On solidarity (I) -- phenomenology of the picket line

(This discussion has already been updated/elaborated somewhat via an exchange of comments at Jodi's most recent I cite solidarity post.  And here.)

I want to try to systematize my thoughts about the recent solidarity thread (or should I say, "meme"?  -- I don't want to, I'm an old-word person like Benjamin rather than a new-word person like Derrida . . . ) wending its way around my blogospheric neighborhood, but this post probably won't be it, so I'm giving it a Roman numeral "(I)" as a commitment of sorts to return . . . .  What I'll try to do here instead, which will end up addressing "solidarity" anyway, is respond to some excellent questions put to me in comments to an earlier post on Agamben and Derrida by Jodi Dean and squibb.  This post is thus really an extended comment-response elevated into post-dom.

Jodi asks: 

Would your Derridean solidarity then be something like the infusion of the Other into a political calculation? If it is, I don't see how that is solidarity in any political sense; it seems to come after, to supplement, the calculation; and, it is hard to tell apart from a general ethical regard. Solidarity should be something stronger, no?

That's the right question, and I'm not entirely sure how to answer it.  This is also the issue that opens up into the more systematic thinking about solidarity that I'd like to come back to later.    Nevertheless . . .  I wrote a paper a couple of years ago that, among other things, attempts to sketch in a very preliminary way something like this Derridean/Levinasian solidarity through a merger of sorts of Levinas with Kantian social-contractarian political theory (abstract and cite here).  The notion that I was trying to articulate was something like (these are not terms I used in the paper but they're accurate enough) Derridean/Levinasian political solidarity as an aufhebung of the (very "strong") solidarity of the classical polis and the extremely abstract, denatured and "weak" solidarity of the modern, Kantian political subject with its fellow rational beings.  In any event, I'll leave that level of response for later (if ever).  For now I just want to think about Jodi's notion of "strong" solidarity on one hand -- behind which seems to be some kind of substantive, shared commitment, whether it's common class interest or some other characteristic or life-situation shared by the party members -- and "weak" solidarity on the other, based (Jodi suggests) on some (abstract, denatured, etc.) "general ethical regard" for the Otherness of the Other in general.  Should solidarity be something stronger than this?

Yes and no, I think.  Yes, "solidarity" does seem to imply, at first blush at least, some kind of substantive bond that ties party or group members together, something more concrete than their shared status as rational willing beings entitled to respect, or what have you.  But it seems to me that the situation is more complex when you look at it more closely.  Think about a union picket line.  Which of these is the more genuine exemplar of "solidarity" in the sense that (I think) we really mean it when we use it in everyday speech:  (1) the bond between the union members walking the line; or (2) the decision by a non-union member, confronted by a picket line on her way to work, not to cross the line?  It seems to me that the second situation exemplifies solidarity in its highest best sense, and more importantly, in the sense that ultimately underlies all the other senses in which we use it -- including, that is, the solidarity among the union picketers themselves.  That is, it seems to me that true solidarity takes place (and one of the points I'd stress is that it ought to be a "taking place" and not a characteristic of certain groups) when the I encounters another who, prior to the event of solidarity, did not share substantive commitments of the subject, and who (ideally) need not have shared any characteristics or elements of her life-situation, either.  That is, solidarity takes place when the I encounters an Other and is drawn into her stance to the point of being willing to substitute herself for that Other (here, by literally or figuratively joining the union members on the picket-line and on strike, by honoring the line and refusing to work).  Even if the Levinasian terminology is a little strained I trust the point is clear enough.  Solidarity as event in this sense seems closer to Levinas to me than to any analysis in terms of underlying or pre-existing political interest or commitment. 

And in answer to Jodi I guess I would say that the ethical moment does "suffuse" the political calculation (or better, decision, which as Derrida tells us (correctly in my view) is never finally calculable at all); not as an after-the-fact "supplement," however, but as (prior) quasi-transcendental motivation and pre-condition of possibility.  And as I've already suggested, I would also want to argue (but won't here) that "solidarity as event" in this (Levinasian) sense is the presupposition of the more immediately intuitive sense of solidarity as non-event or "thing," as particular shared commitment among members of a party or group. 

Jodi's other question is about the other side of my initial post, Agamben's linguistified ontology and its relation to politics ("it isn't clear to me how he can have a properly destitute subject and still have politics"), as are squibb's questions (e.g., "What is the nature of the relationship between ‘sayability,’ posited by Agamben, and politics? . . . . .  [I]s he saying ‘sayability’ accounts for the possibility of politics? Or for the possibility of a certain kind of politics?").  Given how long this has already turned out and how late it's gotten here, I'll leave that for another time. 

Comments

[Jodi]

Adam, thanks for your response over at I cite. I want to think it through before I say anything. When you wrote 'have to get to work' I had this image of somebody not getting a stay of execution because of ongoing blog discussions!

[Adam Thurschwell]

Jodi, well not quite that bad -- more like "Crim Pro II students not getting the fully-prepared professor they thought they'd bought and paid for" (although I do also have a suppression motion in a capital case, the basis of which is extraction of the statement by torture, that I've been working on too; I suppose that's a bit sexier . . . .)

[Nate]

hi Adam,
Thanks for this. I posted a reply over at Jodi's place that probably should have gone here. Sorry about that. I'd repaste it here but that seems a little, well, unsatisfactory.
I'm enjoying this solidarity discussion a lot. It's like an electronic pub crawl, stumbling from site to site keeping conversations going, sort of, inflected by the new surroundings and changing offerings of jukebox and tap.
take care,
Nate