The Ends of Resistance - by Alix Olson & Alex Zamalin

About the Book

Alix Olson and Alex Zamalin offer a clear-eyed critical account of how neoliberalism has redefined resistance to thwart social movements and consolidate power.

Book Synopsis

Since the rise of Donald Trump and other right-wing authoritarians worldwide, we have been told to "resist." But this kind of opposition looks surprisingly like restoring the status quo. Under the banner of resistance, liberals and progressives have encouraged voting for Democrats, reading the mainstream media, trusting the science, putting up yard signs, buying the right products, and celebrating a "return to normal." How was "resistance" diluted, and where can we find alternative forms of resistance for present and future struggles?

Alix Olson and Alex Zamalin offer a clear-eyed critical account of how neoliberalism has redefined resistance to thwart social movements and consolidate power. Elites have domesticated and coopted some once-radical concepts and practices into "restorative resistance" that bolsters support for an unjust social order while marginalizing, racializing, and criminalizing many others. Olson and Zamalin argue that true resistance to racial neoliberalism must instead be deeply antirestorative: collective, horizontal, counterhegemonic, radically democratic insurrectionary movements that cannot be redirected into shoring up the existing order. This "unruly world-building"--exemplified by Occupy Wall Street, the Movement for Black Lives, Indigenous activism at Standing Rock, and more--pushes us to live, think, and dream beyond profit maximization, democratic civility, and individual freedom. Powerfully and accessibly written with manifesto-like urgency, The Ends of Resistance shows how marginalized voices and social movements deepen our thinking for confronting power.

Review Quotes

The Ends of Resistance is written in highly accessible, largely jargon-free prose...For readers, the book offers an invitation to consider what might be required to have a greater impact and what a transformation of contemporary politics beyond its current neoliberal confines might entail.-- "New Political Science"

The Ends of Resistance sheds an illuminating light on the shocking ways elite media and politicians have appropriated Black political resistance and the #MeToo movement for corporate and individualistic ends. Olson and Zamalin challenge the ways 'anti-racist' tactics have been appropriated to reinforce racial capitalism in a powerful indictment of the nation's lackluster political will, even among so-called radicals.--Terrence L. Johnson, author of We Testify with Our Lives: How Religion Transformed Radical Thought from Black Power to Black Lives Matter

Resistance is a word that has lost its critical edge, as this book demonstrates. Olson and Zamalin name 'restorative resistance' the idea that a return to a pre-Trump era is sufficient. Their critique challenges our coalitions, but this is a challenge that must be taken up to make the change the world needs. Essential reading.--Linda Martín Alcoff, City University of New York

How did suburban lawn signs, social media photo frames, and voter mobilization campaigns for moderate Democrats become 'resistance'? Soberly diagnosing the rise of 'restorative resistance' as the outcome of a decades-long deliberate neoliberal narrowing of the political life of democracy, Olson and Zamalin echo Michel Foucault's fundamental insight that what is called 'resistance' illuminates how power is exercised. Rightfully alarming readers about a hegemonic horizon of reform that prizes channeling people's capacities to endure economic and social injustices they should resoundingly reject, the authors offer compelling guides to reigniting radical imagination and praxis by joining deeply democratic struggles through which we work to reawaken demands for liberation, actual popular sovereignty, and the state itself as ours--in solidarity with each other and the planet--to reimagine.--Jane Anna Gordon, author of Statelessness and Contemporary Enslavement

About the Author

Alix Olson is an assistant professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Emory University's Oxford College. Before her academic career, she toured internationally as a spoken word artist. Olson is the editor of Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution (2007) and is a widely published poet.

Alex Zamalin is professor of Africana studies and political science at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. He is the author of six books, including Struggle on Their Minds: The Political Thought of African American Resistance (2017) and Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism (2019), also with Columbia University Press.