My social media is constantly flooded with political statements, condemnations, and demands for others to repost. While I empathize with the causes my peers are ardently supporting, I’ve questioned whether my lack of published dissent on social media —silence— can be construed as complicity, or even condonation. Does a story repost meet the criteria for political dissent? We exist in a world where there is unprecedented connection and communication across the globe despite a seemingly increasingly atomized society, and in the age of Instagram as the agora, what is the real impact of individual public statements of dissent—or lack thereof— on social media?
Conceptions of Dissent: Public or private?
The philosopher John Holloway initially conceives of dissent as a negation, a rejection of the world we feel to be wrong. While dissent can characterize individual actions, it is ultimately a collective process that is built by individual acts of “questioning from different places”1. There seems to be an implicit sense of dissent as a public action due to its collective nature in changing an institutional order by “social and political questioning […] to undo consensus and render excluded actors and struggles visible”2. Furthermore, there is the view that political action can only be conducted in the public sphere, for hearts and minds can only be changed if they are introduced to new ideas3. The digital world is an arena that teems with political statements. On platforms where most of us are most immediately visible to a large group of our peers, there seems to be a push toward being vocal. You must repost infographics, news articles, and slogans; you must unfollow those who do not share your political opinions or block those who have been silent. Do these political ‘actions’ on social media carry any real weight? Must dissent be visible to others and hence, public, to be considered as such? Does dissent have to be directly impactful on the issue at hand to qualify as dissent?
Dissent need not be public or visible to be categorized as such. The French theorist Jacques Rancière conceives of dissent more broadly as ‘dissensus’, which is the process by which the “improperty of the division of what is proper and not” is revealed4. In other words, dissensus is what questions why we have divided certain issues to be disputed in private or in public. Dissensus “allows the introduction of new subjects that question and disrupt the arbitrary distribution of political participation”, and generally gives visibility to disagreement5. Rancière’s characterization of politics as an aesthetic affair—that which has to do with appearance—nuances the implications of what it means to be visible.
According to Rancière, an action can be categorized as political as long as it disrupts the common order. In Proletarian Nights, he highlights the disruptive nature of 18th-century workers learning to read and write poetry as forms of dissensus against the industrialist and alienating common—in this case, capitalist—order. Forms of dissensus that are not visible on large scales can also be quite consequential. For instance, James C. Scott’s “intrapolitics”, or “tactical ways of resistance produced in hidden spaces” are traditionally performed by peasants. Scott details how under conditions of repression and the lack of the ability to coordinate resistance, English peasants from the 17th to 19th century exercised their “presumed rights” to the gifts of nature on private lands through poaching. Eventually, this practice evolved into a custom, and into a de jure right in itself6.
Dissent as dissensus on Instagram
In the context of social media, this perspective reminds us that Instagram is not the only venue for politics or political statements. Dissent as dissensus also reminds us to recognize what qualifies as dissent, whether in or out of the public eye. Posting due to pressure—whether explicit or tacit—does not automatically qualify as dissent. One is not disrupting any kind of common order or widely held belief if the primary motivations for so-called dissent do not come from a place of understanding or desire for change. According to Rancière and Scott, meaningful dissent on social media not only promotes a collective and transformative effort from a place of genuine perspective change, it also promotes means for others to change their perspectives through action. True dissent—dissensus—reorients society through genuine sentiment.
Ultimately, in such a globalized, interconnected world, dissent (as qualified through its transformative effect) has an arguably more significant counterpart: how it is received. We must recognize the particularities in every case, and maintain awareness and think critically about the information presented to us on social media. To foster dissent is to foster an ethic of critical responsiveness, or a “careful listening and presumptive generosity to constituencies struggling to move from an obscure or degraded subsistence below the field of recognition, justice, rights, or legitimacy to take place on one or more of those registers”7.
This article should not be taken to understand that statements on social media are never genuine, and therefore, do not qualify as dissent. Social and political movements such as Black Lives Matter, the MeToo movement, broad calls for regime change during the Arab Spring, and grassroots journalism in Gaza have arguably been made possible through social media platforms. Although Instagram infographics have been decried as simplistic and inane, I have actually learned a lot while scrolling through my feed. When engaging with politics on social media, however, it is important to keep in mind the tension between both the individual and collective nature of dissent. Although arising from individual spontaneous moments, social change encompasses a multitude of collectivized actions, all spurred by an ethic of critical responsiveness in political activity. So the next time you hit ‘post’, reflect not only on your actions on social media, but your offline attitudes. Whose opinions are you changing, and how are you transforming yours?
- Jorgenson and Augustín, 14 ↩︎
- Jorgenson and Augustín, 12 ↩︎
- Arendt, 198-9 ↩︎
- Jorgenson and Augustín, 14 ↩︎
- Rancière 2010 ↩︎
- Scott, 11 & 16 ↩︎
- Connolly, Pluralism, 126 ↩︎
Edited by Eva Leblanc
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and they do not reflect the position of the McGill Journal of Political Science or the Political Science Students’ Association.
Featured image by todaytesting.com
References:
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.
Martin Bak Jørgensen & Oscar Garcia Agustin. The Politics of Dissent. Political and Social Change vol. 1, 2015
William Connolly, Pluralism. Duke University Press, 2005
James C. Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism. Princeton University Press, 2012
Jacques Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. London: Continuum, 2010