The Politics of Friendship in Feminist Anthropology

Robin Whitaker

ABSTRACT: Many feminists have been troubled by questions of friendship in ethnographic research. For some critics, such assertions elide power imbalances, invoking a ‘sisterly identiﬁ cation’ built on essentialist models of gender. In this article I combine insights gained from partisan ethnography in the Northern Ireland Women’s Coali- tion with feminist theory to argue that the problem lies not with claims to friendship as such, but with a naturalized model in which friendship is treated as a power-free zone. A more politicized approach to friendship oﬀ ers analytical tools for thinking about methodological, epistemological, political and applied problems in feminist anthropology and politics and to wider questions about the relationship between intellectual and political life, critique and solidarity.

KEYWORDS: engaged anthropology; feminist ethnography; feminist politics; friendship; Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition; research relationships

My stomach was in knots. It was my fi rst year – murkier than straight interviews, where of full-time teaching, straight off my PhD, so the context of data gathering is ceremonially my reserves were already low when I opened marked by consent forms and tape recorders an email from a friend in Northern Ireland. – and agreed that if I did use the conversation, She had taken time to read my thesis and was I would blur the context and generalize the startled, she said, to fi nd an account of a con- account. I was enormously relieved. My prose versation we’d had in the heat of a political might be less vivid, but ‘friends are worth moment. I was pre y sure we had talked about more than books’ (Glassie [1982] 1995: 11). my intention to use such material alongside Problems like these are not uniquely femi- formal interviews, but I must have been too nist. However, the confl uence of feminist po- vague, for there clearly had been a misunder- litical activism, partisan ethnographic research standing. Sick with anxiety, I phoned my friend and friendship points to a wider set of debates to beg forgiveness and ask what I might do to about the nature and object of feminist anthro- make amends. It turned out I was more upset pology, particularly for those a empting to than she was. She didn’t want me to lose sleep do applied, activist or other forms of engaged over it, she explained, but she felt the exchange research. These include the ‘standard admoni- refl ected one pressure-fi lled moment, not the tion’ to new scholars: ‘please leave your poli- longer trajectory of her political thinking. She tics at the door’, because engaged research is also thought people might be able to iden- bound to sacrifi ce rigour and complexity to tify her, despite my use of pseudonyms. We ‘reductive, politically instrumental truths’ discussed the ethics of ethnographic research (Hale 2008: 1–2). For feminists, the problem of

Anthropology in Action, 18, 1 (2011): 56–66 © Berghahn Books and the Association for Anthropology in Action doi:10.3167/aia.2011.180107 The Politics of Friendship in Feminist Anthropology | AiA engagement has been further conditioned by o en used interchangeably … o en without long-standing worries about the potential for further refl ection or com ment on the intrinsic exploitation in research relationships. These contradictions of power that are masked in emerged acutely in the 1980s and 1990s with such a slippage’ (Visweswaran 1997: 614). stinging challenges to universalistic assump- If ethnographic invocations of friendship tions about ‘women’ in feminist scholarship are based on unrefl ective assumptions of a and politics and the ‘colonizing’ tendencies of ‘comfortable congruence between the feminist some white Western or Northern feminist rep- researcher and women subjects’ (Wolf 1996: resentations of ‘Other’ women across bound- 19), then Visweswaran and others were obvi- aries of culture, class, race and nation. In the ously right to question both the assertions and case of anthropology, critics highlighted a dis- the gender politics underpinning them (e.g. ciplinary history ‘produced by, indeed born of, Caplan 1994; Wolf 1996; Duncombe and Jes- colonial rule’ and implicated in the ‘“nativiza- sop 2002). Yet, as my opening story suggests, tion” of third world women’ (Mohanty 1991: for me, friendship has not worked to hide such 31–32). Henrie a Moore’s (1988) book-length problems. On the contrary, friendships that survey, Feminism and Anthropology, shared the developed in a nexus of research and politi- concerns of its time. Yet Moore was optimistic: cal collaboration have tended to expose the ‘Anthropology is in a position to provide a cri- potential for misidentifi cation and betrayal tique of feminism based on the deconstruction much more acutely than would a more conven- of the category “woman”. It is also able to pro- tionally distanced research relationship (also vide cross-cultural data which demonstrate Stacey 1988). That is, I agree with Visweswar- the Western bias in much mainstream feminist an’s appeal for a ention to the power diff er- theorizing’ (Moore 1988: 11). ences, disconnections and disjunctures between By the mid-1990s, when I started my PhD, women, including feminist ethnographers and the deconstructionist critique had long-since their ‘subjects’. Claims to friendship are obvi- won the day (Alonso 2000). Nevertheless, sev- ously at odds with this project if we imagine eral review essays published at that time dis- it as a privatized or naturalized relationship, a cerned a tacit essentialism in how feminist zone of unmediated affi nity. However, I would ethnographers described their research rela- argue that the problem is not so much that tionships, particularly in presumptions to a claims to friendship allow feminists to avoid privileged relationship with female informants. the politics of ethnography as that friendship These surveys tended to regard claims to itself is too o en conceived as an apolitical friendship in fi eldwork with suspicion. Kamala relationship. Visweswaran (1997) was particularly blunt. This article combines feminist and other po- The postmodernist deconstruction of gender litical theory with refl ections on partisan eth- was salutary, but feminist anthropologists nography in a feminist coalition to map out a tended to drop the ball. All too o en, their en- political model of friendship, one that locates gagement with this literature ‘actually reifi ed it between people who recognize one another unproblematized notions of gender’ (Visweswa- as diff erent and whose relationship encom- ran 1997: 613). They might pay lip service to the passes multiple registers that may at times critique of universalistic models, Visweswaran become confused. My intention here is to put said, but ‘then proceed to privilege gender as theory and refl exive ethnography together in the centre of analysis. Notions of sisterly iden- a way that honours the feminist insight that tifi cation abound, and feminist ethnography the personal and the political are inseparable, continues to traffi c in intimate forms of address including in relation to the politics of research … The terms “friend” and “informant” are (e.g. Stacey 1988; Wolf 1996). The original im-

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petus was my dissatisfaction with diagnoses Because most nationalists have been Catho- of friendship in fi eldwork as a kind of feminist lic and most unionists have been Protestant, bad faith. However, the process of working constitutional confl ict has sometimes been la- or thinking through questions of friendship in belled religious or ethnic. Without denying the this more political way may also off er a kind salience of sectarianism or the broad associa- of orientating analytic (as opposed to model tion between religious and national identities or metaphor) for central concerns in engaged in Northern Ireland, this depiction underplays anthropology, an angle I am borrowing from the political background of confl ict and divi- Jane Cowan’s (2006: 10) discussion of the con- sion, especially when religion (or ‘culture’ or ceptual potential of viewing ‘culture as ana- ‘identity’) is cast as the cause of the confl ict. lytic to rights’. Her argument is not to approach Moreover, if confl ict and division have domi- human rights and culture as similar ‘objects’ or nated Northern Ireland politics, an oversim- to conceptualize rights as ‘a culture’ but that plifi ed ‘two communities’ approach not only rights might ‘be grasped through [anthropo- marginalizes those who do not easily fi t into logical] methods and orientations to cultural the dominant categories, it also neglects the analysis’. Following this lead, a feminist analy- possibility that even people who clearly iden- sis of friendship might help us grasp some- tify with one side in the constitutional confl ict thing about the nature and demands of ethics, may hold complex aspirations and allegiances engagement and solidarity for feminist anthro- – for example, nationalist and feminist, or Brit- pologists and activists confronting disengage- ish and Irish (e.g. Nic Craith 2002; Whitaker ment in the 2000s – disengagement that is itself 2008b). perhaps partly an unintended consequence of The Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition the earlier critique of gender identity (Alonso was formed against the backdrop of an offi cial 2000; Moore 2006).1 peace process centrally focused on reaching accommodation between nationalism and unionism and the possibility of Northern Ireland’s Political Friends: The Northern Ireland future being negotiated entirely by men. At the Women’s Coalition time, it was widely assumed that two groups were central to securing peace. One was ‘the Much of what I have to say about the politics of men of violence’, as the British Prime Minister friendship I learned from the Northern Ireland of the day put it (quoted in Cochrane 1997: Women’s Coalition (NIWC). The Coalition was 316), neatly erasing women from both war- and formed to contest the election to the 1996–98 peace-making. The other was politicians. And multi-party talks on the future of Northern while it is o en said that a generation grew up Ireland. The goal of the talks was a se lement in the north without knowing peace, the same capable of restoring local government and generation grew up without seeing a female ending permanently nearly three decades of Member of Parliament.2 Thus, in early 1996, violent confl ict involving loyalist and republi- women’s organizations in Northern Ireland can paramilitaries, police and the British army. drew up a set of proposals for ‘gender-proofi ng’ Irish nationalists, including republicans, had the talks process. When neither the government never accepted the legitimacy of the Northern nor the existing parties responded, a group of Ireland state, aspiring to a united independent activist women – nationalists and unionists, Ireland and an end to the constitutional link loyalists and republicans, Catholics, Protestants with Great Britain. Unionists and loyalists were and others – decided to form a women’s coali- and are commi ed to maintaining the union tion for the purpose of contesting the elections with Britain. to the talks. Only a few had any direct experi- 58 | The Politics of Friendship in Feminist Anthropology | AiA ence in party politics. Yet, in just six weeks, a women’s party, arguing that gender could they built an election campaign around three not trump national politics in an election ‘de- ‘core principles’: equality, inclusion and hu- signed to give a mandate to negotiating teams man rights. By the time nominations closed in who will be negotiating a new constitutional mid-May, the Coalition had 70 women candi- arrangement’ (Ayres et al. 1996). I also knew dates. On polling day, they took enough votes some women who were unhappy when people to win a place at the talks. When peace talks assumed they were supporters simply because opened in June 1996, some parties included they were feminists. In sum, I worried that the women in their talks teams, but the Coalition Women’s Coalition was based on the very ap- delegates were the only women at the table as proach to gender identity that Visweswaran negotiators. At the closing plenary on Good had detected in much feminist ethnography: Friday 1998, the only woman to endorse the an approach my generation was trained to see resulting peace agreement was NIWC negotia- as bad feminism. tor Monica McWilliams.3 I was wrong about this. One of the ‘common The NIWC was not yet formed when I was goals’ listed in the founding manifesto was ‘to preparing for doctoral fi eldwork, so it didn’t include women on an equal footing with men’. fi gure in my original research plans. A er liv- The other was ‘to achieve an accommodation ing in Northern Ireland for a couple of months, on which we can build a stable and peaceful I approached ‘Elisabeth’, a local linchpin of future’ (NIWC 1996). The fi rst suggests gender Coalition activism, about including the party identity, and the Coalition did demand social, in my research. By this point, Elisabeth knew economic and political equality and inclusion me fairly well – I had met her on a preliminary for women. At times, it invoked ‘women’ and research trip and we had corresponded in the ‘women’s experiences’ in ways that were both intervening year. She was generous with anal- strategic and heartfelt. For example, the Coali- ysis, encouragement and advice regarding my tion argued that women brought something work on women’s activism as well as with op- distinctive to the negotiations since, ‘over portunities to participate in local women’s or- the years of violence women have been very ganizations. When I asked her about research- eff ective in developing and maintaining con- ing the Coalition, she responded by doing what tact across the various divides in our society’ she’d done to many other women: she recruited (NIWC 1996). Interviews and conversations me. Joining, she said, ‘will be your passport to revealed that for many – though not all – Co- the meetings’. alition members, the original motivation for My fi rst reaction was uncertainty. Aside ge ing involved was simple: ‘Get women to from the received wisdom that research re- the talks table’. quires political detachment, my training had But in its pursuit of accommodation the Co- warned me that feminist ethnographers were alition worked from the explicit premise that all too prone to ‘delusions of alliance’ (Stacey women are not all alike. In a context where the 1988: 25). But these were not my only reasons line between us and them, friend and enemy, for hesitation. I was also unsure about my af- was o en treacherous, the Women’s Coalition fi nity to Women’s Coalition politics. For some argued that diff erence was not an insurmount- local feminists, such a coalition of unionists able barrier to political solidarity. Rather than and nationalists could work only by avoiding assuming a common political standpoint, the the national confl ict – the whole reason a peace Coalition included people who recognized one process was needed. These critics agreed there another as alike and diff erent. The Coalition’s was a real danger women would be shut out account of what ‘women’ did during the trou- of negotiations. But they rejected the idea of bles continued: ‘They have created a space for

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discussion and an honest exchange of views. jects of knowledge are other people – second- In doing this, women have seen themselves as person thinking assumes that personhood, agents of change’ (NIWC 1996). Likewise, at its including the capacity for individuality and best, the basis for Coalition interventions in the objective knowledge, is enabled by social be- peace process was open debate and negotia- ing. Code is not suggesting that women are tion among its unionist, nationalist and other inherently caring and other-oriented. She takes members over the meaning of a commitment her distance from theories that make maternity to equality, inclusion and respect for human paradigmatic for a relational model of subjec- rights in relation to the issue in question.4 tivity. She is proposing a feminist epistemol- Sometimes these exchanges were fractious. But ogy, not an epistemology ‘for women’. In the rather than seeing them as a barrier, the Coali- process, she draws on Aristotle and feminist tion made a virtue of the political diff erences readings of his work to make a normative case it encompassed, diff erences that included but for the critical potential of friendship – a rela- could not be reduced to those of national poli- tionship with no intrinsic reference to gender tics. They allowed it to present its membership – for feminist politics (e.g. Code 1991: ch. 3, as a built-in test of ‘cross-community’ inclu- 259–262). I will come back to this argument. sion in the peace process context. Individually, For now, let me note that the Women’s Coali- members were encouraged to ‘check in’ with tion approach meant that politics, in the form women from diff erent backgrounds, compar- of dialogue and dispute, was the basis for soli- ing perceptions of events that polarized the darity and identity, not the other way around ‘two communities’ in Northern Ireland. (also see Fuss 1994). In this sense, members Put another way, the Coalition did not ap- did not so much fi nd common cause as make it proach its diff erences with a ‘live and let live’ – an order of priority that might off er guidance relativism. The demands of live politics required on problems of (mis)identifi cation between it to take clear positions on even the most con- feminist anthropologists and their female sub- tentious issues. The process of reaching these jects raised above. resembled what feminist philosopher Lorraine Code (1991) calls ‘second-person’ thinking. This approach is based on the premise that Collaboration as Research personhood requires others, from an infant’s dependence on its caregivers to the acquisition The NIWC’s way of doing politics facilitated and practice of such social conventions as criti- my membership despite my initial hesitation. cism and affi rmation. Contrasted with ‘third (It probably did the same for men in the Coali- person talk about people’ (Code 1991: 86), sec- tion.) Having joined, I found myself increas- ond-person thinking casts ‘the production of ingly caught up in Coalition politics. Partici- knowledge as a communal, o en cooperative pant observation became partisan ethnography though sometimes competitive, activity. Either and the Coalition became my political home way, knowledge claims are forms of address, for the fi ve years I lived in Northern Ireland speech acts, moments in a dialogue that as- as a researcher and non-native citizen. I voted sume and indeed rely on the participation of and campaigned for its candidates. I served as (an)other subject(s), a conversational group’ press offi cer in several elections, as a member (Code 1991: 121). Second-person thinking is of the Talks team and the Coalition executive. I avowedly inter-subjective and engaged. In con- helped research and write speeches and mani- trast with the idea that the strongest knowl- festos, policy and position papers and press edge claims derive from autonomy and an statements. ‘The fi eld’ became a political scene a itude of value-neutrality – even when the ob- in which I was actively involved. 60 | The Politics of Friendship in Feminist Anthropology | AiA

This alignment put me in a position that is If the process of talking and working to- in many ways similar to action, practicing or gether in the Coalition was equalizing, it did applied researchers who co-design and execute not erase diff erences between members. For research projects with community members to my part, being a political friend heightened my meet a specifi c need or goal (e.g. Wolf 1996; sense that I was a foreigner (as press offi cer, for Lamphere 2004; Hale 2008). However, the locus example, I sometimes refused to speak pub- of collaborative research was a li le diff erent. licly for the Coalition, reasoning that a North As one of the founding members put it, the American accent was not good for our street Coalition was a ma er of DIY (Do It Yourself) credibility). Nevertheless, to use a test invoked politics. Once I joined, much of my own ‘doing’ by one of my Northern Irish friends, some of of Coalition politics took the form of research these are people I could call in a crisis. The and writing, skills developed partly through fi rst person I phoned a er learning my partner my academic training and partly through prior faced a cancer diagnosis was the woman at experiences in student/community journalism. the heart of my opening story. Over the sub- Thus, policy and political research itself became sequent period of diagnosis and treatment, a primary form of participant observation. other friends from the Coalition off ered suc- Friendships such as the one I introduced at cour of diverse and generous forms. Some of the start of this article also began in the shared these people could also be described as ‘infor- ‘doing’ of politics: hammering out a last-min- mants’. Their insights, words and actions have ute press statement, thinking up a campaign informed my work, not just in the sense of slogan, canvassing for votes. They developed providing information and data, but – in com- over hours spent talking politics in coff ee shops mon with other engaged anthropologists (Hale and pubs, shared evenings and bo les of wine. 2008) – through the deeply inter-subjective ex- Hannah Arendt’s (2005: 15–18) meditation on perience of analytical conversations described Socrates captures something of the quality of above, where ideas emerge, get honed and this engagement. To Arendt, Socrates’ famous sometimes set aside. method was at heart ‘a political activity, a give- Of course, the more research is entwined and-take, … the fruits of which could not be with social or political intimacy, the greater the measured by the result of arriving at this or danger of betrayal, which is precisely what led that general truth’. Where we are most famil- Judith Stacey (1988) to ask: ‘Can there be a fem- iar with this sort of exchange, of course, is in inist ethnography?’ I have argued that friend- friendship, which is largely built on ‘this kind ship does not depend on identity between of talking about something which the friends its partners. Next, I look more closely at the have in common. By talking about what is ground between friends, suggesting that it, too, between them, it becomes ever more common is composed of diff erences. This approach may to them’. Following Aristotle, the emphasis on be especially pertinent to the dilemmas that what lies between them (‘inter-est’) does not haunt activist and feminist ethnographers. imply agreement, identity or equality (Disch 1995). Rather, community is made through equalizing, a process that makes friends ‘equal Politicizing friendship partners in a common world’. Indeed, it is through grasping partners’ various coexist- So far, this article has argued that claims to ing realities that ‘the commonness of this friendship need not inevitably deny disparities world becomes apparent’ (Arendt 2005: 16–18). between ethnographers and their ‘subjects’ or Critically, friendship is cast here as an ongoing between women more generally. A closer look production.5 at the nature of the dilemmas that arise when

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‘informants’ are friends shows that we also traying my friends, betraying the cause and need to address the diff erences incorporated betraying the demands of scholarship. within any given friendship, a point readily Sometimes, the multiple loyalties entailed illustrated by the unhappiness I recounted at make writing diffi cult, particularly where doc- the start of this article. That trouble arose less umenting one kind of betrayal threatens to out of the diff erences between my friend and produce another. Political friendships break up me than because I confused diff erent aspects of over disagreements about ends versus means: our friendship: research and activist collabo- when does usefulness justifi ably override vir- ration, private and public. For Bonnie Honig tue and when does it spell an irredeemable (2001), the ever-present potential for this kind betrayal of principle? At what point does par- of misunderstanding is precisely what makes ticipating with the aim of changing oppressive friendship political. Where Aristotle classifi es institutions or systems become co-optation or friendships by type – distinguishing between selling out? What should partisans do when friendship as pleasure, virtue or usefulness the most principled position looks like a vote- – Honig (following Jacques Derrida) presents loser? Do we support the candidate most in each and every friendship as treacherously line with our values or the one who has the straddled across multiple registers. Friendship best chance against our rivals? The Women’s is threatened when one becomes ‘the wrong Coalition was not immune to such disputes. kind of friend’, as happens when friendship As a party activist, I contributed to some of as usefulness clashes with friendship based in them. As a press offi cer, I was very conscious virtue or pleasure (Honig 2001: 53–54). These that partisans, like friends, hesitate to air their confusions arise less because friends diff er internal confl icts (sometimes called dirty laun- from each other than because they diff er from dry) in public. At the same time, an ethnogra- themselves – friend and informant, friend and phy is not a manifesto and confl ict is o en the researcher, comrade and anthropologist (cf. de richest source of insight for social researchers. Lauretis 1986) – and because the ground that What is an engaged anthropologist to do? connects friends is shot through with diff erences. Diff erence lies inside the relationship, ‘pluraliz[ing] passion itself’ (Honig 2001: 120). Thinking through Friendship: Anyone who has ever worried about being a Friendship as Analytic to Politics bad friend knows that these problems are not unique to social research. However, because it Perhaps these dilemmas – conceptual, ethical uses people by defi nition, ethnography throws and political – are not so separate a er all. the danger of being the wrong kind of friend Joining a political party might not be busi- into stark relief. Or perhaps I should say ethno- ness as usual for ethnographers. Yet, the issues graphic texts do. When I consulted my super- it raises are common to feminists and other visor about Elisabeth’s suggestion that I join public anthropologists who hope to change the the Women’s Coalition, she encouraged me to world they are studying, sharing theoretical accept. The big challenge, she warned, would and political problems with our so-called sub- come with writing. She was talking about the jects (Stacey 1988; Narayan 1995; Hale 2008). problem of writing from a position of deep Shortly before her death, Begoña Aretxaga involvement, where I was documenting a po- (2005: 164) argued that anthropologists need litical scene even as I was actively involved in to face up to the impossibility of judging with eff orts to change it. This is a conceptual puzzle. confi dence as if from ‘outside’, as if they could For me, the greater challenge has been my free themselves from ‘personal moral respon- need to negotiate three fears of betrayal: be- sibility by adopting a position beyond the 62 | The Politics of Friendship in Feminist Anthropology | AiA realm of good and bad, a position from which ceasefi res, adding that we would ‘talk to any- it would be possible to establish universal one’. The Coalition repeatedly put its money moral truths and judgments’. In this regard, where its mouth was on this principle, even anthropologists face ethical and moral chal- at the risk of losing supporters. In 1997, the lenges that ‘are no diff erent in nature to those Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) was on the confronted by our informants’ (Aretxaga 2005: brink of being kicked out of the Talks because 164). Friendship, understood in the kind of its associates in the Ulster Freedom Fight- plural way sketched above, is inevitably the ers (UFF) had murdered eight Catholics. The scene of such dilemmas. I want to end on an Coalition, virtually alone, argued the UDP exploratory note. What lessons might think- should be allowed to stay, reasoning that ing through friendship off er for political and UDP politicians (unlike UFF gunmen) were research relationships? working to prevent further killings and that Aretxaga herself rejects friendship as either excluding them would likely lead to more, not a metaphor or condition for politics, arguing less, violence. When it became clear that the that friendship cannot be forced on anyone but UDP would be expelled, Coalition leaders met sometimes we must recognize others whose with its delegates and urged them to withdraw politics we fi nd repugnant. From this perspec- voluntarily. They did (see Fearon 1999: 98–99). tive, to demand friendship may have an anti- Many NIWC members, angry and sickened by political eff ect or, worse, render friendship it- the UFF violence, were deeply troubled by this self meaningless. As she puts it, ‘the awareness engagement but, a er diff ering views were of belonging to the same community and feel- exchanged, ultimately agreed it was most in ing free not to be “friends” with someone … [is line with a commitment to inclusion. As this what] makes genuine dialogue about political example demonstrates, we can take guidance diff erences possible’ (Aretxaga 2005: 176). I from the ‘second person’ quality of friendship agree that friendship and politics should not described by Code without being friends with be confl ated. Yet, I also think there is potential everyone we engage politically. in her friend Joseba Zulaika’s (2005) extension Finally, it is easy to see how ‘thinking of the conversation a er her death to argue through’ friendship pertains to a context that certain dimensions of friendship are para- where political interlocutors hold obviously digmatic for at least some kinds of politics. antagonistic positions, or in political coalitions Echoing Code, Zulaika argues that friend- of clearly distinctive groups. But as debates ship’s emphasis on knowing other people as introduced at the start of this article indicate, ‘essentially “you,” second persons’ off ers ‘an feminist anthropologists and activists are as epistemic model which introduces the promise likely to come to grief over assumptions of of a radically diff erent logic in politics’ (Zulaika shared identity or exhortations to unity as they 2005: 285).6 I have already outlined how this are from self-evident antipathy. In this light, kind of thinking operated within the Women’s politicized friendship may be exemplary for Coalition. More germane here, the party ex- feminists as an explicitly achieved or made re- tended this approach to the wider peace pro- lationship. As with maternalism, Code argues cess. In a context where ‘talking to terrorists’ that assertions of ‘a “natural”, “found” sister - was frequently denounced as unprincipled hood’ off er a suspect paradigm for feminists. appeasement, the NIWC called for all parties ‘[F]riendship’s epistemic dimension’, in con- to be included ‘as of right’ in the negotiations. trast, ‘open[s] up creative possibilities for Even as it decried any use of violence, the Co- achieving sound, morally and politically in- alition argued that parties with paramilitary formed alliances’ (Code 1991: 102). Indeed, affi liates should be at the table with or without friendship off ers a be er model for relation-

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ships between family members than the re- it is on a relationship between cognition, rec- verse. ‘Friendships are chosen relationships’; ognition (of others) and re-cognition – chang- relatives might become friends, but friendship ing our minds, coming to understand things requires ‘a careful, reciprocal, non-imperialistic’ in a new way – a process that is most powerful knowledge of the other person that is by no when it unse les or remakes us (Fabian 2001). means automatic in families (ibid.: 104). This is so whether or not our ‘subjects’ are also our friends, as I have discovered now that my To recap: as an equalizing relationship that research includes opponents of my best politi- requires knowing another in their own right, cal friends in Northern Ireland. Notwithstand- friendship challenges assumptions that diff ering recent arguments that feminist intellectual ence need be a barrier to political community. work needs to be protected from the urgency In both membership and ways of working in- of live politics through a ‘dynamic distance’ ternally, the Women’s Coalition was premised (Brown 2001: 43), in anthropology, theory is of- on the possibility of alliances across diff er- ten advanced through innovative ethnography ences, a kind of political friendship that might (Vincent 1990: 24). This provides one answer to off er lessons for feminists in other contexts. In the warning that applied and activist research terms of the wider peace process, the Coali- is liable to sacrifi ce intellectual creativity to in- tion argued that an agreed se lement based strumental goals. Indeed, the most productive on democratic accommodation could only be tension between analysis and politics o en oc- built through second-person dialogue between curs when we let ourselves get close enough to subjects who were not friends – indeed, whose be changed by the engagement, safeguarding politics were o en presented as mutually hos- the potential for theory and politics to inter- tile. At the same time, foregrounding its cho- rupt each other rather than shut each other sen and made qualities in situations when down (Hale 2008; cf. Brown 2001: 41–43). friends and allies appear to be ‘of a kind’ can Finally, as with ethnography and politics, usefully unse le the assumption that alle- the demands of friendship are at once emo- giance fl ows automatically or ‘naturally’ from tional and cognitive. The requirement of trust certain forms of identity. Doing so might help opens up the possibility of betrayal. Yet this counter the interpellations and exclusions that risk is tempered by our concern for our friends. arise from imagining gendered alliances, na- Friendship involves a relational ethics, not an tions or ethnicities as families. What diff erence ethics of absolute principles. Saying so is not the might it make if the key metaphor for national key to resolving dilemmas, but it calls into ques- or ethnic belonging even for the ‘born and bred’ tion the idea that loyalty always interferes with was friendship not kinship? good judgement and so makes for bad politics As for research: a more political model of – or bad ethnography (Code 1991; Hale 2008). friendship – one that emphasizes diff erences The challenge is to negotiate between the mul- between people and also treats the ground be- tiple loyalties of our pluralized passions. Under tween them as plural – fi ts well with a feminist these circumstances, uneasiness is inescapable approach to ethnographic knowledge produc- but also, perhaps, an ethical safety check. tion. If the term ‘informants’ suggests people are repositories of information, friendship points towards knowledge produced through Conclusion respectful inter-subjective engagement, including analytical interchange (Code 1991: 86; Returning to the problem of feminist (dis)en- Disch 1995; Arendt 2005: 16–18). Such engage- gagement, despite Henrie a Moore’s earlier ment will not always be comfortable, based as argument that anthropology’s major contribu- 64 | The Politics of Friendship in Feminist Anthropology | AiA tion to feminism lay in its ‘radical questioning who died before this article went to press. of the sociological category “woman”’ (Moore He exemplifi ed the inextricability of friend- 1988: 197), in 1997, Kamala Visweswaran ship from the production and application of looked back on the anthropological record and knowledge. concluded: ‘feminist ethnographers have been largely unresponsive to feminist challenges Robin Whitaker is an Associate Professor in the to gender essentialism, relying upon gender Department of Anthropology at Memorial Univer- standpoint theory, which erases diff erence sity. Email: [email protected] through a logic of identifi cation’ (Visweswaran 1997: 616). Hence, the easy references to informants as friends. As a corrective, Visweswaran Notes called on feminist anthropologists to explore 1. Essays in Grindal and Salamone (eds.) (1995) ‘strategies of disidentifi cation’ from their fe- show that friendships forged during fi eldwork male subjects (ibid.: 613). The challenge now can illuminate diverse ethnographic scenes, as may be to retain the critique of universalizing well as the fi eldwork enterprise itself. I am not claims without turning disidentifi cation into a addressing the question of ‘cross-cultural varia- recipe for disengagement – particularly insofar tion’, but it is worth asking whether the idea (or ideology) of friendship as a purely personal or as Moore is correct that ambiguity, fragmenta- pleasure-based relationship is only possible un- tion and multiplicity have become so taken for der certain political economic conditions. granted that diff erence has become a ‘prethe- 2. No woman won a Westminster seat in Northern oretical assumption’: ‘the new essentialism’ Ireland between 1970 and 2001 – and very few (Moore 2006: 41; see also Alonso 2000). women held local government seats (Wilford In this article, I have explored the idea that 1999). 3. See Fearon (1999) for an account of the NIWC’s thinking through friendship can also help us formation and early years. think through ethical and epistemological is- 4. In place of a stalemate of mutually exclusive sues in feminist fi eldwork and politics. How- national politics, Coalition members could argue ever, that potential hinges on challenging the about how best to promote these core principles. idea that friendship expresses apolitical iden- See Whitaker (2008a) for one illustration. tity. Rather, its ground lies between friends 5. Visweswaran’s own ethnographic work (1994: ch. 3) discusses a friendship rooted in shared who are, by implication, separate (Disch 1995: activist struggle that also served as theatres 304). Taking friendship understood in this way of personal/political struggle between women as analytic to feminist engagement – whether who still cared deeply about one another. In the scene of that engagement is ethnography, Visweswaran’s hands, such friendships off er nu- political activism or a combination of these anced insights into gendered agency. – off ers no guarantees. Yet, ultimately it may 6. In addition to Code and Arendt, Zulaika draws on the friendship ‘canon’: Aristotle, Derrida and be more useful than appeals to global sister- others. hood, for ‘justifi cation and consensus’ – solidarity – ‘must always be fought for rather than assumed’ (Moore 2006: 41). References

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| 65 AiA | Robin Whitaker

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