Moral subjects in white spaces: impossible solidarities

This article explores women of colour’s struggles against white spaces in anti-austerity, anti-fascist and migrants’ rights movements in Berlin, Brussels, Copenhagen, London, Madrid and Paris. We argue that solidarity is denied by white activists who resist women of colour’s practical demands to take race, class, gender, sexuality, disability and legal status seriously as an organising strategy. These demands are misinterpreted as emotional pleas for care and, crucially, as threats to the fantasies in which white activists place themselves as the eternal moral subjects and agents of their activism. Focusing on emotional expressions of solidarity can therefore fatally undermine the pragmatic work required to build solidarity. It is unclear how women of colour activists should pursue solidarity as a goal when their interests are misrepresented by their white comrades. Yet solidarity remains an impossible necessity in a cost-of-living crisis and far-right emergency.