On resistance in human geography

Abstract

This paper outlines scholarship on resistance within geography. Its contention is that conceptualisations of resistance are characterised by a predetermination of form that particular actions or actors must assume to constitute resistance. Asking what we risk ignoring if we only focus on predetermined, recognisable resistant forms, the paper revisits some of the fundamental assumptions (of intention, linearity and opposition) that underpin accounts of resistance. It calls for geographers to engage with resistance in emergence. The paper concludes by detailing what this might look like in practice, including intersections with work on potentiality, incoherent subjects, agentic materiality and speculative futures.