Fractured Militancy: Precarious Resistance after Racial Inclusion

By Marcel Paret ILR/Cornell Univ Press, 2022

“Paret’s book is a theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich ethnography of social movements in post-apartheid South Africa. He shows with great subtlety and empathy how marginalized black communities are able, under conditions of the passive revolution of capital, to protest and why their resistance remains fragmented and weak. A compelling read.”

— Partha Chatterjee, Columbia University, author of Politics of the Governed and Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World

DESCRIPTION

Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with activists, Fractured Militancy tells the story of postapartheid South Africa from the perspective of Johannesburg’s impoverished urban Black neighborhoods. Nearly three decades after South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy, widespread protests and xenophobic attacks suggest that not all is well in the once-celebrated “rainbow nation.”

Marcel Paret traces rising protests back to the process of democratization and racial inclusion. This process dangled the possibility of change but preserved racial inequality and economic insecurity, prompting residents to use militant protests to express their deep sense of betrayal and to demand recognition and community development. Underscoring remarkable parallels to movements such as Black Lives Matter in the United States, this account attests to an ongoing struggle for Black liberation in the wake of formal racial inclusion.

Rather than unified resistance, however, class struggles within the process of racial inclusion produced a fractured militancy. Revealing the complicated truth behind the celebrated “success” of South African democratization, Paret uncovers a society divided by wealth, urban geography, nationality, employment, and political views. Fractured Militancy warns of the threat that capitalism and elite class struggles present to social movements and racial justice everywhere.

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PRAISE

“Marcel Paret assembles four exciting community studies in a theoretical tour de force to explore the paradoxes of post-apartheid South Africa—how racial inclusion has undermined the working class unity and militancy that spear-headed the anti-apartheid movement. A must-read for anyone interested in the dynamics of postcoloniality.”

— Michael Burawoy, University of California-Berkeley, author of Manufacturing Consent and The Extended Case Method

“Bringing detailed ethnographic work into conversation with larger theoretical debates, Fractured Militancy offers important insights into post-apartheid South Africa’s ‘service delivery’ protests. Marcel Paret’s thoughtful analysis of the complicated interactions between local activism, party loyalties, and class identities in poor neighborhoods around Johannesburg will resonate across the global South, and makes an important contribution to discussions of grassroots movements in the 21st century.”

— Gay Seidman, University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of Manufacturing Militance and Beyond the Boycott

“Fractured Militancy is a beautifully written, extremely accessible, and very insightful telescope into the multi-layered and complicated terrain of South Africa’s recent social protests. Set against the historic arc of South Africa’s monumental transition from apartheid to democracy and racial inclusion, Paret masterfully toggles between theorists drawing from the global North and South and grounded empirical evidence from the field … For anyone interested in understanding the limits and possibilities of the recent decades of social and welfare-oriented Neoliberalism, this book is a must-read.”

— Rina Agarwala, Johns Hopkins University, author of Informal Labor, Formal Politics and Dignifying Discontent in India.

“Fractured Militancy is clearly written, theoretically sophisticated, and methodologically sound, bringing new information and a new interpretation to the well-trodden topic of working-class politics.”

— Edward Webster, University of the Witwatersrand, coauthor of Grounding Globalization