Critical Solidarity Research Articles

‘Chile – Ballad of the Cameraman’: New Song and ‘Revolutionary’ South America in Wolf Biermann's Anthems of East German Critical Solidarity

Abstract Using GDR dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann's ‘Chile – Ballade vom Kameramann’ as a point of departure, this article explores the role that ‘revolutionary’ South America and its musical corollary, the Nueva Canción, played in expressions of inner-communist critique in 1970s East Germany. Biermann's critique was Janus-faced. Lyrically, the ‘Chilean’ allegory of his ballad, in which a cameraman is murdered by a soldier, expressed support for the Allende administration while simultaneously destabilizing Soviet Bloc rhetoric. Musically, references to Nueva Canción music such as that of singer-songwriter Daniel Viglietti represented the anti-imperialist Other while simultaneously rejecting GDR-style socialist realism. On the one hand, Biermann's inspiration in South America can be heard as a colonizing gesture; on the other, it can be understood to reflect a provincialized East German society looking to the Third World for alternative sociopolitical – and musical – models.

The ecclesiastical crisis of human sexuality: ‘Critical solidarity’, ‘critical distance’ or ‘critical engagement’

The issue of human sexuality has many negative implications in African society. These arose in a number of contexts – legal, religious, cultural and societal – and were significantly divisive. This article examines these responses in terms of critical solidarity, critical engagement and critical distance, and attempts to find a way of considering them in the perspective of achieving justice and solidarity. The focus is on one mainline denomination, the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa (UPCSA).Contribution: This article has implications that link subjects within the theological encyclopaedia of History of Christianity, Church Polity, Systematic Theology and Practical Theology, and other disciplines including Social Sciences such as Political Science.

Active Respect and Critical Solidarity

ABSTRACT This article argues that, to distinguish between “critical” and “uncritical” solidarity, the normative concept of solidarity must be grounded on the principle of respect for persons. I start analyzing the principle of respect for persons from a modified Kantian perspective, arguing that it must be interpreted as a normative relation of power in which each person must recognize the autonomy of the other as a source of power. In this perspective, the principle of respect offers a foundation for an ethical assessment of situations in which ethical solidarity is required. By drawing on the distinction between passive and active respect, I argue that solidarity is grounded on the duty of active respect in the face of danger or oppression and that this foundation allows us to distinguish between critical (i.e. appropriate) and uncritical (i.e. inappropriate) solidarity.

Interpreting God’s Protection through a Dynamic Faith Partnership

Abstract This article examines how Christians in a faith partnership between Malawi and Scotland sought and defined God’s protection as they responded to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Malawi and Scotland have different cultures, societies and economic prosperity but a shared Presbyterian history, and long-standing faith partnerships through the two national churches. Qualitative interviews articulate striking comparisons of expectations of God’s protection when confronting global disease. This research shows how the dynamics of this partnership allowed both member churches to contribute to each other’s needs and hold a critical solidarity in each other’s interpretation of God’s protection.

The ecclesiastical crisis of human sexuality: ‘Critical solidarity’, ‘critical distance’ or ‘critical engagement’

The ecclesiastical crisis of human sexuality: ‘Critical solidarity’, ‘critical distance’ or ‘critical engagement’

Third-order critical family therapy: rethinking psychopathology and psychotherapy

Background: The focus of third-order critical family therapy is to raise awareness of the systems of systems – structural, socioeconomic and cultural contexts– that organize lifestyles that interfere with health. This clinical proposal integrates systemic wisdom with social theories, and in particular delves into a sociocultural theory of the human mind, power and emotions, a set of concepts from which indignant love, solidarity dialogue, critical honesty emerge, as the axes from which clinical work is woven. The ultimate goal is for the family to restore critical solidarity dialogue and empower themselves in their well-being. Method: Our study is narrative. Conclusion: This clinical proposal leads to re-thinking psychopathology not as an individual or biological problem, but as a resistance to those contexts of belonging that excludes and mistreats, and therefore to diagnosis as an active organized social framework. And on the other hand, also to psychotherapy and psychotherapist who must always be critically attentive to explain the androcentrist, classist and Eurocentric privileges of clinical theory and practice, to become health professionals with a social, human, political and ethical perspective.

Towards what end? Collective bargaining and the making and unmaking of the working class

In contemporary literature, bargaining is often construed as an instrument in the hands of the employer, a practice that is sustained by undermining worker solidarity and promoting interests of privileged unionized workers at the expense of other workers. This article challenges such narratives by foregrounding the idea of solidarity and highlighting the complex interplay of solidarity emanating from the multiple ways consciousness about worker identity plays out. Drawing on the literature on new social movements (NSM) and industrial relations (IR), the article shows that the relevance of bargaining is not merely confined to instrumental economic goals but extends to politically constitutive action. In the process of bargaining the political agency of workers and distinctive articulations of solidarity are identified. This article presents and classifies three kinds of solidarity that correspond to the three dimensions of political consciousness, namely critical solidarity, limited solidarity and absent solidarity across cases that are shaped by contextual realities of labour politics.

Reclaiming Transgender Identity Through Intersectionality and Decoloniality: A Critical Autoethnography of an Academic-Activist Performance

ABSTRACT As a Malaysian Muslim transwoman and a social justice researcher, exploring her transgender identity in a conservative society positions Aisya within a long history of oppression and injustice alongside other global marginalised and vulnerable assigned-male-at-birth transgender groups. This paper offers reflections on Aisya’s lived experience of discrimination arising from her trans identity. It focuses on linking critical theory (decoloniality and intersectionality), methodology (autoethnography) and theological epistemology (a progressive Muslim standpoint), while the analysis ‘tells’ the autoethnographic ‘transgender identity’. By exploring her lived experience in a heterocisnormative neocolonial setting, this paper encourages a critical discourse of decolonising Aisya’s transgender identity by using intersectional feminist theory and critical authoethnography as methods of decolonial performance. This paper contests the colonial matrix of power by dismantling colonialism through rebuilding and rediscovering ancient and pre-colonial knowledge of Indigenous and colonised people to decentre heterocisnormativity, gender hierarchies and racial privilege. Ultimately, this paper invites readers to come along on a social justice journey through decolonial intersectional feminism, arise together in critical solidarity, and carry compassion, care, love, and the desire to heal from the grievances of colonialism.

Hated without a reason – Contending with issues of human sexuality in a South African ecclesial context: A case study

The mainline churches in South Africa are in turmoil internally as a result of divisions arising out of issues related to human sexuality. These issues have serious implications for these churches, church families within them, and the relationship of these churches with one another and with the state. There is little open space for debate as discussions are hampered by a variety of theological perspectives on the authority of scripture, some of which are fixed and absolutised. This is a matter of justice for all those involved. This research article seeks to analyse the issues involved theologically and in terms of church polity, with a view of clarifying possibilities and options for a resolution of the distress and pain caused within and between members of the Christian family using the transnational context of the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa as a case study. The concepts of critical solidarity and critical distance will be used to clarify relationships within the relevant contexts. This article is interdisciplinary and embraces the fields of Church History or Polity, Practical Theology, Missiology and Systematic Theology.Contribution: This paper seeks to analyse issues of human sexuality within a South African Christian denomination with particular attention to the matter of justice.

The Materiality and Heritage of Contemporary Forced Migration

Fleeing violence, poverty, abuse, war, and climatic change, tens of millions of people have fled their homes in the Global South seeking refuge in adjacent nations and in the Global North. This modern migration entails a material, sensual experience in time. The craft of archaeology has traditionally engaged with the material, the sensual, and the temporal. Archaeologists who study the materiality of modern undocumented migration embrace activist-engaged research that applies the craft of archaeology to the contemporary world. They study the materiality of migration to reveal and comprehend the lived experience of displaced persons. They seek to understand the barriers erected to that journey, the things migrants acquire and leave on the trail, migrant placemaking, their stranded lives, how they build new lives, what the migrants have left behind in their home countries, and the heritage of forced migration. They approach this work in critical solidarity with displaced peoples.

Solidarity and the incarnation

This paper will discuss how the doctrine of the incarnation informs practices of solidarity in the public and political spheres through the work of two South African activists and theologians, Rev Dr Allan Boesak and Dr Denise Ackermann. I will begin with explicating Ackermann’s task of theology, its ground in praxis and human experience, which will lead to a discussion of stories and theology. As we begin to listen to the stories of those around us, we find we need an account of human agency and the particular stories we are told of the incarnation through the Eucharist . Defining solidarity will be the next task, which will begin with Boesak’s discussion of “critical solidarity”, or solidarity between powerful parties. We will then continue to construct our definition of solidarity through Boesak’s model of black solidarity as explicated in his dissertation, Farewell to Innocence. Finally, I will synthesize a theology of solidarity in conclusion to this conversation.

Religion and Social Justice: A Critical Analysis of the South African Council of Churches in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Within the South African context, the South African Council of Churches (SACC) played a constructive role in the formation of a democratic society. The SACC was the united voice of the church, and its relationship with civil society made it a major role-player in the dismantling of apartheid and the establishment of democratic rule. While post-apartheid is a time of hope and achievement, the country is facing serious social injustices more than two decades into democratic rule. This shift from apartheid to democracy has resulted in a different relationship between church and state. The relationship between church and state has moved from antagonism and polarisation during the apartheid era to “critical solidarity,” and finally to “critical engagement.” This paper will analyse and evaluate the role of the ecumenical church for social justice in post-apartheid South Africa. It will investigate the reasons for the presumed turning point in the relationship between the church and the state, the impact that the relationship between the church and state has on the role of the church, as well as the contribution the church can make to social justice issues, with particular reference to those at the margins of society.

Critical Relational Solidarity: Collectivist and Transformative Knowledge Practices in and beyond the US Academy

Critical Relational Solidarity: Collectivist and Transformative Knowledge Practices in and beyond the US Academy

Proteção da dignidade humana de migrantes e refugiados: uma proposta de intervenção

As transformações provocadas pela globalização e seus efeitos acentuaram as diferenças entre os países centrais e periféricos. Tais diferenças são marcadas pela complexidade das relações econômicas, a instabilidade política em regiões específicas, a insegurança jurídica, a falta de políticas pautadas no respeito pela dignidade humana. Como resultado desse cenário, a possibilidade de uma vida digna e com qualidade acaba condicionada à migração; num movimento que coloca as pessoas em deslocamento em situação de dependência dos países receptores e, consequentemente, em estado de vulnerabilidade e significativa perda de autonomia. Nesse contexto, a Bioética de intervenção pode contribuir com o estabelecimento de critérios político-sociais em busca do reconhecimento e garantia da dignidade da pessoa humana, especificamente dos refugiados e migrantes.

Letters to Kaka: postcard-images of Upendra Baxi

This essay weaves together post-card images of Upendra Baxi’s formative life as a student at Berkeley, California in the 1960s. As a law student in Berkeley from 1964–1966, Upen wrote long letters every other week to his father, Vishnuprasad Venilal Baxi (1905–1990) whom everyone called Kaka. Through these letters we represent fragments of his life as a student, catalogue the courses he read and chronicle his first meeting with the Austrian jurist, Professor Hans Kelsen. The first part of the essay brings together fragments of the letters Upen wrote to his father. The second part of this essay turns to Upen’s use of the form of letters as crafting a specific tactic of speaking against power. We reflect on the link between the biographical and the intellectual. The link between the two parts of this essay—life and law—is liminal. To the many insightful analyses of the Mathura Open Letter and the birth of epistolary jurisdiction, we add a biographical footnote that privileges letter writing as a form of relatedness in critical solidarity. Upen’s literary inheritance, especially of writing letters as a form of forging kinship and relatedness inflects how he writes of law and life.

Unfinished Trials and Sentences

Unfinished Trials and Sentences

“It is loved and it is defended”: Critical Solidarity Across Race and Place

AbstractSince 2010, the Wixárika (Huichol) indigenous people of western Mexico have struggled against transnational mining activity in their sacred pilgrimage site of Wirikuta in the semi‐desertic plateaus of San Luis Potosí. This struggle has been accompanied by a multitude of non‐indigenous and largely urban actors who have joined the Wixárika, bringing with them their own cultural, political and geographic registers for understanding and mobilising against mining in the region. Taking Wirikuta as a contemporary demonstration of interracial and cross‐geographic alliance building, I analyse how social movements that express solidarity and affective ties with the territories and cultures of indigenous peoples struggle to unsettle entrenched racial and spatial relations.

Uma análise bioética das relações intra e inter-equipes de saúde bucal.


 
 
 
 Na reorganização da atenção básica e especializada em saúde bucal, a inserção do Auxiliar e do Técnico é percebida como desafio contemporâneo à odontologia. Objetiva-se desvelar à luz da bioética os novos problemas e possibilidades relacionais nos processos de produção do trabalho inter e intra-equipes de saúde bucal. Em estudo exploratório-descritivo qualitativo, foram realiza das entrevistas semi-estruturadas com 15 cirurgiões-dentistas especialistas atuantes em Centros de Especialidades de uma região metropolitana do sul do Brasil, e analisadas por Análise Textual Discursiva. Os resultados evidenciaram a construção de novas identidades profissionais no processo de trabalho em equipe de saúde bucal, entrecortada por problemas intra e inter-equipe como: ideologia do profissionalismo; dicotomia entre a formação no modelo biomédico e no modelo de co-gestão; e hierarquização ainda hegemônica. Constrói-se como desafio bioético um novo ethos público que associe a produção de valores de uso a valores intrínsecos de solidariedade crítica e participação política.
 
 
 

Traces of a Revolution

Traces of a Revolution

Reification and Modern Drama: an Analysis, a Critique, and a Manifesto

Drawing on a close reading of Theodor Adorno's essay, ‘Education after Auschwitz’, in this article Eva Urban develops the argument that an analysis of the reification that reduces human relationships to mere business interactions has been a central concern of modern drama. The article offers an analysis of some of the ways in which this theme continues to be represented, interrogated, and challenged internationally in contemporary political plays and theatre performances across a range of genres and grounded in a variety of dramaturgical principles. It asks how drama, theatre-making, theatre-spectating, and theatre-participating can create dynamics necessary to enable a move from reified consciousness towards the development of critical autonomy and solidarity. A negotiation of the principles of critical consciousness and solidarity is problematic within economic structures that cause social, ethnic, and religious atomization and divisions. Her argument concludes with an outline for a manifesto for political drama and theatre practice to work against reification. Eva Urban is a lecturer and researcher in the English Department and an Associate of the Irish Studies Research Centre, CEI/CRBC, at the University of Rennes 2, France. She recently completed a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Cambridge and is a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. The author of Community Politics and the Peace Process in Contemporary Northern Irish Drama (Peter Lang, 2011), she has also published articles in New Theatre Quarterly, Etudes Irlandaises, Caleidoscopio, and edited book collections.