Critique of Pure Resilience

As we have seen throughout this volume, resilience is buzzing to the point of becoming a victim of its own success. By being brandished, bargained and brewed, it has been morphed into a portmanteau word, borrowed for very diverse ends. Moreover, it is often linked to other notions in vogue (sustainability, governance, etc.) that show a similar plasticity. Resilience has both a fairly intuitive content, an eye-catching hook and an undecided long semantic train where everyone can rediscover their own meaning. Its multiple transfers across disciplines seem to legitimize its semantic and theoretical vagueness, to the point where resilience too often boils down to the promise of a bright new horizon.