Environment and Planning D: Society and Space

Studies of resistance challenge overly structural conceptions of social systems by emphasizing the various forms of creative practice operating within hegemonic space. Yet, by illustrating the different ways that agents respond to a dominant system, resistance theory inadvertently establishes that system as a preestablished entity. Thus, although resistance theory endeavours to recognize the ongoing deconstructs of systems, it simultaneously reifies the system as primary. In response, I argue that this problem is not indicative of a flaw in resistance theory per se, but rather of a flaw in the conception of systems it operates with. Drawing upon Butler's work on performativity, I develop an alternative theory of systems that accounts for social coherence and stratified relations of power through creative forms of social practice alone. Rather than depending on sociostructural concepts such as ideology, hegemony, and normative space, a performative theory of systems situates creative social practice as the engine of social coherence. In this framework theories of resistance are redundant because creative practices are the rule of systems rather than a challenge to their stability.

In this paper we offer an alternative reading of the role of performativity and everyday forms of resistance in current geographic literature. We make a case for thinking about performativity as a form of embodied dialectical praxis via a discussion of the ways in which performativity has been recently understood in geography. Turning to the tradition of Marxist revolutionary theater, we argue for the continued importance of thinking about the power of performativity as a socially transformative, imaginative, and collective political engagement that works simultaneously as a space of social critique and as a space for creating social change. We illustrate our point by examining two different performative strategies employed by food service workers at the University of Southern California in their struggle for a fair work contract and justice on the job.

In this paper I examine aspects of the notion of performativity as related to race. I propose that the experience of ‘mixed race’ identity can offer opportunities for the performance of racialized identities. Drawing from qualitative interviews, I suggest that some ‘mixed race’ women put into play racialized performances, demonstrating a desire to create new meanings out of imposed hierarchical and dualistic racial orders. They effectively take advantage of multiple, dynamic, and ambiguous racialized spaces. I begin by critiquing recent examinations of performativity in geography, pointing out that, although they contribute towards a greater understanding of the relationship between gender and performance, processes of racialization in regards to performativity have not yet been fully unravelled. Through the stories of some ‘mixed race’ women, I chronicle racialized performances in the social landscape in order to ground the notion of performativity through a racialized lens.

Although interracial (hetero)sexual relations are no longer illegal, and the number of visible, consensual interracial partnerships has increased, there still remains a discourse against these social arrangements circulating in the United States that continues to bear the traces of the history of antimiscegenation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the everyday negotiation of public spaces of an African-American man as he participates in interracial (heterosexual relations. With a theoretical debt to both Lefebvre and de Certeau, and employing a narrative approach, I highlight the complex interactions of race, gender, and sexuality, and how these are manifest spatially. Through this narrative, moreover, I demonstrate how resistance to one form of hegemony (racism) may simultaneously contribute to the augmentation of other forms of dominance (patriarchy).

In this paper I explore the ways in which Latinas, young US-born Mexican-descent teenage girls, construct national belonging through difference: corporeal, spatial, and temporal difference between themselves and their Mexican contemporaries, young Mexicanas. Specifically, I analyse their representations of Mexico and Mexicanas, in narratives of their own and others' travels, and experiences of living, ‘over there’ and ‘back then’. I argue that, in and through an engagement of body image with national narratives and transnational hierarchies, the young women intervene in and reproduce hegemonic narratives of nation and gender. In so doing they simultaneously construct a transgressive modern national subjectivity for themselves and a regressive domestic subjectivity for the young Mexicanas, both of which are fixed in place and ordered differentially in time.

There has been a renewed intellectual concern with the politics of geographical research in recent years, which has expressed, at times, the need for an engagement between the often separate worlds of academia and activism. Interventions by critical geographers such as Ian Maxey, and feminist geographers, including Cindi Kate, Heidi Nast, Gillian Rose, and J-K Gibson-Graham, have provided important insights into the political commitment geographers bring to their research, critical and reflexive forms of engagement, and the politics of fieldwork, representational strategies, and collaborative research. This paper examines the author's collaborative critical engagement with two organizations—the Goa Foundation and the Jagrut Goenkaranchi Fouz (Vigilant Goan Army)—involved in resisting tourism development in Goa, India. Collaboration took several forms, particularly the author masquerading as a tour operator, Walter Kurtz, in order to elicit information concerning the contravention of Goan environmental laws by hotel developers. Drawing, in particular, upon the insights of the aforementioned feminist geographers concerning identity, difference, and power in the conducting of fieldwork, I examine the problematic ethical and power relations that were encountered during the performance of collaborative research. In so doing, I argue for a relational and reflexive ethics of research that is attentive to difference in seeking a common ground with resisting others.