Introduction: Why Revisit Intimacy?

Abstract

Intimacy is tightly bound up with notions of privacy, sexuality, proximity and secrecy, and with dynamics of sensual and affective attachments and forms of desire. It is therefore integral to the formation of human selves and subjectivities, as well as communities, publics, collectives and socialities. The articles in this Special Section all offer an anthropological inquiry into intimacy, seeking a conceptual formulation that might capture its actual operations, the ways intimacy is done in talk and action. They thus contribute ethnographically to ongoing anthropological debates about intimacy, and explore how multiple domains and forms of intimacies are defined, shaped, constructed and transformed across different social worlds.

Rethinking NGOization as Postfeminist Practice: Interstitial Intimacies and Negotiations of Neoliberal Subjectivity in Violence Prevention

“…My use of interstitial intimacy in this article, however, is more grounded, in that it reflects and corresponds to how frontline workers conceptualize their relationships with each other, and with their families and communities, through a notion of intimacy that articulates and engenders collective desires and affects. My use of "intimacy" draws on feminist and anthropological discussions that move away from reducing intimacy to relations of sexuality and conjugality, and instead focuses on how globalization both shapes existing, and produces new, intimate spaces and encounters (Sehlikoglu and Zengin 2015), and how intimacy brings together and crosses the lines between private and public spheres and relations (Wilson 2012). Feminist theorists and anthropologists have also situated intimacy within historical and cultural frameworks that shape desire, affect, and emotions, while also recognizing these as deeply political questions (Ahmed 2004;Wiegman 2010;Freeman 2020).…”

'Stay Home, Stay Safe': Proximity as Vitality and Vulnerability Under Lockdown

“…To think through emergent forms of closeness under lockdown, we pair proximity with intimacy in recognition of the fact that the physical and social aspects of closeness are rarely separable in practice (Sehlikoglu and Zengin 2015). Following Lynn Jamieson, we see intimacy as a processual experience that is constantly being made and refashioned through 'practices of intimacy', rather than being a given of particular relationships (1998,2011).…”

Scientific Intimacy

“…Epidemiological data created new intimate relationships with the state, increasing its capacity to shape people's sense of what can be considered 'personal' and 'private' and what can be seen as a public ma er (see also Sehlikoglu and Zengin 2015). During the pandemic, numbers dictated what forms of intimacies and interactions would be recognised by the state as essential and permi ed.…”