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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research into transnational activism in ‘solidarity with Kashmir’ and a combined perspective from the anthropology of ethics and emotions, my paper suggests a conceptualisation of political solidarity as affective-ethical striving amid, and despite, military nationalism.

Paper long abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research on transnational activism in 'solidarity with Kashmir' and emotions of exhaustion among activists, my paper suggests a conceptualisation of political solidarity as affective-ethical striving for relations of support amid, and despite, military nationalism and related mistrust and suspicion. In response to what I read as normative debates about ‘true’ and ‘false’ solidarity in both activism and scholarship, I wish to outline an anthropological perspective that foregrounds the ethics, emotions and embodied experiences of those who act, and claim to act, in solidarity with oppressed people.

By bringing feminist and anthropological debates on political solidarity into conversation with ethnographic research on emotions and ethics, I propose that we examine how solidarity feels, not only as passive, visceral experience but also as an active, ethical engagement with the world. My aim is to explain ‘ethical commitment’ in solidarity movements, which tends to be taken for granted as the driving force behind acts of political support, distinguishing ‘genuine’ from ‘parasitical’ solidarity. The implicit assumption is that we engage in political solidarity because we feel ethically committed to do so, resulting in a kind of circular argument. What remains unexplored is how we feel and do ethics: how ethical commitment affects and moves bodies.

Understanding ethics as being entangled with emotions, in the sense that emotions reveal what matters to people, I suggest that exhaustion can point us towards the ethical striving of a person who is ‘responsive and vulnerable, trying to act well’ (Kuan 2023: 309) in the world.