Sarah Schulman on ‘Conflict Is Not Abuse’: Rethinking community responsibility outside of the state apparatus

Sarah Schulman, a long-standing U.S. activist and author of internationally recognized novels, plays and films, was invited to participate in the 2015 Sexuality Summer School on queer art and activism, held in May at the University of Manchester. From her engagement with Act Up in New York in the late 1980s and onwards, to the creation of the Lesbian Avengers in post-Reagan America of the early 1990s, to her current engagement for the rights of Palestinians and endorsement of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, I like to think of Sarah Schulman as one of the most radical minds that I have had the opportunity to come across. By radical, I mean an activist who embraces critique as an integral dimension of political action, and who is able to rethink the foundations of her engagement through renewed paradigms and historicization of her own actions. Adorno’s expression according to which ‘open thinking points beyond itself’ (Adorno, 1998; p. 293) could fairly apply to Schulman’s intellectual and political profile.