FAMILY AND FRIENDSHIP BONDS IN CONTEXTS OF POLITICAL POLARIZATION: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE FRAGILITY OF TIES AND THE ETHICAL POSSIBILITIES OF COEXISTENCE

Abstract

This article problematizes the resilience of family bonds and friendship relations in contexts of political polarization, critically analyzing the impacts of ideological divergences on contemporary affective ties. Drawing on an interdisciplinary theoretical approach and a literature review grounded in Zygmunt Bauman, Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, Jürgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu, and Paulo Freire, it discusses the contemporary crisis of bonds, the centrality of alterity, and the depletion of dialogical mediations within the private sphere. It is argued that, although politics operates as an intensifying factor and a catalyst for latent conflicts, the rupture of microsocial ties does not stem exclusively from ideological divergence stricto sensu, but rather from a broader, macrostructural performance in late-modern forms of sociability and subjectivation. The tension within these interrelations reveals a transition from bonds of organic solidarity to fluid and utilitarian connections. The study concludes that the preservation and maintenance of these essential interrelations require a profound ethical reconfiguration, founded on the radical acceptance of alterity and the building of a dialogical space that transcends identity-based passions.