Sahelis in struggle: Reimagining feminist solidarity and friendship in neoliberal times

1980s. The autonomous women's movement burst into the scene capturing the imagination of so many women – women who were trapped in families, women who were battling sexism in their workplace, women suffocating in abusive marriages, women struggling to be seen and heard in political organizations that still refused to see gender as a primary question - women from different backgrounds, professions, caste, class, religion, political beliefs – all of whom who were ill at ease with their worlds, their homes, their works and were struggling to find air, grappling for a new home, came together in solidarity, resistance, rage and imagination. While the rumblings of the women's movement, of feminist politics could be felt long back since the waging of the freedom struggle, there was a novelty in the way the 80s moment brought in scores of women to talk, scream, organize, sing, dance, shout slogans, march, ideate on things that moved them, on ‘women's issues’. The idea of sisterhood though soon encountered the anti-Mandal commission agitation, and the rise of Hindutva that exposed the cracks, faultlines of any notion of sisterhood that subsumed identities of caste, religion, sexuality. The journey of the feminist movement in India, therefore, has also been a journey of making and remaking of ideas of sisterhood, solidarity, of the collective ‘we’. While the critical interventions from identity based movements have torn down the inherent ‘naturalness’ of women's friendships – bringing to question the identities and political locations that make the collective ‘we’, the question arises, how do we then think of forging bonds of resilient comradeships, of waging collective struggles in times of cancel culture and neoliberal notions of ‘allyship’. Informed by and building on the debates on ‘intersectionality’ (Nivedita Mennon, Mary John, David Mcnally, etc.), learnings from identity based interventions in movements, and Marxist feminist interventions, this paper will examine Jodi Dean's theorization of the communicative ‘we’, Devika Jain's reconfiguration of Ambedkar's concept of ‘maitri’, and insights from activists in the struggle to unpack how we can think of building companionship of resistances in today's times. Furthermore, as we interrogate the possibilities of friendship in organizing social relations in the new world, we will also look into the possibilities it then holds in crafting a new morality, new ethics.