“I would rather wear lipstick”: Notes on (unrepresentable) resistance in Foucault and Derrida

Abstract

This article examines the notion of resistance, providing an analysis that problematizes the place of representation in politics and democracy. First, the problem is addressed via a story that narrates a particular episode and actions of a group of prisoners liberated from a concentration camp. Next, Michel Foucault’s writings on resistance are considered, which ultimately result in a decoupling of the relationship between power and politics. Thus, resistance suggests a link with politics that is not restricted to the forms and codes of conventional politics. Nevertheless, Foucault’s work itself raises the question of freedom as a kind of mandate for the subject, in the face of which resistance runs the risk of being trapped. The figure of Bartleby (Melville) offers an opportunity to suggest a hypothesis that will allow us to inquire into a radical resistance that is not captured by the privilege of representation. Subsequently, the writings of Jacques Derrida and his reading of Melville’s disturbing character are examined, offering the possibility of questioning the unrestricted publicity assumed in the domains of the political, politics, and democracy as representative democracy, and even a demanding interrogation of such inherited concepts. Faced with the canon, Derrida will allow us to think precisely of a radical resistance in the manner of a certain secret that, while articulating itself, nevertheless subtracts itself from representation, and that will then be irreducible to the domains of the public-political; which will not mean that this secret is restricted to the private, and will thus make it possible to pose the democratic question anew. Finally, the paper offers some tentative conclusions and a synthesis of the challenges that have arisen.