The Affective Ambiguity of Solidarity: Resonance Within Anti-Deportation Protest in the German Radical Left

Abstract

Solidarity is a key concept in the literature on humanitarianism and social movements. Public discourse, too, promotes solidarity as a consistent feeling of belonging and empowerment. However, despite its popularity in the social sciences, there is little evidence about the phenomenological experiences underlying the concept. This article aims at moving beyond ethical considerations that underlie the boundaries between more conventional and contentious forms of civil engagement in examining the affective and emotional dimensions of solidarity. Building on long-term ethnographic fieldwork within deportation protest in Germany, I draw on cultural approaches to social movements and on the anthropology of affect in order to analyse resonance in four affective encounters. I argue that rather than communicating a political opinion, solidarity represents an attitude with which people explain their engagement in certain forms of affective and emotional exchange which are often just as ambiguous, challenging and contradictory as they are comforting and exciting.