Contribution short abstract:

For Arendt, friendship is worth sacrificing any absolute claim on truth. This contribution focuses on a master calligrapher in Cairo after the 2011 uprising. His manner to navigate friendship during this period shows the uneasy interplay of humanness and politics, and its possible prospects.

Contribution long abstract:

A paradox in Hannah Arendt’s essay Humanity in Dark Times is the ambivalence towards truth she expresses in it. According to her, friendship is worth sacrificing any absolute claim on a better knowledge of the world to keep the dialogue open. Yet, she presents friendship as a way to engage with the world, and warns of the dangers of trying to escape responsibilities towards it. Thereby, giving priority to a struggle in the name of a cause or a conviction seems to go against the very notion of humanness she defends. Indeed, people often make strong claims about the world, yet maintain durable relations with others with diverging opinions. This contribution focuses on ‘Abd al-Qadir, a master calligrapher in Cairo, in the direct aftermath of the 2011 uprising. His great openness to people holding various opinions about religion and politics shows in the broad range of people frequenting his workshop for friendship’s aim. His attitude towards them involved uncompromising stances about his art, for which he was widely recognized, and positions in which politics were set aside for the sake of conviviality, with sometimes an active avoiding of conflictual topics, echoing antipolitics at state level, yet with different meanings. The manner ‘Abd al-Qadir navigated friendship during a troubled period shows the uneasy interplay of humanness and politics. At the light of Arendt's essay, it should prompt us to reflect upon what politics do to humanness and upon what political prospects humanness offer as a value to defend against all odds.