Freunde führen einander – Der kommunalpolitische Dialog mit dem „Islam“ im Modus einer Gouvernementalität der Freundschaft

Drawing on Foucault's notion of governmentality and on ethnographic fieldwork in a German city, this paper addresses practices of governing “Muslims” and “Islam” at the level of local politics. It conceptualises these practices as a governing through friendship, that is, a type of “liberal” conduct-of-conduct that focuses on trust-building and practised “togetherness”. The paper analyses techniques of governance and processes of subjectivation, putting an emphasis on how emotionality becomes integrated into governmental practices. I show how governing through friendship unfolds in the spatio-political context of a local dialogue with “Islam”, how the latter is linked to the interfaith paradigm and thus becomes a religiously-sensitive, post-secular political technology in which religious sensibilities are becoming elements of governmentality.