THE TALE AND THE TONGUE. The Loving Life of Friendship

«The Loving Life of Friendship» is the fourth episode that follows a conversation with poet and researcher Sara Torres. Author of several poetry books, including «La otra genealogía», she also writes for various media and is currently working on her PHD «The Lesbian Text: Fetish, Fantasy and Queer Becomings at Queen Mary University of London.In one of her texts, «Friendship as a way of life: a culture of the lovers-friends», she begins by mentioning Michel Foucault and his conception of friendship as the center of queer becoming and relationships. What kind of relationships can exist outside the framework of the heterosexual norm? The norms of love make us love from within the norms. And can dangerously lead to love of the norms. With her concept she refers to a third space of relationship based on the encounter and practice of love: the lovers-friends ethic is about understanding that our lovers are our friends and vice versa, and that this ethic is a culture of resistance. It is a third space in a binary world. But betting on this ethic has painful consequences. The fact that relationships cannot be readable produces suffering and discomfort - if it is not monogamous and unconditional, if there is no renunciation and sacrifice, it is not perceived as real love. The realities of love instead should be more realistic. And friendly.

Om Podcasten

Promise No Promises is a podcasts series produced by the Center for Gender and Equality, a research project of the Institute Art Gender Nature FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel, conceived as a think tank tasked to assess, develop, and propose new social languages and methods to understand the role of gender in the arts, culture, science, and technology, as well as in all knowledge areas that are interconnected with the field of culture today. The podcast series originates from a series of symposia initiated in October 2018 in Basel and moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer. Part of the Gender’s Center for Excellency, the symposia and the podcasts are the public side of this research project aimed to develop different teaching tools, materials and ideas to challenge the curricula, while creating a sphere where to meet, discuss, and foster a new imagination of what is still possible in our fields.