New chapter on the Power of Disappointment in Resistance

I’m delighted to announce the publication of a chapter on The Power of Disappointment in Resistance, now out in the collection on Resistance in Epistemic, Communicative and Political Practices, edited by Leo Townsend, Dina Lupin and José Medina. The volume constitutes a much needed intervention, taking a bottom-up, activist-centered, and multidisciplinary approach to resistance. In doing so, the essays in this volume create new frameworks to explore and engage with the ways that resistance can play a crucial role in our social lives and political futures.

My chapter challenges the dominant perception of disappointment as an inward-oriented emotion and explores the political power of disappointment in resistance. Specifically, it examines how resisters can engage with disappointment in a politically productive manner and keep open a space of political possibility in the face of failure. It focuses on the disappointment of marginalized groups within resistance, such as women, whose concerns are often neglected within the overall goals of the movement. It argues that marginalized resisters’ disappointment can serve as an important critical tool. It can mobilize new forms of resistance against the failures and oppressive attitudes within the resistance movement and thus strengthen its power and goals. The chapter illustrates the political power of disappointment on the example of Operation Anti Sexual Harassment and Assault (OpAntiSH), a feminist activist group that formed in the wake of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution against mass sexual assaults of women protesters.

You can access it here: https://academic.oup.com/book/63059/chapter-abstract/566749356?redirectedFrom=fulltext