Beyond brotherhood: Elena Ferrante's politics of friendship in the Neapolitan novels

Abstract This article examines how Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels, beginning with L'amica geniale (2011, My Brilliant Friend ), engage with the politics of friendship. It first outlines a longstanding tendency in Western philosophy and literature to view personal friendship and political culture as mutually constitutive. The article argues that Ferrante offers a highly original contribution to this tradition by analyzing three different forms of friendship: (1) Brotherhood, understood as patriarchal and fraternal power, described by Ferrante as a perverted form of mafia loyalty. (2) Sisterhood, a form of solidarity closely linked to feminist and socialist movements. (3) Star friendship , a complex, unstable bond, invoked by Friedrich Nietzsche, that undermines the boundaries between friend and enemy. The article concludes by discussing the intersection of friendship and love as a political ideal, drawing on Abdelkebir Khatibi's term “lovence” (French: aimance), which points to various qualities associated with both friendship and love, without defining them in advance. By referring to previous Ferrante scholarship, Derrida, and Khatibi, the article argues that literature, and particularly Ferrante's work, explores nuances of friendship that allow us to rethink political discourse and commitment.