An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail

A friendship is a filiation we choose. It holds love and laughter; it can extend our sense of the possible. Moved to honour a form of relation often subordinated to romantic and familial ties, and to explore a part of her own history, Hélène Giannecchini pieces together an alternative genealogy of queer ancestors. In searching and sensitive prose, she sifts the past to bring existences deemed ‘marginal’ into communion with each other, traces of which may remain only in memory and archival fragments. Roving from Casa Susanna, a space of freedom from persecution in McCarthyite North America, to the diary of a man living with HIV in France, and to the life and work of pioneering lesbian photographer Donna Gottschalk, each narrative counters oblivion through loving acts of witness. A slantwise gathering of queer life and activism in the twentieth century, interspersed with images encountered by chance, An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail establishes friendship as a vital political force and offers a moving testament to its liberatory power.

‘An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail is a florilegium of countersexual kinmaking, survival strategy, lesbian comradeship, dinner parties full of queer ancestors, fugitive photography, transfeminist acting-up, insurrectionary eroticism and pieces of anonymous queer archival ephemera from many lands, brought alive with the help of critical fabulation. The domination of the couple-form over human life can and must be brought to an end, and Giannecchini deftly points to all the places where it is already dead (or perhaps always was). At the heart of this beautiful book lies a deceptively incendiary critique of capitalist society. It asks a direly urgent question: can humanity rise to the challenge of the term “friend”? If not, how do we propose to live together?’ — Sophie Lewis, author of Abolish the Family

‘We could be friends, we could be lovers, we could be comrades. Queer people are specialists in the art of chosen families because we have to be. Giannecchini’s book is not just about such bonds, it’s made by making them. In a world intent on crushing us all into isolated particles, this is an essential guide for everyone in how to glue together a fuller and deeper life.’ — McKenzie Wark, author of Love and Money, Sex and Death

"As someone who has long struggled with conventional ideas of family and marriage, I felt relieved and hopeful reading this searching text. Hélène Giannecchini swings open the doors to a great hall of kinship, camaraderie, companionship and neighbourliness. She writes with love and optimism and a desire that we may all become part of communities in which we endeavour, as friends, to hold one another up. This came at a difficult moment in my own life, a period shaped by the death of my father, and I am grateful to have been able to read it." — Lara Pawson, author of Spent Light