(Mis)understanding (Anti)colonial Solidarity – CRITIQUE-PTRG Seminar with Jared Holley (08 October)

Wednesday 8 October 2025, 3pm-4.30pm, Room 3.15, Chrystal Macmillan Building

The aim of this working paper is to begin developing an approach to the political theory of solidarity grounded in practices of anticolonial solidarity. To do this, I offer criticisms of the two dominant European traditions of theoretical reflection on solidarity from the perspective of two recent examples of solidarity practices. In Part I, I discuss transnational solidarity actions that responded to Canada’s paramilitary invasion of unceded Gidimt’en Clan territories of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation. I argue that the recent discussion of solidarity in Anglophone analytic political philosophy is prone to a kind of abstraction that generates misunderstandings of these practices. In Part II, I survey a selection of declarations of solidarity issued by critical theorists from the Global North in the context of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. I argue that this discussion relies on a set of global-historical and political-economic premises that impede its participants ability to see, hear, and respond to Palestinians’ calls for solidarity.