Pedagogies of the Poor: Resisting Resilience in Eastern Europe and Beyond

• Authors: Julian Reid
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article illustrates the different ways in which the poor are being put to work, in defence of a global neoliberal order by global economic institutions concerned with constructing them as resilient subjects, as well as by opponents of neoliberalism concerned with galvanizing the revolutionary potentials of poor people. In spite of the apparent gulf between neoliberalism and its revolutionary opponents, the poor find themselves subject to remarkably similar strategies of construction by both proponents and opponents of neoliberalism today. This predicament of the poor is particularly vexed in Eastern Europe where strategies of resilience are fast developing, and critical legal theory has so far offered little resistance to this trend. Turning against this tide, this article considers how we might reimagine poverty and conceive its politics beyond and against clichéd images of the poor as resilient subjects. Through an analysis of the work of the Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr, it argues for the necessity of images capable of conveying the intolerability of the conditions in which the poor continue to live, as well as the contingency of those conditions; images that serve as interventions on narratives which would reduce the poor to a life of mere resilience.

Keywords

EN

resilience; poverty; cinema; neoliberalism; commons; Roma; Eastern Europe; Béla Tarr

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Iuridica
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 89
• Pages: 111-129

Dates

published

2019-12-29

Contributors

author

Julian Reid

• Professor of International Relations, University of Lapland

• https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4215-8570

References

• Allen, Craig R. David G. Angeler. Ahjond S. Garmestani. Lance H. Gunderson. C. S. Holling. 2014. “Panarchy: Theory and Application”. Ecosystems 17(4): 578–589.
• Baar van, Huub. 2018. “Contained Mobility and the Racialization of Poverty in Europe: the Roma at the Development-security Nexus”. Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture 24(4): 442–458.
• Banila, Nicoleta. 2018. “World Bank lending Romania 400 mln euro for disaster risk management”. SeeNews: Business Intelligence for South East Europe. https://seenews.com/news/world-bank-lending-romania-400-mln-euro-for-disaster-risk-management-617880
• Berlant, Lauren. 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham: Duke University Press.
• Berlant, Lauren. 2016. “The Commons as Infrastructure for Troubling Times”. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 34(3): 393–419.
• Bohland, Jim. Simin Davoudi. Jennifer L. Lawrence. Eds. 2019. The Resilience Machine. New York: Routledge.
• Butler, Judith. Athena Athanasiou. 2013. Dispossession: The Performance in the Political. Cambridge: Polity.
• Chandler, David. Julian Reid. 2016. The Neoliberal Subject: Resilience, Adaptation and Vulnerability. London: Rowman and Littlefield.
• Cosens, Barbara A. 2013. “Legitimacy, Adaptation, and Resilience in Ecosystem Management”. Ecology & Society 18(1): 3.
• Craig, Anthony Arnold. Lance Gunderson. 2013. “Adaptive Law and Resilience”. Environmental Law Reporter 43: 10426–10443.
• Deleuze, Gilles. 1989. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. London: Athlone.
• Douzinas, Costas. Adam Gearey. 2005. Critical Jurisprudence: The Political Philosophy of Justice. Oxford and Portlan, OR: Hart Publishing.
• Evans, Brad. Julian Reid. 2014. Resilient Life: The Art of Living Dangerously. Oxford: Polity.
• Felli, Romain. 2016. “The World Bank’s Neoliberal Language of Resilience”. In Risking Capitalism. 267–295. Edited by Susanne Soederburg. Bingley: Emerald.
• Fisher, Pamela. Lisa Buckner. 2018. “Time for ‘Resilience’: Community Mediators Working with Marginalised Young People Offer a Novel Approach”. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 38(9/10): 794–808.
• Folke, Carl. Steve Carpenter. Thomas Elmqvist. Lance Gunderson. C. S. Holling. Brian Walker. 2002. “Resilience and Sustainable Development: Building Adaptive Capacity in a World of Transformations”. Ambio 31(5): 437–340.
• Ginn, Franklin. 2015. “When Horses Won’t Eat: Apocalypse and the Anthropocene”. The Annals of the Association of American Geographers 105(2): 351–359.
• Gorfinkel, Elena. 2012. “Weariness, Waiting: Enduration and Art Cinema’s Tired Bodies”. Discourse 34(2–3): 311–347.
• Grear, Anna. 2015. “Deconstructing Anthropos: A Critical Legal Reflection on ‘Anthropocentric’ Law and Anthropocene ‘Humanity’”. Law and Critique 26(3): 225–249.
• Hallegatte, Stephane. Adrien Vogt-Schilb. Mook Bangalore. Julie Rozenberg. 2017. Unbreakable: Building the Resilience of the Poor in the Face of Natural Disasters. Washington, DC: World Bank.
• Hardt, Michael. Antonio Negri. 2009. Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• I, Daniel Blake. 2016. Directed by Ken Loach. United Kingdom: Sixteen Films.
• In the Air. 2009. Directed by Liza Johnson.
• Kaun, Anne. Maria Francesca Murru. 2018. “Narrative Mediation of the Occupy Movement: A Case Study of Stockholm and Latvia”. In Media and Austerity: Comparative Perspectives. 226–236. Edited by Laura Basu, Steve Schifferes, Sophie Knowles. London: Routledge.
• Kiraly, Hajnal. 2015. “Leave to Live? Placeless People in Contemporary Hungarian and Romanian Films of Return”. Studies in Eastern European Cinema 6(2): 169–183.
• Lawrenson, Edward. 2011. “Edge of Darkness: The Turin Horse”. Film Quarterly 64(4): 66–67.
• Lendvay, Marton. 2016. “Resilience in Post-socialist Context: The Case of a Watermelon Producing Community in Hungary”. Hungarian Geographical Bulletin 65(3): 255–269.
• Mańko, Rafał. 2018. “Critique of the ‘Juridical’: Some Metatheoretical Remarks”. Journal of the University of Latvia. Law 11: 24–37.
• Mańko, Rafał. Cosmin Cercel. Adam Sulikowski. 2016. Law and Critique in Central Europe. Oxford: Counterpress.
• Menchaca, William. 2018. “Analyzing Poverty Disparities Between Eastern and Western Europe”. Borgen Magazine. http://www.borgenmagazine.com/poverty-disparities-between-eastern-and-western-europe/
• Morell, Ildikó Asztalos. Margaret Greenfields. David M. Smith. 2018. “Governing Underprivileged Roma Migrations within the EU: Receiving Country Responses and Roma Resilience”. Local Economy 33(2): 123–126.
• Pingali, Prabhu. Luca Alinovi. Jacky Sutton. 2005. „Food Security in Complex Emergencies: Enhancing Food System Resilience”. Disasters 29(51): 5–24.
• Rancière, Jacques. 2011. Bela Tarr, The Time After. Minneapolis: Univocal.
• Rear Window. 1954. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. United States: Patron Inc.
• Reid, Julian. 2012. “The Disastrous and Politically Debased Subject of Resilience”. Development Dialogue 58: 67–79.
• Reid, Julian. 2013. “Interrogating the Sustainable Development-Resilience Nexus Biopolitically”. International Political Sociology 7: 353–368.
• Roberts, Phillip. 2017. “Control and Cinema: Intolerable Poverty and the Films of Bela Tarr”. Deleuze Studies 11(1): 68–94.
• Ruhl, J.B. 2012. “Panarchy and the Law”. Ecology & Society 17(3): 31.
• Rust, Stephen. Salma Monani. 2013. “Introduction: Cuts to Dissolves – Defining and Situating Ecocinema Studies” in Ecocinema Theory and Practice. 1–13. Edited by Stephen Rust, Salma Monani, Sean Cubitt. London: Routledge
• Smith, Adrian. Judit Timar. 2010. “Uneven Transformations: Space, Economy and Society 20 Years after the Collapse of State Socialism”. European Urban and Regional Studies 17(2): 115–125.
• Tandon, Nidhi. 2007. “Biopolitics, Climate Change and Water Security: Impact, Vulnerability and Adaptation Issues for Women”. Agenda 73: 4–20.
• Trawick, Paul. 2003. “Against the Privatization of Water: An Indigenous Model for Improving Existing Laws and Successfully Governing the Commons”. World Development 31(6): 977–996.
• The Turin Horse (A Torinói Ló). 2011. Directed by Béla Tarr. Hungary: TT Filmmûhely.
• UNDP [United Nations Development Programme]. 2018. Roma Data. http://www.eurasia.undp.org/content/rbec/en/home/ourwork/sustainable-development/development-planning-and-inclusive-sustainable-growth/roma-in-central-and-southeast-europe/roma-data.html
• UNEP [United Nations Environment Programme]. 2004. Exploring the Links: Human Well-Being, Poverty & Ecosystem Services. Nairobi: UN Publications.
• Yew-Foong, Hui. 2017. “The Umbrella Movement: Ethnographic Explorations of Communal Re-Spatialization”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 20(2): 146–161.

Identifiers

DOI

10.18778/0208-6069.89.08