Friendship is full of revolutionary potential in the face of a profoundly anti-social capitalist system. Friends in Common explores friendship as a radical practice, capable of upending hierarchies and producing social change. Friendship can transcend social boundaries and political borders. It is vital in building communities and underpinning solidarity. But its transformative potency ensures that it is heavily policed and restrained by the state. Understanding the radical possibilities of friendship can help us rethink our approach to family, work and politics, and show us new routes to resistance and ways to open up spaces of solidarity and escape. The dissonance created by comparing societal expectations around friendship and a lonely reality, especially in the wake of an isolating global pandemic, is deeply alienating. Friends in Common shows that friendship as a political practice is foundational to strengthening revolutionary ideas and projects, and is the antidote to capitalist despair.
"'Friends in Common - itself the product of a friendship between its two authors - is a moving exploration of the importance and the difficulty of forging and sustaining intimate relationships within and against the capitalist hell world. Assembling an array of historical case studies, interviews, personal anecdotes and pop cultural references, Laura Forster and Joel White show that the interperso
Hannah Proctor, author of 'Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat'
"'This brilliant and accessible book reveals the revolutionary potential of friendship, and how it can help to remake capitalist relations. The authors unmoor friendship from its structural constraints under capitalism, which produce isolation and alienation. Instead, they compellingly show how friendship is a method for creating political transformation at an everyday level. This book teaches us
Miriam Ticktin, Professor of Anthropology, City University of New York Graduate Center
