Sarah Schulman w/ Dan Berger, THE FANTASY AND NECESSITY OF SOLIDARITY

About the Book

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 the searing yet uplifting book, , 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.

Schulman writes that in order to grapple with solidarity, we must first recognize its inherent fantasies. Those who are 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 their 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.

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.

About the Author

Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, nonfiction writer, and AIDS historian. Her books include 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 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 Interlocutor

Dan Berger is a historian of activism, Black Power, and the carceral state. His latest book is Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family's Journey. Berger curates the Washington Pr*son History Project.

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