For a Politics of Complicity. Networks of Care and Friendship Beyond Heteronormativity

Friendship and complicity are underestimated sources of support and empowerment in the life of queer people who decide to counteract heteronormativity, mononormativity, and monomaternalism. The feminist ethics of care, friendship and complicity are not just a matter of personal choice or individual satisfaction, but also a way of life intrinsically political in its aim of building another kind of social solidarity. The feminist ethics of care is the environment in which queer relationships flourish and in which solidarity can emerge when people become aware of their interdependency and vulnerability. Friendship has a subversive and transformative power in terms of questioning relational normativity and redefining care. Complicity underlines the marginal and non-normative position of people pooled by commitment to create another imaginary. Complicity could be what comes before friendship, and the lowest common denominator of solidarity built on a shared worldview. Based on qualitative interviews, the aim of the article is to answer to two important questions: how to take care of each other on the long-term? How to share the benefits of queer networks of care beyond friendship in order to encompass people who live at the margins?