Wellfleet Public Library

The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity

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 Ihe Fantasy_ ot Necessity_ot Solidarity, Sarah 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 true solidarity as a simple union of equals, arguing that in today's world of globalized power structures, 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 withoutit 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.