We live in a contradictory moment where increased nationalism and economic de-globalization unfold alongside increased expressions of global political solidarity. From Congo to Sudan to Palestine, global solidarity has been an important and highly contested aspect of political action. These contestations have seen the emergence of robust transnational consciousness and revolutionary energies, but also widespread repression and intensified surveillance, alongside the closure of spaces for critique. The university has been a central site in which the contestation of contemporary solidarity politics is playing out. Student movements have been at the forefront of solidarity struggles, while facing repression, victimisation, and criminalisation. The re-emergence of solidarity is not limited to the political left. Solidarity as a political act is also being used in service of exclusionary and oppressive politics. Xenophobic, ethno-nationalist, and far-right movements have shifted from stray vigilante groups on the street to the policies of mainstream political parties and to parliaments, both in South Africa and around the world. These questions of solidarity are intensified by the ongoing planetary crisis. Environmental destruction and the risk of ecological collapse force us to reckon not merely with our human relations to one and another, but also to our relation to the earth. This raises the question of what planetary solidarity might mean in a time of ecological precarity.

 

This conference invites critical reflections and reconfigurations of the concept and practices of solidarity, and the challenges posed in this critical conjuncture. Questions of freedom and repression, disparate geographies and marginalised histories, connection across difference and boundaries, all assume significance and require collective, committed thought and action. Which solidarities endure, which falter, and how does power and hegemony reassert themselves against collective resistance?