Author: Anna Leyrer

Friendship is a natural ally of networks. If you wanted to visualise friendship in any way, you would probably choose some network-like structure. Because I was interested in some form of visualisation of the friendship networks I am working on, I applied for the Interconnected Summer School. In the end, I did not really get to know any concrete tools or software to use in my research — quite the opposite: Firstly, I found myself in good company being sceptic of social network analysis as it is usually implemented in the social sciences; moreover, others were also having difficulties defining their networks and conceptualising the links they want to establish. Secondly, Claire Lemercier’s article on networks in historical research proved really helpful, because she warns against using network analysis carelessly and directing the attention to the fact that “networks” are rather a means than an end of historical research.

So I will definitely go home bearing in mind that the closeness of friendship and networks is not inevitable; and that it is worth thinking carefully about which specific method (in contrast to a vague general concept of network) to employ and to what end. However, this is also what I missed: It would surely have been interesting to move the focus from specific research projects (which tend to be difficult to relate to for those who are not to some extent familiar with the subject) to more methodological and theoretical reflections.

My dissertation project focuses on the networks and connections of Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937) — intellectual, author and one of the first psychoanalysts. In Biddy Martin’s phrase, she avoided the exclusionary mechanisms of the history of literature solely due to her relationships to “great men”. It is true that no work treating Lou Salomé makes do without referring to Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke and/or Sigmund Freud. At the same time, most descriptions — by her contemporaries as in present-day biographies — fall back on stereotypical patterns, and Lou Salomé is received as Nietzsche’s muse and lover, as a motherly figure for Rilke, as Freud’s disciple; or she is defamed altogether as men-devouring femme fatale. Academic literature on Lou Salomé mainly treats her literary and, less frequently, her psychoanalytic oeuvre; her life as an intellectual and her relationships have largely been left to biographers and other commentators.

Moving beyond these narratives I will read Lou Salomé along the paradigmatic lines of friendship: Borrowing from feminist historian Joan W. Scott, I see Salomé not as an examplary figure, but as a “historical marker”, where “crucial political and cultural contests are enacted and can be examined in some detail”. Centering around Lou Salomé, I want to pose the question how friendship can be an emancipatory practice for women. This question centrally entails tracing connections and networks of diverse kinds — flows of ideas, of letters, of emotions.

During the last weeks I have been looking for an approach to friendship both on a micro and a macro scale, i.e. how to reconcile an inquiry into Lou Salomé’s personal networks with a broader interest in the concept of (female) friendship.

Therefore, I have read up on Italian microhistorians, especially Edoardo Grendi and Carlo Ginzburg, and I have also, like Pablo Hernández Sau, stumbled upon Francesca Trivellato’s ”Is there a future for Italian Microhistory in the Age of Global History?”, which provides an good starting point for discussion. (Trivellato2011)

Besides, I have been thinking about whether to visualise those networks I intend to analyse and how I could possibly do it. I found some inspiration here — though, impressive and pretty as these charts and maps are, I am still not sure how much insight there is to gain from them. I’m looking forward to discuss questions like these in St. Andrews!

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Before I went to Basel as a doctoral student just a few months ago, I studied history, political science and cultural studies at the Universities of Freiburg/Br., Leipzig and Zürich.