Tied Together by Death – Post-Mortem Forms of Affective Intimacy in LGBTQ People’s Stories of Partner Loss

Affective diaries of quarantine: Writing as mourning

“…Ahonen et al, 2020;Beavan et al, 2021;Helin, 2019a;Mandalaki, 2021aMandalaki, , 2021bPullen, 2018;Pullen et al, 2020;Thanem and Knights, 2019). Through engagement with critical affect theory, and namely Berlant's (Berlant, 2011(Berlant, , 2015Edelman and Berlant, 2014) critical ideas on affect, largely understudied in organization studies with few exceptions (Harding, 2016;Kenny, 2020), I also wish to join the burgeoning organizational studies literature discussing the emancipatory potential of affect for political and relational action (Alasuutari, 2021;Ashcraft, 2017;Fotaki and Daskalaki, 2021;Fotaki and Harding, 2018;Fotaki and Pullen, 2019;Kolehmainen et al, 2021;McCarthy and Glozer, 2022). In so doing, I embrace a collective struggle to push the boundaries of conventional academic practices to explore the empowering potential of doing and writing research through critical engagement with embodied and affective experiences.…”

“…It raises awareness of how ordinary affects registered in our everyday experiences create common ground, enabling processes of public feeling with and through others (Stewart, 2007). This has the political potential “to address [affective] co-constitutions and interdependencies as a condition of life” (Alasuutari, 2021; Kolehmainen et al, 2021: 148) to enable a reframing of our ontological positioning as relational (Ashcraft, 2017; Beyes and Steyaert, 2012). It is from these possibilities that driving change and meaningful political action can emerge (Fotaki and Daskalaki, 2021; Probyn, 2010; Seigworth and Gregg, 2010).…”

“…In these writing spaces, we can keep our affective intimacies with others alive and exchange stories of loss and love, transcending normativity. For, these spaces cross the boundary between life and death (Alasuutari, 2021) and that determining whose losses are worth mourning and whose are not (Butler, 2009); they lead us to reframe our writing and socialization practices through the aperture of affect, reminding us even in the darkest periods that there is a “flicker of hope” where alternative endings are possible (Altan, 2019: 155). This is the power of words; they unearth our grief and share it (Kivinen, 2021).…”

Introduction

“…Thus, intimacy should not be understood solely through physical proximity and, in addition to material intimacies, immaterial intimacies provide one way to re-imagine affective intimacies. To give a few examples, bodies and minds have capacities to communicate -to affect and become affected -largely in immaterial ways (Dernikos, 2018); meaning that material and other-than-human elements participate in producing post-mortem forms of affective intimacies (Alasuutari, 2021). Intimacies hence also take novel shapes; from dreams to fantasies, and from cravings to memories that haunt us.…”