Sarah Schulman - The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity
Presented by Left Bank Books & the Left Bank Books Foundation
Join us to welcome Sarah Schulman back to Left Bank Books to discuss her new book The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity. Schulman is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, nonfiction writer, and AIDS historian. Her honors include a Fulbright in Judaic Studies, a Guggenheim in Playwriting, and honors from Lambda Literary, the Publishing Triangle, NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, the American Library Association, and others. Join us as we discuss her very important book The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity.
"This book will save lives. How many is up to us." --ALEXANDER CHEE
Schulman will personalize and sign copies after the presentation! Personalized and signed copies will be available to be mailed anywhere in the country. For personalized copies, please order before noon on November 14th.
Join us at Left Bank Books
399 N. Euclid Ave
St. Louis, MO 63108
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About the Speaker
Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, nonfiction writer, and AIDS historian. Her books include The Gentrification of the Mind, Conflict Is Not Abuse, and Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993, and the novels The Cosmopolitans and Maggie Terry. Schulman's honors include a Fulbright in Judaic Studies, a Guggenheim in Playwriting, and honors from Lambda Literary, the Publishing Triangle, NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, the American Library Association, and others. 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. Schulman holds an endowed chair in creative writing at Northwestern University and is on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.
About The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity
From award-winning writer Sarah Schulman, a longtime social activist and outspoken critic of the Israeli war on Gaza, comes a brilliant examination of the inherent psychological and social challenges to solidarity movements, and what that means for the future
For those who seek to combat injustice, solidarity with the oppressed is one of the highest ideals, yet it does not come without complication. In this searing yet uplifting book, award-winning writer and cultural critic Sarah Schulman delves into the intricate and often misunderstood concept of solidarity to provide a new vision for what it means to engage in this work--and why it matters.
To grapple with solidarity, Schulman writes, we must recognize its inherent fantasies. Those being oppressed dream of relief, that a bystander will intervene though it may not seem to be in their immediate interest to do so, and that the oppressor will be called out and punished. Those standing in solidarity with the oppressed are occluded by a different fantasy: that their intervention is effective, that it will not cost them, and that they will be rewarded with friendship and thanks. Neither is always the case, and yet in order to realize our full potential as human beings in relation with others, we must continue to pursue action towards these shared goals.
Within this framework, 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 campus protest movements against Israel's war on Gaza, and her own experience growing up as a queer female artist in male dominated culture industries. Drawing parallels between queer, Palestinian, feminist, and artistic struggles for justice, 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. That action comes at a cost, and is not always effective. And yet without it we sentence ourselves to a world without progressive change towards visions of liberation.
By turns challenging, inspiring, pragmatic, and poetic, The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity provides a much-needed path for how we can work together to create a more just, more equitable present and future.
You may also like the following events from Left Bank Books:
- This Thursday, 16th October, 07:00 pm, Jyoti Mukharji & Auyon Mukharji - Heartland Masala: An Indian Cookbook from an American Kitchen in Clayton
- This Sunday, 19th October, 11:00 am, Julie Johnston - If You Lived in the Sea, Who Would You Be? in Clayton
- Next Monday, 20th October, 06:00 pm, Rebecca Lexa - The Everyday Naturalist: How to Identify Animals, Plants, and Fungi Wherever You Go in St. Louis
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