ingenious citizenship: recrafting democracy for social change by charles t. lee

8/20/2019 Ingenious Citizenship: Recrafting Democracy for Social Change by Charles T. Lee

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Ingenious CitizenshipR E C R A F T I N G D E M O C R A C Y F O R S O C I A L C H A N G E

Charles T. Lee


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Ingenious Citizenship


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INGENIOUS

CITIZENSHIPRecrafting

Democracy for

Social ChangeCharles T. Lee

Duke University Press Durham and London 2016


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© 2016 Duke University PressAll rights reservedPrinted in the United States o America on acid- ree paper ∞Designed by Natalie F. SmithTypeset in Quadraat Pro by Copperline

Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataLee, Charles T., [date] author.Ingenious citizenship : recrafing democracy or socialchange / Charles T. Lee.pages cmIncludes bibliographical re erences and index.

978-0-8223-6021-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 978-0-8223-6037-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 978-0-8223-7483-1 (e-book)

1. Democracy — United States — Citizenparticipation. 2. Marginality, Social — Politicalaspects — United States. 3. Social change — UnitedStates. 4. Political participation — United States.

5. Political culture — United States. I. Title. 1764. 427 2016

323'.0420973 — dc232015030380

Cover Art: Do Ho Suh, Floor (detail), 1997 – 2000. PVC gures,glass plates, phenolic sheets, polyurethane resin. Forty partseach 100 × 100 × 8 cm. © Do Ho Suh, courtesy o the artistand Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York and Hong Kong.


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For Celia, Tristan, and Kamina


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Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction. Ingenious Agency

Democratic Agency and Its Disavowal 1

Part I. Beginning

1. Improvising Citizenship

Appropriating the Liberal Citizenship Script 37

Part II. Episodes

2. Migrant Domestic Workers, Hidden Tactics,and Appropriating Political Citizenship 61

3. Global Sex Workers, Calculated Abjection,

and Appropriating Economic Citizenship 101

4. Trans People, Morphing Technologies,

and Appropriating Gendered Citizenship 149

5. Suicide Bombers, Sacricial Violence,

and Appropriating Life Itself 191

Part III. (Un)Ending

Conclusion. Politics without Politics

Democracy as Meant for Ingenious Appropriation 247

Notes 257

Works Cited 269Index 287


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Acknowledgments

This book originated as a dissertation and went through innumerable itera-tions as my thinking about politics and justice evolved and trans ormed overthe years. To recount the kindness o people who have been a part o this journey with me — whether by sharing their critiques and insights, offeringencouragement and prodding, providing institutional assistance and sup-port, or giving emotional and physical care — makes my undertaking o thisproject a humbling endeavor. While all aws and shortcomings remain minealone, I wish to acknowledge the many people who not only helped me com-plete what I once thought was an impossible journey but also enriched it withtheir generosity.

At the University o Southern Cali ornia, my dissertation committee rsthelped me give li e to this project. Marita Sturken taught me about culturalstudies and opened up a new intellectual horizon or me. I learned rom herthe importance o doing original work while maintaining one’s politicalsensibility and responsibility. She has been the backbone o my intellectualadventure, and I could not possibly have done the kind o work that I do to-day without her stead ast mentoring, guidance, support, and savvy. AlisonDundes Renteln has provided pivotal comments and mentoring on my writ-ing, teaching, and pro essional development and always answered my calls

or help with uninching support and encouragement. I especially thank heror planting the seed in my thinking about human rights rom a relativistic


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and contextual vantage point, enabling me to expand on the direction o mynarrative in this book in important ways. Nora Hamilton offered enduringsupport rom beginning to end and is a remarkable treasure o wisdom andinsights. I cherished and learned greatly rom all o my conversations withher on immigrant workers. For years I have marveled at Sarah Banet- Weiser’scritical and creative scholarship. She is an intellectual role model or me inmany ways, and I thank her or her exceedingly perceptive insights on mymethodology, writing, and conceptual arguments.

At Arizona State University, I have been surrounded by colleagues at theSchool o Social Trans ormation ( ) who provide sustaining support tomy interdisciplinary work. Karen Leong and Ann Hibner Koblitz read theentire manuscript and gave constructive eedback and painstaking critiquesat the most critical time, raising questions about my ideas and picking outissues with my prose line by line when I most needed them. I thank Karen orher amazing strength and mentoring, and I thank Ann or her magic sense with words, including suggesting the book’s title. Mary Margaret Fonow readthe draf chapters with crucial suggestions and guidance in spite o her ex-ceedingly busy schedule as the director o the . I am grate ul or her sageadvice and unwavering support. Beth Swadener is a godsend and a tremen-dous mentor: I thank her or her pivotal advice, support, and comments onthe project at the most urgent time. For their wise counsel, expert advice,and help and support in many ways, I thank Mary Romero, Pat Lauderdale,Marjorie Zatz, Karen Kuo, Vanna Gonzales, Vera Lopez, H. L. T. Quan, GrayCavender, Nancy Jurik, Bryan Brayboy, and Daniel Schugurensky. I also thankVanna Gonzales and Vera Lopez or their riendship, which helped ease mytransition to Arizona. And I thank the colleagues in my home unit, Justiceand Social Inquiry, or their collegiality and commitment to justice, with rou-tinely democratic spirit and good sense o humor.

Portions o ideas in the book were conceived and developed during myparticipation in the transnational eminist research cluster “Local to GlobalFeminisms and the Politics o Knowledge,” unded by the Jenny NortonGrant in the Institute or Humanities Research at Arizona State University. Ithank the cluster participants — especially Karen Leong, Ann Hibner Koblitz,Karen Kuo, Heather Switzer, and Roberta Chevrette — or the many criticalreadings and discussions that stimulated my thinking on the book project.And thanks to Sally Kitch, the director o the Institute or Humanities Re-search, and to Reverend Jenny Norton or providing the unding that madethis engaging and supportive space possible.


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I am most ortunate to have ound a superlative editor in Courtney Bergerat Duke University Press. Her keen understanding o the book, perceptiveinsights or my revisions o the manuscript, and belie in this project havebeen indispensable. I am so grate ul or her responsiveness, efficiency, andsavvy in guiding me through the editorial process. I also thank Courtney orsecuring two superb anonymous reviewers. My deepest thanks to BarbaraCruikshank and another anonymous reader, whose many excellent and inci-sive suggestions pushed me to hone my argument, deepening and reningit so that it has more orce and theoretical use ulness. Their brilliant anddynamic engagement with the manuscript inspired condence and in usedenergy into my revision more than I could imagine. I cannot thank themenough or their intellectual rigor and generosity. Finally, I also thank ErinHanas or her important and timely editorial assistance.

Numerous teachers and scholars have had an important impact on myintellectual trajectory and thinking on this project at different stages. Fortheir exceptional teaching and training in political theory, I thank AlysonCole, Judith Grant, Mark Kann, and Raymond Rocco. Alyson rst kindledmy passion or theory during my undergraduate years, and I am thank ulto have had the opportunity to continue that passion in exploring differenttheoretical approaches and inquiries with Judith, Mark, and Ray in graduateschool. I thank Dana Polan or making my arguments more nuanced andreminding me o the role o history in his critical comments on the drafchapters in early orms. I am in awe o Chandan Reddy’s brilliant mind andthank him or his immense kindness in reading the manuscript on short no-tice and offering his insight ul comments at a critical stage. I have beneted

rom his wealth o interdisciplinary knowledge. I was also ortunate to havemet Rita Dhamoon and learned very much rom her inspiring critical work.I thank her or her riendship, generosity, and sharp insights on the project,especially chapter 2.

The critical scholarship by Engin F. Isin and Peter Nyers in citizenshipstudies has been pivotal to my thinking on citizenship. I thank Peter or hisgenerous comments and continuing support o my work over the years, andI thank Engin or his critical eedback and guidance on a book chapter basedon materials included in this manuscript. I have also beneted greatly rominput rom and conversations with Minoo Moallem, Renya Ramirez, Richard Jackson, Jinee Lokaneeta, Vicki Squire, Larin McLaughlin, and Ara Wilson.I thank Jinee Lokaneeta and Sangay Mishra or their riendship, includingthe many memorable ood excursions and conversations back in the days o


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graduate school. Early draf chapters were presented at numerous con er-ence meetings at the American Political Science Association, Western Po-litical Science Association, American Studies Association, Cultural StudiesAssociation, Critical Ethnic Studies Association, National Women’s StudiesAssociation, and International Studies Association. I thank the co- panelistsand audience or their questions and comments, which helped me reshapethis project rom different angles.

Other individuals have also provided assistance in varying orms. I ac-knowledge the graduate students Natalie Lopez, Sangmi Lee, a de la mazapérez tamayo, and Lucía Stavig or their rst- rate research assistance. Thedoctoral scholarship o Nancy Perez on domestic workers has in ormed myown work and is help ul or my analysis in chapter 2. Conversations withLucía Stavig inspired insights and energy or the project, and I value our chatson a range o subjects, rom social justice to ethnic ood and mind- body prac-tices. Editing assistance by Kristie Reilly and Deanna Wilson improved theorganization, clarity, and simplicity o the manuscript. Portions o ideas inthe book were eshed out in my two graduate seminars, “Democracy, Cit-izenship, and Globalization” in Fall 2011 and “Theoretical Perspectives on Justice” in Fall 2014, and I thank the students in the seminars or the dynamicand engaging discussions that enriched my thinking.

Sections o ideas in chapter 2 have appeared in other orms in the ollow-ing publications: “Tactical Citizenship: Domestic Workers, the Remainders oHome, and Undocumented Citizen Participation in the Third Space o Mim-icry,” Theory and Event 9, no. 3 (2006), published by the Johns Hopkins Uni- versity Press; “Undocumented Workers’ Subversive Citizenship Acts,” PeaceReview: A Journal of Social Justice 20, no. 3 (2008): 330 – 38, published by Taylorand Francis; and “Bare Li e, Interstices, and the Third Space o Citizenship,”Women’s Studies Quarterly 38, no 2 (2010): 57 – 81, published by the FeministPress. An early development o the ideas in chapter 5 originally appeared as“Suicide Bombing as Acts o Deathly Citizenship? A Critical Double- LayeredInquiry,” Critical Studies on Terrorism 2, no. 2 (2009): 147 – 63, published by Taylorand Francis. Parts o the introduction, chapter 1, and chapter 3 appeared in“Decolonizing Global Citizenship,” in Routledge Handbook of Global CitizenshipStudies, ed. Engin F. Isin and Peter Nyers (London: Routledge, 2014), 75 – 85.

Although they have not played a direct intellectual role in this project,my amily and riends outside academia have been an inseparable part othis journey or the emotional and physical care and support they have givenme. I thank my parents, Ronny and Vera Lee, and my sister, Melody, or their


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enduring love, encouragement, and support. I also thank the extended Leeamily, in Taiwan and in diaspora. Special acknowledgment to my aunt Linda

Lee and cousin Peggie or their sage counsel and encouragement. To the Hoamily: I thank Hsin-Chi and Judy Ho, as well as Daisy, Joe, Terry, Kitty, Jo-

anne, Chloe, Ethan, Jayden, and Kaitlyn, or sharing another world o amilyli e with me. My riends Jason Chen and Steve Su have been with me throughthick and thin, and I thank them or simply, and always, being there. Fortheir treasured riendship and support, I thank Irona Wang, Tina Chen, andLawrence Tsai.

Since college, Celia Ho has been my closest companion and a loving (andsubversive) presence in my li e. She pushes me harder than anyone to pursue what I want to do while always nding a way to deviate rom my suggestions

or what she should do. I thank her or her extraordinary strength, her un-countable sacrices, and, above all, or bringing love and ingenuity into oureveryday li e. Our two children, Tristan and Kamina, were born while I wasrevising the book. Their play ul and unruly presence constantly “disrupts”my work schedule while also creating a needed, healthy distraction in stress-

ul times. Not only have they changed my work habits; they have also trans-ormed my li e’s horizons. My li e would not have been complete without the

three o them, and I thank them or entering into the heart o my li e. It is tothem that I dedicate this book.

On a last note, or the past decade or so Zen Buddhism has in ormed someo my perspectives in li e and enabled me to regain calm and composure intimes o ux and struggle. As I wrote this book, I ound that its inuence hasalso subtly and indirectly ound its way into the narrative. Although I have notmade direct re erence to Zen thought or literature in the pages that ollow, I wish to acknowledge its (nonlinear) insight and spirit, which has ormed anunobserved but indispensable element o this book.


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Introduction. Ingenious Agency Democratic Agency and Its Disavowal

Two Tales of Democracy: Rethinking Democratic Agency

Ten days afer the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001,the American Ad Council, a nonprot organization known or producingpublic service announcements ( s) to deliver civic messages to the Amer-ican public on national television, launched a new advertising campaign.Called “I Am an American,” the campaign sought to unite U.S. citizens inthe wake o national trauma.

As the reincarnation o the ormer War Advertising Council created during World War II to mobilize public support or the war effort, the Ad Council

has collaborated closely with the ederal government in promoting positive,orward-looking, and democratic civil behavior among U.S. citizens (see,

e.g., its litter prevention, drunk driving prevention, domestic violence prevention, and prevention ads o the past several decades). In this par-ticular post – 9/11 campaign, made in tribute to the tragedy, the ad eaturescitizens o varying ages, races, national origins, occupations, religions, andgenders, each one rmly declaring, “I am an American.” Via delicate emotiveand aesthetic effects — a banner carrying the U.S. motto “E Pluribus Unum”

(Out o Many, One) appears at one moment on the screen, and the ad con-cludes with a girl waving an American ag — the highlights diversity as


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a unique strength o the U.S. national body, which is capable o regeneratinghope, recovery, and democratic li e ollowing the terrorist- inicted deathsand casualties.

Pro essor Cynthia Weber o Sussex University recently produced a multi-media project, “ I Am an American”: Video Portraits of Unsafe U.S. Citizens, thatcompiles narratives and images that challenge the harmonious tale o diver-sity in the name o patriotic nationalism presented by the Ad Council (Weber2011). At the heart o Weber’s critique is the Ad Council’s vacuous vision odemocracy, which subsumes racial, class, gender, and sexual differences intoa unied citizenry in a time o national crisis. This celebratory vision is de- void o , and in act represses, critical social discussion o structural oppres-sion, injustice, and inequality, which could pose a danger to the cohesivenesso the U.S. nation-state in a post – 9/11 climate (Weber 2010, 81).

Using the Ad Council’s declaration, “I am an American,” as a re erencepoint and site o contestation, Weber staged a series o on- camera interviews with a number o individuals whose identities are not easily melded into theconcept o “ordinary American,” who remain othered as, in her terms, “unsa eU.S. citizens.” These dissonant and dissenting subjects are imbued with un-settling differences: a Chinese American Muslim chaplain wrongly accusedas a terrorist spy and imprisoned as an enemy combatant; A rican AmericanHurricane Katrina evacuees treated as “re ugees” and divested o U.S. citi-zenship; the U.S.- born son o an undocumented Mexican immigrant on the verge o deportation; an Iraq War conscientious objector orced to seek polit-ical asylum in Canada. By looking into the video camera and stating emphat-ically, “I am an American,” they contest their nonbelonging as U.S. (second-class) citizens and voice a desire or equality and inclusion. Weber’s criticalart thus exposes the unequal access to and realization o U.S. citizenship orthese unassimilatory subjects and the unseen systematic marginalization ononnormative citizens in everyday liberal democratic li e. In doing so, herpolitical intervention interrupts the Ad Council’s pro essed “tolerance odifference” and illusive celebration o “diversity patriotism,” the hallmark ocontemporary U.S. national identity (Weber 2010).

These two opposing media productions lay out seemingly contrasting juxtapositions o democracy as conceived in Western political thought. TheAd Council presents a mainstream ideal o liberal democracy that appealsto public “common sense,” embracing national loyalty and melting- pot har-mony as its constitutive inclusive logic (“One Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice or all,” as the Pledge o Allegiance has it). As Russ


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Castronovo and Dana Nelson argue, however, this dominant articulation oconstitutional liberalism presents democracy as “a sacred and reied thing”that must be guarded with “conservation and protection” and represses anyantagonistic struggle staged by dissenting subjects regarding the naturalnesso its own sel - ormation (2002a, 1 – 2). By assembling a diverse pool o ethnicsubjects uttering resolutely in consensus, “I am an American,” the Ad Coun-cil’s advertising campaign mythically attunes citizens to a “ antasy scene oprivate, protected, and sanctied ‘American’ li e” (Berlant 1997, 220), and“takes orm as an antipolitical gesture that closes down disagreement, con-testation, and meaning ul conict” (Castronovo and Nelson 2002a, 1).

In contrast, Weber’s multimedia project points toward a vision o radicaldemocracy that, as the political theorists Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe(1985) deploy the term, is constitutive o perpetual struggles or racial, class,gender, and sexual justice in political institutions and civil society. Focusingon difference, disagreement, and contestation rom subordinate positions,radical democratic politics ormulates itsel as a critique o the dominant lib-eral emphasis on social harmony and consensus. It rattles the illusive natural-ness o the liberal patriotic discourse o diversity and belonging and contestshypocritical closure to marginal struggles or social membership and inclu-sion. In calling attention to the precarious material conditions o social li eon the margins, Weber’s work is meant to shock the pacied mainstream citi-zenry absorbed in a li e o static privilege out o its complacency by con rontingit with vivid narratives and imageries o violent exclusion and displacement.By rupturing the sterilized order o the Ad Council’s normative democracy,the unsa e citizens’ rendition o “I am an American” constitutes an agonisticdisruption o the status quo and a contestation or democratic equality.

Weber’s critical project, in my view, provides an indispensable oppositionto, and an important corrective o , the Ad Council’s hegemonic representa-tion o liberal America. Yet the political campaigns’ contrasting ideologiesnotwithstanding, these two visions o democracy actually converge with andmirror each other. Specically, both campaigns imagine and enact a similarkind o citizen subjectivity that ts within the amiliar, conventional modeo “democratic agency” — that is, a capacity to act politically in ways that arepublic and collective, with generally orward- looking and romantic conno-tations. Crucially, this linear and one- dimensional construction o politicalagency throughout the genealogy o Western political thought has long beeninterpreted as, and comes to stand in or, the only (proper) way to enact one-sel as a citizen.


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Hence, the Ad Council’s , aligned ideologically with constitutionalliberalism via the motto “E Pluribus Unum” ashing across the screen, con-notes the proper orms o citizen activity, which include mainstream acts o voting, representing, deliberating, or campaigning. These ordinary ormso political participation are imbued with democratic agency and laden withpublic and collective qualities that are central to the making o democraticcitizens.

Weber’s multimedia project also mani ests these same qualities, albeit ina dissenting and radicalizing ashion. For instance, the unsa e citizens areseen openly resisting the Iraq War, speaking out against unjust treatment oGuantánamo detainees, taking church sanctuary to ght a deportation order,and issuing public complaints about mistreatment o Hurricane Katrina evac-uees. All o these political acts — in being vocal and openly contestatory —resonate with the civic ethos o democratic practices such as protests,demonstrations, and sit- ins. Although the general public tends to look atthese contentious acts less avorably than, say, voting, they do converge withmainstream liberal orms o political participation in ormulating the rangeo activities commonly understood as practices o democratic citizenship in Western political thought. Weber’s progressive critique o the Ad Council’scampaign thus expands the spectrum o the political, yet remains based indemocratic agency. By laying bare the limits o the original “I am an Ameri-can” ad as insufficiently democratic, Weber’s “unsa e citizens” project sup-plants it with what she sees as a more genuine and substantive vision o radicaldemocratic agency. In spite o the ideological differences between these two visions o democracy, their conceptions o citizen subjectivity and politicalagency actually constitute two sides o the same coin.

I begin this book with these two tales o democracy because, in their respec-tive ideological inclinations, they roughly capture the predominant spectrumo modes o political participation among citizens in an actually existing de-mocracy: rom mainstream liberal (the Ad Council’s : voting, represent-ing, deliberating) to radical democratic (Weber’s multimedia project: pro-testing, demonstrating, sitting in). This suggests that the massive terrain opolitical participation and social activism in actually existing democracy isprevailingly contained within the preconceived vocabulary and trajectory odemocratic agency in liberal and progressive thought.

But why does it matter i these citizens act out their political agency andcitizenship in a democratic way? Is that not how we, as citizens, should par-


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ticipate in a political community? In act, not only should the historical strug-gles or suffrage staged by A rican Americans and women not be taken orgranted, but both mainstream liberal orms o participation and the radicalpractices o dissent and protest have been employed by subordinate groups.Racial minorities, manual laborers, women, sexual minorities, and the dis-abled have embraced both positions as indispensable tools in advancing theirinterests and voices in society, empowering them to ght or the inclusion,rights, and equality that historically and continually have been denied tothem as citizens. This democratic agency — especially the radical democraticinvigoration Weber gestures toward — has continued to animate and reviveour vision and aspiration or justice and equality, however ragile and precar-ious these ideals may in act be in capitalist democracies.

I wish to suggest, however, that when this democratic mode o enactmenttakes hold as the only (proper) way to imagine onesel as a political subjector participating citizen, it implicitly valorizes democratic agency as some-thing sacred and heroic, while insidiously dening other orms o politicalagency as less proper and honorable. This romance o democratic agency, inenvisioning “acting democratically” as the central mode o political action,crystallizes an invisible orm o ideological judgment and normative exclu-sion that systematically remainders other orms o political agency. Even moreimportant, its linear delineation o political agency orecloses a serious andopen- ended investigation o how marginalized subjects lacking access andresources may contest and resist in surprising and even unthinkable waysto improvise and expand spaces o inclusion and belonging, thus obtaining“citizenship” via nonlinear routes.

This book explores agency rom abject positions in lived conditions as well as the larger social and political lessons that such agency offers or re-thinking critical intellectual intervention and social movement activism roma nonlinear perspective. To the extent that democratic agency constitutes thedominant rame or thinking about and articulating political li e and socialchange, critical blind spots also punctuate its constructed vision, prevent-ing it rom ullling its potential strength. The preeminence o democraticagency is attributable to its articulation in Western political thought in its lib-eral, civic republican, communitarian, deliberative, and radical democratic variants. This has ramed the mainstream and progressive understanding odemocratic citizenship in both discursive and material orms and cohered asthe common perception o “proper” political subjectivity.

Saba Mahmood has previously examined how the normative liberal as-


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sumption that “all human beings have an innate desire or reedom” has be-come “integral to our humanist intellectual traditions” (2005, 5), including

eminism. Mahmood writes, “Freedom is normative to eminism, as it is toliberalism” (10), such that human agency is conceived in orms o “acts thatchallenge social norms” rather than those who inhabit norms (5), and “criti-cal scrutiny is applied to those who want to limit women’s reedom ratherthan those who want to extend it” (10). Indeed, what happens when polit-ical agency is exercised via a deliberate subjection o onesel in order to re-alize reedom — or other desired values or ends — in other ways? As I argue,democratic agency in Western liberal and progressive thought has exerteddisseminating effects and become the way in which many commentators,scholars, and activists apprehend and conceive the “political.” I suggest that we reexamine this normative assumption, particularly the ways in which itcan preempt an engagement with orms o agency that are not necessarilydemocratic, but nonetheless engender uid congurations o change.

To urther clari y this point, I pinpoint two critical blind spots that ex-isting conceptions o democratic agency persistently disavow via normativerepetition: (1) the subtle and roundabout improvisation o resistance everyday by subordinate people; and (2) the nonlinear and circuitous social changethat is always occurring in liberal social li e. These two blind spots will be madeprogressively clear throughout this introduction and the book’s chapters, butI provide a brie explication here.

First, the preeminence o democratic agency prevents many political the-orists and activists rom seriously tracing and uncovering the minute yetmyriad ways in which episodes o social resistance might be subtly stagedby marginalized populations in everyday liberal social li e. The textures andqualities o these mercurial orms o quotidian resistance may not necessarily

ollow conventional democratic trajectories. The protean multitude o suchresistant acts and practices, however limited they might be, can be under-stood as creating momentary ssures and ruptures in the seemingly rigidand immobile terrain o hegemonic liberal li e.

Second, the recognition that political contestation is constantly stagedurther suggests that change and movement are instigated in ambiguous and

indirect ways in everyday social li e governed by liberal sovereignty. Here,Ase Bayat’s insights on sociopolitical trans ormation can help provide aglimpse into how such nonlinear change might take place. Bayat points outthat “the vehicles through which ordinary people change their societies are


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not simply audible mass protests or revolutions,” but ofen involve what hecalls social nonmovements — the collective endeavors and common practicescarried out in everyday li e “by millions o noncollective actors” who remaindispersed and ragmented (2010, ix, 20). In contrast to social movements thatadvance “organized, sustained, sel - conscious challenge to existing authori-ties” (Tilly 1984, 304) through “the unity o actors” (Bayat, 20), Bayat argues,“The power o nonmovements rests on the power of big numbers” — that is, “the(intended and unintended) consequences o the similar practices that a ‘bignumber’ o subjects simultaneously per orm” (20 – 21; emphasis in original).Although they lack a common ideological ront and the extraordinary stagingo mobilization and protestation, the effects o these multitudes are not tobe underestimated. As Bayat asserts, rst, “a large number o people actingin common has the effect o normalizing and legitimizing those acts thatare otherwise deemed illegitimate. The practices o big numbers are likelyto capture and appropriate spaces o power in society within which the sub-altern can cultivate, consolidate, and reproduce their counterpower” (20).Second, “even though these subjects act individually and separately, the e -

ects o their actions do not o necessity ade away in seclusion. They can join up, generating a more power ul dynamic than their individual sum total. Whereas each act, like single drops o rain, singularly makes only individual impact, such acts produce larger spaces o alternative practices and norms when they transpire in big numbers — just as the individual wetting effects obillions o raindrops join up to generate creeks, rivers, and even oods and waves” (20 – 21; emphasis in original).

These nonmovements o big numbers, which describe “the silent, pro-tracted, but pervasive advancement o the ordinary people on the proper-tied, power ul, or the public, in order to survive and improve their lives” (56),constitute what Bayat calls the “quiet encroachment o the ordinary,” whicheffects change in microscopic and mani old ways. Here, Bayat’s observa-tion moves away rom the conventional linear concept o democratic socialmovements by indicating that the cumulative encroachment o nondemo-cratic acts and practices, “without clear leadership, ideology, or structuredorganization” (56), can nonetheless lead to change and movement in society.As James Scott has similarly observed, “the accumulation o thousands oreven millions o . . . petty acts can have massive effects on war are, landrights, taxes, and property relations” (2012, xx). Bayat’s nonlinear delineationo social change, though grounded in the Middle Eastern context, bears im-


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portant implications that subordinate people’s subversion in other contextsmay similarly generate cumulative and encroaching effects, albeit throughdifferential trajectories and varying compositions.

In sum, the subtle and roundabout improvisation o resistance, with itsnonlinear and circuitous production o social change disavowed by demo-cratic agency, suggests a needed shif o angle in viewing the horizon andpotential o social justice activism. In the predominant progressive social justice paradigms, democratic agency has long unctioned as motor and mo-dus operandi. Driven by the democratic motor, social justice is ofen articu-lated as being critical of and oppositional to — in a linear ashion — the structuralconditions o injustice, especially in racialized, classed, gendered, and sex-ualized orms. To create change means that we must seek out the structuralroots o social problems and overturn any undemocratic structures o socialrelations — to imagine a purer world, so to speak. To a large extent, demo-cratic agency precludes social justice movements rom the kind o impureethos that would reproduce unjust logics and unequal conditions. Such in-complete social trans ormation cannot be considered bona de.

Yet in this way there is a general tendency to render the social world instarkly binary, black- and- white terms — justice versus injustice, equality ver-sus inequality, democratic versus antidemocratic, and good versus evil — thatimpossibly ignores innate complexity and variability. Indeed, in its most ro-mantic (and problematic) orm, the conventional social justice paradigm canprogress into an implicit belie that its vision and operation are (or shouldbe) quintessentially sacred and untainted. Thus, the illusion that democraticideals and progressive activism can transcend, without being implicated in,the instrumental exchange o liberal economy is created. This overlookshow — living in a liberal social world, with our bodies immersed and embed-ded in its structural material economy — we as human subjects cannot beimmune to that world’s instrumental effects. We may, in act, actually need tonegotiate with instrumentality (thus inextricably replicating conditions o injustice and inequality) in order to generate congurations o social change. This impossibility o transcendence, and the messy entanglement and com-plicity o all political actors in the liberal economy, may in effect constitutethe given basis or us, as critical scholars and activists, to recover and generatea complex and contingent process o trans ormation.

This is not a re usal o the exhortation o democratic agency (which wesorely need), but a sobering acknowledgment. The impossibility o detach-ing social justice rom the necessity o instrumental calculation and demo-


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cratic progressivism rom the reinscription o a liberal hegemonic order can-not be ignored. As Joshua Gamson argues in another context, social changemay inevitably involve “walking the tight rope” between puri ying and con-taminating elements and moving through “the turbulence o these attachedconicts” (1998, 220) — i only because, as he puts it on a nonlinear note,sometimes “the more diverse and democratic” the trans ormative process,“the more the dilemma,” and thus contamination, may also come alive (224).

My comments in this introductory section are thus offered in the spirito continuing the generation o democratic social change, calling orth areinvestigation o what we can learn rom nondemocratic mani estationso agency in everyday liberal social li e in order to pluralize and expand thespheres and potency o such change. Such inquiry, however, is preemptedand disavowed i we continue to be trapped within the discursive assump-tions o liberal and progressive thought by upholding democratic agency asthe “truest” enactment o political subjectivity.

Ingenious Agency:

The Immanent Coexistence of Purity and Contamination

To open this inquiry, I wish to identi y and conceptualize an unpredictableand exible way o acting politically that I term ingenious agency. The word“ingenious” suggests being clever, original, inventive, and resource ul. I usethe term “ingenious agency” to re er to the capacity o creatively devising andcontriving different ways o enacting onesel politically with limited toolsand resources to generate change in one’s immediate surroundings and eventhe larger social sphere. I provide a more detailed articulation o this agencythrough a our-pronged rame (i.e., oppositional, negotiated, interstitial,and subcultural) in chapter 1. Here, the above characterization provides apreliminary understanding o the term.

My conception o ingenious agency owes intellectual debt to several schol-ars who have art ully delineated the ever present emergence o creative resis-tance staged by subordinate people under repressive conditions (Hebdige1979; de Certeau 1984; Scott 1985, 1990, 1998, 2009; Kelley 1994). O crucialimportance is the political anthropologist Scott, whose inventive concepts,

rom “weapons o the weak,” “hidden transcripts,” and “in rapolitics,” to“mētis” and “ungovernability,” have provided exceedingly help ul vocabu-laries and directions by which to analyze the varied and multitudinous di-mensions o subversive contestation. While some suggest his idea o every-


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day resistance is more about de ensive coping strategies that preserve “analready achieved gain” than an aggressive “making [o ] resh demands” thatadvances its own claims (Bayat, 54 – 56), I think subversive contestation moreofen than not demonstrates a uid motion between these two characteris-tics and blurs the lines between aggressive “encroachment” and de ensive“survival strategies” (56). For instance, unauthorized migration can be seenas a de ensive survival strategy or undocumented migrants as well as ag-gressive encroachment on their destination countries. In addition, as Scott’s work illustrates, weapons o the weak — in the orms o thef; pil ering; ootdragging; arson; and sabotage o crops, livestock, and machinery directedat slave owners, landlords, and employers (Scott 1985, 288) — are not merelyde ensive but can be aggressively deployed vis- à- vis “the state, the rich, andthe power ul” (Bayat, 56). As Scott argues, “In rapolitics is . . . always press-ing, testing, probing the boundaries o the permissible” (1990, 200). An es-pecially valuable contribution o Scott’s ormulation o creative resistance isthus its organic and polymorphous character, which takes on both de ensiveand aggressive qualities.

However, despite this versatile notion o subversive contestation, I arguethat Scott’s overall conceptual rame leaves the binary o purity and contami-nation intact as exogenousopposites. As such, in spite o his astute awarenesso subordinate people’s pragmatic disposition and practical knowledge,there is a strong interpretive tendency in his work to retrieve the “purity” osubaltern resistance (and even their entire way o li e, as shown in his The Artof Not Being Governed) away rom the “contamination” o state control ratherthan seeing the two elements as intricately intertwined. By “purity,” I re erto the inviolable ideals and vision or justice, equality, and reedom; by “con-tamination,” I mean the immersion and enactment o one’s thoughts andbehavior — in varying ways and degrees — in alignment with the dominantlogics o existing power structures. In my view, the tendency o Scott’s work tointerpret subaltern struggles as a retreat rom the contaminating inuenceso all-seeing sovereign states and their embodied high- modernist regimes(Scott 1985, 1990, 1998, 2009, 2012) misrecognizes the intimate connectionbetween purity and contamination, as well as between creative resistanceand social movements.

Hence, as Tom Brass points out, Scott consistently aspires or the resis-tant purity o “state-evading” agency and regards “state- making” projectssuch as “development, progress and modernization as three historical evils”(Brass 2012, 127). But it is not clear that subordinate people’s state- evading


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conceptual redisposition that sees the ineradicable, endogenous coexistence opurity and contamination in the eruption o subordinate contestation. Thisredisposition would enable a rereading o how subaltern subjects’ improvi-sational complicity with the existing system — or, to put it another way, theiractive reuse o contamination — may actually offer valuable lessons or a use-

ul re ormulation o democratic organizations and movements. There ore, while my concept o ingenious agency is indebted to Scott’s conception ocreative resistance, I nonetheless depart rom his ormulation by reposition-ing purity and contamination as organically and interactively constituted inthe ormation o such agency. Contra Scott, I suggest that the notion o inge-nious agency offers a theoretical illumination, via its inevitable immersion inthe dominant logics o existing power structures, that we need to inventivelyengage rather than negatively repel. Ingenuity, in my rame, embodies thenotion that contamination is intrinsic to struggles or change and purity.

This dilemma compels us to con ront the ineradicable coexistence o pu-rity and contamination in any struggle or social change within the vicis-situdes o liberal democratic li e. There is always contamination in purity, just as there is always purity in contamination. That is the paradox, but alsothe opportunity: purity and contamination may never fully annihilate each other, butactually require each other to survive and thrive. Indeed, i contamination is an en-dogenous part o purity, the orces o contamination may circuitously lead tothe material realization o purity in unpredictable and nonlinear ways. Andi that is the case, perhaps the way to achieve and realize greater purity in thedirection o social justice is not to utilely run away rom or eliminate con-tamination, but rather to more positively, and even ingeniously, engage, reuse,and reorient it in order to improvise and generate social change in potentand surprising ways. It is by recentering this notion o ingenious agency atthe core o political theorizing — both with and against the normative currento democratic agency — that this book hopes to offer a renewed lesson oncontentious politics and social change.

This lesson runs contrary to much o what we have been taught by theexisting critical scholarship on social trans ormation, which assumes that torealize trans ormative change, we must move toward the visions and valueso purity (i.e., equality, justice, reedom) at the center o our struggles andaway rom any contaminated association with the governing normative logicso the dominant power structure. This normative desire or “decontamina-tion” and “purication” is a prevalent ethos embedded throughout varyingcritical theoretical traditions ( rom Marxist, post- Marxist, and radical demo-


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cratic to critical racial, eminist, and queer theories) as well as progressiveethnographies. We must unlearn our participation in structural oppression,so the thinking goes, in order to puri y our consciousness and engage indemocratic struggles or social justice.

In act, in some o the most astute recent scholarship, critical scholarshave ercely exposed the ways in which even progressive movements mayperpetuate and reproduce the enactment o injustice and inequality such thatthey enable reedom or certain subjects while urthering the marginalizationo others. For instance, Jasbir Puar’s Terrorist Assemblages provides a power ulaccount o the complicit operations o U.S. sexual exceptionalism, whiteascendancy, and homonationalism, which en old gay- rights advocates andmainstream queer subjects into the privileged liberal U.S. war on terror while ostracizing other “monstrous,” racialized queer bodies (Puar 2007).Similarly, Lisa Marie Cacho’s Social Death points orce ully to the replicationo dominant cultural and political grammars and logics in social justice andrights- based politics and pushes or a radical, puried vision o inalienablepersonhood and humanity (Cacho 2012).

While this aspiration and hope or purity vis- à- vis global capitalism, whiteness, and racialized sexualization is crucial, such critical analysis cannonetheless misrecognize or underestimate the degrees to which and ways in which the relational orces o social change may actually hinge on complicityin the given system. What i the way to reach a vision o purity is actuallyto traffic through an inevitable journey o contamination? Just when criticalscholars and progressive activists are seeking purity through the re usal ocontamination, I suggest that recognizing the immanent presence o con-tamination as inseparably linked to purity is not de eating to the progressivecause, but can actually be used in a creative and resource ul way toward sucha cause — i interpreted properly through what I call the method o “criticalcontextualization,” discussed below.

While existing critical intellectual literatures have made an immense con-tribution in pointing sharply to the massive prevalence o injustice in everyaspect o liberal democratic li e, I wish instead to oreground the endogenousrelationship between purity and contamination as a given in order to openup a space or a different theory o social change to emerge. This alternativetheory and politics calls on us not to position purity and contamination asdistinctive opposites (and to orsake the latter in order to save the ormer),but to reconsider them as endogenous entities that organically coproduceeach other. In act, i purity may only arise rom and through a deeply con-


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taminated matrix, then instead o oregrounding purity as the standpoint ocritical intellectual and activist inquiry, I suggest that it might be more help-

ul to oreground contamination as the very context and condition we needto work with in order to bring its immanent purity rom its dim and obscurebackground in actually existing democracies into light.

Linking Abject Subjects, Ingenious Agency, and Social Change

I urther argue that it is those whom I call abject subjects who can most pro-ductively illuminate the improvisations o ingenious agency and the lessonssuch agency holds or the regeneration o social trans ormation. I use theterm “abject subjects” to re er to people who are located in lowly, marginal-ized, and impoverished material conditions dened and produced by liberalsocieties. As such, they ofen have to act in ingenious ways to survive within aliberal social order that systematically exploits or remainders them. Their abjection is especially acute when seen in light o their unequal relations to thenormative Western liberal subject (i.e., white, male, middle class, educated,pro essional, able- bodied, and heterosexual). In a sense, abject subjects arethus not entirely different rom persons who are designated as marginal orsubordinate subjects. However, I argue that abject/abjection contains three lev-els o meaning, which are particularly use ul or the current investigation inthinking about ingenious agency and social change.

First, at the basic, conceptual level, “abject” carries meanings that arecommonly dened in the English dictionary: lowly, cast- off, and discarded.In this respect, “abject” shares many connotations with marginalized, subor-dinate, or excluded. Yet “abject” also specically conjures up affective qual-ities o being contemptible and degraded. What is it, then, about the abjectthat evokes such emotive eelings? This will become clear when we get to itsnal level o meaning. What is important to note at the rst level is that, ormy purpose, “abject” as a term offers more nuance and intricacy in describ-ing the experience and dynamic o exclusion. One critical caveat I will providehere is that, like “marginalized,” “subordinate,” or “excluded,” “abject” asa re erential designation does not suggest the subjects’ natural condition.Rather, it underlines a material and political orce that determines, marks,and “throws” the subjects into such a condition. As Peter Nyers argues, “ ‘be-ing abject’ is, in act, always a matter o ‘becoming abject’ ” (2003, 1074). Ni-kolas Rose elaborates:


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Abjection is an act o orce. This orce may not be violence, but it entailsthe recurrent operation o energies that initiate this casting off or a castingdown, this demotion rom a mode o existence, this “becoming abject.”Abjection is a matter o the energies, the practices, the works o divisionthat act upon persons and collectivities such that some ways o being,some orms o existence are cast into a zone o shame, disgrace or de-basement, rendered beyond the limits o the liveable, denied the warranto tolerability, accorded purely a negative value. (1999, 253)

The conceptual description o “abject” thus cannot be understood outsidethe historical- political context o liberal socialization — its continuing mate-rial production o inequality, displacement, and abjection.

Second, as critical social theorists who examine abjection have argued,not only is the abject always dened in relation to the normal, but the normalalso requires the existence o the abject as its own precondition. Julia Kristeva writes that the abject “is something rejected rom which one does not part,

rom which one does not protect onesel as rom an object” (1982, 4). In other words, the normal subject denes itsel by always being in relation with whatit rejects: the abject. Judith Butler puts it more explicitly: “The orming o asubject requires . . . a repudiation which produces a domain o abjection, a

repudiation without which the subject cannot emerge” (1993, 3). She writes,“The abject designates here precisely those ‘unlivable’ and ‘uninhabitable’zones o social li e which are nevertheless densely populated by those whodo not enjoy the status o the subject, but whose living under the sign othe ‘unlivable’ is required to circumscribe the domain o the subject. . . . Inthis sense, then, the subject is constituted through the orce o exclusionand abjection, one which produces a constitutive outside to the subject, anabjected outside, which is, afer all, ‘inside’ the subject as its own ounding

repudiation” (3).The abject is thus an inherent constitution within the normal/subject, or,

in Kristeva’s words, “a precondition o narcissism” (1982, 3). Indeed, i wetake citizenship to be a narcissistic embodiment through which democraticcitizens can realize themselves as legitimate and authoritative insiders, thenthose populations that we call abject subjects located in lowly and impover-ished conditions are not merely rejected by citizenship but are also necessaryto its constitution. As Engin Isin argues, citizenship is made possible only

by its alterity/otherness (e.g., strangers, outsiders, aliens): “It requires theconstitution o these others to become possible” (2002, 4). The abject and its


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converse — the pure, the normal, the subject , and the citizen — are thus mutuallyconstitutive.

Finally, extending this crucial observation regarding the mutually constitu-tive relations o normality/abjection, I argue that we might urther understandsuch relations not as remaining in a xed and static state, but as continuallychallenged and disrupted by the abject themselves, such that these relationsare always shifing in liberal social li e. That is, on this third level o meaning, what is salient about the abject is that they are subjects imbued with agency who use and improvise the elements in their surroundings in response totheir abjection. In act, because they resort to whatever tools and resourcesare available to ameliorate their abjection and to survive, such agency doesnot mani est in any predictable or predetermined way but ows in diverse di-rections. Abject subjects thus are perceived as wretched and contemptible notonly because o their marginality and exclusion, but also because o the gen-eral public’s ear o their unpredictable agency, which threatens and disruptsthe existing social order, as well as moral assumptions and power relations.Kristeva gestures toward such agency when she writes, “It is thus not lacko cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, sys-tem, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in- between,the ambiguous, the composite” (4). She continues, “The abject is perversebecause it neither gives up nor assumes a prohibition, a rule, or a law; butturns them aside, misleads, corrupts; uses them, takes advantage o them,the better to deny them” (15). The properties o the abject, in short, in Isin’s words, “are experienced as strange, hidden, right ul, or menacing” (2002, 3).

Without prejudging ethical character or presuming the emotive effectssuch agency might evoke (since these ofen depend on the eyes o the be-holder, varying according to political- ideological position), I use a more neu-tral term, “ingenious,” to describe such unpredictable agency o the abject.This term recognizes how, in their limited and oppressive conditions, abjectsubjects come up with original and resource ul ways to enact themselves po-litically. Regardless o whether we agree or disagree with such acts and prac-tices, it is important to recognize, without prejudgments or presumptions,the political ingenuity o these acts and practices. This acknowledgement iscrucial or us to see how abject subjects contest and resist in inventive andnonlinear ways when democratic agency is not possible or effective. One maythus say that the abject are eared and rejected precisely because o their inge-nious acts, which politically disturb the given liberal order while generatingmore inhabitable spaces.


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This ingenious agency signals uidity in the abjects’ status and quality,since they might, through the constant deployment o such agency, normalize themselves by appropriating spaces o inclusion, belonging, and citizenship,thus unsettling the existing relations. In act, even abjection itsel may bestrategically embraced and redeployed as a weapon through which to ob-tain normality/citizenship. While abject subjects will remain abject vis- à- visliberal citizenship, the limited degree and extent o normality they obtainalso helps alleviate their abject conditions and place them in relatively more“advantageous” positions.

So what, then, i abject subjects do not act democratically but instead im-provise their actions? Given that the general public would rarely considersuch acts or practices politically worthy, what larger political lessons can wedraw rom ingenious agency? As I argued earlier, the preeminence o demo-cratic agency emanating rom Western political thought disavows the subtleand roundabout improvisation o resistance in everyday marginal spaces bythe abject. It is even less likely to conceive such hidden contestation as beinglinked to meaning ul social change. Yet even though such ingenious acts andpractices are enacted in nondemocratic ways, they create hope — both or thesubjects and those affected by them — or more humane spaces in liberal li e.

Each instance o such agency is certainly raught with limitations andcontradictions. In chapter 1, I describe how the domestic worker Lita’s re-

usal o dehumanizing exploitation is enabled not through an emancipatoryrealization o her human rights but through a sel - demeaning act that oolsand manipulates her employer. In chapter 5, I consider how Ayat Akhras’senactment o suicide bombing in an effort to revive the political cause o asovereign Palestinian state must eventually traffic in the liberal discursivelanguage o “li e, liberty, and property,” given the reality o the internationalsystem o states governed by the liberal world order. Neither subject is capa-ble o transcending the liberal structure that governs, disciplines, and regu-lates her li e; in act, both subjects are implicated in it even as they seek tocreate change. Despite these limits, they nonetheless resort to creative andunordinary means, with the tools they have, to generate spaces o greater in-clusion, dignity, and belonging. In act, one may say that these limits actuallyprovide the tools and channels the abject creatively reassemble and redeployin expanding livable spaces. All o this suggests that ingenious agency indeedinduces change and movement, not according to any linear or predeterminedtrajectory, but through ambiguous and indirect means. And to think: thesetwo examples are merely a minuscule sample o the protean multitude (or the


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encroaching “big number”) o ingenious acts and practices staged in hetero-geneous ways every day by the abject in liberal social li e.

The observation that the process o social change creates trans ormationeven as it replicates the normative liberal order can be urther illustrated byexamining the tangled linkages between abject subjects. Specically, theiragency may normalize and redeem them in ways that simultaneously ab- jecti y others. For instance, while Lita is marginalized in her position as animpoverished migrant, her occupation as a dignied and right ul domestic worker may stigmatize other emale migrants who make a living as “way- ward” prostitutes. At the same time, the orientation o the migrant sex work-ers discussed in chapter 3, who participate in the sex trade to acquire a betterliving standard, raise their children, and even marry their prospective (white)clients and orm a heterosexual amily may also provide a semblance o “nor-mal li e” that offers them certain degrees o opportunity and belonging incapitalist democracies. Such opportunities are denied to Akhras, the emalePalestinian suicide bomber who is condemned and vilied or violently andlethally breaking with this liberal pursuit o li e, liberty, and happiness. Yet,conversely, Akhras’s aw ul act o sacricial violence also enables her commu-nity to recast her as a noble martyr whose heroic deed contributes immea-surably to the potential ounding o Palestinian (liberal) statehood, by whichstandard the acts o other abject subjects might pale in comparison.

These linkages among abject subjects, which are seemingly invisible intheir disparate social positions, demonstrate the impossibility o transcen-dence but also the spectrum o opportunities or disruption and appropria-tion vis-à- vis liberal citizenship. No one is completely oppressed or abject inrelation to the other; everyone is relatively normalized in certain ways andabjectied in others, depending on contingent contexts and circumstances.The abjects’ agency may never ully recover them as normative subjects. How-ever, their ingenious improvisations may ameliorate their abjection, even iin such amelioration they also rei y the standard order that sets others inrelative places o abjection. These uid and unpredictable relations to abjection vis-à- vis liberal social li e suggest that the hegemonic terrain is not wholly xed. Rather, it leaves room or malleable reshaping by political subjects to assuage their abjection and create change (albeit with complicitiesand within limits). Such abjection may never be surpassed or transcended within the liberal li ecycle, but it can nonetheless be mitigated, sublimated,and trans ormed.

What these ashes o ingenious agency signal is that the process o cre-


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ating change may not be able to escape complicity in reproducing the he-gemonic liberal order, which orever circumscribes any radical potential osocial justice movements to exceed its transactional terrain. Social justicemovements are always already lodged inside the liberal economy, and theirhope or change may similarly hinge on their submitting to a complex processo instrumental negotiation with this economy, a trans ormative process thatis tainted by complicity and never completely achieved. All o us, critical the-orists and social activists alike, do not stand outside or above this contami-nated cycle, but are ourselves implicated in tangled relations o normalityand abjection. But even though there is no “outside” to the liberal economy where one may stage trans ormative change, the episodes in this book pointto the possibility that we, like the abject, may devise more clever and un-ordinary methods to remold and recraf the given “democratic terrain” inmani old ways and thus generate more livable spaces or all citizen- subjects.It gestures toward an ingenious uturity that entails creative recongurationo the system at a collective level (with whatever means are available), andinventively reshapes the terrain o the battleeld, without transcending thebattleeld.

Returning to the example that opened this introduction, even or Weber’sradical democratic project, the appeal to “I am an American” contains a cer-tain layer o meaning that evokes the same narcissistic desire or “Americathe Beauti ul” that is embedded in the Ad Council’s campaign (Ling 2010,99). Those citizens marked as unsa e courageously indict the U.S. govern-ment even as they reinscribe the liberal myth o American exceptionalism.As L. H. M. Ling notes, these statements, “ranging rom the geographical( or example, I live/work in this space) to the legal ( or example, I have/wantthe papers) to the psycho- cultural ( or example, I am entitled to certainrights)” (100), appeal to American audiences through the high principles o“democracy, reedom, and justice or all.” Bonnie Honig has argued that dra-matizing consent validates the “universal charms o American democracy”by showing the continuous streams o immigrants voluntarily consentingto the constitutional liberal regime (2001, 92). In Weber’s project, Americandemocracy is persistently critiqued but also continually shored up by the un-sa e citizens who consent explicitly, and who would “suffer exile, indignities,and loss to be a real American” (Ling, 100). What does this critical, sociallyconscious project thus tell us about complicity, contamination, and socialchange?

Perhaps Weber’s project not only exemplies democratic agency, afer


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all, but also contains an ingenious element. Specically, the complicity o theproject in rei ying “America the Beauti ul” may be read as partially strategic.That is, or Weber to achieve her desired political effect — winning support

or the cause o her project — she may actually need to traffic in this kind onationalist- cum-American-exceptionalist language to establish identica-tion with the public viewing audience, showing how these unsa e citizens are just like “us.” They strongly identi y with being Americans, they love “our”democracy, and they are even more democratically conscious and engagedthan most citizens are. How could “our” government deny them undamentalrights and liberties when every bit o their character deserves to be American?

Thus, Weber’s project may be reread not as merely producing a linearreplica o democratic agency, but as circuitously and cleverly using the rep-resentation o democratic agency and consent to the liberal constitutionalregime as a critical instrument to achieve her larger goal o obtaining rightsand inclusion or unsa e citizens. In addition, or her radical democratic proj-ect to generate her envisioned social change, it has to work with limits andoperate inside the given hegemonic liberal construct that circumscribes itsradicalizing vision. In the end, like Lita and Akhras, Weber’s critical art canin this instance be read as an ingenious political act, one that uses whatevertools and resources are available (including limits and complicities) to gene-rate trans ormative change.

Toward a Political Theory of Social Change

In asking how we may look at abject subjects’ quotidian acts and practices ascreative resistance and how such resistance may offer lessons or us to recraf ways to generate trans ormation, the oregoing sections lay out the centralthemes o this book. What Ingenious Citizenshipseeks to advance, then, is a political theory of social changethat turns to and draws on the everyday lived ex-periences o the abject as contextual resources and inspirations or its criticaltheorization. I suggest that the customary spaces o the abject that generallyhave been assumed to be apolitical, insignicant, or even deviant in West-ern political thought (bound by its constrictive vision o democratic agency)may actually offer valuable insights and lessons regarding alternative modeso political intervention and social justice. Although much contemporaryscholarship in political theory rom critical and progressive angles is alsoessentially about normative theorization o social trans ormation, I wish toaccentuate social change as a descriptive qualier o this work, because I think


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the way we conceive the term needs to be creatively and uidly rethought. Todo so requires a departure rom, and a recrafing o , the predominant metho-dology o political theory.

While racial, anticolonial, eminist, queer, and comparative political theo-ries have made important advances in recent decades, the predominant workso political theory still look to Western (male) philosophers and theorists

or their intellectual resources on agency, democracy, and trans ormation. Without taking away the important contributions these works have made tothe reconceptualization o democratic politics, there is nonetheless a way in which such disciplinary practice and methodological imagination can bothconne and skew our perception o resistance, citizenship, and social changetoward certain cultural mores and political contours. Specically, I argue thatrestricted intellectual sources can inhibit our notions about the possible anddesirable orms o agency, politics, and social change within a prevailingly Western democratic landscape and value system, which have a tendency toprescribe democratic agency (whether in liberal, communitarian, postmod-ern, or radical terms) as the universally pre erred orm o political subjectivityto con ront any unjust conditions without attention to contexts.

Take, or example, Romand Coles’s radical democratic scholarship, Be-yond Gated Politics. In it, Coles shrewdly moves beyond “democracy” as it iscommonly understood by arguing that democracy is always about democrati-zation — that is, the continuous effort to “embark beyond democracy’s dom-inant orms to invent greater equality, reedom, and receptive generositytoward others” (2005, xi). Signicantly, this intent o perpetual democrati-zation leads him to move beyond traditional practice in political theory bypointing to the insufficiencies o prevailing Anglo- American and Europeandemocratic theories or their disengaged, inward- looking, and hermeticcharacter. Instead, he advocates or a more radical mode o democratic the-ory and action that orients toward “ ‘strangeness, risks, and world- making’ ”and “multidimensional modes o public engagement” (xix).

However, even with this admirable challenge to the core terrain o politicaltheory, Coles’s aspiration or perpetual democratization (beyond prior polit-ical theorists) as the oreground o his interpretive lens remains shaped by,and conned within, the universalizing democratic ethos o Western politicalthought and ignores the critical question o contexts. What i , or instance,the generation o greater equality and reedom sometimes, and in certaincontexts, actually requires that we take other routes besides democraticpolitics? Like that o many critical scholars be ore him, Coles’s interpretive


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schema creates an exogenous binary between “democratic” and “antidem-ocratic” without accounting or the intricate ways in which antidemocraticpowers — such as global capitalism and corporate technology — may alreadyconstitute an essential, endogenous part o the matrix and in rastructure odemocracy (including radical democracy).

As Inderpal Grewal observes, “The orms o civil society that enable demo-cratic citizenship are the new technologies and new media that are controlledby multinational corporations” (2005, 26). In the new in ormation age, de-mocratizing existing orms o citizenship, civil society, and social conscious-ness ofen entails using, and relying on, global capitalist- consumerist cir-cuits o media and in ormation technologies to deliver and disseminate amessage, which enable its critical disruption but also perpetually delimit thecontours o its rupture. When one attends to material contexts, it reveals that what Coles takes to be the two contrasting spheres o “democratic citizen-ship” (rights, equality, justice) and “corporate culture” (neoliberal, neocolo-nial, antidemocratic) have become so deeply interwoven in their liberalizedglobal dissemination that the ormer cannot be untangled rom the lattersimply by way o democratic consciousness- raising or counterhegemonicpolitics.

All this is not to re ute the value o democratic politics, but it does pointto the problem o the prevailing ethos o democratic agency derived romthe existing intellectual resources and methodological practice o politicaltheory, which constrict its interpretive ramework toward a universalizingconception o (democratic) political agency and (democratic) social change without attention to contextual intricacies. As such, we need a different kindo interpretive methodology to read abject subjects’ nondemocratic agencyproperly and to help us conceive a more uid horizon o making politicalchange.

Critical Contextualization as Interpretive Strategy

To move us toward this goal, I propose an alternative strategy, what I callcritical contextualization, to shif our interpretive lens rom the “high” vision o Western political theorists to the “low” angle o the lived experiences o theabject to reopen a once oreclosed horizon in understanding abject subjects’everyday practices as original and creative ways to act politically. This methodo critical contextualization, I argue, consists o three steps.

First, it makes a methodological shif to decenter political philosophers


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and theorists and recenter an eclectic assemblage o abject subjects — rommigrant domestic workers and global sex workers to trans people and suicidebombers — as resources or a critical reinterpretation o political agency, cit-izenship practices, and social trans ormation. The political theorists Shan-non Bell and Paul Apostolidis have reread subordinate subjects such as pros-titutes and immigrant workers, respectively, as political philosophers, thusdestabilizing the epistemological assumptions and trajectory o Westernpolitical thought (Bell 1994; Apostolidis 2010). This move is signicant, orit opens up a way or “the subaltern to speak” (and to be heard) in politicaltheory and not simply be irrelevant, discarded, or invisibilized objects in in-tellectual “high theory” conversations. Yet both o them still operate withinthe democratic theory tradition and present their subjects primarily througha counterhegemonic, radical democratic lens.

To move past this connement, I wish to look or something even moreuid and polymorphous in the retrieval o the agency o the abject. Speci-cally, instead o setting up the subjects as speaking explicitly and directly likedemocratic theorists, I look into and reinterpret their everyday acts (whichare not visible to us as political at all) as already politically signicant — that is,as ofen subversive improvisations o citizenship in everyday liberal social li ethat do not con orm to the linear democratic trajectory. In other words, I donot require the subjects to be in the position o being like “political theorists”

or them to provide lessons about democratic change. I simply take them where they are and look or meanings that might offer us a different way toapproach agency and change. Also, while I recognize that what I characterizeas abject subjects are not all abject to the same degree or in the same way, Ideliberately use the term “abject” in conceptualizing their shared lowly andmarginalized locations vis- à- vis Western political philosophers and theoriststo accentuate the distinctive lessons these subjects could bring us as com-pared with the dominant standard ormulation.

Second, in addition to placing abject subjects’ everyday acts at the centero political theorizing instead o canonical texts, critical contextualization

urther calls or a decentering o our unitary subjectivity (e.g., as theorists,intellectuals, pro essionals, the educated) to relate to the abject and seethings rom their social positions in more uid and organic ways. This doesnot entail our identication with all o the acts and deeds committed by theabject, but it does call on us to imagine and embody a contextual shif o ourlocations between us – them, normal – abject, spectator – gazed, and subject –object positionings to blur these boundaries and enable the possibility o an


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alternative interpretation o their acts and deeds. As James Ferguson arguesrom an anthropological perspective, “What we see . . . depends on where we

are looking rom” (2006, 29). When we practice looking at the everyday actsand practices o the abject through their “low” vantage point rather than romour unbendable “high” positions, it could bring “into visibility things thatmight otherwise be overlooked and [ orce] us to think harder about issuesthat might otherwise be passed over or lef unresolved” (29).

One way to approach this decentering o sel - subjectivity might be by go-ing through the simple exercise o asking onesel : What if any o my riends,loved ones, or children — or even mysel — is in the position o being an abject subject? What kinds o limitations, dangers, violence, or precarity wouldthey or I be acing? How would their or my needs, desires, and dreams shif?How would that make me think differently about the occurrence or eruptiono their or my abject acts and practices? And i I become one o the abject(say, a domestic worker), what happens to my worldview and li e outlook when I shif again to the position o another abject gure (say, sex worker)?Contextually shifing our imagined or embodied locations helps challengeand destabilize our existing assumptions and open up new possibilities ointerpretation.

Kobena Mercer’s critical essay, “Just Looking or Trouble: Robert Mapple-thorpe and Fantasies o Race,” illustrates how our interpretive lens could beexpanded through such a decentering shif o our locations and contexts.In it, Mercer discusses his initial shock and disgust on seeing the grotesquephotos o nude black men in the white gay photographer Robert Mapple-thorpe’s homoerotic artwork, with images such as a black man whose ace isout o the rame “holding his semitumescent penis through the Y- ronts ohis underpants” (Mercer 1997, 242). Mercer’s initial emotive interpretation othe images is constructed via his ideological perception o Mapple thorpe’sracial etishism and colonial antasy, which, in his eyes, reduces “these in-dividual black men to purely abstract visual ‘things’ ” (243). However, thisideological ramework is destabilized and trans ormed when Mercer comesto acknowledge a shifing context o his own embodied subjectivity: as a gayblack man, he is also “a desiring [gay consumer] subject . . . [with] an identi-cal object- choice” in his “own antasies and wishes” (247). From this changedlocation, he begins to recognize “another axis o identication — between white gay-male author and black gay- male reader — that cut across the identi-cation with the black men in the pictures” (247). In act, here the reader mayeven expand on Mercer’s example to enact another kind o shif and conceive


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onesel as the desired object (the nude black man) in the photos, which canurther destabilize the boundaries in other ways and open up other kinds o

cross- identications.Signicantly, the shifing location rom being strictly critical o Mapple-

thorpe’s racism to being identied with his homoeroticism enables Mercerto expand his interpretive horizon in seeing Mapplethorpe’s deliberate subversion in the larger material context o “the exclusion o the black subject

rom one o the most valued canonical genres o Western art — the nude”(248). Mercer writes, “One can see in Mapplethorpe’s use o homoeroticisma subversive strategy o perversion in which the liberal- humanist values in-scribed in the idealized ne- art nude are led away rom the higher aims o‘civilization’ and brought ace- to- ace with that part o itsel repressed anddevalued as ‘other’ in the orm o the banal, commonplace stereotype in every-day culture” (249).

As Mercer concludes, the textual ambivalence o Mapplethorpe’s artwork“ oreground[s] the uncertainty o any one, singular meaning” (248); it is pre-cisely meant to deny “a stable or centered subject- position” and arouse “anemotional disturbance that troubles the viewer’s sense o secure identity”(247). The decentering o subject position that Mapplethorpe opens up en-ables readers, rom their ragmentary subjectivities and pluralized contexts,to bring conicting and open- ended interpretations to the image that are

oreclosed by certain ideological predispositions with their dichotomous“good and bad, positive and negative” rame (247).

Taking insights rom Mercer, our embodied locations always alreadyshape and ormulate our interpretations. As Dagmar Lorenz- Meyer writes,“The knower is part o the matrix o what is known, and . . . the location rom which we speak is one rom which other voices . . . [or even] those withinourselves, may be sanctioned” (2004, 795). And i a contextual shif o loca-tion can open up a once sanctioned or oreclosed interpretation, then themethod o critical contextualization helps acilitate this goal by requestingthat we embody ourselves through the located subjectivity o others — or, inKuan-Hsing Chen’s words, “to actively interiorize elements o others into thesubjectivity o the sel ” (1998, 25).

Indeed, as an analogy, I suggest that the reader take this book like Mapple-thorpe’s artwork, in its “subversive strategy o perversion,” in the materialcontext o the prevailing exclusion o abject subjects rom being protagonistsand architects in political theory, and consider abject subjects as being in aposition similar to that o the nude black man in the racialized homoerotic


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photo. Together or me as the author and you as the reader, it is by ollowingMercer’s example, undergoing “a thorough investigation o . . . [his] ownsubject position and identications and disidentications, his desires andinvestments, and his use o a single interpretive category . . . versus the adop-tion o a dialogical mode o interpretation or specic knowledge claims”(Lorenz-Meyer, 796), that we may shif rom the dominant interpretive lenso democratic agency in political theory to retrieve, reread, and recover abjects’ nondemocratic agency — in their given contexts — as possibly dynamic,organic, and ingenious political enactments.

Finally, as the last step o critical contextualization, I argue that this in-terpretive method cannot be complete without resorting to its own intel-lectual resources to actually conduct its alternative interpretation o agencyand change through the lived experiences o the abject. Moving beyond theterrain o Western political thought, I nd works in other interdisciplinaryelds — namely, cultural theory and cultural anthropology — to be especiallyhelp ul in enabling me to craf a different political theory o social change:one that does not take democratic agency as its automatic starting point.Specically, Ingenious Citizenship bridges and interweaves cultural theory withexisting ethnographies; qualitative interviews; news reports; lms and docu-mentaries; and autobiographical statements, writings, and documentsthrough a critical layering o textual rereading, reinterpretation, and recon-struction in advancing an ingenious story o citizenship that is groundedin, and in ormed by, the lived experiences o the abject. This methodologyis necessarily interdisciplinary, working at the inter ace o cultural theoryand ethnographically in ormed analysis. While I have not carried out eth-nographic research on my own given the diverse range o populations in thecurrent study, I have been consciously attentive to the human narratives inexisting ethnographic and autobiographic accounts to ensure that the theo-retical story I weave is built on and illustrated through their concrete experi-ences in everyday li e — specically, in the ways these subjects negotiate theirdaily struggles within the hegemonic liberal order.

This combination o cultural theory and ethnography enables me to con-ceptualize “citizenship” differently. While common understanding o citizen-ship ocuses on institutional rights, political participation, or street activism( ormal channels that embody the enactment o democratic agency), I under-stand it as a cultural scriptinscribed and utilized by liberal sovereignty to gov-ern and regulate how citizen- subjects should conduct themselves in differentrealms o social li e (the political realm, economic realm, gender realm, etc.).


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As I explicate in chapter 1, this liberal citizenship script produces normality(proper citizens) and abjection (abject subjects) as mutually constitutive rela-tions. At the same time, this notion o script also serves as a critical template

or us to trace and investigate how abject subjects may be read as disruptingand appropriating the script in in ormal and nondemocratic ways to improvise more humane and inhabitable spaces or themselves.

The term “ingenious citizenship” specically describes how the abject, who are remaindered by the script and lack status, power, and resources to ac-cess “ ull” juridical rights and social acknowledgement as normative citizens,come up with original and creative ways to reinsert themselves into the script.Because such improvisations do not go through ormal channels, the ormso citizenship generated are not (yet) officially recognized. I call the kindo citizenship thus appropriated and acquired “nonexistent citizenship” —that is, inclusion, belonging, equality, or rights that are not ormally guaran-teed and codied. By delineating how abject subjects appropriate and reusethe script to assuage their abjection and make themselves “count,” ingeniouscitizenship enables a viewing horizon o the liminal change and movementthat are effected in the hegemonic liberal terrain.

Note that this is certainly not to say that such change is sufficient or thatabject subjects’ politics should remain at this in ormal, precarious level.There is no doubt that such subversive contestations are limited — in act,even ormal citizenship itsel is a limiting political concept that is never in-stituted to effect social emancipation. But, placing such creative resistancein context, I wish to ask: What is the value o these limits? What i this lim-ited change and movement actually offer unexpected lessons or us to tapcreatively and uidly into the unendin

ingenious citizenship: recrafting democracy for social change by charles t. lee

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