz” can occur in the form of oppositional activities of individuals or groups (workers striking despite a ban, priests criticising Nazi policies), as civil disobedience (not participating in NS assemblies, refusing to salute Hitler, ignoring the ban to associate with Jews, prisoners of war, etc), through maintaining social groups outside of NS organisations ( HY-opposed youth cliques, religious groups, meetings of former SPD members, etc.) or by mentally preserving ideals opposing those of the NS and thus, being immune to NS ideology and propaganda (disapproving of anti-Semitism and race ideology, pacifism, etc.). Broszat, 1987, 49.

The word is almost non-translatable, as it is the direct translation of resistance, yet also a medical term describing a constitutional trait of the immune system in light of an infection. Its comparative advantage lies in being able to pinpoint where the regime’s efforts to control was not successful. It also takes into account those acts that were not a direct reaction to the Nazi regime: contumacies of farmers against the regulations of the Reich Food Corporation, skipping work after a long night, maintaining a “racially shameful” relationship with a “non-Arian” or same-sex partnerships. Resistenz also includes the collection of art branded as “degenerate” or living in niches, such as those provided by the church. The definition of the term Resistenz reached as far as including practices that were already marked as resistance, albeit on an individual, unorganised yet nevertheless conscious level. At first sight the term “Resistenz” allows us to study those people whose contribution to the resistance has so far gone unnoticed. However, the term has been met with some criticism. Was it a form of Resistenz when Nazi officials took hold of the pieces of art frowned upon by official propaganda? Can we call it an act against National Socialism when an SSman falls in love with a Jewish woman, or is it rather an exploitation of the woman’s powerlessness? On the other hand, does the term “Resistenz” suffice to describe those that stood by their partner, despite facing prosecution and prohibition, or those who accepted social and material disadvantages to save their relatives? A man who had voluntarily joined the SS before being convicted for plundering and “racial shame” and was consequently expelled from the SS, applied for victim compensation in 1947. His application was denied, and rightly so (Saurer, 2005, 357). However, until the 1960s the republic of Austria did not acknowledge people who had been accused of “racial

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shame” as victims. Those who had helped others for love, as opposed to political beliefs, were also not compensated (Saurer, 358). After the war, Ferdinand and Gertrude Seidl got married. The pharmacist had hidden his future wife in his house. In August of 1944 he was sentenced to two years in prison, while his wife was deported, first to Auschwitz, later to BergenBelsen and Neuengamme (Saurer, 2005, 355). Is it mere “Resistenz” if someone shouldered prosecution for love? Then again, the term “Resistenz” does sound somewhat hollow, when higher officials used it to free themselves of duties without fear of being punished. Was the system’s central theme not the amount of controlled flexibility it provided; playgrounds that were open to certain social classes and groups, as long as these did not show resistance? (Martin, 1987). “Resistenz”: the term (derived from the field of medicine) implies that it would suffice to remain immune to National Socialism, as if it was merely an ideological infection that swept through Germany during those years (Holzer, 341.). The metaphor elicits the wrong associations, because immunity to the injustice was in fact part of the problem. It is foolhardy to make sweeping judgements about those who did resist but also about those who did not. Nobody is born as a dissident of resistance fighter. It is cheap to judge those (in hindsight and from a secure position) who in the beginning could not grasp the extent of the injustice. Only with time did many work up the courage to oppose the oath to the Fuhrer, the law and their Fatherland. Remembering both opponents and victims of National Socialism, does not mean keeping quiet about the fact that many anti-Nazis did not believe in democracy. Their remembrance should not gloss over their diverse goals and beliefs. Their resistance is defined by their opposition, not their higher convictions. Not what they fought for, but what they had to fight against defines their resistance. The opponents’ goals were usually nothing but a reaction to National Socialism. Many, who had been Social Democrats, only became Communists after the defeat of Democracy. They were isolated. They mistrusted the states medias but could not rely on an independent press. Many of the communistic dissidents would probably have been among the first to be persecuted by the Stalinist apparatus of terror. Many of those who fled to the Soviet Union, soon fell victims of the baiting by the state. Denying their aberration results in their glorification. They were alone. They mistrusted the propaganda of the state, yet did not dispose of critical media. The individual became a separate party, the intrinsic party. Some had been social democrats, some liberal, now they formed the communist movement. They forgot their objections to Stalin. They did not abandon

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their political opinions, but subordinated them to their efforts against Nazism. One may question what the dissidents were fighting for, but nevertheless, one should honour what they were fighting against and risking their life for. They stood for, and many of them died for a world without genocide and Nazism. They should become role models for the democratic republic. The same history and the same stories can be used to tell many different tales. Memories do not exist in singularity. Not the past, but the present power structure regulates what aspects are told, revealed and negotiated, masked or forgotten.

Resistance and Powerlessness What counts as nonconformity in times when existence itself has become an offence? Understanding its meaning in a moment of total powerlessness can help to define the term “resistance”. It was very difficult for Jews to join the opposition, especially during Nazism. They were often met with resentment, even by anti-Nazi groups. The German conservative opposition might have been fighting against Hitler, but at the same time it was excluding Jewish participation (Schoeps, 1990, 80). Many Jews became politically active in left-wing groups. Others fought Fascism in Spain. Many joined the allied forces. We must differentiate between Jewish resistance and the resistance by Jews. Communistic anti-Fascists with a Jewish background did not want to be considered Jewish. Yet, in the end they were part of the group of Jewish victims, despite their own self-concept. The number of Jewish combatants was particularly high in European countries that were engaged in communistic and social-democratic opposition, such as in France or Belgium. (Lustiger, 1997) A Jewish anti-Nazi resistance group formed in Vienna. In 1943 several people who were persecuted for their race joined forces. Since most “full Jews” had already been deported, the activists called themselves “Mischlingsliga in Wien” (mixed-race league in Vienna), in short, “WML”, although the league did not consist solely of people of a mixed heritage. In 1944, the Mischlingsliga was charged with being a “secret military organisation”. The members’ sentences ranged from six years in the “Zuchthaus” (a hard labour correction facility) to one year in juvenile prison. Some were even cleared of their charges. In this case, the defendants’ Jewish heritage even mitigated their punishment. The regime had not expected allegiance from the “Mischlinge” anyway (Dokumentationsarchiv,

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349-351). Their opposition was seen as a “natural” and as a “racial” reaction. To understand that paradox logic one has to bear in mind that the Nazi salute was mandatory for civilians of the “Reich”, but for Jews it was forbidden to raise their arms to the Nazi salute. They were not expected to be in favour of the regime. They had to be enemies. Anti-Fascists with a Jewish background did not seek support from the Jewish community. They understood that the Jewish administration would not have been able to help them, because of the complete powerlessness and desperate situation of the Jewish population. The Jews were not a separated, not an organized, not a homogenous group but a haunted minority that lived in the midst of a hostile majority. Most of the younger men had left the country as soon as it had been possible. Those who stayed behind were very often the women, the children, old and sick people; they were not really a population that could serve as an army. What is resistance, when the enemy’s goal is not submission, but death? If the state aims to destroy everything in their path, especially those striving to save as many lives as possible, isn’t submission also a form of resistance? After the war, in Israel the discussion about the Jewish Councils shook the state’s self-concept. The partisan war was considered the beginning of a new, defensive Judaism. More nationalistic parties compared the policies which emphasised cooperation with the enemy to Jewish Councils. The intra-Jewish controversy sparked by the trial against Eichmann received much international attention. Hannah Arendt published in 1963: Eichmann in Jerusalem. Ein Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen (A Report on the Banality of Evil). Arendt argued that fewer Jewish men and women would have been killed if it had not been for the cooperation of the Jewish leadership. Arendt’s Essay elicited strong negative reactions.7 Arendt had based her studies on the works of the historian Raul Hilberg who had analysed the behaviour of murderers in order to understand the mass killings of Jews. The documents indeed illustrate that the murderers had not encountered many obstacles. None of the strategies for collective survival, not even those of resistance, had been able to prevent the mass killings. Was this the fault of the Jews? It took twenty million allied soldiers, among them many Jews, to defeat National Socialism. The opposition of many European countries did not play a deciding role. What could the

7

Robinson, 1965, Krummacher, 1964 with contributions by Martin Buber, Golo Mann, Eva Michaelis-Stern, Norman Podhoretz, Eva G. Reichmann, Robert Rie, Jacobs, Robinson, Gershom Scholem, Ernst Simon, Manes Sperber.

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Jews, who did not have the support of an exile government, have achieved against the German Reich? More comprehensive information about the Jewish resistance surfaced in the 1950s (Grossman, 1958; Tenenbaum, 1952). Since the Sixties a plethora of international works have been published on the topic.8 A stream of historiography developed from this line of research, which, rather than trace the “active resistance”, investigated the spiritual and cultural rise as a form of Jewish self-assertion.9 Despite the amount of literature written, the question of why such a low proportion of Jews were part of the opposition still remains unanswered. Two alternatives have been heavily discussed within Judaism and amongst historians after 1945: Jewish autonomy, until the point of surrender, or resistance against hopelessness. Gideon Hausner, the prosecutor of the Eichmann trial, Raul Hilberg and Hannah Arendt agreed that he Jewish Councils followed a dishonourable and treacherous strategy (Arendt, 1964, 158-160). However, while Arendt emphasised in her book that the Zionists had cooperated with the Nazis, the Zionists attributed having overcome Diaspora to the cooperation of the “Jewish Council”. In reality, no clear line can be drawn between strategised cooperation and strategised resistance. The Jewish underground in Poland acknowledged the social authority held by Jewish Councils and in some ghettos (e.g. in Bialystok where the head of the Jewish Council was Efraim Bara) Jewish officials even worked with the opposition. Most Jewish Councils did not conceal the true function of the deportations once it became apparent. Why were cultural initiatives recognised as a form of resistance within the German Reich and occupied areas, while the activities of Jewish officials suspected of being collaborative? Why is it so hard to honour the act of teaching Jewish children, despite it being prohibited? Can running a theatre, despite the order to exterminate all Jewish culture, not be considered a form of resistance? Must the persecuted really justify their attempts to save their own life? They are being accused of associating with the perpetrator, as if this association had been their goal all along, and not that of the murderer. The general opinion of Jewish Councils was eventually revised. Individual scientists, Isaiah Trunk, Leonard Tushnet and Aharon Weiss 8

Such as: Bauer, 1973, Brothers, 1987, Eck, 1967, Eck, 1961, Grubstein, 1971, Gutman, 1971, Kohn, 1971, Kowalski, 1986—1991, Krakowski, 1984, Kroh, 1988, Kwiet, 1979 37-57, Paucker, 1971, 239.–248. And Steinberg, 1974, Strobl, 1989, Strobl, 1998, Suhl, 1968, Tushnet, 1968 9 Adler-Rudel, 1974, Dahm, 1979/80, Freeden, 1987, Freeden, 1964, Simon, 1959, Wassermann, 1989.

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emphasised that the reactions amongst Jewish community members diverged. They also highlighted that the social and charitable organisations led by Jewish officials should be honoured.10 In light of the persecution, isolated, without outside help, the only available option was to interact with the enemy. Escape and eviction were only possible in cooperation with the Nazis. A job in the ghettos was supposed to secure a material existence and later, when faced with elimination, survival. Cooperation began as soon as the Nazi administration became the only available provider. An anarchic reaction without leadership, as suggested by Arendt (Arendt, 1964, 162), was infeasible for the Jews. The Jews were systematically eliminated.11 The Jewish leaders found themselves in the middle of a dilemma. To save the collective they were ready to cooperate. Not because the Jewish Councils were betraying the Jewish community, but because they were among the victims. In order to act in their interests, the Jewish officials had to understand the orders of those in power. They had to think like Nazis for the sake of the Jews. They were preserving the order of their enemies because they hoped that these would, in exchange, stick to their system. They agreed to the lies and promises of the Nazis, seeing this as the only chance to save at least some lives. However, the Nazis had the power to change the rules of the game at any time, and therefore every decision intended to preserve life was at the same time one for death. Religious authorities sanctioned cooperation with the murderers. At any other time when Jews were forced to renounce their faith, the rabbi would have preached death in exchange for a higher honour. But now, it was not about kiddusch ha shem, the “sanctification of the name”, but saving lives and sanctification of life was made the primary objective: Kiddusch hachaim represented the command of the hour. At the same time they made it clear that saving the own life at the cost of another could never be a sanctification of life, but was always betrayal. The opposition in the Warsaw ghetto could not prevent their own murder. They could only influence how they would die. This enabled the fighter to choose the principle of honour in death over the wish to survive. The fight did not guarantee an easy death. When were captured, the SS tortured the fighters to death. The Jewish Council tried to at least win time and save parts of the population.12 All of the Jews’ strategies failed, both 10

Such as: Trunk, 1972 – Tushnet, 1972, Weiß, 1977, 201-217. Robinson: Introduction. Some Basic Issues That Faced the Jewish Councils; in: Trunk, 1972, xxxviii. 12 Compare.: Gutmann, Israel: Jüdischer Widerstand: Eine historische Bewertung; in: Lustiger, 1997, 26.–35. 11

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resistance and cooperation, and could not prevent the elimination. The behaviour of the victims did not change their fate, as this was pre-decided by the policies of National Socialism. The Jewish partisans, in an essentially hopeless battle, turned to posterity. They did not believe they would defeat the Third Reich, but they wanted at least to be remembered. They turned to the survivors, spoke of future Jewish generations. And they demanded that the crime be punished. In the Warsaw ghetto Emanuel Ringelblum worked on an underground archive of the ghetto, for future generations. With the help of these documents, reports were written for the Polish opposition and the Polish government in exile in London. The goal was to retain the memories in order to revolt against the extermination of the Jewish existence. Alone the work in the archives was a form of resistance, which, if found out, would have led to a death sentence. On the 7th of March 1944, Emanuel Ringelblum, his wife and son were found in their hiding place and shot a few days later. The archive was saved. Not only was writing and archiving part of the resistance, but also the most important pieces on the topic were written by former opposition fighters after the war, such as by Israel Gutman, Yitzhak Arad, Schmuel Krakowski or Reuben Ainsztein (Schüler-Springorum, 1995, 546). The Jewish opposition to the elimination has always been a desire to be part of memory, and the Jewish memory is still a part of the opposition against the elimination. The aim of the holocaust was to anonymise the victims, rob them of their dignity, before and after death. Nothing was supposed to remain of the countless people that were killed or expelled. Promoting disremembrance, denying the murder victims, means eliminating the Jews a second time. That is why the survivors work hard to retain the memories. Whoever wants to disremember the suffering of the persecuted, becomes an accomplice of the crime ex post. This view leads us back to the general topic of resistance, because it was not only the Jewish opposition that appealed to the posterity. The connection between resistance and remembering can be observed throughout. Resistance fights against the power and for remembrance.

The Moral Limits of Resistance It is almost a law of nature, a basic physical property, that from its onset every force contains in itself its specific kind of resistance. Since 1945 the definition of “resistance” has been dominated by the struggle against crimes during times of totalitarianism; however the tradition of disobedience and rebellion is much older and can be traced back to the

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ancient world. The debates about the right to revolt did not start with National Socialism nor did they end with its fall. It is debatable whether much that goes by the name can really be called resistance. Since the term “resistance” has become a title of honour, many have misused it to gain some of its glory. Neo-Nazis call themselves the “national resistance”, as the National Socialists did during their battle against the Weimar Republic; however since then it is rather the antiFascists that are usually seen as fighters of resistance. More research must be conducted to investigate the factors which promoted the “Nazi resistance”. However, the choice of words is a political decision. The term “resistance”, as used within an anti-Nazi consensus, assumes the belief in an order that is superior to the law, independently of whether this order is divine or human. This kind of “resistance” derives its force from this superior order, while National Socialism was based on the law of might. This is not a human right, but a folkish-nationalist right. Human rights were generally derided, the right of the might on the other hand idolised. National Socialism was based on the primacy of the ethnic community and ignored the individual. From the beginning, it concentrated its force against civilians and utilised terroristic means against the uninvolved. The past century has witnessed the rise of two very different strategies of resistance, namely civil disobedience and modern terrorism. Neither form has developed their greatest force in contexts of totalitarianism. Instead, both practices, as different as they may be, want to occupy our minds, rather than a physical space. They operate within civil society. Civil disobedience and terrorism, Greenpeace or Al Quaida, can nowadays operate internationally.

Civil Disobedience Henry David Thoreau spoke of civil disobedience in the 19th century. Thoreau did not approve of the American war against Mexico and objected to slavery. He refused to pay taxes. In 1849, in his book Civil Disobedience, which was first published under the name Resistance to Government, he wrote: “If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth — certainly the machine will wear out.” (Thoreau, 2004, 42.-43). Thoreau lived in a constitutional democracy, albeit not a democracy for women and slaves. He created nothing less than the bible for modern advocates of civil disobedience, although he was too individualistic to start a movement himself. He inspired the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin

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Luther King Jr. “Civil disobedience” represents a conscious breach of a law, without using or threatening violent measures. Countless movements are based on its principles: the US Human Rights Movement, the Indian Independence movement, The “Madres de Plaza de Mayo” in Argentina, the Israeli group “Yesh Gvul” that refused military service in occupied areas, or the global “Occupy Now” movement. Civil resistance can only evolve in a civil society which remains outside the mechanisms of state control. In 1938, Mahatma Gandhi advised German Jews to employ non-violent disobedience. In A Letter to Gandhi, Martin Buber tried to explain the position of the persecuted in Germany (Buber, 1939). Of what benefit would the term “civil disobedience” have been in the ghetto of Warsaw? Or for those in the Auschwitz concentration camp? Would widespread non-Jewish civil disobedience have defeated National Socialism? The question itself rests on a false assumption as National Socialism gained dominance by brutally destroying civil society. Non-violent resistance had to operate in secrecy. It was nearly impossible to appeal to the public. Civil disobedience requires a certain level of independent media. The effectiveness of civil disobedience depends on the context. Thus, Martin Luther King called for public disobedience of the laws of segregation after a thorough analysis of the American state of affairs and opportunities; his chosen political strategy was civil disobedience. (King, 1969) He was not a complete pacifist, but within a democratic environment he chose non-violence. In Thoreau’s times, soldiers were still glorified. And later, at the beginning of the First World War, soldiers moved to the front line with drums beating and flags flying. But the times of heroism are over in the so-called Western countries (although these include Japan and Australia). Nowadays, when justifying a war in modern democracies, no one mentions how sweet it is to die for the Fatherland. On memorial days, representatives of the state demand civil courage, and the same quality is preached by the church. Resistance has become a virtue, just as obedience used to be. “When justice becomes un- justice, disobedience becomes a duty”, is an aphorism that is usually attributed to Berthold Brecht, and sometimes Hanna Arendt; although it did not owe its popularity to its author but to the social movements for which it became the leading principle. Radical Chic has become a fashion. Coquetry with revolutionists, such as Lenin, Che Guevara or Angela Davies is more than a form of jest. Anyone who wears a red star, is unlikely to be practicing revolution, but instead is playing a dangerous game with the memories of revolution. The

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magic that comes from the revolt derives from different origins. The battle against evil captures us, not only because heroes come off well against tyrants, but also because monstrosity possesses a special kind of attraction. The portrayal of the absolute dictatorship is appealing. In his groundbreaking essay “Tod und Kitsch. Die Widerspiegelung des Nationalsozialismus” (Reflections of Nazism: an essay of Kitsch and death), Saul Friedlaender describes how traces of Nazi propaganda can still be found in modern, seemingly critical depictions (Friedländer, 1984).

Partisan and Terrorist The expert in constitutional law and philosopher, Carl Schmitt wrote in 1963 about a certain manifestation of resistance: the partisan. During times of National Socialism, Schmitt, an opponent of liberal democracy, had compromised himself by supporting Adolph Hitler. After writing that the Fuhrer’s will is the law in 1933 and a year later the text “Der Fuehrer schuetzt das Recht” (The Fuhrer defends the law) (Schmitt, 1934, 945950), he published his book “Theorie des Partisanen. Zwischenbemerkungen zum Begriff des Politischen“ (Theory of the Partisan) in 1963 (Schmitt, 2006). In his essay, Schmitt first recited the emergence of the guerrillas during the Napoleonic wars in Spain, mentioned the wars of liberation against Bonaparte, covered Andreas Hofer and dwelled on the French origin of the term “partisan”. Furthermore he argued that while regular war is controllable, well fostered and regulated, partisans are not bound by any laws of war. Partisans are characterised by four attributes, namely irregularity, a high level of mobility as well as intensity of political engagement, and their terrene character (by which Schmitt meant locationbound). Partisans who do not wear uniforms, who consciously blur the boundary between fighters and civilians, who remain affected by their terrene nature, are above all defensive. Partisans can be mobile, because, as opposed to the stationary army, they can operate quickly and unexpectedly, but also draw back in a similarly swift manner. Schmitt remains quiet about the preconditions of the partisan war. He only cautions that a war against partisans cannot be waged like a war between regular armies. The battle against partisans requires a total war. About Hitler’s Wehrmacht he writes: “The supreme command of the German Wehrmacht dispensed general rules for the battle against partisans on the 6th of May 1944. Thus, in the end the German army recognised the true nature of the partisan.” (Schmitt, 2006, 43) Schmitt is referring here to the German army, whose supreme command had announced the Barbarossa decree in May 1941, and who

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had planned to no longer assess hostile civilians by means of a due process of law; rather, any fugitives were to be shot immediately and other suspects at the behest of an official. Places suspected to be partisan support bases were punished collectively, by burning, murdering or deporting the inhabitants. The war against partisans represented the approval for a war of extermination. The infamous Commissar Order by the supreme command of the Wehrmacht followed in June of 1941. Thousands of people were murdered or forced into heavy labour. Schmitt stays silent about this. He writes as if the defence of civilians represented the true crime. Schmitt wrote the text against the background of the Cold War. According to him, partisans, who had previously fought in a purely defensive manner, now lost their terrene character, post Mao and Che Guevara. They became aggressive, global revolutionists. Schmitt saw guerrillas, who formed against barbarian dictators in South America, as nothing but tools for the Eastern superpowers. However, Schmitt recognised that new forms of combat were developing that did not abide by the traditional rules of war. He argued that terrorism is indeed more than a tool of superpowers, a fact that has become glaringly obvious in the past decade. The aim of terrorism is not always a global concern. Irish, Basque, Palestinian, Tamil or Chechen groups have utilised terrorist methods to pursue national, territorial goals. Of course, many forms of resistance were enmeshed in intelligence services. It can be difficult to entangle where resistance stops and authority starts. Governmental authorities like claiming to represent nothing but resistance against foreign injustice and evil. From the beginning, Stalinism took on the role of the opposition against capitalism. Unlike during National Socialism, those who were different were not considered sworn enemies. In Stalinist times, the deviator, the counter-revolutionist, the Trotskyite, the “social Fascist” became the true antagonist. Those who confronted the Totalitarian system with their own ideals and visions had to be eliminated. Civil resistance is strongest where a pluralistic public exists. However, the same environment also gives rise to the kind of modern terrorism that no longer emphasises tyrannicide (as for example Russian anarchists do) but the murder of civilians. Terrorism is like bad breath: it tends to be recognised only on others. Those who kill children, attack the Red Cross or civil establishments call themselves resistance fighters or martyrs. Nobody wants to be a terrorist, thus it is not a coincidence that certain media label suicide attacks in Iraq as acts of resistance. How do I address somebody who is taking me

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hostage? Simple: “Dear Sir”. And what do we call a person who achieves his goals by killing children and terrifying the society? We call him a freedom fighter. What else? Since the term “terrorism” has political connotations, it is often thought of as a purely ideological fighting word. Authorities talk about terrorists in order to dismiss the opposition as criminals that cannot be negotiated with. For these reasons some might assume that terrorism is nothing but a swear word. Whether someone is a terrorist does not depend on the legitimacy of his goal. The term describes a strategy.13 Terrorism as a method is aimed at the civil society, attacks mainly non-combatants and the innocent in order to spread fear and create a climate that is beneficial to its goals (Annan, 2005). Modern terrorism focuses on the psychological consequences of its attacks. The attack is meant to terrify the entire public. The real crime scene is the media, the civilians are eye witnesses and victims at the same time. By seeing what is happening, we cause it to happen. More important than a remote detonator that triggers explosions are the broadcasting stations that spread the news of the massacre. In a narrower sense, terrorism can be seen as a strategy of asymmetrical conflict. (Münkler, 2003). Guerrillas and partisans hide amongst civilians, but terrorism is directed against civil society. The guerrilla tactic or practice of the partisans is to surprise a superior enemy and exploit his military weaknesses. Terrorism wants to dominate thoughts (Wördemann, 1977). The killing of the uninvolved is not just accepted, but aimed for. Attributed to Peter Ustinov are the words: “Terror is the war of the poor - And war is the terror of the rich.” Nothing about this statement is correct. There are other armed strategies used by the powerless. It was not poverty that drove Osama bin Laden into terrorism. Furthermore, the bombs on the markets of Baghdad did not hit the wealthy. We rightfully condemn generals when they order the murder of the innocent. Why should the leader of rebels (oftentimes supported financially by the government) own a charter for barbarism? The violence of terrorist organisations is often justified by a reference to “state terrorism”. This ignores the fact that massacres led by the state are explicitly branded as a war crime by international law. Terrorism is a crime. Winning the war against terrorism, against a military method, is impossible by definition. This makes ostracising terrorism all the more important. 13

Compare for example: Primoratz, 2007

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Conclusion Unlike “disobedience”, “resistance” against a regime attributes the act of transgression to the authority. As opposed to a revolution, the main theme of resistance against authority is not utopia, but a return to a higher order that is superior to the law. It breaks the law to serve justice. The term “resistance” is not new and has been used by theorists and political forces for several centuries. It existed before the Second World War and the socalled Third Reich. Resistance: the term appears when matter withstands a force. Unlike “uprising” and “revolt”, “resistance” expresses a defensive position that is resisting an intervention. Resistance is not an invention of modern history but can be traced back till antiques times. But a discussion of resistance must not omit the history of National Socialism. In other places, such as in India or in Algeria, the term may evoke anti-colonialist movements; within Europe, however, the word is primarily associated with the struggle against the Fascist regime, and adjectives such as “heroic” or “courageous” come to mind. There has never been a single prototype of resistance; it can occur in various forms. The term’s definition depends on the political and, more importantly, the historical context. If a regime aims to murder a whole people, even cooperation can become a form of resistance. The Jewish opposition to the Nazi elimination has also been a desire to be part of memory, and the Jewish memory is still a part of the opposition against the elimination. The connection between resistance and remembering can be observed throughout. Resistance fights against the power and for remembrance. Resistance cannot ignore the question of proportionality of its means. Means that are appropriate when fighting a dictatorship are not appropriate within a democracy. Resistance must not cause more harm than the evil it resists. Civil disobedience focuses on broadening individual freedoms. It is not expedited by fear, but by courage. It does not kill civil society, but revives it. “Resistance” defends the freedom of the individual, even within a democracy; for example by helping people that are victims of the infringement of the executive. There are thousands of examples of civil resistance full of guile and passion, forms of protest that propagate disobedience. The art of resistance is for example portrayed by the history of Viennese actionism. The violation of the law becomes part of the orchestration. There can be no end of the right to resist, but also no licence for resistance fighters. Every society bears different challenges that have to be counteracted and met with composure. Resistance is a constant, but just as

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eternal is the quarrel about resistance, as the choice of words is part of the struggle.

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wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (IWK); Berlin, Volume 4/95 Simon, E (1959) Aufbau im Untergang. Jüdische Erwachsenenbildung im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland als geistiger Widerstand, Tübingen Sophocles (442 B.C.E) Antigone Translated by R. C. Jebb, http://classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/antigone.html Stadler, K R (1966) Österreich 1938 – 1945 im Spiegel der NS–Akten, Vienna Steinbach, P (1987) “Einführung.” in: Widerstand. Ein Problem zwischen Theorie und Geschichte edited by Peter Steinbach, Cologne Steinberg, L (1974) Not As A Lamb. The Jews Against Hitler, Farnborough Stoltzfus, N (2002) Widerstand des Herzens : der Aufstand der Berliner Frauen in der Rosenstraße – 1943, Munich Strobl, I (1998) Die Angst kam erst danach. Jüdische Frauen im Widerstand 1939–1945, Frankfort/M —. (1989) Sag nie du gehst den letzten Weg. Frauen im bewaffneten Widerstand gegen Faschismus und deutsche Besetzung, Frankfort/M Süddeutsche Zeitung, 10. 11. 2003 Suhl, Y (1968) They Fought Back. The Story of the Jewish Resistance, London Tenenbaum, J (1952) Underground. The Story of a People, New York Thoreau, H D (2004) Über die Pflicht zum Ungehorsam gegen den Staat, Zurich Trunk, I (1972) Judenrat. The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe Under Nazi Occupation, New York Tushnet, L (1972) The pavement of hell. Three Leaders of the „Judenrat“, New York —. (1965) To die with honor, New York Vinocur, Jack (Ed.) (1968) The Jewish Resistance, London Wassermann, H (1989) Bibliographie des jüdischen Schrifttums in Deutschland. 1933–1943, Munich Weiß, A (1977) The Relations Between the Judenrat and the Jewish Police; in: Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe 1933–1945. Proceedings of the Third Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, Jerusalem Wördemann, F (1977) Terrorismus. Motive, Täter, Strategien, Munich

CHAPTER ELEVEN RESISTANCE AGAINST EXPERIMENTS: POSITIONING AND RATIONALITY IN MEDICINE UFFE JUUL JENSEN

In recent years there has been a growing resistance to medical experimentation, in particular resistance to participating in controlled clinical trials. This resistance is a part of a general challenge to the cultural hegemony of medicine that–in various forms–has endured for more than 2000 years. Some have interpreted the challenge to the cultural hegemony of medicine as a form of humanistic resistance to paternalistic medicine and medicine’s reduction of the human being to an object of control and manipulation. The challenge and resistance to medical hegemony and paternalism doesn’t, however, only come from groups or individuals outside of medicine. Physicians themselves have played an important role in criticizing and resisting the way medicine has used its power in treating patients and in medical research. Jay Katz, a physician, and from 1953 and for four decades, an important voice in American medicine, is an example of one who produced critique and resistance from within the profession. Already in 1972 Katz published a book on Experimentation with Human Beings. He was a member of a federal inquiry examining medical experiments on hundreds of black male persons in Alabama (the Tuskegee experiment to be dealt with later in this article) but resisted the group’s conclusion that the experiment had been “ethically unjustified.” Katz wanted a much stronger conclusion: that the subjects had been “exploited, manipulated and deceived” (Katz 2008). In an influential book: The Silent World of Doctor and Patient (Katz 2002 (1984)) Katz provocatively claims that “patients’ participation in decision making is an idea alien to the ethos of medicine” (Katz 2002 (1984) xliii). Katz also says that “if ‘interest in humanity’ is an essential professional quality, and if it

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defines, as I believe it does, the art of medicine, it must be taught and learned as thoroughly as medicine’s science is now taught and learned” (Katz 2002(1984)) xlvii).

It’s made clear in the book that “interest in humanity” for Katz includes patients’ participation in treatment. So, in claiming that patients’ participation is alien to the ethos of medicine he was making a plea for a new medical ethos. He spent most of his professional life trying to promote such a new medical ethos: an ethos articulating the idea of participation as crucial to humanity and “interest in humanity.” Katz’ intervention and resistance to paternalistic medicine illustrates what seems to be a recurring feature in the history of medicine: the fact that individuals and groups within medicine have played an important role in resisting dominant ways of positioning patients including positioning patients as research subjects. Davies and Harré point out that “Once having taken up a particular position as one’s own, a person inevitably sees the world from the vantage point of that position and in terms of the particular images, metaphors, storylines and concepts which are made relevant within the particular discursive practice in which they are positioned” (Davies and Harré 1990: 46).

Throughout its history medicine has provided ontological images, metaphors and conceptualizations of disease, illness and patients, which have positioned actual patients in various ways. Three central positionings will be dealt with in this article: (1) the patient as an individual each with his or her particular bodily constitution and individual standard for attaining balance or suffering diseases (the classical Hippocratic tradition); (2) the patient as a case or instance of a general type (disease entity) (The disease-centred clinic from the end of the 18th century onwards), and (3) the patient as a self-reflective, responsible subject. This framework for understanding medicine from a historical perspective raises at least two important questions. Firstly: how did medicinal practices get their power to position people? How did medicine acquire its cultural hegemony? Secondly: why has medical hegemony been challenged in radical ways during the last 30-40 years and why has experimentation, crucial to contemporary medical progress, been resisted in a period when medicine has achieved more success in treating disease than ever before in its history? To answer the first question I’ll interpret medicine as an ongoing resistance to powers of nature that cause disease and spread death. But how then to explain a growing resistance to experimentation in an age with



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unprecedented medical progress? Lack of information or knowledge may play a role in resistance to scientific and technological practices and research related to such practices. However, I’ll question the claim ignorance should be regarded as a major cause of resistance to experimentation. I’ll show how resistance has played a role also within medicine and come from physicians who know the medical technicalities, and I’ll argue that resistance to particular modes of experimentation is a part of a struggle between different medical practices embodying different positioning practices, implying different ontological images and canons of rationality. I’ll especially focus upon disease-centred medicine’s positioning of patients as cases or instances of disease-entities. I’ll try to show how the positioning embodied in that practice made medicine immune to resistance to experimental activities which from our standpoint today seem cruel, inhumane and unethical. By illustrating how resistance to controlled trials arose within medicine I’ll show the fruitfulness of the positioning approach sketched above. I’ll return to a famous controversy about how to treat patients with diabetes and the role of controlled trials in the controversy. The controversy cannot, it appears, be reduced to a struggle for authority between two groups: clinicians and statisticians. It’s a struggle about positioning patients as instances of disease entities or as subjects with their own individual courses of illness, and their own personal experiences. These two conflicting positionings and their different ontologies imply different canons of medical rationality. Finally I’ll try to answer the following questions: How powerful are epistemologically and ontologically based analyses that position patients as active, participating subjects? In what way do such positionings relate to or strengthen resistance-in-practice against methodologies, discourses and practices positioning patients’ as passive research subjects? I’ll look for signs of a new Ethos of medicine and clinical research.

Medicine as Resistance Throughout the history of Western civilization medicine has played a unique cultural role. Measured by our present yardsticks (effective cure and prolongation of life) medicine has done badly until recently. So, how could physicians maintain power and authority for so long showing only limited success in resisting diseases, plagues and death? Perhaps the reason was exactly that they were resistance fighters against all odds. Seneca asked: “What is man?” and answered without hesitation:



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“A weak and frail body, naked, according to his own nature defenseless, in need of outside assistance…. being unable to stand up to any climate and becomes ill by changes in drinking water, with a puff of air to which it is not accustomed, and altogether by the faintest occasion and offence frail and ailing as it is, that being who has opened his life weeping” (Seneca 1977: 129-66).

Man, superior to beasts but in managing disease and afflictions their inferior. Sixteen hundred years after Seneca, John Donne pursued the Stoic insight. Reflecting on his own illness, he went further than Seneca in characterizing our weakness. “Mean creatures” are physicians to themselves he pointed out. “The dog knowes ..his grass that recovers him … man has not that innate instinct, to apply these natural medicines to his present danger, as those inferior creatures have” (Donne 2001: 426). We are not only bad in adapting to changes in our environment. We produce our selves: “diseases, and sicknesses, of all those sorts; venimous, and infectious diseases, feeding and consuming diseases, and manifold and entangled diseases, made up of many several ones . . . O beggarly riches! how much doe we lack of having remedies for everie disease, when as yet we have no names for them ?” (Donne 2001: 425)

As humans we lack natural powers to heal ourselves. Our natural resistance to maladies is in any case limited. We need assistance in resisting disease and Donne comforts us: “But we have a Hercules against these Gyants, these Monsters; that is, the Phisician; he musters up all the forces of the other world, to succour this; all Nature to relieve Man” (Donne 2001: 425). Donne ascribes superhuman powers to physicians as resistance fighters against diseases. The physician gets this power by making alliances with nature, by supporting nature’s own power in fighting the constant threat of maladies. Physicians themselves, however, have in general been more modest is assessing their own power. Their god was Aesculapius, the Greek God of healing. Aesculapian powers are embodied in practical skills and are powers transferred from peers to newcomers by training of skills and sharing of experiences; they are embodied in “the healer’s possession of the knowledge of a body of obscure and complex facts and theories, a variety of practical skills for manipulating instruments and body parts, and experience in the application of this knowledge and skill in a range of practical settings” (Brody 1992:16).



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So, medicine is an exercise of skills and judgments that lay people or people who haven’t been trained in special ways characterizing medicine don’t possess, perhaps even cannot comprehend and cannot assess. According to the received view medical power was embodied in capabilities and knowledge acquired through experience and training; and experience and training had to be governed by physicians themselves. This traditional idea lived on during the Enlightenment. According to Kant there is nothing mystical about medical power. It’s a rational practice that deserves patients’ and the government’s trust. In one of his later works The conflict of the faculties Kant discusses the role of medicine as a profession and a science. As with law and theology, medicine belongs to the higher faculties. These are the faculties the government can use to achieve its own ends of influencing people: “first comes the eternal well-being of each, then the civil well-being as a member of society, and finally his physical well-being (a long life and health)” (Kant 1979: 31). Kant had a very realistic view of the role and the authority of the higher faculties, including medicine. The physician practices in accordance with reason, but he has to respect the commands of an external legislator. Since the physicians deal with people’s health this must be of great interest to the government. So, the government is entitled to supervise physicians’ practice through a Board of Health. This board should, according to Kant be composed of practicing doctors. The medical faculty is and should, Kant claimed, be freer than those of theology or law (e.g. be free with regard to determining the content of the teaching of doctors). According to Kant there are very good reasons for allowing medicine this special status within the state. Though medicine is an art, it is an art that is drawn directly from nature and must therefore be derived from a science of nature (Kant 1979: 41). Medical power embodied in skills, judgment, experimental practices and theories gives the physician an extraordinary power in relation to patients and society in general. Since Antiquity this power has legitimated medical paternalism. But in Kant’s account medical power is not only based upon scientific knowledge and rational principles. Physicians are powerful also because patients ascribe magical powers to physicians. People approach physicians as if they were soothsayers and magicians. As patients we easily forget the precepts of reason: to be moderate in our pleasures, patient in our illnesses and rely primarily on the self-help of nature (Kant 1979: 51). Kant’s gives an acute account of what might be called the cultural hegemony of medicine. According to Antonio Gramsci cultural hegemony



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is a way of characterizing the way the ruling class dominates understandings and values in a society (Gramsci 1971). The worldview of the ruling class is however not just imposed upon other classes and modes of life but is accepted by them. When talking about the cultural hegemony of medicine I’m not using hegemony in a straightforward Gramscian sense. Physicians are not a ruling class in a Marxian sense and medicine’s understanding of disease, health and cure isn’t a world-view or ideology in a Marxian sense. I talk of the cultural hegemony of medicine in an analogous way when highlighting the dialectics between medicine’s power and authority in managing disease and health in society and the recognition of that power and authority by civil society (patients and citizens in general) and the state. According to Kant, patients are not just accepting and recognizing medicine’s power but contribute to empowering the profession and strengthening its authority by ascribing ‘magical’ powers to physicians. The cultural hegemony of medicine was strengthened in the 20th century in particular from the 1930s to the 1960s. The role of medicine for society and for the state ascribed to medicine by Kant was confirmed in analyses of the medical profession in the 20th century. The profession’s importance not only for the well-being of the individual but for society at large was stressed (Freidson.1994: 200). The doctor’s knowledge and skill gives him–Parsons claimed at the dawn of the most optimistic periods in the history of medicine–adequate tools for the accomplishment of his end: responsibility for the patient in the sense of facilitating his recovery from illness and making him capable to return to his normal social role (Parsons 1951: 447). Remarkable advances had, Parsons stressed, significantly narrowed the range of cases of uncertain diagnoses and interventions. Parsons didn’t however see any immediate scientific way out of the common frustrations of physicians and their patients: “The exact relation of the known to the unknown elements cannot be determined; the unknown may operate at any time to invalidate expectations built up on the analysis of the known” (Parsons 1951: 449). Soon after Parsons expressed this hesitation a new kind of experimentation, the controlled clinical trial, spread in medicine and was assumed to fill the knowledge gap referred to by Parsons. Accounts of medical power in the 20th century have been criticized for ignoring the profession’s power to manipulate and control patients or clients, to control markets by having a monopolistic privilege and so securing the self-interest of the professionals rather that the interest of the patient or society (Turner 1987: 132-133). Over the last 30-40 years these aspects of medical power have, however, been highlighted by social



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scientists, bioethicists and others, and the cultural hegemony of medicine has also been challenged in practice.

Growing Resistance to Experiments Various kinds of resistance against medical power, paternalism and the cultural hegemony of medicine have developed. Patients or patient networks have been criticizing physicians and modes of treatment. There has been a growing demand for influence on and participation in treatment. Patient-rights including informed consent have been sanctioned by regulations or by law. Politicians and administrators extend the regulation of health care practice and so limit the profession’s traditional power. All this doesn’t imply that the power of medicine has evaporated. Power takes many forms. Medical power is not only exerted in diagnosing or treating patients but also in medical experimentation. In our culture, physicians have made experiments since Antiquity. Controlled clinical trials have become the dominant kind of medical experimentation and a huge number of patients have been enrolled in clinical experiments during the last 50 years. The first published paper on randomly controlled clinical trials (RCT) appeared in 1948 entitled "Streptomycin treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis" which described a Medical Research Council investigation. One of the authors was Austin Bradford Hill who is usually credited as having conceived the modern RCT. The Evidence-based Medicine movement developed however as late as the 1990s, inspired by Archie Cochrane’s book Effectiveness and Efficiency (Cochrane 1972). The importance and clinical utility of experimental methods and of RCT trials in particular now became manifest. As stressed by Roy Porter “the prominence of medicine has lain only in small measure in its ability to make the sick well” (Porter 1997: 6). In any case, until the introduction of controlled clinical trials medicine was only rarely able to demonstrate efficacy in treating diseases. But the rise and spread of controlled trials, evidence-based medicine and as a consequence more effective treatment, has not stemmed the resistance to medical power. On the contrary, with RCT one of the preconditions for more efficient treatment has itself become a target for resistance against medical power as it emerges in new contexts. Today a growing part of clinical research in the world is industry sponsored. By 2000 more than 60 percent of clinical research was funded by industry. In 1980 it was only 32 percent. Experiments are conducted on a global scale. One company, Across-the Globe-Research (ACR) began



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business in the mid-1990s. According to anthropologist Adriana Petryna ACR has expanded ever since and in 2009 had around a dozen affiliated research sites in the United States, Eastern Europe and Eurasia (Petryna 2009: 3) Adriana Petryna quotes a company scientist who coordinates clinical trials in Eastern Europe. In his view “public distrust of the clinical trials process is rampant in the United States and in Western Europe.” According to Petryna this expert knows “that landscapes of experimentation evolve in a kind of give-and-take where people with unmet medical needs are willing to say yes to the movement of global capital and scientific and medical commodities” (Petryna 2999: 10). Petryna’s work illustrates an interesting dialectics of resistance. A growing resistance to participating in controlled trials in United States and Western Europe has made other parts of the world attractive sites for experimental research. Outside Western Europe there is less resistance among potential research subjects and less resistance from governmental and regulatory bodies. Resistance to outsourcing experiments is, however, mobilized in the western countries. Why did resistance to RCT trials spread in that part of the world, Western Europe and the United States? It’s sometimes suggested that noncompliance to experts’ proposals and requests is just a result of ignorance or fear or a result of a combination of these. Lorna Speid, a medical doctor who has worked for the international pharmaceutical industry since the 1980s seems to take that stance. In her book (Speid 2010: 4) she admits being able to imagine that most people feel intimidated by the process of clinical trials especially if they also are dealing with chronic or serious illness. One of her reasons for writing the book “was to empower the patients and healthy volunteers, otherwise known as research subjects, who participate in clinical trials.” She recognises that research subjects must take responsibility for their own safety during participation in trials, but, as she says “knowledge empowers” (ibid). Speid’s book is illuminating and probably helpful to many patients and healthy volunteers, and probably also to many professionals. But it is not likely in practice that patients’ resistance to participating in clinical trials is a result only or primarily of an information-gap. Speid perhaps gives a clue to understanding the apparent paradox mentioned above. She talks about “patients and healthy volunteers, otherwise known as research subjects.” But those who participate in clinical trials are not just “known” as research subjects. They are positioned as research subjects in controlled experiments. Positioned as a research subject the patient or volunteer has particular rights and duties.



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It’s, however, implied by Speid’s account as referred to above that patients are not positioned to take responsibility for their safety during participation in trials. If they were she might contribute to reduce or limit patients’ resistance to experiments by empowering them as participating subjects taking care of their own safety. I will try to show that resistance to experiments in medicine must be understood in connection with the way patients are positioned as research subjects. Resistance to controlled clinical trials cannot be accounted for as just a result of lack of information or knowledge, neither just as a consequence of patients’ being irresponsible, expecting or demanding care or treatment but being unwilling to recompense by taking part in experiments. Lack of information and self-centeredness may play a role in growing resistance to experiments. But it is not only patients who are resisting experiments. Throughout the history of western medicine individual physicians or groups of physicians have been critical to or resisted experiments. To understand why medical experiments have been contested it is necessary to make medicine as a complex practice the unit of analysis. By focussing on medicine as a complex practice it will be possible to illuminate the role of positioning in the emergence of resistance.

Positioning and Resistance in the Individual-Centred Clinic In the traditional Hippocratic clinic diseases were conceived of as individual. Disease was a result of imbalance between the four bodily humours. A rational clinician had to develop capabilities to assess an imbalance in a particular patient. There is no general standard for harmony between the humours but a specific standard for each body. For the Hippocratic doctor there were no general characteristics of diseases. In Hippocratic practice the patient was positioned as an individual. (Kollesch 1976: 272). When positioned as individuals patients cannot be treated on a par with objects. But as medical experiments may kill the individual being experimented upon, experiments were contested in classical individualoriented medicine. Galen, whose approach and thinking dominated western medicine for more than a thousand years pointed out as early as the 2nd century A.D. that “No one fails to realize that testing is dangerous, because of the subject upon which one exercises the (medical) art. In effect, unlike in other arts,



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where one can experiment without risk, the materials of medicine are not hides, locks or bricks; it experiments instead on the human body, upon which there is a certain risk involved in trying the untested; especially because the experiment may lead to the loss of an entire living human being.” (Galen (quoted in Grmek 1998:130))

Galen also pointed out that interpretation is especially difficult in medicine. The precise cause of the effect obtained cannot be isolated with certainty. In the 15th Century Ugo Benzi pursued the Galenian insight insisting that the human body is subject to continuous variations caused by external and internal factors. In the 14th and 15th centuries it became a widespread view that there is no application for experimental procedures outside anatomical and pharmacological testing. (Grmek 1998: 221-23). Even in the 18th Century there was within biology and medicine resistance against experimentation. The so-called Montpellier vitalists thought of life as resisting the experimenter. To understand life the experimenter would have to avoid radically intervening in the organism (Wolfe 2012). In medicine canons of rationality and positioning practices are interrelated. In the classical clinic originating from the Hippocratic tradition clinical reasoning consists in assessing and interpreting imbalances in the body of a particular patient positioned as an individual. By the rise of the modern clinic and disease-oriented medicine in the 18th and 19th century a reconfiguration of clinical rationality and positioning developed (Jensen 1987).

Positioning in the Modern Clinic During the Enlightenment medicine was linked to the scientific revolution. Medicine claiming to build a science of man acquired a special cultural status as embodying the unifying spirit of science and the hope of progress. Pioneers of the scientific revolution saw themselves as physicians to a sick civilization (Gay 1969: 13). According to Gay: “By the time of Locke, Bacon’s and Descartes’s ambitious claim–a brave hope disguised as a firm prediction–found echoes among practising scientists. Medicine, it seemed, was transforming itself from a medieval mystery, from furtive ally of alchemy and astrology, into a thoroughly philosophical science, and this association of the new philosophy with the art of healing proved to the thinkers of the day the strength of both.” (Gay 1969: 13).

John Locke, himself a medical doctor, praised his friend Thomas Sydenham for fighting against speculation and devoting himself to “industrious investigation of the history of diseases, and the effects of



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remedies, as shown by the only teacher, experience” (Cranston 1957: 92). The ideals of a scientific medicine were, however, only slowly realized. Gay reminds that “in the 18th century a sick man who did not consult a physician had a better chance of surviving than one who did” (Gay 1969: 19). The French Revolution and its aftermath changed the social, cultural and scientific conditions for medicine in France. Clinical Practice at the Paris Hospitals set new standards for scientific medicine far beyond the borders of France (Foucault 1990). In Roy Porter’s words: “the revolutionary doctors put bodies before books, prizing the hands-on experience gained through indefatigable examination of the diseased, and later of their cadavers” (Porter 1997: 306). Careful examination of symptoms and their course as advocated by Sydenham wasn’t enough to develop a scientific medicine. Bichat recognized that observation was insufficient. In his Anatomie Générale (1801) he wrote: “You may take notes for twenty years from morning to night at the bedside of the sick and all will be to you only a confusion of symptoms” (quoted in Porter 1997: 308). Symptoms had to be correlated with lesions found in the body post mortem. The transition from classical clinical practice (Hippocratic) to a science- or disease-oriented clinic illustrates the interrelatedness of canons of rationality and positioning, of epistemological and ethical dimensions, as stressed by Nikolas Rose not confined to the territory of illness: “Clinical experience and the anatomo-clinical method have a decisive epiststemo-ethical significance, in constituting ‘man’ as an object of knowledge, in particular as a complex of specifiable processes and attributes that can be diagnosed, calibrated, compared and generalized” (Rose 1994: 68).

This Foucaultian insight, especially the pointing out of the generalizability of the results obtained, marks a difference from the individual-oriented clinic. It was crucial for the emerging scientific medicine and the scientific brand of the new clinic, which developed means for identifying structural causes of symptoms. This became the task for patho-anatomy. Rational practice had to be based upon examinations in the postmortem room. Vast Paris hospitals (such as Salpêtriére), with masses of poor patients, were reservoirs of ‘clinical material’ necessary for the scientific understanding of disease and the construction of systems for classifying disease-entities behind the fluctuating and diverse symptoms appearing at the surface of the patient (Jensen 1987).



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A positive knowledge of corporeal life became possible by integrating death into medical reasoning (Rose 1994: 68). And more than that: knowledge was obtained by integrating deviants and poor people into clinical thinking and research. This positioning of patients as–in general– instances or cases of kinds of diseases was in accordance with postrevolutionary ideas of a common humanity across class-, gender- and ethnic differences. The respect and dignity which vulnerable, weak or suppressed groups lacked as social beings, they might acquire as research subjects. This modern positioning of patients as research subjects may contribute to explaining why experiments on subjects or their mortal remains without their approval was accepted in medicine after World War II and after the recognition of patients’ consent as an important condition for treating them.

Brains Box 11.1: Collecting tissue samples An example illustrates how weak and vulnerable patients were positioned as valuable research subjects in Denmark until the 1980s. 9437 containers with brain slices in a paraformaldehyde solution are stored in a basement under Aarhus University Hospital Risskov. The collection is among the largest of its kind in the world. In the period from 1945 to 1982 around 9500 brains–removed from deceased psychiatric patients–were examined by neuropathologists. All brains were fixed, sliced coronally and specific regions typically frontal lobe, hippocampus, and striatum were sampled and embedded in paraffin. A detailed neuropathological report was generated for each case. The collection contains samples from approximately 5500 subjects with dementia, 1500 with schizophrenia, 300 with depression, 300 with bipolar disorder, and the remainder from a range of more or less rare neurological and psychiatric diseases. Copies of almost all the neuropathological reports have been preserved. Many of the complete patient records are still available from various archives The brains were removed from the deceased patients without the consent of the patients’ families. In 1991 and again in 2006 the Danish Ethical Council discussed ethical and legal questions relating to the collection and its use. The Council concluded that the practice of collecting brains from deceased patients without the consent of the patients’ families had been in accordance with the law and ethical norms that had prevailed in the period when the brains were collected i.e. until the beginning of the 1980s. Today the practice would be illegal and violating basic ethical principles. It has, however, been accepted that the brains can be used for research purposes today. The collection is currently attracting renewed interest as advanced scanning technology makes it possible to examine brain matter at cellular level. (http://www.etiskraad.dk/da-DK/Hoeringssvar/2006/07; http://www.cfpr.dk/research/brain-collection).



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Increase in Experiments, Ethics Forgotten Experiments on mortal remains without consent were ethically and legally justified in Denmark and many other countries until the 1980s; a practice met with tacit acceptance and only sporadic resistance. While experiments by German physicians in the Third Reich, The Nüremberg Trial and the Nüremberg Declaration had, in the aftermath of World War II, already set a completely new agenda for discussions about experiments on living subjects, experiments without the consent of the research subjects were nonetheless carried out widely in the post-war period. After the War there was an enormous increase in medical experimentation in the United States, especially because of massive funding from the National Institute of Health. The period from 1945 -1965 has been characterized as “the Gilded Age of Research” (Rothman 1991: 51). In spite of evidence provided by the Nüremberg trial about “the horrific uses to which medical experiments could be put”, laissez-faire attitudes prevailed (Epstein 2007: 42). Critical reflection and resistance only emerged in the 1960s. In 1963 The British Medical Journal warned against the alarming rate of increase in experiments on human beings (British Medical Journal 1). In 1966 a medical doctor Henry Beecher published a whistle-blowing article in New England Journal of Medicine. He listed twenty-two examples of studies published since World War II. For Beecher the studies were unethical and they were conducted by well-established researchers working at prominent institutions: withholding penicillin from soldiers with streptococcal infection to study ways of preventing complications, inflicting residents of a state institution for retarded people with hepatitis virus, injecting cancer cells into elderly and senile hospital patients without telling them, etc. (Rothman 1991: 16-17; 70-84). Beecher’s contribution and other examples of problematic experimentation are discussed by Epstein (2007: 41-45).



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Box 11.2: The Tuskegee Syphilis Study In 1972 problems of medical experimentation were made public as a reporter from the Associated Press Jean Heller disclosed a U.S. Health Service Study of “Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” (later known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study) (Jones 1981). The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee Alabama to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in poor, rural, black men. The Public Health Service, working with the Tuskegee Institute, began the study in 1932. It involved 600 impoverished, African-American sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama; almost 400 had previously contracted syphilis before the study began, and 200 didn’t have the disease. They all had free medical care, meals, and free burial insurance. The men who had syphilis were not told and never treated. The men were told they were being treated for "bad blood," a local way of characterizing various diseases and ailments including syphilis, anaemia and fatigue. The participants were not offered penicillin despite recognition of penicillin in the 1940s as an effective cure of syphilis. Earlier untreated syphilis had been studied in Norway. The Tuskegee experiment was intended–according to the researchers–to illuminate whether the course of syphilis was similar to or different from its trajectory in whites. The public debate about the Tuskegee and similar experiments developed in the United States during the 1970s, connected with a growing concern for conditions of and treatment of disadvantaged groups. Governmental reforms enacted formal, legal protection of the rights of experimental subjects (Epstein 2007: 44). Governmental reforms were connected with a growing resistance articulated in public debate. As pointed out by Epstein, resistance was not just a result of the horror produced by the disclosure of facts that had been hidden until a journalist wrote about it. Reports from Tuskegee had been published in medical journals since 1936. In 1969 a committee at a Center for Disease Control and Prevention had reviewed the study, which was given permission to continue.

Some resistance to controlled trials was methodological or epistemological. Shulamit Reinharz criticizes controlled trials as an example of quantitative research, a reductionism that plays out “a fantasy of control over the other (the Subject)” (Reinharz 1984: 115). Richard Titmuss’ influential book The Gift Relationship (1997) contains reflections on the importance of institutional structure for conducting clinical trials. He points out how “poor people and those classed as ‘indigents’ are providers of most of the teaching and research material needed to sustain the fabric of medical systems” (Titmuss 1997:287). Titmuss does not resist trials in general, which are among the activities needed to sustain the fabric of medicine,



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but warns against exploitation of vulnerable persons. This warning stems not only from a concern for the vulnerable but also for the institutions and their professionals. There are human costs that cannot be measured in a cost-benefit assessment: “the moral effects on all those who were involved” in experiments such as the Tuskegee Experiment. The practice of experimenting on vulnerable groups implied positioning patients as research subjects without rights to refuse to participate. Titmuss’ point can be reformulated in terms of positioning: experimental practices positioning patients as research subjects at the same time positioned the experimenting physicians as ethically superior to their subjects and so undermined any possible reciprocal relations between physicians and patients. During the 1970s there was a growing concern over violation of patient rights, and a growing understanding of the need to promote efficacious treatment and reduce risks associated with new treatments. Harry M. Marks has provided one of the most detailed accounts of the transformation of modern medicine in his pioneering work The Progress of Experiment. Science and therapeutic reform in the United States, 19001990. Marks focuses on what he labels “therapeutic reformers” i.e. “individuals who sought to use the science of controlled experiments to direct medical practice.” (Marks 1997: 2) The therapeutic reformers constituted, Marks claims, a political community “joined by their belief in the power of science to unite both medical researchers and practitioners despite obvious differences of training and circumstances.” (Marks 1997:3) In the first half of the 20th century reformers still emphasised trust in the judgement of experienced clinicians. In the United States they founded The Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry assessing and weighing the claims manufacturers gave about the effects of specific therapies. After World War II the scientific ethos of medicine was kept alive by rapidly growing laboratory research fuelling the idea of clinical practice as an applied science, and therapy as an application of our growing knowledge of physiological and biochemical mechanisms (Feinstein 1967) The progress in biomedical research led to a flow of new treatments and researchers turned to new devices for treatment evaluation. Trust in trained clinicians’ judgement was no longer considered sufficient. Randomized controlled experiments were introduced “as a means for controlling physicians’ enthusiasm for new treatments.” (Marks 1997:12) According to Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, today “the randomized controlled clinical trial has become the foundation of current clinical knowledge.” (Horton 2003: 362) The controlled trial has become a cornerstone in contemporary evidence-based- medicine. Eventually we



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are, it seems, realizing the Enlightenment ideal of a scientific medical practice based not upon inherited professional authority but on experience tested by rational methods. Why, then, has it become still more difficult to get patients and citizens in the Western world to act as research subjects? Citizens in our part of the world have profited more than people elsewhere from the rise of modern medicine. Ideals of scientific rationality have been–since the Enlightenment–central to our Western culture. So why do enlightened people in the richest part of the world resist contributing to developing knowledge, which is to their own benefit? Why do we witness a growing mistrust of physicians and health care institutions in an age with unprecedented progress in effective treatment? (Horton 2003: 38-43) To resist quick and (probably) superficial answers about growing selfcenteredness or egotism in contemporary society we will dig deeper into the dialectics of resistance and rationality as it is played out in medicine.

Resistance in Diabetes Research and Treatment Diabetes is considered to be one of the most serious and challenging health problems in the 21st century. Type 2 diabetes (late onset diabetes) is now often characterized as an epidemic. Lifestyle changes are being promoted to prevent the spread of the epidemic. At the same time huge resources in time and money are being spent in attempts to develop more efficient therapies. Controlled trials play an important role in diabetes research and in clinical research in general. This is not something new. As early as in the 1970s controlled trials came to play an important role in diabetes research. Diabetes therapy became a framework for one of the most wearying but also exciting struggles in the history of clinical trials. Treating diabetes with insulin has various side-effects. There were, therefore, great hopes for the use of tolbutamide, an orally administered drug, when it was introduced in the Unites States in 1956. Soon tolbutamide was widely used. Researchers were especially interested in the assumption that patients using tolbutamide might develop fewer cardiovascular complications than patients treated by other means (Butterfield et. al 1967).



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Box 11.3: Talbutamide and Diabetes In the 1960s Tolbutamide was tested in a large trial (The University Group Diabetes Program Study (UGDP)) funded by The National Institute of Health. The primary purpose was to investigate whether effective control of blood glucose levels could delay or prevent the onset of vascular complications (Marks 1997:205). As the study progressed and mortality was routinely monitored an unexpected trend appeared. The drug seemed to result in increased mortality due to cardiovascular complications in comparison with patients receiving the placebo. The statistical director of the study, Christian Klimt, in 1967 informed the other investigators of the trend. Klimt and his colleagues became increasingly concerned as the higher mortality continued in the weekly monitoring of the data. Klimt later summed up his colleagues reaction in the following way: “They couldn’t conceive, nobody could conceive, a drug which had been at that time, I don’t know eighteen years on the U.S. market … could potentially do harm of such serious nature that would get a difference in total death. And by derivation, you know, a much greater difference in cardiovascular mortality.” (Marks 1997: 206) The UGDP study created a long and fierce controversy among statisticians, clinical researchers and clinicians. Clinicians who had pioneered in the use of oral hypoglycemics were skeptical of the findings (Marks 1997:216). Also the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) reviewers had been reluctant to accept the preliminary conclusions from the study. But when the findings unexpectedly were published on the front page of the Washington Post May 21, 1970, the FDA didn’t hesitate announcing that the labelling of the oral hypoglycemic drugs should be revised. The drugs should be used “only in patients with symptomatic adult onset diabetes mellitus who cannot adequately be controlled by diet alone and who are not insulin dependent (i.e. do not require insulin)” (Marks 1997: 217). Over the next one and a half years a veritable strife developed between the FDA and a newly established Committee on the Care of the Diabetic (CCD). The CCD had various motives for criticizing the FDA. They wanted among other things to protect practicing physicians from ‘medico-legal redress’. Adequate protection would require, the CCD thought, that the FDA acknowledge the different opinions in the medical community concerning the study of the tolbutamide therapy (Marks 1997: 218). The CCD lawyers prevented the FDA from issuing a new labelling on tolbutamide until 1984. From 1970 till then controversies continued. The Biometric Society composed a panel of international experts in statistical theory, research methodology and clinical trial practice (Marks 1997: 220). The panel concluded–among other things–that they found evidence of the harmfulness of tolmutamide moderately strong.



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The controversy over tolbutamide concerned a number of different issues, including issues relating to power and authority in the health care system. It reflected a disagreement about who should be in a position (i.e. have the right or perhaps even the duty) to dictate medical practice, and about the basis of such interventions. According to members of CCD guidance should come from authorities constituted by the medical profession and its specialists in diabetes. Guidance should be given in the form of education and not commands (Marks 1997: 224). The tolbutamide study and the discussions and struggles it provoked signalled deep changes in medicine and health care. The resistance to the medical power and authority still defended by, for example, the CCG, was not restricted to the United States. In 1972 when the discussion about tolbutamide reached one of its climaxes in the United States, Archie Cochrane in England published, as mentioned above, Effectiveness and Efficiency, a vigorous attack on medical power in the NHS, the National Health Service in Great Britain. On the basis of careful studies of medical care in England, Cochrane, himself a medical doctor, demanded use of controlled trials especially to assess the effectiveness of expensive biomedical treatment. As a young medical doctor Cochrane had resisted private medical care and had participated in political demonstrations for a public health care system delivering effective care for all. As a medical volunteer in the Spanish Civil war he had been part of the resistance to Franco and the fascists who had attacked the democratically elected government. Now almost 25 years after the start of the NHS he became a key-figure in the resistance against the medical establishment in England.

The Emergence of Internal Resistance In the United States, in England, and in several other European countries the beginning of the 1970s marked a turning point in the history of medicine. The medical profession’s power in relation to patients and political authorities was challenged as never before in the history of medicine and health care. The challenge of medical paternalism and hegemony emerged at the same time as anti-racist, women’s lib, gay liberation, and other anti-authoritarian movements challenged the legitimacy of existing social institutions and practices and changed the political agenda in most Western countries. Paternalism, the doctor’s authority, right and duty, to choose on behalf of patients had been sacrosanct since Antiquity. It now became challenged or undermined by demands for patient autonomy and legislation that required patients’ consent if they were to participate in trials. Also



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challenged were the profession’s right to assess and control its own activities, as was shown in tolbutamide case and in Cochrane’s demands for changes in the governing of the NHS. In The Progress of Experiment Marks provides a detailed and illuminating account of the struggle about tolbutamide and the use of controlled trials in resistance against the use of tolbutamide. He interprets the strife as an example of struggle for clinical authority and as a symptom of a new power-structure in managing health and disease as–what I call– the cultural hegemony of medicine has been challenged. Physicians unwilling to prescribe according to validated standards are “suspect of “interested” behaviour” (Marks 1997: 234). The difficulty is, according to Marks, that “all our behaviors–as physicians, as researchers, as stockholders–are interested behavior” (Marks 1997: 234), since multiple agents are competing for authority. Seeing clinical research as a social process for Marks amounts to seeing “seemingly endless negotiations: negotiations to persuade participant researchers to abide by a uniform protocol even when there are more “interesting” questions to pursue….” (Marks 1997: 240). Therapeutic reformers had believed that the introduction and use of controlled trials would “eliminate bias” and put an end to therapeutic controversies. Such claims were, Marks stresses, exaggerated and showed methodological and ideological naiveté (Marks 1997: 240). But what are the consequences of interpreting clinical practice as a social process developing through the struggle for power and authority and groups trying to obtain power by resisting those who at a given time are in power? Marks proposes creating: “new institutions that enable us to reflect on our decisions and to communicate those reflections to one another…. Judging decisions is a historical task, in the sense that our experience of past and present decisions provides us with a means to assess our future choices” (Marks 1997: 247).

Marks admits to having no blueprint for creating such institutions the task of which would be determining “how the value of medical treatment should be judged and who shall do the judging” (Marks 1997: 248). He believes that knowledge of the history of therapeutic reform (including the struggle about tolbutamide) may prove useful. Indeed this history might provide clues to answer the urgent questions of how to judge the value of medical treatment and who shall do the judging. To achieve this it is, however, necessary to transcend Marks’ pre-



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conception of the history of clinical research and clinical practice as a struggle for authority through negotiations about methods. Resistance cannot be reduced to the presentation of arguments about methods that challenge other arguments or methodological principles defended by opponents. Resistance also manifests itself as the organisation and development of ways of acting and practicing that challenge dominant practices and positionings implied by current practices. The controversies about tolbutamide exemplify resistance to dominant positionings, but in Marks’ interpretation this clinical resistance is interpreted as a struggle for authority between competing professional groups using methodological principles in their struggle for authority. The famous clinician Alvan Feinstein became an important voice in the controversy about tolbutamide articulating a number a critical reflections. Marks includes Feinstein’s critique in a chapter he calls “Methodenstreit.” Feinstein is, in Marks’ presentation primarily articulating reservations about the growing influence of statisticians in epidemiological research (Marks 1997: 213). According to Feinstein UGPD primarily came into trouble because of “an overconfidence in statistical procedures and a neglect of “biological logic” and “clinical judgement” in designing and interpreting the study” (Marks 1997: 213-214). The UGPD hadn’t succeeded in providing clinicians with the information they needed, a result of attempts to accommodate the statisticians’ notions of science (Marks 1997: 215). Marks’ interpretation of Feinstein’s critique fits his framework for understanding research controversies as sketched above: groups are resisting other groups in a struggle for clinical authority and protection of group interests. The struggle is carried out by means of methodologies or epistemological weapons. This is, however, only part of the story and only one aspect of Feinstein’s critique. Feinstein’s critiques had an ontological basis. He is concerned with illnesses as conceptualized and understood as courses in a person’s life. In assessing the value of a treatment he is therefore interested in illuminating how patients’ lives are affected by the choice of one treatment rather than another. This ontological perspective has methodological implications. Examining strategies for treating diabetes patients’ patient-experience of “hypoglycemic” shock, infection rates, fatigue, and headaches should be included. Such ‘soft’ data were not collected in the UGPD study (Feinstein 1971: 173-74). In the study the investigators had decided to use objective measures of pathology or functional impairment. Such data could be interpreted by individuals blind to the status of patients. Interpretations could then be checked by others to control for effects of inter-observer variation. In the



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UGDP study patients’ own reports about complications (weakness, fatigue headaches, etc) were not taken into account.

Conclusion: Towards a New ETHOS in Medicine? Alvan Feinstein contributed (without a lot of philosophical show) to the epistemological and ontological clarification of the ambiguities and problems of medical experimentation. Basic medical science had its heyday after World War II and was a basis of an immense therapeutic optimism. Feinstein’s epistemological break with canons of laboratory medicine was based on his and his colleagues’ clinical research on rheumatic fever. Basic science certainly has provided clinicians with important and relevant knowledge about streptococcal infections. Clinicians could not, however, make the diagnosis of rheumatic fever from any single test or other objective procedure (Feinstein 1967: 4). A patient had to fulfil specific clinical criteria (arthritis, chorea, carditis and others) appearing in appropriate circumstances and combinations. But identification of the constitutive clinical entities depends “on a physician’s subjective interpretation of visible, audible or palpable clinical evidence” (Feinstein 1967: 4). To meet the challenge of laboratory science and its ideals of objectivity the clinician and clinical researcher could not just espouse old (Hippocratic or Sydenhamian) ideals of clinical experience and clinical judgement. Clinicians had to face the problem of testing reliability and standardization performance of–what Feinstein called– the “the human examining ‘apparatus’.” Feinstein and his colleagues developed new ways (multi-circle Venn diagrams) of representing the complexity and variability of diseases such as, for example, rheumatic fever. “One day” he tells “I had the thought that what we had done in improving our techniques of clinical observation and analysis might even be called science ….and we had, in particular increased the precision of our clinical predictions in prognosis and therapy” (Feinstein 1967: 8).

Feinstein introduced various new representational models and procedures to picture and manage illnesses as variable, evolving processes in patients’ lives. In that way he provided an alternative to the positioning of the patient as an instance of a disease-entity. In an age where critics warned of biomedicine dehumanizing clinical practice, Feinstein implicitly developed an epistemological and ontological framework unifying classical ideals of the individual patient as the centre



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of gravity in clinical practice and research and standards for rational diagnostics and therapy. The new representational models and procedures were developed carefully in Clinical Judgement as a response to laboratory medicine’s positioning of patients as cases or instances of disease-entities. Clinical Judgement contributed to creating an understanding of and interest in controlled trials. It is ironic that clinical trials such as those in the tolbutamide experiments were conducted in ways that made Feinstein turn his critical gaze to clinical trials and criticize, for example, the tolbutamide trial for reproducing the shortcomings of laboratory medicine. Feinstein’s analyses and interventions are examples of epistemological and ontological resistance to controlled trials that position subjects as passive. Philosophical resistance doesn’t in itself lead to a re-positioning of patients and citizens as active participants in managing their own health. But Feinstein’s late, radicalized critique and resistance, stressing the significance of involving citizens as active subjects in health research is of special importance (Feinstein 1994; Thorgaard and Jensen 2011). It corresponds with other examples of resistance embedded in socio-political struggles and biomedical breakthroughs. Petryna describes examples of resistance to a “market driven medicine, neoliberal state reforms, and human rights discourses” where citizens “are reduced to their own private hyperindividualized skirmishes for treatment access” (Petryna 2009: 198). Local initiatives in for example Brazil are “informed by a continued commitment to the scientific method, combined with a systemic critique of the political economy of pharmaceuticals as it plays out locally and a desire to empower public institutions to promote individual or collective rights to health”. According to Petryna such groups focus upon the “real-life Brazilian patient” and his or her clinical circumstances that may not “correspond to those of the “ideal” or highly edited subjects of clinical trials” (Petryna 2009: 199). Others have pointed to the potentials of clinical trials as a means to position patients as active participants in managing health and illness: as co-producers of health. Referring to his own research experience, Tudor Hart argues that participation in trials may have huge educational potential for communities and can become “mass education in the nature of scientific reasoning and evidence”. According to Hart, patients can become active participating subjects who are fully informed and included in “discussions of trial design and its underlying logic” (Hart 2006, 263). It might seem much too optimistic to believe that local examples and experiences as described by Petryna and Tudor Hart could inspire a change of research practice whereby patients would be positioned as



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active, participating subjects. Developments in molecular biology and personalized medicine might be more powerful in that respect. To give just one example: there are three million places where individuals vary by one of the letters in the genome (Siegfried 2010). Randomized trials cannot control for the many variables that may affect patients’ drug and placebo responses. If “only 1% of (the three million places) matter for any given drug or disease, that is 30 000 genetic differences to randomize” (Bower 2011: 160). This knowledge inspires personalized medicine, combining molecular information with people’s personal medical history and family history to develop more effective treatment. “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.” (Marx 1998 (1869): 15)

Medical hegemony has been challenged over the last 30 years. But in various contexts, for example in clinical research, citizens are still often positioned as passive subjects. It is difficult to change paternalistic attitudes and practices, especially when such practices are revitalized by scientific arguments. New biotechnological possibilities are a material force which together with philosophical resistance and resistance by collaborating researchers and citizens may contribute to developing a new practice for positioning patients and citizens in general as active subjects indispensable as participating agents in clinical research and development.

References Bower, B (2011) “Statistical Illiteracy in Journalism” in Girenzer G & Muir Gray, JA Better Doctors, Better Patients, Better Decisions. The MIT Press, Cambridge Mass (153-167) British Medical Journal (1963) Editorial, “Ethics of human experimentation” July 6. Butterfield, WJH &Van Westering, W (eds). (1967) Tolbutamide. After 10 years. Excerpta Medical Foundation, New York. Cochrane, A (1972) Effectiveness and Efficiency, Nuffield, Oxford. Cranston, M (1957) John Locke: A Biography. MacMillan, London. Donne, J (2001) “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions” in The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne. The Modern Library, Random House, New York.



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Brody, H (1992) The Healer’s Power. Yale University Press, New Haven. Epstein S (2007) Inclusion. The politics of difference in medical research. Chicago University Press, Chicago. Feinstein, A (1967) Clinical Judgement. Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company, Huntington, New York. —. (1971) “Clinical Biostatistics VIII. An analytic appraisal of the University Group Diabetes Program (UGDP) Study. Clinical Pharmacology and Therpeutics 12, 172-173; 177-178,185-189. —. (1994) “Clinical Judgement Revisited: The Distraction of Quantitative Models”; Ann Intern Med., 120, 799-805. Harré, R & Davies. (1990) 'Positioning: The Discursive Production of Selves.' Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 20 (1), 43-63. FDA Statement May 22 (1970) Diabetes 19. Foucault, M (1990) The Birth of the Clinic. An Archaeology of Medical Perception.Routledge, London. Freidson, E (1994) Professionalism Reborn, Theory, Prophecy and Policy, Polity Press, Cambridge. Galen (1998) Hipocratis de humoribus commentarii III, 7 (Kühn, 16: 8081); quoted from Danielle Gourevitch: ‘The Paths of Knowledge: Medicine in the Roman World’ in Grmek, Mirko D.: Western Medical Thought From Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass. Gay, P (1969) The Enlightenment. The Science of freedom. W.W.Norton & Company, New York. Gramsci, A (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Lawrence & Wishart, London. Harré, R & Davies (2006) 'Positioning: The Discursive Production of Selves.' Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 1990 20 (1), 43-63. Hart, JT The Political Economy of Health Care. The Policy Press, Bristol. http://www.cfpr.dk/research/brain-collection/the-brain-collection-today/ http://www.etiskraad.dk/da-DK/Hoeringssvar/2006/07-03-2006-forskningpaa-hjerner-fra-hjernesamlingen-paa-Psykiatrisk-Hospital-i-RisskovAarhus.aspx?sc_lang=en Horton, R (2003) Health Wars. On the global frontlines of modern medicine. New York Review Books, New York. Jacquart, D (1998) Medical Scholasticim; in Mirko D. Grmek: Western Medical Thought From Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Harvard University press, Cambridge Mass.



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Jensen, UJ (1987) Practice and Progress, A Theory for the modern health care system, Blackwell Scientific, Oxford. —. (2007) The Struggle for Clinical Authority: Shifting Ontologies and the Politics of Evidence. Biosocieties, vol 2, 1, 101-14. Jones, J ( 1981 (1993)) Bad Blood, The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. The Free Press; New York, 1981. Kant, I (1979) The Conflict of the Faculties. English translation: University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Katz, J (1972) Experimentation with Human Beings, Russell Sage, New York. —. (2008) Obituary in The New York Times: Dr. Jay Katz, 86, Dies; Explorer of Ethics Issues; November 19. —. (2002 (1984)) The Silent world of Doctor and Patient. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. Marks, HM (1997) The Progress of Experiment. Science and therapeutic reform in the United States, 1900-1990. Cambridge University Press. Marx, K (1998 (1867)) The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, International Publishers, New York. Parsons, T (1951) The Social System. Routledge, London. Porter, R (1997) The greatest Benefit to Mankind.. Norton & Company, New York. Petryna, A (2009) When Experiments Travel. Clinical trials and the global search for human subjects. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Rose, N (1994) “Medicine, History and the Present” in Colin Jones & Roy Porter: Reassessing Foucault. Power, Medicine and the Body. Routledge, London. Reinharz, S (1984) On becoming a Social Scientist. Transaction Books, New Brunswick N.J. Rothman, D (1991) Strangers at the bedside. Basic Books, New York. Seneca, LA (1977) Ad Marciam de Consolatione, In L.A.S.Dialogorvm (ed. By L.D. Reynolds), 129-66, Oxford Classic Texts, Oxford. Siegfried, T (2010) “Odds are, it’s wrong”. Science News, 177(26) Speid, L (2010) Clinical Trials. What patients and healthy volunteers need to know, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Thorgaard, K & Jensen, UJ (2011) “Evidence and the End of Medicine”, Med Health Care and M, February. Titmuss, R (1997) The Gift Relationship (Expanded and updated version by Anne Oakley & John Ashton The New Press, New York. Turner, BS (1987) Medical Power and Social Knowledge. Sage Publications, London.



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Wolfe, C (2012) “Vitalism and resistance to experimentation on life in the eighteenth century”, Journal of History of Biology, 2012.



PART IV: RESISTANCE IN THE WORLD OF POLITICS AND LAW

CHAPTER TWELVE CLAUSEWITZ AND LAWRENCE: EXAMINING RESISTANCE IN WARFARE R.E. SCHMIDLE

In this chapter I examine the concept of resistance and apply it to the phenomenon of war. I will primarily explore two personalities who were both theorists and practitioners of warfare–Carl von Clausewitz and T.E. Lawrence. Although separated by time and culture their pronouncements on the effect of resistance in war are very much convergent. At the core of their thoughts about resistance is the fundamental tension, inherent in the notion of resistance, of the rational with the irrational. The conduct of war is most certainly not a rational human activity. The planning for war however may be a rational, even arithmetic activity as one tries to compare the number of combatants, artillery pieces, etc. on each side. The conduct of war on the other hand is the realm of the irrational; it is the realm in which reason’s influence quickly becomes a thin and transparent veneer of abstract language. Since warfare is the realm of the irrational, understanding the seemingly irrational beliefs that drive human behavior in this activity is essential to understanding the theory, nature, and conduct of war. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein offers a construct that aids in our understanding when he characterizes these beliefs, which are nonepistemic and non-experiential, as hinge beliefs. His characterization is important because these are the necessary beliefs, like the “hinges” on a door, on which our form of life turns and which drive decisions in war. Underlying this examination of resistance in war is the relationship between rationality and irrationality. In this chapter I will suggest that any attempt to detail a stark difference between the two perpetuates a false dichotomy. In making my case I argue that resistance in warfare, fundamentally the resistance of moral forces, is the tension (resistance) between the rational and the irrational. Resistance can take many forms but the form we are most interested in is the form that clouds the minds of military leaders and civilian decision makers. When Napoleon, speaking

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about the forces in war famously said that the moral is to the physical as three is to one, he was thinking about those intangible but ever pervasive moral forces in war. All to often the concept of resistance is portrayed in simplistic empirical examples, such as the physical difficulty of attacking an entrenched enemy or repositioning artillery pieces on a muddy battlefield. To understand resistance in warfare, however, we must go back to the forces that informed or compelled a commander to make the decision that led to the attack or the repositioning in the first place. Those forces are the result of the resistance (tension) between the rational and the irrational. Also in this chapter I will argue that rationality is a system of necessity, while irrationality is the realm of freedom. I will point out the tension between the two and highlight the resistance of one to the other. This argument is developed throughout and proposes the need to recognize both rationality and irrationality as ingredients in the intelligibility and power of all kinds of discourse if we are to understand the concept of resistance in warfare. In the first part of this chapter I present the ideas of Carl von Clausewitz on resistance in war and begin developing the notion of resistance in the context of overcoming hinge beliefs. Here I propose the idea that the concept of resistance in war can also include the resistance of one’s self to the forms of hinge beliefs, derived from local cultural practices that drive decisions in war. In the second part I present the ideas of T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) on resistance in warfare and show how his ideas about resistance began with his reading of Clausewitz but later evolved into concepts specifically suited to his campaign in the desert against the Turks. In the third part I explain in more depth what I mean by the terms rationality and irrationality. I look at rationality in this part in the context of a system of necessity but not the kind of closed system that leads to inductivism or determinism, rather one that traces patterns of probabilities of outcomes of human actions. Next, I look at irrationality by examining the nature of actions that are considered irrational in the context in which that characterization is applied. At the same time I develop the symbiotic linkage between the rational and the irrational as assessments of discourses and actions as we juxtapose the rational system of necessity onto the irrational realm of freedom. In this part I will also develop the central role of language in understanding both our notions of rationality and resistance. This is important because we express our views of the rational and the irrational in the language that we use in our everyday discourses. Language creates and sustains the microworlds of the rational and the irrational and defines resistance as characterizing the fundamental tension between the two. In the next part I

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explore Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ideas concerning rationality and irrationality and introduce his concept of hinge beliefs and practices. Here we continue developing the idea that rationality and irrationality are in a sense like subject and object. However, they are best understood not as simple opposites like the constituents of the subject-object dichotomy. A more complete picture emerges as we reflect on the ideas of Clausewitz, Lawrence and the French philosopher Simone Weil about resistance in warfare and the relationship of the concept of force to the rational and the irrational. The final part of this chapter covers the consequences that follow from taking this position and explains why those factors should lead us to draw the following conclusion regarding their significance. The conclusion is that clarifying the distinction between rationality and irrationality is the beginning of the means for understanding resistance in warfare and associated human actions in depth. Our understanding is enriched by the idea that it is resistance of the continuously evolving and developing self to our hinge beliefs that is at the heart of the issue of resistance. Overall resistance in war must be viewed through the horizon of history; in terms of the way these beliefs (hinges) shape human actions and thus provide the clearest insight into human actions. The concept of resistance as understood through our examination of the insights of Clausewitz and Lawrence is the central principle that leads to an in-depth understanding of the interaction of forces in war. Rationality and irrationality are the touchstones that enable us to frame the concept of resistance and therefore understand the foundational i.e. moral forces in war. Importantly it is not a choice between adopting either rationality or irrationality as our ultimate measure of the viability of discourses, but rather it is by recognizing the role of both rationality and irrationality taken together that makes possible a more complete understanding of those insights. To begin, it is useful to start with a definition of rationality and from that definition explore how we come to distinguish one form of rationality from another. My working definition of rationality is as follows: an individual and collective construct of a kind of fundamental normativity that is defined by and through discursive, linguistic relations perhaps best seen in the unfolding of coherent story lines. Importantly, there is no such thing as a universal rationality to which all people must adhere for speech and action to be intelligible one with another. This is because the concept of what it means to be rational cannot be articulated abstractly; that is, it cannot be understood outside the concrete context of historical events and the complexities of local social life. Rationality is therefore based on

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contextualizing beliefs within actual historical situations, which, of course, must include social practices. In order to properly contextualize belief and lead us to a more complete understanding of rationality, we need to focus on the practical structures of both discourses and action in the world. It is within these structures that creation and regulation of meaning occur. Rationality is very much a practical notion in that it reflects the meaning assigned to empirical actions or practices in relation to a working framework. Meaning or sense making comes about by considering the privileged position of the use to which those actions are directed within a particular context. There are, in effect, no free floating standards of rationality detached from practices (including historical) to which we can appeal to decide who and what is rational. Nevertheless the rational resists the irrational. Rationality itself is an incommensurable term and it cannot be assumed to be applicable across different paradigms. Those paradigms are created by language, which are also what constitutes one’s reality. The world is made of language and if, for example, you encounter someone else’s language that is fundamentally different from yours then you don’t live in the same world. Everything is relative to language; reality begins and ends with the words we use. Language is relation; it makes the set of relations that could be real, possible.

Clausewitz and Resistance in War Carl von Clausewitz wrote the seminal work On War based on his personal experiences in war as well as his observations of others engaged in battle and finally his own lengthy and well-informed deliberations on the meaning of what he saw and experienced. His book is a foundational work for anyone trying to understand the nature and conduct of warfare albeit from a decidedly Enlightenment Western point of view. On War is concerned with both theory and practice, although owing to his inability to complete all the revisions before his death Clausewitz is not always clear about which of the two he is speaking. We will begin our examination of Clausewitz with his basic notions about what constitutes war. He says that there are “ …four elements that make up the climate of war…” (Clausewitz, 1976, 109). This climate is the context in which we conduct war. It is the horizon of possibilities that influence war’s conduct. Those elements are “…danger, exertion (resistance), uncertainty and chance.” (Ibid) He makes the point that the enemy’s resistance has the greatest effect on the mind of the commander, and the more prolonged the

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resistance the more significant i.e. severe, the effect will be. The commander must overcome not only the resistance of the enemy to his plan but also resistance from his own forces in the form of a desire to change the plan as they react to continued resistance on the part of the enemy. Resistance comes from actions taken by the enemy; it is also inherent in all actions taken in war since all activities in war come about because of intentional interaction with others. Even if resistance takes the form of bad weather or seeming ‘acts of god’ one or more of the combatants began the activities that were so affected by those phenomena. Simply defined, Clausewitz said, “Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult” (Clausewitz, 1976, 119). Understanding this innate friction is to understand the resistance of the rational to the irrational. Clausewitz understood that in spite of the efforts of a commander to plan for every action and reaction in war, war remained the domain of chance and not reason. Accordingly he states that “The good general must know friction in order to overcome it whenever possible, and in order not to expect a standard of achievement in his operation which friction makes impossible” (Clausewitz, 1976, 120). This last thought that a good general knows what is possible to accomplish in his battles and what is not is very evident in T.E. Lawrence’s brilliant execution of the Desert Campaign on the Arabian Peninsula. The great commander makes an attribute out of resistance because he understands that it can never be overcome and is in fact an inexorable part of war. He exploits resistance because he knows that resistance emanates from the hinge beliefs, which inform his actions and practices as well as those of his soldiers. According to Clausewitz an effective commander must also understand the supreme influence of chance, friction and resistance on reason’s plan. He knows however that understanding the irrational (in the form of chance, friction, or resistance) alone is not enough. He must also have a ‘feel’ for the effect of resistance between the rational and the irrational on the morale of his forces, always aware of the hinge beliefs and practices of his soldiers. In other words the great commander understands the horizon of possibilities before him including of course, what is impossible and why. Clausewitz believed that war was neither art nor science. Instead it was “…part of man’s social existence” (Clausewitz, 1976, 149). The thing so different about warfare, when compared to other forms of conflict is that it can only be resolved by killing some number of your opponents. Man’s social existence is characteristically discursive, shaped by fundamentally linguistic discourse. In discourse, as in war, “The will is directed at an

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animate object that reacts” (Ibid). This reaction is the ‘others’ resistance. Also in discourse, the participants hinge beliefs are manifested and evident to others participating in the discourse. In the chapter entitled Types of Resistance Clausewitz makes the case that defense, as a form of resistance, is the “stronger form of war, the one that makes the enemies defeat more certain” (Clausewitz, 1976, 380). It is characterized as such because it consists of two distinct activities, waiting and acting, versus the one activity associated with the offense, which is attacking. I would also argue that there are two types of resistance, active and passive. According to Clausewitz it is possible for the defender to be successful without fighting not because “…he occupies an impregnable position…but because the faintness of the attackers determination which makes him hesitate and fear to move” (Clausewitz, 1976, 387). So we see that resistance is not an inanimate force that simply obstructs, rather it is a force that reacts, pulsing with and against the other. Clausewitz’s views on resistance in warfare also reflect an understanding of the discursive and indeed symbiotic nature of resistance. In his chapter entitled Attack in Relation to Defense he argues for a worldview that reflects a nuanced understanding of the dichotomy of opposites. He states that “When two ideas (referring to attack and defense) form a true logical antithesis, each complimentary to the other, then fundamentally each is implied in the other” (Clausewitz, 1976, 523). Resistance is therefore inherent in both the attacker and the defender. It can favor the defender if he is disciplined enough to wait, to be passive and potentially active. Above all a military commander must understand the effect of friction (resistance) on his own plans and must know the difference between what is in fact possible to do and what he merely thinks is possible. T.E. Lawrence was so effective in his campaigns because he clearly understood this distinction. It is to Lawrence that we now turn in our exploration of resistance in war.

Lawrence and Resistance in War Lawrence was an Oxford educated Englishman with a keen interest in history and an obvious sense of adventure. His interest in the history of the Middle East burgeoned during his first visit to Syria in 1909, when he went to study the architectural remains of castles built during the Crusades. Subsequently Lawrence lived among the Arabs learning their dialects and customs, assimilating many of their practices and all the while developing considerable knowledge of and sympathy for their world-view.

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When war broke out in 1914 he was sent to Egypt as a subaltern (Lieutenant) in the British Army because of his knowledge of the region. Lawrence not only lived and participated actively in-the-world, but he also thought deeply about the phenomenon of war. He conceptualized and then conducted a ‘new’ way of war, different from the traditional and accepted Western way of war. Interestingly, although his tactics were viewed with much skepticism in his day, his book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom was instrumental in the development of U.S. military counterinsurgency doctrine nearly a hundred years later. His extensive knowledge of the region and its history gave him a unique horizon of context through which to understand the conflict at a depth clearly beyond that of his contemporaries. We will explore Lawrence’s unique way of war by first looking at his philosophy about conflict and then at what he calls the ‘elements’ of war and compare them with Clausewitz’s elements of war. In the Seven Pillars of Wisdom he outlines his study of war and the theorists who wrote about it saying “In military theory I was tolerably read…However, Clausewitz was intellectually so much the master of them (referring to other theorists from Molke to Jomini to Saxe) and his book so logical and fascinating…” (Lawrence, 1991, 188). Lawrence held, like Clausewitz that wars were fundamentally irrational activities and any attempt to understand what caused them or how to fight them needed to pay homage to the reflexive practices and beliefs of the warring parties. This is not to say that there wasn’t a place for calculations, i.e. in matters of logistics or the tactical application of artillery, rather that those calculations were not necessarily a key factor in deciding the outcome. Famously Lawrence said “Nine-tenths of tactics were certain enough to be teachable in schools; but the irrational tenth was like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and in it lay the test of generals” (Lawrence, 1991, 193). The test of generals, which very few but the greatest would pass, was their ability to understand and tap the true source of power–the seemingly irrational tenth. It is the irrational decision of a great general, which goes against the conventional wisdom of the day, confounding the enemy while inspiring his own forces that wins the day on the field of battle. Lawrence explains further about the irrational tenth “It could be ensued by instinct (sharpened by thought practicing the stroke) until at the crisis it came naturally, a reflex.” (Ibid) Here he is connecting the notion of the irrational tenth with a reflexive action, an example of which is a hinge practice. The actions that are part of the irrational tenth are the hinge practices and non-reflective thoughts that create coherence in our everyday lives. Lawrence’s perspective on irrationality, far from seeing it as

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something to be avoided, was that it should be understood as providing a horizon of possibilities not evident otherwise. In this he is aligned with Clausewitz’s ideas about resistance and the implied tension between the rational and the irrational, manifested as resistance. When thinking about conflict Lawrence refers to what he calls the ‘elements’ of war and believed there were three–the algebraical, the biological, and the psychological (Lawrence, 1991, 190-196). Unlike Clausewitz who also spoke of three elements in war, Lawrence is more specific about giving examples of these elements beyond characterizing them as chance, exertion and uncertainty. Lawrence outlines his ideas on the elements in war as follows. The algebraical is, as its name implies, a formula based approach that deals with the fixed things in war, from geography to railroads. It is essentially the element of war that is predictable and repeatable–it can be calculated. The next element in war is the biological element. Lawrence refers to it as the biological factor in command, and aptly so since warfare is fundamentally about choices and arguable first among those choices are the decisions of commanders. He points out that the uncertainty in war, the unknown possibilities, the components that are “sensitive and illogical” (Lawrence, 1991, 193) are dealt with by generals through the use of a reserve force. A general, exhibiting what is a reflexive practice, always holds a reserve, even unconsciously, according to Lawrence. He also explains in his categorization of the biological element how the irrational tenth becomes the test of generals, applying this test to the troops as well. His war, so Lawrence believed, was a war of detachment vice contact and he saw as his ally the “silent threat of an unknown desert” (Lawrence, 1991, 194). He embraced the concept of resistance and applied it as Clausewitz suggests in a way that exploits the strength of waiting and acting vice simply attacking His war was “no-war” he sought to be like a ‘drifting gas’ and not engage the enemy and therefore not present a target that could be resisted; i.e. a target at which the Turks could shoot. The third element in war was what Lawrence referred to as the psychological element, what we might refer to today as propaganda, although he thought of it in the broader terms of influencing the thoughts of his own forces as well as those of the enemy. He believed that the minds of his troops needed to be arranged as thoroughly and carefully as their bodies as they prepared for battle. He also thought that influencing the enemy’s thoughts meant more than just affecting the minds of their troops, it also meant affecting the mood of the nation behind them. He said that while there were material limits to what one could do in war, there were “no moral impossibilities; so the scope of our activities was

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unbounded” (Lawrence, 1991, 195). Lawrence’s lack of conventional military capability necessitated a different possibility for his war, one that would have him make a virtue out of his lack of capability. Without large standing formations of soldiers and fortified positions to defend, he developed a strategy of defending nothing and with his limited supplies developed tactics that didn’t require his forces to shoot at anything. His strategy focused not just on the enemy but also on the civilians who lived in the places being contested. The focus of his strategy was using ‘irregular’ as opposed to regular or conventional uniform-wearing forces. Lawrence believed that it was important to think of war, at least his war, in terms of asymmetric presentations by his irregular forces to the regular forces of the Turks. He goes so far as to say, “In a real sense maximum disorder was our equilibrium” (Lawrence, 1991, 338). Lawrence is seen here continuing to redefine the Western way of war in terms of his new way of war, which fundamentally sought to embrace uncertainty and focus his resistance not against a rational model of war plans but against a fundamentally irrational model of human decision-making in war. His is a method of warfare that takes issue with the traditional model of warfare in which equilibrium equals order–viewing the battlefield as one large Newtonian formula. Lawrence sees his war against the Turks not as a formula to be solved by arithmetic but as a fluid and chaotic enterprise, unique to its historical context, to be exploited.

Rationality and Irrationality Rationality is not a closed system that leads to determinism but rather one that traces patterns of outcome probability in human actions. A rational system, however, doesn’t allow for contradiction. It is continuously moving toward totalizing itself as one whole system. This notion of totalizing is immediately at odds with the view that finds tolerance of contradiction to be a central component of human experience, one that allows for many independent systems to exist simultaneously. Consequently, no one system can be established as more deserving of our attention than any other. In characterizing contradiction we see structural uncertainty and realize that this uncertainty is not something that can or should be mitigated. Rather, uncertainty is displayed in a way that holds competing ideas in tension. In a sense, uncertainty actually defines freedom. For it is freedom that rules out certitude, freedom that is characterized by individual

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decisions; e.g. by the choice to say no to living life absurdly, while also knowing from history and experience that life really is absurd. The concept of rationality then is based on choices and decisions made by the individual subject that take into account such things as paradigm changes, cognitive structures and the process and framework of discursive human communications. This power of reason, exemplified by the Cartesian distinction between subject and object, also includes in its structure the postulation of an autonomous subject. The belief in the power of human reason is tied to a belief that each one of us would reason our way to the same ‘rational’ decision if only we could all possess the same information from which to reach decisions and develop programs of action. Irrationality is the realm of freedom, it is the choice to manage one’s life and thought in ways that are other than rational. I am not proposing a radical version of irrationality as no more than the stark dichotomous choice to look to some way of living other than rationality. Rather I am proposing that irrationality is displayed in the freedom to choose not to trust human reasoning, for example in the reflections and decisions of an individual subject as the ultimate arbitrator of human thoughts and actions. In the same sense that rationality and the horizon of finite reason limits our view of history, irrationality and the ability to choose among historical traditions are the contents of the realm of freedom. In that realm of freedom we choose the preservation of traditions rather than the invention of social and cognitive practices ab initio. The realm of freedom even includes a tradition of revolutions. Rationality is a system of necessity, the necessity to act and reason in a certain manner that is at least probable if not predictable, and is at least in principle, not just a matter of what an individual decides to adopt as his or her way of life. The practices of rationality are presented as the best way for each and everyone. Irrationality is the realm of freedom to choose to decide what you are responsible for and to take responsibility for your actions in your own way. I would contend that freedom cannot be realized in isolation, in the isolation of a reasoning subject; rather freedom is realized in the possibility of making a choice in every possible situation. Thus it can only be realized in a world of choices, which is in the world of other cognizing beings also acting freely.

Wittgenstein: Rationality and Irrationality Wittgenstein argues, in the Philosophical Investigations that language is possible only in a social context. Only within that context can there be a

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distinction between what would be considered a rational or an irrational act or thought. A solitary subject on the other hand has only his own thoughts about the correct use of a word, so there is no standard against which the solitary individual can test the meanings he or she is giving to a word or phrase. In depending only on his or her memory for how the meaning of some word had been established it is perfectly possible to be mistaken about the use of a word. It is only through interaction with others in a language game, i.e. through use that a word gets its meaning in such a way that the system of signs can be stabilized as a language. This social character of language also precludes a private language, one that could only be understood by the speaker through reference to his or her subjective experience. This is because it is social interaction that creates the context necessary to give meaning to the utterances of the participants. Since there could be no human interaction without other subjects, there could never be a private language known only to a solitary subject as a means of interaction and creating meaning. Wittgenstein argues that if words got their meanings from personal and private experiences not only would those meanings be unstable but also they could never be learned in the first place. The teacher, for example has no way of knowing what personal experience the learner is depending on to give meaning to a word. For Wittgenstein rationality is grounded in socially organized, rule governed practices and forms of competency in language games. Participating in a language game requires that one learn the relevant language and in learning a language one uses words and through their use in practice they acquire meaning. He summarizes this point when he says, “…the meaning of a word is its use in language” (Wittgenstein, 1958, 43). In the Philosophical Investigations he proposes that learning a language is being initiated into a form of human life, i.e. into the practices of naming, calling, choosing, measuring, etc., in other words learning through use the meaning of words (Brenner, 1999, 16). From this I would conclude that Wittgenstein intends a rationality that is developed through the practices of humans in the language games with which we conduct our lives. Importantly, this is not a rationality grounded in traditional (Enlightenment) epistemological judgments about truth claims, i.e. that I ‘know’ something by reasoning. Since no judgment in this sense is impervious to doubt we must find justification for any position we take with respect to a particular claim to ‘know’ the truth of something. Therefore, the rationality of a given position in this view is subject to the epistemic grounds for holding that position. However, what Wittgenstein is searching for is a rationality not open to doubt or epistemic scrutiny in the course of its deployment in a form of

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life. At the same time it is not a rationality that we can choose not to believe in or ignore if we are to participate in that local order. He says of this type of non-epistemic certainty: “I would like to regard this certainty, not as something akin to hastiness or superficiality, but as a form of life” (Wittgenstein, 1969, 358). In other words, to characterize the rationality of someone’s performance in the practices inherent in a particular language game presupposes that certain judgments are beyond doubt, that they ‘stand fast’ for that participant (Wittgenstein, 1969, 151). Those beliefs, the ones not open to doubt, are constitutive of the rationality of those practices and are distinct from the judgments functioning as epistemic claims in a language game. The practices that are beyond doubt, that are the hinges upon which a form of life turns, are the scaffolding or framework that make possible the language games constituent of that form of life (Wittgenstein, 1969, 341). In other words the language games that constitute the form of life in which we participate, are based on a rationality that is not subject to scrutiny. ‘We cannot label these practices irrational if we chose to live in that particular local order. In a racing ‘eight’ the oarsmen must all sit facing the same way if we want to boat to go forward. That rationality is based on the rule-governed practices that constitute a language game, such as the management of an Olympic boat race. Since it is from their use in language games that words, propositions, and even judgments get their meaning, it is in turn the practices exemplifying that use, which define Wittgenstein’s rationality. In other words the use of a proposition, which is central to determining its meaning, is based on practices both constitutive and regulative of that language game. Wittgenstein’s rationality then is based on the idea of following a rule based on imitating the actions of others who are also participating in the same language game. The primacy of practice along with Wittgenstein’s assertion that beliefs, the propositional doppelgangers of hinge practices, are groundless (in the sense that they are not based in reason) means that rationality inheres in human practices. The grounds of rationality are groundless in the sense that they are not based on a subject’s abstract vantage point but on their participation in a language game. Wittgenstein says of this idea: “Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end;–but the end is not certain propositions’ striking us immediately as true, i.e., it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language game” (Wittgenstein, 1969, 204) (Emphasis added). Importantly, Wittgenstein does not pressure us into the false choice between rationalism and irrationalism. Instead he shows the way beyond a

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rationalism based on a grand narrative of scientific rationality, and does this without falling into a relativistic irrationalism. His ‘practice-oriented’ construct of philosophy, which proposes a pluralistic account of rationality based on actions in local orders, is grounded in non-epistemic beliefs. These beliefs could be described as irrational in the sense that they are not based on reflective, abstract reasoning, or on attention to experimentally established matters of fact. In Wittgenstein’s view one chooses not between the alternatives of rationality or irrationality but rather one understands that the two are inextricably linked in a symbiotic manner, this in his mind calls into question attempts to view them in isolation. He helps us understand that the resistance we sense between the rational and the irrational is rooted in our language. The following section of this chapter explores Wittgenstein’s notions of rationality and irrationality in the context of the writings of three thinkers on human conflict. I will show that those labels of rationality and irrationality are not strictly speaking used to refer to discrete positions. The line between them is at times arbitrary and indistinct. Lastly, I take issue with the assumption of the primacy of reason as the ultimate expression of the source of whatever order is in human behavior. I show that in spite of the best intentions, seemingly irrational force remains the fundamental source of human actions. We uncover this by looking at three diverse writers on the subject of war: Simone Weil, Carl Von Clausewitz and T.E. Lawrence.

Simone Weil, Carl Von Clausewitz and T.E. Lawrence The French philosopher, Simone Weil wrote the Iliad in 1940 after the German invasion of France, the defeat of the French Army and the subsequent Nazi occupation of most of her country. She begins her account of the Iliad with the pronouncement that: “The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force, Force employed by man, force that enslaves man...swept away, blinded, by the very force it (human spirit) imagined it could handle…” (Weil, 2005, 3)

Force according to Weil is something that treats both the victorious and defeated alike; no one is immune to the effects of force. It is the action of force that turns man into a thing, an object; it treats man now as a means and not as an end. “…it is that x that turns anybody subjected to it into a thing…it turns man into a thing in the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of him.” (Ibid) Her detailed description of death and dismemberment throughout her essay are indicative of the focus she has

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on showing the dehumanization of man in war. Weil’s stated admiration for Lawrence’s portrayal of war in the Arabian Desert stems from the candor with which he displayed the primordial violence of man being tuned into an object (Weil, 2005, x). In Lawrence’s account, as in the Iliad, war is not portrayed as heroic or valorous but as simply as what it is; the most violent human activity that transforms men into objects. Further the two accounts render the same judgment against both winners and losers and show how that distinction is merely one of words in the context of a temporal historical horizon. Weil says toward the end of her essay that the comparisons which: “…liken them (victors or vanquished) to…things can inspire neither admiration or contempt, but only regret that men are capable of being so transformed” (Weil, 2005, p. 26). In the same way that she shows the back and forth of the fortunes of war for the participants, she is also opening up a metaphor to apply to the relationship between the rational and the irrational. This relationship is evident in the sense that the rational is evidenced in human reason and the irrational is evidenced in the instinctive and natural in man’s moral structure. The irrational is also most evident in the force, which is the real hero of the Iliad. She points out in her essay that in spite of reason’s desire to control force in war, it is not possible to maintain the desired balance on the part of the one who uses force. Even if the use of force is in what he considers to be a reasonable or rational manner, “Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to his victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is nobody really possesses it” (Weil, 2005, 11). Weil’s contention in this passage and throughout the essay is that it is a fatal delusion to think that one can control by rational measures the employment of force. Since force has its own logic that tends toward greater and greater violence. The concept of resistance as the tension between the rational and the irrational is evident in Weil’s portrayal of force. Interestingly Weil’s position is very much in line with Clausewitz, who said of force in war that: “War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will” (Clausewitz, 1976, 75). It is this act of force in his view that is the central activity in war and he spends the greater part of On War interpreting this notion in different historical and theoretical contexts. Forcing an enemy to our will is accomplished by overcoming his resistance to our force and the predominant measure of that force is moral not physical. To those who would believe that force can somehow be managed or constrained in war he says early in his book that: “To

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introduce the principle of moderation into the theory of war itself would always lead to logical absurdity” (Clausewitz, 1976, 76). Weil makes another point relevant to our discussion here when she talks about the relationship between exceeding the force available and the notion of ‘chance.’ She says with a sense of foreboding: “…Inevitably they exceed it (force) since they are not aware that it is limited. And now we see them committed to chance…sometimes chance is kind to them, sometimes cruel” (Weil, 2 005,14). She goes on to propose her idea of equilibrium. It is an equilibrium that comes from what she calls “retribution,” which is the balancing of the rational system of necessity and irrational realm of freedom in man. That equilibrium is manifested in an understanding of the ungrounded beliefs (hinges) that influence our actions and practices, such as ‘Kharma.’ Clausewitz also comments on the notion of retribution when he says with regard to retribution, (which he calls reciprocal actions): “ …war is an act of force, and there is no logical limit to the application of that force. Each side, therefore, compels its opponent to follow suit; a reciprocal action is started which must lead, in theory, to extremes.” (Clausewitz, 1976, 77)

Here we see Clausewitz making the case for an equilibrium of sorts; not one that is static but rather one that leads to an escalation of violence. This is because his notion of equilibrium is based on a concept of retribution, which is based on the inevitable escalation of force. In Weil’s characterization of rationality in her essay on the Iliad she talks about rationality being the ‘voice of reason.’ She also introduces her thoughts on reason when she enunciates her version of moderation in the use of force. She does not believe that force can be moderated, she says that: “…ordinarily excess is not arrived at through prudence…on the contrary man dashes to it as an irresistible temptation” (Weil, 2005, 18). In fact she points out that in spite of words mouthed by the characters in the Iliad the ‘voice of reason’ never informs the actions of the those characters, the words of reason ‘drop into the void.’ Additionally, as if to insure that the actors are not guided by reason she says that “…there is always a god handy to advise him to be unreasonable.” (Ibid) In other words the handy god is irrationality, the realm of freedom, born of faith and non-epistemic beliefs that push and pull against reason. In war reason is the first causality, even before truth. That is why Simone Weil contends that it is not the rational man (reason) who wins battles but rather it is the irrational man possessed by what Weil refers to as “blind force.” She says: “ It is not the planning man,

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the man of strategy, the man acting on the resolution taken that wins or loses a battle; battles are fought and decided by men deprived of these facilities…” (Weil, 2005, 22). This is very much in line with Lawrence’s beliefs that it is the “irrational tenth” that is the test of generals and the fundamental force in war. Weil would agree with Lawrence’s postulations; she talks about rational man undergoing a transformation to either “pure passivity or to the level of blind force, which is pure momentum” (Weil, 2005, 22). Importantly she also says that: “The art of war is simply the art of producing such transformations and its equipment…is only a means directed toward this end—its true object is the warrior’s soul” (Weil, 2005, 27). In other words the focus of the art of war is on directing force against and affecting the soul, the faith, the belief, the ‘irrational tenth’ of the enemy. That focus leads to the resistance of the rational to the irrational since the art of war consists of directing force against the irrational beliefs of the adversary not against rational beliefs derived from reason.

Consequences of My Position The principal point in this essay is that resistance in war as defined by Clausewitz and Lawrence comes from the tension between rationality and irrationality. Furthermore, I pointed out that rationality and irrationality are primarily understood as features of the dynamics of language. I also proposed that language is constitutive of our personal self in the context of our societal or cultural reality since it is that context that creates our experience of being-in-the-world and in which we understand its meaning. The use of language in dialog additionally creates the form of life by and through which we identify ourselves with a community of other human subjects. For example, donning the uniform of a national army, like using that nation’s language helps to shape the development of a quite specific sense of self. Our sense of self along with all the factors that define its discursive development is symbiotically linked to the hinge practices that prevail in the local community of which one is a part. It is these hinge beliefs that are at the heart of the tension between the rational and the irrational that defines the concept of resistance in war. I have also shown in this chapter that by understanding rationality as a system of necessity and irrationality as the realm of freedom we realize the essential and symbiotic relation between the two. Understanding that relationship means taking issue with the view that reason is or should be understood as the primary determinant of human actions. The central motivation behind human behavior in war lies in the realm of irrationality where hinges are most evident in their role in making it possible to be part

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of a particular form of life. Further, I accounted for irrationality in the context in which we decide to assimilate our non-epistemic beliefs and practices into the accepted rationality of a local order if we are to live in a particular society. In the end I explained how three authors from different backgrounds, political alignments, and historical eras converged on a similar view of the relationship between rationality and irrationality. T. E. Lawrence had it right when he identified the ‘irrational tenth’ as the distinguishing feature of (great) generals. We can apply that concept more broadly and see the applicability of that model to all forms of human activity. Searching for that irrational tenth uncovers the convergence of rationality and irrationality and shows that searching for purely rational or purely irrational reasons to serve as complete explanations for a human action is a fool’s errand. The understanding we seek is informed by our knowing when we reach the point in our investigation when “my spade is turned” (Wittgenstein, 1958, 217). At that point we must believe, not from simple faith in the form of naïve relativism but rather from the beliefs that we understand are an intrinsic part of the local rule-governed community in which we choose to live. The characterization of those beliefs as rational or irrational is exemplified in the practices inhered in that form of life. In the continuous opposition of one to the other (rational to irrational) we find the give and take that distinguishes that symbiotic relationship. That relationship also highlights the concept of resistance that I have proposed as the essential and inexorable tension between the rational and irrational forces in war. Resistance is more completely understood in the context of decisions made by belligerents in war, driven by the hinge beliefs that make up the form of life in which they live and fight those wars.

References Brenner, W. (1999). Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press. Clausewitz, C. (1976). Howard, M., & Paret, P. (translation ed.) On War. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. Lawrence, T. (1991). Seven Pillars of Wisdom. New York, N.Y: Random House. Weil, S., and Bespaloff, R. (2005) War And The Iliad. New York, N.Y: The New York Review of Books. Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical Investigations. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc. —. (1969). On Certainty. Oxford: Blackwell.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN CRIME AS RESISTANCE: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS CARL JENSEN

Introduction Depending upon one’s perspective, criminal activity can be seen as an atavistic form of non-conformance to societal norms, a “rational response to inequitable conditions in capitalist societies” (Hagan 2011: 176), or something in-between. Over the years, researchers and experts have formulated numerous theories to explain why individuals engage in crime and deviance. In the present paper, I explore those theories that view crime as a form of resistance to state control. I further discuss the implications of “crime as resistance” in terms of practical applications for police agencies.

Theoretical Perspectives Marxism/Conflict Theory The most direct articulation of crime as resistance is found in conflict theory, whose theoretical underpinnings are derived from Marxism (Marx and Engels, 1998: 35): The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.



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 Dutch sociologist Willem Bonger (1916) applied Marxist theory to crime in terms of economic inequality; others later expanded the theory beyond strictly economic terms to speak more generally about inequality in all spheres of existence (e.g., social, political). Adherents of the conflict school maintain that groups with vested interests naturally form in societies. The interests of these groups inevitably collide since each wants dominance over the other. Eventually, one group prevails; members of the dominant group endeavor to hold control by using every advantage available to them. This includes the passage and enforcement of various laws. Humphries (1979) cites the Wood Theft Laws, passed in Germany in 1840, as an example of this strategy. When it sensed it could sell lumber for a sizable profit, the state passed laws criminalizing the cutting and gathering of wood that heretofore had been freely available to peasants who used it to build and heat their homes. The (arguably) greater need of the lower class was superseded by the desires of the upper class, which was able to use the criminal justice system to its advantage. From a conflict perspective, crime can be viewed as resistance of the lower classes against the coercive power of a state whose only legitimacy rests in its dominant position. For example, Young (1978: 50) characterized street crime as “the forcible reunification” of economic production and consumption. More recently, Cohen specifically associated the conflict perspective with resistance, which he describes as being more “active, radical, and political” than merely “lashing out” in frustration (Cohen, 1988: 152-153). Because the resistance is often undirected or directed against an inappropriate target (e.g., English skinhead gangs attacking Pakistani immigrants), it becomes symbolic. Cohen and others have described this as “resistance through ritual” (see, inter alia, Hall and Jefferson, 2006). To that end, under the Marxist/conflict criminology approach, almost any form of criminality could be considered resistance. The victims are rarely the true “other” against whom resistance should be directed; often, they occupy the same social strata as the perpetrator. As Cohen noted, the targets are symbolic, surrogates for the true oppressors who are generally insulated and untouchable. While Marxist/conflict criminology may help explain street level crime, it is far less successful at explaining white collar offending and corrupt activities on the part of elites. Some countries today appear to be nothing more than criminal plutocracies. Additionally, even in countries where the rule of law is thought to exist, there is often a symbiotic relationship between the state and such entities as organized crime, whose large profits depend on government regulation of activities like gambling,



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 prostitution, and drugs; states, in turn, help justify their existence and derive power and resources in their “fight against evil.” Indeed, organized crime figures are often quite patriotic—consider mobster John Gotti’s storied 4th of July fireworks celebrations in his Ozone Park neighborhood or the ill-fated attempts by the CIA and Mafia who together conspired to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro in the 1960s.

Strain Theory Strain theory traces its roots back to Emile Durkheim and his conceptualization of anomie (Durkheim, 1897, 1997). The micro-level application of Durkheim’s theory (a decrease in societal regulation leads to increased pressure for deviance) provided the basis for what later became known as strain theory. Throughout the early part of the 20th century, anomie/strain played a major role in theoretical criminology. However, by the 1960s, a lack of empirical verification led to its general disuse (Agnew and Passas, 1997). In the 1980s, Robert Agnew broadened strain theory to address its shortcomings; what emerged was general strain theory (GST). Agnew contends that three major types of strain exist; each can motivate an actor to deviance (Agnew, 1992): • Failure to achieve positively valued stimuli (e.g., money, respect, autonomy). This closely mirrors the “failure to capture the American Dream” component of previous versions of strain theory. In other words, humans are taught to aspire to certain cultural desirable outcomes (e.g., wealth, power); however, society is “rigged” such that everyone does not have equal access to the legitimate means to attain these goals. When societal pressures to achieve become overwhelming, crime occurs. Agnew also includes individual components in his theory: when a person fails to achieve what he expects to achieve or is treated (in his view) unfairly, strain also results. • Loss of positively valued stimuli (e.g., a significant other is lost to another, something is stolen). In Agnew’s view, this can lead to revenge-seeking behavior, frustration, and, ultimately, deviance. • The presentation of negative stimuli (e.g., the death of a family member, sudden poverty). According to Agnew, this is one area that has been examined by criminologists and sociologists but never integrated into strain theory.



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 The primary causal mechanism between GST and crime is anger: individuals under strain grow frustrated and angry. As a result, they react in illegitimate (at least as defined by the state) ways, in order to achieve desired ends, remove themselves from unfavorable circumstances, or satiate a need for revenge or “justice.” Given the structure of GST, it is more easily operationalized and tested than the conflict approach. Accordingly, researchers have tested GST under a host of circumstances (e.g., juvenile delinquency, police officer commitment to their organizations, prison deviance). In general, the results have been mixed (see, inter alia, Jang and Rhodes, 2012; Morris, Carriaga, Diamond, Leeper and Piquero, and Piquero, 2012; and Broidy, 2001). Generally, because it better lends itself to testing, GST enjoys greater acceptance as a theory than the conflict approach, which is seen as more of a paradigm or worldview. However, under Agnew’s approach, can crime be defined as resistance? According to Cohen (1988), resistance implies intentionality and directionality, such as African American resistance described by Cooper-Owens in in this volume. Using Agnew’s model, and borrowing a bit from the conflict school, criminal behavior is a reaction against frustrated goals; actors resist their circumstances, whether they be internally or externally generated. In some cases, the resistance is direct and overtly political. Most terrorist operations that have been carried out in the United States, such as the anarchist bombings in large urban centers in the early part of the 20th century, the Weather Underground attacks in the 1970s, and the Army of God’s anti-abortion campaign of the 1980s & 90s, were direct assaults. While the proximal goal of each was to achieve some political victory (e.g., end abortion), all three movements also viewed the U.S. government as illegitimate; therefore, a more distant goal was to undermine and disrupt the state as a whole, replacing it with a more “legitimate” government or removing state actors each movement viewed as corrupt. Not all crime can be considered direct political resistance against the state. However, it may be seen as indirect resistance—an attack against prevailing societal norms and expectations. Agnew himself declared that frustration and anger led to “moral outrage” (italics added), which implies anger directed against “the other” at a level more deeply felt than mere frustration (Agnew and Broidy, 1997). In the United States, these norms and expectations are articulated as statutes by legislatures and interpreted by courts. As time goes by, norms change and laws are re-written and discarded (e.g., statutes against miscegenation were once widespread). This is not to suggest, as some functionalists would, that laws evolve naturally to equally and fairly serve all members of society. The conflict



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 school is probably closer to the mark when it suggests that laws and court decisions tend to favour those with greater power and affluence; one only need examine the history of white collar prosecutions in the United States, where business types who have bilked innocent victims out of millions of dollars serve minimal sentences in “country club” prisons while those who commit far less impactful crimes serve many years of “hard time.” One of the primary roles of government is to effectively and efficiently administer the rule of law. Crime interferes with this process, much like friction interferes with the rolling of a ball; in extreme cases, crime can render the rule of law meaningless. The state may continue to exist in name but its governing authority will be chimerical, secondary to the criminal factions that maintain actual control. Worse still, entire governments can function as criminal enterprises, plundering national treasuries and controlling the citizenry through force and violence.

Forms of Crime Crime usually takes one of two forms: it is instrumental when it provides a material benefit to the perpetrator, such as the proceeds of a drug transaction or it is expressive when the act has no purpose beyond the behaviour at hand, such as assaulting someone. These boundaries, however, are not dichotomous: consider anarchistic violence that has occurred with some regularity in large American and European cities over the last decade: it can be viewed as expressive in that participants clearly enjoy the act of confronting the police and damaging property; on the other hand, if it is carried out to advance a particular political agenda, it can be viewed as instrumental as well.

Theories of Criminal Justice In the first part of the chapter, we discussed two criminological theories—reasons people engage in crime and deviance. In order to understand how the police actually respond to crime, it is important to understand the many theories that guide criminal justice agencies in their operations. Some of these include community oriented policing, problem oriented policing, COMPSTAT, intelligence-led policing, and predictive policing. Each of these takes a different approach to dealing with crime. Of particular interest, none has yet emerged as the “grand” theory of policing. If crime is resistance, than the role of the police is to reduce or eliminate that resistance. Consider friction—while it is impractical to



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 eliminate it in nature, it can be reduced. So while we will never likely eliminate crime altogether, a more realistic and desirable goal should be to reduce it to a level that provides an equilibrium between safety for the community, an efficient use of resources, and civil rights. Over the years, billions have been spent trying to control crime. Myriad theories have been advanced to explain why people engage in criminality and numerous programs and initiatives have been undertaken to reduce it. Yet, the “magic bullet” remains elusive. In the 1990s, University of Maryland researchers reviewed more than 500 studies to determine “what works” in preventing crime. The result of their efforts was a massive volume that contained rather dismal results—only a few things were empirically shown to be effective. Many popular programs that were in widespread use—things like “Scared Straight” and gun buyback programs—were shown to be ineffective and in some cases counterproductive (Sherman, Gottfredson, MacKenzie, Eck, Reuter, and Bushway, 1998). Most approaches to crime control take one of two forms: Prevention or suppression. Prevention obviously involves heading off crime before it occurs; suppression concerns efforts to deal with crime while it is ongoing or after it has occurred. Project DARE, which attempts to dissuade elementary age students from substance abuse, is an example of prevention; arrest and prosecution are examples of suppression. The goals of these two approaches are not mutually exclusive: one reason people are prosecuted is to deter them from future offending; hence, one goal of suppression is prevention. In order to understand how suppression and prevention can be applied to crime mitigation, it is important to first understand the conditions under which crime occurs. Some time ago, researchers Marcus Felson and Lawrence E. Cohen developed routine activity theory to explain what conditions are necessary to produce crime; they discovered three: • A motivated and likely offender • A suitable target • A lack of capable guardianship When these three variables converge, crime results (see figure 13.1); if any of the three are removed, crime disappears (Cohen and Felson, 1979). Routine activity theory can be applied to both prevention and suppression activities; readers should view each of the strategies below as different ways in which the state can potentially lower resistance, much like oil reduces friction.



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Figure 13.1: Routine activity theory (Source: Burton (2012))

Prevention Demotivating offenders: There are many programs in place to try to divert individuals from becoming motivated to commit crime. Some of these include after school programs, vocational training, substance abuse treatment and the like. Curiously, some of the more popular programs, like Project DARE, don’t appear to work very well. Some, such as Scared Straight, have even been shown to have negative results (Sherman et al., 1998). Despite this, their popularity with both political figures and the public keep them viable. Hardening targets: Hardening a target obviously makes it less attractive for potential offenders. Things like burglar alarms, antivirus protection, enhanced lighting in high crime areas, even locking one’s door can serve to harden targets. Gun advocates argue that permissive



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 concealed carry laws harden a population because potential offenders never know who may be armed (gun control advocates, on the other hand, argue that permissive carry laws place more guns in circulation, thereby creating more capable motivated offenders). Providing capable guardianship: It was once popular in criminal justice circles to claim that the police had little or no effect on preventing crime; a famous study, the Kansas City Preventive Patrol experiment (further described below), seemed to support that claim. However, a series of experiments carried out in the 1980s and 1990s showed that, if deployed properly, the police actually can prevent crime from occurring (see Sherman et al., 1998).

Suppression Demotivating offenders: One of the foundational principles of the U.S. criminal justice system is that punishment, properly applied, will reduce crime. Deterrence theory, a bedrock of criminology, maintains that certain, swift, and appropriate punishment for crime deters future offending by the individual who was punished (specific deterrence) and by the public at large who witnessed the punishment (general deterrence). While some have questioned the efficacy of this approach, it nevertheless forms the basis of law enforcement: capturing, prosecuting, and punishing offenders. Hardening targets: A significant amount of criminological scholarship shows that some geographic areas produce more crime than others; therefore, if those areas can be hardened, it is less likely that criminals will target them. This is the rationale for highly publicized undercover sting operations in areas frequented by prostitutes and pre-announced DUI checkpoints. While these suppression efforts inevitably produce arrests, that is not their primary purpose; rather, it is to signal to potential perpetrators that these targets are no longer suitable. Providing capable guardianship: One of the most robust findings in criminal justice is that a small number of offenders commit the majority of crime. Hence, if these individuals can be removed from society, they will be unable to continue their criminal careers (at least on the street). In recent years, the philosophy of incapacitation, which is nothing more than locating and imprisoning habitual offenders at every opportunity, has grown quite popular in some circles; indeed, it forms the basis for the “three strikes” laws that some states have adopted. Decried as barbaric by some, at least a few criminologists credit incapacitation strategies with being partially responsible for the 40-year decline in violent and property



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 crime that America has enjoyed (for a discussion of the issue, see Zimring and Hawkins, 1995).

Policing in America Many people incorrectly use the terms “policing” and “law enforcement” interchangeably. Law enforcement is a subset of policing that concerns only suppression. Policing is much broader. It concerns preventing crime, maintaining order, allowing citizens to feel safe, and myriad other tasks. Arresting people once they’ve broken the law can assist in some, but not all of these areas. While federal and state agencies play a part in enforcing the law in the United States, it is the local police and sheriffs’ departments that are primarily responsible for maintaining peace and social order. This has come about in large measure because the framers of the US Constitution envisioned a small role for the federal government in such matters and because “local control” has been a cherished concept, embedded in the principles of the republic since its earliest days.

Policing Through the Early Years The Cop on the Beat The earliest form of organized policing in the United States was, like its UK counterpart, informal. Police were hired primarily based on the political loyalties and family connections. There was little or no training and policing was carried out idiosyncratically, to say the least. Police officers often served their entire careers walking a beat in one neighbourhood. As a result, a cosy familiarity often formed between the “neighbourhood cop” and his constituents. This led to close policecommunity relations, which had its benefits but also its price. Both prevention and suppression activities were often quite informal. Instead of charging individuals with crimes, officers often arrived at a “fitting” punishment on their own, oftentimes at the end of their nightsticks. Juvenile offenders were often returned to their parents by the scruff of the neck. Because officers were under little scrutiny and received almost no training, they enforced the law as they saw fit; this led to wildly different styles of policing and law enforcement across communities. As well, overfamiliarity with their constituents led to a differential administration of justice, even within neighbourhoods. If the officer liked you or you



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 belonged to the correct ethnic and social group, you were often treated with favour; on the other hand, if you were a member of an “out” group, justice could be swift and severe. Finally, the close relationship between the community and “its” officer produced a great deal of corruption.

The Professional Era By the 1920s, calls for police reform had reached a crescendo. Progressive thinkers, like August Vollmer, believed that educational standards and modern management techniques should be integrated into policing. Further, he and others like him insisted that high ethical standards and the unbiased administration of justice should be at the core of every agency. In the federal sphere, a young lawyer J. Edgar Hoover was brought in to head the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) in 1924. At the time, the BOI existed as a small agency and endured a reputation for sloth, incompetence, and corruption. In short order, Hoover cleaned house—he also insisted that law enforcement become more “scientific.” The Bureau soon owned the national fingerprint identification system and opened a forensic laboratory. By 1935, the Bureau of Investigation had become the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Hoover served as its leader until 1972. Perhaps no other figure had greater influence over 20th century US law enforcement than J. Edgar Hoover. Both idolized and reviled, his cleancut, no nonsense “G-men” epitomized the professional law enforcer of the 20th century. During the Professional Era, police officers received better training. As well, their once freewheeling autonomy was soon replaced by a rigid hierarchical structure. The emphasis for the police became the enforcement of laws. Whereas the cop on the beat had great discretion in the way he performed his duties, Professional Era police emulated, or attempted to emulate, military discipline and order. Soon, technology intervened; two inventions—the automobile and the mobile two-way radio—revolutionized policing. Now the police could travel far distances. “Radio cars” increasingly replaced foot patrols. As well, with modern communications systems, the police could respond quickly to crimes in progress. The mantra of the Professional Era soon became: • • •



Enforcement of laws Rapid response to criminal calls Random patrolling to deter crime and catch offenders “in the act”

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 In essence, resistance in the Professional Era was dealt with almost entirely by suppression. In particular, arrest was believed to demotivate offenders and send a message that criminal behaviour would not be tolerated. Random patrol was meant to instil a sense of capable guardianship—the police could be just around the corner; hence, would-be offenders were taking a substantial risk of apprehension. However, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, cracks began to develop in the Professional Era philosophy. In the first place, studies showed that the police generally couldn’t respond quickly enough to catch perpetrators “in the act.” As well, a famous experiment carried out in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1974, cast doubt on the efficacy of random patrol (Kelling, Pate, Dieckman, and Brown, 1975). Finally, in 1968, the Kerner Commission concluded that significant distrust existed between the police and the residents of disadvantaged, urban areas--the police had become unwelcome strangers in the communities they patrolled (National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968). These revelations set in motion a series of events that reverberate through the profession to this day.

The Present Day: Whither Policing? Policing today is at a crossroads. New threats brought on by technology and the globalized world challenge the profession in ways not dreamed possible a quarter of a century ago. The Internet and the “wiring” of the world have introduced new words into the lexicon, such as identity theft and malware. Street gangs have evolved into transnational criminal organizations. Policing is left to decide how it will react to a world in which resistance changes form almost daily. As a result of problems associated with the Professional Era, new paradigms of policing emerged beginning in the 1980s. One attempted to re-introduce the police into the community in a positive way. In community oriented policing (COP), some officers are re-assigned from patrol vehicles to foot or bicycle patrol in an attempt to have them better engage with the citizenry. Agencies open neighbourhood substations and the police hold regular meetings with the community. Though it had a preventative component, COP is best suited to suppression—if the public trusts the police, they will seemingly be more willing to report crime1 and come forward as witnesses.

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Historically, the most oft-cited official crime statistics are the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCRs), which separate crime into two categories (Part I and Part



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 Another model with a similar sounding acronym emerged alongside COP. Problem oriented policing, or POP, holds that by addressing the root causes of crime, solving problems as it were, the police can head off trouble before it begins. Obviously, POP is firmly rooted in the idea of prevention. Many POP solutions have a particularly un-law enforcement like design. For example, by having the city install lighting in certain dark, secluded locations, theft and sexual assault crimes have been reduced in some areas. That is not to say that all POP solutions are removed from traditional policing activities—while random patrol has been shown to be largely ineffective, intensive patrol directed at high crime areas does seem to act as a deterrent. As well, suppression also has a role in POP; studies show that a small minority of the population commits a disproportionately large amount of crime. Consequently, some organizations have formed squads to target high-risk offenders in the hope that their incapacitation will significantly impact the crime rate. Many modern policing agencies claim that they use both POP and COP in tandem. Police chiefs appreciate the positive relations that accrue as a result of COP; they also appreciate the promise of POP to reduce crime before it occurs. Somewhat after the introduction of COP/POP, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) introduced its own model of policing called COMPSTAT (an acronym for Computerized Statistics). COMPSTAT uses the “broken windows” theory popularized by social scientists George Kelling and James Q. Wilson which holds that the rigid enforcement of “nuisance” crimes, like jumping turnstiles in subways and illegal panhandling, leads to a reduction in such serious offences as homicide and sexual assault (Kelling and Wilson, 1982). COMPSTAT also involves a rigid accountability system, where precinct commanders are held responsible for crime rates within their command; if the rates go up and the commander appears ineffective, he or she will likely be looking for another job. The NYPD is quick to cite COMPSTAT for the remarkable reduction in crime New York City has experienced in the last twenty years. While

 II). Part I crimes include homicide and sexual assault and are generally considered the most serious offences; they are also only counted when a crime is actually reported to the police. For years, criminologists have discussed the “dark figure of crime” which refers to crimes that do not get reported. Some offences, such as rape, have historically been severely underreported (Clay-Warner and Burt, 2005). In a successful COP scenario, citizens would feel better about confiding in the police and reporting when they had been victimized. Hence, the official crime rate could increase with no actual increase in crime.



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 other large urban areas have also seen reductions in crime, New York’s experience is fairly unique. In 1990, the city experienced 2,245 homicides; by 2010, that number had fallen to 536 (Oppel, 2011). Not everyone is enamoured with COMPSTAT. Some criminologists cite other factors, such as demographic and economic shifts, as being primarily responsible for the drop in crime. As well, some precinct commanders in New York and elsewhere have been accused of “cooking the books” by recording fewer crimes than actually occur or downgrading those that get reported (e.g., recording felony aggravated assault as misdemeanour assault). COMPSTAT is concerned with suppression in all three areas identified above: strict enforcement of the law for even minor offences is thought to demotivate offenders from committing larger ones. Likewise, offenders tend to commit both large and small crimes. Hence, if they are incarcerated for smaller ones, they do not have the capability to commit larger ones. Finally, by using crime mapping to direct policing efforts to the areas most in need, the police hope to harden vulnerable targets and demonstrate capable guardianship. Two other policing models, neither of which is in widespread use today, deserve mention because either may emerge as the “next big thing.” intelligence-led policing was developed in the United Kingdom in the 1990s. As the name implies, it uses intelligence to direct prevention and suppression activities. The newest policing paradigm, Preventative Policing, uses computer models to forecast emerging areas of crime that can be targeted for prevention efforts.

Resistance and Policing Conceptualizing crime as resistance offers several ideas on how it can be controlled. General strain theory especially suggests that the police should address root causes of crime. This is well in keeping with prevention strategies like predictive policing, POP and, to some extent, COMPSTAT. Since anger is the causal mechanism in GST, police must address it as well. On the surface, this may call into question suppression as a strategy, since zealous enforcement of the law can be expected to cause anger. In fact, studies suggest that police tactics viewed as harassment, such as frequent stops of vehicles and persons for suspected disorderly behaviour, do produce resentment (Gau and Brunson, 2010). However, when police action is deemed procedurally fair, it produces few feelings of anger, even when arrest occurs. This has further been shown to lead to a decrease in recidivism (see, inter alia, Rottman, 2007). It is also a



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 perfect example of how crime is resistance—otherwise, feelings of resentment over mistreatment by the police would not lead to higher levels of seemingly unrelated and non-political crime. In examining procedural justice and domestic abuse, Epstein (2002) notes: Researchers evaluating why people obey the law have found that the manner in which an official directive is reached has an independent, and often more powerful, effect than does the outcome of the directive itself. The likelihood of a person's compliance with the dictates of police and probation officers, or with court orders issued in civil or criminal cases, is at least as firmly rooted in his perception of fair process as in his satisfaction with the ultimate result2

The procedural justice studies further suggest that suppression, when properly applied, can be an effective strategy to control crime without producing further resistance. In terms of order maintenance philosophies, like COMPSTAT, this suggests that the manner it is carried out makes a huge difference. If the action as seen as procedurally fair (e.g., not targeting a particular group) and is viewed as a legitimate police activity to ensure the safety of the citizenry, it can have a positive effect. In fact, over the years COMPSTAT has been criticized for unfairly targeting minority groups (New York Civil Liberties Union, 2011). This comes as no surprise to conflict theory supporters and suggests that, even if it pays short-term dividends, unfair suppression activities may ultimately produce more crime, as GST would suggest. Community policing strategies, with their focus on improving policecommunity relations, are particularly suited to resolving feelings of anger and resentment. While they cannot solve all the structural inequalities that exist, they can foster positive feelings for one major aspect of governance, often the only agency with which most individuals have contact. Agnew suggested several programs to reduce strain and resentment, such as family-based programs designed to teach individuals how to solve problems in a constructive manner and how to discipline children effectively (Agnew, 1995:48-50). Agnew asserts that this reduces the negative emotions that result from conflict in the family as well as strain in the home. Other strategies that Agnew suggests include school-based programs to improve relations in and after school, peer-based programs to reduce strain in adolescents, and programs that emphasize behavioral, emotional, and cognitive support (Agnew, 1995).

 2



http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=333701 Accessed October 2012

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 In general, Agnew put forth four general recommendations to lessen strain: a) reduce the negative relationships of individuals with their environment, b) change the way individuals respond to their environment, c) increase social support to help individuals cope with strain, and, d) devise individually-based strain reduction strategies. (Ibid.). While much of Agnew’s attention is focused on delinquency, there are opportunities to reduce anger and resentment at several points in an individual’s offending career. For example, prison-based anger management programs have shown some success (Dowden, Blanchette, and Serin, 1999). Anger management interventions have been shown to be effective if administered properly (Deffenbacher, Oetting, and DiGiuseppe, 2002). However, over the last ten years, funding for these types of programs has decreased even as funding for prosecution and incarceration has increased (Coalition for Juvenile Justice, n.d.). If prevention of future crime is the goal, this strategy appears misplaced. To summarize, the “crime as resistance” model suggests four overarching strategies to reduce criminality: 1. The best way to deal with crime is to prevent it in the first place. This reduces both the fiscal and human costs that accompany criminality. Fortunately, many extant and emerging criminal justice paradigms (e.g., predictive policing, POP) seek to do just that. Researchers are producing an ever-increasing body of “what works” in preventing crime which should be followed and scrupulously employed (see Jensen, 2006, for an examination of evidence-based policing, a model that suggests that all facets of policing should be based on principles that have been empirically shown to be effective). 2. Numerous schools of criminology and criminal justice suggest that anger and resentment lead to law breaking, which in essence is a reaction against a system that is perceived as unfair. The entire criminal justice system must endeavour to retain fairness as a core principle. Overly harsh enforcement of laws and mistreatment of citizens (e.g., racial profiling) merely serve to enhance feelings of anger and disrespect, even if they may appear to pay some shortterm benefits. 3. Programs that emphasize suppression at the expense of prevention (e.g., incarceration instead of anger management) may prove counterproductive and needlessly expensive in the long run. Both



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 approaches have their place in policing and should be employed as appropriate. 4. Some of the most efficacious strategies to confront crime may seemingly have little to do with traditional law enforcement; the police should not be afraid to serve as advocates for their use, even if it comes at a cost to the agency (e.g., advocating for after school pro-social programs instead of new squad cars). This will take a great deal of political courage; however, if the mission of the police is to protect and serve, it will likely be necessary.

Concluding Thoughts Resistance offers a new, and valuable, approach for conceptualizing crime. It also offers strategies the criminal justice system can employ to reduce harm and suffering. The globalized and technologically driven society of the future will offer many challenges for the police. To that end, “business as usual” approaches to crime will likely not work. Instead, the police must continually and proactively seek innovative and “out-of-thebox” solutions. The present chapter was an attempt to foster discussion and, perhaps, some of that needed innovation.

References Agnew, Robert. 1992. Foundation for a general strain theory of crime and deviance. Criminology 30(1): 47-87. —. 1995. Controlling delinquency: recommendations from general strain theory. In Barlow, Hugh D. (ed.). Crime and Public Policy: Putting Theory to Work. Boulder: Westview: 43-70. Agnew, Robert, and Lisa Broidy. 1997. Gender and crime: a general strain theory perspective. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 34(3): 275-306. Agnew, Robert, and Nikos Passas (eds.). 1997. The Future of Anomie Theory. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Bonger, Willem. 1916. Criminality and Economic Conditions (translated by Henry Horton). Boston: Little, Brown. Broidy, Lisa. 2001. Test of general strain theory. Criminology 39(1): 9-35. Burton, P.S. 2012. Routine activity theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Routine_activity_theory.png (accessed July 24, 2012) Clay-Warner, Jody and Callie Burt. 2005. 2005. Reporting rape: Have things really changed?” Violence Against Women 11:150-176.



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 Coalition for Juvenile Justice. n.d. Safeguarding the future: Strategic investments to secure the safety of America’s youth, families and communities. http://www.juvjustice.org/media/factsheets/factsheet_15.pdf (accessed August 31, 2012). Cohen, Lawrence and Marcus Felson. 1979. Social change and crime rate trends: A routine activity approach. American Sociological Review 44(4): 588–608. Cohen, Stanley. 1988. Against Criminology. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Deffenbacher, Jerry L.; Eugene R. Oetting, Eugene R.; and Raymond A. DiGiuseppe. 2002. Principles of empirically supported interventions applied to anger management. Counseling Psychologist 30(2): 262280. Dowden, Craig; Kelley Blanchette; and Ralph Serin. 1999. Anger Management Programming For Federal Male Inmates: An Effective Intervention. www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/rsrch/reports/r82/r82_e.pdf (accessed August 30, 2012). Durkheim, Emile. 1897. Suicide (George Simpson (Editor), John A. Spaulding (Translator), 1997 edition). Epstein, Deborah. 2002. Procedural Justice: Tempering the state's response to domestic violence. William & Mary Law Review 43: 1843-1905. Gau, Jacinta and Rod K. Brunson. 2010. Procedural justice and order maintenance policing: A study of inner-city young men's perceptions of police legitimacy. Justice Quarterly 27(2): 255-279. Hagan, Frank. 2011. Introduction to Criminology: Theories, Methods, and Criminal Behavior. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Hall, Stuart and Tony Jefferson (eds.) 2006. Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. London: Routledge. Humphries, Drew. 1979. Crime and the state. In A. J. Szymanski and T. G. Goertzel (eds.) Sociology: Class, Consciousness, and Contradictions. New York: Van Nostrand. Jang, Sung Joon and Jeremy R. Rhodes. 2012. General strain and nonstrain theories: A study of crime in emerging adulthood. Journal of Criminal Justice 40(3): 176-186. Jensen, Carl J. 2006. Consuming and applying research: Evidence-based policing. The Police Chief 73(2): 98-101. Kelling, George L. and James Q. Wilson. 1982. Broken windows. Atlantic Monthly 249 (3): 29-38.



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 Kelling, George L., Tony Pate; Duane Dieckman; and Charles E. Brown. 1975. Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment: A Technical Report. Washington, DC: Police Foundation. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. 1998. The Communist Manifesto. New York: Signet Classics. Morris, Robert G.; Michael L. Carriaga; Brie Diamond; Nicole Leeper Piquero; and Alex R. Piquero. 2012. Does prison strain lead to prison misbehavior?: An application of general strain theory to inmate misconduct. Journal of Criminal Justice 40(3): 194-201. National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. 1968. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. New York: Bantam Books. New York Civil Liberties Union. 2011. Stop-and-frisk, 2011: NYCLU briefing. http://www.nyclu.org/files/publications/NYCLU_2011_Stopand-Frisk_Report.pdf (accessed August 31, 2012). Oppel, Richard. 2011. Steady decline in major crime baffles experts. New York Times (May 23). http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24crime.html?_r=1 (accessed August 30, 2012). Rottman, David B. 2007. Adhere to procedural fairness in the justice system. Criminology & Public Policy 6(4): 835-842. Sherman, Lawrence W.; Denise C. Gottfredson; Doris L. MacKenzie; John Eck; Peter Reuter; and Shawn D. Bushway. 1998. Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising. https://www.ncjrs.gov/works/ (accessed July 24, 2012). Young, T. R. 1978. Crime and capitalism. Cited in Eitzen, D. Stanley and Doug A. Timer. Criminology. 1985. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Zimring, Franklin E. and Gordon Hawkins. 1995. Incapacitation: Penal Confinement and the Restraint of Crime. New York: Oxford University Press.



CHAPTER FOURTEEN HIGH COST RESISTANCE: STUDENT ACTIVISM IN THE FIRST INTIFADA FRANCESCA BURKE

This is really the crux of the matter. Each time those sent to fetch the food return to their ward with the meager rations they have been given there is an outbreak of angry protest. There is always someone who proposes collective action, a mass demonstration, using the forceful argument… that determined wills, in general merely capable of being added one to the other, are also very capable in certain circumstances of multiplying among themselves ad infinitum. However, it was not long before the inmates calmed down, it was enough that someone more prudent, with the simple and objective intention of pondering the advantages and risks of the action proposed, should remind the enthusiasts of the fatal effects handguns tend to have… —From Blindness, by José Saramago (p.155) Ever since David Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment, we define instrumental rationality as choosing the best option to pursue your own interests. And if both players do that in the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game they end up worse off than two irrational players who haven’t done that, who co-operate and don’t give up and confess to the police. —Andrew Colman, In Our Time, 10 May 2012

Early in the morning on 4 December 1986, Israeli soldiers set up a checkpoint blocking entry to the Palestinian university of Birzeit in the occupied West Bank. In response, a number of Palestinian students and staff sat peacefully in the road in what a contemporary observer remarked was ‘a spontaneous non-violent form of civil disobedience that is unusual in the occupied territories’ (Johnson 1987a, p.136). The army’s reaction to this act of collective resistance was to employ tear-gas against the protestors and to detain and beat a member of the university staff. A small demonstration then ensued on the campus, which the army met not only



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with tear-gas but also live ammunition; ten students were shot, two fatally (Al-Fajr, 5 December 1986). This moment of collective resistance by university students and staff died down but one year later, a popular uprising known as the first intifada began in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).1 It was to last for four years and represented the most sustained mobilization in these areas since the Israeli invasion of 1967. Although Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been draconian from the outset, when the first intifada began in late 1987 repression rose to new levels, with Israeli Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin exhorting soldiers to use ‘force, power and beating’ to end the insurrection (Washington Post, 26 January 1988). In the first eighteen months of the uprising 40,000 Palestinians were arrested (Sayigh 1997, p.619) and ill-treatment of detainees leapt as an estimated 5,000 Palestinians underwent torture in Israeli prisons every year (B’Tselem 1992, p.7). Between the outbreak of the intifada and December 1991, some 812 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military (B’Tselem, http://www.btselem.org/statistics/first_intifada_tables, accessed 3 June 2012). With the occupying forces willing to exert such repressive measures, why did so many ordinary people mobilize to collectively resist, especially when such action seemed to go against their individual selfinterest?

Rationality, Resistance and Collective Action Organized co-operation by individuals who hold common interests or share grievances is by no means inevitable. Mancur Olson (1965), noting the potential “costs” of collective action combined with the possibilities for individuals to “free-ride” (that is, to benefit from gains won through collective action without contributing), asked why rational, self-interested individuals would ever choose to act collectively. Yet, despite these concerns, collective action, often with high costs being paid by participants, frequently has occurred both in the context of national movements and

 1

This chapter adopts the majority view of the international community–expressed by the United Nations General Assembly and the UN Security Council, International Committee of the Red Cross, High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Convention and International Court of Justice (ICJ)–that the areas invaded by Israel in 1967 are occupied territories–for further discussion, see ICJ, Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, para.86-101. Since 1974 UN General Assembly resolutions have also demonstrated a tendency to view these territories–the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip as constituent parts of a future Palestinian state.



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social movements. Explanations for such seemingly “irrational” behaviour are particularly pressing in contexts where collective action constitutes resistance (broadly defined here as action in response to confrontation) and, moreover, when participation risks significant suffering. The renowned Prisoner’s Dilemma cited above demonstrates how making an apparently rational choice may led to a poorer outcome for an individual than would have resulted from “irrational” co-operation.2 Yet a key assumption of the Prisoner’s Dilemma (and more generally Rational Choice Theory)–that individuals are egotistical actors purely seeking to maximise their self-interest without a central authority–is also problematic. This chapter, informed by critical theory, instead regards individuals as socially embedded actors who can also be motivated by normative values or notions of communal benefit. Taking seriously the role of identity in shaping perceptions of interest and therefore action, it accords importance not only to material structures and self-orientated goals but also to normative structures and group-orientated objectives. This approach also acknowledges the potential for authorities to emerge which can aid coordination of individuals’ action, promoting co-operation. Drawing on the work of Charles Tilly (1978), David Snow and Robert Benford (2000) on collective action, this chapter argues that understanding the rationality of resistance in the first intifada requires an appreciation of the population’s political context, identity and resources, and how Palestinians framed resistance in this period. Using the example of Palestinian student activism, it will discuss each of these to argue that the costs of repression were: 1) accepted due to a vision of communal interests and normative values; 2) endured due to their potential to elicit international condemnation of the occupation; 3) off-set through the promotion of resistance as a valuable act within the community and a belief that the resistance was effective; 4) avoided (or at least attempts were made at avoidance) through clandestine or “quiet” activism; and 5) shared through a form of mass mobilization which hoped to spread the costs. Utilizing participant interviews and contemporary political pamphlets, I argue that mobilization against the occupation in this case study rendered participation in resistance rational.

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For further discussion on cooperation ‘in a world of egotists without central authority’, see Axelrod, 2006.



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Collective Action and Framing Charles Tilly outlines elements he believes to be relevant when considering collective action by contenders. Shared interests and grievances are an important factor but, supporting Olson’s view that this in itself is not sufficient to lead to collective action, Tilly also credits mobilization with a vital role. Mobilization is the manner in which shared ideas about the situation are produced to provide a framework capable of motivating and sustaining collective action. This mobilization is achieved through structures that channel and organize collective action, and via discourse used by leading actors within the movement. Formation and maintenance of a strong group identity is essential to this process. A shared identity enables actors to conceptualize their individual situation as part of a larger context, to link their personal grievances with a wider discontent, and to struggle for collective goals (even accepting personal costs) as part of a community. The further factor in understanding collective action is opportunity, namely the presence of political opportunities that enable protest to develop. This requires an understanding of the broad political context–both the interaction between a contender and other actors in the polity, and the amount of coercion, repression or facilitation that the contender faces from the government or other groups. A vital stage of mobilization lies in the framing engaged in by social movements. Developing Goffman’s (1974) concept of frames as ‘schemata of interpretation’ that enable individuals ‘to locate, perceive, identify, and label’ what is going on in the world around them (p.21), Snow and Benford argue that collective action frames produced by social movements have a very particular dynamic. Promoting ideas of injustice, identity and agency, collective action frames ‘are developed and deployed to achieve a specific purpose–to recruit new members, to mobilize adherents, [and] to acquire resources’ (p.624).

Identity, Political Context and Resources in the Occupied Palestinian Territories The 1947-49 War for Palestine saw the establishment of an Israeli state on 78 per cent of what had been until 1948 the British Mandate of Palestine, and 750,000 Palestinian Arab refugees fleeing or being expelled from their homes (Morris, 2004). The 1949 armistice lines held until 1967 when the Israeli military routed Arab forces in the remaining 22 per cent of former Mandatory Palestine–the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip–and occupied these areas. Other than East Jerusalem,

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which Israel rapidly declared annexed,3 the Israeli government chose to rule the newly-conquered Palestinian territories via a military administration. Israeli official discourse meanwhile sought to name Palestinians in a manner conducive to denying their connection with the land and their right to self-determination. It was a sentiment famously expressed by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in her 1969 pronouncement that, ‘There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist’ (quoted in Sunday Times, 15 June 1969). Such a denotation marked an effort by power-holders to delegitimize a contender group’s self-ascribed identity and consequent rights. However these efforts were vigorously contested by the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fateh) and other Palestinian parties pressing for independence which in the late 1960s rose to prominence in the umbrella body of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Since 1967 and throughout the first intifada, successive Israeli governments pursued three key objectives in the OPT: a) suppressing organized resistance to Israeli control; b) opposing Palestinian efforts for national self-determination; and c) incorporating significant parts of the land and resources but not the Palestinian population into the Israeli state. The sustained pursuit of this three-pronged strategy was seen most strikingly in the large-scale construction of Israeli settlements and military bases on expropriated Palestinian land and in the prohibitions on independent Palestinian political activity in these years. In doing so, Israeli rule created multiple grievances among the occupied population, but kept the Israeli political system consistently “closed” to the Palestinians of the OPT. Yet the Palestinian context was not solely determined by the Israeli military, an alternative system was embodied in the Palestinian national movement which encompassed the PLO, Palestinian nationalist parties and independent cross-party local groups. These bodies openly advocated Palestinian nationalism and aimed to operate in the context of a separate Palestinian political system outside the Israeli framework. To this end they engaged in independent institution-building, working to construct national structures accessible to the Palestinian population. They affirmed Palestinians’ right to an independent state and typically backed the status

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Annexing East Jerusalem, Israel redrew the city’s boundaries and added a further 64 square kilometres to Jerusalem from 28 West Bank villages and the Bethlehem and Beit Jala municipalities (B’Tselem, 1995, p.10). The Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem has not been recognized by the international community.



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of the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people despite the considerable costs involved in doing so.4 The nationalist groupings in the OPT in the 1970s (such as the Palestinian National Front, the nationalist mayors and the National Guidance Committee) represented short-lived attempts to co-ordinate resistance undertaken by committed activists. Yet, as the Israeli occupation stretched into the mid-1970s, there was a growing sense that sustained resistance required mass mobilization at the grassroots. Initially, the most prominent proponents of this effort came from the Palestinian left, but the strategy was soon adopted by the centrist Fateh, the largest bloc in the PLO, and later also embraced by Islamist groups. Increased settlement-building, land confiscation and repression under Israel’s Likud government from the late 1970s galvanized local Palestinian actors and this period saw a flourishing of independent community organizations providing food, healthcare and education. The student movement, trade unions, professional associations, relief societies, and voluntary work committees were vital in local efforts to promote selfsufficiency. It was not only everyday needs and grievances that spurred ordinary Palestinians into high levels of activism. Broad-based organizational structures with a diffuse leadership were also a strategy to counteract Israeli attempts to limit resistance by arresting and deporting prominent political figures. As resistance to the Israeli occupation gathered popular strength in the 1980s, this grassroots activism developed to encompass almost all sectors and all levels of Palestinian society. Having briefly sketched the general scene in the West Bank and Gaza Strip under Israeli occupation, this chapter moves to outline how the specific situation of Palestinian students in these areas developed the possibilities for resistance.

Palestinian Students under Occupation Until the early 1970s, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were obliged to travel to Cairo, Beirut, or further afield for higher education. However with Israel’s occupation of these areas from 1967, the military administration severely curtailed the ability of Palestinians from the OPT to study abroad and establishing domestic universities came to be seen as a

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The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), which emerged soon after the beginning of the first intifada, although undoubtedly nationalist, has consistently refused to join the PLO and contested its claimed monopoly on representing Palestinians and Palestinian nationalism.

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necessity. The first Palestinian university was founded in 1972 in the West Bank village of Birzeit, near Ramallah. Within a decade universities had sprung up in Bethlehem (1973), Nablus (1977), Gaza (1978) and Hebron (1980). Expanded provision saw enrolment figures climb rapidly, with student numbers increasing more than seven-fold between 1977 and 1987 (Robinson, 1997 p.21). The dramatic growth of universities in the OPT opened up new educational avenues to Palestinians from middle and lower income groups. During the 1970s residents of villages and refugee camps, as well as poorer quarters of urban areas, began to compose the majority of the intake at the new institutions (Baramki, 1987). The universities’ reasonable fees and their ease of access also enabled high female enrolment (Brown, 1984), while their ability to partially remove students from their usual setting was central in allowing young people from dissimilar backgrounds to interact and create new socio-political links. As Glenn Robinson (1997) cogently argues, this extension of higher level education facilitated the formation of the new political elite in the OPT. This emerging political class was not only varied in its origins but also unequivocally committed to national independence and the mass mobilization of the population. In the 1970s and 1980s, this rising generation was particularly visible in local universities where an intensely active student movement employed strategies that directly confronted the occupation.5 Indeed Emile Sahliyeh, a political scientist who taught at Birzeit University from 1978 to 1984, noted the students’ self-image as ‘the vanguard in their society’ (1988, p.124). Complementing the students’ activism, the institutions themselves swiftly assumed a distinctive national character. In 1980, Birzeit University’s Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Muhammad Hallaj projected an ambitious mission for the universities, arguing that they would be crucial for Palestinian society to ‘undergo the metamorphosis from a colonial to an independent community’ (p.86). In this context, the very act of studying was conceived as a valuable part of the national struggle. Student radicalism thus both contributed to, and drew strength, from the universities’ self-image as national institutions. Another important feature of Palestinian student identity was its democratic aspect which coalesced with calls for self-determination and national independence. It was also encouraged by the annual elections of the student councils

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An indication of the politicization of the new students is visible in the profile of student council presidents in Birzeit University between 1981 and 1987 who all came from villages or refugee camps (Ghiyatha, 2000, p.98).



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elections which exhibited the political currents of Palestinian society in the OPT, with candidates generally running on lists affiliated with PLO parties or Islamist movements. Yet student aspirations to resist through education and protest were confronted by Israeli military restrictions. Military Order Number 101 ‘Concerning the prohibition of incitement and adverse propaganda’ (introduced 1967) stipulated that all reading material entering the OPT had to be approved by an Israeli army censor. In 1985, 350 books were specifically banned, including texts on Palestinian history and Arabic poetry, while 98 per cent of Birzeit’s applications for Arabic-language academic periodicals were refused (Birzeit University, 1985). Permission was also required for any new building or the extension of current facilities and the increasing denial of these permits from the early 1980s inhibited the universities’ attempts to meet the growing demand for higher education (World University Service, 1991; Al-Fajr 27 July 1984). Restrictions were also financial with Palestinian universities refused the tax exemptions provided to Israeli educational institutions yet required to pay substantial Israeli taxes on all educational materials (Washington Post, 24 June 1978). Moreover Military Order 101 forbade (unless permission had been obtained from the military commander of the area) meetings or marches of more than ten people for a political purpose; the display of flags or political emblems; and the printing and publishing of any picture or document with political significance. As the universities developed, this order was repeatedly invoked by the military to justify arrests, raids and the use of physical force against students. During the mid-1980s student prisoner numbers steadily rose: Birzeit had 73 students in jail in 1983-84, 91 during 1984-85, and 115 in 1985-86 (70 per cent of whom were held without charge) (Birzeit University, 1987). Detention became so common that Birzeit’s internal newsletter carried a regular item listing the names of recently arrested and released students. Yet the political education students received in the Palestinian universities overlapped with experiences in prison, and former student activists repeatedly stressed the importance of this interaction: In our culture, we call prisons schools–political schools. A guy would enter prison very naïve and leave very aware, full of information related to the political situation. [In Nablus prison] the senior prisoners used to train the junior prisoners, to educate them and help them [to] improve their political understanding... I wouldn’t be as successful politically if I didn’t have these experiences in prison and also in university (Khatib, 2007).

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Rather than marking the end of, or a hiatus in, political activism, imprisonment became a continuation of activism by other means. Experience of prisoner repertoires informed later student activism but more importantly personal connections formed in jail fostered co-operation across the ideological spectrum in the factional world of student politics. The prisoner-student overlap was enhanced by the Israeli policy of prohibiting former Palestinian prisoners from making visits abroad which had the unintended result of concentrating ex-detainees in local universities. The expansive Military Order Number 8546 sanctioned the military authorities to control the universities’ curricula, student admission, and hiring and firing of university staff. In 1982 all “foreign” staff applying for work permits in Palestinian universities (including Palestinians who had been denied legal residency status) were ordered to sign a statement rejecting affiliation with the PLO or any organization deemed hostile to Israel. The following year, a mass refusal by staff to sign the document resulted in a wave of deportations of professors from the West Bank and Gaza, with more forbidden to teach (Roberts, 1984). The move attracted international criticism and focused attention on the occupation’s targeting of universities and students. In 1983 UNESCO’s General Conference stated that it: Strongly condemns the measures taken by Israel to efface the cultural identity of the Palestinian people, and the actions of the Israeli authorities in closing university and other educational institutions, violating academic freedoms and opening fire on Arab students and teachers.

After 1986 “town arrests” (which confined individuals to their towns for six month periods) were increasingly used against students, while censorship, refusal of building permits and permission to run certain courses were seen by staff and students as military attempts to control the institutions and student activism (see Sahliyeh, 1988; Sullivan, 1988). The repressive capacity of the occupation forces was particularly visible in the frequent forcible closures of the universities, generally lasting for several weeks at a time. From 1987 the possibility of extended university closure became increasingly voiced within Israel under the justification that the institutions were centres of political agitation (AlFajr, 12 December 1986). The heads of the Palestinian universities were summoned to meet with Israeli Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin who

 6

Order Concerning Education Law Number 16 for the year 1964 (Amendment) (West Bank) (Number 854) for the year 5740-1980 (reproduced in Kuttab, undated).



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threatened to close down the institutions if political demonstrations continued to occur on campuses (Al-Fajr, 23 January 1987). This prohibition included peaceful demonstrations which Rabin condemned for displaying Palestinian flags and showing open support for the PLO (Johnson, 1987a). As force was increasingly used against students, Birzeit accused the army of employing ‘battlefield tactics’ on campus (Birzeit University, 1987b). Amnesty International recorded the particular targeting of students by the military authorities (Amnesty International, 1987), exemplified by the deportation of Birzeit and al-Najah student council presidents, Marwan al-Barghouthi and Khalil ‘Ashour. Both were charged with making speeches at student rallies (allegedly supporting Fateh), political activity related to the student movement, and inciting other students to demonstrate (Johnson, 1987b). The criminalization of student politics was extended as Shabiba, a group representing young affiliates of Fateh and the main bloc in the student councils, was increasingly treated as an official, and therefore prohibited, part of the PLO. Then in February 1988, as the first intifada took hold, the Israeli military closed all the Palestinian universities indefinitely.

Students in the First Intifada, 1987-1991 The first intifada was triggered in December 1987 when four Palestinian labourers died after being hit by an Israeli truck in Gaza. After the initial spontaneous demonstrations and strikes that followed the funerals, existing grassroots associations rapidly organized a network of local committees to channel the energies of the highly mobilized population. These actions were coordinated under a general leadership based in the OPT known as the Unified National Leadership (hereafter UNL) of the uprising. Although four groups issued leaflets during the first intifada, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and some leftist groups, most of the pamphlets were credited to the UNL. Formed in January 1988, the UNL was initially an anonymous local body composed of activists from Fateh and the leftist groups of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Communist Party. It became known through its regular leaflets which attempted to structure the insurrection by setting certain days for strikes, others for demonstrations, publicizing instructions about boycotts and so on. One member described the group as ‘an attempt to install a conductor and pass out sheet music to an orchestra in which all the instruments were playing in the same metre but not in the same pace’ (quoted in Schiff and Ya’ari, 1990, p.188).

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Students formed a dynamic part of the UNL. PLO factions in the OPT nominated their rising stars to create a coordinating committee of respected local activists who were less familiar to the Israeli intelligence agencies and therefore deemed less likely to be arrested. Birzeit’s student council president Samir Sabihat was selected as the head Fateh representative in the West Bank’s UNL team and almost half of the UNL had attended Birzeit or were still students there.7 The leaflets of both the UNL and Hamas also explicitly and repeatedly stressed the role of the student sector in the struggle. From 53 separate statements released during the first intifada, student participation was mentioned in 23 of the 28 UNL leaflets and 9 of the 25 Hamas handbills.8 For the UNL and Hamas, the universities’ indefinite closure reflected the Israeli government’s fear of education as a tool for liberation (see Hamas, 13 February 1988 and UNL, 5 August 1988). The UNL’s first approach was to ask students to return to their campuses, setting certain dates as ‘a day of Palestinian defiance (a teaching day) against the policy of enforced ignorance’ (UNL, 19 February 1988, brackets in original). On such occasions they requested that students, along with their families and teachers, held marches, sit-ins and lectures on campus. The activism of the student organizations was visible in the reaction of the military authorities when, in mid-March 1988, Shabiba was declared an unlawful association.9 From the outset, studying was perceived as a vital component of the uprising, with one pamphlet stressing ‘the importance of strictly maintaining studies in academic institutions from 9.00 a.m. to 12.00 noon’ (UNL, 30 April 1988). Student resistance via non-educational activities was also strongly advocated, and the third leaflet issued by the UNL called for the mobilization of ‘the masses of students in the villages, the camps, and the cities’. With the universities closed, it recommended ‘struggle in the streets, so that they [the students] can help shake and burn the ground under the feet of the occupiers’ (UNL, 18 January 1988). As the intifada wore on, student resistance and its entailed costs were acknowledged in calls for general strikes in solidarity with incarcerated students and praise

 7

For example, former Birzeit student leader Bassam al-Salhi was a member of the West Bank UNL and in Gaza the older Fateh figure of Tawfiq Abu Housah was soon replaced by the 25-year-old Shabiba activist Ihab al-Askar (Schiff and Ya’ari, 1990, p.197; Robinson, Building, 1997, p.97). 8 The UNL and Hamas material in this section is taken from Mishal and Aharoni’s (1994) collection of intifada pamphlets. 9 Along with ‘youth committees for social activity, youth movements or bloc’ (Ben-Natan, 2009, p.225).



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for the on-going student activism (UNL, 8 June 1988). In its initial attempt to quell the uprising, Israel imposed long curfews on parts of the occupied territories, making it difficult for the population to obtain food. Popular committees proliferated as groups outside the areas under curfew would collect provisions, while committees inside the areas would organize distribution (Kuttab, 1988, p.21). In the early weeks of the intifada many of these popular committees were organized by Shabiba, who worked to involve non-students, as well as professionals, women’s organizations and charitable societies (Schiff and Ya’ari, p.246). Although created to meet an unforeseen emergency, as Israeli policies of closure and collective punishment became permanent features of life in the OPT so too did the popular committees. Hanan Ashrawi, then a Birzeit professor, described students digging wells, bringing in harvests, building school playgrounds and street cleaning. Her account illustrates the combination of community service, social connections, and anti-occupation activism offered by such work. We would go, for example [and] sweep the streets of Ramallah…and the army came and arrested many of the students and shot at others so we developed this chant: ‘These are brooms, not machine guns. What are you afraid of, occupation army?’… The students were part of the community, they weren’t isolated (Ashrawi, 2007).

Students were not only vital players in the popular committees but they also helped these initiatives to permeate Palestinian society by disseminating organizational techniques learnt on campus to their villages and neighbourhoods (Darwish, 2004). Such activities not only maintained the population’s practical ability to sustain a rebellion, but also, with their ideology of self-sufficiency through collective action, embedded the uprising at all levels of society. As the closures continued and concern grew that Palestinian educational achievements were being set back, successive leaflets urged the community to secretly arrange off-campus classes for students. Handbills asserted that this popular education was a national responsibility to which everyone should be committed (UNL, 22 August 1988). Students were instructed to structure their time efficiently to enable participation in underground seminars and still find time for other intifada activities (UNL, 8 June 1988). With education confirmed as ‘a basic Palestinian treasure’ (Hamas, 19 April 1990), Hamas robustly criticized students who cheated in examinations and argued that such misbehaviour was ‘violating the national consensus’ (Hamas, 1 May 1991). By August 1988 the universities of Birzeit, Bethlehem, Hebron and al-

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Najah were all attempting to hold off-campus sessions to enable final-year students to complete their degrees. As the uprising continued the “University without walls” programmes became institutionalized. Indeed, by 1989, Birzeit University was catering for 500 students in summer sessions which offered around a quarter of the pre-closure courses (Robinson, 1997, p.107). Involvement in these initiatives was broad; a former student who participated in popular education stated every lecturer would hold classes, and even exams, in their homes (Darwish, 2004). The impact of this initiative was perhaps most clearly proven in the continued military harassment of the education process. In August 1988 the Israeli military authority outlawed popular committees and threatened prison sentences of five years for mere membership, while more significant involvement could result in up to twenty years (Ben-Natan, 2009). A few weeks later, the army raided informal classes in Nablus and Abu Dis, arresting teachers and students (Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre, 1990). Students also played a part in the intifada strike forces. These groups were responsible for enforcing strikes and boycotts of Israeli goods, although they also organized demonstrations, sprayed slogans on the walls, built barricades in the streets, flew the Palestinian flag, clashed with Israeli soldiers and attacked Palestinians suspected of collaboration (Robinson, 1997, p.96). Students confronting Israeli soldiers would sometimes throw stones during protests. Although a violent act, given its limited capacity to harm a well-equipped military, stone-throwing was more significant as symbolic action, representing a link to the land, an uneven conflict, and defiance against superior force. A vital image of the first intifada, stone-throwing youth and the military’s armed response was depicted as a kind of David and Goliath struggle eliciting international sympathy for the Palestinian uprising. While the act represented a highcost for its Palestinian practitioners, it offered a strategic gain to the Palestinian national movement, encouraging the positioning of Israel as an oppressive occupier.

Rationality in Resistance The military authorities have never allowed Birzeit University the option of being an ivory tower, nor have we ever considered the university isolated from the community that surrounds it. —Gabi Baramki, former acting president of Birzeit University, quoted in Johnson, 1988



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This chapter has shown how resistance in the first intifada, despite the risks of participation, came to be conceived by Palestinian students as a rational act. The potential costs of resistance were variously accepted, endured, off-set, avoided and shared by activists as Palestinian identity, context and resources combined to create a system in which resistance to military rule made sense. Israeli practices in the OPT generated a framing of the occupation as fundamentally unjust, and Palestinian students pursued normative values of freedom and independence in their opposition to foreign military rule. Collective action was motivated by hopes for liberation and self-determination not simply for the individual but moreover for the community–both writ small in the familiar terms of activists’ intimate social circles and writ large in the broader imagined community of the Palestinian people. This tangible community both provided incentives for undertaking resistance (positioning it as a noble endeavour) and offered practical structures to co-ordinate activism, increasing its effectiveness. Costs appeared worthwhile when activism visibly contributed to local needs through the popular committees and was channelled into strategic action by the UNL and other groups. This chapter’s focus on student collective action in the OPT demonstrates the limitations and opportunities of Palestinians’ political context under the occupation as informed by the Palestinian national movement, and articulates the processes through which a new Palestinian political elite developed in the West Bank and Gaza. It outlines how this context, Palestinian nationalist identity and independent bodies, contributed to the notion of communal goods and promoted a popular conception of resistance as a socially good act leading to an acceptance on the part of individual activists of the price of resistance. The marginality of Palestinians in the Israeli political system did not only enable a range of repressive measures to be practised against them, it also encouraged their orientation to the alternative structures of the Palestinian national movement. In this setting, the nationalist identity of Palestinians in the OPT endured, with the presence of substantial grievances due to the occupation encouraging system-challenging behaviour. Resistance in the OPT was sustained in this era by its collective character as anti-occupation activity was popularized through civil society mobilization. The independent Palestinian political system that emerged in the first intifada–mass-based, led at the neighbourhood level, centred on collective action and coordinated by directives from the accepted (albeit clandestine) leadership–provided different structures and motivations for action than the Israeli military system. The fundamental challenge presented in this

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strategy was not lost on the Israeli authorities. Indeed in August 1988, Rabin criticized the popular committees for ‘undermining the Israeli government apparatus and establishing an alternative apparatus in its place’ (quoted in Robinson, 1997, p.103). In this setting, none of the early repressive repertoires adopted by the Israeli authorities were successful in suppressing activism in the initial months of the uprising. Arguably, the collective punishment employed by the military–widespread violence, mass detention and the closure of educational institutions–only added resonance to the injustice framing adopted by student activists. Meanwhile the strategy of sustained university closure unwittingly both spread student activism off-campus and encouraged the foundation of alternative education. A key part of the injustice framing that was widely used by intifada activists, was the grievance of deprivation of education. Israeli measures affecting Palestinian education were framed as maliciously designed to set back their societal development and movement for independence. Support for the students’ framing of education as resistance was promoted by the university staff and by the OPT’s Palestinian political leadership, in which students played an important part. This frame referenced a well-established Palestinian discourse of achieving self-sufficiency and independence through education. Israeli policies, practices and pronouncements, which were viewed as attacking Palestinian learning, enhanced the potency of this frame. From education for nation-building, the frame progressed to education for insurrection. This extremely broad conception of what counted as resistance enabled widespread participation in the uprising. More broadly, increasingly draconian military prohibitions rendered students’ previously unremarkable behaviour (attending class, growing vegetables, street cleaning) suddenly contentious. Everyday actions became imbued with ideas of revolt aiding the mass mobilization of Palestinian society, while early patterns of arrest by the Israeli military encouraged the emergence of younger leaders (as well as more women). The enthusiasm galvanized by students’ framing was channelled and structured through existing social ties based on familial and neighbourhood relations, party-lines, prison connections, community work and popular committees. The use of this educational frame was remarkably consistent across the parties, demonstrating a national coalition in aims despite the secular-Islamist divide at organization level. Shifting student activism from campus protests to clandestine education sought to avoid punishment where possible while mass mobilization through student blocs and popular committees aimed to spread resistance



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through society, making anti-occupation behaviour part of everyday life and, in doing so, sharing the burden of repression. Alongside “quiet” educational activity, Palestinian students’ community work with the burgeoning popular committees saw students contesting Israeli sovereignty over the OPT by promoting self-sufficiency. Thus students not only disobeyed, but also disregarded the Israeli authorities, by contributing to and following the calls of an alternative local authority structure in the UNL which coordinated cooperative action, articulated communal and normative objectives and valorized resistance. The occupation and the multiple costs it inflicted on the community stimulated existing calls for national independence among Palestinians students. Palestinian students in the first intifada, armed with aspirations of liberation and self-determination, embedded in a community that regarded resistance as necessary, moral and useful, and supplied with systems to structure and methods to maintain their collective action, reasoned that simply accepting military rule would be an irrational choice.

References Amnesty International, 1987. Amnesty International Report, 1986. Ashrawi, H. 2007. Former Birzeit staff member (1973-1995), later Palestinian Legislative Council member. Interview by author, 21 March 2007, Ramallah. Alexrod, R., 2006. The Evolution of Cooperation (revised edition). New York: Basic Books. B’Tselem–The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories: http://www.btselem.org/statistics/first_intifada_tables. Accessed 3 June 2012. —. The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, 1992. The Interrogation of Palestinians during the First Intifada: Follow up to March 1991 B’Tselem Report. —. The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, 1995. A Policy of Discrimination: Land Expropriation, Planning and Building in East Jerusalem. Baramki, G., 1987. Building Palestinian Universities under Occupation. Journal of Palestine Studies 17(1), pp.12-20. Benford, R. and D. Snow, 2000. Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment. Annual Review of Sociology 26, pp.611639. Ben-Natan, S., T. Atamleh-Mohana and L. Wolf Goldstein, 2009. The Law

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of the Israeli Military Courts in the West Bank: Military Orders and Israeli Domestic Legislation, Source Book. Machsom Watch. Birzeit University, 1985a. Newsletter, 10. —. 1985b. No Mercy: A Report on Army Actions at Birzeit University on November 21, 1984. —. 1987a. Academic Freedom at Birzeit University, 1985-86. —. 1987b. Battlefield Tactics at Birzeit University: A Report on Army Actions at Birzeit University, 13 April 1987. Colman, A., 2012. Game Theory: In Our Time. Radio programme, BBC Radio 4, 10 May: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01h75xp. Darwish, Y., 2004. Former Birzeit student (1987-1995). Interview by author, 8 December 2004, Birzeit. Ghiyatha, I., 2000. Al-Haraka al-Tulabiyya al-Filastiniyya al-Mumarasa wa al-Fa’aliyya (The Palestinian Student Movement: Practice and Efficacy). Ramallah: Muwatin. Goffman, E., 1974. Frame Analysis. New York: Harper and Row Grace, A., 1990. The Tax Resistance at Bayt Sahur. Journal of Palestine Studies, 19 (2), pp.99-107. Graham-Brown, S., 1984. Education, Repression, Liberation: Palestinians. London: World University Service. Hallaj, M., 1980. The Mission of Palestinian Higher Education. Journal of Palestine Studies 9(4) pp.75-95. Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre, 1990. Lessons of Occupation: Palestinian Higher Education During the Uprising. Johnson, P., 1987a. Palestinian Universities under Occupation, FebruaryApril 1987. Journal of Palestine Studies, 16(4), pp.115-121. —. 1987b. Palestinian Universities under Occupation, November 1986January 1987. Journal of Palestine Studies, 16(3), p.134-141. —. 1988. Palestinian Universities under Occupation, February-May 1988. Journal of Palestine Studies, 17(4): 116-122. Khatib, G., 2007. Former student activist at Birzeit University (Communist Party), later Palestinian Legislative Council member. Interview by author, 19 March 2007, Ramallah. Kuttab, D., 1988. A Profile of the Stone-Throwers. Journal of Palestine Studies 17(3), pp.14-23. Kuttab, J., undated. Analysis of Military Order No. 854 and relating orders concerns educational institutions in the occupied West Bank. Ramallah, Law in the Service of Man. Mishal, S. and R. Aharoni, 1994. Speaking Stones: Communiqués from the Intifada Underground. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. Morris, B., 2004. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited.



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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Olson, M., 1965. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Roberts, A., B. Joergensen and F. Newman, 1984. Academic Freedom under Israeli Military Occupation: Report of the WUS/ICJ Mission of Enquiry into Higher Education in the West Bank and Gaza. London: World University Service. Robinson, G.E., 1997. Building a Palestinian State: The Incomplete Revolution. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sahliyeh, E., 1988. In Search of Leadership: West Bank Politics since 1967. Washington: The Brookings Institution. Saramango, J., 2005. Blindness. Vintage Books: London. Sayigh, Y., 1997. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: the Palestinian National Movement 1949-1993. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Schiff, Z. and E. Ya’ari, 1990. Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising: Israel’s Third Front. New York: Simon and Schuster. Sullivan, A.T., 1988. Palestinian Universities under Occupation. Cairo: American University of Cairo Press. Tilly, C., 1978. From Mobilization to Revolution. New York: McGraw Hill. White, P., 1989. Children of Bethlehem: Witnessing the Intifada. Leominster: Gracewing. World University Service and the Association of University Teachers, 1991. Palestinians and Higher Education: The Doors of Learning Closed. London: World University Service.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN IUS RESISTENDI: RESISTANCE AS REFLEXIVITY ALAIN POTTAGE

Law is so readily identified with the exercise of power that it is easy to overlook the sense in which it functions as a technique for generating and culturing social resistance. To begin with, the question of resistance is central to any reflection on the legitimacy of legal institutions; and, to the extent that these self-descriptions inform the actual practice of law, they are essential to its operation. The relation between resistance and legitimacy evolved through a reflection on the notion of ius resistendi–the paradoxical form of a (legal) right to resist legal authority. The bases of this right first appeared in mediaeval commentaries on the question whether subjects might legitimately resist the exercise of power by a tyrant, or even kill the tyrant, rather than leaving matters to divine providence. The answers turned on a distinction between divine, natural, law and human, positive, laws; if there was such a thing as a ius resistendi or a right of tyrannicide, then it was founded on the premise that the law of God prevailed over the law of men. So, for example, Aquinas (1265-1274) legitimates resistance to a tyrant who acts in his private interest rather than in the interest of the common good (as determined by the precepts of natural law).1 The terms of this distinction were considerably reworked in the passage from the confessional politics of the Reformation through to Hobbes’ theory of an individualized right of resistance, but the mediaeval discussions already yield the sense of resistance that is implicit in any conception of ius resistendi. For the most part, theories of ius resistendi

1

Summa Ia-Ilae, q 92, article 1, 3-4.

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were not developed by lawyers,2 but they make explicit an essential dimension of what might be called law’s self-understanding. All theories of ius resistendi construe resistance as an essentially conservative force or agency. Resistance is not a mode of transformation but a process of reaffirmation. The proper object of resistance is to defend or restore a set of principles whose authority has been undermined by the actions of an illegitimate or unjust ruler. So the relation between resistance and its counterpart (power) is not symmetrical or agonistic but asymmetrical and hierarchical. A ius resistendi is founded in, and gives expression to, a higher law. In that sense, resistance is actually more fundamental than legal power or authority; a ius resistendi would be founded on premises that serve to delimit and control the exercise of power. The question of a higher law resurfaced in the second half of the twentieth century, long after the eclipse of natural law theory by positivist explanations of sovereignty and legal authority. Were the subjects and functionaries of the Third Reich obliged to obey Nazi law? Did they not instead have a right–indeed a duty–of disobedience? For contemporary lawyers, this is a question of validity: was Nazi ‘law’ really law? Is the validity of any given law dependent not only on compliance with the terms of a constitution, but also on some higher criterion of morality? Although the weight of opinion is that law made in accordance with even the most immoral constitution remains law, the question of validity still points to the paradox that was found in the notion of ius resistendi (and which is made explicit in conceptual figures such as Carl Schmitt’s (2005) and Giorgio Agamben’s (1998) notion of the exception).

Resistance as Reflexivity A second sense of resistance comes into view if we switch analytical frames, from an optic of legitimacy to an optic of functionality. As we shall see, political-philosophical reflections on the foundations of a ius resistendi had already generated some prototypical notions of government as a specific (secular) art or technique, but reflection on law as one of the forces by which ‘society’ is held together only really got under way with the emergence of sociology and anthropology. The histories of those disciplines might be retraced in various ways, but here it is convenient to begin with Emile Durkheim. Durkheim (1982) approached the question of 2

The two most obvious exceptions are Bartolus of Sassoferrato’s Tractatus de Guelphis et Gebellinis of 1355, and François Hotman’s Antitribonien, and Francogallia of 1567 and 1573, respectively.

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what makes society hang together by way of a reflection on the transition from ‘organic’ to ‘mechanical’ solidarity, in which law (notably contract law and criminal law) figure as precipitates of the conscience collective. The point of Durkheim’s famous observation that ‘crime is normal’ was not that deviant behaviour will always exceed or evade the reach of legal power, but that behaviour which deviates from or resists the law is actually generated by the normative sense that seeks to repress it. Behaviour is not inherently deviant; it is only so by reference to a normative sense that notices transgression. For Durkheim, the normality of crime was an effect of the ‘originality’ of individuals: ‘we each have our own organic composition and occupy different areas in space’ (1982: 100-101). ‘Originality’ in this sense, which could be visualized through statistical observation, was more pronounced in more complex societies. The moral sensibility of such societies could never be uniformly distributed because individuals inevitably differed in their constitutions and contexts. This made possible an explanation of legality that goes directly to the question of resistance. The originality of individuals–and hence the differential distribution or intensity of moral sensibility–gives rise to a particular dynamic of normative judgment. Those in whom the prevailing moral sensibility is most thoroughly concentrated will identify any behaviour that departs from their moral sense as deviant or transgressive; and, the more evolved or exigent that moral sense is, the more innocuous will be the kind of behaviour that is identified as deviant. Hence Durkheim’s metaphor of the ‘society of saints’: Imagine a community of saints in an exemplary and perfect monastery. In it crime as such will be unknown, but faults that appear venial to the ordinary person will arouse the same scandal as does normal crime in ordinary consciences. If therefore that community has the power to judge and punish, it will term such acts criminal and deal with them as such (1982: 100).

With the theme of resistance in mind, the important point here is that deviant or ‘resistant’ behaviour is constituted as such by the normative sense that seeks to repress it by instituting criminal laws. No action is inherently criminal: ‘What confers upon them this character is not the intrinsic importance of the acts but the importance with the common consciousness ascribes to them (Durkheim, 1982: 101). Resistance is generated by law. The category of acts that are defined as criminal is contingent on the intensity of the moral consciousness that identifies them as such. Second, criminal law is a work in progress, so

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that, at least for the most ‘moral’ members of a society, the rules of criminal law function as a baseline against which deviant behaviours that are not yet criminalized become visible. In the language of cybernetics or systems theory, criminalized behaviour is ‘redundancy’, deviance or resistance beyond the criminal law is ‘variety’. But in Durkheim’s theory, resistance is both inside and outside the criminal law. The normative judgement that identifies certain acts as deviant or resistant is itself the expression of a certain mode of resistance; namely, resistance to change. If crime is functional because it is an agent of change–for Durkheim, social progress is not achieved without some kind of ‘social disturbance’ (1982: 102)–then the deeper kind of resistance is on the side of moral judgement: Any arrangement is indeed an obstacle to a new arrangement; this is even more the case the more deep-seated the original arrangement. The more strongly a structure is articulated, the more it resists modification [plus elle oppose de résistance à toute modification] (1982: 101).

By identifying certain kinds of ‘original’ behaviour’ as deviant or resistant, the conservative morality of a society gives definition to forces that will eventually, through the operation of ‘statistical’ forces, undo its own resistance. There is, one might say, a certain kind of reflexivity in resistance. Durkheim’s sense of society was informed by the emerging science of statistics. The observation that crime is ‘normal’ was based on the newfound ability to visualize social phenomena as graphical curves or rates. And the sociological explanation of the constancy of crime rates presupposed the sense of the ‘individual’ that emerged from processes of statistical aggregation. Society was traversed by forces whose effects were made visible as statistical distributions, and ‘individuals’ effectively represented statistical distributions. One might be sceptical about the metaphorical underpinnings of this model of society. So, for example, Ian Hacking complains of Durkheim’s ‘penchant for mixing metaphors’: There was cosmology; the social forces acting on individuals were comparable to cosmic forces like gravity. There was medicine: suicide is a disease striking, epidemic-like, at a community, some resisting better than others. There was electricity (or fluid dynamics?): ‘suicidogenic currents’ (Hacking 1990, 177).

My hypothesis is that this recourse to scientific or economic metaphors has actually been remarkably productive in shaping our sense of the matrix of forces–the relations of power and resistance–that

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condition the operation of legal discourses or institutions. Durkheim’s analysis originates a line of thought that runs through Marx and Weber, to late modern theories of law and power, notably those of Michel Foucault and Niklas Luhmann. With the broader question of ‘resistology’ in mind, what is interesting about these reflections, which evolved in conversation with the sciences of biology, economics, mathematics, and cybernetics, is that they transform the notion of power and resistance as agonistic or antagonistic forces into an understanding of resistance as an aspect of reflexivity.

Paradoxes of Legitimacy Mediaeval discussions of ius resistendi started from the premise that divine law prevailed over temporal authority. In the words of the apostle Peter, ‘We must obey God rather than men’.3 But divine law itself prescribed obedience to temporal authority; Paul’s Epistle to the Romans states that ‘whoever resists [temporal] authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves’.4 According to the latter principle, obedience to God might be performed through obedience to temporal authority. How, then, was one to determine whether or when divine law authorized resistance to temporal authority? More importantly, who was habilitated to make that decision? The mediaeval writers are somewhat circumspect in developing a theory of ius resistendi. Resistance was legitimate only in the most extreme cases. John of Salisbury’s Policratus (circa 1159), which is often characterized as the most direct mediaeval justification of tyrannicide, says both that the tyrant ‘should be cut down with the axe wherever he grows’ and that those living under tyranny should have recourse only to prayer.5 Aquinas’s Summa distinguishes between those circumstances in which, following Romans 13, subjects should respect temporal authority, and those exceptional conditions of tyranny in which they might invoke the Acts of the Apostles as a justification for resistance.6 Perhaps the real purpose of these texts was not to legitimate resistance, even in exceptional cases, so much as it was to remind rulers that they were, as John of Salisbury put it, ‘the image 3

Acts of the Apostles 5:29, Sanhedrin 5:29 Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. 5 Policratus, viii, 17. 6 Aquinas Summa Theologica Ia IIae (Prima Secundae), q. 96, art 4). 4

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of God [divinitatis imago] (Ullmann 1944, 388), and to exhort them to look to the common good rather than private interest. The mediaeval writings are only suggestive of a true ius resistendi. Although the essential paradox of a right of resistance is foreshadowed in the notion of a divine law that trumps temporal authority while at the same time recognizing the virtue of maintaining order on earth, the terms of such a right are not really specified. There is no formalization of the kinds of authority that one might be justified in resisting, or of the persons who might exercise a right of resistance. The poles of the paradox remain undefined. A first step is taken in the fourteenth century; in his legaldoctrinal gloss on the relevant sections of Aquinas’s Summa Bartolus of Sassoferrato formulated a distinction between two kinds of tyrant–the usurper of legitimate power (the tyrant ex defectu tituli) and the legitimate ruler who turns power to personal ends (the tyrant ex parte exercitii)– which became the basic premise of a line of mediaeval commentary that ran through to Grotius. The distinction went some way to giving legal definition to the political or theological concept of resistance. A second crucial intervention was made by the writings of the Reformation. In his tract On Secular Authority (1523), Martin Luther confines the scope of application of Romans 13 to the province of temporal government, which is limited to matters of public order and public finance,7 and takes Peter’s saying in the Acts of Apostles as authority for holding that in all matters of faith we should obey God rather than men. This sharp differentiation of the realms of temporal and spiritual authority, or of the respective ambits of the Paulinian and Petrinian principles, focused attention on the proper

7

For these writings, see Höpfl (ed) 1991, esp at pp 13-14 and 28, respectively: ‘[B]ecause a true Christian, while he is on earth, lives for and serves his neighbour and not himself, he does things that are of no benefit to himself, but of which his neighbour stands in need. Such is the nature of the Christian spirit. Now the Sword is indispensable for the whole world, to preserve peace, punish sin, and restrain the wicked, And therefore Christians readily submit themselves to be governed by the sword, they pay taxes, honour those in authority, serve and help them, and do what they can to uphold their power, so that they may continue their work and that honour and fear of authority may be maintained. [All this] even though Christians do not need it for themselves, but they attend to what others need, as Paul teaches in Ephesians’; ‘St. Paul is speaking of superiors and power. But I have just shown that no one has power over the soul except God. St Paul cannot be speaking of obedience where there is no power [entitled to obedience]. If follows that he is not talking about faith and is not saying that worldly authority ought to have the right to command faith. What he is talking about is outward goods, about commanding and ruling on earth’.

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definition of government, and hence on the proper foundation of any right of resistance. Although the political struggles of the Reformation prompted writers to develop more sophisticated rationales of ius resistendi, events such as the Peasants’ War of 1524-1525 brought to mind the necessity of limiting the ambit of such a right. Although protestant writers were keen to defend their faith by constitutionalizing a right of resistance, they were also careful not to grant catholic minorities a pretext for resistance to protestant rulers. The catholic theologians of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were equally sensitive to this question. On one hand, they conserved the normative basis of resistance by, for example, using Bartolus’s distinction between tyrants ex defectu tituli and tyrants ex parte exercitii to reinterpret the Council of Constance’s prohibition of (1415); on the other, they were careful to specify that resistance was justified only in the exceptional case where a tyrant interfered with believers’ ability to practise their faith. For example, De Soto (1567) counselled that subjects should suffer tyrannical power until such time as the tyrant might yield to better advice, and that a right (indeed duty) of resistance arose only where a tyrant prevented the dispensing of the sacraments or imposed rites that were contrary to those sanctioned by the Church. For a reflection on the ways in which the question of ius resistendi shaped the definition of the body politic and of legitimate authority, the writings of the French monarchomachs are especially interesting because they turned an essentially theological discussion into a political-theoretical reflection on the bases of governmental power. Even if it is true that the Calvinist theory of revolution was derived from the reflections of the catholic writers on ius resistendi, the line of (partisan) reflection that culminated in the writings of Bodin and Hotman gave rise to a thoroughly new sense of sovereignty and governmentality. The Huguenot text Vindiciae contra tyrannos of 15798 legitimates resistance to Catholic authority on the basis of a twofold covenant (between God, the king, and the people, and between the king and the people) which subjected the rule of the king to the consent of the people. In characterizing the office of kingship, the Vindiciae adopts the old metaphor of the ship of state: In a commonwealth, which is often compared to a ship, the king is in the position of pilot, and the people in that of master [loco domini]. So while the former takes care of public safety, the people obey and submit to him. 8

The text, which was published under the pseudonym of Stephanus Junius Brutus, is now attributed to the Huguenots Hubert Languet and Philippe DuplessisMornay.

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However he is–or ought to be considered to be–no less a servant [servus] of the commonwealth than any judge or tribune. He differs from these in no other respect than that he is bound to carry greater burdens, and meet greater challenges (Junius Brutus 1994, 75).

This metaphor is interesting for two reasons. First, it expresses the modern conception of governance as an art or technique which is to be exercised and judged not by reference to transcendent precepts but by reference to the dictates of circumstances, or the demands made by the propensities and accidents of the objects of governance.9 Incidentally, this had some implications for the question of who might be habilitated to exercise a right of resistance. When the safety of a vessel is imperilled, then control should be assumed only by someone who has the skill to steer the ship back to a proper course. For the writers of the Vindiciae, this meant that a right of resistance might be invoked only by those who had the capacity to take on the task of governance. Second, the metaphor of the ship of state characterized the body politic as a particular kind of composition of ‘parts’. It recalled the Roman lawyers’ use of the image of the Argonauts’ ship (which remained the same even though the planks of which it was made had been thoroughly renewed) to characterize the body politic as a universitas; an indivisible, incorporeal, entity that remained identical to itself whatever the empirical composition of its parts (on this image, see Thomas 2005). The contributions of Calvin–who is often characterized as an advocate of civil disobedience rather than active resistance10–might be read against the background of this specification of the nature of government. In a passage of his Institution de la religion chrétienne, Calvin includes the art of politics in the set of ‘les choses terriennes’; that is, the set of practices that are ‘conjoinctes avec la vie presente et quasi encloses soubz les limites d’icelle’ (1961, 115). The arts in question were: ‘la doctrine politicque, la manière de bien gouverner sa maison, les ars mécanicques, la Philosophie, et toutes les disciplines qu’on appelle libérales’ (1961, 9

‘What does it mean to govern a ship? It means clearly to take charge of the sailors, but also of the boat and its cargo; to take care of a ship means also to reckon with winds, rocks and storms; and it consists in that activity of establishing a relation between the sailors who are to be taken care of, and the ship which is to be taken care of, and the cargo which is to be brought safely to port, and all those eventualities like winds, rocks, storms, and so on. This is what characterizes the government of a ship’ (Foucault 2000, 209). The practical experience of shipping cargoes informed the emergence of the modern concept of risk, which is essential to so many technologies of governance (see Luhmann 1993). 10 Skinner (1978), especially chapter 7.

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115). This association of politics with domestic governance, the mechanical arts, and philosophy takes up the distinction made by Luther between the spiritual and secular realms, but it adds a crucial twist. For Calvin, the essential point was that political questions should be debated and decided between men, without the mediation of transcendent precepts; they were matters ‘qu’il faut garder entre les hommes’. Men were as much competent to practise politics as they were to invent and make machines, and this competence was given to them as part of their essential nature. Indeed, not only were human assemblies competent to govern and decide, but those assemblies derived their authority from the consent of men rather than divine warrant. The foundation of political authority was not the ‘nature’ of a transcendent natural law but the ‘nature’ given to men by God. This is the point at which the paradoxical form of ius resistendi really takes shape. What is crucial is not the sense in which the duty of obedience to God is gradually condensed into a principle of freedom of belief, but rather the emerging sense of representative government. According to many of the reformed writers, the people, as a singular and indivisible corporation or universitas, were represented by rulers which they had the capacity to install and depose. The old question of who might be habilitated to exercise a right of resistance is answered by the proposition that a ius resistendi might be exercised not by any private individual or group of private individuals, but only by the people as a whole (as a universitas or corporation) in the exercise of its singular political will: ‘les particuliers n’ont point de puissance, ils n’ont point de charge publique, ils n’ont domination quelconque, ni aucun droit de desgainer l’espee’ (Junius Brutus, imuH). Individuals gained their identity as political agents only in and through the agency of the universitas (a proposition which closely foreshadows Hobbes’ idea of the people as a body constituted by the emergence of the sovereign). The basic paradox of ius resistendi–how can the same instance be constituted and yet changing– is concealed by the representation of the people as a corporation. According to the authors of the Vindiciae contra tyrannos, the corporate person of the people was immediately represented by its magistrates, who effectively mediated between the people and the monarch, as delegates of the former and officers of the latter. These magistrates were supposed to have the political imagination to exercise the right of resistance–the reaffirmation of primary authority of the people–at exactly the right moment. Hobbes undid this figure of ius resistendi and relocated the paradox elsewhere. For Hobbes, there was no consequential distinction to be made

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between different species of tyrant, or between legitimate and illegitimate, or just and unjust, governments: There be other names of Government, in the Histories, and books of Policy; as Tyranny, and Oligarchy. But they are not the names of other Formes of Government, but of the same Formes misliked. For they that are discontented under Monarchy, call it Tyranny; and they that are displeased with Aristocracy, call it Oligarchy. So also, they which find themselves grieved under a Democracy, call it Anarchy (which signifies want of government) (1968, 239-240).

If one could not make the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate governments, then there was nothing with which a right of resistance could engage. Whereas Grotius (2012) had reactivated Bartolus’s distinction between tyrants ex defectu tituli and tyrants ex parte exercitii, taking it as a basis for the proposition that a people could resist the exercise of power by a usurper, questions of this sort simply did not arise for Hobbes. Hobbes collapses the relation of representation that is crucial to the operation of resistance. The people do not exist politically until the sovereign comes into being: ‘A Multitude of men are made One Person, when they are by one man or one Person, Represented’ (p114). There is no corporate body which has (in every sense) priority over the sovereign, a priority which could be (re)affirmed through the exercise of a right of resistance: ‘[I]t is the Unity of the Representer, not the Unity of the Represented, that maketh the Person One’.11 Yet, although Hobbes thereby dissolves the mediaeval foundations of ius resistendi, the paradox is reconstituted in the structure of another kind of right of resistance. The natural right of the people as universitas or nomen iuris to dissolve their government is translated into an innate and inalienable right of individuals. Each person has the right to preserve their own person: ‘Every man, not onely by Right, but also by necessity of Nature, is supposed to endeavour all he can, to obtain that which is necessary for his conservation’ (1968, 209-210). Each person has the right to resist or oppose any intervention that more or less immediately imperils his or her life.12 The paradox that this entails becomes apparent as soon as one explores Hobbes’ account of criminal law. On one hand, the sovereign undoubtedly has the right to punish transgressions, and the act of the sovereign in so doing is the act of each and every subject: ‘every Subject is 11

Skinner (2005) describes the influence of the Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos on English parliamentarian tracts from the mid-seventeenth century. 12 One might say that natural law precepts are internalised and that they become part of the ‘equipment’ of the subject of civil society.

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Author of every act the Soveraign doth; so that he never wanteth Right to any thing’ (1968, 148). On the other hand, by virtue of his or her natural right of self-preservation, each subject has the right to resist even the violence of state punishment: ‘No man is supposed bound by Covenant, not to resist violence; and consequently it cannot be intended, that he gave any right to another to lay violent hands upon his person’ (1968, 353). This right cannot be transferred as part of a political compact. The upshot is a kind of conceptual stalemate, in which the right of the sovereign to apply criminal sanctions is matched by the right of the subject to resist violence.

The Medium of Text The paradoxical form of ius resistendi in its mediaeval and early modern forms is made explicit in Kant’s theory of legitimate government. For Kant, whose theory of moral law was premised on the universalizability of maxims, the paradox of a ius resistendi was unacceptably stark: Even the constitution cannot contain any article that would make it possible for there to be some authority in a state to resist the chief commander in case he should violate the law of the constitution. For, someone who is to limit the authority in a state must have even more power than he whom he limits, or at least as much power as he has; and, as a legitimate commander who directs the subjects to resist, he must also be able to protect them and to render a judgment having rightful force in any case that comes up; consequently he has to be able to command resistance publicly. In that case, however, the supreme commander in a state is not the supreme commander; instead, it is the one who can resist him, and this is self-contradictory (Kant 1996b, 462-463).

If one were to incorporate a right of resistance into a written constitution, ‘the highest legislation would have to contain a provision that is not the highest’.13 In form, a constitutional provision for the suspension of authority would seem to be internal to the legal order, but the paradox becomes clear as soon as one asks who would decide or adjudicate on the applicability of the exception. As Carl Schmitt’s commentary on Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution makes clear, the point from which the decision is made is at once inside and outside the law: ‘the sovereign stands outside the juridical order and nevertheless belongs to it since it is up to him to decide if the constitution is to be suspended in toto’ (2005, 13) So 13

Kant (1996b), at p 463.

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constitutional provision for a right of resistance would defeat the legality of the constitution as a whole. Kant’s solution was to relegate the phenomenon of resistance or revolution to the dimension of fact, but these facts could constitute the horizon against which legal obligations were construed.14 Perhaps the most interesting expression of Kant’s argument against a right of resistance is made in Toward Perpetual Peace (1795), which holds it to be a ‘transcendental formula of public right’ (1996a: 347) that ‘All actions relating to the rights of others are wrong if their maxim is incompatible with publicity’ (loc cit). Almost of necessity, resistance or revolution would have to be fomented by means texts and compacts made in secret or anonymously: ‘the maxim of rebellion, if one publically acknowledged it as one’s maxim, would make one’s purpose impossible. One would therefore have to keep it secret’ (ibid: 348). Conceptually, Kant’s insistence on publicity can be seen as an implication of the requirement that maxims be universalizable, but it also reflects a particularly significant process of social-structural transformation. The diffusion of the writings of the Reformation was in part an effect of the agency of the printing press. This new technology, coupled with the commercial and infrastructural conditions for the publication and circulation of the printed word, radically transformed the constitution of the public sphere, and, by implication, the grounds for resistance, and especially resistance in and through writing. It also generated the form of the constitution as a public text that could be taken as the formalization of the will of a sovereign intention and made available for exegesis, interpretation and critique by the public at large. Of course, even before the invention of the printing press, foundational texts were made, copied and circulated by means of scribal publication, but so long as these texts remained in the effective custody of elite interpreters, they could not be ‘public’ in the sense of the modern constitution.15 Hotman’s polemic in 14

Revolution could make law, but only after the fact: ‘Once a revolution has succeeded and a new constitution has been established, the lack of legitimacy with which it began and has been implemented cannot release the subjects from the obligation to comply with the new order of things as good citizens, and they cannot refuse honest obedience to the authority that now has power.(Kant 1996b, at p 465). 15 Ever since the mediaeval period, writers on ius resistendi had defined law as something that existed as a rational, textual or proto-textual practice. One might say, for example, that John of Salisbury advocated transparency in law, or that ‘simplicity of conception, lucidity of style, brevity of expression and naturalness of style were the hallmark of the legislator’ (Ullmann, 1944, at 389). One might say,

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Antitribonien (1567) against the glossators’ ‘science’ of law16 might be interpreted as a diagnosis of this deficit of transparency and publicity. This gives us a linkage into the second sense of ‘resistance’. Kant’s insistence on the publicity of maxims, and the process of social-structural transformation that this insistence presupposes, yields the ultimate solution to the paradox of ius resistendi. As Niklas Luhmann explains, the emergence of the written constitution solved the paradox of law’s foundation by way of a relation of ‘structural coupling’ between law and politics. In this relation, a single document is materialized twice over, within the communicative processes that make up law, and again within those that articulate politics. This doubling allows each discourse to resolve or at least sustain its constitutive paradox: The ultimate paradoxes and tautologies of the legal system (that law is whatever the legal system arranges to be legal or illegal) can be unfolded by reference to the political system (for example, the political will of the people giving itself a constitution), and the paradoxes and tautologies of the political system (the self-inclusive, binding, sovereign power) can be unified by reference to the positive law and by supercoding the legal system with the distinction between constitutional and unconstitutional legality (Luhmann 1993, 1436-37).

On the side of law, the evolution of the textual form of the constitution resolves the paradox that is made manifest in positivist theories of legal validity–namely, the paradoxical notion that a normative proposition counts as ‘law’ if it is treated as such by the legal system–by allowing us to say that the legislature, or the ‘people in Parliament’ is the ultimate source of law. On the side of politics, the form of the constitution generates the perception that absolute political power is controlled by formal legal principles.

more broadly, that he promoted what might now be called the ‘rule of law’ (Walter Ullmann, John of Salisbury’s Policratus in the later middle ages’ in Jurisprudence in the Middle Ages (1980: 519-545, esp at 521)–the rule of (man-made) laws rather than men. The commentaries of Bartolus are historically significant precisely because they were incorporated in the vast compilations of the glossatorial law, in the Volumen legum of the Corpus iuris civilis. 16 According to Hotman, the texts compiled and commented by the glossators were for the most part ‘tout abolie et hors d’usage, remplie de desordre et confusion, farcie de contrarietez et antinomies, entachee de fautes et erreurs’ Cf Vismann 2008).

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Reflexivity and Resistology Luhmann’s account of the constitution as a medium of structural coupling is crucial to an understanding of the history of ius resistendi. The doubling–or perhaps division–of a single paradox into two is the basis of the modern division of labour between jurisprudence (in the sense of legal theory) and political theory. The former treats the question of law’s foundation as a matter of validity, while the latter treats it as a question of legitimacy or morality. Second, because it associates this development with the evolution of textual media, Luhmann’s analysis points to a basic truth about resistance to law in the contemporary world. In many ways, the preoccupations of the old political-theological theories of ius resistendi have been taken on by the modern legal and political discourse of human rights, which resurrects the old sense of legitimate resistance as the reaffirmation of a deeper and more fundamental right. By virtue of their supposed universality, human rights can be claimed by all subjects of a system that has acted arbitrarily or illegitimately according to human rights standards. One might even say that the rights of derogation and margins of appreciation that are provided for in human rights conventions replay the old tension between the Paulinian and Petrinian principles. In any case, the assertion of a human right is quite complicated in practice. For example, anthropological studies have shown how, on the ground, the ostensibly universal norms of human rights claims are translated into local networks of power.17 The practical value of a right as a basis for resistance is conditioned by the way that texts are mobilized within a localized set of relations between human rights advocates, police forces, judges, and politicians. Luhmann’s own theory of the agency of human rights also suggests, in somewhat different terms, that the reality of these rights is conditioned by the processes in which they are communicated . Luhmann’s theory quite directly answers the question, what became of the mediaeval and early modern theory of ius resistendi? It also, and perhaps more importantly, develops the clearest conceptual picture of the sociological reality of resistance. It is obvious that most mediaeval and early modern theories of ius resistendi were themselves written and construed as acts of resistance. John of Salisbury’s characterization of the duties of the prince and his condemnations of tyranny were probably motivated by his disapproval of the acts of Henry II, and the publication of the text may well have earned him his exile to the bishopric of Chartres. Bartolus’s doctrinal analysis of tyranny was written at time when the authority of the empire was giving way to the power of the signori in the 17

See Wilson (1998) and Goodale & Engle Merry (2007).

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city states of northern Italy, and even if his writings cannot be construed as incitements to resistance, they express a nostalgia for the time in which the (unified) papacy and empire had been able to forestall–perhaps ‘resist’–the emergence of the new species of tyrant (see Maiolo 2007, chapter 9). The political engagements of reformed writers from Luther and Calvin to Bodin and Hotman are evident, and episodes such as the Peasants’ War show how responsive their political theories were to the evolution of circumstances. Even Kant may have had in mind the potential reach of political power in formulating his theoretical opposition to the notion of ius resistendi (see Beck 1971). From a sociological perspective, none of these theories of resistance actually described its own effects in the world. To ask how these texts–or resistance in general–works in reality one would have to switch from the ‘inside’ of legal and political theories to their external conditions of possibility. Luhmann’s systems theory develops the most sophisticated account of this ‘doubling’ of reality, into the ‘reality’ that is constructed semantically or conceptually within the discourse of law, and the ‘reality’ of the communicative operations that condition the making of this conceptuality. To engage properly with this account one would have to turn a brief commentary on law and resistance into a primer on systems theory. One would have to explore the systems-theoretical notion of media,18 the theory of communication as ‘a synthesis of three selections, namely information, utterance, and understanding (including misunderstanding)’,19 and the role of the binary code which distinguishes ‘legal’ from ‘nonlegal’ in such a way as to lock speakers and addressees into the discursive regime of law.20 With the project of resistology in mind, what is really important here is the figure of reflexivity, which in systems theory is worked out in the theory of the system as a paradoxical unity of closure

18 ‘Language will increase the understandability of communication beyond the sphere of perception; media of dissemination (writing, printing, and electronic broadcasting) will ensure access beyond the limited spatiotemporal sphere of interaction; and symbolically generalized media will increase the chances of communicative success by providing persuasive means of motivation’ (WinthropYoung, 2000, 404). 19 Luhmann (1990), 3. 20 The code that defines law encourages participants to process ‘utterances’ and ‘understandings’ in terms of a set of techniques or conventions, and a set of archived resources (precedents and procedural rules), that increase ‘the chances of communicative success’, and, in so doing, continue the reproduction of a regime or ‘system’ (which, as systems theorists say, ‘produces itself from its own operations’).

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and openness.21 Returning to the hypothesis in my introduction, this figure of reflexivity is a general feature or premise of many late modern theories of law. And, although Luhmann’s theoretical architecture is especially clear, it is convenient here to turn to a more tractable theory, namely, Michel Foucault’s characterization of biopower. In The History of Sexuality, Foucault suggests that in the age of biopolitics legislation ‘increasingly functions in the manner of a norm’ (Foucault 1976, 190).22 Whereas many legal and political theorists still imagine legal power as the direct instrumental imposition of a sovereign intent, Foucault points out that the operation of law in the modern world is much more contingent. A norm in Foucault’s sense involves both representation and intervention. In the mode of representation, norms propose a certain knowledge of the world. A norm is a measure (generated by statistical and other modes of bureaucratized knowledge) that colours the world in a very particular way. As with Durkheim’s moral consciousness, the prescription embodied in a norm functions a cognitive horizon for disclosing a field of deviant behaviour, and behaviour is deviant not inherently but only by reference to the norm. But this is representation with a view to intervention; norms have to be applied. Application is a reflexive process because norms are learning devices.23 First, in the process of application one has to decide which of many shades of ‘deviant’ behaviour warrants intervention, and this means (re)formulating the prescription embodied in the norm in the light of the likely effects of its implementation. Second, the application of a norm sets up a kind of ongoing feedback effect. Successive applications will produce effects which have to be integrated into the specification of the norm. In short, 21

The basic thesis is that systems are simultaneously closed and open. The closure of the legal system–‘the legal system is a closed system, producing its own operations, its own structures, and its own boundaries by its own operations; not by accepting any external determination, nor, of course, any external delimitation whatsoever’ (Luhmann 1993, 1425) –is actually predicated on the relation to environment: ‘the emergence of closed systems requires a specific form of relations between systems and environments; it presupposes such forms and is a condition of their possibility as well’ (loc cit, 1431-1432). 22 A fuller quote reads as follows: ‘La loi fonctionne toujours advantage comme une norme, et l’institution judiciaire s’intègre de plus en plus à un continuum d’appareils (médicaux, administratifs, etc) dont les fonctions sont surtout régulatrices’. 23 See especially Ewald (1986). Statistical knowledge can see only what its methods allow it to see; it is therefore locked in a `spiral of observation' in which new observations prompt a fresh calibration of observational techniques, which in turn produces another set of observations, and so on.

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norms articulate a reflexive intelligence that continually mediates between representation and intervention. As in Luhmann’s systems-theoretical account, this coupling of representation and intervention suggests a paradoxical, reflexive, articulation of law and resistance. A norm is a device that generates and processes social resistance. Foucault’s theory might also be interesting to those in search of a more practical reflection on resistance, something more like a reformation text on how to create a space of personal freedom within temporal power. The reflexivity that characterizes the norm is reworked in Foucault’s later writings on the technologies of the self, which describe a mode of self-fashioning within the constraints of power. In these writings, Foucault draws on Greek and Roman practices of reflection on oneself to develop of a paradoxical figure of resistance within domination, freedom within constraint, autonomy within heteronomy. The classic techniques of self-fashioning were ‘a set of practices by means of which the individual can acquire and assimilate truth, and transform it into a permanent principle of action (Foucault 1988, 800). In Stoic meditations imagination was exercised not to test out alternative objects of thought but to translate the subject into a situation in which it could it experiment with itself. What was being actualized in imagination was not a set of variations of thought but a set of variations on or of the subject itself. So imagination became the medium of a kind of virtual gymnastics in which the subject tested its capacity to respond to specific events, and measured its progress in developing these capacities. As with exercises in rhetoric, the point was to be prepared for an eventual challenge. …How would I react if? The exemplary ascetic technique was the exercise of praemeditatio malorum, premeditating or presuming the worst. For the Stoics, this was a basic meditation, which consisted in imagining that the worst that one could imagine had already happened. One had to imagine that one was already suffering an excruciatingly painful death or undergoing a particularly gruesome form of torture. Imagination transports the self to a future in which the worst is already happening, is happening to its fullest intensity, and with no prospect of remitting. Foucault suggests that this might be seen as an ‘eidetic reduction’ of future misfortune, or rather, perhaps, a process of double reduction; a reduction of the future itself and a reduction of suffering or misfortune as such. To begin with, the exercise was premised on the Greek prejudice that an orientation towards the future was unethical or unphilosophical: to direct one’s attention to the future was to neglect the past, over which one could exercise some mastery, in favor of a domain that was either

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inexistent or predetermined, and either way, unmasterable. Consistent with this prejudice, the exercise of praemeditatio malorum presumes the future in order to abolish it. In Foucault’s terms it is not a simulation of the future but a simulation of the future–the whole expanse of the future–as present. So the exercise collapses duration or temporal succession into a kind of permanent present. This is the premise of what Foucault calls an eidetic reduction both of the future and of the misfortune that it holds. Praemeditatio malorum is an exercise in reducing events ‘strictly to their minimum conditions of existence’ (Foucault 1984, 465). To be always already ready for something whenever it happens is in some sense to be draw the sting of contingency from events, and in the process to reduce the reality of the misfortune. All events have the same value, partly because if the distinguishing feature of before and after survives it survives only as a formal abstraction, and partly because the event is almost completely saturated by the meaning as ascribed to it by ethical training. This exercise might not allow one to stave off death or torture, but it does allow one to say what the Stoics said: either pain is so intense that one cannot bear it and one expires immediately, or it is bearable and therefore slight (Foucault 1984, 454). What Luhmann calls autopoiesis,24 Foucault calls ethopoioen (Foucault 2001, 430). The making of systems is analogous to the making of selves. And in both cases the effect is to reframe the question of resistance. If, from the perspective of cognition, resistance is classically an ‘indicator of reality’, then these modes of self-production ‘generate resistance to themselves’ (Luhmann 2000, 89). Foucault’s analysis of autonomy within contingency makes the point that both cognitive and normative resistance– knowledge and power–can be self-generated in this sense. To return to the proposition with which I introduce this chapter, this is the sense in which law functions as a technique for culturing social resistance, and what is true of law is true of law’s subjects. It may be that a reflection on these modes of resistance as reflexivity is the most vital contribution that a study of law can make to a general project of ‘resistology’. It might also be the bridge by which an analysis of resistance in law and legal theory can enter

24

Niklas Luhmann once explained how the term autopoiesis was coined (not by him but by Humberto Maturana) in terms of the distinction between praxis and poiesis. Praxis is ‘an action that includes its purpose in itself as an action’, an action that is virtuous or satisfying in itself, whereas poiesis implies action that produces something. ‘Poiesis also implies action: one acts, however, not because the action itself is fun or virtuous, but because one wants to produce something’ (Luhmann, cited in Moeller 2006, at p 12).

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into a conversation with the sciences of biology, economics, mathematics, and cybernetics around the theme of resistance.

References Agamben, G (1998) Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Aquinas, T (1265-1274) Summa Theologica. Beck, L (1971) ‘Kant and the right of revolution’ Journal of the History of Ideas 32(3): 411-421. Calvin, J (1961) [1536], Institution de la religion chrétienne, Paris: Belles Lettres. De Soto, D (1567) De justitiae et de jure, Antwerp: Nutius. Durkheim, E (1982), The Rules of Sociological Method New York: Free Press. Ewald, F (1986), L’Etat providence, Paris: Grasset. Foucault, M (1984) Histoire de la Sexualité, vol 3, Le Souci de Soi, Paris: Gallimard. —. (1988) ‘Technologies of the self’, in Martn, L, Gutman, H & Hutton, P (eds) Technologies of the Self. A Seminar with Michel Foucault , Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. —. (2000) ‘Governmentality’ in Power, New York: Free Press. —. (2001), L’Hermeneutique du Sujet, Paris: Gallimard. Goodale, M & Engle Merry, S (2007) The Practice of Human Rights. Tracking Law Between the Local and the Global, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grotius (2012) [1625] On the Law of War and Peace, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hacking, I (1990) The Taming of Chance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hobbes, T (1968) [1651] Leviathan (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Höpfl, H (ed) (1991) Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. John of Salisbury (1159), Policratus. Junius Brutus (1994) Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I (1996a) [1795], ‘Toward perpetual peace’, in Gregor (ed), Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. (1996b) [1797], The Metaphysics of Morals, in Gregor (ed), Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Luhmann, N (1993) Risk. A Sociological Theory, New York: de Gruyter. —. (1993) ‘Operational closure and structural coupling. The differentiation of the legal system’ Cardozo Law Review 13: 1419-1442. —. (2000) The Reality of the Mass Media, Cambridge: Polity. Maiolo, F (2007) Mediaeval Sovereignty. Marsilius of Padua and Bartolus of Saxoferrato, Delft: Eburon. Moeller, H-J (2006), Luhmann Explained. From Souls to Systems, Chicago: Open Court. Schmitt, C (2005) Political Theology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Skinner, Q (1978) The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Vol 2: The Age of Reformation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. (2005) ‘Hobbes on representation’ European Journal of Philosophy 13: 155-184. Thomas, Y (2005), ‘L’extrême et l’ordinaire. Remarques sur le cas médiévale de la communauté disparue’ In : Jean-Claude Passeron & Jacques Revel (eds), Penser par cas, Paris: Editions de l’EHESS, 4573. Ullmann, W (1944), 'The Influence of John of Salisbury on Mediaeval Italian Jurists', 59 English Historical Review 382-97 —. (1980), ‘John of Salisbury’s Policratus in the later middle ages’, in Jurisprudence in the Middle Ages, London: Variorum. Vismann, C (2008), Files. Law and Media Technology , Stanford, Stanford University Press. Wilson, R (1998) Human Rights, Culture and Context: Anthropological Perspectives, London: Pluto Press. Winthrop-Young, G (2000) ‘Silicon sociology, or, two kings on Hegel's throne? Kittler, Luhmann and the posthuman merger of German media theory’ Yale Journal of Criticism 13(2): 391–420.



AFTERWORD: TOWARDS A GENERAL RESISTOLOGY? MARTIN W BAUER, ROM HARRÉ AND CARL JENSEN

We close this collection of essays with some comments on the debate. The discussion to which this edition contributes is the problem of rationality, and in this third round of discussions at the LSE we ended by looking at the problem of the rationality or irrationality of ‘resistance’ in its variety of guises. We asked the question: How is the term ‘resistance’ used in the natural and biological sciences, and in the social sciences? What is the relationship of ‘resistance’ to rationality? Is there any metaphorical exchange between the natural-biological and the social sciences on the issues of ‘resistance’? What effect does this exchange have on judgements people make on the rationality or irrationality of ‘resistance’? What we find is first and foremost a variety of uses of the term ‘resistance’. In this final section we comment on this variety and suggest some further avenues for enquiry, and explore the potential for a general ‘resistology’. In this effort, we carefully avoid the fallacy of assuming that across different usage of a term we must be looking for an underlying common meaning.

How Much Scholarly Activity References ‘Resistance’? In order to gauge the scholarly publications that make use of the term ‘resistance’ we can nowadays consult electronic resources. The International Bibliography of the Social Science (IBSS) is a service offered by the British Library of the Political and Economic Sciences (BLPES). This is a fairly comprehensive record that chronicles social scientific research across a large number of English speaking journals. Google Scholar is a freely available resource for on-line tracing of scholarly publications. The latter spreads its search beyond the Englishspeaking world.

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By typing the keyword ‘resistance’ we swiftly get a sense of how intensively the scholarly world and the social sciences have made use of this concept over the years.1 We might explore two issues very briefly: the number of references and the main topics referenced.

Figure Ad.1: Number of publications responding to the search term ‘resistance’ in two archives: IBSS at BLPES (search as of June 2012) and Google Scholar (numbers x 1000; search as of November 2012).

The number of documents responding to the keyword ‘resistance’ has increased considerably since the 1970s. A marginal topic in the 1970s, as we move into the new millennium our graph shows considerable growth in scholarly activity. Google Scholar reports a tenfold increase from around 100,000 documents referring to ‘resistance’ in 1975 to over 1 Million by 2005. By June 2012, the IBSS corpus contained a total of 13,404 references with the term ‘resistance’. In 1975, there were below 50 such references, increasing twentyfold to over 1000 by 2010. This growth passes through two plateaus: one between 1993 and 1999, at about 220 annual publications, and a second after 2007 at over 1000 publications per year. 1

We are interested in the absolute increase here. Of course, exploring Google Scholar might warrant further, more rigorous exploration before strong conclusions may be reached.

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There are two clear growth periods in which the term ‘resistance’ became prominent in the social sciences, the first from 1988 to 1992 and a second from 1998 to 2005. Since 2005, scholarly activity on ‘resistance’ seems to be in decline. If future years confirm this decline in use of this concept, we can recognise an issue or fashion cycle with a saturation point. However, it is too early to tell, because of a lag in the record updating.

What is The Ratio of Social Scientific Material into All Scholarly Activity on ‘Resistance’? The on-line resource, Google Ngram Viewer allows us to search digital books in the Google Library in UK and American English. It shows a constant ratio of about six in every 1000 books referring to ‘resistance’ over the period. If we relate Google Scholar and the counts in IBSS, we can say that one in every 1000 scholarly documents is a social science document making reference to ‘resistance’. Again, this ratio seems fairly constant between 1970 and 2010. However, if we take Google Scholar only and compare the entire scholarly activity to a search that is limited to ‘resistance social OR political’ (standing for social science publications), we find that the ratio of social scientific activity increases over the years from below 10% until the 1990s, to over 25% by 2012. The latter seem to indicate that the language games of ‘resistance’ have become more social scientific over the past 20 years.

Does This Tell Us Anything? We can summarise our brief excursion into bibliometrics: a marginal term in the scholarly world of the 1970s, ‘resistance’ has seen considerable growth in absolute numbers of occasions of use, but maybe not relative to all scholarly activity (see note 1). This growth might have peaked between 2005 and 2010. The balance between social science and natural science references to ‘resistance’, however, is shifting: into the new millennium, the social sciences take a larger share of all scholarly activity on ‘resistance’. We thus gain a rough indicator of the rising academic interest in ‘resistance’. However, we do not know what topics and problems this covers. Nor do we know how these interests are distributed across the disciplines of the social sciences, or to what phenomena the term refers. This information would clearly be helpful for our purposes, but we are not yet in a position to provide this data beyond a few glimpses.

Towards a General Resistology? Google Scholar (11 Mio reference, January 2008) Insulin resistance Anti-biotic, anti-microbial resistance Disease resistance genes Drug resistance, global surveillance Electrical resistance (no 31) Weapons of the week (Scott, no 41) Google Business (133000 references) Resistance to reform Strategies of resistance, power in organisations Take-over bid resistance Worker resistance, employee resistance Resistance to change Path of least resistance for managers User resistance across system types Consumer resistance to innovation Optimal pest resistance (agricultural plant systems) Resistance to new technology (ref 18) Spirit of resistance and capitalist decline Resistance a tool for change management

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Google Social Science (1.46 Million references) Weapons of the weak (Scott) Overcoming resistance to change Resistance, drug abuse resistance Resource control and resistance Pedagogy of opposition Men’s resistance to sexual equality Resistance through ritual Resistance to persuasion Girls and psychotherapy: reframing resistance Globalisation of resistance Islam and resistance Escape attempts, everyday resistance Feminism & Foucault Ethnographic refusal Racism and resistance

Table Ad.1: The topical results of three Google searches conducted in January 2008: Google Scholar, Google Business and Google Social Science.2

The Changing Scope of References to ‘Resistance’ We can gain a rough sense of the semantics of ‘resistance’ by again using other Google resources, as summarised in Table 1. In Google, we find very different topics covered under this heading. The general Google 2 These services are no longer publicly available, so we could not update them. The impression they give is sufficient for the present purpose.

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search portal throws up millions of hits (11 million, searched in January 2008), and refers us primarily to biomedical uses of the term in anti-biotic and anti-microbial resistance, insulin resistance, and drug resistance. Further down the line appear references to electrical resistance and lower on the list we find reference to social and political resistances. The Google Social Science Portal3 (1.46 million hits) refers us to many different social scientific topics such as ‘weapons of the weak’ (by Scott), resistance to change, resilience, drug abuse resistance, the pedagogy of opposition, resistance to persuasion, feminism, globalisation and racism; in each topical area, the word ‘resistance’ appears as a keyword. Finally, the Google Business Portal (133,000 hits) refers to topics such as resistance to reform, strategies of resistance, worker resistance, resistance to take-over, user resistance in the IT context, consumer resistance, the spirit of resistance in capitalist decline, but also optimal resistance as a managerial matter of agricultural plant systems (the latter a reference to biological resistance). Again, Google Ngram Viewer is helpful for a quick overview, split into different time periods. In the years 1900-1913, the most prominent book titles are ‘antenna resistance’, ‘measuring electrical resistance’, ‘resistance and the propulsion of ships’. The main reference here is clearly to physics, either mechanical or electrical resistance. For the years 19141950, Ngram throws up titles such as ‘resistance welding’, ‘the effects of air resistance’, ‘tire resistance and fuel consumption’, ‘music and the line of most resistance’, but also ‘Ukrainian resistance’ and ‘resistance to social innovation’. The natural sciences’ dominance of ‘resistance’ seems to have been broken by usages of the term in aesthetics and in the social sciences. The period 1953 to 1990 throws up yet a different set of books. The prominent titles are now ‘resistance – psychodynamic and behavioural approaches’, ‘domination and the arts of resistance’, ‘rebellion among Andean peasants’, ‘resistance to theory’, ‘Western women and imperialism’ and ‘German resistance to Hitler’. One has to scroll down four pages to hit the first reference to ‘pesticide resistance’, a natural-biological reference. It seems that by 1990, resistance is an established concept in the social sciences, from psychotherapy, to anthropology, sociology, gender studies and world war history. By the 2000, we find the references to include ‘resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto’, ‘rhythms of resistance – African music in Brazil’, but followed soon by ‘insulin resistance’ and ‘anti-biotic resistance’, and coming back to ‘resistance and reform in Tibet’, ‘pure 3

Google Portals for area specific searching existed back in 2010, but seem no longer available. For our purpose, it is only important to indicate the different semantics these portals generated on the keyword ‘resistance’.

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resistance – queer virginity’, and the ‘rise of massive resistance in South Africa’. By the turn of the century, a mix of social science and medical references tops the search results. This quick glance at search results for different periods of the 20th century, suggests one or both of two things. Either, the book format loses its function of communication in the natural sciences except for popular science and our trend results are simply a reflection of the book format being taken over by the social and historical sciences. Or, the prevalence of usage of ‘resistance’ moves indeed from a dominance of the natural sciences to social science, interspersed with bio-medical references to antibiotics and insulin resistance. Our evidence is not conclusive on this interpretive dilemma. However, what seems clear is that the social sciences have developed an intensive language game of ‘resistance’. This is indeed the historical intuition on which we set out to bring together the present collection of essays. We ask the question: What have we learnt about the language games of ‘resistance’ in physics and medicine, psychology, history and sociology, political science, military strategy and the history of law?

A Potential Ordering: The Perspectives of It/Them, I/Us and You, and Historicity In this collection of essays we have brought together a good number of viewpoints on the problem of charting the uses of `resistance’. We have split the essays into four groups, resistance in the natural sciences, in the psychological sciences, historical manifestations, and analyses from the politico-legal fields of enquiry. We might say that this order of the chapters constitutes an analysis of the meaning of the concept of ‘resistance’ from four different perspectives. The natural sciences present the view of the ‘it’ of resistance. The psychological sciences open up the perspective of the ‘I’, the expressive and identity functions of resistance. The historical perspective shows that ‘resistance’ has its own historicity and contexts of being conceptualised. Finally, the politico-legal perspective roots resistance in the ‘you’, the moral respect for the ‘other’ and the normative framework for doing so. Harré outlines the perspective of physics, where ‘resistance’ manifests itself in inertia as an intrinsic property of matter, and as conditional force in opposition to an impressed force as in friction. Resistance limits the efficiency of an impressed force, and this can be controlled by altering the kind of contact between interacting material substances, or it can be eliminated or reduced by certain circumstances such as lubrication. Inertia

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remains a theoretical puzzle. Peters revisits the question of how historians have accounted for revolutions in the history of science, and in tracing the evidence finds that those who ‘resist’ theory change are not as irrational as an ex-post and rationalist Whig account wants to have it. Grimley Evans traces different meanings of ‘resistance’ in biology, from ‘life resisting entropy’, homeostatic processes resisting perturbations of the environment, defence of a constant internal environment against toxic attacks, to resistance to treatment because the body is organically unreceptive or because of psychological causes such as secondary gains from disease. Also, the cultural environment is a source of conformity, unconscious processes and pathologies which stimulate resistance to reason. Thus in biology ‘resistance’ is a fundamental property of life and a determinant of individual and collective behaviour. What appears irrational for an observer might be perfectly adaptive for the individual. The social psychological perspective is opened in Mazenauer’s explorations of Peter Weiss’ 20th century opus ‘Aesthetics of Resistance’. Here cultural significance of resistance is explored in three features. Resisting the social milieu of the family is part of identity construction. The aesthetic experience of art can function as a wake-up call to change your life. And finally, resistance and rebellion is a creative force arising from this wake-up call, and thus resistance is a condition of being an artist. Hook, Dashtipour and Hewitson follow the trails of psychoanalysis and Freud’s dictum on whatever interrupts the primary process is ‘resistance’. Psychoanalysis discovered active and passive resistance, and finds resistance in apparent co-operation, and at the basis of psychotherapy: not to overcome it, but to work through the resistance. Resistance is not only a part of the process, but progress includes recognising that resisting analysis is acknowledgement of the therapist by the patient. Bauer asks whether the diffusion of new technologies is a rational or irrational affair. Rationalists consider resistance to new technology as basically an irrational affair of deficient mentalities of non-adopters, assuming that the dis-inhibition of technological capabilities is always progressive. Less Whiggish models of technological design assume social psychological constraints that arise from feedback at all stages and without undue prejudice of users and non-adopters. It is suggested that the analysis of resistance might gain from an organic analogy based on the selfmonitoring functions of pain in relation to human activity. Finally, Bangerter and Eicher complete the psychological perspective by exploring infectious diseases in public discourse. They show how social representations of disease take on the functions of a cultural immune system, mixing physical and social threats and mobilising defences. Lay

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theories of infection come with the disease process. They protect cultural worldviews against change. The attributions of cause to out-groups, or to malignant and negligent elites can contain as well as aggravate the situation by attracting and distracting expert attention and pressurising public health agendas, as for example towards the construction of adequate drainage systems. The historicity of resistance is explored by Cooper Owens in the context of slavery in North America. Historiography of anti-slavery resistance uses the metaphor of the ‘river with many contributories’ to depict the diversity and the ebb and flow of black resistance. These include the practices of regaining autonomy through everyday resistances in the house and in the fields, organisation and participation in political societies, through storytelling of African connections, and through a theology of liberation and black nationalisms designed to overcome the legal status of African-Americans as outsiders. Markova traces different forms of resistance under Stalinism and warns against lumping together a diversity of phenomena. The situation is defined by the irrational mystique of the Party and of Marxist scientism in functional analogy to religion. In this context, anti-totalitarian resistance is manifest in the apathy, inertia and avoidance of obligations continuous with an older ‘serf mentality’. The room for political resistance was very limited. The sanctification of the Party in artful mythology stifles doubt through mechanisms of religious guilt and public shame and makes deviance psychologically inconceivable through a resistance to rationality. This leads ultimately to the denial of Stalinist atrocities as resistance to uncomfortable knowledge. Rabinovici traces the origins of resistance in the motive to re-establish a status-quo ante and not in a quest for utopian future. He examines antiNazi resistance during WWII, and warns that inflationary use risks trivializing the term. Resistance grows with the historical distance of events, both in formats and range of actors. The distinction of ‘resistance’ and ‘resistenz’ is important, so are the cruel dilemmas of Jewish resistance in conditions of absolute powerlessness. The 20th century has produced two forms of resistance, civil disobedience and partisan-terrorism, and because resistance transcends existing laws, it must be bound by moral limits - not causing more harm than the evil it resists - in order to be legitimate. The right to resist is no license for it. Finally, U Jensen explores the growing resistance against modern medicine as refusal of a certain positioning of the patient. The cultural hegemony of modern medicine is a recent phenomenon and culminates in randomised-control trials and evidence-based practice. In this context, resistance is framed as motivated by fear, ignorance and selfishness. Internal resistance through

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expert whistle blowing and exposure of abuses leads to a new ethos and the re-valuation of clinical judgment vis-à-vis a laboratory based industrial medicine. Finally, the investigation of the politico-legal field of resistance is opened by Schmidle’s exploration of ‘hinges of rationality’ in the context of strategic violence and escalating force in warfare. Beliefs beyond doubt are constitutive of rationality; the latter is but a system of necessities, rulegoverned practices and a language game. In the writings of Weil, Clausewitz and TE Lawrence, the art of war is a battle for the soul, the faith, the irrational part of the enemy, which is neither a matter of calculation nor introspective empathy, but of building a common understanding through fusing of horizons among mutually resistant actors. C Jensen examines concepts of crime, ranging from atavistic anomie, to a calculated response to inequity in society, to resistance against authority in the face of injustice. Framing crime as ‘resistance’ suggests policing should focus on prevention, procedural fairness and community building, which are imperatives that challenge the traditional remits of policing such as patrolling, law enforcement and incarceration. Burke examines the Intifada in Palestine. Here the puzzle arises from apparent ‘irrational’ Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation when facing high costs in the return for limited gains. Palestinian students frame their actions to off-set the risks of confrontation: fight against injustice, education for nationbuilding, Palestinian identity and resistance as socially good acts, and by moving education from campus to clandestine locations they mobilise widely and share the burdens of action. Finally, Pottage traces the legal history of a right to resistance (ius resistendi). Law is a technique for engaging social resistance. Legal theories of resistance are conservative in outlook: resistance aims not at transformation, but at reaffirmation, to delimit the exercise of power. The legal point of view offers two perspectives: legitimacy and functionality. If resistance brings reflexivity to the legal process, an up-to-date theory of resistance must describe its own effect on collective learning processes. This brief summary of our chapters in four sections has shown up a multitude of perspectives and much that is consistent with family resemblances between semantic networks of different fields of enquiry on resistance. Our collection of papers is far from a complete survey of the way the concepts of ‘rationality’ and ‘resistance’ interweave in modern discourses, both lay and professional. If there is one commonality across these contributions, it might be in showing that any equation of resistance with irrationality is misguided, premature and conceptually blinkered. Activities directed by the notion ‘resistance is irrational’ are prone to

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failure. In that sense, our collection of essays is an invitation to rethink resistance, to remove it far from any polemical simplification of ‘bad’, ‘mad’ and ‘pointless’.

The Changing Big Picture of Talking About ‘Resistance’ An intriguing vision of rethinking ‘resistance’ has recently been offered by the German philosopher-essayist, Peter Sloterdijk in his ‘The interior of world capitalism’ (2005). In his characteristic style of rhapsodic word constructions for an intellectual history with broad brushes, Sloterdijk talks unashamedly of a grand theory of Western history in two periods: one starting with Columbus setting off for India in 1492 and ending with the grinding halt of German tanks at Stalingrad in 1943. Henceforth, we all are living in the second period, the era since WWII. What characterises these two time periods of history? The axial element of this account is the dis-inhibition of human actions in consideration of fellow humans. The period opened by Columbus is the age of dis-inhibition: all constraints on human action are progressively removed; Prometheus is unbound. Sloterdijk suggests the perspective of ‘nautical expeditions’ as the unrecognised context of all modern philosophy. The use of words to characterise this mentality is emphatic, and Table 2 lists some these rhapsodic formulations: ‘the priority of initiative, expansion, unilateralism, rushing and speed’, the ‘turn from reflection to projection’, ‘suspension of all inhibiting norms’ and the ‘rejection of all responsibilities’ for consequences and side-effects in the name of Progress and creative destruction for a better future. This mentality epitomises the ‘nautical ecstasy’ that sustains an expedition psychology bordering on the mass psychotic. We are invited to imagine vividly the symbolic means Columbus, Magellan and other nautical explorers mobilised to keep their sailors-soldiers on board and from mutiny: the dis-inhibition of human forces at all costs is fed on the anticipation of El Dorado. This expedition mentality without any consideration for collaterals culminated in a reality check at Stalingrad. Forthwith, we live in an age where Prometheus, previously unbound, is rebound by the constraints of feedback loops. The age of inhibition is the ‘dusk of the actor’, a new humility responds to the resistance that must be expected. A new ethos of being tamed by anticipated consequences comes to prevail. Action inhibition has priority; though the latter-day ‘ecstasy of dis-inhibitions’ has not totally disappeared but survives in niches, such as markets. The world of action is now dominated by the realisation of potential for

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negative consequences of action and the precautionary principle that tames any undue rush. While the scope of human capabilities has clearly expanded enormously, self-constraint has grown as well. Resistance is the dominant force to reckon with in all collective undertakings. What do we do with this rhapsodic festival of grand theory? The ‘Big Picture’: Sloterdijk’s rhapsodic keywords 1492-1943 The age of disinhibition

>1944 Age of inhibition

Priority of initiative, expansion, unilateralism, rushing and speed [12ff]; Ethos of conquest [28]

‘Dusk of the actor’: new humility [292]

Speed into the world like a bullet out of a cannon [111]; gain identity in projecting [112]; Projectile existentialism: the projective turn: from reflection to projection

Resistance is to be expected [24]

Discover and suffer a world of hyperfeedback [296ff]

Ethos of being tamed [28] Disinhibited auto-persuasion of action; the privilege of the man of action is impunity; destruction for a better future [118] Nautical ecstasy: philosophy of captains [124]; Expedition psychology: every ship is a mass psychosis = a corporate identity Surface not grounding; idea of progress as immunisation: rejecting responsibility for consequences and side effects [293]

Priority of action inhibition [23]

Self-constraint on expanded space of capabilities [296] Feedback, multi-laterality, responsibility [297] Ecstasy of disinhibition and unilateral action only in niches [300] Prometheus is rebound by constraints [296]

Suspension of all inhibiting norms [117]

Table Ad.2: Sloterdijk’s characterisation of two world historical periods: the ‘age of disinhibition’ from 1492-1943 and the ‘age of inhibition’ from 1944 to the present. While not engaging with this play of words, the inconsistency of their use, or the historical issue of periodisation, we think that the core of this argument is useful for our own purposes. Resistance in human affairs has

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moved to centre stage. From the marginalia of history - resistance is pointless, easily dismissed under the framework of secular ideologies of markets, Marxism and millenarianism -; resistance is again something to be reckoned with. It is both a physical reality, a blue-print for action and a moral force, dignified by past and present sacrifice. Resistance offers clairvoyance where others are caught up in delusions expressed in grandiloquent terms. Albert Camus’ famous, and less individualistic variation on Descartes doubt–‘Je me révolte [Je resist], donc nous sommes’ (1981, p 432)–is morally and factually vindicated in Sloterdijk’s emphatic swan song on the obsessive nature of the modern mentality. We are clearly invited to think more carefully and in a more circumspect manner about ‘resistance’ than the moderns have done hitherto. Resistance is a far cry from being that stubborn force that keeps us from making progress and getting better; to the contrary, resistance is part of that very vector of historical and social progress.

A General Resistology? There seem to be only a few previous attempts of rolling out the issues of ‘resistance’ in a novel and comprehensive manner, namely the essays collected by Akerman (1993), the essays collected by Bauer (1995) and the earlier ambitious monograph by Seidmann (1974). Seidmann (1974) presented a study in anthropological psychology, building on his experience in psychotherapy, by comparing the resistance against healing on the private psychoanalytic couch with the high-risk resistance in the religious-political sphere, in particular against totalitarian Stalinism and Fascism. By exploring in some depth the origin, dynamics and phenomenology of both forms of resistance, he attempts a comparison by working out the pathological commonalities of two extremes (les extremes se touchent; extremes meet) in order to define the middle ground of ‘responsible Socratic resistance’. The foundations of an anthropologically grounded resistology involve a critique of resistance and an analysis of the potential rationality of resistance in all human affairs. The critique reveals the ambivalence of resistance, its Freudian Janus-headedness, pointing towards something to celebrate and something to vilify; its structural basis in being-with-others that requires boundary work and inhibition; its relation to power; its potential for historical action; and finally an existential analogy between pain, anxiety and resistance. These pose dilemmas of repression or denial, on the one hand, and conscious acceptance and working through on the

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other. According to Seidmann (p251), anxiety, pain and resistance are anthropological ‘existentials’, ontological universals of all conscious life forms. In this argument, resistance is a correlate of the human capacity for making decisions and for holding obligations towards others. However, this capacity is at risk of degeneration into the ‘Herakles delusion’, the despotic positioning of oneself above the Law, both in its transcendentalnatural (hubris, the word of the gods, the nature of things) and its positive manifestation (the existing laws). In the ‘Herakles delusion’, both the private neurotic and the religious-political terrorist find their common pathological expression. The essay closes with an analysis of the responsible path of resistance which reveals the delusions of power as the task of our time: might does not make for right. We take Seidmann (1974) as an invitation to think again about a general resistology in new circumstances, but maybe not in exactly these same terms. Seidmann’s approach is comparative and rescues the anthropological normality of ‘resistance’ by analysing its potential for pathological dynamic; he thus follows the pathological method which psychoanalysis inherited from medicine: normality is defined in contrast to deviations from it; health is the absence of disease. A different take on the problem of resistance is opened up by Nordal Akerman’s collection of invited essays (1993). His starting point is Clausewitz’s analysis of the dynamics of warfare, and how difficulties accumulate in an unforeseeable manner in warfare, what came to be known as ‘friction’: ‘Every effort will be dogged by inertia, resistance, delay’ (p7). What seems to be a fundamental correlate of any strategic action motivates Akerman’s commentators from different domains to reflect on ‘what keeps you from realising your goals, what compromises all plans, sometimes making them unrecognisable. …constitutes the divide between dream and reality’ (p8). Resistance is the great leveller between human efforts across all cultures. He diagnoses a problem in the modern rationality project: it underestimates and misconceives the problem of ‘resistance’ in world affairs. Akerman (1993) invited his contributors to reflect on the notion of ‘friction’ and to move away from the imperative of getting rid of friction, towards recognising its functional necessity and ubiquitous reality: nothing will proceed precisely as decided beforehand; every effort will be dogged by inertia, resistance, delays; that which is inert and recalcitrant makes almost every endeavour much harder than anticipated; friction and inertia are the great levellers between different cultures; without friction, there is no movement (p7ff). Akerman’s contributors examine these notions in the social sciences, in physics and metaphysics, on the battlefield, the marketplace, in play and industrial

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design, and in the quest for forecasting the future. The common thread through the contributions is an examination of ubiquitous friction as resistance to rational design and a polemic against any illusion of movement without friction. Our present collection of essays has taken up the same challenge. In a similar vein but entirely unconnected, Bauer (1995) had brought together social scientists to reflect on the significance of resistance against new technology.4 A conference organised at the Science Museum, London in 1993 compared and reassessed the forms and impacts of resistance against industrialism, nuclear power, computing and information technology, and asked the question: will resistance against biotechnology be modelled on nuclear power or on IT? History has since caught up with events, and the late 1990s and early 2000s brought real resistance to biotechnology. The question posed at the time attempted to move resistance from a question of moral legitimacy to one of functionality: what is the empirical contribution of resistance to technological development? In the empirical analysis, resistance shall no longer be the dependent variable, the explanandum, but figure as the independent explanans. This is indeed consistent with what Alain Pottage in this present volume claims for the legal tradition through Niklas Luhmann and Michel Foucault: the quest for a theory of resistance that considers its own consequences as representation and intervention. How has our current collection of essays added value and moved on this potential agenda for a general ‘resistology’, or for a comparative analysis of resistance across different fields of enquiry? We must leave this judgement mostly to the diligent reader. However, a number of markers might help him or her along that path: 1. Resistance has gained significant prominence as a concept and technical term in the social sciences over the past 20 years. 2. Resistance has been rescued from a simple equation with irrationality and moral turpitude.

4

It was a Swedish colleague, Bjorn Fjaestad, who during collaboration on the project ‘Biotechnology and the European Public’ in the late 1990s gave Martin Bauer a copy of the Akerman book pointing out the similarities of concerns (see ‘the necessity of friction’: US edition 1998 by Westview Press; and in 2012 a soft copy of the 1993 edition by PHYSICA). Incidentally, Rom Harré contributed to that volume with an essay on ‘physical dispositions’.

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3. Resistance has moved away from being exclusively a synonym of false consciousness, stupidity, narrowness and deficiency of mind, and therefore a ‘white wash’ for the designs of powerful actors.5 4. Resistance has multiplied the contexts of use, to such an extent that the risk of semantic realism is real: we need to avoid the fallacy that a homonym points toward a common reality or a common underlying mechanism. 5. More likely, we are dealing with family resemblances among many manifestations. Each manifestation and usage of ‘resistance’ displays a different set of features, and the conjunction between all sets is empty; some features are shared across a combination of sets, but none across all sets. 6. One of our initial questions remains largely unexamined: what is the exchange of metaphors between the natural and the social sciences with regard to ‘resistance’? We examined notions such as immunity, inertia, viral processes, pain modulation, mass transfer, fluvial dynamics, and signalling. However, a closer examination of metaphorical entailment and their added value and drawbacks remains open and desirable. 7. A promising avenue for a general resistology would be the empirical turn from questioning the legitimacy to investigating the functionality of resistance: what does resistance contribute? Resistance primarily irritates and thus stimulates reflexivity and potentially collective learning. The modalities and modes of this reflexivity that arise from resistance need to be examined.

References Akerman N (1993) (ed) The necessity of friction, Heidelberg, Physica Verlag Bauer M (1995) (ed) Resistance to new technology, Cambridge, CUP Camus A (1981) L’homme révolte, in Essais (R Quillot and L Faucon, eds) Paris, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade (original published 1951)

5 Sheila Jasanoff, Professor Science and Technology studies, now at Harvard, but at the time at Cornell and a contributor to the 1993 conference at the Science Museum London, was initially very reluctant to attend the proceedings because she was apprehensive that the term ‘resistance’ could only be used as a ‘deficit concept’ against users and citizens and would therefore function as a ‘white wash’ of powerful actors in politics and industry. I am not sure, but suspect she might have changed her mind in the meantime on the use of the term ‘resistance’.

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Seidmann P (1974) Der Mensch im Widerstand–Studien zur anthropologischen Psychologie, Bern & Munchen, Francke Verlag [man in resistance–studies in anthropological psychology] Sloterdijk P (2005) Im Weltinnenraum des Kapitals – Fuer eine philosophische Theorie der Globalisierung, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp. [The world interior of the capital – a philosophical theory of globalisation] 



CONTRIBUTORS

Authors Adrian Bangerter Martin W Bauer Francesca Burke Deirdre Cooper Owens Parisa Dashtipour Véronique Eicher John Grimley-Evans Owen Hewitson Rom Harré Derek Hook Carl Jensen Uffe J Jensen Ivana Marková Beat Mazenauer Dean Peters Alain Pottage Doron Rabinovici Robert E Schmidle

University of Neuchâtel London School of Economics and Political Science Council for British Research in the Levant University of Mississippi London School of Economics and Political Science University of Neuchâtel University of Oxford LacanOnline.com Georgetown University and University of Oxford Birkbeck College London University of Mississippi Aarhus University University of Stirling Author, Luzern London School of Economics and Political Science London School of Economics and Political Science Author, Vienna Georgetown University

INDEX Alisin, 5 Abramovitch, 140 Actor-Network Theory, 91, 92, 98 Adler-Rudel, 168 Adnkronos, 114 Adorno, 51, 52 African Americans, 126, 127, 130, 131, 132, 134, 135, 136 Agamben, 263 Agnew, 227, 228, 239 Aharoni, 255 Akerman, 293, 294 Al Quaida, 171 Allen, 80 Améry, 162 Anderson, 57, 66, 70, 71 Annan, 175 Anschluss, 161 ANT. See Actor Network Theory Antebellum-era, 129, 132 Anthony, 62 Aquinas, 159, 262, 267 Arendt, 167, 168, 169, 172 Aristotle, 159 Arnold, 48 Artaud, 53 Asch, 84 Atwood, 54 Authority, 59, 77 Avant-garde, 53 Axelrod, 246 Banneker, 131, 132 Baramki, 250, 258 Barnes, 13 Barry, 112, 116 Barthes, 51 Bartolus, 263, 267, 268, 271, 274, 276 Bauer, 103, 167 Beck, 71, 119

Behaviourism, 70 Bellinger, 128 Benford, 246, 247 Ben-Natan, 255, 257 Berdyaev, 141, 145, 147 Bergman, 144 Bernard, 31 Bettega, 110 Bichat, 190 Bijker, 92 Billington, 143 Birzeit University, 243, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 256, 257, 258 Birzeit. See Birzeit University Black Death, 105, 112, 116, 119 Blaine, 118 Blanchette, 239 Blassingame, 130 Bloch, 80, 95 Bloor, 13 Bodin, 159, 269, 276 Bogart, 111 Bonger, 226 Bonnell, 141, 142, 147, 148 Botz, 161 Bradford Hill, 186 Brandon, 111 Bratich, 110 Brecht, 48, 49 Brenner, 218 Briggs, 119 Broadnax, 118 Brody, 184 Broidy, 228, 229 Broszat, 163 Brothers, 167 Brown, 235 Brunson, 238 Buber, 167, 172 Burt, 236

300 Bushway, 230 Butterfield, 12, 196 Byrne, 105, 106 Calvin, 270, 276 Cambrian explosion, 31 Camp, 130, 132 Campion-Vincent, 118 Camus, 52, 53, 293 Cantwell, 110 Cardozo, 277 Carloppio, 81 Carriaga, 228 Chang, 24, 25 Chemical revolution, 12, 21, 25, 26, 27 Cherry, 111 Cicero, 159 Cirhinlioglu, 113 Clausewitz, 220, 222 Clay-Warner, 236 Cochrane, 186, 198, 199 Coercion, 61 Coey, 7 Cohen, 226, 228, 230, 231 Cohn, 105, 106 Collective action, 243, 244, 246, 247, 256, 259, 260, 261 Commitment, 46, 54 Communicative action, 88 Community Oriented Policing, 230, 236 Compliance, 69, 71 COMPSTAT, 230, 237, 238 Conspiracy theories, 110 Contagion, 81, 90, 98 Copernicus, 16, 19 Counterresistance, 67 Countertransference, 67 Cranston, 190 Crocker, 118 Cultural immune system, 101, 102, 121 Dahm, 168 Dante, 49 Darwish, 256, 257 Davidson, 142, 153

Index Davies, 181 Debord, 53 Defence, 65, 74 in Psychoanalysis, 64 Deffenbacher, 239 deGreene, 81 Denialism, 111, 118 Dialogue, 87, 89, 98 Diamond, 228 Dieckman, 235 Diffusion, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 97, 98 DiGiuseppe, 239 Disease resistance, 34 Disobedience, 157, 162, 163, 170, 171, 172, 176 Donne, 183 Douglas, 116 Douglass, 134, 135 Dowden, 239 Duesberg, 111 Duncan, 102 Durkheim, 154, 227 264, 265, 266, 278 Duveen, 90 Eaton, 111 Eck, 167 Eck, 230 Einsiedel, 88 Emery, 71 Enard, 54 Engels, 225 Entropy, 30 Epigenetic control, 32 Epstein, 192, 193, 194 Essien, 111 Etchegoyen, 61 Evidence-Based Policing, 240 Ewald, 278 Expert explanations for disease, 101, 115 Expert knowledge, 103, 104 Extension, 87 Farmer, 120 Fateh, 248, 249, 253, 254 Fauci, 101

Resistance and the Practice of Rationality Faulkner, 102, 117 Federman, 53 Feinstein, 195, 200, 201, 202 Felson, 230, 231 Fest, 158 Fitzpatrick, 142, 143 Flick, 104, 116, 119 Folkers, 101 Foucault, 266, 269, 277, 278, 295 Foucaultian, 191 Framing, 247, 259, 260 Fraser, 103 Freeden, 168 Freedom, 209, 216, 217, 222, 223, 224 Freidson, 185 Freire, 87, 88, 89 Freud, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 69, 72, 73, 77 Freudian, 60 Friedlaender, 173 Frosh, 58, 63 Fülöp-Miller, 147 Galileo, 6 Gaskell, 90, 103 Gau, 238 Gay, 190 Gentile, 145 Gergen, 87 Géricault, 42, 49 Ghiyatha, 250 Gilles, 104, 114, 121 Gilman, 129 Ginneken, 84 Ginzburg, 147 GM crops, 92 Godin, 80 Godlee, 113, 120 Goethe, 160 Goffman, 247 Gottfredson, 230 Graham-Brown, 250 Gramsci, 185 Green, 117 Greenpeace, 171 Greenson, 56, 57, 65, 66, 68

Grimley Evans, 39 Grmek, 189 Gross, 81, 158 Grossman, 167 Grotius, 267, 271 Grubstein, 167 Gruner, 162 Gutman, 167, 170 Gutmann, 169 Habermas, 88, 89 Hacking, 265 Hagan, 225 Hagerstrand, 82, 84 Halfin, 147, 149, 153 Hall, 226 Hallaj, 250 Hamas, 249, 254, 255, 257 Hamilton, 30 Hannemyr, 85 Haraway, 54 Harding, 126 Harré, 138, 143, 181 Hartman, 129 Hatty, 102, 106 Hawkins, 233 Hayes, 103 Heller, 194 Hersen, 70 Highland Garnet, 134 Hilberg, 167, 168 HIV/AIDS, 107 Hobbes, 159, 262, 271, 272 Hodann, 48, 53 Hook, 59 Horton, 195, 196 Hotman, 263, 269, 274, 276 Hoyningen-Huene, 21 Hume, 243 Humphries, 226 Hutchinson, 111 Id, 64, 65, 68, 69 Imaginary, 73, 74, 75 Imitative behaviour, 38 Immunisation, 33 Impedance, 29

301

302 Infectious disease, 101, 102, 104, 105, 113, 114, 121 Influenza, 105, 112, 113, 114, 118, 119 Innovation, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 88, 98 Intelligence Led Policing, 230 Interruption, 57 Irrationality, 138, 139, 142, 145, 152, 153, 154, 209, 217, 218 Isaac, 111 Ius resistendi or right of resistance, 262, 263, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276 Jacobs, 167 Jameson, 49, 51 Jang, 228 Jardine, 12 Jasanoff, 88 Jaspars, 103 Jefferson, 226 Jensen, U. 189, 191 Jewish Councils, 166, 168, 169 Joffe, 107, 110, 113, 114, 117 Johnson, P. 243, 253, 258 Johnson, W. 128 Jones, 130 Jonsson, 110 Kafka, 49 Kalichman, 110, 111 Kant, 160, 184, 185, 272, 273, 274, 276 Katz, 180 Kelling, 235, 237 Kelly, 105, 106 Khatib, 252 Koestler, 140 Kohn, 105, 167 Kollesch, 188 Koop, 108 Kowalski, 167 KragelskiƱ, 5 Krakowski, 167, 170 Kroh, 167 Kronberger, 104

Index Krummacher, 167 Kuhn, 12, 14, 15, 16, 20, 26, 27 Kuttab, 252, 256 Kwiet, 167 Lacan, 58, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76 Lacanian, 60 Ladyman, 24 Langs, 66, 67, 69 Lassen, 92 Latour, 91, 92 LaVeist, 111 Law of suppression of radical potential, 86, 87 Lawrence, 220, 221, 223, 224 Laws of ‘supervening necessity’, 98 Lay explanations for disease, 104, 105, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121 Lay knowledge, 103, 104, 116 Learning, 36, 38 Lee, 113 Leeper, 228 Lenin, 137, 139, 140, 145, 146, 148, 152 Leninism, 138, 149 Lewin, 148 Lewis, 24 Liao, 113 Libet, 37 Lichtenberg, 160 Locke, 159, 190 London, 148, 150, 154 Löw, 161 Luhmann, 266, 269, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 295 Luhtanen, 118 Lustiger, 166, 169 Luther, 267, 270, 276 Lyons, 38 Mach, 7 Machians, 10 MacKenzie, 230 Mann, 167 Marat, 44, 45, 46, 49 Marková, 140, 149 Marks, 195, 197, 198, 199, 200

Resistance and the Practice of Rationality Martin, 164 Marx, 43, 54, 139, 141, 145, 147, 154, 225, 266 Marxism, 138, 139, 141, 145, 146, 147, 152 Marxism/Conflict Theory, 225 McGilchrist, 38 Medicine, 127, 129 Medvedev, 137, 141, 149, 150 Memory, 36 Mentality, 79, 80 Meyer, 162 Meyer-Rochow, 102 Michaelis-Stern, 167 Mischlingsliga, 166 Mishal, 255 Mobilization, 244, 246, 247, 249, 250, 255, 259, 260, 261 Moghaddam, 143 Mokyr, 81 Mommsen, 161 Monarchomachs, 159 Montesquieu, 159 Morens, 101 Morin, 151 Morris, R. 228 Morris, B. 247 Morrison, 54 Moscovici, 89, 103, 104, 107, 144, 148, 153 MRSA, 105, 114, 117, 118 Munjack, 70 Münkler, 175 Munroe, 56, 57, 64, 65 Musgrave, 21, 23, 25 Myth, 145, 146, 152 Necessity, 209, 217, 222, 224 Neel, 32 Nerlich, 119 Neugebauer, 162 Newton, 6, 7 Newtonians, 10 Niehaus, 110 Novel predictions, 20, 21, 23 Oberreuter, 159 Oetting, 239

303

Olson, 244, 247 Oppel, 237 Osterholm, 113 Oudshoorn, 92 Oziel, 70 Pain, 86, 95, 96, 97, 98 Palestinian Liberation Organization, 248, 249, 251, 252, 253, 254 Paradox, 262, 263, 266, 267, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 277, 278, 279 Park, 101 Parsons, 185 Partisan, 173 Passas, 227 Passive resistance, 60 Pate, 235 Paucker, 167 Perec, 52 Petryna, 187 Philips, 130 Phillips, 77 Phlogiston, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 Picasso, 49 Pinch, 92 Piquero, 228 Plato, 159 PLO. See Palestinian Liberation Organization Podhoretz, 167 Polevoj, 146 Popular committees, 256, 257, 259, 260, 261 Porter, D. 132 Porter, R, 186, 190, 205 Predictive Policing, 230, 238, 240 Primoratz, 175 Problem Oriented Policing, 230, 236 Professional Era, The, 234, 235, 236 Psychoanalysis, 56, 59, 60, 61, 62, 68, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 90 Psychoanalytic, 89 Quinn, 111 Rabin, 244, 253, 260 Race, 126, 127, 128, 129, 135, 136 Racialized, 129, 136

304 Radkau, 87 Randall Williams, 129 Randall, 81 Rationality, 38, 39, 138, 139, 142, 144, 149, 152, 153, 154, 209, 210, 211, 217, 218 Reflexivity, 263, 265, 266, 275, 277, 278, 280 Reichmann, 167 Reik, 60, 64 Reinharz, 194 Religion, 139, 141, 143, 144, 145, 147, 148, 149, 154 Repetition, 62, 63, 64 Repression, 39 Resistance to knowledge, 149 Resistenz, 160, 163, 164 Reuter, 230 Rhodes, R. 95 Rhodes, J. R. 228 Rie, 167 Riegel, 141, 146 Roberts, 252 Robinson, J. 167, 169 Robinson, G. E. 250, 255, 257, 260 Rogers, 81, 85 Rose, 190, 191 Ross, 111 Rothman, 192, 193 Rottman, 238 Rousseau, 159 Routine Activity Theory, 231 Rush, 71 Ryan, 81 Sade, 44, 45, 46, 49 Sahliyeh, 250, 253 Sandoval, 130 Saramago, 243 Sartre, 50 Saurer, 164 Schaller, 101 Schiff, 254, 255, 256 Schlesinger, 59, 63, 64, 66 Schmidt, 119, 120 Schmitt, 173, 174, 263, 273 Schoeps, 165

Index Scholem, 167 Schüler-Springorum, 170 Schurz, 24 Science, 101, 104, 110, 112, 113, 116, 119, 120 Philosophy of, 115 Scientific, 2, 3 Sciences, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9 Social, 105, 113, 115, 116 Techno-science, 80, 91 Techno-scientific, 79 Scientific Revolutions, 11 SCOT. See Social Construction of Technology Seidmann, 293, 294 Seifert, 104 Seneca, 182, 183 Serin, 239 Service, 139 Shabiba, 253, 254, 255, 256 Shaffner, 13 Shapin, 13 Shaw, 71 Sherman, 230, 232 Shlapentokh, 143 Simbayi, 110 Simon, 168 Slavery, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136 Sloterdijk, 95, 99, 291, 292, 293 Snow, 246, 247 Social construction of technology, 91,92 Social representations theory, 89 Social representation, 98 Social representations, 103, 104, 121 Sohlberg, 114 Sophocles, 159 Souvarine, 140, 142, 144, 149 Speid, 187, 188 Spinelli, 59 Stadler, 162 Staerklé, 117

Resistance and the Practice of Rationality Stalinism, 137, 138, 139, 140, 142, 144, 145, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155 Steinbach, 159 Steinberg, 167 Sterba, 66 Stewart, 57, 66, 70, 71 Stoltzfus, 162 Strain Theory, 227, 238 Strobl, 167 Suhl, 167 Symbolism, 140, 141, 145, 146, 152 Techno-science. See Science Tenenbaum, 167 Terrorism, 171, 174, 175, 176 Thagard, 115 Theory of war, 222 Thomas, 111 Thorburn, 111 Thoreau, 171, 172 Tilly, 246, 247 Tissaw, 138 Titmuss, 194 Torres, 111 Totalitarianism, 137, 142, 144, 145, 151, 153 Transference, 64, 65, 66, 67, 71 Treatment, 34 Trunk, 168 Turner, 186 Tushnet, 167, 168 Ullmann, 274 Unconscious, 36, 37, 38 Unified National Leadership, 254, 255, 256, 259, 261

305

UNL. See Unified National Leadership Viennese actionism, 177 Viral, 79, 82, 85, 98 Wagner, 103, 104 Wagner-Egger, 113, 118 Wallace-Sanders, 129 Wallis, 119 Warsaw ghetto, 169, 170 Washer, 107, 108, 110, 114, 120 Wassermann, 168 Weber, 266 Weil, 220, 221, 222, 223 Weiß, A. 168 Weiss, P. 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 Wejnert, 81, 84 WHO, 107, 112, 113, 120 Wilson, J. Q. 237 Wilson, R. 276 Winston, 86, 87 Wittgenstein, 4, 138, 155, 210, 218, 219, 220, 224 Wolman, 53 Woolgar, 91 Wördemann, 175 Worrall, 15, 16, 20, 26 Wynne, 104 Ya’ari, 254, 255, 256 Yamamoto, 80 Yamba, 110 Young, 226 Zahar, 15 Zimring, 233