Atmospheres and Activism: Rethinking Solidarity Politics

How and why does left solidarity fail women of color? Given the rising tide of far right extremism, this is an urgent question for social movement actors who wish to build sustainable coalitions for progressive politics. In this paper, we examine the dynamics of solidarity via a novel approach to the study of “atmospheres”. While scholars of emotions have identified the importance of atmospheres in social and political life, they are unable to answer their own important question: “What does atmosphere make possible politically?” (Sumartojo and Pink 2019: 122). Our conceptual innovation brings together Hooker’s (2009) concept of “racialized solidarity”, whereby reciprocal relations are refused to racialized groups, with the sensuous inequalities of activist spaces. We identify visual, sonic, somatic and emotional inequalities that work together to produce what we name as the racialized atmospherics of activist spaces, in which the mood is systematically mobilized against women of color.