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1 Z i n e s a n d T h o s e W h o Ma k e T h e m Introducing the Citizen Bricoleur La perruque is the worker’s own work disguised as work for his employer. It differs from pilfering in that nothing of material value is stolen. It differs from absenteeism in that the worker is officially on the job. La perruque may be writing a . . . love letter on “company time” or . . . “borrowing ” a lathe to make a piece of furniture for [the] living room . . . [T]he worker who indulges in la perruque actually diverts time (not goods, since he uses only scraps) from the factory for work that is free, creative, and precisely not directed toward profit. —Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life In an amusing illustration of how acts of resistance get mustered into serving that which they resist, Walker Percy tells of how sightseers at the Grand Canyon must exercise considerable savvy if they wish to reclaim a sovereign view of the canyon from those who intend that it be seen in the officially approved ways. Percy offers a number of tactics by which ordinary tourists can seize or “recover” the canyon for themselves. One of the most obvious is simply choosing to get off the beaten track—in other words, refusing the organized, planned tours in favor of venturing forth through the canyon on one’s own. Problems arise, however, when a park official notices that maybe a few too many tourists are electing to get off the beaten track, thereby calling into question the very necessity (and profitability) of organized tours in the first place. When this happens, only one solution recommends itself: tourists are advised to “consult ranger for information on getting off the beaten track.” Perhaps for a slightly higher fee, tourists can now buy tickets for the official Off the Beaten Track Tour and thereby maneuver around the standard tours designed for those who, sadly, cannot afford a more authentic view of the Grand Canyon (Percy 2008, 483). Percy’s essay is a complex, somewhat desultory examination of the difficulty in exercising some measure of autonomy—or, to use his term, 30    After the public turn sovereignty—over one’s experiences. While Percy would not put it in these terms, he shows how the marshaling forces of power can so easily deputize resistant others on behalf of the complete hegemony such power seeks to enforce. In making this point, Percy raises the unsettling question of whether resistance is even possible. Is there any way to get beyond the reach of appropriating power (what Percy calls the “symbolic complex”) (Percy 2008, 482)? Are there any loopholes or escape routes through which one might pass in order to establish a site of resistance outside of that power? Is it, in other words, even possible to get off the beaten track? If we were to draw reasonable inferences from this and his other examples, Percy’s answer to these questions would be a qualified yes—qualified because, for Percy, resistance occurs not in the forum, the streets, or the public square but rather in the ad hoc, ingenuous , and quotidian strategies that individuals deploy in everyday contexts . For Percy, acts of resistance would likely seem to be rather innocuous and happenstance affairs, designed primarily to allow individuals to live lives that are genuinely their own. Might not the same be said of the office or factory employee who “borrows” workplace time and resources for private purposes? Are these not acts of resistance as well? Certainly, in his illustration of la perruque, Michel de Certeau wishes us to believe as much. The ethically questionable practices described in the above epigraph are legitimized by the fact that “nothing of material value is stolen” and that tools are merely borrowed, not taken. Most significant of all are the virtuous ends that the activity of la perruque serves, ends that are “free, creative, and precisely not directed toward profit” (de Certeau 1984, 25). Even though it is easy to imagine other, less noble purposes that such borrowings might serve, de Certeau is not as much interested in a formal, ethical analysis of this situation as he is in identifying everyday, tactical forms of resistance. In his illustration, de Certeau wishes to draw our attention to the ordinary resourcefulness, the very unheroic cunning of those who “make do” with, or make the best of, the situations in which they find themselves...

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