Tagung "Potenitial Solidarities. (Popular) Cultural Alliances and Political Engagements with and within East-Central Europe"

The “Potential Solidarities” conference aims at critical and multidisciplinary reflection on the concepts and practices of solidarity within and with East-Central Europe from the 1980s until now -- with a special focus on its cultural manifestations and their theoretical framing. It proposes to consider East-Central Europe as a specific laboratory of solidarity, not least because of the historical background: traditions of resistance and dissidence, a high degree of distrust of the power institutions as a result of oppressive regimes, which in turn stimulates creative forms of social togetherness etc.

The conference will focus on the time period spanning from the last decade of state socialism and the following decades of systemic transformation until now: from Polish social movement Solidarność in the 1980s – including its international recognition and vehement support – through the political upheavals of Orange Revolution (2004/2005) and Euromaidan (2013/2014) in Ukraine, to recent instances of universal solidarity in the region: during the 2018 political protests in Hungary, the 2020 mass protests for women’s reproductive rights in Poland (Women’s Strike), the 2020 protests in Belarus, as well as in the face of influx of Ukrainian refugees to the adjacent states after Russia’s full invasion in 2022. Since solidarity builds “bonds of commonality across the difference” (Hunt-Hendrix/Taylor 2024, XIII), its political potential is becoming increasingly topical in times of social polarization triggered by authoritarian and libertarian populism as well as radical conservatism (not only in East-Central Europe).

The conference gathers an international group of scholars who in their research represent diverse disciplinary and geographical backgrounds. The invited scholars have worked on the concept of solidarity in various notions: as a philosophical reflexion of social togetherness, as a category of historical research, in the context of (popular) culture, and as a political concept of social practices that proves its significance in contemporary frameworks. Furthermore, they focus in their research on solidarity bonds within East-Central Europe now and then as well as on phenomena of international solidarity working across political divisions such as Iron Curtain, East-West, Global South-Global North (from the perspective of East-Central Europe).