Passivity as Resistance: Counter-Conduct in Japan and Cambodia

Resistance is often depicted as events that are active, adversarial and antagonistic. However, we would like to suggest that it could also be understood through other narratives, which connect political pursuits to passivity rather than activity. These stories can contribute to increasing our awareness of the limits of the resistance scholarship and extend the view of political performances. In this paper, two different trajectories of counter-conduct – the anti-sexual assault movement in Japan, and the anti-authoritarian struggles in Cambodia – will be used to reveal how resistance is sometimes delegated or outsourced, rather than actively pursued by the subject. In these cases, the political subjects' passivity feeds political activities, but, on the other side of the coin, the activities also foster passivity.