Resistance
by
“Resistance,” as a keyword for contemporary media studies, has a curious political lineage. It was first adopted by the right, then crossed the aisle to the left; its history marks the evolution of an idea and a transformation in cultural politics. The English word “resistance” is a derivation of “resist,” stemming from the Latin—via the French—and meaning to stand. Resistance has a technical scientific meaning, “the opposition offered by one body to the pressure or movement of another,” as well as a later psychoanalytic one: the unconscious opposition to repressed memories or desires. But it is the Oxford English Dictionary’s primary definition, “to stop or hinder (a moving body); to succeed in standing against; to prevent (a weapon, etc.) from piercing or penetrating,” that conveys the meaning most often used in media studies: resistance is a stand against an oppositional power. Writing Reflections on the Revolution in France in 1790, Edmund Burke is horrified by the French overthrow of birthright authority, the leveling of classes, and other such “usurpation[s] on the prerogatives of nature” (1993, 49). (He is particularly horrified by the thought of the hairdresser who thinks himself the equal of his betters.) The only response to such usurpations...
This essay may be found on page 176 of the printed volume.