Making Equals: Classical Philia and Women's Friendship

Abstract

The recent burgeoning of interest in “friendship with the Other” raises important questions: can women’s cross-cultural friendships sidestep or even undo the effects of male domination and western imperialism or do they reinscribe them? I argue that to answer this question, we need a more comprehensive history of friendship as cultural discourse and ideological tool. This essay recounts friendship theory grounded in classical thought, especially Aristotle’s, that serves as background for sketching some of the central issues facing women’s friendships in feminist and transnational contexts. It focuses on the theme of equality, the source of classical friendship’s homophilia, reading it as a site of utopian potential. Although feminist notions of friendship acknowledge its ambivalence, difficulty, and even failure, it remains a salient, potentially subversive form of affiliation.