ABSTRACT
We have seen how everyday resistance has to be understood as a pattern of acts, or a practice. This chapter explores the second of the two basic features of everyday resistance: what it means that this pattern of acts occurs in an oppositional relation to dominant power. The main focus is to develop the meaning and consequences of the unavoidable power/resistance couplet. We have four main claims we want to argue here. We start by (1) showing why the relation to power is unavoidable, even “after liberation”, and for all, including the resisters. This relational marriage between power and resistance needs, furthermore, to be understood as (2) dynamic interactions played out in history, space and context that produce many unexpected results. Then, we argue that since power is not singular but both decentered and intersectional, it means, logically, that also resistance is (3) decentered and intersectional; i.e., resistance is always in relation to several powers simultaneously. Resistance is therefore inherently plural. Lastly, this also means, that power and resistance are interdependent and constitute/affect each other and, as a result, become (4) entangled.
