Sınırdalık: Direnişin Siyasal Antropolojisi

Abstract

When modernity defines society with “order”, “stability” and “steadiness”, the political has become trapped in fixed boundaries. Western political thought, along with metaphysics of order, describes the political with narrative of the truth. Within this approach, the relation with the Other is constituted dichotomously. Anthropology whose object is the Other, stands within that dichotomy between state and stateless society. Thus, with the disenchantment of narrative of Truth, anthropology also obtains the possibility of speaking for the political. Resistance is the state of acting situated before such political truth which can be described as metaphysics of order. When resistance presents a movement, transformation and disorder, it challenges the steadiness produced by institutionalized power regarding the society. This challenge necessitates an alternative interpratation of resistance as a ground to re-describe the political. This study proposes the concept of liminality as an alternative theoretical framework in which the relationship between the political event and the metaphysics of order can be revised. The concept of liminality which also makes it possible to talk about the politics of disorder, makes it possible to reconsider resistance as an expression of transition. In this respect, resistance refers to a transition ritual as well as to the moment at the threshold. On the basis of liminality, resistance does not assume either attaining with to come, nor the stability and steadiness. On the contrary, when it is read in the focus of the liminality, resistance refers to the existence of the political event as a threshold, an unstructured moment.