Reimagining Communication: Uncivil Resistance as Conveying Affective Knowledge

• In Event: Politics of Suffering and Resistance: Understanding and Responding to Trauma

Abstract

In this paper, I categorize the literature on political resistance, covering civil disobedience, protest, and riots, into two primary accounts. The first, what I call the communication-oriented account, highlights the communicative aspect of these acts of resistance (Markovits 2004; McAdam 1996; Rawls 1971; Woodley 2015). This perspective attributes values to these acts for their potential to heighten citizens’ awareness, understanding, and acceptance of the motivating cause for resistance. In contrast, the action-oriented account focuses on enforcing actions upon other citizens with the aim of potentially achieving positive political changes (Delmas 2018; Hayward 2020; Pasternak 2019; Pineda 2021). This viewpoint expresses skepticism about the effectiveness of communication as the primary objective, highlighting instead the value of resistance for its potential to bring about tangible political transformations.
I argue that both accounts exhibit a tendency to interpret political communication narrowly. From both perspectives, instances of uncivil resistance are often exclusively seen as action-oriented, with minimal acknowledgment of their contribution to political communication. By focusing on the role of victimhood in uncivil forms of resistance, I argue that the communicative aspect of political resistance extends beyond the persuasion of citizens to support a cause. Instead, it encompasses communicating what I term affective knowledge, wherein victims of injustice utilize their sense of victimhood to convey to non-victims a glimpse of their emotional experience, including feelings such as frustration, anxiety, and anger.
Victims possess valuable firsthand knowledge of the emotional toll inflicted by injustices (Vasanthakumar 2018). I argue that communication of affective knowledge often requires employing uncivil forms of resistance, disrupting the daily lives of non-victims and inducing a sense of vulnerability. Simply articulating emotions, no matter how eloquently, may prove ineffective or insufficient for this type of communication. This is because non-victims often do not desire or seek victims’ affective knowledge, in contrast to other forms of knowledge found in domains such as science, finance, or art. Instead, non-victims may be motivated to be unaware of the suffering experienced by victims (Hayward 2020). Consequently, the communication of affective knowledge often necessitates compelling non-victims to have a taste of the emotional distress of victims, disrupting their routine lives and making them feel vulnerable in the process.
I exemplify this process by analyzing a recent case in South Korea involving activists with disabilities who staged routine protests, deliberately disrupting the subway system during morning rush hours. Advocating for expanded access to public places and facilities, these activists employed diverse tactics to disrupt subway operations, such as blocking doors with their wheelchairs, collectively entering and exiting with wheelchairs, and even crawling on the ground. Despite facing public anger for the considerable inconvenience caused, I argue that we can interpret this protest as a manifestation of communicating affective knowledge.
I contend that by expanding our understanding of the communicative aspect of resistance, my account elucidates why uncivil forms of resistance can retain value even in cases where they fall short of achieving intended political changes and, instead, provoke anger and frustration from their fellow citizens toward those engaging in resistance. Additionally, my argument sheds light on the frequently overlooked dimension of affective communication, wherein victims’ actions evoke anger, frustration, and anxiety from non-victims, rather than fostering sympathy and favorability. I suggest that this dynamic holds a democratic value by facilitating political communication among citizens.

Author

• Jihyun Jeong, Duke University