Week 3: From power to resistance

Introduction

This week was written by Owain Smolović Jones and Fidèle Mutwarasibo.

Welcome to the resistance. Over the next two weeks you will learn about a crucial aspect of Black leadership, working with and through resistance, which can provide energy and a critical edge to leadership practice. History is usually told through the eyes of the powerful, those who amass the greatest economic and cultural power, and there is no greater example of this than the ways in which official history has been warped to normalise – or forget – the horrors and legacies of colonial rule globally.

Figure 1 Resistance leadership can change the world

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The picture features a child in a cape and mask. She extends her arm through the air, shattering a large ball.

Figure 1 Resistance leadership can change the world

However, there is a powerful case to be made that reality, rather than what is officially recorded in ‘history’, is largely a series of responses to resistance: that it is the less powerful standing up to the powerful who force change, innovation, progress and equity in the world. Often made to feel weak by dominant power, resisters are nevertheless the force that must always be responded to. After all, every step towards more equal and empowering societies has always been fought for.

This week you will study the myriad of people and relations that create resistance leadership, the force that drives equity and progress. You will begin through considering how resistance can be defined in relation to power, and by extension how resistance leadership always involves a claiming of power by the previously powerless. You will consider the constructive role of resistance, as something that helps organisations, communities and societies develop through offering constructive forms of dissent (Grint and Smolović Jones, 2022). The week concludes by considering some of the challenges you can face when you move from positions of resistance to positions of power.

By the end of this week, you should be able to:

• understand resistance as always being a response to power, and vice versa, creating a process of struggle
• distinguish between constructive dissent and destructive consent as enabling organisations to develop and adapt to contemporary demands
• identify and analyse some of the key challenges groups face when transitioning from positions of resistance to positions of power.