Activist Pedagogies: Thinking Beyond Solidarity and Allyship

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Dialogue Format

Abstract

This roundtable probes the distinctions between allyship and solidarity in activism, scholarship, and pedagogy that resist histories of antiblackness, xenophobia, colonialism, misogyny, and ableism in the United States. Rather than arguing exclusively for models of either “allyship” (and/or its radical twin “accomplice”) or “solidarity,” our conversation takes shape around the contradictions and resonances that emerge when we think the two together. On the one hand, “allyship” often comes along with the attendant discourse of privilege, which frames the ally as a helper who wields social capital to improve the lot of those less fortunate. Thinking allyship in relation to its meaning within the context of nation-states, then, implies that individual actors can embody a kind of sovereignty that exceeds the institutional and disciplinary constraints of which we are all subjects. In this formulation, the language of allyship retrenches the social divisions that give rise to injustice in the first place, reproducing the kind of multicultural rhetoric of inclusion that scholars such as Sarah Ahmed and others have criticized. On the other hand, “allyship” and “accomplice” address, however inadequately, one of the shortcomings of “solidarity” politics that David Roediger teased out in his 2015 ASA Presidential Address. The identity knowledges that the field of American Studies has developed and embraced since at least the 1980s remind us that we are not all Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, or the Standing Rock Sioux. Yet the solidity implied by solidarity is still enticing, still seductive; we are attracted to the oneness that suffuses solidarity, however different our material circumstances due to our social positions might be.

Responding to the call for pedagogies of dissent, our panel proposes an ethical orientation towards inquiry over altruism: one that dwells in the affective space of “learning from” rather than a posture of support. From this orientation, our panelists imagine modes and arrangements between the individual and the collective that might differently negotiate the tensions between solidarity and allyship. Our discussion seeks to generate new rhetorical and social arrangements by which we might understand collective political mobilization. Panelists raise questions about the relationship between afro-pessimism and Black Lives Matter in the classroom, for instance, and the at-times fraught relation between direct action tactics and the ethics of accessibility. We wonder why the identitarian phrase “I am [X],” where X is a party subject to state-sanctioned violence, has come to stand for solidarity in contemporary activism; we imagine what modes of collective praxis might replace this identitarian fantasy with a solid coalition. By what logics do we negotiate the need for separateness--the necessity for distinct movements like Black nationalism, lesbian separatism, even the “women’s march”--in the face of accelerating privatization of all services purportedly oriented toward a public good? These questions serve as the departure point for the interactive and dynamic discussion, which invites audience participation, of our teaching, our scholarship, and our activism.

Sub Unit

• American Studies Association Annual Meeting

Chair

• David Thomas Mitchell

Panelists

• M. Shadee Malaklou, Beloit College

• Anna Vitale, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Kevin Modestino, Howard University

• Alex W. Corey, Harvard University

• Maria Katharina Wiedlack, University of Vienna, Austria

Comment

• David Thomas Mitchell