POL S 514 A: Selected Topics in Political Theory

The Politics of Friendship

Hannah Arendt says that Socrates—who used to stroll in the Athenian agora and pick up intellectual arguments with his fellow citizens—wanted to make friends out of the Athenian citizens. Aristotle famously argued that friendship—and not justice—is the true bond of the political community. Friendship, he thought, makes us partners in a common world.

What are friendship’s promises as a political practice and as an analytical concept with which we might think the political? What are its limitations? How should we think about the role of affect/affection in politics more broadly? What does friendship help us understand about the pleasures of collective action, about our political investments? When is friendship world building and conducive of transformative politics and when is it a source of the displacement of conflict and of politics? Finally, what is the role of friendship in contexts of structural injustice or of transitional justice? Arendt thought that friendship might play key role in the resolution of the conflict in Israel/Palestine. She imagines a federated structure in Palestine which rests on Jewish-Palestinian community councils, and where “the conflict would be resolved on the lowest and most promising level of proximity.” Is this vision delusional? Inspiring? or both?

This seminar will explore these questions and others, discussing friendship as a form of affective investment (alongside other, adjacent inclinations such as love/affection, solidarity, betrayal, etc.), and as informing historical and contemporary forms of political organization (such as council democracy and coalition building). Thinkers whom we might read include Aristotle, Carl Schmitt, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, and Michel Foucault, alongside contemporary works by Leela Gandhi, Cigdem Cidam, Lida Maxwell, Lori Marso, and others.

Requirements include a 15 pp seminar paper, one in-class oral presentation, and participation in an in-class mini-conference where students will present their work in progress and will give/receive feedback from peers.