Theorizing for Resistance: Reading the Leaders of the Global South

This paper is then driven by the following question: how do we, as political theorists, build a theoretical groundwork from which transnational resistance and activism can grow? Today, resistance is needed more than ever to the "triple oppressions" to which Claudia Jones (1949) drew our attention. The triple oppressions of colonialism, class, and gender only continue to intensify under globalized capital today, and form the problem space from which this paper emerges. Wendy Brown (2015) has indicted capitalist globalization for "undoing" democracy; Nancy Fraser (2016) has indicted it for creating a "crisis of care" whereby humanity is no longer able to reproduce itself; Maha Tai (2019) reminds us that the consequences of these crises are "displaced" from the global north unto the global south through a vicious "coming together of social reproduction, gender, empire, race and capital." A problem space of this magnitude can only be approached through the building of transnational resistances and solidarities, and I suggest that political theorists will play a part in this process. In Marx’s (1844) words, theory becomes a "material force" when gripped by the oppressed and used as a "weapon" of resistance. Praxis, the unity of practice and action, has long been a tenant of our discipline yet scholars have often ignored those figures who best exemplify praxis. Thus, I wager that if political theory is to theorize for resistance, it ought to look to the thought of those who have resisted. I build on methods used by Adom Getachew (2019) to make a methodological intervention: I argue that our discipline should take seriously the thought of leaders of resistance movements in the global south in order to build a theoretical environment fit for forging transnational solidarities. The paper ultimately concludes through demonstration: by showing how the thought of non-canonical figures such as Claudia Jones, Francia Márquez, and Vilma Espín can be read as political theory fit for addressing the intersecting problems facing our time.