Love and the Politics of Intimacy articulates the concept of love within the relationship between the intimate and the social, rethinking how intimacy is conceived and experienced in the context of 21st-century neoliberalism. Reflecting on experiences of intimate, romantic and sexual love, and the role of individual identity, these essays explore historical trajectories that have culminated in particular, contemporary experiences of intimate love. Politically, this work links identity and articulation of the self to liberatory practices in the arenas of friendship, romance and sex.
This interdisciplinary exploration of what love means in the 21st century incorporates academic writing and original creative work from established and emerging scholars around the globe. Essays from across the humanities and social sciences – including literary studies, sociology, psychology, philosophy and gender studies – interrogate the role of relational intimacy on topics of ‘Love and Romance’, ‘Love and Liberation’ and ‘Love and Technologies of Intimacy’. The volume looks at the past, present and future in search of inspiration for transforming and re-charting the pathways of love, seeking a more diverse and emancipatory model of social life and what it would take to restore love to social and institutional spaces.
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Stanislava Dikova, University of Essex, UK; Wendy McMahon, University of East Anglia, UK; and Jordan Savage, University of Essex, UK
Part 1: Love and communities
1. ‘Love is a battle, love is a war’: James Baldwin’s use of love to represent race, gender and sexuality in segregated America
Daniele Nunziata, University of Oxford, UK
2. Liberating the Victorian politics of love through Jack the Lass and Anne Lister
Vicky Panossian and Salma Yassine, Central European University, Austria
3. The lover and the tribe
Ian Davidson, University College Dublin, Ireland
4. A love letter to white friends
Deya Mukherjee, Independent Scholar, UK
Part 2: Intimate bodies
5. The sharper end of love: When sex is painful, how is intimate love navigated? Reflections from a qualitative study in England and France
Hannah Loret, Nottingham Trent University, UK
6. Kathy Acker’s voice in Blood and Guts in High School and Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘desiring-machines’
Gemma Curto, University of Sheffield, UK
7. Digital love: Love through the screen/of the screen
Daniel O’Brien, University of Essex, UK
8. #BlackLove and dating sites: A South African perspective of cyber-love and cyber-ethics during Covid-19
Adelina Mbinjama, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa
Part 3: Love’s boundaries
9. Imploding fireworks: Love and self-knowledge in the contemporary Italian sentimental novel
Francesca Pierini, University of Basel, Switzerland
10. Lovespeak, love novels and the onset of modernity
Gary Kelly, University of Alberta, Canada
11. Love as theoretical object in Marguerite Duras’s writings
Crisia Constantine, Griffith University, Australia
12. Love without object
Lauren Edwards, York University, Canada
13. Post-humanism and the road to castle Frankisstein
Lawrence Quill, San Jose State University, USA
Index
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