The Power of Resistance:
A Look at the Power of the Power-less

Gemma Tulud Cruz1

Introduction

It is a sight to behold: numerous women in different groups filling the park, church compounds, sidewalks, walkways, and every imaginable corner of Hong Kong’s Central District, doing anything and everything (including things normally done in private) in a very public setting. They may be reading, talking, laughing, singing, crying, calling home from their mobile phones, eating, playing cards (some even discreetly gambling), selling stuff from ‘home’ or packing stuff to be sent home. Anyone who comes to Hong Kong for the first time could not help but take notice of the Filipina domestic workers as they go about their “off-day” rituals on a Sunday. How often do you get to see someone giving or having a haircut out on the street? Where else do you find a sidewalk and a church compound turned into a beauty parlor with manicure, pedicure and haircut on offer? Nowhere else but Hong Kong’s Central District on a Sunday.

The Sunday phenomenon is the most well known act of resistance of Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong. Once the subject of a heated public debate in what is now known as the “Battle of Chater Road”, this symbolic occupation of the Central District by the Filipina DHs (domestic helpers) has become their primary act of refusing to be sidelined and of wanting to be seen and heard. Aside from visibility, it is also an indirect assertion of autonomy:

The ritual could be seen as more than just a get-together. Their occupation of Statue Square and the ground floor of Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, on their only day off, is highly symbolic and a claim of autonomy over their oppressive working conditions. Sunday gatherings let them be free…. It is an expression of power beyond their lowly rank as maid, and gives them a chance to throw away imposed Chinese customs, meet with friends, and talk about home (emphasis mine).2

Gillian Youngs considers this “successful and dramatic claim to high-profile public space” as one of those rare “sightings” of gender resistance in the context of globalization, especially since it “represents a disruption of public/private divides.”3 This is what I would like to explore in this paper: the face of power that has not traditionally taken up much space in theological discourses but is very much deserving of our attention today, in the wake of the global rise of alternative social movements and the increase in contestation by marginalized peoples of repressive policies across borders, religions, and ideologies.

Christian Theology and Power

What could be the Christian contribution to this more pronounced reality of changed and changing subjectivity through power that shows itself as resistance? In the same way, how does this “irruption of the poor” and the power-less4 challenge the method and content of Christian theology? What could be the face or contours of a Christian theology that takes these developments seriously, hence, respond to the challenges of the 21st century? Central to the response to these questions, I believe, is Christian theology’s need to expand its discourse on power from the usual power of the powerful to the power of the power-less. Doing this entails looking at resistance as a face of power, particularly as the power of the power-less.

Power is a theme that runs through the lives of the Filipina DHs in Hong Kong. It is there in how they are subjected to multiple forms of oppression and on how they survive day in and day out, individually or collectively, successfully or not.5 Isasi-Díaz says “power always rests with those who define the norm.”6 At first glance, I am sure this will not elicit critical comments because it very much reflects prevailing theological conceptions and sentiments. Power in traditional Christian theology has to do with the majority. They are actually the minority quantitatively but are given the label “majority” because they are the ones whose voice is heard and whose policies get implemented). Power has to do with those who wield authority and those who dictate the course of history. In short, power is about domination or those who bring about oppression.

But does power only have to do with the dominant majority? Is it always the monopoly of the powerful? The strategies of resistance of the Filipina DHs challenge this. Given the extensive forms (personal and collective), scope (political, socio-economic, and religio-cultural) and dimensions (local, national, and even transnational), not to mention its multiplicity and creativity, the resistance strategies of the Filipina DHs show that this is not just the case. I believe their experience presents certain angles and faces of power that calls for Christian theology to expand power as an analytical category from the power of the powerful to the power of the power-less.

Re-imagining Power: Power as Power of the Power-less

One problematic aspect of Christian theology’s discourse on power is its fixation with power as domination. Kyle Pasewark, who gives an eloquent discussion and critique of this in his book, A Theology of Power: Being Beyond Domination, says that power as dominance is ultimately destructive and that a constructive theology of power is creative and redemptive, not repressive.7 As dominance, traditional Christian theology also often presents power as structural or positional power (auctoritas) or what the Bible calls “principalities and powers.” Power based on authority is another way of describing this concept and this can also run in the way of a more liberative understanding of God’s sovereignty. For instance, the idea of a God of freedom or of a God who creates and allows us to flourish can be sidelined or even obliterated by a God who dominates. Paul Tillich gives voice on how the latter runs counter to the former:

[God] deprives me of my subjectivity because he is all-powerful and all-knowing. …God appears as the invincible tyrant, the being in contrast with whom all other beings are without freedom and subjectivity. He is equated with recent tyrants who with the help of terror try to transform everything into a mere object, a thing among things, a cog in the machine they control.8

Sovereignty, misunderstood and misinterpreted, is power in its warped form. It maintains the regnant aspect of power, not as a moment of power but as complete power, thereby losing its end and character as a gift. For sovereignty, correctly understood and interpreted, must be about efficacy.9 Power, in the first place, is not just about authority or domination. Having come from the Latin word potere which means “to be able”, power must not be viewed solely as the ability to dominate. It is also present in the ability to resist and I mean this not in the binary (either/or) way but in an integrated (both/and) manner. Joanne Sharp and others describe this as the domination/resistance couplet. They contend that power operates in “myriad entanglements” and emphasize that “wound up in these entanglements are countless processes of domination and resistance which are always implicated in, and mutually constitutive of one another.”10

Power, as a dynamic interplay between resistance and domination and as played out in spatial conditions, endlessly circulates. Power then is exercised or practiced not only by the powerful through domination but also by the power-less through resistance. The notion that the poor and oppressed are power-less, meaning “without power”, is a myth. And Christian theology is guilty of peddling this myth by its tendency to present the poor as utterly and hegemonically powerless or by portraying dominating power as so ubiquitous or as just so power-full that acts of resistance appear either futile or insignificant. This should be critiqued not only because it is not fully representative of reality but also because it can be a self-serving agenda of the dominant elite. What I mean to say is, this kind of rhetoric can be utilized by those who dominate to keep the poor and oppressed in their place.

When it is not lambasting power based on position or authority, Christian theology resorts to effacing it by situating it in the discourse on powerlessness, e.g. “There is power in powerlessness.” While this may seem to be meant to present power positively, the way it is done still presents power negatively since this has been used to legitimize passivity and even acceptance of oppression.11 Hence, when I say power on the DHs’ part I am not talking about it in terms of ‘power in powerlessness’ or ‘power as powerlessness’. Pasewark points out that if we want to articulate a theology of power beyond the discourse of domination, we should refrain from this transvaluation or going to the other extreme and simply redefining power as weakness.12 The power exercised and manifested by the DHs, particularly in their strategies of resistance, is transforming power and not the power mired in talks about victimization, suffering, the cross, the crucified God, and the crucified people. It is not the romanticized power that is supposed to come out of patiently and passively bearing with the economic, political, and personal ‘limitations’ of one’s miserable situation. Neither does it mean cultivating ‘the strength that is made perfect in weakness’ or the ‘energy’ that supposedly sustains (but actually chains) people in their weakness as Moltmann states and portrays in his book, Power of the Powerless.13 While I recognize personal power14 -- that inner wisdom rooted in moral sensibilities, equilibrium, and serene disposition that we will overcome whatever trials that come our way, I have reservations about power couched in the language of weakness or powerlessness. More often than not, I find discourses along this line escapist and which lull victims into a false sense of security and virtue that do not really empower them to address the cause of their suffering. In Moltmann’s book, for instance, he discourages the power-less from being angry because if they do so, they will just “run [their] heads against the wall.”

What is wrong with being angry? Anger is neither right nor wrong. It is what we do with it that makes it right (do we fight injustice because of it?) or wrong (do we kill because of it?). It is, I think, one of the most under-estimated and maligned Christian virtues. As Jesus himself exhibited when he got angry at the vendors and money-changers at the Temple, anger can be sacred, particularly when it serves as an impetus to critique and transform unjust relations. It is the passion that is born out of injustice; the outrage that longs, calls, and struggles for respect for humanity -- this is the anger that transforms. Anger is a basic component of resistance. It is anger against the unjust practices of their employer that makes the DHs refuse to finish or renew their contract, sign blank receipts, file cases, etc. It is outrage at the anti-migrant DH policies of the Hong Kong and Philippine governments that drive them to take to the streets and to the Philippine consulate to protest. It is the passion for justice that emboldens them to take their case to higher authorities like the Equal Opportunities Commission in Hong Kong and even to the United Nations. And this anger, as a moving force for resistance, is power.

Power as can be exercised by the minority in the form of resistance is not the lame, passive, and weak power of defenselessness or powerlessness but of the active, liberative, and transforming kind. Christian theology has to take this into account if it is to give justice not just to the full meaning of the term but also to the struggle of the oppressed for justice. Pasewark contends that for contemporary theology to view power beyond domination it must look beyond politics as starting point since political theory is greatly responsible for the stagnation of power in the realm of domination. For Pasewark, an acceptable notion of power must recognize power as omnipresent and not simply exercised occasionally by a few; productive and not simply repressive or destructive15; private and not just public; consistent with human freedom; and related to justice, love, and ethics.

Power needs to be construed as power-in-relation. This entails expanding the usual depiction of power as ‘power over’ into a conception of power as ‘power with’. In doing so, the discourse will be much more holistic in that ‘power with’ not only captures the relational, oscillating, and shifting character of power. It also brings with it the notion, and especially the experience, of power from the perspective of the poor and oppressed.16 This is the face of power that has not gotten much attention and elaboration in Christian theology, except in liberation theologies. But then again even liberation theologies, particularly classic Latin American liberation theology,17 are still limited in this aspect.

Classic liberation theology, for example, talks about the irruption of the poor or ‘poor power’ but there never really has been a clear articulation on the ‘how’ of this and the extent of the participation of the poor themselves, especially by women. Much of the writings focus on the analysis or exposition of what, who, and how the poor and oppressed and not so much on how the oppressed are combating this. Moreover, we only get to read and listen on behalf of the poor, not so much from the poor themselves. Elina Vuola, in her book Limits of Liberation: Feminist Theology and the Ethics of Poverty and Reproduction, which is a good critique of (classic) Latin American liberation theology, asserts that this disadvantages women, especially since most prominent liberation theologians are clerics, highly educated, male and of European ancestry. Vuola stated that “If liberation theology has largely been the ‘voice of the voiceless’, now those without voice are finding it and expressing themselves”.18 While such a statement argued for the expansion of the generic term ‘poor’, it is a crashing indictment of classic liberation theologians’ underestimation and even misrepresentation of the many faces of the poor and their practice of power.

Power as power-in-relation will put in a lot of the missing pieces of the power puzzle. For one, it will open up the private realm where silent, various, intense and yet uncriticized women oppression, e.g. sexual and physical abuse, takes place. And as the personal is made political, love – a much-neglected component of power as justice, is stressed. Power as power-in-relation is ultimately about mutuality as exemplified by the Trinity. God’s power itself is experienced in companionship and mutual relationship. When power as a theological category is expanded this way, its richness, complexities, possibilities, and responsibilities are fully mined and surfaced. The discourse will not just be about justice and/or/as equality but justice and/or/as love and mutuality as well.

But while it is important not to trivialize resistance we also have to be careful about romanticizing resistance either. While we try to critique and destabilize the usual discourse on power as domination or the power that comes from the center, we must not fall into the trap of the other side either by resorting to simplistic spatial imagery of the center and margins. The issue here “is not the expansion of some spaces (the margins) at the expense of others (the centre), nor ‘resisting’ through finding/creating a ‘space’ where dominance is less effective, but rather transforming, subverting, challenging the constitutive relations which construct the spaces in the first place” (emphasis mine).19 This is what Gabriele Dietrich describes, in her article on the Dalits and Adivasi struggles in India, as “transformation from the fringes of society, where the chronically marginalized and thus ‘victimized’ are enabled to hit at the centers of power, subverting, transgressing and transcending the boundaries of the established order.”20

It is important, indeed, that we do not resort to a ‘romance of the margins’ or a ‘romance of the resisters’ since this could result to sidestepping, if not escaping from, the responsibilities of power. Power has manifold possibilities. But it also has undeniable responsibilities. So while we talk about alternative power by giving a preferential option for the margins (power-less) this must not take us away from making the center (power-ful) accountable. This entails transforming the current order and dynamic of relations from within and not totally outside of it, with enough care taken so as not to end up reproducing the same forms of domination or creating new ones. As the World Social Forum famously trumpets, yes, “another world is possible”. The alternative is a “globalization from below”. But “working against” will be extremely difficult without “working within” the current process of globalization. First of all, we cannot deny the fact that we cannot stop it nor turn it back. Nor can we deny the fact that it has some good aspects. The fact alone that a lot of people, both NGOs and individuals, associated with the WSF use cyberspace – one of globalization’s icons, for advocacy and mobilization purposes, attests to this. Working against something does not necessarily mean working only outside of it. To change it, one must also transform it from within.

Conclusion

At a time when talks and scenarios in relation to the “new world order”, “geo-political powers”, “people power”, and/or alternative movements abound, taking a second look at power and how it is engaged in theological discourse is indeed auspicious. Too often theology conceptualizes it in terms of oppression and domination, which, to me, impoverishes theology. Even the seemingly spiritual or neutral way of apprehending it by couching it in the language of weakness or powerlessness can be narrow and escapist. Power is more than these and as a concept whose theological articulation has repercussions in the construction of human relations in theology, power deserves more than these. It has to be construed not only in terms of its limitations but also in relation to its possibilities and responsibilities. Hence, resistance or the power of the power-less deserves theological space, if not emphasis. In doing so, we do not only give justice to the full range of contemporary realities but we also do theology in a way that is constructive and liberative. For theology in this way becomes more than just “faith seeking understanding” but faith seeking em-power-ing understanding.

NOTES:

1 Gemma Tulud Cruz has been a Catholic educator for 11 years and is presently doing her doctoral studies in Intercultural Theology at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Her research is on the Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong.
2 Words of Dr. Lisa Law quoted in Julian Lee, “Filipino maids’ act of resistance,”
http://info.anu.edu.au/mac/Newsletters_and_Journals/ANU_Reporter/_pdf/vol_29_no_07 accessed November 3, 2003. I have also written about this elsewhere. See Gemma Tulud Cruz, “No strangers in this church” National Catholic Reporter Global Perspective (December 3, 2003).
3 Gillian Youngs, “Breaking patriarchal bonds: Demythologizing the public/private,” 51, 54.
4 I write the term in this way as a critique to the way in which the word is often used or interpreted with regard to the poor and the oppressed. While Christian theology has fixatingly but unrealistically equated the word “powerless” with “without power” or absence of power, so that they do not resist or do not have the means to resist. By writing power-less, I mean that they have power albeit “smaller” than it should be, and they exercise power. They are not monolithic victims.
5 Significant studies or research on these include Nicole Constable, Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Filipino Workers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); Julian McAllister Groves and Kimberly Chang, “Romancing Resistance and Resisting Romance: Ethnography and the Construction of Power in the Filipina Domestic Worker Community in Hong Kong” in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 28: 235-265; and Kimberly Chang and L.H. Ling. “Globalization and its Intimate Other: Filipina Domestic Workers in Hong Kong,” and Gillian Youngs, “Breaking Patriarchal Bonds: Demythologizing the Public/Private,” in Gender and Global Structuring: Sightings, Sites, and Resistances. ed. Marianne H. Marchand and Anne Sisson Runyan (London: Routledge, 2003): 27-43 and 44-58 respectively.
6 Ada María Isasi-Díaz, “A Hispanic Garden in a Foreign Land,” in Inheriting Our Mothers’ Gardens ed. Letty Russell et.al. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988): 98.
7 Kyle Pasewark, A Theology of Power: Being Beyond Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 2. He cites, for example, Glenn Tinder, The Political Meaning of Christianity: The Prophetic Stance (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991), 9, 32, 36 and even liberation and political theology’s “fairly unreflective borrowing of Marx’s notion of power as domination” as guilty of reducing power to either the potency or actuality of dominion. See a similar critique and a more constructive approach in the section on “Redefining Power” in Carter Heyward, Our Passion for Justice: Images of Power, Sexuality and Liberation (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1984), 116-22.
8 Paul Tillich, The Courage To Be (New Heaven: Yale University Press, 1952), p. 185 as quoted in Kyle Pasewark, A Theology of Power…, 4.
9 Power in this way is basically construed and affirmed as omnipresent power that is ultimately trustworthy in that it is saving power. Ibid., 336.
10 Joanne Sharp, et. al. “Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance,” in Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance. ed. Joanne Sharp, et. al. (London: Routledge, 2000), 1. Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992) also discusses how power is not just about domination or oppression but also about how it may be actually engaged and resisted.
11 Even God, especially Jesus, is a victim of this theologizing. God’s power is presented in an alienating way. He is either the all-mighty, all-powerful God – someone “up there” who should be appeased and be approached with fear and trembling, or the utterly powerless (read: helpless) Jesus on the cross. By emphasizing God’s greatness and sinful humanity’s littleness and unworthiness, theology has diminished one of God’s primary characteristics which is love. Moreover, its theologia crucis cripples the human spirit and buries the cross in life-negating meanings.
12 Kyle Pasewark, A Theology of Power…, 5.
13 Jurgen Moltmann, The Power of the Powerless (London: SCM Press, 1983), ix-x.
14 Rita Nakashima Brock, “Understanding Personal Power and Discerning Structural Power,” Voices from the Third World Vol. XX1 No. 2 (December 1998): 69-78 discusses this more in detail
15 This has to do with the perception that power is something that should be neutralized, feared, hated, or destroyed. Of course, the fixation with power as domination, either as the “evil forces” that oppress or the contemptible power of the oppressor, is mainly responsible for this.
16 Anna Karin Hamar, “Some Understandings of Power in Feminist Liberation Theologies,” Feminist Theology No. 12 (May 1996: 10-20) maintains that redefining power as “power with” also entails looking at power as “co-powering” and cooperation.
17 Because of its preoccupation with power as economic and political power that is heavily based on institutional politics, classic liberation theology has not fully mined the richness and possibilities thatcome from the poor and the oppressed themselves. In its talks about the irruption and empowerment of the poor, for instance, one gets the impression that the power practiced by the poor is heavily external in origin. It is as if it is something ascribed or given to them from outside, e.g. by theologians who speak for them or conscientize them. This takes away the internal aspect or the struggle of the poor themselves as they in their day-to-day life of relating with people who either oppress them or suffer like them construct their own power and lay claim to it even without much conscientization or mobilization of NGOs or church people. In fact, we have so many of these “unarticulated liberation theologies” borne out of the dominated people’s everyday negotiation and struggle against their oppression.
18 Elina Vuola, Limits of Liberation: Feminist Theology and the Ethics of Poverty and Reproduction (New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 61.
19 Doreen Massey, “Entanglements of Power: Reflections” in Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance, 284.
20 Gabriele Dietrich, “Subversion, Transgression, Transcendence: ‘Asian Spirituality’ in the Light of Dalit and Adivasi Struggles” Concilium 4 (2000): 84.