Nordin, AHM and Smith, GM orcid.org/0000-0003-2521-0066 (2018) Friendship and the new politics: beyond community. Global Discourse, 8 (4). pp. 615-632. ISSN 2326-9995
Abstract
What role can friendship play in contemporary politics? This article answers this question by showing how friendship supplements one of the central tropes of modern European thought: community. It argues that both the recent phenomenon of populism and more traditional political practice rely on this trope. This results in a politics which focuses on identity and difference, inclusion and exclusion. Ultimately this form of politics seeks an immanence which is impossible to achieve. In contrast, friendship offers a new way of thinking about politics as it focuses on open-ended relations between persons based not on sameness, but otherness and difference. The article articulates five key features of this understanding of friendship: (1) that it is a relationship, (2) between self and other, (3) which exists between the friends, which is (4) extendable into a network but not a unity and (5) it eschews all programmes or projects. In this way, friendship suggests not a project or a programme but an ethos. This article concludes by claiming that friendship is the open-ended and ongoing encounter with the other, and its politics holds a shared space open for the potential that this encounter brings.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Keywords: | Friendship; Community; Populism; Self; Other |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Politics & International Studies (POLIS) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number CCKF Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Not Known |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 27 Jul 2018 10:07 |
Last Modified: | 21 Feb 2020 01:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/23269995.2018.1505348 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:133888 |