Week 8 - Derrida and friendship

Unfortunately I was sick this week, after struggling through the slightly bizarre Jacques Derridas' 'The Politics of Friendship'. It opens like the lament of a drunken barman -'O, my friends, there is no friend [1].', but thankfully picks up towards the end. Derrida confronted the idea of friendship as 'political', associated with his previous more prominent theory of 'deconstruction'. The famous quote, attributed by Montaigne to Aristotle, functions as a way for Derrida to deconstruct the idea of friendship, leading to the conclusion that friendship is linked to both past and future phases, confusingly telling the reader that a multitude of friends is less 'politically' beneficial than a smaller group.

Since I clearly had some difficulty with this text I was sad to have to miss the seminar - owing to horribe stress-influcted migraines that I'm prone to - so I decided I'd see if I could get a copy of the lecture notes from a friend. However, when I came to try to contact someone, I realised that: yes, I have many friends in that seminar; but no, I don't know any of them well enough to have their phone number. I wondered if this might have been the overwhelming message of Derrida - the importance of having a few, close friends, as opposed to many, distant friends.

[1] Derrida, Jacques, The Politics of Friendship, London, Verso