Many of us think of protest as acts that are communicative, aimed at fighting injustice, and done with others in public, in a group. But what happens when that kind of resistance isn’t possible or safe? When showing up, or waving a sign, or making a public speech might get you jailed, or silenced, or disappeared? Is it possible to resist oppression without following Western scripts surrounding protest? 

Must resistors always act for reasons of justice, or can they act for reasons of love? Can we draw distinctions between the thing that motivates people to act and the political meaning they’re aware such acts can have? This week, we are joined by guest Dr. Tamara Fakhoury, of the University of Minnesota, to talk about what it means to be a quiet resistor.

This week’s jukebox picks:

• From Leigh: Everybody Knows, by Leonard Cohen
• From Bob: Fight the Power, by Public Enemy
• From Jen: Three Six Five, by Shinedown
• From Tamara: Birds, by Turnstile

In this episode, we discuss the following authors, texts, works, and people:

• Tamara Fakhoury, Wadi Climbing: Quiet Resistance in the West Bank (The Journal of Ethics, 2021)
• Tamara Fakhoury, Quiet Resistance: The Value of Personal Defiance (Radical Philosophy Review, 2021)
• Tamara Fakhoury, Non-Normative Behavior and the Virtue of Rebelliousness (Journal of Value Inquiry, 2023)
• The Wadi Climbers of Palestine: wadiclimbing.org
• Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks(1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
• Bat-Ami Bar On, Standing Between Us and Our Grave Wrongdoings (2012)
• Civil Disobedience/Protest
• Herman Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853)
• The Conformist (1970 film, Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci)
• Mona Eltahawy