Where Does Resistance Begin? The Politics of Solidarity

This article offers an alternative to the monadic self, that resilient offspring of modernity whose voices still ring in our ears today. The question conspicuously absent from the concept of the ontological closedness of the self is the question of community. Therefore, we point to the necessity of grounding the subject as relational and interdependent. The article argues that organized resistance to oppressive structures arises primarily through a renaissance of solidarity. When the Spinozist conatus is turned upside down and becomes the epicenter of nonviolent rebellion, political force is mobilized for the renewal of society. In the final section, the article shows how the public and the private are not two separate spheres and analyzes the avant-garde and the reactionary aspects of the current student uprising in Serbia.