Banner at Edinburgh's occupied lecture theatre. Image, Adam Ramsay, CC2.0
Spending time on the picket line in the last few weeks has given me a – not always pleasant but still welcome – insight into something I have dedicated a lot of time and effort studying as a theorist – complicity with injustice. The strikers in Edinburgh have received important and heart-warming support from the student union and from several groups of student volunteers who, day after day, did the tours of the picket lines, bringing hot beverages and food. Moreover, Edinburgh is now the site of a wonderful student occupation (@EdiSolidarity), endorsed by our equally supportive rector, Ann Henderson. These expressions of solidarity nurtured us immensely, striking academic and support staff.
However, too often on cold, wet mornings, my calls to passing students, offering information and asking for their solidarity, hit a wall. I am aware that there are extraordinarily difficult personal circumstances that put a lot of strain on some of our students and that it would be unreasonable to expect solidarity from everyone. This is not who I am pleading with here. I am addressing those who are not impeded by such circumstances and who deliberately entered what I would call a sensorial shut-down: eyes averted, ears covered with voluminous, noise-cancelling headphones, accelerated walking or last-minute changes of direction – these were frequently-used strategies that many adopted to become immune to my pleas. The sensorial shut-down was simultaneously an emotional shut-down, which prevented any form of conversation – let alone solidarity – from developing. This had the (very depressing) effect of rendering me invisible and inaudible, excluding me from their reality and the realm of what matters to them.
