Claudia Gronemann and Agnieszka Komorowska, University of Mannheim, Germany

Veranstaltungsort: Harvard University
Zeit: 17.-20.03.2016
Bewerbungsschluss: 23.09.2015

In his essay on friendship, De l’amitié, Montaigne is unequivocal that women are ‘incapable’ of true friendship: “Whereas friendship is without affair or commerce, the ordinary sufficiency of women is not made to answer the conference and communication, which nourishes this sacred bond.” Paradoxically, Montaigne bases his claim on the absence of female friends in the Western canon, where women have been excluded systematically due to a supposed otherness, sinfulness and intellectual deficiency.

Neither male nor female friendship can be considered neutral concepts. Masculine friendship is not universal, rather, it too is a gendered construction. Instead of raising consciousness for gender biased models, research seems to prove the claim that friendship is a male category, lamenting both the poor historical sources of female friendship and the lack of study about the Early Modern Period (Classen / Sandidge 2010) and about Enlightenment, which has been called the “age of friendship”. Read more … (Web)