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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnography with British Kashmiri/Pakistani activists, the paper traces the work of ethical feelings in transnational activism for Kashmir. It offers insights into the conflicting and transformative potential of political solidarity and entangled nationalist and Islamic identity politics.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the work of ‘passion’ in transnational activism for Kashmir and the right to self-determination for Kashmiris. Drawing on insights from my ethnographic research with British Kashmiri/Pakistani activists, I examine the transformative and conflicting potential of solidarity and entangled nationalist and Islamic identity politics. I conclude my paper by outlining a theory of political solidarity as affective-ethical striving for a shared narrative of bridgeable differences.

Rather than assuming a ‘common cause’ of solidarity movements (see Scholz 2008), I propose the lens of emotion (Ahmed 2005) to examine how solidarity feels – not only as a passive experience or visceral intensity, but also as an active, yet vulnerable, engagement with the world, and how to act well despite contradictions and radical differences.

I contend that emotions reveal what matters to people (Lutz 2017), and that this ‘mattering’ can point us towards the ethical striving of a person (Kuan 2023). While ethical feelings, including emotions of ‘passion’, navigate power disparities and bridge differences between oppressed people and privileged activists, they also reproduce hierarchies and forms of marginalisation. In the case of the Jammu and Kashmir region, disputed by powerful nation-states, claiming solidarity with Kashmir is contested, as it can be used to promote mutually exclusive political aspirations, including independence for Kashmir, or accession to Pakistan or India. Theorising solidarity as feeling allows us to explore (self-)transformative and repressive moments of ethical striving, bridging, but also reifying, differences, and recognising certain struggles and their (post-)colonial histories of oppression, while ignoring others.