Politics, Solidarity, and the (Dis)Location of Love

Five Summary Remarks about Socio-Political Solidarity and Action What is at issue in this paper? I am making five basic points. These are guided by an attention to paradox and counter-finalities. The first point is really a question. First, how do we today proceed toward organized political action in the name of abjected groups or in the wake of economic and ecological catastrophe? Admittedly, this is an abstract way of phrasing the question. I’ll remain abstract for a moment, and ask, psychologistically: How to create a “we” today; a “we” that acts together enduringly? Second point, which is a contention: there are useful and less useful measures available for constructing a “we.” To begin with, a “we” plausibly defines itself in light of a “they.” But the key in oppositional situations is not to project noxious elements of a received imaginary onto groups that thereby become potential or real victims—within or without one’s unfolding “we-space.” Third, historical point: If the creation of some “they” is unavoidable—please keep in mind that the conditions of the definition and enactment of logics of enemy-other versus “we-same” or allies becomes, in Carl Schmitt, the essence of what is political because he declares himself strictly opposed to ‘illegitimate’ harm (COP, 48-49). It was Schmitt—right Hegelian student of Max Weber—who most effectively reminded us that the governing concepts in our many political imaginaries were drawn from theology—sovereignty, majesty, solidarity, eschatology. Thus a “we” may close ranks before a “they”; or by a different logic, “we” may coalesce around one who sets “us” apart as our ruler or symbolic institution, say: a certain justice or “the Law.” These are two ways a socio-political “we” forms. In the second case, the symbolic institution (understood actively, as instituting us), like the leaders, also need to mobilize something like a sublime, which provides an ideal for striving and sense of vocation at best; or again something that awes and paralyzes critique at worst. This “something” answers abstractly but effectively the “identity” question: What shall we become? Now a little over ten years ago, Drucilla Cornell wrote of the “imaginary domain” in which women (in her At the Heart of Freedom) could dream of alternative possibilities for living their desire, the orientation of and the work done by their sexuation. For Cornell, this requires the primacy of a positive principle of freedom and equivalent equalities. More on that shortly. For now, I emphasize that this metaphoric “space,” this heuristic, for the imaginative re-creation of a “we”—perhaps even a “we” lacking some threatening “they” to consolidate it—requires an extensive cultural effort—from the arts to literature, to architecture and religion, as these are what configure our willing with our imagining. Fourth point, the counter-imaginary: Marimba Ani, speaking in Harlem, realizes all of this. She gives Pan-Africanists her version of a negative creation myth, combined with unrelenting deconstruction of Western hypocrisy. The book, Yurugu, reads at points like Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X_NwaHQsOA (1:40-3:30) “Yurugu”

2021

www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press 1 Leo stands and invites the rest of us to do the same. We push back our small, plastic chairs. About forty of us rise in the circle, acknowledge each other with small nods, and join hands. Witness Against Torture has gathered at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Washington DC. It is the first week of January 2014. People are now entering the fifth day of their fast. Many have bundled themselves with scarves and hats. Those wearing orange jumpsuits have packed layers of wool and down under the iconic outerwear, preparing to stand for hours in front of the White House in what is certain to be a freezing drizzle. The room is necessarily large for all that it must accommodate. Rectangles of butcher paper scribbled with colorful notes line the back wall. There are lists of team members and their requisite tasks, words, and shapes from direct action planning. A tenfoot plastic folding table is set up for letter writing ...

2025

Plea, defence, utopia-solidarity has become a buzz word. New technologies and the associated national and global networking through data, the challenge of political upheavals that affect social coexistence, the world of labor, access to education as well as family and identity politics, repeatedly raise the question of changing solidarity practices. They make it necessary to fill and define the concept of solidarity anew. The background to this anthology is therefore the question of solidarity practices in an increasingly digitalized, globally connected world that is repeatedly challenged by multiple crises. New connections as well as disruptions are emerging, particularly in the context of social networks, which include not only, but also, spaces within the digital sphere. The call for more solidarity has very different consequences, depending on the context. It quickly becomes clear that what is meant by solidarity and what consequences accompany the call for solidarity is by no means an undisputed universal. The different definitions in terms of extensionality, intensity, framework conditions, forms, goals and duration make it clear that solidarity is a broad field whose ambiguity sometimes carries the risk of instrumentalization (see Dabrock: 2022; and the contribution by Megan Arndt in this volume). Nevertheless, the concept of solidarity is a 'Sehnsuchtswort' (cf. Högg/Rung: 2019), a 'word of longing'. The term continues to be addressed anew, time and time again, particularly in the current German and European political debates on democracy and its foundations (cf. Lesch: 2019), which is increasingly under threat amid the questioning of the social constituent. Nationalist and radical right-wing parties are increasingly gaining ground in Europe and around the world. Their agendas consist of narrowing group affiliations. In the face of this challenge to democracy, work on the concept of solidarity is far from over. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has also played a formative role in the global debate on the concept of solidarity in recent years. It has once again shown the interconnectedness of human actions and bodies in a globalized world as well as their disruptions. The calls for solidarity in times of the pandemic showed that these calls had very different consequences. Often the concept of solidarity was understood asymmetrically in this context. It was linked to the question of 'who is (most) vulnerable?' when it came to determining whom solidarity is applied to.

Monthly Review, 2021

Bill Fletcher Jr. and Bill Gallegos interview Fernando Gapasin on race, class, and building communities of solidarity.

Cultural Politics, 2017

T his article is composed of photographs and remembrances: my own and those of several students and friends who participated in the Women's Marches in New York and Washington, DC, on January 21, 2017. The images and text raise questions brought to life by the marches. They address the efficacy of mass marches and similar forms of protest in an era driven by polarization of both social media and mainstream news media. The article poses such questions as, what was the nature of the Women's March, and how did it differ from previous demonstrations? What did it achieve? Can solidarity be sustained in an environment of heightened and ongoing divisiveness? The election of President Donald J. Trump was a nightmarish event for a large number of Americans and peoples worldwide. Aside from his obvious lack of qualifications and a long list of ongoing questionable business practices, Trump's discourse of hate and fearmongering, coupled with his authoritarian white nationalist agenda and apocalyptic tweetstorms calling for a strong man to "fix" the nation's problems, has set in motion forces and policies that, if implemented, would deny whole segments of the population the very basic dignity of their humanity. Trump's attacks on historical memory, facts and science, public education, the press, and the institutions of governance are paired with his shocking disrespect for the rule of law, including civil, individual, and political protections. Trump's rhetoric has given right-wing extremists in our own and other nations a sense of confidence in their appeal to