Anti-Totalitarianism, Affective Solidarities, and the Council System

While Hannah Arendt never wrote a unified theory of anti-totalitarianism, she nevertheless provides a guide for resisting and undoing the affective bonds of totalitarianism, or what she calls “negative solidarity.” Drawing on Sarah Ahmed’s notion of an “affective economy,” I consider the importance of emotions in Arendt’s conceptualizing of negative and positive solidarity as bonds that bring people together, as well as the principles that inspire them to engage in anti-democratic or participatory political action. For Arendt, I argue, isonomy and the council system represent a more inclusive and pluralistic framework for forging positive solidarity than the party politics of the nation state, which will always be more susceptible to despotism. I conclude by reflecting on how contemporary feminist work on biopolitics builds on Arendt’s work to think more broadly about radically inclusive, anti-oppressive networks of anti-totalitarianism built on commensality (Bargu), care (Tronto), and creating with others (Haraway).