Resistance reveals power’s hidden locations and methods better than studying power itself

Evidence

This is perhaps why Foucault, in proposing a “new” diagnosis for the “economy of power relations” governing “our present situation,” suggests that we take “the forms of resistance against different forms of power as a starting point.” For resistance amounts to a “chemical catalyst” that brings to light power relations, locating their position and finding their “point of application and the methods used.… Rather than analyzing power from the point of view of its internal rationality, it consists of analyzing power relations through the antagonism of strategies. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 74

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the methodology in James Scott’s Weapons of the Weak and ‘Seeing Like a State’ — power is best mapped from the vantage of those it acts upon. — connects to: Power can be wielded quietly by overlooked figures — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 397
• SEED: An angle: ‘How to map a power structure — reverse-engineer it from its resistances.’ Could apply that lens to contemporary surveillance or platform capitalism, where resistance cases expose how the system actually operates.