Can empathy deliver political change? Does art that elicits emotional identification with others take us where we need to go? In Imperfect Solidarities, writer and art historian Aruna D’Souza offers observations pulled from current events as well as contemporary art that suggest that a feeling of understanding or closeness based on emotion is an imperfect ground for solidarity. Instead, Imperfect Solidarities explores the importance of translation and mistranslation, the sovereign subject’s right to opacity, and the difficult obligation to care for one other.

For the Paris launch of this new book in Floating Critic’s Essay Series, Aruna D’Souza will be joined by Skye Arundhati Thomas for a discussion about the book. More info about it here.

• Aruna D’Souza is a writer and critic based in New York. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times and 4Columns.org, where she is a member of the editorial advisory board. Her writing has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Bookforum, Frieze, Momus, and Art in America, among other places. Her book, Whitewalling: Art, Race, and Protest in 3 Acts (Badlands Unlimited), was named one of the best art books of 2018 by The New York Times. She is the recipient of the 2021 Rabkin Prize for art journalism and a 2019 Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers.

• Skye Arundhati Thomas is a writer and editor currently based in Paris. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, the London Review of Books, Frieze, and ArtReview, among other places. She is co-editor of The White Review. She is the author of Remember the Details, the second book in Floating Critic’s Essay Series.