Recontextualizing Resistance

Resistance is a concept that rose to the forefront of several areas of study when Max Weber made careful distinctions between authority, force, violence, domination, and legitimation. It gained strong attention when the well-known Palestinian journalist, activist, fiction writer and critic Ghassan Kanafani (1936–1972) published a study entitled the Literature of Resistance in Occupied Palestine: 1948–1966, a work that contributed to postcolonial theories of power, race, ethnicity and gender, and second generation theories of orientalism, feminism, and disability. Initially identified by philosophers, historians, and social critics as a focal point for situations in which oppressors brutally destroy the identity or subjectivity of the oppressed, resistance has been transformed by fiction writers, filmmakers, lyricists and speechmakers into a process in which responses and counter-responses to some type of injustice create difficult situations with complicated nuances. These works now form the foundation for what has come to be recognized as “resistance art.” This book gathers the insight, knowledge, and wisdom found in different manifestations of this art to further our understanding of the impact of resistance on contemporary life.