ABSTRACT
At first glance, the politics of resilience has reached a stalemate of sorts. According to proponents,
the rise of resilience thinking in fields such as climate change and disaster studies is inherently
political and empowering. Resilience, we are told, focuses on freeing individuals’ and communities’
agency and empowering them to develop their own coping strategies and adaptations to social,
economic, and environmental uncertainties (Brown and Westaway, 2011). Critical readings of
resilience offer a more sobering account. In a provocative article, Jeremy Walker and Melinda
Cooper (2011) argue that resilience circumscribes the radical possibilities of critique. Their genealogy
of resilience draws out how resilience thinking and neoliberal thought share a common comport-
ment to critique’s destabilizing effect. In both cases, critique generates crisis that offers possibilities to
change for the better and continue current trajectories of growth and development amidst uncer-
tainty. The confluence of resilience thinking with neoliberal governmental rationalities leverages
critique’s transgressive force to extend and solidify neoliberal rule. ForWalker andCooper, resilience
thrives on critique even as it negates critique’s political force. Thus, in contemporary neoliberal
order, resilience appears to be either inherently empowering or inescapably depoliticizing.
