Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity
From award-winning writer Sarah Schulman, a longtime activist and critic of the Israeli war on Gaza, comes a brilliant examination of the misunderstood concept of solidarity which seeks to provide a new vision of what it means, and why it matters.
In this nuanced analysis, Schulman challenges the traditional notion of solidarity as a simple union of equals, arguing that in today's world of globalized power structures, true solidarity requires the collaboration of bystanders and conflicted perpetrators with the excluded and oppressed.
Schulman examines a range of case studies, from the fight for abortion rights in post-Franco Spain, to NYC's AIDS activism in the 1990s, to the current wave of protest movements against Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people, and her own experience growing up as a queer female artist in male dominated culture industries. Reckoning with the successes and failures of these movements, she argues that action always comes at a cost, despite not always being effective. But without solidarity we are stuck with the status quo, and we lose any hope of progressive change.
By turns challenging, inspiring, pragmatic, and poetic, The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity provides a much-needed path for how we can work together towards justice now and for the future.
Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, nonfiction writer, and AIDS historian. Her books include The Gentrification of the Mind and Conflict Is Not Abuse. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, New York, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times, and The Guardian.