nanopolitics handbook - Minor Compositions

a family, or a somehow older network that supports you, but here...that made you a lot more vulnerable. And it was paradoxical if onlyfamily ties could be ties that last. That’s to say that it seemed that theonly thing that could be consistent was the family bond, of blood andall that, or a couple bond. And I remember when I had married – forpapers precisely – a friend who is amongst my closest, said: ‘I just thinkwe ought to have marriages for friends. I would really like that you andI, that we do a wedding and get married. Because I want you to alwaysbe in my life’ and I told her, ‘Yes of course, I also feel that link with you,where I would like to be able to ask for this kind of commitment. I wanta marriage with my friend and I want her to never leave, I want to beable to ask of her to be present’. But within this politics of freedom...well of course, making demands is no good! And it’s very difficult, toknow how to ask the other to be there... 14A process of imagining other kinds of families, inspired by queer and migrantexperiences, is underway for many of us. If we understand family as aspace of commitment, mutual support and love that enables people to collectivelyraise children and care for old people, then why shouldn’t we be able tobuild our own? Beyond merely blood-based, hierarchical, patriarchal or localmodels of family, the urgency lies in finding desirable ways of reproducingour everyday. While it takes a lot of effort and sustained struggle and trust to193