Friends In Common Glasgow Book Launch - Laura C. Forster & Joel White

Join Aye-Aye Books, Laura and Joel for the Glasgow Launch of their new book Friends in Common: Radical Friendship and Everyday Solidarities via Pluto Books. Expect a bit of reading, chat, and then tunes and karaoke in the bar after (friendship themed songs encouraged!).

Friends in Common

Friendship is full of revolutionary potential in the face of a profoundly anti-social capitalist system. Friends in Common explores friendship as a radical practice, capable of upending hierarchies and producing social change.

Friendship can transcend social boundaries and political borders. It is vital in building communities and underpinning solidarity. But its transformative potency ensures that it is heavily policed and restrained by the state. Understanding the radical possibilities of friendship can help us rethink our approach to family, work and politics, and show us new routes to resistance and ways to open up spaces of solidarity and escape.

The dissonance created by comparing societal expectations around friendship and a lonely reality, especially in the wake of an isolating global pandemic, is deeply alienating. Friends in Common shows that friendship as a political practice is foundational to strengthening revolutionary ideas and projects, and is the antidote to capitalist despair.

About the authors

Laura C. Forster is a writer and historian based in Newcastle. She is a lecturer in Modern History at the University of York, and has written for Tribune, ROAR, and DOPE.

Joel White is a writer and campaigner based in Glasgow. His writing has appeared in Tribune, the LRB Blog, Radical Philosophy, The Guardian, and The Wire.

Access / Content Note

Will be reading and Q&A without subtitles or BSL, some possible themes around racism, police violence, and mental health.