Page 201 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL STUDIES

Resistance The common use of the term resistance refers to opposition or
insubordination that issues from relationships of power and domination. That is,
resistance takes the form of challenges to and negotiations of the ascendant order.
178 However, resistance is not a singular and universal act that defines itself for all time,
rather it is constituted by repertoires of activity whose meanings are specific to
particular times, places and social relationships. That is, resistance needs to be
thought of in relational and conjunctural terms. Further, resistance is not an
intrinsic quality of an act but a category of judgement about acts and as such is a
judgement that classifies the classifier.
It is common to understand resistance as an essentially defensive relationship to
cultural power experienced as external and ‘other’ by subordinate social forces.
Here, resistance arises where a dominating culture is seeking to impose itself on
subordinate cultures from without. Consequently, resources of resistance are to be
located in some measure outside of the dominating culture. This is the way that
resistance has commonly been understood by cultural studies writers when they
talk about class conflict, ideological struggle or counter-hegemonic blocs. This is to
grasp resistance in terms of a zero-sum model of power that involves constraint. For
example, subcultural style was understood as a dynamic and creative signifying
practice of spectacular subcultures that was contrasted to passive consumption of
cultural industry commodities and as such was a manifestation of symbolic
resistance.
An alternative account of resistance (associated with De Certeau and Foucault)
conceptualizes the resistive practices of everyday life as always already in the space
of power. Consequently, there are no ‘margins’ outside of power from which to lay
an assault on it or from within which to claim authenticity. Thus, where resistance
is taking place in contemporary culture it is happening ‘inside’ consumer lifestyles,
transforming commodities and using the mass media. For example, since there is
no outside to commodified culture from which external resistance can be mounted,
youth cultural styles are not formed outside and opposed to consumer culture and
the media but within and through them. Here resistance is not to be thought of as
a simple reversal of the order of high and low, of power and its absence, but rather
of ambivalence and negotiation as exemplified by the transgressive character of the
‘carnivalesque’.
Links Carnivalesque, class, hegemony, ideology, power, style, youth culture

Rhizome A rhizome is a form of botanical growth that, unlike a single root structure,
produces different points of equal growth across a lateral path. In cultural studies
the concept is deployed as a metaphor of logic or conjunction that stresses non-
linear patterns of interconnection and feedback loops. This forms a contrast to the
culturally predominant arboreal metaphors of ‘root and branch’ in which the image
of the tree predominates, with causality running in straight lines. Burrows in their
interconnected layout and multiple functions of shelter, supply, movement, evasion
and breakout are rhizomorphic in character as are the bulbs and tumours of
potatoes.