Off-site Event: THE FANTASY AND NECESSITY OF SOLIDARITY by Sarah Schulman

We're thrilled to host an off-site event celebrating the release of The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity by Sarah Schulman. This event will be held at Haymarket House (800 W. Buena). For this event, Sarah will be joined in conversation by Daisy Hernández.

For those who seek to combat injustice, solidarity with the oppressed is one of the highest ideals, yet it does not come without complication. In this searing yet uplifting book, award-winning writer and cultural critic Sarah Schulman delves into the intricate and often misunderstood concept of solidarity to provide a new vision for what it means to engage in this work—and why it matters.
To grapple with solidarity, Schulman writes, we must recognize its inherent fantasies. Those being oppressed dream of relief, that a bystander will intervene though it may not seem to be in their immediate interest to do so, and that the oppressor will be called out and punished. Those standing in solidarity with the oppressed are occluded by a different fantasy: that their intervention is effective, that it will not cost them, and that they will be rewarded with friendship and thanks. Neither is always the case, and yet in order to realize our full potential as human beings in relation with others, we must continue to pursue action towards these shared goals.
Within this framework, Schulman examines a range of case studies, from the fight for abortion rights in post-Franco Spain, to NYC’s AIDS activism in the 1990s, to the current wave of campus protest movements against Israel’s war on Gaza, and her own experience growing up as a queer female artist in male dominated culture industries. Drawing parallels between queer, Palestinian, feminist, and artistic struggles for justice, Schulman challenges the traditional notion of solidarity as a simple union of equals, arguing that in today's world of globalized power structures, true solidarity requires the collaboration of bystanders and conflicted perpetrators with the excluded and oppressed. That action comes at a cost, and is not always effective. And yet without it we sentence ourselves to a world without progressive change towards visions of liberation.

Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, nonfiction writer, and AIDS historian. Her books include Gentrification of the Mind, Conflict Is Not Abuse, and Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP, New York 1987–1993 and the novels The Cosmopolitans and Maggie Terry. Schulman’s honors include a Fulbright in Judaic Studies, a Guggenheim in Playwriting, and honors from Lambda Literary, the Publishing Triangle, NLGJA, the American Library Association, and others. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, New York, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times, and The Guardian. Schulman holds an endowed chair in creative writing at Northwestern University and is on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Daisy Hernández is the coeditor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism and the former editor of ColorLines magazine. She speaks at colleges and conferences about feminism, race, and media representations, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Ms. magazine, CultureStrike, In These Times, Bellingham Review, Fourth Genre, and Hunger Mountain, and on NPR’s All Things Considered. In 2022, she won the PEN Literary Award for The Kissing Bug (Tin House).

Accessibility: This event is hosted at Haymarket House (800 W Buena) which is a wheelchair accessible space. The wheelchair ramp is located via the private parking lot, which is accessible via N. Clarendon Avenue. Masks are REQUIRED in Haymarket House. We ask that all in-person attendees wear masks in the event space during the program for the health and well-being of the speaker and other guests. We will have a reception afterwards with light refreshments and books available for purchase, as well as a book signing. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email [email protected] by no later than 14 days before the event. For other questions or access needs, please email [email protected].

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Haymarket House, 800 West Buena Avenue, Chicago, United States