Others as Selves, Selves as Others: Theorizing City-Twinning

Pertti Joenniemi

Journal of Borderlands Studies, 2017, vol. 32, issue 4, 429-442

Abstract: The paper aims to account for city-twinning by focusing on the narratives employed and through a highlighting of its affective rather than instrumental aspects. At large, city-twinning is approached as an ideal case, one premised on togetherness and a desire to be like the other. It is noted that the pairing of cities engaged in twinning comes into being through an emphasis on similarity instead of being constituted against the other and with stress on difference as has usually been the case in the sphere of relations extending beyond national borders. These unconventional features integral to twinning as an identity that satisfies emotive desires of belonging are explored by drawing on the concepts of friendship and love. Both are arguably helpful in clarifying what city-twinning is about as a relational form of being in pointing to an opening up and moving beyond the ordinary through the establishment of we-ness and an embracing of the other, although love rests on togetherness and obliterates difference far more thoroughly than does friendship.

Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2016.1260040

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