Body Breakdowns as Politics: Identity regulation in a high-commitment activist organization

Identity regulation beyond a discursive practice

Identity regulation has been investigated and understood primarily as a discursive practice (e.g. Ainsworth & Hardy, 2009; Kuhn, 2006; Musson & Duberley, 2007). In their seminal work, Alvesson and Willmott (2002) examined the role of discourse in identity regulation and managerial control, shedding light on the specific strategies targeting individuals.

Answering the call to investigate how control is exercised through the ‘manufacture’ of subjectivity (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002, p. 622), Musson and Duberley (2007) highlight the relational, situational and multiple dimensions of identity construction. Narratives of self, they argue, result from an ongoing, ‘active and critical process’ (p. 147) of identity construction, and are often imbued with ambiguities (Collinson, 2003) and contradictions. Hence, identity regulation necessarily involves a struggle over subjectivity (Knights & McCabe, 2003) that transcends discourse. Indeed, Alvesson and Willmott (2002) have noted the potential significance of ‘somatic and tacit aspects of social interaction and human development’ (p. 639) that could impact the formation and transformation of self-identity. In fact, various ethnographies about organizational control have pointed to the role of material elements, such as artefacts and bodies, in identity regulation processes (e.g. Casey, 1996; Covaleski, Dirsmith, Heian, & Samuel, 1998; Michel, 2011; Paring et al., 2017). Still, many identity scholars emphasize the lack of consideration for the material actualization of identity regulation (Bardon, Clegg, & Josserand, 2012; Iedema, 2007) – particularly its corporeal side (Paring et al., 2017). While the interest in subjective identities as a ‘disembodied phenomenon’ (Knights & Clarke, 2017, p. 340), ‘construed through discourse and other symbolic means’ (Brown, 2015, p. 21) has been dominant among organizational scholars, emergent research on the body-identity nexus has been challenging the underlying assumption separating body and mind (Knights & Clarke, 2017, p. 351). This paper thus emphasizes the relationship that individuals build with their body – a relationship that helps them to reconsider their subjective positioning within an organization as well as their life projects.

The body-identity nexus in the literature

In their review of the literature on identity in management and organization studies, Knights and Clarke (2017) criticize its prevailing neglect of the body in favour of ‘the dominant discursive, linguistic and often masculine narratives’ (p. 340). They have thus called for an embodied understanding of identity (p. 346) aimed at further exploring its relations with self at work (Johansson et al., 2017), as a resistance tool (Courpasson & Monties, 2017), or as corporate capital (Tyler & Abbott, 1998; Wolkowitz, 2006).

Increasing attention has been paid to the body-identity nexus in recent years. In relation to identity regulation, the role of the disciplined body has been highlighted in the reproduction of masculine identities (Kachtan & Wasserman, 2015) and among rugby players (Coupland, 2015). In a similar vein, Johansson et al. (2017) shed light on the gendered dimension inscribed in managerial athleticism and how it operates through specific norms implied in processes of bodily identity regulation. Also, the work of Paring et al. (2017) shows how employees, in order to regulate their identity, were required to internalize certain bodily gestures and postures that formed a new set of ‘bodily norms’ (p. 848) needed to perform new tasks and roles within the firm.

Hence, the body constitutes one of the most important signifiers of identity (Ainsworth & Hardy, 2009), in terms of both compliance and resistance. For example, in his 1998 study of flight attendants, Murphy analyses the embodied strategies used by female employees to resist a constraining culture imposed upon their bodies. Conversely, Courpasson and Monties (2017), in their ethnography on police work, show how police officers willingly embarked upon disciplinary bodily practices to resist institutional reforms that were imposing increasing judicial and clerical tasks, taking them off the streets. The authors thus emphasize bodies as resources for identity work, in which individuals place ‘tacit confidence’ (p. 51) in order to resist alternative visions of their work.

While constructed in discourse, the body is not confined to such. Michel (2011, 2014), in her nine-year ethnography on investment banks, shows how the identity of bankers was influenced by embodied cues of organizational controls. Examples include the constant presence of co-workers in the office, round-the-clock administrative support, free car services, meals, health clubs and dry-cleaning valets. These ‘homey bodily comforts’ (p. 18), perceived by workers as increasing their autonomy, were actually used by the banks as unobtrusive controls to enhance the bankers’ sense of well-being and – therefore – their work performance. Overall, research suggests that the passion that drives workers to mistreat their bodies to the point of sacrificing them points toward the power of contemporary organizations in diffusing new forms of self-control (Johansson et al., 2017) but also to the potential agency of individuals to transcend these (Michel, 2011).

Body politics and the significance of breakdowns

These recent studies show the centrality of the body in processes of identity regulation, as bodies seem to mediate employees’ responses to cultural control. Bodies can hence be used and understood as political instruments – of both compliance and resistance – that necessarily affect individual identities (Courpasson & Monties, 2017). For instance, conceptualizing the body as ‘the locus of cultural interpretation and the site at which the individual takes up, interprets, and possibly transforms a set of received interpretations’ (Trethewey, 1999, p. 447), post-structuralist feminist research has long established the political implications of embodied identities, notably investigating the positioning of women’s bodies within gendered discourses. However, while examining how professional women’s bodies are normalized, controlled and disciplined in organizational contexts, Trethewey (1999) suggests in her conclusion the potential emergence of ‘a new social Darwinism’ (p. 446) – i.e. a boundary between women with ‘fit enough bodies or personalities to survive corporate downsizing or to be promoted’ and the ‘unfit’ others (p. 446). The body is thus understood as an impediment when it cannot comply with the norm, as with aging women or disabled people in organizations. The underlying norm of discrimination is not used as a political instrument to transform the overarching normative culture.

We take a different view, arguing that body breakdowns can serve not as impediments but rather moments of realization when individuals move away from compliance toward critically questioning one’s identity. In fact, Deetz (1998) suggests that – as long as it can support work – the body is subject to self-surveillance and medicated (e.g. with caffeine or cold and stomach medications) to hide any symptoms of stress and fatigue. When it breaks down, the body becomes misaligned with organizational norms and therefore unable to conform to its disciplining culture. Michel’s 2014 study of investment bankers demonstrates how body breakdowns made it impossible for them to continue working in culturally normative ways, hence creating the necessary distance for them to recognize the previously transparent influence of the banks’ organizational culture and transcend the invisible controls within their work environments. It is precisely the experience of work-disruptive breakdowns that can push individuals to reflect on their action and its relationship with the organizational culture. In our study, breakdowns signal to the individuals that they do not inhabit their bodies as static and passive objects; they rather experience them as arguments for questioning a particular regime of control based on pace, intensity and extreme physical requirements.

We thus extend this line of research by arguing that body breakdowns reveal the precarious dynamics of identity regulation processes and the potential political dimensions of bodies in the face of disciplining cultures. Indeed, we show specifically that breakdowns trigger a progressive physical and normative disconnection between activists and their organization when they realize their unfitness to the bodily requirements of the working culture. Hence, their passion for the cause remains steady, but is no longer tied to their engagement with the organization. Self-expulsions become political gestures rather than punishments, as they show the regeneration of activists’ autonomy to choose the reasons why they shape their lives in one way or another.

Research setting

Born in 2014 at Bayonne, a small city in the south of France, AlterNV emerges as a central actor of the French environmental activist scene in 2015 with its hundred local chapters mobilizing young and novice activists for COP21 taking place in Paris. It thus defines itself as an ‘incubator of new militants’ (extract from a collective text produced post-COP21) who are attracted by its spirit of joyful, inclusive and concrete activism. One member, Marie, describes her early involvement:

I could see that it was very open, very familial. . . that there was a very good atmosphere among people (. . .) and that we could gather easily without having any a priori knowledge about what to do to enter the (activist) domain. And so, I stayed.

Combining experimentation with concrete alternatives and non-violent direct action in the public space, the group’s practice is based on what they call a ‘radical-pragmatic software’ that emphasizes the value of learning by doing, but also of strict organization and discipline. On this matter, the group’s status document highlights ‘discipline, rigor, sense of organizing, and search for efficiency’ as the basic common principles of engagement. Exemplifying the enactment of these principles, regular meetings are characterized by a strict detailed agenda, including scheduled interventions by members; time duration for each debate; and role distribution between facilitators, time keepers and rapporteurs.

To give a sense of its size, the movement claims over a hundred active local chapters in France, one chapter in Haiti and another in Switzerland. Its power derives from its capacity for mobilization at the national level, along with specific skills in organizing distributed actions at the local level. Membership in each local chapter ranges between 10 and 50 activists with varying levels of experience, aged between 19 and 40, mostly well educated. Organized as a network, AlterNV relies on the voluntary work of its members while occasionally employing some of them for specific temporary campaign missions. Our study focuses on the group’s core organizers, whose engagement was characterized by a constant and long-term commitment to the movement as members of the national facilitation team. This team’s main task is to implement collective decisions taken at assemblies, while ensuring coordination and communication among local chapters. These assemblies consist of face-to-face meetings every three to four months where activities are debated and where all members are allowed equal representation.

Following COP21, the movement engaged in a process of structuration seen as necessary to build a mass mobilization for climate justice in France. This led to the introduction of numerous organizational arrangements through the formalization of rules and procedures. Table 1 summarizes the main organizational choices regarding membership, sanctions, rules and monitoring that exemplify the formalization of the movement. Through this process, AlterNV lost many of its original characteristics as a movement, such as inclusiveness, horizontality and autonomy, in favour of more centralization, procedural rigidity and differentiation of roles.

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Table 1.

Overview AlterNV’s main organizational arrangements collectively approved in 2016 and 2017.

Organizational elements*	Illustrations of formalization of the organization post-COP21
Membership: who can join in decision-making	An affinity-based recruitment method within the national facilitation team. – approved in February 2016
Sanctions: rewards and punishments for individuals	Exclusion procedure and definition of ‘toxic’ behaviour: disturbing the smooth internal functioning, repeatedly creating tensions and exhaustion within a group; endangering other people (harassment, physical/verbal violence), not respecting the common Charter nor collective decisions. – approved in November 2016 and March 2017
Rules (for participation): explicit expectations about actions and classifications to follow	Conditions for using the label in organizing local actions. – approved in June 2017
	A written procedure for participating in national agenda setting. – approved in March 2017
Monitoring: observing performance and behaviour of individuals	Two specific written procedures for organizing national Actions: who can decide on its ‘strategic relevance’ and how it can be organized. – approved in June 2017

*

As defined in Den Hond, de Bakker and Smith (2015).

Data collection and analysis

Data were collected between February 2016 and November 2017, from periods of observation and participation in 18 meetings, 3 assemblies combining various chapters, 2 training camps and 5 direct action performances. Analysis of internal documents helped to trace the formalization of the organization. Observations account for a total of 1096 hours. Additionally, 23 interviews lasting between 45 and 120 minutes were conducted. Among these interviewees, nine were co-organizers with whom we had worked and discussed issues of engagement and exhaustion on multiple occasions through informal conversations. Respondents were first identified through personal contacts and followed a snowball sampling technique.

The research process evolved in an iterative manner, moving from analysing the empirical materials to developing the conceptual framework. Through an open-ended and inductive approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), the analysis proceeded in four main phases to illustrate ways that the body irrupted in the activists’ work and influenced the identity regulation of the organization. First, we started from the tension that emerged as a crucial issue for activists: how to balance caring for themselves with caring for the planet through their engagement? This pushed us to interrogate the role of embodiment in relation to their identity as activists.

Second, we coded the data in multiple cycles. With the help of NVivo, we began with descriptive codes and aggregated them to broader themes and conceptual categories. Themes coalesced around (a) body-work-identity, (b) exhaustion as sacrifice, (c) normative control and (d) disconnection from the organization.

The third stage of analysis focused on the daily work of activists and how they discussed the increasing rule- and procedure-bound context. Narratives of highly engaged activists, particularly the vocal critics among them, were created to understand their internal conflict that pitted strong commitment against growing dissatisfaction with their work. Tracking individual trajectories revealed a shift over time in activists’ relation to their body and appreciation of their engagement within the organization.

In the fourth and final stage, we returned to the literature on organizational control – particularly the question of how cultural constraints operate and impact identity formation and transformation. Going back and forth between theoretical concepts and analytical themes derived from the empirical material, we identified the processes involved in identity regulation and the crucial role of the body in these. Through iteration with the literature, we then pinpointed ‘body breakdown’ as a shifting point in activists’ self-identification with the organization. The crucial role of the body in influencing activists’ responses to organizational normative control was then analysed through three main themes that we develop in the following section.

A culture of self-sacrifice

Self-sacrifice is a common feature of communities marked by the meaningfulness of virtuous actions (Cornwall, 1998), high ethical gestures (Milbank, 1999), or ‘pure volunteering’ (Smith, 1981). Based on activists’ narratives of self and our ethnographic immersion in a particular organizational culture, we proceed to describe three dimensions of the culture of self-sacrifice that has developed in the organization.

Self-identification with the founder

If tens of people around France have followed the same mode of functioning as this person [Thierry] while they were not before. . . a lot of people I talked with were not at all following this functioning mode! . . . well, it’s true that at some point, this is something which is going to leave a mark on you. (Paul)

As a major public figure of the movement Thierry, one of the two co-founders, is highly valued for his work at COP21. He embodies a hybrid of the charismatic, ideological and pragmatic leadership styles (Wilson, 1973). Indeed, in the first two years that the movement existed, he played a major role both inside and outside: articulating its claims and strategy with the larger society but also inspiring participants through his heavy engagement in strategizing, organizing and performing actions. The symbolic place he still keeps among a large base of followers points to his influence in developing the organization post-COP21. In particular, his impact on the organizational culture can be seen in the normative patterns of commitment he inspired, making exhaustion the desired norm rather than a consequence of high engagement. As Georges explains:

What really applies the pressure are the people who created this movement and the people who are part of it; many of them are engaged in a self-destructive manner [in the sense that] one gives everything one has to this. And working with these people, if you don’t have the same kind of investment, sometimes it can be awkward (. . .) I have the tendency to give everything I have as well, but it’s true that. . . here, there is something of a cult of exhaustion.

The culture of sacrifice is exemplified by the figure of Thierry and early members, who easily bring the metaphor of the corporate athlete (Kelly et al., 2007) to mind. According to those who joined him at the very beginning, such as Paul, he is highly admired for having committed his life to the cause and brought that spirit with him, meaning that ‘his life is dedicated to militancy’ and ‘so, surely the philosophy it brings to the movement is: We outdo ourselves, we go farther, we always do more.’ As a former militant of the Basque struggle for independence, the co-founder projects an aura among many members who strongly identify with him and thereby see their sacrificial commitment as voluntary. For instance, in an informal conversation with Jean and Marie, two young activists we met at a climate camp, one of them suggested that we could interview the co-founder. We responded that he must probably be busy, leading us to discuss the work-life balance of an activist:

Indeed, these quotes suggest that certain activists seem to experience overwork and the correlated sacrifices as voluntary choices, supporting Michel’s findings in her study of bankers’ self-controlling work habits (2011). Embodying a ‘cult of exhaustion’ (Georges) at work, the co-founder has normalized a way of living and doing activism among a community of activists who have internalized it despite its dramatic impact on their lives. Reflecting on her experience with AlterNV, Sarah explains: ‘I’ve done only militant jobs, but none of them required so much energy and investment (. . .) you put a big part of your life aside for a time.’ Self-imposed pressures are therefore linked to a chosen identification with powerful symbolic figures who embody a ‘proper activist’, possessing such attributes as energy, strength and passion which encourage them to constantly over-perform, even at the cost of corporeal self-neglect or disconnection from one’s private life:

The problem is that we’re so engaged that the rest of our life completely passes us by. . . we don’t maintain family relations. . . nor friendships. . . we have no personal hobbies, and we’re always in there, in there, in there. (Paul)

Although Thierry left the movement to focus on more local socio-environmental struggles in the Basque region, his print is still tangible. Invoking the symbolic relationship developed by many members with this charismatic leader, Paul recalls: ‘When [Thierry] took some distance vis-a-vis AlterNV, I felt like I was taken away from my father, you see? . . .when talking with other friends, they identified with this feeling.’ In fact, their limitless engagement is a recurrent topic of (informal) discussion among activists, especially in the absence of any space for emotional support within the movement. This too is attributed to Thierry’s influence. While we were discussing how emotions were addressed in social movements, Paul relayed an incident that occurred during a particularly tense team meeting that reflected both his own strong emotional attachment to the founder and the latter’s particular discourse on emotions. Struggling with ambivalent feelings of motivation and exhaustion, Paul found himself trapped between expressing his feelings and keeping them to himself, realizing the organizational inability to face and discuss these issues on a collective level:

I know that it’s a person I value a lot, and in my relations to people, when I value a person a lot, I have the tendency to glorify them. And the thing is that [Thierry] actually represents that: this idea of putting your emotions aside. . . and you go, like a machine, always forward. And what’s funny, is the fact that when I snapped during the meeting, he came out and we talked over it. . . his reaction was. . .: ‘well, if you have a problem with your emotions, you have to solve it!’ It’s funny, coming from a person who has put all his emotions aside, who chose militancy as a way of life. . . so when that person tells you that, because you emotionally snap, it means you have a problem with your emotions. . . it’s also really significant for the movement’s relation to emotions.

In sum, the fetishism for the figure of the co-founder is an argument for the expression of violence inflicted de facto upon bodies, in that he represents the (historical and living) embodiment of personal sacrifice. The normative control is thus maintained and reproduced via this exemplary sacrificial figure standing as a model for other activists in becoming. Eventually, many highly engaged activists experience body breakdowns (in the form of particular diseases, depression or burnout) or witness their fellow comrades going through them, which opens a breach into this process of self-identification with the founder and exemplary members.

Body breakdowns

At the moment of our fieldwork, body breakdowns were starting to thwart the self-sacrificial culture. This is because some activists had physically reached their personal limit, forcing them to treat their bodies as ‘knowledgeable subjects’ (Michel, 2011), i.e. a serious personal issue that they could not address openly within the organization. This realization in turn helped them to transcend the cult of exhaustion.

The precariousness of identity regulation based on bodies

This study articulates an understanding of the body in relation to identity as a dynamic mutual constitution of docility and resistance, thereby highlighting its capacity to disrupt identity regulation processes. Indeed, on the one hand, activists accept the sacrifice of their bodies to the organizational cause and inhabit their bodies as conduits of identity construction because they passionately embrace the environmental cause and therefore see the prevalent culture of self-sacrifice as a condition of collective organizational efficiency. Hence, identities of activists are subject to regulation because people position themselves in relation to an ideal notion of who is a proper activist, and how she or he acts and reacts (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002; Costas & Grey, 2014). They appear as docile ‘corporate athletes’ (Kelly et al., 2007) who use and abuse their corporeal resources to achieve a meaningful collective purpose.

On the other hand, the intrusion of body breakdowns materializes individual physical vulnerabilities that trigger a shift in these internal dynamics. Indeed, the mere fact that norms of self-sacrifice that had previously been taken for granted cannot be systematically embodied transforms the perception of what is achievable and acceptable and what is not, producing questions, doubts and growing distance. Identity thus ‘erupts from the flesh’ (Battersby, 1998, p. 39). In this sense, breakdowns express a bodily refusal that allows activists to destabilize the clear-cut demarcation between compliance and resistance that is produced by identity. Our data show that this destabilization does not solely rest on individual bodies breaking down but also on a mirror-like effect of seeing friends’ bodies struggling or falling. Indeed, while they strongly self-identify with those who embody the ideal image of the ‘proper’ activist, they also share deep affinity relationships with other activists and are thereby affected by their corporeal suffering. Hence, the fact that breakdown as a phenomenon concerns more and more activists without prompting any organizational reaction participates in one’s growing feeling of inadequacy vis-a-vis the working culture. We can say then that the progressive disconnection operates in a twofold sense: (1) by reflecting back on their own singular bodily experience, activists grow aware of both their vulnerability and others’, which allows them to further see the contradiction between their working practices and the organizational discourse on values and purpose; (2) the organization’s unresponsiveness or blindness to the issue of exhaustion reinforces the idea that it can only be activists’ own business and should be dealt with as such, which leads to their decision to withdraw.

Previous research describes regimes of intelligibility through which workers make sense of a convergence between their work and the role of the body in shaping their identities: Being a manager (Johansson et al., 2017), a police officer (Courpasson & Monties, 2017), a banker (Michel, 2011) or a rugby player (Coupland, 2015) is coherent with the bodily models promoted in these specific contexts of work. Furthermore, these studies reveal how individuals, through their constant efforts and self-sacrifice, come to sustain and reproduce the identity regulation rather than weaken it. Our data rather highlight a movement of disconnection between the identity regulation and the self-conception of voluntary engagement for a cause, therefore explaining the growing wavering between moments of docility – when work is prioritized over life, and rebellion – when lived bodies make a brutal comeback. This suggests instability in the very activists’ engagement with the self-sacrificial culture. In other words, our study accounts for the precarious nature of identity regulation through bodies: Although commitment to the cause is a powerful motivator to sustain their engagement, activists’ bodies eventually succumb to exhaustion, eroding under increasing physical constraints. As a consequence, we see bodies both as crucial conduits for the enactment of the identity regulation, and as sites of overt resistance to this regulation, hence emphasizing their political dimension.

The politicization of bodies

Previous ethnographies of high-commitment organizations (Michel, 2011) and occupations (Coupland, 2015; Courpasson & Monties, 2017) have shown that the body is largely excluded from accounts of organizational control. They illustrate that the body does have agency, because it can resist absolute compliance to organizational norms. However, these studies do not politicize bodies. Instead, they see them as adapting to organizational circumstances rather than transforming them. Our study takes an extra step, illustrating how corporeal breakdowns show not only the physicality of identity regulation (Paring et al., 2017) but also the political dimension of self-expulsions by provoking a radical change in activists’ relationship with their organization, their own bodies, and the cause to which they are committed.

By refusing to recognize breakdowns as political issues, the organization treats them as individual weaknesses, driving out members who are physically unfit. However, breakdowns are moments where bodies explicitly become sites of individually comparable performance, defining and sustaining criteria of inclusion and exclusion (Trethewey, 1999). The organization’s implicit denial of the political aspect of bodily breakdowns thus contradicts the meaning that exiting activists give to their self-expulsion. Indeed, they interpret breakdowns as a rejection of their culture rather than a corporeal impossibility stressing the physiological dimension of their bodies and denying their political character. Hence, this tension between interpretations of the same event directly challenges the absolute power of the sacrificial culture and turns the ‘personal’ into a political matter. In particular, self-expulsions are political gestures that stem precisely from a critique of the identity regulation, opening de facto a space of resistance (Johansson et al., 2017). We hence contend that politics emerge at the interface between the docile enactment of the norm of self-sacrifice and the revelation of its concrete physical impossibility and implicit violence. Indeed, the experience of breakdown reveals how the ideas of sacrifice and martyrdom (Chen & Gorski, 2015) infiltrate bodies and are infused with meaning (Godfrey, Lilley, & Brewis, 2012). Breakdowns thus produce a violent experience for activists that also transforms their relation to their bodies and the cause.

In fact, because breakdowns burst through the normative corporeal barriers (enduring versus non-enduring bodies), they create a moment of tension where political acts can develop through the emerging talk between activists and their own bodies. This encourages a critique of the self-sacrificing culture, sometimes resulting in self-expulsions. Passion for the cause often leads activists to ‘forget themselves’ and surrender their social life and health to an overwhelming organizational culture. They experience this sacrifice as freely chosen, because it stems from passion and self-identification with symbolic figures that create valorizing self-images such as that of the corporate athlete (Kelly et al., 2007). However, breakdowns shift this perception, producing a tension between body and passion. This inner contradiction forces activists to choose between the two. They are forced into a new relationship with their body that encourages them to reconsider their commitment to the organization. Because their passionate attachment to the organizational cause tempts them to remain docile, the challenge is therefore to separate the organization from the cause. This means that the relevant source of identity regulation is questioned. Those members who choose to exit shift their focus from the self-sacrificial culture to a self-defining cause, allowing them to first detach themselves cognitively and emotionally from the organization before physically leaving. Their passion for the cause can then be expressed elsewhere.

Following this discussion, our contribution lies in illuminating how breakdowns permit the politicization of the body in the face of the insidious violence of identity regulation processes. The concreteness of corporeal vulnerabilities reinforces the idea that identity regulation does not rest upon discourse and abstract idealized identities, but is rather lived every day by specific individuals, alternating moments of adequacy and inadequacy. Our study shows how the body becomes ‘carnally reflexive’ (Ball, 2005) because of its very physical limits. Indeed, the experience of bodily vulnerability allows people to step back and re-interpret the meaningfulness of their work and lives. The initial focus on passionate work for the environmental cause shifts to an utter inclination to deciding upon the material personal circumstances of their lives. Breakdowns enable individuals to rearticulate a sense of what it means for them to be activists, as well as reasons to act politically and disentangle their commitment to the organization from their attachment to the cause. It is thus through this friction between each body and the prescribed norm of sacrifice that politics emerge.