Searching for Solidarity: Revolutionary Dreams and Radical Social Movements

In Searching for Solidarity, Noor Ghazal Aswad explores how the emancipatory qualities of transnational revolutionary struggle are often denied, misunderstood, and erased. Drawing on the stories of those in struggle, Searching for Solidarity reimagines solidarity as an affective, ethical, and political capacity that can thrive amid today’s volatile ＂political economy of emotion＂--an environment marked by mistrust, fake news, and disinformation campaigns targeting those in resistance. At the heart of this book is the ＂radical subject,＂ which refers to those revolting against repressive forces to achieve liberatory change at the risk of death, injury, or disappearance. These radical subjects offer a new foundation for critical theory--one that rejects ＂negative solidarity,＂ the tendency to acquiesce to power or distance oneself from those fighting against systemic injustice. By immersing readers in the testimony, memory, and hopes of these subjects, each chapter reveals solidarity as an affective force capable of cutting through distortive narratives and binding us in a cross-cultural, decolonizing, and nonhierarchical collectivity. Solidarity, through this lens, emerges as a transformative stance that compels us to, as Yassin al-Haj Saleh writes, become ＂partners in word and deed to change power.＂

Noor Ghazal Aswad is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Alabama. Her research bridges political communication, cultural studies, decolonial studies, and transnational liberation movements, with a focus on grassroots activism in the Middle East. Her research has appeared in Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Environmental Communication, and Presidential Studies Quarterly, among other venues.