International Political Sociology Group at KCL/Department of War Studies (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/ws/research/groups/intpolsoc/)

and Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance (CCIG) at Open University

(http://www.open.ac.uk/ccig/) (Joint reading group on Power and Resistance)

Notes of 3rd October meeting on Michel De Certeau ‘The Practice of Everyday Life’

“Many everyday practices (talking, reading, moving about, shopping, cooking etc.) are

tactical in character. And so are, more generally, many ‘ways of operating: victories of the

‘weak’ over the ‘strong’ (whether the strength be that of powerful people or the violence of

things or of an imposed order, etc,), clever tricks, knowing how to get away with things,

hunter’s ‘cunning’, manoeuvres, polymorphic simulations, joyful discoveries, poetic as well

as warlike” (p.xix)

• Discussion on whether De Certeau’s ‘tactics’ are rational, conscious actions or ‘irrational’ by

their very nature.

• Further debate on the validity of using De Certeau’s conceptual tools to theorise the 2011

London Riots and Arab Spring. Such events could be seen as both the mis-use of and the

making use of structures of domination.

• Follow on questions:

-How are the ‘tactics’ of Bouazizi in Tunis (self immolation) labelled ‘rational’ and those of

London youths (such as the ransacking of JD Sports) branded ‘irrational’.

-What is the necessity of rationality in resistance?

-Can choices aimed at changing society be labelled as rational? Is not all choice constituted

by discourse?

- Is the rational/irrational dichotomy in fact a false binary? Everyone has different ideas as to

what ‘rational’ means. Are ramifications more important than rationality?

• Further discussion on the insights of Ranciere to the debate on rationality: Actions do not

need to be prescribed. Most important is how they are read retrospectively. Some

highlighted Ranciere’s ‘partage du sensible’ as a more useful division than rational/irrational.

• It was pointed out that an interesting undertaking would be to examine how Ranciere and

Balibar engaged with De Certeau at the time of publication of ‘The Practice of Everyday Life’.

“Because it does not have a place, a tactic depends on time- it is always on the watch for

opportunities that must be seized ‘on the wing’” (p.xix).

• De Certeau’s understanding of time drew some criticism here. Some argued that his

conceptualisation of ‘time’ was far too thinly formulated. Exactly how, in what way do

‘tactics’ disrupt a strategy’s authority over time?

• Some pointed to Judith Butler’s notion of performativity and the need for repetition of

discourses to produce the phenomena they regulate and constrain. Alternatively, others

pointed to the notion of a ‘rupture’ (a la Ranciere) to disrupt the dominance of a strategy,

much like ‘the public declaration of the hidden transcript’ in James C. Scott.

• This in turn led to a discussion on De Certeau’s conceptualisation of the ‘political’. Some

argued that De Certeau was overly ambitious. By making the microscopic practices of

everyday life political, the author renders everything, hence nothing, political. E.g. Can

ravishing all the ketchup from a McDonalds really be labelled ‘political’?

• Further questions were then raised:

-Must a ‘tactic’ be carried out within a particular context to make it political?

-Is a rupture always needed for a ‘tactic’ to ‘count’ as resistance?

-Does the repetition of ‘tactics’ take away from their politicisation or in fact make them

more political?

• Discussion on the pitfalls of De Certeau’s methodology. Many agreed that tactics and

strategies are better viewed as indexes of belief rather than in binary opposition but some

raised questions as to how, i.e. in what way tactics can become strategies. De Certeau fails

to conceptualise by what means a non-discursive practice becomes a discourse in itself.

• Some felt De Certeau’s methodology was too individualistic- ‘tactics’ must be shared

collectively to be seen as ‘meaningful’. E.g. the ‘tactic’ employed by the abolitionist

campaign to boycott West Indian slave-grown sugar in the 1700s.

• We agreed that ‘resistance’ in De Certeausian terms was perhaps an unsuitable word and

put forward ‘subversion’ or ‘evasion’ as better alternatives.

“I call a strategy the calculation (or manipulation) of power relationships that becomes

possible as soon as a subject with will and power (a business, an army, a city, a scientific

institution) can be isolated. It postulates a place that can be delimited as its own and serve

as the base from which relations with an exteriority composed of targets or threats

(customers or competitors, enemies, the country surrounding the city, objectives and

objects of research, etc.)- can be managed” (p. 35-36, emphasis in original).

• We identified a similarity between De Certeau and Foucault in the ‘flattening out’ of space,

i.e. the rendering of space as a planar. Many felt this poorly conceptualised and led to calls

for a more multi-dimensional notion of space i.e. ‘spaces’ existing inside of each other. E.g. a

young private in the army retaining her own sense of internal space whilst orders are barked

at her from a sergeant, by repeating the mantra ‘I’m wearing sexy underwear today’ in her

head.

“A tactic insinuates itself into the other’s place, fragmentarily, without taking it over in its

entirety, without being able to keep it at a distance” (p.xix).

• We went on to clarify what is meant by the ‘space’ of this other. Some agents do not have

the means to impose power-knowledge and must make use of the terrain imposed on them.

Examples given of an Islamist group picketing the funerals of dead soldiers in Wootton

Bassett or Gaddaffi’s famous ‘Zenga Zenga’ speech being remixed into a techno song.

• We questioned the importance of De Certeau’s role as a Jesuit Priest. Is it possible to

separate the man from the theories and view ‘tactics’ and ‘strategies’ in an explicitly secular

light? Some pointed to an almost religious element of ‘tactics’ in that they operate firmly on

the plane of belief and appear to offer some ‘hope’ against all-prevalent structures of

domination. Others saw tactics as reinforcing such social forces. E.g. Saying the rosary in a

mechanical fashion whilst one’s mind wanders may be viewed as an escape ‘tactic’ as the

diction of the prayers has no meaning, though the practice is given significance as the

intention behind the act is more important.

• In the context of a Foucauldian notion of resistance, some disagreed that a De Certeausian

framework was ‘hopeful’ or somehow ‘empowering’, as it is simply the underside or

corollary of normalisation. All processes of normalisation need subtle movements of escape

and evasion to legitimise them. Is De Certeau therefore saying exactly the same thing as

Foucault but by using other words?

“Marginality is today no longer limited to minority groups, but is rather massive and

pervasive; this cultural activity of the non-producers of culture, an activity that is unsigned,

unreadable and unsymbolized, remains the only one possible for all those who nevertheless

buy and pay for the showy products through which a productivist economy articulates itself.

Marginality is becoming universal” (p.xvii).

We then went on to identify a tension in De Certeau’s definition of ‘the marginality of the

majority’. This notion of marginality is central to the author’s ‘tactics’ framework as it is

marginality which promotes tactics. Though De Certeau insists this group is not homogenous

(p.xvii), he goes on to discuss them as if they were indeed a homogenous group, as a

consumer’s tactics do produce similar effects in destabilising the game of capitalism. An

element of functionalism to this argument?

• Finally we highlighted De Certeau’s expressions of hesitancy around his model of strategies

and tactics. He states that

“A distinction between strategies and tactics provides a more adequate initial schema”

(p.35, emphasis added) and labels the framework as a “preliminary hypothesis” (p.35)

We agreed that De Certeau’s model was designed to broach new lines of inquiry, to provide

suggestions for a different type of discussion and should therefore perhaps not be treated as

a refined, conclusive model.