The Trials of Solidarity: A Defence

The Trials of Solidarity

a defence

Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández

ABSTRACT As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact communities around the world, “solidarity” has become a rallying cry, invoked by everyone from world leaders and politicians to academics and community organizers. Bandied about in different ways for a plethora of purposes without a clear definition, these calls for solidarity are often diffused and largely ignore how the very forces that have exacerbated the impact of the pandemic have also put solidarity itself on trial. Making sense of these trials requires a complex understanding of solidarity and a recognition of the contradictions that underly the many uses of the concept. This article traces different understandings of solidarity and points to the promises and opportunities, as well as the puzzles and challenges, that each understanding suggests. The article concludes with a set of questions about solidarity that must be asked as we navigate the global pandemic.

Solidarity is on trial. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread throughout the world, solidarity has become common parlance and is widely invoked by everyone, from world leaders and politicians to academics and community organizers. Yet whether solidarity can play a role in ameliorating the impact of the virus and the extent to which the experience of the pandemic has either strengthened or weakened solidary bonds remain open questions. The answers to these questions hinge on how we understand solidarity and how we use the concept to make sense of experiences and behaviors.

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Email: r.gaztambide.fernandez@utoronto.ca.

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, volume 64, number 3 (summer 2021): 302–314. © 2021 by Johns Hopkins University Press

Sometimes solidarity is invoked to acknowledge and describe the different kinds of responses to the crisis, from individual acts and expressions of support to collaboration between governments and international organizations around the world (Broom 2020). Sharan Burrow (2020), General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, described the ongoing lockdowns and the willingness of individuals to confine themselves in order to protect others as “the greatest display of solidarity in human history.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pointed to creative acts to express gratitude and support as the “many signs of solidarity” (Maclean’s 2020). Other times, appeals to solidarity seek to compel particular kinds of actions and desired commitments, whether by individuals, organizations, or nations. UN Secretary General António Guterrez called for an extended debt moratorium for developing countries and urged governments to develop sustainable recovery plans in response to the pandemic (UN News 2020). Sociologist Eric Klinenberg (2020) likewise invoked the need for solidarity, pondering whether US citizens would be able to overcome staggering social fragmentation and individualism in order to confront the virus with a sense of collective duty.

However it is invoked, whether to describe or to prescribe behaviors from individuals or institutions, solidarity has been bandied about in different forms for a range of purposes without a clear definition. Most speakers rarely specify what they mean by solidarity, yet they seem to place enormous faith in solidarity as an antidote against the social, economic, and cultural pressures that the pandemic has either caused or intensified. Without a clear understanding of solidarity, however, this faith is misguided, as it largely ignores how the very forces that have exacerbated the impact of the pandemic pose a challenge to solidarity. In other words, while solidarity is being trialed as a response to the pandemic, the pandemic is also trialing the limits of solidarity and, indeed, putting solidarity on trial.

These trials of solidarity are at least of three kinds, each reflecting a different meaning of the word trial. First, the pandemic is shedding light on whether and to what extent solidarity can serve as a strong foundation for a collective response to a major challenge such as a global pandemic. In this sense of being trialed, solidarity is also being put to the test as an antidote to other crises that preexisted and have been highlighted by COVID-19, such as systemic racism and growing economic inequality (Gravlee 2020). Second, the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged our sense of solidarity with others both near and far from us (indeed, it has challenged the very sense of us and them). Can solidary bonds withstand the pressure to act in our own self-interest at the expense of others? This question points to the third meaning of trial as judgment: solidarity is on trial. The bonds that bring particular groups together have led some groups to protect their own interests, thereby undermining the quest for the presumed common good that calls for “solidarity” involve. Has solidarity deepened the social rifts that have incresed the harms of the pandemic?

Making sense of these multiple trials requires that we have a complex understanding of solidarity and that we recognize the contradictions that underly its use. Since the start of the pandemic, solidarity has been invoked to describe such a wide array of actions and relationships as to render the term almost a cliché. While it is usually invoked in a positive sense, critiques of solidarity abound. For example, in 2013 Black feminist author and cultural critic Mikki Kendall (2020) coined the hashtag #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen to call out the continued exclusion of Black women and their particular experiences from mainstream—or what Quechua scholar Sandy Grande (2015) has called “whitestream”—feminism. In a recent interview, author Barbara Ehrenreich noted that while solidarity implies a coming together for a shared goal, it can also “turn against us in awful ways,” pointing to the need to recognize difference if we are to enact solidarity effectively (Tolentino 2020). More dramatically, Ehrenreich suggests that solidarity “can embody so many things—fascism, religious fervor,” and that it is not to be trusted “inherently.” If we are to defend solidarity in light of these critiques, we have to articulate what we mean by solidarity, specify its promises and opportunities, and also come to terms with its limits and the challenges that it poses.

On Debts, Duties, and Obligations

Solidarity has its conceptual and etymological roots in the Roman law of obligations and the legal concept of obligatio in solidum, or “solidary obligation.” In legal terms, a solidary obligation happens when two or more people share a debt for which each member of the group carries responsibility for its entirety (Cumyn 2010; Zimmerman 1996). For example, when two or more people co-sign a loan, all borrowers have a solidary obligation and can each be held responsible for the totality of the debt, even if only one borrower defaults. If one debtor pays the entire debt, the others are off the hook. Although in contemporary common parlance solidarity is not specifically framed in relationship to a financial debt, some expressions of, and calls for, solidarity carry this sense of debt or obligation beyond gratitude. For example, the recurring idea that health-care and other “frontline” workers deserve some form of pandemic—or “hero”—pay as way to compensate them for their sacrifices and for putting themselves at risk of illness or death captures this idea of a collective debt (Firozi 2021; Unifor 2021). While not literally a debt that any one person can repay, everyone is held responsible for this additional compensation, whether through taxes or through increased costs for goods and services. The idea carries a sense of collective burden and shared responsibility that is akin to a solidary obligation.

The notion of a collective debt that one person can satisfy in its totality is also at the heart of the idea of Christian sacrifice and the notion that Jesus Christ died for the sins (or the debts) of humankind. The notion of a debt or a duty to others (if not necessarily a sacrifice) also undergirds various religious ideas around gener-

osity and taking action on behalf of others, such as charity in Christianity, tzedakah and tikkun olam in Judaism, zakat in Islam, or the practice of d¯ana in Eastern religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. In a more secular context, notions of volunteerism and community service, which are seen as positive acts and encouraged in many contemporary societies, are often framed in terms of an obligation to act. While these obligations are not necessarily understood as debts to be paid on behalf of others, they carry the sense of responsibility for others and of collective wellbeing as a shared burden. More broadly, the notion of fraternity—one of the pillars of the French Revolution, which can also be traced back to the Christian dictate to “love thy neighbor”—is grounded in a sense of duty and obligation to others (Brunkhorst 2005).

Four Uses of Solidarity

Like fraternity, many contemporary expressions of solidarity evolved following the French revolution and are linked to liberal humanism, most prominently through the notion of human solidarity articulated by Pierre Leroux (1845). Expressions like “All for one and one for all,” made famous by Alexander Dumas’s 1844 The Three Musketeers, and even the motto inscribed on the Great Seal of the United States, E pluribus unum (out of many, one), contain the original connotation of a group debt in which each individual has an obligation in solidum, or for the totality of a debt obligation. Other more political connotations of solidarity also evolved during the 19th century. For example, solidarity linked to class struggle and other revolutionary ideas was articulated in Marx and Engels’s 1848 Communist Manifesto and was central to the 1871 Paris Commune. Also during this time, Emile Durkheim (1897) and other French sociologists and philosophers developed the contemporary conceptualization of social solidarity, building on earlier work on social cohesion that can be traced back to Muslim philosopher and social scientist Ibn Khaldun (2015) and his concept of asabiyya (Stauth 2007). Moreover, this was also the time when solidarity was incorporated into Catholic doctrine, setting the foundations for both Liberation Theology in Latin America and Black Liberation Theology in the US (Boff 1985; Cone 1985; Gutierrez 1971).

German philosopher Kurt Bayertz (1999) suggests that there are four ways of mobilizing the concept of solidarity. First, a universalist understanding of solidarity is based on the notion that human beings have an obligation or moral duty to support and care for one another and to seek mutual benefit regardless of differences. This way of thinking about solidarity is expressed in initiatives by global organizations such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization (WHO), and in the efforts of various countries to provide health assistance and help to other countries. While this view of solidarity as a universal bond might seem like common sense, it is based on the premise that humans are united

around certain values and shared needs. This rather fragile assumption loses resonance when conflict emerges around values or around the needs of groups or nations. For example, while WHO (2020) originally touted its efforts to support the development of a COVID-19 “Solidarity Trial” as an expression of unprecedented collaboration among nations, the emergence of what has been called “vaccine nationalism” clearly shows the fragility of such notions.1 Moreover, this universalist approach to solidarity ignores power dynamics through which certain moral values are imposed and interpreted and how and to whom solidarity action is directed. This is perhaps the most important trial of universal or human solidarity: whether it can serve as a basis for fighting against the power dynamics that shape whether and how humans are capable of assisting each other.

A second understanding of solidarity, according to Bayertz (1999), is manifested in the actions taken by governments and state officials but also in the willingness of citizens to follow the guidelines and restrictions that are imposed by the state. Civic solidarity is premised on the assumption that it is the state, and not the market or a higher power, that should be responsible for ensuring the wellbeing of a society. Civic solidarity is an expression of a sense of duty or responsibility to fellow citizens and members of civil society; it also underlies the notion of taxes or even charitable donations in support of groups in need. In the context of the pandemic, staying at home or maintaining physical distancing are acts of civic solidarity. Nevertheless, we have seen that not all citizens are willing to limit their sense of individual freedom in the name of the common good, and some insist that maintaining a free and open market should override the public health imperatives. In the early days of the pandemic, for instance, some business owners were caught raising the price of essential goods, and there continues to be debate about whether freedom of religion or the right to protest should be curtailed in the interest of public health (Ro 2020; Zizek 2020).

Ensuring that individuals follow the directives of the state in the absence of a sense of connection or reciprocity with those who are most affected by the circumstances and who benefit most directly from civic guidelines is the trial of civic solidarity. Civic solidarity cannot be taken for granted. While mostly relying on persuasion and appealing to a sense of moral duty, the state often ends up mobilizing its legal and repressive state apparatuses to ensure that citizens observe the rules (Althusser 1971). The state can impose fines or even arrest those who don’t follow the guidelines. This trial of civic solidarity illuminates the challenge of extending the equal protection of rules or laws to societies composed of interest groups that are divergent and whose commitments and pursuits do not easily

1In his indictment of “vaccine nationalism,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (2021) declared that “To the virus, we are all one herd. To beat it, we must act as one community,” clearly echoing the sense of human solidarity. Ghebreyesus describes vaccine hoarding among wealthy nations as counterproductive, pointing out that ensuring the wide distribution of the vaccine among the world’s poorest nations would both slow down the spread of the disease and reduce the “possibility that new variants will develop vaccine resistance.”

align. Even as crises like the pandemic bring some social groups to coalesce and collaborate, they also highlight inequalities and the challenges of ensuring competing interests.

This recognition of competing group interests points us to Bayertz’s (1999) third use of the concept: social solidarity. Social solidarity is less interested in making moral claims about why and how individuals should care for the wellbeing of others, and more in documenting and analyzing the ways in which societies ensure cohesion. This issue becomes increasingly more challenging to answer as societies become larger, more complex, and more diverse, and as the sense of responsibility to others becomes more ephemeral and abstract (Crow 2002). For Durkheim (1897), for example, preindustrial societies were characterized by what he called “mechanical” solidarity, based on the prescribed roles of undifferentiated individuals in tightly knit communities, while large, industrialized societies were characterized by an “organic” solidarity, in which individuals rely on unfamiliar or distant others to perform duties enforced through contractual obligations. Yet these different modes of social solidarity are not exclusive.

When Klinenberg (2020) questions whether US citizens have the capacity to overcome the extreme social fragmentation that the four years of the Trump presidency made apparent (if not also made worse), his argument is premised on the circular assumption that social solidarity is both the basis of as well as premised on a sense of cohesion, even among competing groups. In other words, his argument is that a lack of social solidarity is what produces fragmentation, but also that what is needed for social solidarity is more cohesion. This “functionalist” view assumes that societies are organized around a set of roles that different groups and individuals fulfill to ensure collective wellbeing. Even as groups might have competing values and interests, in order for them to pursue their goals and fulfill their social roles, they must also have a strong sense of cohesion and interdependency. That sense of cohesion evolves through collaboration and the sharing of available resources. By contrast, a “conflict” view of social solidarity argues that social transformation is the result of competition among “status groups” that limit access to their material and symbolic resources (Weber 1922). In this sense, social solidarity is about the cohesion of particular status groups as they secure the power to pursue their interests in competition with others. As competition among status groups becomes more or less attenuated through conflict or collaboration, society moves between more or less stability, which in turn is what produces social change.

Understood this way, social solidarity in the US is manifest in the intimate relationship between Donald Trump and the far-right conservative groups that persist in minimizing the impact of the virus on health and instead underscore the impact on the economy. When Trump spoke to the crowd of supporters that would eventually attack the Capitol, he used language that projected solidarity: “Our country has had enough, we will not take it anymore”; “If you don’t fight

like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore”; “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave Senators and Congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.” The way Trump used the first person plural and invoked a sense of collective action and shared purpose appealed to a sense of solidary obligation among his supporters, who would eventually “fight like hell” and threaten to kill those who supported Biden’s election victory. In this instance, social solidarity among Trump supporters put civic solidarity on trial, and the lack of determination from Republican elected officials to hold Trump accountable suggests that the former won the day. This is not a failure of solidarity undermined by fragmentation, but an example of the strength of social solidarity among particular groups in conflict with each other.

Associating a term like solidarity with right-wing conservative groups might strike progressive readers as anathema. Yet the left does not have the market cornered when it comes to solidarity, nor does embracing progressive politics guarantee a solidary stance toward others. As cultural geographer David Featherstone (2012) shows, in the labor movements of the early 20th century many articulations of solidarity embraced Whiteness and anti-Black racism as an organizing principle. More recently, notions of solidarity have been used by right-wing populist leaders, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, to justify the closing of European borders to refugees (Spiegel 2016). As Austrian sociologist Jörg Flecker and his colleagues (2019) have argued, “Far-right parties in Europe have benefitted from intensified socioeconomic change following the financial and economic crisis in 2008 as well as from declining trust in public institutions,” but this has not resulted in less support for state welfare or civic solidarity. In fact, the conservative parties’ “trump card of welfare chauvinism is thus based on both a more welfare-state-friendly rhetoric and a more aggressive xenophobic stance. In this process, the far right has laid a claim to the concept of solidarity and no longer leaves it to the political left.” In the context of the current pandemic, the emergence of what has been called “vaccine nationalism” can in fact be understood as an expression of civic solidarity within a specific national context, where duty to fellow citizens overrides any solidary obligations to those in other countries. In short, social solidarity plays a significant role in the internal cohesion of divergent groups and movements and is not a characteristic of a particular political agenda, orientation, or commitment.

While the concept of social solidarity helps make sense of all kinds of movements, from labor to the alt-right, as well as the tendency of such movements to close ranks and oppose other movements that might pose a threat to their interests, Bayertz (1999) points to political solidarity as a fourth use of the concept. Political solidarity highlights the importance of inter-group connections and alliances and is particularly helpful in making sense of commitments to causes that might seem to undermine particular interests and of alliances between groups

across differences (Scholz 2008). Political solidarity is characterized by the actions of one group on behalf of another, even when the interests of the latter might contradict or undermine the interests of the former. For instance, when those who identify and are identified as White commit to anti-racist work that undermines their own White privilege, they are engaging in forms of political solidarity. Likewise, when settlers engage Indigenous communities in struggles around the return of land, or when men invest in doing anti-sexist work, or heterosexual or cis-gendered individuals commit to advancing LGBTQ rights, these are examples of political solidarity. Often these commitments are grounded on a critique of how the privilege enjoyed by some is directly linked to the oppression and marginalization of others and how this relationship is untenable, unethical, or perhaps even immoral. This may be why political solidarity is usually associated with a progressive understanding of equity and with struggles against discrimination, oppression, exploitation, and violence.

While one could argue that political solidarity also brings together groups that might not otherwise have much in common, such as alt-right and religious right conservatives, alliances occur when there is a coincidence of goals, like opposing the outcome of an election or securing access to a resource—a vaccine, for instance. As such, these movements are not premised on an underlying obligation. Unlike other kinds of alliances, political solidarity requires a larger common purpose, especially when the work demands confronting opposing or contradicting interests that are nonetheless linked to a larger commitment to justice or an acknowledgment that the destinies of various groups are linked together. The maxim “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free,” most famously articulated by Black civil rights activist and organizer Fannie Lou Hamer (2014), captures the underlying sentiment and commitment that drives political solidarity.2

The common association of political solidarity with progressive and radical left movements might be related to the particular ethic that such movements sometimes embrace. The commitment to understand, confront, and when possible overcome the contradictions and tensions that emerge when groups with ostensibly conflicting interests come together is, at least in principle, central to political solidarity. This may also explain why political solidarity seems to be more fragile: it is contingent upon a willingness to engage in frank and challenging conversations about the complex intersections between different dynamics of oppression. For example, recognizing how colonialism, ableism, racism, and sexism intersect to produce the conditions that lead to different health outcomes is essential for making decisions about how to allocate resources in response to a pandemic. Yet this recognition does not make decisions about vaccine distribution, for instance, any easier, particularly when some marginalized communities have a fraught relationship with the health-care system and a history of being used as test subjects

2In her speech, Hamer drew links between Black liberation, the feminist movement, and the anti-war movement, as well as to the epidemic of drug use affecting her community.

in medical experiments. To some extent, political solidarity is always already on trial, in the sense that it is always contingent on a recognition that inequality is embedded in the very conditions that produce the solidary relationship.

The precarity of solidary relations also presents a challenge to other kinds of solidarity, as these are contingent on a certain willingness to overlook the inequalities and injustices that actually sustain those relationships. A universalist call to solidarity is put on trial when it ignores the dynamics of exclusion that produce the very category of the “human” and that shape who is entitled to be vaccinated, when, and how that process unfolds. Likewise, social solidarity is put on trial when the assumed coherence of any particular group is challenged by internal differences, or when the boundaries of who belongs and who has the right to speak on behalf of the group become contested under the pressure of crises like a pandemic. Civic solidarity faces the trial of disagreements over which policies are likely to secure collective wellbeing and how to prioritize the different needs of a community, and about the balance between individual freedoms and the need to contain the spread of the virus.

In the context of crises like a pandemic, when solidarity becomes a rallying cry for communities to come together and for individuals to make necessary sacrifices, the same social differences can at once exacerbate the unequal impact of such crises while also straining social ties, putting solidarity on trial. COVID-19 is part of what medical anthropologist Merrill Singer (2009) has called a syndemic, a concept that helps us understand the complex interaction between “epidemic diseases or other disorders and the socioenvironmental context that promotes their interaction” (29). As Clarence Gravlee (2020) argues, it is well established “that communities most impacted by new epidemics often are already facing other threats to their health,” and this includes social and systemic “epidemics” like racism, sexism, and ableism. These are also the forms of political oppression and social marginalization that, on the one hand, compel a call to some forms of social and political solidarity, while on the other strain the social bonds that secure human and civic solidarity. Indeed, solidarity itself may play a role in exacerbating the synergies that produce the unequal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic across the planet. As some groups enact social solidarity by closing ranks to hoard economic resources, or as governments enact civic solidarity by hoarding vaccines and closing borders to refugees in the name of national security, inequality and violence increase. These are the trials of solidarity, when its values must be questioned and challenged, and when its defense must rely on a complex and robust understanding of its dynamics.

Defending Solidarity

Bayertz’s four ways of understanding solidarity point to some of the contradictions and problems that arise when we use the concept without specifying the context, commitments, and communities involved. If we seek to defend solidari-

ty as a central aspect of how societies confront the challenges of a global pandemic that is also a syndemic, we must articulate a theory of solidarity that surfaces its underlying processes. The very qualities that define solidarity point us to the questions we must ask in order to understand inequality and competition, as well as to find ways of navigating the mire that syndemics present. To that end, I offer that solidarity, however it is defined, is always circumscribed by (1) a particular set of relationships, as well as (2) a specific set of intentions (Gaztambide-Fernández 2012). These relationships and intentions organize the expressions and movements of solidarity, but they also set limits to what can be accomplished in the name of solidarity. Defending solidarity requires an ethical reckoning with these limits and a recognition of how solidarity not only fails in the trial of confronting crises, but how it is sometimes responsible for deepening the fractures that result in the startlingly unequal impacts of health crises.

However it is understood, solidarity is relational, in the sense that no one is in solidarity on their own. It is in relationship to (and against) others that we develop the contours of our own self-understanding. Defending as well as recognizing the limits of solidarity requires that we carefully consider who we are in solidarity with, as well as what defines the terms and the boundaries of those relationships. For example, when organizations like WHO promote a sense of universal human solidarity in order to bring global actors to collaborate on the development of a vaccine, it is important also to name how global capitalism and economic interests play a central role not just in the speedy development of a vaccine, but in how it is distributed nationally and internationally.

Solidarity is also intentional, and therefore it is crucial to name the intentions of the solidary movement and the contingencies that shape the circumstances that have led to the call for solidarity. Solidarity entails agency, in the choice to take on roles, in the consent to embrace group identifications, and of course in the enactment and confirmation of social expectations. This means that solidary action always has a purpose, even when that purpose is not clearly articulated. This is perhaps why a fascist leader like Donald Trump can get away with promoting violence among his supporters while claiming innocence for the outcome of such violence. It is also why wealthy nation states engage in practices that limit the access of poor nations to vaccines, even though doing so undermines the goal of limiting the spread of COVID-19 (Ghebreyesus 2021). The competing goals of civic solidarity and human solidarity may not be articulated, yet these goals can play a synergistic role in the failure to combat the disease at all levels.

A third and important characteristic of solidarity is that all solidary action is both transitive—in the sense that it is always directed toward others and defined by those relationships—and also reflexive—in the sense that it is also directed toward the self and affects the one who acts in solidarity (Gaztambide-Fernández 2012). This is even apparent grammatically, when we consider that in some Romance languages the verb form of solidarity implies an action on the self: yo me solidarizo; nous nous solidarisons. Being in solidarity, or “solidarizing oneself,” is an

action that transforms the actor or subject: it requires a shift in one’s condition. Elsewhere, I have argued that without such a shift, there is no solidarity (Gaztambide-Fernández 2020). Simply expressing support for an idea or extending sympathies to others, without action, does not amount to solidarity. When we invoke the term, it is crucial that we also ask what we are willing to do or to give in order to advance the call to solidarity.

Such questions are helpful as we reflect on the values and the ethical and political commitments that lead us to respond to the call to solidarity. In the absence of such a reflection, solidarity can “turn against us in awful ways,” as Barbara Ehrenreich reminds us (Tolentino 2020). This is clearly evident in how WHO’s call for an international Solidarity Trial to develop treatments and a vaccine for COVID-19 quickly turned into “vaccine nationalism.” Such turns often undermine solidary projects, from progressive solidarity movements to the distribution of vaccines during a global pandemic.

Solidarity cannot be taken for granted, and its success depends on our ability to recognize its limits, as well as our own limits in coming to know and understand the experiences of others. Recognizing the biases in what drives us to be in solidarity, and with whom, as well as the boundaries implied in our commitments, requires a constant reflection about the relationships, intentions, and our willingness to be transformed and changed by solidary action. However we define it, solidarity cannot be something we simply claim, but something we do. It is only in the doing that we can put solidarity on trial, and putting solidarity on trial also puts ourselves on trial.

In these challenging times, when, according to Canadian journalist Naomi Klein (2007, 2020), “crisis blows open the sense of what is possible,” pursuing solidarity also requires creativity. We must build new ways of being with each other and in relationship to the earth (Gaztambide-Fernández 2012). Creative solidarity involves rethinking the values that brought us to this present situation and the intentions that inspire us. It also requires new narratives about who we are, to what and where we belong, and with whom and to whom we owe collective commitments. This is the trial of solidarity: whether we have the capacity to transform and to make the world, and ourselves, anew.

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