The Political Value of Disappointment among Ex-resistance Fighters: Confronting the Grey Zone of Founding

• Author: Maša Mrovlje
• Published date: 01 June 2020
• Date: 01 June 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0090591719880626
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591719880626

Political Theory

2020, Vol. 48(3) 303 –329

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0090591719880626

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Article

The Political Value of

Disappointment among

Ex-resistance Fighters:

Confronting the Grey

Zone of Founding

Maša Mrovlje1

Abstract

This essay examines how the disappointment of ex-resistance fighters can

illuminate the grey zone of founding—the ambiguity of beginning anew against

the background of systemic violence that eludes the predominant linear

visions of transition. For a theoretical framework, I draw on Hannah Arendt’s

insights into the ambiguity of beginning anew as a practice of attunement

that takes oppressive practices as points of departure for democratizing

political action. I explore how the ex-resisters’ stories of disappointment

can invigorate this practice, focusing on their ability to reorient political

action towards reframing unjust relationships in a way that guards against

systematic exclusions in the future. This essay demonstrates the political

relevance of disappointment on the example of a South African ex-resister’s

memoir, Pregs Govender’s Love and Courage. Govender’s narrative discloses

how experiences of disappointment can orient the ex-resisters’ efforts to

confront the complexities of founding obscured from the official story.

Keywords

grey zone of founding, disappointment, Hannah Arendt, memoirs of

resistance fighters, South Africa

1Politics and International Relations, School of Social and Political Science, University of

Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Corresponding Author:

Maša Mrovlje, ERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Politics and International Relations, School of

Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, 18 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9LN, UK.

Email: masa.mrovlje@ed.ac.uk

880626PTXXXX10.1177/0090591719880626Political TheoryMrovlje

research-article2019

304 Political Theory 48(3)

Introduction

The [Berlin] wall came down, everyone was pouring across and hugging each

other [. . .]. We had the same reaction when the apartheid walls came down.

Then comes the morning after. Then comes the hangover. Realities, which

during any kind of political struggle you don’t really have time to think about.

Nadine Gordimer1

Widespread disappointment haunting transitional societies exposes cracks

in the predominant linear conceptions of transition.2 In these models, the

founding of a new community is based on a transcendent principle—such as

divine will, natural law, or historical destiny—through which to go beyond

past divisions and suffering. What the prevalent discourse tends to obscure is

the grey zone of founding—the ambiguity of beginning anew against the

background of systemic violence that cannot ultimately be expunged and will

condition the future. Conceiving of founding in terms of a progressive move-

ment from past oppression to a brighter future, linear visions of transition

miss the ways that the deeply ingrained, systemic patterns of violence get

rewritten into new discourses of oppression and exclusion from the public

sphere.3 This essay explores how the ex-resistance fighters’ stories of disap-

pointment elucidate the grey zone of founding as a predicament that comes in

“the morning after” liberation, focusing on how the hopeful momentum of

the resistance struggle gives way to the murky compromises of transitional

politics. Delving into the political value of the ex-resisters’ disappointment, I

contribute to the rich literature on the positive significance of negative atti-

tudes for unveiling the remainders obscured from harmonious models of

transition.4 I propose that the ex-resistance fighters’ disappointment can aptly

expose the risks of refusing to engage the complexities of systemic complic-

ity, as well as the possibilities for beginning anew within, rather than above,

contexts of violence.5

To shed light on the grey zone of founding, this essay draws on Hannah

Arendt’s insights into the ambiguity of beginning anew as theorized in con-

temporary democratic theory. Building on these debates, my emphasis is not

on issues of constitution and state organisation, but on the experiential reality

of founding as a situated process of bringing into being communities of

speech and action without reliance on transcendent principles of community

formation.6 Arendt’s rejection of a transcendent principle allows her to cap-

ture the perplexity of founding as a distinct challenge that should not be con-

fused with liberation from oppressive rule and that involves affirming the