Solidarity is rarely taken seriously as a category in the study of politics, but it enlivens the practice of politics whenever the bonds of community are put at stake. The concept of solidarity draws attention to the many challenges faced by political actors seeking to work beyond entrenched social divides and racialized hierarchies. Whether discussing the politics of hospitality in an imperial metropole or the possibility of new internationalisms after the Cold War, solidarity is an underappreciated but nonetheless crucial element in shaping both the past and future of global politics.

Convening community in sites of surprising intimacy and unexpected collaboration, solidarity renders unworkable the expectations of territorial domination, autonomous rule, and self-possession that commonly undergird discourses of state sovereignty. What sense of politics arises in renunciation of these expectations? How might some of the critical keywords of political modernity – empire, democracy, revolution, pluralism, asylum, and refuge – be rethought in terms of the politics of solidarity? Finally, how might our political present call on us to think through histories of disaffection and the attenuation of solidarities?

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Speakers
Amahl Bishara
Professor of Anthropology and of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora, Tufts University

Charles Hirschkind
Professor of Anthropology, UC Berkeley

Darryl Li
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences, University of Chicago

Moderator
Kabir Tambar
Associate Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University