1 Bayat, 2010, p.56.
2 Bayat, 2010, pp.25-26.
3 Bayat, 2010, p.15.
4 Bayat, 2010, p.20.
5 Bayat, 2010, pp.20-21.
6 Bayat, 2010, pp.24-25.
7 Bayat, 2010, p.64.
The works of Thompson and Bajtin can be considered to be, avant la lettre, essential contributions to this exploration of the diverse manifestations of infrapolitics. They advanced two forms of parrhesia, theater and folklore, whose political character remained invisible. Their exceptional richness attained the utopia that Hobsbawn longed for: “to produce the historical equivalent of those Picasso portraits which are simultaneously displayed full-face and in profile.”1 I will not do justice to these riches here since I will limit myself to reviewing succinctly those ideas of theirs that complement the analytical framework of Scott. Thompson deepened the Marxist rupture with tradition by separating himself from prevailing Marxist thought. With his thesis that there is class struggle even when no class exists,2 he undertook a heterodox return to the Marxist thesis regarding the power of the proletariat by reason of its position in the system of productive relations, but he complemented it by paying unusual attention to the cultural elements—the great silence of Marx, Thompson thought3—which showed traces of the ideological battles. The premise of his approach was that it is not possible to consider relations of power and strategies of social change while abstracting from culture.4
Thompson revealed that many struggles of the industrial revolution were waged as much about customs as about wages and working conditions, for “in the eighteenth century custom was the rhetoric of legitimation for almost any usage, practice, or demanded right.”5 When the culture of the dominated was rendered opaque to the prying eyes of the upper classes, the customs also became less visible; they formed part of the hidden manuscripts, and appeal was made to them only furtively, by acts that reinstated the custom or penalized its violation. Thompson thus broadened the conception of political action so that it included all acts of resistance to the order imposed by capitalism, including acts that demonstrated moral conscience and creative imagination.6
Such acts included “theater,” a notion that Thompson developed in Customs in Common.
Theater served as an instrument of political control because “much in the political life of contemporary societies can be understood only as a contest for symbolic authority.”7 The effort to control draws on theatrical expression in order to regain dominion over minds: “Such hegemony
1 Hobsbawm, 1971, p.32.
2 Thompson, 1978, pp. 133-165.
3 Mattelard, 2004, p.40.
4 Mattelard and Neveu, 2004, p.38.
5 Thompson, 1993, p.6.
6 Mattelard and Neveu, 2004, pp.41-42.
7 Thompson, 1993, p.74.
can be sustained by the rulers only by the constant exercise of skill, of theater and of concession.”1 The most dramatic settings for this type of theater were the 18th-century gallows and other sites where criminals were subject to public punishment and even execution—but not all criminals, only those whose punishment could be used to exemplary effect. According to Thompson, the terrorizing effect that theater had on class control depended on local advertising, which was provided by the crowd’s witnessing of the procession to the gallows, the subsequent gossip in market and workplace, and the sale of leaflets with the victim’s “last words before dying.”2
Thompson uses the concept of “theater” to examine the forms of political control employed by the dominant class in the 18th century, but he warns that “theater is an essential component both for political control and for protest, including rebellion.”3 The dominated also responded with theatrical political actions. One counter-theatrical action of the poor consisted in having letters published in the newspapers. Shielded by anonymity, in a sort of braid woven of hidden/public transcripts, the working class issued warnings, made plain their discontent, and reminded high officials of their obligations.4 No sooner would the powerful assert their hegemony with their calculated theatrical style than the dominated would establish their own presence on the stage through threats and acts of sedition: burning of effigies, hanging of boots in the gallows, illumination of windows (or breaking of those not illuminated), ballads with political double entendres, and other acts—part satire, part threat—replete with ritual significance. In the streets the people made known their approval or repudiation of officials, of laws, and of judicial verdicts.
Using the cover of the anonymous masses, they could declare their opinions publicly in the streets and thus avoid the repression reserved for organized movements. With such a shield they could destroy machines, damage mills, and intimidate employers and contractors.5 These acts of sabotage, like those mentioned by Scott as an example of the weapons of the weak, were effective because of their theatrical effect.
4. Civil disobedience as everyday politics and ideal type of expressing the struggles for inclusion
1 Thompson, 1993, p.86.
2 Thompson, 2000, p.28.
3 Thompson, 2000, p.26.
4 Thompson, 1974, pp.399-400.
5 Thompson, 1974, pp.400-401.
The concepts of Scott, Bayat, and Thompson, as well as the prisms of Marx and Hobsbawm, are useful tools for rescuing the political experience of the dominated from the trashcan to which they are consigned by a restricted conception of political actors and actions. Those concepts and prisms are inadequate, however, because they were conceived in geographical and historical contexts very different those in which the Central American migration is taking place. Their potential for rescuing the political speech of these actors can be exploited best if they are made concrete by focusing on the chronotope.