Introduction: The promises and perils of more-than-human resistance

Abstract

Who resists? With whom and against whom do they do so? These questions, long thought to be exclusively human, are increasingly proving more than human in the conflicts of the Anthropocene. To keep up with such messy constellations, we suggest, in this special issue, the reintroduction of the concept of resistance by reworking it as more-than-human resistance. This captures confrontations from below, in which humans and other-than-humans forge alliances, partnerships, or otherwise collaborate to oppose dominant power. Defined as such, we argue, the concept with its orbiting analytics advances much-needed encounters between multispecies anthropology and political anthropology, to the benefit of both. This introduction conceptualizes such encounters in four steps, which the authors in this collection touch upon ethnographically in their contributions. First, recasting resistance to include more-than-humans is slowed down by careful interaction with debates from the intellectual history of the concept. Second, the concept is nuanced by juxtaposing the categories unruliness v. resistance, other-than-human v. more-than-human, or alliance v. adversity. Third, amid the contemporary rise of authoritarianism, the concept is detached from a critical anthropologist’s sympathies to encompass a range of political positions. Fourth, resistance is reconnected with power analytics over more-than-human cases to cast both in sharper relief.

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