Making Middles Matter: Intersecting Intersectionality with New Materialisms

Introduction

“…This translates to a quest for methodologies that foreground processes (Knudsen and Stage, 2020). Further, for working with non-reductive understandings of affective intimacies it is important to pay attention to how they emerge in varying and unfolding conditions of the world (Tiainen et al, 2020). Reclaiming the heterogeneous materiality of the intimate -with intimacy being made of and with multiple entangled materialities -counters the invisibilisation of affect (Latimer and Gómez, 2019).…”

“…Instead of static events or certain relational forms, affective intimacies often emerge as barely perceptible events in the process of 'becoming' across social, material, discursive, human and more-than-human worlds (e.g. Tiainen et al, 2020;MacLure, 2013). Entering the middle -an approach stemming from Deleuzian tradition (Coleman and Ringrose, 2013) -is especially fruitful in examining affective intimacies.…”

A Critique of Our Own? On Intersectionality and “Epistemic Habits” in a Study of Racialization and Homonationalism in a Nordic Context

“…But the concept was also introduced as way to deal with and manage the tensions and anxiety that the criticism caused (Carbin & Edenheim, 2013, p. 244), which in itself can be seen as a habitual response of white feminisms in the face of accusations of racism. The concept has since been established in Nordic feminist research, not only for analysing how "class, race and gender" intersect, but recently also developed in relation to feminist pedagogy and indigenous studies, and feminist new materialisms, taking intersectionality into concerns beyond anthropocentrism (Laukkanen, Miettinen, Elonheimo, Ojala, & Saresma, 2018;Olsen, 2018;Tiainen, Leppänen, Kontturi, & Mehrabi, 2020).…”

Introduction: Affective Intimacies

“…Building on feminist research traditions, this Special Issue also calls attention to the presence of a range of intersecting inequalities such as gender, race and class. Yet it also departs from the assumptions of differences as inherently hierarchical (Lykke, 2018); advancing a processual and relational take on intersectionality (Tiainen, Leppänen, Kontturi, & Mehrabi, 2020). We apprehend that the study of affective intimacies enriches feminist thought by contributing to the further exploration of mundane experiences of exclusion and injustice, where differences are also affectively made and unmade (Kolehmainen, 2019;Lahti, 2018).…”