The International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs is pleased to announce the publication of the third issue of volume seven of Critical Times, published by Duke University Press at https://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-timesThis special issue, titled “Solidarity’s Challenge,” edited by Robin Celikates and Samera Esmeir, includes an introduction, a range of scholarly essays, a set of activist reflections on solidarity at sea, and two artistic interventions on past and present solidarities with Palestine. “Solidarity’s Challenge” confronts the difficulties and contradictions of solidarity, complicating our understanding of solidarity as a force that coheres and coordinates subjects in perfect unity. The issue’s introduction and scholarly essays probe the logics of exclusion underlying certain forms of solidarity and look to new models amid contemporary crises. Within the restrictive and statist frameworks revealed by police violence, crackdowns on encampments for Palestine, and regimes of neoliberal austerity, what counterhegemonic forms of solidarity remain possible? Across militarized borders and a territorialized earth, can solidarity take us down new paths, leading us through ”modest tunnels,” onto “makeshift barricades, broken ramparts, nomadic ships, steadfast olive trees” and away from the current political order?The scholarly essays bring together a range of disciplinary perspectives, taking us from the Black liberation movement to the free psychoanalytic clinics of Brazil and from the skies and seas of the Mediterranean to the galleries of Gwanju, South Korea. Hieyoon Kim’s essay juxtaposes two instances of South Korean aractivism with Myanmar to consider the potential and limits of “south-south partnership” expressed through aesthetic and digital channels. In a study of the activist and political prisoner Safiya Asya Bukhari, Harun Rasiah draws an ethics of remembrance from her life and thought, revealing the implications of her revolutionary Islam for the Black liberation movement. Ana Minozzo and Raluca Soreanu trace the emergence of free psychoanalytic clinics in Brazil from the 1970s onward as an emancipatory set of practices couched in practices of territorial listening and fugitivity. Such practices offer a challenge to the psychoanalytic establishment and a call to articulate a mental health commons. Borrowing theoretical frameworks from both hermeneutics and creolization epistemologies, Patricia Cipollitti Rodríguez asks whether, breaking from a solidarity premised on asymmetrical relations of power, a transformative model of solidarity is possible. Drawing from firsthand experiences within the New Sanctuary Coalition as well as from feminist thought, Marianna Poyares troubles normative claims around solidarity and considers the capacity of migrants’ rights movements to offer models of border solidarity grounded in heterogenous, rather than hegemonic, alliances. Taking to the skies, Angela Smith thinks through aviation’s ability to offer meaningful help to those traversing the dangerous waters of the Mediterranean; her essay grapples with the limited forms of agency entailed by these forms of aerial witness. The issue’s Emergences section includes a dispatch from the Free Mediterranean—a vessel chartered by the Ships to Gaza movement. Nikolas Kosmatopoulos surfaces the insurgent spaces and structures undergoing transformation in the face of colonial-capitalist violence and explores the potential, in this context, for transinsurgent solidarity. The special issue concludes with two artistic interventions. Stills from the research-based exhibition Past Disquiet offer a glimpse into the forms of solidarity with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon developed by groups of artists in Europe in 1976. Curators Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti cull from the archives pamphlets, posters, letters, and photographs of public spaces in Paris and Tuscany, pointing toward a range of vibrant public actions taken for Palestine. Lastly, “For Gaza” offers a snapshot of Palestinian solidarity’s current persistence: Banan Abdelrahman writes from the Free Palestine Encampment on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, where tents, libraries, posters, and murals—documented by photographer Olive Elibott—attest to a collective commitment to Palestine in the face of ongoing obliteration. Critical Times is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal committed to the intellectual and political project of critical theory. Recognizing the many forms that theory takes today, the journal works to call attention to the ongoing, collective reinvention of critique. Critical Times features work from various regions, with particular interests in theory from the southern hemisphere and other places beyond Europe and the United States, and in practices of cross-regional intellectual exchange and struggle. We publish scholarly essays, interviews, dialogues, dispatches, visual art, and various other forms of critical reflection and response, and we welcome submissions that engage with social and political theory, literature, philosophy, art, anthropology, and other fields in the humanities and critical social sciences.Please visit the Critical Times website for more information on the journal and on how to contribute. Inquiries can be sent to criticaltimes@berkeley.edu
Table of Contents, Critical Times 7:3
- Solidarity’s Challenge
Edited by Robin Celikates and Samera Esmeir - Solidarity’s Challenge: An Introduction
By Robin Celikates and Samera Esmeir - Standing with Myanmar: The Limits and Possibilities of South Korean Art Activism
By Hieyoon Kim - Pedagogy of Rembrance: Safiya Asya Bukhari’s Ethics of Solidarity
By Harun Rasiah - On the Mental Health Commons: Brazilian Free Psychoanalytic Clinics and an Ethics of Togetherness
By Ana Minozzo and Raluca Soreanu - Asymmetric Power, Asymmetric Knowledge, and Solidarity: Lessons from Hermeneutic and Creolizing Epistemologies
By Patricia Cipolliti Rodríguez - Border Solidarity: Transversal Alliances and Defiant Territories
By Marianna Poyares - The Aerial Witness and Infrastructures of Solidarity
By Angela Smith
Emergences
- Free Mediterranean: Palestine’s Transinsurgent Solidarities
By Nikolas Kosmatopoulos
Artistic Interventions
- Tal al-Zaatar in Tuscany: A Folio from Past Disquiet
By Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti - For Gaza
By Banan Abdelrahman - Photographs by Olive Elibott
