On August 31, Dr. Noor Ghazal Aswad will deliver a Rhetoric Unbound lecture. Dr. Aswad’s talk, entitled “Searching for Solidarity: Revolutionary Dreams and Radical Social Movements,” will take place at 8.00 p.m. Eastern. The lecture will last 30 minutes and will be followed by discussion.
Lecture Description
This lecture investigates how revolutionary actors speak, survive, and inspire amid today’s volatile political economy of emotion—one shaped by disinformation, state violence, and global apathy toward liberation struggles. Drawing on rhetorical theory, decolonial critique, and grassroots archives, the lecture centers the voices of dissidents, poets, artists, first responders, and militants whose radical commitments challenge dominant narratives of war, trauma, and legitimacy. At the heart of this is the concept of the radical subject, whose affective force disrupts the cynicism and “negative solidarity” that often plague global publics. They are able to weave testimony, memory, and resistance into a transnational tapestry of revolutionary thought.
Based on her upcoming book Searching for Solidarity: Revolutionary Dreams and Radical Social Movements, Dr. Aswad asks, “how do we listen across difference, and how can we act ethically in solidarity with distant others?” Rather than romanticizing revolution, Searching for Solidarity offers a clear-eyed view of its contradictions—foregrounding the beauty, exhaustion, and political insight of those who continue to struggle. In doing so, solidarity is reframed as a relational and rhetorical practice: not merely a moral stance, but a transformative engagement that compels us to “partner in word and deed to change power.” In this lecture, a theoretical and emotional roadmap for building collective futures beyond empire is explored.
Register for Dr. Aswad’s Lecture
To register for Dr. Aswad’s lecture, click here.
Rhetoric Unbound 