The latest thing I’m thinking about with Andor is the question of its relationship to Cassian’s line in Rogue One about having “been in this fight since [he] was six years old.” Now: there’s still a lot that we don’t know about what happened between Cassian-as-Kassa and Cassian as we see him in this show, and revelations about that might change our understanding of the character. But right now I’m really interested in how the show interprets “be[ing] in this fight.” The fan interpretation has been that Cassian has been a member of the Rebellion (or some faction that identifies itself broadly with the goals of the Rebellion) since he was six years old. What the show gives us is a Cassian whose life, since (presumably) the mining disaster when he was six years old, has itself been made a fight with a hegemony that has pitted itself against his existence. The show’s Cassian (as far as we know at this point) has been sent to prison for acts against the Empire, has stolen from the Empire, and has basically done everything except join a formal movement.
I think this is significant because it’s a very different understanding of what being in a struggle entails. I know an awful lot of people who join formal activist groups and do very little aside from giving money and occasionally sending out form letters. They place a lot of importance on the identity part of a movement: I am a member of this, and my personal identity is determined by self-identification as part of this movement. Many of their acts center around self-identification: for instance, wearing t-shirts, attending marches, buying merchandise. However, most of those people do not live their lives resisting hegemony. In part, this is because they don’t have to: they have the option to not resist hegemony because hegemony is not opposed to their existence in the way that, to take just one example and the one with which I happen to be best acquainted, it is opposed to the existence of asylum-seekers/migrants. When hegemony is opposed to your existence, every day you fight hegemony to survive. Sometimes you fight literally, by engaging in acts of violence. Sometimes you fight by stealing, begging, escaping, lying, hiding. Sometimes you fight by doing some or all of those things under the guise of being a model citizen. This is one of the things that resistance can be.
It seems important the Cassian moves in and out of acts that we would identify as formal Rebellion. The Rebellion isn’t bad; the Rebellion is great. The Rebellion wins. But Cassian was in this fight before he was in the Rebellion, and after doing stuff that counts as “being in the Rebellion,” and before getting a job and a title in the Rebellion. He was in this fight because he was doing things to survive and help others survive in the face of an Empire that does not see them as “people.” That’s what being in this fight looks like. The fight is not between two organizations; it’s not even between two systems of government, or two economic philosophies. It’s a fight against a power that classifies some forms of life as grist, as extraneous, as fuel. Resisting that power therefore takes many forms of refusal to accept that classification, to insist on the value and dignity of those people whom you’ve been taught have no value or dignity— which may or may not include yourself. And the importance of understanding this lies in the fact that it denies you the opportunity to exculpate yourself by virtue of your inability to pick up a rifle. It’s not about picking up a rifle. The fight is now. The fight is every day.
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