EXIT AS POLITICAL RESISTANCE Jennet Kirkpatrick
Chapter Four
The Virtues of Exit
** Please contact me at [email protected] if you would like to cite this draft or quote
from it. Thank you. **
November 30, 2014
In April 2012, the blind Chinese dissent Chen Guangcheng made an unlikely escape
from house arrest in eastern Shandong Province and, fleeing to Beijing, sought refuge in the
United States Embassy. Once in the embassy, Chen equivocated. Should he remain in China
or exit to the United States? If he remained in China, he could continue his struggle against
Shandong party officials on behalf of farmers and peasants. Yet staying would also risk
further trials and prison sentences. Leaving China, in contrast, would be an escape from
these threats and, while not easy, flight to the U.S. would make Chen and his family
comparatively secure. But leaving his native China would also affect his capacity to resist. As
two nations watched Chen’s every move and a diplomatic crisis threatened, Chen
prevaricated.
One reason for Chen’s hesitation may be that leaving has been equated with
capitulation and desertion. As the Polish anti-communist dissident Adam Michnik explained
in his 1982 letter from prison, “Why You Are Not Emigrating…,” a common stereotype of
the émigré in communist Poland was as “someone who had turned his back on his country,
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who placed himself outside of the nation, who did not share in its good and bad times…the
émigré who chose easy earnings, security, and prosperity and who, for American money, told
lies about Poland.” On this view, true dissidents remained in the country, “on the banks of
the Vistula where life is difficult and uncomfortable—not on the Seine or the Thames,
where life is comfortable and predictable.”1 From this perspective, the stereotypical emigrant
is motivated by self-preservation, greed, and a love of easy living and, in this way, the
emigrant sharply contrasts to the domestic dissident, who may risk everything for the
struggle. In this view, exit precludes resistance. Once over the border, the dissident is no
more.
James Scott has forcefully challenged this stereotype of the ‘cowardly emigrant’ who,
by leaving, gives up on resistance. In Weapons of the Weak, Scott argues that exit and desertion
are everyday acts of opposition that, unlike open confrontation with authorities, can be
covert and non-confrontational.2 Because sneaking away in the night can be clandestine and
concealed, Scott calls desertion a “weapon of the weak” – that is, a kind of resistance
preferred by subordinate classes in contexts marked by political constraint and control. In
Scott’s view, exit does not halt resistance. Rather, leaving constitutes resistance. On the issue of
self-interest, Scott disagrees that resistance must be free of self-regarding motives such as a
desire for personal gain or self-preservation. He argues that even the exit of an exclusively
self-interested emigrant is resistance. Crossing borders does not halt resistance, as the
cowardly emigrant view has it, but rather exiting creates resistance.
These two conflicting understandings of physical departures point to larger question
about the relationship between exit, resistance, and self-interest. The idea of the cowardly
emigrant assumes that they are naturally in opposition. Running away from the political field
of battle for self-regarding reasons is opposed to the engagement and sacrifices required by
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true resistance. Scott’s understanding, in contrast, tightly links all three terms together. He
posits that exit is a fundamental demonstration of opposition because it indicates the wish to
no longer be a part of the political unit and to no longer participate in it.
In this paper I examine Chen’s dilemma more closely by considering empirical cases
in which the concepts of exit, resistance, and self-interest are brought to the fore. In broad
terms, I argue in favor of understanding of the connection between the three, and I provide
additional support that the standard view of the cowardly emigrant is just what Michnik says
it is, a misleading caricature. There are many different ways to leave a country or a region of
a country and these distinctions are effectively washed away by the oversimplified image of
the emigrant as “someone who had turned his back on his country, who placed himself
outside of the nation.”3
At the same time, I disagree with the claim that an exit motivated wholly by selfinterest can be an act of resistance and it takes issue with the tendency to stretch the concept
of resistance too thinly. More particularly, I argue that resistant exits are characterized by
behaviors and beliefs that reveal that the actors are not motivated completely by selfregarding concerns. I identify three actions that signify a resistant exit: maintaining
attachment to the “homeland,” creating solidarity with organizations of resistance, and
engaging in noisy or spectacular exits.4 These three actions often overlap in practice, but any
one action alone signals a resistant exit. Not all three are required for an exit to qualify as a
resistant exit. An important similarity between these actions is that each shows an otherregarding concern for the homeland. Although those who engage in resistant exits are away
from their native land, they are firmly fixed in its political affairs and in the cause of
opposition. To put the point more broadly, resistant exits tend to demonstrate affection and
care for the political world and for those who reside in it. This other-regarding concern does
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not have to be all-encompassing. A resistant exit can be a “mixed case” in which the exit is
prompted by desire to effect change from abroad and by self-interested motives.
In what follows I begin by offering a working definition of exit and by explaining my
challenge to Scott’s conception of resistance more fully. The next three sections of my essay
examine three actions that signify a resistant exit in turn. In each of these three sections I
make the case that resistant exits are other-regarding and display connection and care for the
homeland and its people. I use various cases from the fugitive slave exits from the American
South in the nineteenth century, to Stokely Carmichael’s departure to Guinea in 1969, to
Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in 2010, in order to explore what a resistant exit looks
like. In the concluding section I return to the case of Chen Guangcheng and the dissident’s
dilemma of whether to stay or go and considers how resistant exit can enrich our of
understanding of actions leading to political change.
Definitions of Exit and Resistance
Exit
The first issue to address is what is meant by exit. The definitive text in this regard is
Albert Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and
States, which begins with a customer who is unhappy with a product or service.5 Hirschman
argues that there are two broad courses of action that a dissatisfied consumer can take: 1.
The consumer can express displeasure to the company through the use of “voice,” 2. The
consumer can “exit” by switching products or service providers. The third term, loyalty,
influences the choice that will be made: high loyalty leads to voice, while low loyalty
encourages exit.6
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Hirschman notes that political scientists tend to focus on voice, or the attempts to
“appeal to a higher authority with the intention of forcing a change in management” or to
use “various types of actions and protests, including those intended to mobilize public
opinion.”7 In contrast, exit involves withdrawing from an organization. Exit causes
“revenues to drop, [and] membership [to] decline,” and thus it impels management “to
search for ways and means to correct whatever faults have led to exit.”8 Exit can occur on
two basic levels:
1. Physical exit / exile from a country. This kind of exit consists of physical movement
from one distinct juridical territory to another.
2. Physical exit from within a country. In this exit, individuals or groups migrate within a
country, moving from one location to another (e.g., the Tiebout framework).9
Hirschman is primarily interested in the relationship between exit and the decision making of
those in power, and he explores how exit might impel the political leadership to make
different policy decisions. He understands exit as a means to encourage decision makers to
be responsive; it is, in short, a tool to pressure the decision making process. Much of the
significant and influential work on exit follows Hirschman in adopting this focus on decision
making.10
My approach differs from Hirschman’s and the literature it inspired because it is not
focused on the effect of exit on decision making, efficacy, or what Steven Lukes called the
“first face of political power.”11 Here I am concerned with exit’s capacity to influence the
ideas of the organization that has been left behind. Resistant exits have the potential to
influence the thoughts and priorities of citizens, policy makers, and leaders of the home
regime in two ways. First, exit can bring to the fore an issue or concern that was either a low
priority on the national agenda or even altogether absent from it. By exiting with resistance, a
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group or an individual can signal the centrality of a concern for them and, through their
actions, raise public awareness of the matter and ideally increase opposition as well. When a
resistant exit involves crossing national borders, it can also attract international attention and,
through pressure from foreign governments or international organizations, bring previously
ignored issues “to the table.”
Second, exits can illuminate pervasive domination or injustice within a country.
Resistant exit can be appealing to dominated groups (or their advocates) that have not been
able to meaningfully express their grievances in the polity or have them effectively addressed
through the normal political channels. For those who lack “voice” in the home regime,
resistant exit can be a dramatic event that sheds light on oppression and domination.12 In a
democracy, this lack of voice may be the result of minority status and the inability to achieve
representation through majoritarian political channels. It may also be the result of one’s
being so far on the political fringe that a dialogue with mainstream political institutions is
difficult or even impossible under current conditions.13 Resistant exit is especially important
in political contexts where public political activity is sharply restricted. As will become clear
in the following discussion of James Scott’s work, it is often unrealistic to expect that
oppressed individuals will be able to articulate their political grievances in public settings.14
Resistance
Resistance is a concept that tends to defy sharp definition and is subject to much
debate. Following historic acts of civil disobedience in the twentieth century, John Rawls,
Hannah Arendt, and Howard Zinn (among others) considered whether legitimate political
resistance must necessarily be done in public, performed collectively by a group,
accomplished for non self-interested reasons, and remain non-violent.15 While there was (and
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remains) much disagreement, considerable emphasis was placed on resistance as being a
public action, often undertaken by groups in the public realm to protest a pervasive social or
political injustice without violence.16 As William Smith recently put it, “civil disobedience is a
public, non-violent and conscientious infringement of law carried out to express opposition
to law and policy.”17 On this view, resistance is public, visible, and performed for publicminded reasons.
James Scott’s Weapons of the Weak challenges this conception of resistance by
asserting that resistance can legitimately be undertaken in secret and for selfish reasons and
often takes this form in repressive political contexts.18 Most of Scott’s examples of “everyday
forms of peasant resistance” focus on the Malaysian agricultural village of Sedaka, but he
does introduce examples that links exit, resistance, and self-interest. He considers, for
instance, peasant desertion from the Russian Army in the summer of 1917 an act of
resistance.19 In a mass exodus that devastated the Army and played “a major and
indisputable part of the revolutionary process,” peasants relinquished their posts and seized
land in the Russian countryside.20 Scott makes a radical claim: resistance can be entirely selfinterested. He states the peasant desertions from the Russian army were wholly “self
interested” deeds that had “no revolutionary intent” whatsoever.21 The peasants’ goals had
nothing to do with politics, resistance, or revolution, but, as Scott sees it, they resisted
nonetheless. He also disputes the idea that resistance “must be shown to be intended” as
resistance.22
Scott’s notion of resistance encounters a serious conceptual problem. In correcting
for the tendency to define resistance in open political contexts as self-less, public and
organized, Scott overcorrects.23 His understanding of resistance goes too far in the other
direction by defining resistance as wholly self-interested, individualistic, and hidden from
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public view.24 According to Scott’s definition of resistance there is no meaningful distinction
to be drawn between the Russian peasant who deserted out of cowardice and the peasant
who deserted in part to bring down the Tsarist government and took further steps to do so.
Yet, the difference between these two peasants is crucial. One exited and the other engaged
in a resistant exit. Scott’s definition of resistance is so broad, in other words, that it washes
out a meaningful distinction between garden-variety exits and politically resistant exits. Let
me be clear that my dispute with Scott is conceptual, not methodological. The problem is
that not that Scott (or social scientists in general) needs to employ the appropriate
methodological tools in order to see resistance even in contexts in which actors will attempt
to obscure it.25 Instead, Scott’s definition is so comprehensive that it is nonspecific.
Here I argue, by contrast, that resistant exit should include a discernable concern for
the political world and for the shared cause of resistance. Resistant exit ought to reveal an
interest in changing common political things, not solely in the self. While this concern may
not be evident to those in power and it may be intermingled with self-interested motives, it
should be identifiable to some as being connected to a larger political cause of opposition.
This means, for instance, that resistance is often not entirely individual but is linked—albeit
sometimes very loosely—to defiance and to a resistant community. This group can be
furtive, fugitive, secret, and organized in a very minimal, haphazard way, but the important
thing is that discernable bonds of solidarity exist between those resisting and this wider
group. Exits that lack any sort of attachment or solidarity look less like resistance and more
like garden-variety exits. Likewise, withdrawals that are clearly deficient in any concern for
the political world are not resistant. Weapons, even those of the weak, have to have an edge
to them.
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Putting this conception of resistance to work in this essay means searching for
behaviors and beliefs that distinguish resistant exits from entirely self-interested and
individualistic exits. Resistant exits need not meet the very high and exacting standards of
civil disobedience, and thus they need not be entirely public, wholly selfless, or highly
organized or orchestrated. At the same time, this notion of resistance suggests that resistant
exits should be somewhat public-interested and they should be connected in some measure
to communities of resistance. They need not be visible to all, but they need to be manifest
nonetheless.26
In practical terms, this means that those resisting through exit will tend to do one of
three non-exclusive things:
1. Maintaining Attachment: an individual or group preserves political connection
to the exited homeland; they attempt to influence its politics from the “outside.”
2. Creating Solidarity: agents are in agreement with or support of the cause of
resistance within the homeland or among the diaspora.
3. Causing Disruption: actors attract public, external attention to the exit itself or
make the exit a demonstration of opposition.
It is not necessary for a resistant exit to encompass all three of these elements. Any one of
them alone signifies an exit undertaken for the sake of resistance. The first attribute is the
most significant however and the other two can be seen as derivative of it. Resistant exits are
attached exits. This attachment is not to the regime, but rather to cause of resistance and to
the political future of the homeland. Individuals who exit and resist care about the political
welfare of those they left behind, and they remain invested in their political fate.27 It is
important to note that this sort of attachment might appear to be counter-intuitive. At the
very moment when individuals are formally and legally separating from the homeland, they
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attach themselves to its possible political future. Detachment, dissociation, and partition are
combined with their opposites of participation, engagement, and concern. With this
definitional framework of resistant exit in place, we can now turn to these three attributes,
seeing the intriguing action of resistant exit in practice.
Maintaining Attachment
Exit, like any deed, can be done in a variety of ways. One way to recognize an
individual engaged in a resistant exit is that the individual or group will remain connected to
the homeland and those left behind. This connection is not to the climate or the culture
(which many emigrants remain attached to), but to domestic politics. A primarily selfinterested exit, in contrast, will leave without looking back to the politics of this nation or
group, without a concern for the larger, on-going struggles of the homeland. Self-interested
exits are forward looking; they are primarily concerned with the opportunities available in
the new land. Resistant exits look both backwards to past grievances and forward to a
possible political future.
To see the importance of attachment, consider American conscientious objectors to
the Vietnam War who fled from the United States to parts elsewhere, usually Canada or
Sweden. Once abroad, these draft evaders and deserters divided into three general groups:
the first was unconcerned with American politics, the second was interested in altering
America along socialist lines, and the third sought change similar to that accomplished by the
civil rights movement.28 The latter two groups were at odds, but in one crucial respect they
remained united: they were unified in their desire to influence American politics from abroad.
What distinguishes these two groups was not that they thought of themselves as Americans
in exile or that they remained connected to their homeland by affective bonds.29 Most of the
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individuals who left because of the war saw themselves as displaced and remained attached
in some way to their native land. They were homesick for the weather, a real American
hamburger, or football.
The crucial identifier of those who were engaged in a resistant exit was that they
maintained a connection to politics of their homeland and solidarity with their political
allies.30 They were émigrés, not immigrants. They actively assisted others to desert or evade
by writing the Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada, a 90-page how-to guide that became
a best seller in the United States.31 They wrote and were interviewed for articles and books
chronicling the evils of the war, their decision to leave, and their hopes for the political
future of the United States.32 While in Canada they protested America’s war by burning draft
cards and induction notices at the American Consulate to oppose the sentencing of Dr.
Spock and to protest the turbulence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in
Chicago.33 Some stole back into the United States to participate in the various moratorium
gatherings in 1969 and to protest the Cambodian invasion in 1970.34 They used their exile
status to their political advantage. As one exile put it, “I’ve been in enough jails in the South
in the civil rights days” to know “[y]ou can’t do fuck-all in jail unless you’re into being a
martyr, and I’m not into martyrdom…You can do something in Canada—a lot do.”35
Not all were attached to the same degree or expressed their solidarity in the same
way, a fact that suggests a continuum between high and low attachment as well as different
dimensions of attachment. The “civil rights” exiles adhered more firmly to the internal,
shared language of rights and justice than socialist exiles and thus engaged in “connected
criticism.”36 The term is Michael Walzer’s, who argues that the effective critic is not radically
detached, disinterested or universalist in principles, but rather speaks to the internal, situated
shared needs of a political community that she or he criticizes. The connected critic is often
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highly censorious of the community, but gives voice to that criticism in the political and
theoretical “language” of the community. For Walzer a connected critic is unlike Jean-Paul
Sartre who, during the Algerian War fashioned himself as an enemy of his own people, and
unlike Lenin, whose vision for Russia was disconnected from Russia’s specific political
history. In the contemporary context, Walzer’s distinction suggests that American and
European citizens who are currently leaving their homelands to fight for the so-called ISIS,
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, are not connected critics.
With the idea of “connected criticism” in mind, it is possible to understand that a
political exile like Stokely Carmichael was comparatively disconnected from the political
language and ideals of his homeland. Carmichael’s parting shots as he left the United States
for Guinea in 1969 was a public declaration that “America does not belong to the blacks.”37
To further cement his opposition and symbolically mark his exit, he changed his name to
Kwame Ture, which combined the names of two African leaders, Kwame Nkrumah and
Sekou Toure. His 2003 book Ready for Revolution urges opposition to the United States, but it
does so through the realization that the struggle of the African diaspora “is one.” “Struggle
here, struggle on the continent, the location didn’t really matter. I knew I would always go
wherever the struggle sent me.”38 Ture’s mission in Africa was to further a pan-African
revolutionary movement, the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, dedicated to “the
total liberation and unification of the mother continent under African socialism.”39 He
criticizes America in the language of African socialism, not American socialism.
Can political attachment also be found in repressive political situations? The
American exiles operated in contexts of established political freedoms of speech and protest,
and it is logical to wonder what role their context played in the open demonstration of their
attachment. While there is no doubt that repressive political contexts make political
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attachment to the homeland far more risky and complex, there are numerous examples of it.
Exiled dissidents from communist Poland, for instance, smuggled copies of the émigré
publication Kultura back into Poland, as well as numerous books which were “passed from
person to person, hidden from the watchful eye of the police.”40 Jan Kavan undertook a
similar effort after leaving communist Czechoslovakia in 1968 when the Warsaw Pact forces
savagely suppressed the Prague Spring uprising. Living abroad in London for twenty years,
Kavan established the Palach Press Agency, a samizdat publishing house that publicized and
distributed key political texts by dissidents in Czechoslovakia, including Charter 77 and
Vaclav Havel’s “Power of the Powerless.”41 While Kavan secretly exported dissident writings
from Czechoslovakia, he also covertly trafficked supplies—books, journals, records, medical
supplies, cameras, duplicating machines—into his homeland. Kavan was a smuggler. He
maintained “one of the indigenous Czech movement’s most effective lifelines.”42 After the
fall of communism in 1989, Kavan returned to his homeland, ran for office, and was elected
to the new Czech federal parliament. In 1991 a video surfaced of Kavan drinking with the
communist secret police, and Kavan’s loyalties during his time abroad were questioned. He
was accused of spying for the secret police and of profiteering through his fly-by-night
smuggling operation. Kavan was eventually cleared of these charges in court, and he
successfully reclaimed his parliamentary seat in the Senate.43
Two things about these examples from communist Poland and Czechoslovakia are
significant. First, both are in accord with much of what we would expect if we adopt Scott’s
conception of resistance. These exiles operated in a far more disguised and low profile way
than the American exiles in Canada and, in Kavan’s case, his resistance was joined to
material gain.
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Second, however, Kavan’s case complicates Scott’s argument that resistance can be
entirely self-interested or wholly hidden. Kavan resistance was effective because his actions
were not only self-interested, and they were not completely hidden from those in the
domestic resistance movement. Consider, for instance, the questions about Kavan’s
character and his allegiances to the Czech underground resistance movement that arose after
the video of the drink with the secret police was released. Kavan was accused of disloyalty to
the resistance, a charge that is not unique to his case. Similar allegations were made in the
case of Czech exiles Josef and Zdena Skvorecky and the Iraqi exile Kanan Makiya.44 Indeed,
the suspicion of disloyalty is a theme running through Lawrence Weschler’s Calamities of
Exile, suggesting that one such calamity is that those in the domestic resistance movement
may call the political exile false-hearted or untrustworthy. Kavan was able to disprove
accusations of complicity with the secret police because his actions were neither completely
secret nor fully self-interested. He was successful because he balanced just how concealed his
actions were. To the secret police, his smuggling had to be concealed—or, if revealed, the
police needed to believe Kavan was a crass profiteer who was actually their ally (hence the
drink). Those resisting inside Czechoslovakia however had to see the true nature of his
trafficking—that is, that it was done to oppose the communist regime—for unselfish
political reasons. As Kavan explained in his own defense, “everybody knows how I lived in
those years, the physical conditions I endured…I doubt if anybody seriously imagines I was
profiteering for my own benefit.”45
In non-democratic contexts the capacity to demonstrate attachment beyond selfinterest can be of vital importance for a political exile. While this attachment will likely be
hidden from those in power, it needs to be plain to those allied in resistance. A politically
contrained context creates both the need for obscuring the attachment—the authorities
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must be duped—and the need for clarifying it. An exile resisting a regime that creates
widespread fear and suspicion will have to overcome the deeply ingrained skepticism of his
or her allies on the inside.
Maintaining attachment to the homeland is an enormous challenge. This strain is
especially clear in repressive contexts in which attachment must be simultaneously hidden
and exposed. But all political exiles are painfully aware of the physical and psychic gulf that
separates them from the homeland and the ever-looming threat of obscurity. As Adam
Michnik observed, “So often, the migration from jail into exile is a road from hell to
nothingness.”46 The prospect of insignificance can be pronounced. On hearing of Saddam
Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, exile Kanan Makiya noted, “Everyone I
respected…immediately gravitated toward the peace position. And with every fiber of my
being I longed to be there with them. Only, in this instance, I couldn’t be. It was an
incredibly painful time.”47 Attachment, maintained from afar, can be painful. It can be risky,
and it may require courage. For these reasons, an attached exit is not a garden-variety selfinterested exit, but rather a sign of an exit undertaken in the name of resistance.
Creating Solidarity
A second, independent indicator of a resistant exit is political solidarity with
communities of resistance within the homeland or abroad. This means that the émigré has a
discernable relationship of accord and agreement with opposition groups inside or outside
the homeland. As with the other two signs, this one alone signals a resistant exit.
To understand why solidarity can be crucial to resistant exiles, one need only look at
exile from the perspective of repressive domestic regimes with an active dissident population.
As China’s leaders know well today, domestic dissidents can be a problem.48 They can
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“contaminate” society, undermine the political legitimacy of the regime, and create unwanted
international attention when the need for heavy-handed methods of suppression arises.49
The international splash created by the conviction of Liu Xiaobo on trumped up charges
(publicized further by his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize) and the public outcry over
the detention of Ai Weiwei for so-called economic crimes illuminates the dangers of internal
dissent. With the adage “domestic shame should not be publicized” in mind, the Chinese
policy was until the late 1980s to sharply restrict exit for human rights and pro-democracy
advocates.50
As Chinese leaders learned, exile can also be a solution to internal dissent because it
introduces the dissident to a wholly unknown difficulty: the problem of political obscurity.
By encouraging dissidents to leave and by refusing them access back into the country, the
regime purges itself of “contamination.” As one Chinese party intellectual proposed in 1989,
“ways could be found of sending people into exile overseas and refusing them permission to
return…on the grounds that their presence would not be beneficial to stability and unity.”51
The goal is not only to keep dissidents out of the country, but also to negate their political
influence long term. The regime’s reasoning is:
…after enjoying the limelight for a short period, [the political émigré] turns
into a troublesome acquaintance, a burdensome regular in the waiting rooms
of various institutions which want only to get rid of him. He is no longer an
authority at home, hence no one listens to him, and he loses him importance
in the West... Émigrés quarrel among themselves, they are condemned to
dependence on one another; they are forgotten by the rest of the world.52
To be placed at the margins of the politics of their homeland and to understand the very real
threat of being forgotten are often novel experience for political émigrés. Within the country,
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they were often at the center of opposition activity and did not want for political attention.
Indeed, they often have to evade unwanted attention from the authorities. The need to garner
attention can be and often is an utterly unfamiliar experience.
Solidarity is a means to counter the problem of political oblivion. It takes two general
forms: creating solidarity in the diaspora by establishing an organization or maintaining
solidarity with existing opposition organizations in the homeland.53 The first method has
been enthusiastically adopted by Cuban exiles in the United States (Cuban American
National Foundation, Brothers to the Rescue, Consenso Cubano) as well as Chinese and
Tibetan émigrés. Before them, a slew of anti-Soviet émigrés in the West adopted the same
strategy. This approach to political exile, oddly enough, has its roots in the exiled monarchal
courts that established themselves abroad with plans to regain formal power, like the House
of Stuart after the England’s Glorious Revolution in the seventeenth century or the House
of Bourbon after Napoleon’s rise to power. In this tradition of advocating for dramatic
change, some exile organizations have championed the overthrow of the regime, including
the anti-Soviet Russian Monarchists, the Spanish Republicans, the anti-Fascist Italians, the
anti-Nazi Germans and the numerous governments-in-exile in Europe in World War II.54
Today the anti-Castro Cuban exiles are heirs to this tradition of seeking regime change. An
important uniting factor in all of these examples is that the exile groups are established outside
of the homeland to affect change within it. Exile organizations generate political solidarity
beyond the borders of the homeland and with others in exile. Often organized in democratic
contexts, these exile organizations are organized and visible; they have a name, a web
presence, a constitution, officers, and so on. At the far end of formality, some governmentsin-exile are permitted to act as a party to treaties and to maintain diplomatic relations with
other countries.55
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The second approach is focused, by contrast, on maintaining solidarity with existing
opposition within the homeland. This was Lenin’s approach. Managing to preserve close
contact with domestic opposition while in self-imposed exile for over a decade, Lenin
returned victoriously to Russia in 1917 and played a major role in the October Revolution.
In repressive contexts, this kind of solidarity with internal opposition can involve a series of
secret returns to the homeland and covert exits from it. The life of Maria Teresa Tula
illustrates the back-and-forth nature of maintaining solidarity, in this case with Co-Madres
(“Mothers of the Disappeared”), an organization of women that formed in the late 1970s to
expose human rights violations during the civil war in El Salvador. After her husband was
assassinated by the military, Tula was targeted. She escaped to Mexico in 1982 with the
assistance of Co-Madres and continued to work with the organization from abroad.
Thinking the political situation had changed in 1984, Tula returned to El Salvador. Two
years later after abductions, torture, and imprisonment, she again fled to Mexico and
eventually to the United States with the help of Co-Madres. In Washington D.C. and
working on behalf of Co-Madres, she observed that her life in the United States
is not very different from before [in El Salvador]…I never went to parties or the
theater or attended a social event. I worked with Co-Madres, trying to make our case
understood by other people so that changes could come about. I do the same here.
The main difference is…that…when I go to bed at night I don’t fear that they will
come in the middle of the night. I feel my children are safe. I sleep better.”56
Physical movement is a refrain of Tula’s account, as she moves in and out of El Salvador
(and also moves within it) to elude the military. But the other refrain, equally as loud, is of
her solidarity with Co-Madres. Throughout every move and no matter the extent of the
physical distance, she continued to work with Co-Madres.
Kirkpatrick, Jennet
18
The problem of obscurity is a serious one for political exiles. Emigrants regularly
lament feeling distant from the news, culture, and even the language of their homeland. As
one Iranian emigrant put it, “I no longer feel the texture of society.”57 For political exiles,
this loss represents the very real threat of being consigned to political oblivion—of
becoming an inconspicuous or unknown figure and of being “forgotten by the rest of the
world.”58 While solidarity is not a cure-all to the unrelenting problem of obscurity, it is an
attempt to avoid being blotted out. Solidarity is both a way to feel the texture of politics in
the homeland and also, in some rare cases, a way to influencing how it is woven.
Causing Disruption
The third discrete sign of a resistant exit is noise, spectacle, and disturbance. In these
cases, the actor uses the exit itself or the status as exile to vociferously expose, shame, or
wound the home regime. The disruption is not directed at other individuals and does not
impinge on their wellbeing, but rather it attracts public attention to the injustices of the
home regime and galvanizes external opposition to it. These kinds of disruptions break
down into two general types, the first of which is signified by traditional speech—that is, the
actors use verbal appeals and criticisms with the intention of forcing political change. In the
second general type the speech is symbolic.
Disruptive exits might also be called “noisy exits,” a term which nods to the
combination of Hirschman’s categories of exit and voice.59 The actors use voice by
“appeal[ing] to a higher authority” or by using “various types of actions and protests,
including those intended to mobilize public opinion.”60 While voice traditionally occurs from
within the political entity in which change is sought, in these cases voice is united with
physical departure or takes place outside of a political organization. An intended audience of
Kirkpatrick, Jennet
19
these cacophonous exits is often external as well. The gaze of an external public or the
attention of outside political authorities is what is sought, with the hope that this attention
will prompt opposition and pressure.
Noisy and disruptive exits are not necessarily devoid of self-interest, especially in
contexts in which political freedoms are sharply curtailed and exit may be a viable way to
protect oneself or one’s family. But, in addition to self-interest, some of these exits reveal
other-regarding beliefs and behaviors as well. Indeed, in some cases it is through the
disruption, the noise, and the spectacle that the interest in the political world beyond the self
is made evident. Consider, for instance, nineteenth-century slaves in the United States who
fled from bondage in the South to a comparatively better life in the in the free Northern
states or in Canada. For those who remained in the United States, this was an internal or
domestic exit; it occurred within the geographic bounds of the polity. These flights were
motivated in part by an individual desire for personal security, safety, and freedom. The
estimated 40,000 to 100,000 who exited from the South did so to better their lot.61 Indeed,
for some of these individuals, exit was a means of liberation and self-preservation. Departing
meant being free and surviving. The American slave exodus is permeated with self-regarding
motivations: the self-interested desire to be free, to not be a slave, not to be killed, not be
raped, to earn a wage, and so on.62
This self-regard is not all encompassing, however. Amid the slave exodus, there is a
phenomenon that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. calls “curious”: slave narratives in which the author
recounts the cruelties and injustices of slavery in order to strike a blow against the institution
itself.63 More than 6,000 slave narrative records have been discovered.64 More than a hundred
former slaves wrote book-length accounts chronicling their life in slavery and bearing
witness to the desire of every slave to be free. Because of his keen intellect, his tireless
Kirkpatrick, Jennet
20
efforts, and the power of his prose, Frederick Douglass is a paragon of this noisy, disruptive
exit. In addition to speaking to countless audiences New England, Great Britain, and Ireland
about the injustices of slavery, Douglass published his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
in 1845, which sold 5,000 copies in two months, and he founded the abolitionist newspaper
The North Star.65 Interest in Douglass’s story extended beyond the United States; his Narrative
went through nine editions in Britain and was republished in Ireland. Douglass was a
popular speaker and writer in Ireland and the British Isles, to which he considered exiting,
but did not because he wanted to remain closer to the struggle against slavery in the United
States.
Seen from the vantage point of disruptive exit, a significant strand of Douglass’
resistance (and his 100 fellow authors) might be described as re-creating and re-living his exit
for various public audiences outside of the American South. Douglass fashioned what had
been a covert and personal escape into a political spectacle that called dominant power
relations into question. He used his own flight to make noise and attract attention to the
plight of others.66
A skeptic may point out that the problem of self-interest cannot be so easily
dismissed in Douglass’s case or in that of many other slaves who wrote and spoke to further
the causes of anti-slavery and abolitionism. Douglass did, of course, earn a living from
transforming his flight into political resistance, and he established renowned and standing
within the abolitionist and anti-slavery movements and beyond. Indeed, by the end of his life,
Douglass had served as an advisor to President Lincoln and as U.S. minister and consul to
Haiti. What the skeptic’s view misses, however, is that Douglass risked the very thing that he
had escaped for—his freedom—every time he publicly spoke or wrote about his escape
prior to his manumission in 1846. The Fugitive Acts of 1793 and 1850, which enforced
Kirkpatrick, Jennet
21
Article IV, section 2 of the Constitution, provided for the seizure and return of alleged
runaway slaves who escaped from the South into another state or federal territory. Neither
Act was favorable to the former slave. In the first decade after the passage of the 1850 act,
322 blacks were returned to slavery while only 11 were declared free.67 As Harriet Jacobs
makes clear in her narrative, the Fugitive Slave Act made freedom in the North less secure.
“All that winter [after the passage of the 1850 Act] I lived in a state of anxiety…I dreaded
the approach of summer, when snakes and slaveholders make their appearance. I was, in fact,
a slave in New York, as subject to slave laws as I had been in a Slave State. Strange
incongruity in a State called free!”68 One solution was to remain both visible and hidden --that is, to be discernable to other abolitionists and to other slaves who were fleeing and in
need of assistance, while remaining closeted to enemies and slave catchers. Self-regarding
behavior and other-regarding behavior were often intertwined, in other words, in what was a
delicate splice between action, disruption, participation and a quiet, innocuous blending into
the background.
It is important to note that resistant exits do not always serve the cause of racial
justice and inclusion. Indeed, they can be reactionary and racist. In the United States, for
instance, neo-Nazis are migrating to enclaves and compounds in Idaho and elsewhere in the
name of constructing a racially purer communities. Their exits are noisy and disruptive, as
members court publicity by burning crosses, by extolling the virtues of Adolf Hitler, and by
disputing the veracity of the Holocaust. Resistant exit is a practice or method that can serve
a variety of ends. There is nothing about resistant exit itself that precludes it from being
undertaken in the name of discriminatory ideas or to restore an unjust by-gone political era.
The second general type of disruptive exit does not involve speech making or writing,
but rather consists of non-verbal actions. While in American constitutional law, “symbolic
Kirkpatrick, Jennet
22
speech” has consisted of acts such as the wearing of armbands and the burning of the
American flag, the symbolic speech of disruptive exit has been far more extreme and final.
Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor, set himself on fire in a public street in front
of the Governor’s office in the center of town in Sidi Bouzid following the confiscation of
his wares by a municipal official. Bouazizi did make a verbal complaint to the Governor’s
office of his mistreatment, and, by some accounts, he shouted, “How do you expect me to
make a living?” before he dousing himself with gasoline. Still it was not Bouazizi’s spoken
statements that attracted the attention of concerned individuals in Tunisia and beyond. The
action itself—a dreadful, dramatic public spectacle of exit via self-immolation—is what
garnered the attention of various publics and played a role in pro-democracy protests in
Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, and Syria. And, although the injustices they face are
different, approximately 114 Tibetans have engaged in the same practice, setting themselves
on fire to protest Chinese rule in Tibet and human rights abuses. Lacking freedom of speech,
these Tibetans have turned violence on themselves with the hope that their resistant exit
might disrupt or dislodge Chinese rule.69 In 2013, a string of self-immolations occurred in
Bulgaria to oppose the Borisov cabinet, while India has seen waves of alleged political
suicides around the issue of affirmative action (or the policy of “Reservation”) and the
recent demand to create the new state of Telangana.70
These sacrificial exits are complex and uncommon. They speak to the hopeless
political circumstances of those who undertake them but also—and no less importantly—to
a hopeful assertion of individual political will and to the promise of political change. Political
martyrs are rare because they undertake political actions in which it is largely impossible for
them to personally benefit. They seem different in degree, not in kind, from verbally
disruptive, noisy exits because they too involve risk and sacrifice. While the precariousness
Kirkpatrick, Jennet
23
of verbal disruptions is often tempered by self-regard, they too are undertaken in the name
of changing the future political world.
Flight and Fight
In closing, it makes sense to return to Chen Guangcheng’s dilemma of whether to
remain in China to continue to fight for legal reforms or to depart for the United States.
Chen waffled over what to do, perhaps because neither action was without personal, political,
and physical risk. Staying in China would allow Chen to continue to fight for the rights of
peasant farmers, while at the same time placing him and his family in a precarious position
of risking future trials, prison sentences and perhaps worse. Exiting China, in contrast,
would eliminate these threats, but would also have an effect on his capacity to resist.
Chen chose the latter option, deciding to leave China. One fascinating element of his
departure was that it initially appeared to be a non-resistant, garden-variety exit. The official
reason for Chen’s exit—agreed to by the United States and, most importantly, China—was
educational, not political. Chinese officials consented that Chen should be allowed to leave
the country to further his study of law at New York University. If one looked no further into
the matter, Chen’s departure might look like a scholarly visit, an intellectual opportunity for
Chen to study, conduct research, collaborate, and exercise his talents abroad. According to
the official version of events, Chen’s exit was a kind of impromptu Fulbright.
Yet, as we have seen, there is reason to doubt this official version of events and to
probe more deeply into the motivations of Chinese officials. Emigration has been employed
in China and elsewhere as a strategy to rid society of “contaminating” dissidents. By refusing
to allow dissidents back into the country, China can quite neatly change a temporary visit
Kirkpatrick, Jennet
24
into a permanent exile. Given this, it seems plausible that Communist Party officials
calculated that Chen would cease to be a political problem once sent to the United States.
After Chen was gone, he would be forgotten. Recall Michnik eloquent comment that exile
can be “a road from hell to nothingness.”71 The Communist Party has aggressively aided and
abetted this process of forgetting. Rather than celebrating Chen as an intellectual ambassador
of Chinese law, it has attempted to expunge Chen fully from the public record.72 Hilary
Clinton’s diplomatic memoir Hard Choices, which discusses the Chen case extensively, was
not published in China because “publishers were fearful of heavy fines if they sold books the
government deemed embarrassing or too politically sensitive.”73
Examining Chen’s actions since leaving China also cautions against understanding
his exit as a self-interested opportunity to further his career in law. Once in the United States,
the resistant nature of his exit has become quite clear. Two signals stand out: Chen’s
attachment to the Chinese people and his willingness to act in exile as a noisy, disruptive
critic of China. Since arriving, Chen has been outspoken in his opposition to the current
Chinese regime, outlining the hardships that he and others have suffered and continue to
suffer at its hand and, rather than avoiding public attention, he has sought it out.74 Among
other things, he has testified before Congress, he visited Taiwan and praised its democracy in
an 18-day tour, and he has received a number of awards, including the annual award from
Human Rights First and the Lantos Human Rights Prize. Acting as provocateur to the
Chinese government (and appearing to relish the role), Chen has complained bitterly about
the harassment of his relatives who still reside in Shandong Province and has made threats to
embarrass Chinese officials with additional revelations.75 Further media coverage followed
his public accusation that New York University ended his fellowship to appease Beijing and
Kirkpatrick, Jennet
25
his announcement that he was joining the Witherspoon Institute, a conservative research
group in Princeton, New Jersey.76
While Chen has had successes furthering the cause of resistance abroad, there are
also risks to his actions. Exit removed his immediate family from harm, but it protected
neither his extended family who still are subject to harassment nor his comrades. On
October 12, 2014, Guo Yushan, who played a key role in helping Chen Guangcheng to
escape house arrest, was led away from his home and detained for “picking quarrels and
provoking troubles,” a charge typically used to silence dissidence.77 Acting from abroad also
risks political obscurity in China. Will the Chinese people remember Chen or will the
Communist Party succeed in blotting him out?
For those on the mainland who have crossed the Great Firewall, Chen can stay
connected through social media and the Internet. As one émigré puts it, “The Internet and
globalization have changed the very concept of exile.”78 Technology now allows the
Walzerian “connected critic” to remain connected in new ways. It permits real-time
discourse with dissidents in the homeland, and the opportunity to “feel the texture” of
present-day politics without being physically present. Chen and others like him can act as
participant-observers in a way that permits both security and activism. There is an
opportunity through social media as well to constantly influence public opinion.
Like many resistant exiles before him, Chen’s case illuminates the tensions between a
self-interested desire to protect one’s family and a public-minded desire to further the cause
of resistance. In a poignant article entitled “Mr. Chen, Welcome to America,” Dan Wang, an
exile from the Tiananmen democracy movement of 1989, addresses this tension directly.
I’ve come to believe that exile is not a liability but an asset… I hope that Chen
Guangcheng knows that although a country’s democracy and human rights are of
Kirkpatrick, Jennet
26
great importance, so are a family’s love and affection…If he chooses to leave now,
no one has good reason to criticize him. He will not be giving up the fight. He may
well be helping it more.79
It remains to be seen if Chen’s exit will substantially help the cause of resistance and the
struggle for human rights in China. What is more certain is that Chen, while gaining much,
has also sacrificed much. It is this tension between self-interest and care for the political
world that make Chen and others like him so fascinating, compelling, and admirable. It is
this tension, not the erasure of one side or the other, that is at the center of resistant exit.
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1
Michnik 1987, 17-18. Michnik’s letter eventually complicates this stereotype of the
cowardly emigrant in ways that suggest an alliance between exit and resistance. Wang Dan
raises similar concerns about Chen’s case specifically. Dan 2012.
2
Scott 1985.
3
Though his focus is different, Yossi Shain’s research is particularly insightful on the
political dimensions of exit and emigration. Shain 1988, 1989, 1991, 2005. Also see Mueller
1999.
4
I use “homeland” or “native land” to signify the physical and political place that was exited,
regardless of whether it is a nation state or a region within a nation state. As the cases
demonstrate, ‘home’ is often an ambivalent concept, encompassing both “yearning and
escapism.” Honig 2001, xiv.
5
Hirschman 1970.
6
Hirschman 1970, 77-78. On the ambiguity of Hirschman’s conception of loyalty, see, e.g.,
Pfaff 2006, 20.
7
Hirschman 1970, 30.
8
Hirschman 1970, 4.
9
Attentive readers will recall that Hirschman also defines exit in non-physical terms. The
politician who exits from a political party, for instance, does not physically change locations
but exits nonetheless. Hirschman 1970, 106-119. For the purposes of this paper, I focus on
physical exits.
Kirkpatrick, Jennet
31
10
Barry 1974, Bednar 2007, Clark, Golder, and Golder 2012, Dowding et al. 2000, Dowding
and John 2012, Gehlbach 2006, Kato 1998.
11
Lukes 2004.
12
Lukes 2004, Scott 1990.
13
See, for instance, Abanes 1996, Adamic 1934, Barkun 2001, Brundage 1997, Crothers 2003,
Dees and Corcoran 1996, Dyer 1997, Gurr 1970, Kirkpatrick 2008.
14
Scott 1985.
15
Arendt 1972, Ball 1973, Bedau 1969, 1991, Fortas 1968, Glazer 1970, McWilliams 1969,
Murphy 1971, Rawls 1969, Singer 1973, Zinn 1968.
16
On the efficacy of non-violent resistance, see Chenoweth and Stephan 2011, Howes 2013,
Arreguín-Toft 2005, Byman and Waxman 2001, Martin 1992, Pape 1996, 2005.
17
Smith 2012, 826. For recent challenges to this definition of resistance, see Laudani 2013,
Sabl 2001, Kirkpatrick 2008, Martin 2013.
18
Scott 1985, Scott 1990, 198-201. Also see Gutmann 1993, Ginzberg 2014, Kerkvliet 1986
19
Scott 1985, 293. Also see Scott 2009.
20
Scott 1985, 293-301.
21
Scott 1985, 294, emphasis added. Also see Scott 1986, Scott and Kerkvliet 1986. As WingChung Ho puts it, “resistance [in Scott’s account] becomes a set of actions so
individualized…that it seems to be recognizable only within the subjectivity of the actor. Ho
2011, 45.
22
Scott 1985, 290, emphasis original.
23
Sherry Ortner notes that in Scott’s account “the question of what is or is not resistance
became much more complicated. When a poor man steals from a rich man, is this resistance
or simply a survival strategy?” Ortner 2004, 175. Also see, McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 1997,
150-151, Stoler 1986.
24
For analysis of peasant resistance in keeping with the argument developed here, see Adas
1986, 72-78, Fegan 1986, 92-95, 104.
25
Scott 1985, 290-291.
26
To put this differently, resistant exits cannot be wholly hidden or obscured. Scott 1990.
27
See, Shain 1988, 1989, 1991.
28
Dickerson 1999, Finn 1968, Hagan 2001, Williams 1971, Cooney and Spitzer 1971.
29
Shklar 1993.
30
Shain 1988, 394.
31
Williams 1971, 66-77.
32
See, e.g., Frutkin 2008, Dickerson 1999, Hagan 2001, Williams 1971.
33
Williams 1971, 78.
34
Dickerson 1999, Finn 1968, Williams 1971.
35
Williams 1971, 334.
36
Walzer 1988, 1987, Also see Mouffe 2008.
37
Cornwell 1998.
38
Carmichael and Thelwell 2003, 642.
39
Carmichael and Thelwell 2003, 675.
40
Michnik 1987, 19.
41
Palach Press was named after Jan Palach, who set himself on fire in 1969 to protest of the
political apathy in Czechoslovakia. Weschler 1998, 64.
42
Weschler 1998, 63.
Kirkpatrick, Jennet
32
43
Weschler 1998, 63-135.
Weschler 1998, 134, 1-61.
45
Weschler 1998, 104.
46
Michnik 1987, 22.
47
Weschler 1998, 48.
48
Lee 1992, Ma 1993, Michnik 1987, 22, Hedlund 1989. Napoleon, the tsarist Russian
government, and Mussolini were all deeply troubled by the activities of political exiles. Shain
1991.
49
Lee 1992, 41-3.
50
Lee 1992, 41-3.
51
Ma 1993, 373.
52
Michnik 1987, 22.
53
Afkhami 1994, Shain 1988, 1989, 1991, Weschler 1998.
54
Shain 1989, 145-162.
55
Shain 1991, Aust 2010, 26-28, Talmon 1998.
56
Afkhami 1994, 48.
57
Afkhami 1994, 99.
58
Michnik 1987, 22.
59
On “noisy exit,” see Barry 1974, 95-99, Hirschman 1970, 117, Laver 1976, 741-3, Pfaff
and Kim 2003, 403, Dowding et al. 2000, 475, Dowding and John 2012, 10, 58, Montanaro
2012, 1102-3.
60
Hirschman 1970, 30.
61
Davis and Gates 1985, Davis 2014, Gates 1987, Starling 1988. Some of these exits were
local (slaves did not leave the South), short-lived, and unsuccessful. David Byron Davis
notes that it is “probable that between 1830 and 1860, no more than 1,000 or 2,000 fugitives
annually made it to the North and achieved freedom.” Davis 2014, 235-236.
62
Andrews and Gates 2000, Andrews 1988, Gates 1987.
63
Gates 1987, 1.
64
Starling 1988, xxvi.
65
Gould 2007, 23-24. William Wells Brown, Josiah Henson, Charles Ball, and Solomon
Northrup also wrote popular narratives. Ball 1859, Brown 1991, Henson 2008, Northup
2014.
66
Bruce Jr. 2007.
67
Zinn 2004, xv. Also see Bearse 1969, Cover 1975, Smith 1860, Von Frank 1998, Friedman
1971, 28-50.
68
Jacobs 1987, 655.
69
Other well-known political acts of self-immolation include Thich Quang Durc, who
protested the persecution of Buddhists in Viet Nam in 1963 (and five other monks who
replicated his act in the same year) and Armia Krajowa, Ryszard Siwiec, Jan Palach, and
Romas Kalanta, all of whom opposed Soviet rule in Soviet-bloc countries.
70
Also see Rasool and Payton 2014.
71
Weschler 1998, 104.
72
Gao 2014, Osnos 2014
73
Perlez 2014.
74
Zhang 2013, Jacobs and Zhang 2013.
75
Eckholm 2012, Buckley 2013.
76
Jacobs 2013.
44
Kirkpatrick, Jennet
33
77
Jacobs 2014.
Dan 2012.
79
Dan 2012.
78
Kirkpatrick, Jennet
34