The power of the concept of solidarity resides in how it cuts through a rigid understanding of belonging to one single group…

Interviewee: Nora Sternfeld

Here I’d like to draw on Oliver Marchart, who has worked on this issue and shown that there is an identitarian perspective on this concept, i.e. solidarity amongst a political subject who sees him/herself so: proletariat, migrant…and that there is another solidarity which he describes as “self-alienation”, and here the self-understanding is that of betraying one’s own identity or class. I think that this form of solidarity is particularly interesting. The power of this concept of solidarity resides in how it cuts through a rigid understanding of belonging to one single group. That’s what interests me. Politics without solidarity is inconceivable and indeed such a politics holds no interest for me, because, in the first place, I’ve got no idea which identity I’d adopt and commit myself to, and secondly I don’t want to limit myself to any one group of people who are the same as me. Because I really wish that I don’t have to stand up against anti-Semitism on my own, but also because I don’t want to live in a racist world, one where people are discriminated on the basis of skin colour, language or ethnicity, even when I myself am not directly affected. That’s why the only conceivable politics for me is one based on solidarity.