RETHINKING SOLIDARITY IN A TIME OF WAR AND GLOBAL COMPASSION

ZERO-GENDER IN THE AGE OF NETWORKS by Iryna Matsyshyna 

Modern geopolitics, due to the war in Ukraine, has posed many challenges for the international community. At a time when Ukrainian society is fighting for its identity, the European mindset is rethinking the concept of solidarity. In the context of Ukrainian society’s history, the notion of “solidarity” is more closely associated with Soviet times, when social unity was constructed through political and ideological class solidarity. However, the alliance of the working class and the peasantry led to policies of destroying the Ukrainian peasantry through collective farms, the Holodomor, and the devaluation of Ukrainian subjectivity. Soviet ideology established the holiday of international workers’ solidarity at the state level according to its own logic. To be “solidary” meant to support and approve the Party’s decisions; otherwise, a person would be branded an “enemy of the people.” Thus, solidarity turned into a duty toward Soviet power and became an axiom of opposition to “others.” In other words, if you were not in solidarity, you did not support the Party’s course and automatically stood against the unity of the Soviet people.

Therefore, the full-scale war in Ukraine has made the notion of “identity” even more relevant for Ukrainians, as it stands in opposition to the Russian stigma of devaluing the Ukrainian nation. Language, culture, and homeland have become symbols of resistance and the defense of their territories, where rethinking and perceiving oneself within the framework of the Ukrainian nation is an important step in resisting Kremlin labeling. In this sense, identity is not only an inner self-awareness of “who I am” through the categories of nation, ethnicity, and culture, but also raises the issue of rethinking the category of solidarity. And while for the Ukrainian nation “identity” and “solidarity” are closely linked through the category of war, for the European community the real challenge has been migration. That is why this work is devoted to analyzing different concepts of solidarity in the writings of Paul Gilroy, Richard Rorty, and Lilie Chouliaraki, who reject fixed identity and view its continuation precisely in solidarity.

One of the first to spark a discussion around solidarity was Richard Rorty with his concept of the “liberal ironist.” In the introduction to his book “Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity”, Rorty explains that he uses the word “ironist” to describe a person who faces the mismatch between their own beliefs and the beliefs of others. He then goes on to clarify what he means by this term. “Liberal ironists are people who include arnong these ungroundable desires their own hope that suffering will be diminished, that the humiliation of human beings by other human beings may cezrse” (Rorty, 1989, р.XV). That is, to understand that reality can have different perspectives means having the ability to see oneself through the eyes of another. Since the liberal ironist understands that their truth is not universal, they allow for the presence of other ways of thinking and, along with this, the very presence of the “other.” For Rorty, irony can serve as a tool of solidarity, because a person who is capable of irony is able to perceive others and to see themselves as another. From this follows the ability to develop empathy and participation not because one is forced to, but because living among others feels natural. For Rorty, then, identity is not the main principle of coexistence, since it can lead to rigidity as a lack of empathy. He contrasts solidarity with rigidity, which dehumanizes others. In the context of migration, Rortyan solidarity offers a key: not to ask “who are they?” in terms of identity, but rather “can we imagine their pain and humiliation?” This means that the attitude toward migrants should not be built on the search for a shared “essence,” but on the readiness to expand the sphere of empathy. Here, identity takes a back seat, yielding to concrete human vulnerability. 

 “In my utopia, human solidarity would be seen not as a fact to be recognized by clearing away "prejudice" or burrowing down to previously hidden depths but, rather, as a goal to be achieved. It is to be achieved not by inquiry but by imagination, the imaginative ability to see strange people as fellow sufferers. Solidarity is not discovered by reflection but created. It is created by increasing our sensitivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of other, unfamiliar sorts of people” (Rorty, 1989, p. XVІ). Thus, for R. Rorty, solidarity is not so much a continuation of identity as it is the ability to understand another’s pain. Solidarity is born out of care — not through belonging to a particular group or culture, but through the willingness to help someone who does not belong to that group.

Continuing the concept of the “liberal ironist,” the Greek-British scholar Lilie Chouliaraki, in her study “The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-Humanitarianism”, writes about humanitarian practices where the spectator has turned into a consumer of spectacles. Therefore, modern solidarity can no longer rely on a moral imperative, as it no longer works today. Society has consciously moved away from the classical solidarity of workers that Karl Marx wrote about. In its place has come selfish gratification. Since life has been transformed into a format of spectacle and entertainment, the form of solidarity has also changed. It has acquired the element of “egoistic altruism,” where unity and assistance are carried out in line with one’s own interest. She examines solidarity from the perspective of communication and proposes three dimensions: “the institutional, where I discuss the implications of the increasing expansion and concomitant instrumentalization of the aid and development field; the political, where I address the end of grand narratives and the ensuing rise of individualist morality as a motivation for action; and the technological, where I show how the new media have facilitated an unprecedented explosion of public self-expression, thereby also changing the premises upon which solidarity is communicated” (Chouliaraki, 2013, p. 5). In her view, solidarity originates in the 18th century with the “culture of compassion,” when capitalism gave rise to a new moral discourse about kindness that should be shared. Undoubtedly, it was Adam Smith’s work on the moral imperative that influenced the relevance of the very notion of morality (Smith, 2006).

When speaking about the society of the spectacle (Debord, 2021) and its moral imperative in the context of solidarity, for Chouliaraki this is a form of “pleasant” activism. It is anti-political, since it has nothing in common with Marx’s concept and is oriented not toward the evaluation of others, but toward one’s own decision. The spectacle of suffering can lead to solidarity taking on ironic forms — instead of caring for others, people begin to act out of care for themselves. “As recent UK-based research shows, western publics may accept that helping the poor is our ‘human obligation’ but, at the same time, appear reluctant to prioritize poverty in the South over poverty at home and, in fact, provide support, albeit limited, to cuts in humanitarian aid”  (Chouliaraki, 2013, p.19).

Her paradigm of solidarity as the irony of modern consumer society is by no means a hint at the decline of moral values. Rather, the algorithm of helping a person who is a user of digital media has changed. Assistance must turn into a trend; otherwise, there is a risk of getting lost in the vast flow of information. From this follows that to help means, first and foremost, to remind others of oneself — to have an informational occasion to announce it. Therefore, Lilie Chouliaraki emphasizes that solidarity today carries an egoistic character. The culture of irony, which Rorty raised in the context of solidarity, is analyzed by Chouliaraki as a practice of spectatorial altruism, “which intensifies our engagement with the pleasures of show business while itreproduces the moral distance between ‘us’ and ‘them’. ” (Chouliaraki, 2011, p.366). 

Modern communication through entertainment and spectacle invites people to engage in the humanitarian process. Even under the conditions of the war in Ukraine, entertainment content has increased, where fundraising is carried out for drones or assistance to the military. For example, in August 2025, the band Badstreet Boys for the charitable foundation “Sternenko Community” (BADstreetBoys, 2025) released a parody video of the famous Haddaway song “What Is Love”. 

In 1993, the British cultural theorist Paul Gilroy published his book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Examining slavery and colonialism, Gilroy rejects national and ethnic frameworks that serve as fixations of identity. In his view, Atlantic culture is hybrid, because it is not made up of a single racial identity. As a result of historical conditions connected with the slave trade, a certain triangle was formed between Africa (from where Africans were forcibly taken) and America and Europe (where they were forcibly brought). This led to the development of music, literature, religion, and politics. Therefore, modernity cannot be seen as a purely European product, since it is also a product of the African diaspora in Europe.

To be both European and Black at the same time, according to Paul Gilroy, requires double consciousness. This is not about “unfinished identities,” but about the feeling of being simultaneously connected to one’s past and present. “The issue of the identity and non-identity of black cultures has acquired a special historical and political significance in Britain. Black settlement in that country goes back many centuries, and affirming its continuity has become an important part of the politics that strive to answer contemporary British racism. However, the bulk of today’s black communities are of relatively recent origin, dating only from the post–World War II period. If these populations are unified at all, it is more by the experience of migration than by the memory of slavery and the residues of plantation society” (Gilroy, 1993, р.81). However, such duality is not a complex or a problem but a resource that gives new impetus to the development of cultural forms. The memory of slavery, as a cultural trauma, is reproduced through music, literature, and other forms of art. Through such art, connections and reminders are created that make it possible to build a space of compassion. The triangle between the Caribbean, the United States, Africa, and Europe, which Gilroy calls the “Black Atlantic,” opens up a new dimension of political imagination about identity shaped by the history of oppression. To understand this means to go beyond denial and silence. In this way, solidarity can become a practice of a transcultural community, where pain is embedded in art. And such a shared experience of colonialism becomes a form of political unity.

Thus, the search for new forms of solidarity in contemporary theories is linked to the search for alternatives to identity as the main basis of social unity. Richard Rorty, Paul Gilroy, and Lilie Chouliaraki each show in different ways that appealing to national, cultural, or even universal identity cannot serve as a stable foundation for political participation. For Rorty, the concept of the “liberal ironist” means a conscious and independent practice of caring for the other, regardless of skin color or origin; here the focus is on developing the skills of empathy. In the context of contemporary Europe, this means that solidarity with migrants is possible not because they are “just like us,” but because they too are capable of suffering and seek dignity. This logic continues in Lilie Chouliaraki’s notion of communication through a “proper distance,” where mutual aid and justice become possible without dissolving the other into a culture unfamiliar to them. While for Rorty and Chouliaraki solidarity appears as an ethical practice, for Paul Gilroy this dimension unfolds as the political behavior of “double consciousness.” The rupture between a marginalized history of belonging and European everyday life is overcome through transcultural practices of solidarity, which not only break down the boundaries of “self” and “other,” but also create new political spaces for joint action. This dimension resonates with Niall Ferguson’s approach, which defines true civilization through the capacity to help others. From this perspective, those who support migrants themselves undergo transformation, as they contribute to the formation of new discursive norms of coexistence. Solidarity thus emerges not as a byproduct of identity but as an active performative practice that transforms both those seeking refuge and those providing it, moving them into a shared space of mutual responsibility.

1. BADstreetBoys. (2025, August 22). Ukrainian volunteers sing parody to raise funds for drones [Video]. YouTube. www.youtube.com/watch
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7. Smith, A. (2006). The theory of moral sentiments. MetaLibri. (Original work published 1759)