buddies! (or not)

After so much enmity in the blogosphere (if sometimes of a semi-affectionate nature), and given that this form seems particularly prone to dispute, occasionally ironized or celebrated as "snark," it's refreshing to see some reflections on friendship.

Angela is perhaps shy to mention it, but she's put up some interesting thoughts on mateship, in the wake of the mining melodrama in Beaconsfield. Glen responds. I wonder how nationally circumscribed that discussion is, the "mate" as Australian icon of a rather particular type. Indeed, that's partly what's at issue in the disagreement between Angela and Glen.

Meanwhile, over on Charlotte Street, Mark Kaplan continues an ongoing series of meditations on friendship, most recently with reference to Blanchot, Benjamin and Brecht, and Nietzsche.

Now, however much my friends are important, I've mentioned before I'm also keen on the limits to friendship, the indifference of what Alberto Moreiras terms the "non-friend," who can in some ways be equated with the subaltern. At issue here is the challenge of living together beyond like or dislike.

It's the question of community and exclusiveness. And then there's love.

Perhaps all of this will return when we start reading Schmitt.

Cross-posted to Posthegemony.

Comments

[s0metim3s]

Methinks 'mateship' has particular, idiomatic (ie., national) connotations of egalitarianism that link to the things like the prominence of the Eight Hours Movement and centralised wage-fixing/bargaining from the time of Federation in 1901. To cut a long story short - by which I mean the kind of egalitarianism that I talked about here.

But you're right, in any case, to suggest that the questions raised shouldn't be confined to the idiomatic. But, still, I wonder whether it's feasible to discuss the (for instance, masculinised) connections between, say, fraternite and mateship without, at the same time, noting the differences that would see one to codify the 'Rights of Man' and the second a 'White Australia'.

And, yes, all this does flow into a discussion on Schmitt ...

[Matt]

Great post, Jon.

I'm glad you mention one thing in particular, namely: the speed with which blog discussion, generally, turns indignant or vituperative is probably, among other things, the biggest turn-off for those more worthy, patient souls who might otherwise at times contribute. An effort to keep things amicable and understated, in other words, might be something to work toward (myself certainly included). Then again, I suppose some of it is just endemic to the intimacy of such an everyday medium, if not reflective generally of the literary and intellectual state of things...among those who've crossed the digital divide in such manner, anyway.

More David Bryne!

Perhaps all of this will return when we start reading Schmitt.

And cheers to that.

[tco]

If in academia the fights are so bitter because the stakes are so small, in the blogosphere the bitterness must tend to infinity, because nothing is at stake.

I don't think that the mateship thing is that peculiar to Australia. Every language I know anything about has familiar terms based on identifying some level of commonality, and almost always these terms are used, for various reasons, in situations in which the commonality doesn't exist. That's really the end of the matter, except in Australia mateship is constructed into term within the secular religion of ANZAC, catechism 43, subsection (c), paragraph 'egalitarianism'. Nobody really knows what the term means. If I remember it right, when someone suggested chucking the word into the constitution there was a furore, basically because it is regarded as a non-word, or very ugly English by many people.

Aus. egalitarianism is really just your stock standard pseudoegalitarian 'equality of treatment' concept. The classic example of this would be if a few mates, with wildly different incomes go into a pub. The custom is to buy 'rounds' in which one person buys beers for the whole circle, then the next person 'shouts' the next 'round'. Well, it is considered totally unacceptable for someone to say "well, I earn five times more than you, I'll buy all the rounds", or for someone to consistently have his beers shouted. That would offend "egalitarianism". At stake here is less reciprocirty than the maintenance of an appearance of equality no matter what actual inequalities exist, and the ritual of reciprocity is part of that. The same principle applies in the ANZAC cult, but with 'dying for the nation' inserted for 'shouting rounds'. I am sure these or similar traditions are familiar to anyone who has lived in a nation state for the last 200 years.

[s0metim3s]

Perhaps, but not all nations predicate their theology on the scene of a loss and mourning, a la ANZAC. The anxiety in this case seems much more pronounced.

More David Bryne!

Second that.

[Salvos]

http://conjunctural.blogspot.com/2006/05/carl-schmitt-and-death-of-politics.html

[s0metim3s]

via nettime, via GL: on snarkiness.

[Blip]

blogging is the conversation of the world wide white collar force, which is often working from home today.

in distinction to the authoritarian character described by Max Weber in the rigidly hirarchized administration of the Prussian State, the new authoritarian character is a liberal one, he is contributing to an economic culture which integrated a protestantic work ethic and loaded it with hedonism and fun. the new authoritarianism is much more machinic and structural to a degree of micro-management. another word which is very fashionable with bloggers is procastination. it describes a hesitation of fulfilling small tasks...between snarkyness and procastination lies the new work ethic which follow the subjectivification of the knowledge worker in the neo-liberal world society.

some truth to that. typos excised. lol!

[Matt]

Perhaps all of this will return when we start reading Schmitt

Wonderful Spurious, prods us on:

Then the second, much more difficult to invoke. Friendship without terms, or whose terms cannot be thought as is measured by a life closed in upon itself. No interiority - or rather, friendship for the other - for the one who draws you from yourself - already brings you up against the limit of what you are.

The limit? This is a thought of finitude, and of finite friendship. Where you are death is not, and where death is you are not. Very well, but when the other is dying? When the other dies before you? There is death, in person. There is a dying that crosses over and demands that you, too, run up against your death. But death presents nothing to run up against; there is no limit, or rather, the limit becomes infinite, a play of prohibition (you will not know death) and transgression (death is here, where you are not). An infinite spiral, the limit turned inside and out and back again.

But the other is not always dying (or rather, it is not always a question of the limit of death). Unless dying can be thought in another sense. This becomes difficult. A dying, now, that is the refusal of negation, of the measure of negation. Neither of us is the master, neither is the slave; that dialectic is suspended - halted at the point in which I become aware that the other shatters my egotism. I am not who I am; the other is also within me. The outside inside, but an outside with which I can never have done. There will be no fight to the death...