China and Latin America

Abstract A specter haunts the globe: the specter of solidarity—from its leftist heyday to its projected prehistory, casting its shadow into the twenty-first century. But solidarity itself is haunted by the past, present, and future others on which it relies. This article reflects on the temporality and inclusionary logic of discourses of solidarity. It takes as its case study Zheng Shengtian and Sun Jingbo's 2017 painting Winds from Fusang, a painterly excavation of Sino-Latin American solidarity that traces the impact of Latin American (especially Mexican) art on Chinese artists. The article's reflections are not meant as a celebration of leftist solidarity, but also not as an uncritical reduction of solidarity to leftist propaganda. Paying attention to the relational and temporal fault lines of solidarity implies validating solidarity's power to create affective and politically potent links beyond differences, but without subscribing to sanctioned and sanitized narratives that seek to undo such differences.