Journal Article


Opposing the opposition? Binarity and complexity in political resistance

Abstract

The point of departure for this article is the question of how to pursue and encourage political contestation from a position that acknowledges the significance of binary conceptualisations, but that is at the same time uncomfortable with a mode of politics that is exclusively geared towards them. The limitations of this traditionally modern conceptualisation of politics – and life more generally – calls for an ontological move away from the prioritisation of bounded entities and clear-cut (oppositional) identities in order to explore other dimensions of political action. While there has been a turn to such new ontologies – in critical geography and beyond – in the last decades, there has been less exploration of what this could mean concretely for a political activism that aims to go beyond mere ‘micropolitical’ transformation. To address this lack, this article examines the tensions between binarity and complexity through an engagement with political resistance against genetically modified organisms (GMOs). This brings to light that the ontology of complexity pursued by some anti-GMO activists is ultimately grounded in a binarisation of both politics (one is either ‘for’ or ‘against’ GMOs’) and life (which is either ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’). Whilst problematic in its limitation and specification of what kind of politics and life is considered ‘right’ and ‘natural’, this binarisation also informs the success of anti-GMO activism. An engagement with the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, especially through the notion of the ‘encounter’, brings out this paradox and serves to radicalise the ontology of complexity argued for by anti-GMO activists in order to open up different avenues for thinking about and ‘doing’ political resistance. 

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Authors

Rosenow, Doerthe
Ansems de Vries, Leonie

Oxford Brookes departments

Department of Social Sciences

Dates

Year of publication: 2015
Date of RADAR deposit: 2020-02-05


Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License


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