Solidarity for the Long Haul

In Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon famously writes that resistance efforts are “overtaken by events” beyond the control of political party leaders; colonial repression tightens its grip until it snaps, causing the masses to “give free rein” to instinct and “spontaneously [bring] their violence to the colossal task of destroying the colonial system” (1963, 72). Foregrounding Fanon’s insight that the most meaningful events are those that escape planning, my dissertation names solidarity as the primary agential force behind the events and responses that spontaneously bring people to the colossal task of liberatory social change. I argue that solidarity is a specific kind of cooperative meaning-making: by co-creating a shared moral understanding of their situation, subjects realize (as in, make real) the material interdependence required for successful resistance. I explain solidarity’s collective empowerment as a form of collective surrender to the uncontrollable, thus creating a theory of solidarity (and social change, broadly) where powerlessness constitutes power and freedom is found in the most constrained actions, those where overdetermination meets indeterminacy—a fed-up transgender woman throws a brick that starts a movement, a police officer fires his weapon into a crowd and incites a revolution, a global pandemic fundamentally shifts the nature of the workplace and labor organizing.

Solidarity’s structure is a non-reciprocal, role-based mutuality directed toward a joint interest, rather than transactional exchange. Notably, solidarity harnesses the human craving for devotion (Katsafanas), and it promotes an ironic, playful commitment to one’s values, thereby sustaining non-fanatical commitment. For individual political actors, solidarity is a transformative process that reshapes the political self and co-creates the subject by aligning personal desire with collective duty. I demonstrate the efficacy of this theory by challenging the conventional symmetry/asymmetry taxonomy in the solidarity literature and by distinguishing solidarity from its primary impersonator, allyship. I conclude with a comprehensive account of solidarity as an intrinsically valuable mode of relating that affords subjects within autonomous self-creation.