Effectiveness Over Purity

The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity

by Sarah Schulman

2025 (Thesis, Penguin Random House)

The world is on fire. Whether it is the senseless violence against Palestinians or the rollbacks against transgender rights, many people in America feel compelled to do something beyond gaining awareness of the issues or posting on their social media. Some were perhaps part of a social movement in the past, while others are just awakening to putting their politics into action. People need help, but the question is: how can we do so effectively?

Sarah Schulman offers us a sobering and pragmatic answer to this question with her book The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity. She focuses her attention on Israel´s present-day war on Gaza, but provides valuable context on how we got to this moment, what role various institutions and governments play in this horrific war (including the United States), and shares a number of concrete examples of what she has been doing as an activist in this space for years--the risks she has taken, the lessons she has learned, the strategies she has found useful. Further, Schulman links this conversation to other relevant social movements which also run in parallel to her central thesis, from the "underground railroad" in Europe during the late 1970s to help women have access to safe abortions, to the life-saving work of ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, which Schulman was a part of in New York) during the AIDS epidemic from the late 1980s to the early ´90s (for more about ACT UP, I strongly recommend her book Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993. It's definitive and excellent).

As its title of her latest book implies, Schulman dispels the fantasy of what many of us think activism looks like. Often, she tells us, it will demand risk of the participants involved, including potential loss of social status, professional opportunity, and perhaps even personal safety. The process of change will be slow. And one will often need to work with others who may hold different opinions or have a completely contrary agenda than you do, or who are "problematic" in one way or another.

And yet, Schulman keeps urging the reader throughout every chapter, one needs to do the work anyway. Because people are suffering, and they need your help. This book illuminates how so many of us live in a dreamland which misunderstands how effective social movements operate; it is not a coalition of people who all agree on each topic, or who will accomplish their goals in a few weeks or months. While acknowledging how hard this work can be for the activists doing it, Schulman is also asking us to get over ourselves and keep our eyes on the prize. Using details from her own experience volunteering on behalf of women needing an abortion, people with HIV needing treatment, or Palestinians seeking safety are all instructive. When one compares the discomfort over attending a hearing organized by one´s employer, is that really comparable to having one´s home literally destroyed by bombs? How can any of us hesitate, Schulman asks, when others with far less and with much more to lose are willing to stand up and fight?

The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity is a powerful book: clearly written, thoroughly researched, and convincingly argued. I learned a lot while reading this book--such as how the nonviolent Palestinian-led BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement on college campuses in the West harkens back to the student movements for divestment from and sanctions against apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and '80s; how the notion of "criteria" in education functions to exclude some and inflate others; and how complex and contradictory fantasies may fuel effective solidarity. But perhaps more than that, Schulman´s book taught me a lot about myself. Reading The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity is like being in the presence of a brilliant teacher who is more invested in holding her students accountable versus doing any kind of virtue signaling. Parts of this book may be difficult or unsettling to read, but that doesn't mean Schulman isn´t right in what she's saying, or that what she advocates in this book is any less urgent. 

Available for purchase at the Bureau of General Services - Queer Division.

Watch to this reading and discussion with Sarah Schulman held at the Bureau on 23 June 2025.