ABSTRACT
Political values often are formulated in local contexts in which citizens do not visibly confront public authorities. This chapter shows how political values are represented in ‘silent citizenship’ practices and in unseen ‘resistant texts’. By ‘silent citizenship’ we mean hidden, non-public repertoires and practices of civic resistance. By ‘resistant texts’ we refer to hidden and alternative narratives of the ‘everyday expressions of endogeneity’ (Winkler 2018: 2) – that is, narratives or social practices in which alternative, often indigenous understandings of power and oppression are manifested. Both silent citizenship practices and resistant texts illustrate previously hidden ways of knowing, being and acting. In this chapter, we show how political values manifest themselves in such hidden political practices and narratives, many of which historically have been under-researched. These include non-public and informal forms of political protest such as fishers’ illegal struggles and the occupation of vacant land, as well as hidden narratives animating the renaming of occupation sites, beadwork and traditional attire. We argue that our inability to hear and recognize these long-standing discourses and practices of resistance by groups rendered ethnic, traditional, marginalized or ‘other’ under the universal and modern episteme brought by colonialism is due to the grounding of our research methods in colonial and heteronormative epistemologies and ontologies. We argue that there is a need for researchers to (re)learn to hear, see and read silent citizenship practices and resistant texts in order to render hidden political values and resistance practices visible. This entails a deep willingness to understand previously hidden epistemological and ontological perspectives, political subjectivities and experiences of power and resistance. Surfacing the hidden narratives and practices of silenced citizens – such as the civil disobedience and economic non-cooperation of protest fishers, and non-cooperation with customs and institutions by those adorning traditional attire and beads reserved for individuals in different social positions – allows us to recognize acts of resistance. These acts challenge the researcher’s ontological perspectives of what constitutes an act of resistance in the first place.
