Replanted elsewhere: Getting to the root of solidarity

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper brings together two scholars, Filipina/CHamorro and Cantonese (respectively), to engage in collaborative story-sharing sessions. We accessed our upbringings, K-12 and postsecondary educations, relations with processes of coloniality and racialization, and critical consciousness formation to situate our lives and knowledges in how Asian diasporic peoples have sought to challenge systems of oppression through radical intellectualism. We consider how this radical work has been necessarily connected to practices of what has been referred to as “thick solidarity” or “co-conspiracy.” We share how we came to an understanding of solidarity as protection, the importance of considering power relations and formations, and the need to sustain value systems. We discuss implications for broader work in what might be called, in the lineage of Cedric Robinson and his invocation of the Black radical tradition, the Asian radical tradition.