PLEASE NOTE: This is a 10 - TEN - ECTS module! That's twice the work of a regular module. This course MAY NOT BE FOR YOU if you are not seeking to commit to active, engaged learning practices and to attending and completing assignments on a weekly basis.
THIS COURSE HAS A CENTRAL FOCUS ON INTERACTIVE, BODY-BASED AND VISUAL ARTS-BASED FORMS OF LEARNING. Students should be okay with trying out these typically unfamiliar ways of working as well as sharing them collectively in class discussion.
PLEASE ALSO BE AWARE THAT EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING INVOLVING CRITICAL SELF-REFLECTION AND COLLECTIVE EXPLORATION AND DISCUSSION ABOUT ISSUES OF PERSONAL AND POLITICAL POWER, PRIVILEGE AND DIFFERENCE CAN BE DIFFICULT WORK TO UNDERTAKE.
DO CONTACT ME TO DISCUSS ANY QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS IN ADVANCE OF THE TERM: alice.feldman@ucd.ie
The acceleration of profound, complex and intertwined global conflicts and planetary crises has seen the growth of collective actions that traverse ever greater expanses of social, political and geographical terrains and actors. Consider movements such as Occupy, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, the 2017 Women’s Marches, Ni Una Menos, the School Climate Strikes, and more recently the extraordinary global digital collective projects galvanised by the pandemic. Calls for ‘solidarity’ have become ubiquitous, a taken-for-granted element of the radical and transformative interventions necessary in the face of such challenges. The rise of online and hashtag activism, enhanced by the increasing variety and sophistication of social media platforms, has revolutionised social movement organising, providing globally accessible platforms that make it possible for people to ‘stand in solidarity with’ others around the world.
This scenario, however, belies the equally compelling, longstanding and vocal politics of representation: Who speaks and for whom?; of voice: Who is/can be heard?; of privilege: How do social and structural inequalities, power relations and positionalities among movement actors mediate movement organising?; and of the ongoing legacies of historical and ongoing colonialisms: What does it mean to mobilise on unceded indigenous territories?
The ongoing failures to effectively address these fundamental and ‘difficult’ issues continue to undermine the success of these extraordinary mobilisations.
The term, ‘solidarity’, and many of the ideas that constitute the ‘received’ understandings and practices relating to it, are problematic and contentious. The notion of solidarity is often conflated with other terms such as empathy and reciprocity, and ‘used in reference to a vast range of social phenomena, from social cohesion to social movements, from political to civic organization, from religious duty to racial obligation’ (Gaztambides-Fernandez 2012, 46). Moreover, solidarity can be defined according to any number of criteria including particular moral principles, personal characteristics, values, actions and duties, the understandings of which are assumed to be shared ones (Ibid). However, more than just an ideal, a theory or a condition, solidarity is ultimately a relational phenomenon, a process of relationship-building.
Considered in this way, rather than taken as given, solidarity actually constitutes a project in and of itself. It is a project that involves – if not necessitates -- working through the relational conflicts around difference as part of rather than ancillary to the work of social justice movements. They very much are intertwined because the foundations of conflicts regarding representation, voice and privilege are inextricably linked to the circumstances giving rise to the very injustices collective actions to transform. As such, the project of solidary relations is one that arises through an ethics of critically reflexive engagement around these issues.
This course delves into the examination of the relational dynamics, politics and practices that underpin – and often determine the course of -- social justice mobilisations. It focuses on the questions How does solidarity actually evolve? What constitutes solidary relations? In what ways can personal, political, cultural differences and circumstances – which are often vast, contradictory and in tension with each other – be negotiated and even maintained while working collectively? How can collective actors cultivate the skills of critical reflexivity necessary to effectively engage in this type of work?