https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2025/11/19/18881624.php

 

Beyond the illusion of a harmonious “we”

Emilia Roig

[This article posted on 8/26/2025 on neue wege is translated from the German on the Internet, https://neuewege.ch/jenseits-der-illusion-eines-harmo-nischen-wir.]

What does belonging mean in a world built on exclusion? How can we create a united “we” without denying differences? A plea for radical solidarity.

In the last year and a half, I have experienced more hatred than ever before. Not as an exception, but as an escalating normality. As a queer, Black, Jewish person, visible in public, awake and political, I have felt how quickly the wind is turning, how harsh the climate has become. And although I knew that Nazis and racists had never disappeared, the brutality of the present hits me to the core. Perhaps because it is no longer on the margins, but is regaining ground—on podiums, in parliaments, at editorial desks. It is not their existence that is frightening. It is the power that is given to them.

In times like these, I ask myself: What does belonging mean in countries that have never really accepted so many of us—only sorted, tolerated, appropriated? What does it mean to feel at home in the midst of a system that pushes most of us to the margins? And how can we conceive of a solidarity-based “we” without it degenerating into a comfortable consensus?

Because the problem does not lie in our differences. It lies in the order that assigns value to them. For far too long, we have struggled to bridge differences, to harmonize, to reconcile – as if they were the obstacle. But it is the hierarchies that divide us: colonial, economic, gender, cultural. It is power that decides whose perspective counts, whose pain is acknowledged, whose history is remembered.

The image of an inclusive “we” remains empty if it aims to bring everyone together under a supposedly neutral center. This middle ground is not neutral. It is shaped by white norms, by capitalist value logic, by national narratives that have made exclusion a condition of identity. Under these conditions, finding a home is not a matter of arriving, but often of enduring—the suspicious glances, the assignments, the daily small indignities.

And yet—we need a “we.” But one that is not based on similarity, but on relationship. On connection amid differences. Not as a cozy utopia, but as a political practice that does not smooth over differences, but respects them. That also endures tensions, ambivalences, friction. Because it knows that there can be no equality without justice. And no justice without the sharing of power.

Solidarity begins when we leave the comfort zones of our identities. When we stop protecting ourselves with “correct” language and start taking responsibility. Not performatively, not paternalistically, not as a means of self-improvement, but as an expression of a deep understanding: that no one is free until everyone is free. That a system based on the exploitation of many also dehumanizes those who profit from it.

Capitalism as we know it cannot be reformed to achieve equal coexistence. It is built on competition, separation, and instrumental rationality. It requires the invisibility of care, the devaluation of the supposedly weak, and the externalization of costs. Its basis is not the abuse of power—it is power itself. And this power is intertwined with patriarchal and colonial logics: in the construction of the sovereign male subject, in access to bodies, to land, to labor. The toxic triangle of capitalism, patriarchy, and imperialism is not one problem among many—it is the structural foundation of our world order.

In this order, self-care becomes rebellion. Because it defies the idea that our value is defined by productivity. It breaks with the illusion that we must first exhaust ourselves in order to belong. A radical “we” cannot exclude the “I.” It takes individuals who know, protect, and regulate themselves—not to isolate themselves, but to be able to enter into genuine relationships.

I don’t dream of consensus. I don’t want a harmonious whole. I don’t believe we will ever live in a world without conflict. But I do believe it is possible to remain dignified in conflict. That we can find new forms of coexistence—beyond pyramids, toward circles. Forms in which we do not conform, but relate to one another. In which belonging is not a place, but a lived practice: of recognition, of care, of resistance.

In this sense, belonging is not a sentimental “back to earth.” It is a political act. It means creating spaces where anger also has a place. Where pain can also be expressed without being immediately translated or invalidated. Where we can mourn collectively without losing sight of the political. Where we don’t first ask ourselves how we can make ourselves useful, but how we can connect.

Perhaps this “we” has not yet been born. Perhaps its form lies beyond what we have been able to imagine so far. But I believe that we will sense it when we stop obeying. When we stop belittling ourselves. When we stop fighting for recognition in houses that were never built for us. And start building our own spaces. Wild, contradictory, vulnerable. But inhabited by all of us.

Belonging is not a place, but a lived practice: of recognition, of care, of resistance.

Emilia Roig,

• *1983, is a multi-award-winning bestselling author and expert on intersectionality and systemic inequalities. She is the founder of the Berlin Center for Intersectional Justice (CIJ). Publications: Why We Matter. The End of Oppression (2021) and The End of Marriage. For a Revolution of Love (2023).