buddies!

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 from Long Sunday.