The following is an extract from the new open access book The Great Flattening: Enclosure, Extraction and the New Age of Concentrated Power, which can be accessed here.   

Barbara Harlow (1948–2017) was an influential US academic, activist and literary critic who fundamentally reshaped the study of literature by insisting that writing could be a powerful tool for political change. She is best known for her landmark 1987 book, Resistance Literature, which bridged the gap between academic theory and revolutionary struggle. That book analysed texts from occupied Palestine and apartheid South Africa as tools for sovereignty.   

The idea of resistance literature (RL) first emerged in contexts shaped by occupation and struggle, where writing was not separate from political life.    

Harlow’s era faced the brute force of colonialism and that issue is still very much relevant today. At the same time, though, resistance faces a more insidious foe: the narrative of inevitability or, simply put, the belief in TINA—There Is No Alternative.    

Over time, a small number of policy directions begin to be treated as unavoidable. Other options remain, but they stop appearing in serious discussion.

Whether in global food systems, digital surveillance or neoliberal policy, the system sustains itself by convincing the public that its current form is the only possible one—there is no alternative.   

For instance, if we focus on food and agriculture, we can deconstruct the corporate-funded metrics that claim industrial agriculture is the only way to feed the world by providing alternative data and examples to show that agroecology can feed the world or that small farms already feed most of it. However, corporate narratives attempt to obscure this to enforce TINA.   

The most effective way to maintain control is to label any viable, humane alternative as ‘impossible’. But by documenting the success of small-scale farmers and decentralised food sovereignty movements, we begin to decolonise the imagination.   

Resistance attempts to tear down what is wrong while making visible what is already working, thus stripping the current system of its veneer of inevitability.   

Power thrives when people remain silent.

Writing preserves the history of the marginalised, ensuring that the official version of reality does not become the only version. One purpose of resistance writing is to chronicle alternatives. By mapping out a way forward, it makes the ‘impossible’ feel tangible. Ultimately, the purpose of RL is to force a change in the state of the reader who moves from a passive spectator to a participant.   

In this light, the act of writing is a refusal to participate in the official narrative and a deliberate contribution to a collective struggle. Whether through the long-form essay or the investigative report, the goal of RL is to transform the reader’s perception so profoundly that the status quo no longer feels like a necessity but like a choice that can, and must, be undone.   

Corporations and states spend millions to ensure their version of history and reality is the only one with authority. We can take a very modern example of this in action.   

Google prioritises search results through a complex evaluation of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness). Search results are shaped through ranking systems that reward certain kinds of visibility over others. By weighing factors like ‘topical authority’, original ‘information gain’ and technical page signals, the system attempts to match user intent with ‘high-quality’ information.   

But Google uses ‘authority’ as a proxy for market dominance and historical data footprints. By mathematically weighing established credentials and backlink profiles, the system creates a self-reinforcing feedback loop where legacy institutions are perpetually boosted, while independent or dissenting voices are buried for lacking ‘topical relevance’.    

This shift towards ‘information gain’ and EE-A-T has in the last few years transformed the previous open web into a curated echo chamber, where the algorithm actively decides whose perspective is ‘reputable’ enough to be seen. Over time, what appears most often begins to be treated as what is most reliable, even when other material still exists outside the visible range.    

Google search engine holds around 90 per cent of the global market (second is Microsoft Bing with 5 per cent). So, it comes as no surprise that many alternative media platforms have been decimated in terms of readership loss and reach and why many are now shouting into a void or an echo chamber. The age of the ‘open’ internet has ended, and the era of deplatforming and algorithmic censorship is here.    

However, these ‘dissident’ sites can still be found and continue to play a vital role in offering a counter-narrative and some provide an archive of literature often stretching back 25 years or so. What’s more, some have adapted and have moved to platforms that are less censored or uncensored. Despite the difficulties, their voice is still heard.   

That is why RL is increasingly important in building a ‘counter-archive’. It acts as a mirror to show people that their own intuition (that the system is wrong) is valid while breaking the fear of being the only one who thinks that way. The reader stops seeing the world as inevitable and starts seeing it as temporary.   

At a certain point, reading shifts perception, and we start to move beyond mere critique by seeing the evidentiary weight of the counternarrative that opposes corporate-funded propaganda and which seeks to nullify the alternative.   

Moreover, by making the ‘impossible’ feel not just tangible but necessary, the goal is to transform the reader from a spectator of global crises into a participant in a movement for an alternative and better future.   

The aim is to ensure that the status quo is seen for what it is: a system of oppression that can, and must, be undone.  

Such a system does not require constant force if it can establish itself as inevitable. Constraints imposed by political policy and state-corporate propaganda and enclosure come to be experienced as common sense to large sections of a population.   

Over several decades, rural economies were restructured under the banner of ‘development’. Governments were encouraged or compelled to open markets, reduce support for small farmers and prioritise export-oriented production. Public systems that once stabilised local agriculture were weakened. In many regions, farmers who had produced primarily for local consumption were drawn into global commodity chains or displaced from the land.   

This model carried the promise of efficiency, growth and modernisation. In practice, it often resulted in dependency. Farmers became reliant on purchased inputs, credit and volatile markets. Control over seeds, fertilisers and distribution became concentrated in a small number of firms. Decision-making shifted away from the farm and into corporate boardrooms and institutional structures.   

The ideology of development played a central role in this transformation. It defined what counted as advancement and what could be dismissed as backward. Systems that prioritised local autonomy, ecological balance and subsistence were reclassified as underdeveloped. Their displacement was framed as necessary.   

At the same time, viable alternatives were rendered invisible or implausible. Through the political clout, funding and lobbying of vested interests, practices that continued to function well were excluded from policy frameworks, sidelined in research agendas and marginalised in public discourse. And what remained visible to many was a single model, presented as the only realistic option.   

In agriculture, this model is industrial. The field is treated as a production unit. Soil is managed through chemical inputs, and seeds are standardised and protected through intellectual property regimes. Farmers follow prescribed systems shaped by input suppliers, buyers and regulatory standards. Digital technologies extend this process by translating land into data and farming into sequences of optimised decisions.   

This approach is justified through a persistent claim: that large-scale, heavily subsidised industrial agriculture is required to feed a growing population. Yet small-scale producers continue to supply a substantial share of the world’s food. In many contexts, they do so with fewer external inputs and with greater resilience to environmental stress.    

Policy frameworks, trade agreements and financial systems favour scale and standardisation, and research funding is directed towards technologies that reinforce this model. Corporate actors influence both production and distribution, and public institutions often align with these priorities, whether through subsidies, regulatory systems or development strategies.   

Within this system, knowledge is separated from place. It is produced in formal institutions, codified into technical packages and delivered as instruction.   

However, a different understanding of agriculture continues to exist, though it operates under constraint. Soil is approached as a living system, and fertility is maintained through crop diversity and ecological processes. Seeds are selected and adapted over time. Farming decisions are based on observation and accumulated knowledge tied to specific conditions.   

This approach produces variation and resilience and does not depend on continuous external inputs. It works within cycles that regenerate.   

The contrast between these approaches reflects a broader shift in perception. The dominant perception sees land as a tradeable financial asset. Food is merely a commodity. Agrarian social relations are reorganised through markets. It is a paradigm that enables measurement, pricing and control and which facilitates extraction.   

Infrastructure reinforces this direction whereby global supply chains determine production patterns and financial systems shape investment and risk. At the same time, digital platforms extend oversight across production and consumption, and farmers are tied to suppliers and buyers through contracts and debt. And the end-result is ordinary people who encounter food through retail systems that structure ‘choice’ on the supermarket shelf in advance.   

And what we see is dependency across both cultivation (seeds, chemicals, cloud-based farming, proprietary knowledge) and post-cultivation (global supply chains, food processing, retail) where distribution depends on logistics, decisions and margins determined by giant agrifood conglomerates.    

Ecological strain follows in terms of soil degradation, biodiversity loss and water depletion. These outcomes are consistent with a model that degrades and simplifies ecosystems and relies on continuous intervention to sustain output.   

There is an alternative. It begins by recognising the inherent value of land and community and works with ecological processes. And it accepts limits to human intervention (agrochemicals, GMOs, intensive monocropping) and adjusts activity accordingly.   

This does not require a return to an earlier period. It involves recognising and extending practices that remain in use. Across many regions, small farmers maintain diverse systems of production and local markets continue to operate. Moreover, knowledge is transmitted through learnt practice rather than a model of corporate standardisation.   

These systems persist without the level of institutional support granted to industrial models and continue under policy environments that disadvantage them. Their presence demonstrates that alternatives are not hypothetical.   

The struggle over agriculture is therefore also a struggle over how reality is defined. When one model is treated as inevitable, others are excluded from consideration. Similarly, when productivity is measured narrowly, other forms of value are removed from view.   

The ‘agrarian imagination’ keeps these forms visible by recognising relationships that are not mediated by markets and knowledge that cannot be standardised. It acknowledges forms of autonomy grounded in local control of natural resources like land and seeds.   

But this argument extends beyond agriculture to encompass how societies organise provision, how they understand limits and how they define progress. The current system depends on specific configurations of power, maintained through policies and narrative.   

Once the narrative is questioned, authority begins to weaken. From that point, rhetoric weakens and alternatives can be practically assessable. The enclosure of imagination can be reversed.    

The horizon has been narrowed, but it can be widened again.   

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Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Visit the author’s substack, https://substack.com/@colintodhunter.

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