‘No One Is Illegal!’ Resistance and the Politics of Discomfort
[Article]
/ Maurice Stierl
7731-1474
This work attempts to recast conceptions of global/ised political resistance. Instead of following systematic accounts of actors seeking global social transformation, it is shown how a Foucauldian understanding of power and resistance—here developed into a ‘politics of discomfort’—can help illuminate more situated and cautious approaches to expressions of dissent. It is illustrated how undocumented migrants, or sans-papiers, with the support of the German activist network No One Is Illegal (NOII) can assume political subjectivity to confront and resist the dominating power of sovereign state agencies that attempt to marginalise and silence acts of contestation. I argue that NOII’s practical resistance, although local, nonetheless has important dimensions ‘beyond’, as it critiques through its creative actions (global) sovereign hypocrisy, violence, and the ‘governmentality of documentation’.