Research seminar: "'We have deputized ourselves to articulate and render legible': Solidarity in SWANA anglophone writing"

Political crises often prompt writers to imagine solidarity, yet such imaginings demand negotiating entrenched hierarchies and crossing lines of difference, raising questions about the limits and possibilities of collective action. In Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA), regions shaped by colonial histories and protracted conflict, solidarity is both conceptually fraught and politically imperative. Despite this urgency, literary articulations of solidarity in these contexts remain underexamined.

This paper investigates how contemporary English-language literary works from SWANA develop an aesthetics of solidarity. It examines what it means for literature to perform solidarity work, exploring the forms that emerge when writers assume responsibility for rendering local experiences legible to transnational audiences. The paper argues that this act of deputized solidarity highlights the possibilities and perils of literary representation: it enables writers to claim a space of ethical responsibility, while highlighting the contradictions of translating political urgency into aesthetic form.