Abstract
Imogen Tyler, Revolting subjects: Social abjection and resistance in neoliberal Britain, Zed Books: London, 2013; 244 pp.: ISBN 9781848138513, £14.99 (pbk)
Imogen Tyler’s Revolting Subjects is an important, poignant and powerful book that expands upon and illuminates the age-old maxim of imperialism and domination running amok in modern day Britain: deride and disgust, divide and conquer. Quoting Bauman (2002: 47), ‘Along the fault-lines of the world disorder piles of human waste are rising’, Tyler situates a critical re-theorised notion of the abject as an integral component of neoliberal governmentality in rapaciously extending the market through the re-configuration of wasted populations as abject groups, stigmatised scapegoats to justify state action in the further retrenchment of the welfare state and denial of democratic freedoms and sensibilities. Revolting Subjects provides a compelling and terrifying insight into the distributed but coordinated dynamics of political and media power aligned to reinforce and pursue the neoliberal ideological agenda. The power of Tyler’s book is the ‘thick’ description of neoliberalism (Wacquant, 2010) complemented by Hall (1978) cultural studies to detail not just the circuits of political and media power but also the way in which ‘national abjects become enmeshed within the interpellative fabric of everyday life…’ (p. 9).
The wide-ranging theoretical discussion is grounded in the ‘parables’ or cases of national abjects, including people with names and faces and lives torn asunder, that are the focus of the following seven chapters. In relation to each group, Tyler demonstrates the processes, circuits and collusion between media and political power that function to re-configure groups as spoiled identities and threats to society. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 present a searing and shaming history of British citizenship as a mark and process of exclusion and denial of rights to refugees and asylum seekers in England through racist state practices and the emergence of a for-profit ‘asylum invasion complex’. Chapter 6 locates the emergence of the ‘chav’ in New Labour policy and popular media, such as the television programme Little Britain that promoted and gave form to a powerful myth of the feckless, indolent and culpable poor. This chapter foregrounds the popular representations of the 2011 riots that sought to depoliticise the actions of the rioters away from political and economic explanations including austerity policies and towards a pathologising discourse featuring ‘penal pornography’ that argued for a punitive response and further retrenchment of the welfare state.
It is credit to Tyler that for each bleak depiction of destitution and desperation she illuminates sites and forms of resistance, either in terms of activism or the theoretical and political resources to resist abjectification. We meet, for example Abas Amini a ‘failed’ asylum seeker who sewed his eyes, ears and mouth closed to protest against his treatment. Woven into these accounts, Tyler marshals and joins the calls of Skeggs, Rancière and Williams for a declassificatory politics, ‘a struggle against classification’ (p. 173). One arresting form of resistance is the naked protest, a ‘maternal commons’, where the unclothed female body is a site of challenge against oppression in Yarl’s Wood detention centre and the Nigerian Delta region.
This is clearly an important and significant book, yet I have some minor concerns about the sampling of voices included. Tyler’s account resounds with the cynical and abjectifying invective of politicians, tabloid papers and ‘right wing’ bloggers, not to mention television shows such as My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and Little Britain. This perspective is counter-posed by searing and shaming portrayals of life lived in the shadows of abjection, removed from the benefits and safety of inclusion in a civilised society. Yet the lived experiences and views of what we might call non-abject, everyday people are absent.
Following Hall (1978), Tyler explains that the hardening of public opinion into consent relies upon the repetition and accumulation of expressions ‘on the streets’ (pp. 9–10). This hardening may indeed be the case with a consensus for consent for increasingly punitive neoliberal policies, but with reference to Ranciere (2004) and Williams (1960) Tyler argues for the need for a greater understanding of, ‘the refusal of these names and the resistant politics which unfold from practices of social classification and struggles of declassification’ (p. 175). I would like to have read more about the disruption and resistance to the apparent automatic ‘repetition and accumulation of expressions’ into consent for further neoliberalisation. There are repeated examples of solidarity between apparent abject and non-abject groups in Revolting Subjects in the form of the Dale Farm solidarity group and the local community that rallied around Abas Amini. This is hopefully not a pedantic point but rather significant to developing the practical strategies for resistance. Otherwise the enactment of de-classificatory politics is at risk of becoming the activism via media spectacle of abjectified individuals, communicated through media to be repeated and accumulated.
Revolting Subjects is essential for readers of Power and Education, with the depth and scope of focus to inform interdisciplinary discussions on the neoliberal state we’re in. For example, Tyler’s engagement with affect, abjection and the circuits of political, corporate and media power presents a potentially interesting take on the attacks on public education through the on-going ‘discourse of derision’ that manifested recently in the tropes of ‘the Blob’ and ‘enemies of promise’. A part of this discourse is the teacher as sexual abuser that pervades the media and informs safeguarding legislation (Sikes and Piper, 2010).
I argue that there is urgency for reading Revolting Subjects for those in academia, education and equivalent fields in terms of self, not just societal, preservation. We are at risk of abjection either through becoming disabled or unemployed. The digital revolution, the rise of the algorithm and the massive open online course (MOOC) in line with further neoliberalisation threatens to place ever-greater numbers of people in wasted populations. So I urge you to read this book about the making of abject identities at least to understand what may happen to you. Re-purposing Martin Niemoller's famous reflection on the rise of Nazism, ‘I read about it when they came for the asylum seekers, the chavs, the riotous youth and the disabled… and then there was no one left to read about me’.