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Affective Inequalities in Intimate Relationships
 9781138092747, 9781315107318

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of figures
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: thinking with and through affective inequalities
Part I Affective capacities in embodied encounters
1 An affective (re)balancing act? The liminal possibilities for heterosexual partners on MDMA
2 Boundless care: religious farm women and their emotional practices in post–World War II Finland
3 Listening to old tapes: affective intensities and gendered power in bisexual women’s and ex-partners’ relationship assemblages
4 Mapping affective capacities: gender and sexuality in relationship and sex counselling practices
Part II Affective transitions throughout intimate lives
5 Yet another lesbian breakup? Understanding intimate relationship dynamics through affective resonance
6 Slipping into ‘that nurse’s dress’: caring as affective practice in mixed-sex couples’ relationships
7 When death cuts apart: on affective difference, compassionate companionship and lesbian widowhood
Part III Affective negotiations between partners
8 Independence and vulnerability: affective orientations in imagining futurities for heterosexual relationships
9 In the name of love: a relational approach to young people’s relationships in urban Mexico
10 Affective dissonances: resources to disrupt gender binaries?
Part IV Affective intimacies beyond couples
11 Mobilizing affects about intimate relationships: emotional pedagogy among the New Right in Germany
12 The power(s) of friendship: affects and inequalities between friends
13 Touch between child and mother as an affective practice: (re)producing bodies in haptic negotiations of intimate space
14 Reviving ghostly bodies: student–teacher intimacies as affective hauntings
Index

Citation preview

Affective Inequalities in Intimate Relationships

Rising to the challenge of how to grasp such forms of inequalities that are mediated affectively, Affective Inequalities in Intimate Relationships focuses on subtle inequalities that are shaped in everyday affective encounters. It also seeks to bridge a gap between affect theory and empirical social research by providing ideas and inspiration of how to work with affect in research practice. Presenting cutting-edge empirical studies on affect and intimate relationships, the collection • • •

introduces alternative and novel ways of conceptualizing the workings of affect in intimate relationships provides tools for tackling the subtle ways in which affectivity connects with power relations in intimate relations develops innovative methodologies that provide better access to affect as an embodied experience

A fascinating contribution to the interdisciplinary field of affect studies, Affective Inequalities in Intimate Relationships will appeal to advanced undergraduates and postgraduates interested in fields such as gender studies, queer studies and cultural studies. Tuula Juvonen is a collegium researcher at the University of Turku, Finland. Marjo Kolehmainen is a postdoctoral fellow at University of Tampere, Finland.

Routledge Research in Gender and Society

64 Bodies, Symbols and Organizational Practice The Gendered Dynamics of Power Edited by Agnes Bolsø, Stine Helena Bang Svendsen, and Siri Øyslebø Sørensen 65 Beyond Gender An Advanced Introduction to Futures of Feminist and Sexuality Studies Edited by Greta Olson, Daniel Hartley, Mirjam Horn-Schott, and Leonie Schmidt 66 Girls, Aggression and Intersectionality Transforming the Discourse of ‘Mean Girls’ Edited by Krista McQueeney and Alicia A. Girgenti-Malone 67 Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities Rewriting the Sexual Contract Petra Bueskens 68 Age, Gender and Sexuality through the Life Course The Girl in Time Susan Pickard 69 The Romani Women’s Movement Struggles and Debates in Central and Eastern Europe Edited by Angéla Kóczé, Violetta Zentai, Jelena Jovanovic´ , and Eniko˝ Vincze 70 Affective Inequalities in Intimate Relationships Edited by Tuula Juvonen and Marjo Kolehmainen 71 Masculinities, Sexualities and Love Aliraza Javaid www.routledge.com/sociology/series/SE0271

Affective Inequalities in Intimate Relationships

Edited by Tuula Juvonen and Marjo Kolehmainen

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Tuula Juvonen and Marjo Kolehmainen; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Tuula Juvonen and Marjo Kolehmainen to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-09274-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-10731-8 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of figuresvii List of contributorsviii Acknowledgementsxi Introduction: thinking with and through affective inequalities

1

MARJO KOLEHMAINEN AND TUULA JUVONEN

PART I Affective capacities in embodied encounters17   1 An affective (re)balancing act? The liminal possibilities for heterosexual partners on MDMA

19

KATIE ANDERSON, PAULA REAVEY AND ZOË BODEN

  2 Boundless care: religious farm women and their emotional practices in post–World War II Finland

34

ANTTI MALINEN

  3 Listening to old tapes: affective intensities and gendered power in bisexual women’s and ex-partners’ relationship assemblages

49

ANNUKKA LAHTI

  4 Mapping affective capacities: gender and sexuality in relationship and sex counselling practices

63

MARJO KOLEHMAINEN

PART II Affective transitions throughout intimate lives79   5 Yet another lesbian breakup? Understanding intimate relationship dynamics through affective resonance TUULA JUVONEN

81

vi Contents

  6 Slipping into ‘that nurse’s dress’: caring as affective practice in mixed-sex couples’ relationships

95

LIINA SOINTU

  7 When death cuts apart: on affective difference, compassionate companionship and lesbian widowhood

109

NINA LYKKE

PART III Affective negotiations between partners125   8 Independence and vulnerability: affective orientations in imagining futurities for heterosexual relationships

127

RAISA JURVA

  9 In the name of love: a relational approach to young people’s relationships in urban Mexico

141

OLGA SABIDO-RAMOS AND ADRIANA GARCÍA-ANDRADE

10 Affective dissonances: resources to disrupt gender binaries?

155

POLONA CURK

PART IV Affective intimacies beyond couples169 11 Mobilizing affects about intimate relationships: emotional pedagogy among the New Right in Germany

171

KATJA CHMILEWSKI AND KATHARINA HAJEK

12 The power(s) of friendship: affects and inequalities between friends

186

VERÓNICA POLICARPO

13 Touch between child and mother as an affective practice: (re)producing bodies in haptic negotiations of intimate space

201

JULIA KATILA

14 Reviving ghostly bodies: student–teacher intimacies as affective hauntings

218

BESSIE P. DERNIKOS

Index231

Figures

1 2.1 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4

Map of personal relationships Participation map Extract 1 Extract 2 Extract 3

192 206 207 210 213

Contributors

Katie Anderson completed her doctoral research on intimacy and relationality in couples who use MDMA. She used process theory to examine the materialpsychological contexts in which drug use and relationality emerged, and is interested in space, embodiment and intimacy more generally. Her interests also include psychological theories of emotions, drug use and drug policy, and she has delivered talks and written about drug experiences and affect. Zoë Boden is a senior lecturer in psychology at London Southbank University, UK. Her research focuses on relational and emotional experience in the context of mental health and wellbeing. She runs the Qualitative Approaches to Affect, Feeling and Emotion research network. Katja Chmilewski (MA) works as junior researcher at the Department of Political Science, University of Vienna, Austria. In her dissertation project she analyses affective mobilization in a feminized workspace and perspectives of trade unionism. Her research interests include affect studies, feminist theory and gender equality policies in Austria and Germany. Polona Curk is currently an executive research fellow in the Philosophy Department, University of Essex, UK, working on EAP ‘Insight’ Stream of the Wellcome Trust-funded Mental Health and Justice project. With a background in psychoanalytic theory, she has published on autonomy, destructiveness, and responsibility in intimate relationships. Bessie P. Dernikos is an assistant professor of reading and language arts at Florida Atlantic University, USA. Her research focuses on affect and critical literacies. She has authored publications in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. She is currently co-editing a forthcoming volume, Feeling Education: Affect, Encounters, Pedagogy. Adriana García-Andrade is a professor at the Sociology Department, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM), Mexico. Her current interests include sociology of love, embodied love, and neurosciences and emotions. She has edited the volume Feminism and the Power of Love, with Lena Gunarsson and Anna Jónasdóttir, currently in press by Routledge.

Contributors ix

Katharina Hajek is a lecturer and project researcher at the Department of Political Science, University of Vienna, Austria. Her research interests include feminist theory, political representation, family policy and the gender politics of the New Right in Austria and Germany. She has published in journals such as Globalizations. Raisa Jurva (M.Soc.Sc.) is a doctoral researcher in gender studies at the University of Tampere, Finland, and part of the Academy of Finland-funded research project on affective inequalities. She is interested in entanglements of power and affect in intimate relationships, and the ways in which gendered conventions can be challenged institutionally, politically, personally, and affectively in relationships in everyday life. Tuula Juvonen works as a collegium researcher at the University of Turku, Finland, and leads the Academy of Finland-funded project on affective inequality. She has previously studied emerging lesbian communities and the changing position of homosexuality in Finnish society. Her current project, The Materialisation of Affective Attachments, focuses on sexualities and genders in flux. Julia Katila is a Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tampere, Finland. Her research interests include intersections between social relationships and touch, interconnections between affectively rich encounters and interpersonal bonds, and the role of touch in healthcare interactions. Marjo Kolehmainen is a postdoctoral fellow at University of Tampere, Finland, working in the Academy of Finland-funded project on affective inequalities in intimate relationships. Her research interests include affect, gender, sexuality, and methodology. She has published in Feminist Media Studies, Sexualities, and The Sociological Review. Annukka Lahti is a researcher at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and part of the Academy of Finland-funded research project on affective inequalities in intimate relationships. Her research interests include the affective shaping of inequalities both between and within contemporary relationships, (bi)sexualities and gender. She has published in Feminism, Psychology, and Subjectivity. Nina Lykke (Dr. Phil.) is professor emerita of gender sttudies, Linköping University, Sweden. Lykke is a co-founder of the Queer Death Studies Network and her current research interests include cancer cultures, queer widowhood, and death in queerfeminist, materialist and decolonial perspectives. She has most recently published on queer widowhood in Lambda Nordica and on academic feminisms in Feminist Encounters. Antti Malinen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences, University of Tampere, Finland. Malinen has written extensively on the social history of post-World War I and World War II Finland, especially from the perspectives of experiences, emotions and gender.

x Contributors

Verónica Policarpo is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Lisbon, Portugal, working on an individual project funded by FCT (BPD/85809/2012) about friendship. Her current research interests include human-animal relations, affect, friendship, gender, sexuality, and methodology. She has published in the Journal of Gender Studies and Sociological Research Online. Paula Reavey is a professor of psychology at London South Bank University, UK, and a director of design in Mental Health Network UK. She has co-edited three volumes, Space & Mental Health (2018), Memory Matters: Contexts for Understanding Sexual Abuse Recollections (2009), and New Feminist Stories of Child Sexual Abuse: Sexual Scripts and Dangerous Dialogues (2003). She has also edited the volume Visual Methods in Psychology: Using and Interpreting Images in Qualitative Research (2011). She has also published two monographs: Vital Memory and Affect: Living with a Difficult Past (2015) and Psychology, Mental Health and Distress (2013) – a winner of the British Psychological Society Book Award. Olga Sabido-Ramos is a professor of sociology at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico. Her research interests are sensory studies and affective bonds. She has published numerous articles and book chapters theorizing the body, the senses, and embodied love on different analytical levels. She is part of the editorial board of Simmel Studies. Liina Sointu is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tampere, Finland. She currently works on the Academy of Finland Strategic Research Council-funded project on sustainable urban development. Her research interests include social policy and sociology of care, aging, and sensory methodology.

Acknowledgements

This book, edited by Dr Tuula Juvonen and Dr Marjo Kolehmainen, is one of the outcomes of the Academy of Finland–funded research project ‘Just the Two of Us? Affective Inequalities in Intimate Relationships’ (project 287983, 2015– 2019). The project, led by Tuula Juvonen, thrives through the cooperative work of its four subprojects: in addition to Juvonen and Kolehmainen, PhD students Annukka Lahti and Raisa Jurva have contributed to the project in various ways. Thank you. We are also thankful for the generous support the project received in its initial stages from its international collaborative partners: Professor Lisa Adkins, Professor Clare Hemmings, Professor Stevi Jackson and Professor Sasha Roseneil. Our project, and hence also the editing process of this book, has been hosted by the inspiring and hospitable gender studies community led by Professor Päivi Korvajärvi and Professor Johanna Kantola at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Tampere, Finland. The university, with its professional and efficient administrative staff and conference assistants, greatly assisted us when we organized several workshops and seminars that have nurtured our academic pursuits. First, we would like to thank Professor Patricia Clough and Professor Lisa Blackman for their fascinating keynotes during the ‘Affect & Methods’ workshop (2016), and for the exchange of ideas and insightful comments upon our work-inprogress papers. Likewise, we wish to express our gratitude to Professor Rosalind Gill and Dr Christina Scharff for their inspiring keynotes in the ‘Affective and Psychic Life of Capitalism’ seminar (2017), as well as for lively discussions and useful comments. That seminar was jointly organized with two other Academy of Finland–funded projects, Professor Suvi Salmenniemi’s ‘Tracking the Therapeutic: Ethnographies of Well-Being, Politics and Inequality’ and Professor Lisa Adkins’ ‘Social Science for the 21st Century’, and we would like to thank the respective principal investigators for a good collaboration. Finally, our thanks go to Professor Stevi Jackson, who joined us for the ‘Heterosexuality and Beyond’ workshop (2017), which we co-organized with Professor Jaana Vuori. We also wish to express our warmest thanks to all workshop and seminar participants, whose contributions have greatly enriched our thinking.

xii Acknowledgements

Likewise, we would like to thank all those who have collaborated with us in terms of attending the workshops and panels we have organized as a project: ‘Post-Qualitative Methodologies in Social Sciences’ at the 28th Nordic Sociological Association Conference (2016); ‘Affects in Diverse Relationships’ at the Family Research Conference (2016); ‘Affect and Temporalities in Intimate Relationships’ at the Crossroads in Cultural Studies conference (2016); and ‘Affective Relations’ at the Gender Studies conference (2017). We extend our gratitude also to all those who organized the numerous conferences, workshops and seminars where we have been able to present our work, receive feedback, feel inspired and create networks. Such joyful moments have not been limited to large academic events only, since we have also had the privilege of meeting and discussing with several visiting scholars in less formal settings. We would like to thank you all – especially Professor Mirka Koro-Ljungberg, Professor Silvia Gherardi and Senior Lecturer Saija Katila. Also, the useful insights offered by Professor Hanne Marlene Dahl, Professor Johanna Kantola and Senior Lecturer Marja Vehviläinen on an early draft of the introduction of this book were fruitful, as were our intellectual exchanges with Professor Maryanne Dever, Senior Lecturer Taina Kinnunen and Postdoctoral Researcher Katariina Mäkinen. Likewise, we would like to thank the members of our project’s extended reading group for discussions and our former research assistants for invaluable help in advancing our research. Moreover, our work, including on this book, has greatly benefited from the impulses we have been able to accumulate while visiting other institutions during this project. Tuula would like to thank Professor Brenda Cossman at the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies and Associate Professor Elspeth H. Brown, both at the University of Toronto (Canada), as well as Dr Kori Allan, for their friendliness and support. Marjo recently visited the GEXcel International Collegium for Advanced Transdisciplinary Gender Studies (Linköping University, Sweden) and the Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths (University of London, UK). Her thanks go especially to Professor Nina Lykke, Dr Rebecca Coleman and Professor Beverley Skeggs for their hospitality. We would not have a book to edit, though, without the authors who so delightfully responded to the call for papers. Thank you for your impressive work – it has been a pleasure to work with you. Similarly, the collaboration with Routledge has been very smooth, thanks to the professionalism of the commissioning editor for sociology, Emily Briggs, and editorial assistant Elena Chiu. We would also like to thank the reviewers – Professor Greg J. Seigworth and two anonymous reviewers – for their encouraging feedback. Likewise, our warmest thanks to Dr Merl Storr for first-class copy-editing and proofreading services. We have been very lucky to have support for this project in our private lives, too. Hence, we would like to express our heartfelt thanks to our respective partners, who have spurred our work on this and other academic pursuits over the

Acknowledgements xiii

years, and who have enriched our lives in many ways – including by making the connections between affectivity and intimate relationships more than just a theory. Last but not least, we want to thank each other for keen and inspired collaboration in co-editing this volume. Tuula Juvonen and Marjo Kolehmainen Tampere, January 2018

Introduction Thinking with and through affective inequalities Marjo Kolehmainen and Tuula Juvonen

This book’s approach to affect sheds light on subtle mechanisms of inequality which may easily go unnoticed, given that affects are often ambivalent, mundane, ordinary and difficult to capture empirically. Yet the new ontologies opened up by relational affect theories suggest that inequalities can be known affectively, as they are felt intrapersonally and made tangible in interpersonal encounters. While taking affective inequalities as its point of departure, this book introduces alternative and novel ways of conceptualizing and approaching the workings of affect in intimate relationships.

Why affective inequality? Why do many inequalities concerning gender and sexuality prevail, even in countries that rank highly in international equality measurements and where general demands for equality are widely approved and supported? This question was our starting point when we were drafting our successful research proposal on affective inequalities, of which project this book is one of the outcomes. We assumed that it was perhaps more difficult to disrupt power relations in intimate relationships than in other social realms, especially if we wish to reach beyond such widely acknowledged concrete issues as equal pay, household chores or care responsibilities and to consider the full spectrum of inequalities. These include the hardly recognizable, unthoughtfully mundane or otherwise complex and messy power dynamics through which people experience their relationships. Further, we wondered how these kinds of subtle operations of power could be recognized, and whether new conceptualizations or methodological innovations would be needed. In particular, we could not avoid noticing how previous studies stressed heterosexual relationships as persistent arenas for renewing gendered conventions and hierarchies, which was simultaneously often explained away by referring to stereotypical gender roles. However, we started to ponder to what extent inequalities in intimate relationships can actually be traced back to heterosexual dynamics. Alternatively, might there be something else about intimate relations themselves that makes them a fertile ground for sustaining unequal practices – regardless of who the partners are, and irrespective of their gender or sexual identifications?

2  Marjo Kolehmainen and Tuula Juvonen

With such questions in mind, we started to reflect on how inequalities are shaped in everyday affective encounters, as well as in their interpretation and judgement. We finally came up with the concept of affective inequality, hoping with its help to identify phenomena that are difficult to capture empirically. Moreover, we wanted to experiment and even play with the collocation – and to see what other scholars might have to say about it. The aim of this edited collection is to explore affective dynamics with particular attention to affective inequalities in intimate relationships. By doing so, Affective Inequalities in Intimate Relationships opens up a new path in affect studies. It draws upon affect theories in its aim to set a research agenda for the definition, recognition and exploration of affective inequalities in intimate encounters. While placing focus on intimate encounters, we seek to promote a relational understanding of affect. From such a perspective, affect can neither be reduced to an easily defined, captured or proved ‘it’ nor viewed as a personal property or individual reaction; rather, affect emerges in encounters and provides a novel perspective on relations between bodies and subjects. A relational approach further invites the exploration of aspects of intimate relations that underline corporeal co-constitution, intersubjective connection, multiple assemblages and affective entanglements. For example, acknowledging the everyday flows of forces, charges, energies, moods and atmospheres is crucial for developing our understandings of the fabrics of different relationships, which cannot be grasped by employing conventional analyses of power. Having a look at intimate relationships is probably as timely as ever – they hardly ever go out of fashion. Despite the shifts in the ways in which intimate lives are organized in late modern societies, a coupled relationship still has high status and a robust allure. Various forms of intimate relationships – be they a fling, a marriage or a polyamorous arrangement – are expected to offer personal and emotional fulfilment. At the same time, normative and non-normative relationships are sites where social expectations and lived experiences concerning gender and sexuality are renewed, produced and resisted. However, these intimate entanglements are often challenging to recognize, as many forms of intimate vulnerability and suffering are hardly tangible and difficult to pinpoint. Taking a closer look at the ways in which affectivity connects with power relations in intimate relations expands our knowledge of the social significance of affective inequalities and the workings of power beyond conceptualizations that foreground structures, institutions and norms. The difficulty of recognizing affective inequality as it occurs brings us to another aim of this book, which is to bridge the gap between affect theory and empirical social research with innovative methodologies. A great body of theoretical work has been published on affect, yet the sophisticated debates on the significance of affect in renewing social hierarchies and indicating societal power relations have remained somewhat distanced from empirical inquiry. We do not seek to mobilize juxtapositions of the ‘theoretical’ and ‘empirical’, yet we too cannot avoid noticing that affect studies are often literally about affect theory – which makes us ask

Introduction 3

how empirical inquiry might enrich the current approaches to affect. This book for its own part seeks to offer ideas and inspiration by providing practical examples of how to work with affect in empirical research practice. In particular, we are interested in developing and working with methodologies that provide better access to affect as an embodied experience. We envision that it will produce knowledge about the ways in which inequalities are mediated affectively. All in all, with its focus on affective inequalities, this volume presents cutting-edge empirical studies on affect and intimate relationships. In this way, the book not only provides tools to analyse affective inequalities in intimate relationships, but also puts forward the idea that to think through affect has the potential to transform the way we understand the social, and hence offers new possibilities to politicize it. For us, the motivation to pose questions about affective inequality is also a political, ethical and feminist endeavour. Even though this volume focuses on affective inequalities in intimate relationships, it is evident that its theoretical and methodological contributions not only help to deepen our understanding of affective inequalities both in and beyond such relationships but can also be employed when exploring operations of force and power in other kinds of encounters as well.

Relational understanding of affect An increasing interest in the study of affect across the humanities and social sciences has simultaneously raised doubts concerning its ‘newness’. These criticisms are often made by pointing towards previous studies on emotions. Even though this kind of debate is necessary and relevant, a simplistic identification of affect studies with emotion studies does not do justice to the new ontology affect studies advance. Of course, several questions and concerns discussed across affect studies appeared in feminist theories of the body, in various psychoanalytic approaches and in critical inquiry on the emotions, before the breakthrough of affect studies (Blackman & Venn 2010:8; Seigworth & Gregg 2010:6–9). Still, we wish to highlight that affect is not more or less synonymous with individual human emotions. Affect can entail emotions, but it is not by any means limited to them. The relational understanding of affect foregrounds the importance of acknowledging intercorporeality and trans-subjectivity (e.g. Blackman 2012; Blackman & Venn 2010:8; Seyfert 2012). Hence, affect as a concept directs attention to the relations between bodies – be they individual or collective, human or non-human. Crucial for the relational understanding of affect is the idea that affecting and becoming affected emerge in and through encounters between bodies and things. Affects, as in energies, flows, intensities and resonances, are not to be understood as straightforward reactions or simple results of relating, because the encounters and their effects are themselves open-ended and productive. Moreover, it would be misleading just to see affects emerging as a distinct result of particular encounters, since affects also contribute to the happenings of these encounters. They can be viewed as active agents themselves, having productive capacities

4  Marjo Kolehmainen and Tuula Juvonen

(see also Kinnunen & Kolehmainen under review). The encounters are thus not to be understood as interactions between two separate bodies: to foreground relationality is to reject the idea of pre-existing entities that interact, as the relation itself is seen as primary (Blackman & Venn 2010:10, 22). From this it follows that individuals, or couples for that matter, are seen as emerging through entangled processes of relating. These affective encounters take place with bodies – but also within bodies. Even though affect does not require pre-existing subjectivity and exceeds human agency, the workings of affects can become individually felt or experienced, or otherwise registered in human bodies. We can get affected by other people’s affects or non-human elements. Likewise, we can get affected by just the mere anticipation of affective intensity, or by our embodied memories. These activities stress affect’s distinctiveness from human emotion. Paying attention to different bodily responses helps to illustrate the involuntary actions of bodies, as well as their fluid compositions: we can hardly perceive blood pressure or control goosebumps. However, affect is not only about bodily responses. Rather, affect as a concept refers to different embodied, non-conscious and non-linguistic systems of meaning-making, knowing, remembering and experiencing (Blackman & Venn 2010). In other words, not seeing the body as singular, autonomous, individual or human only provides one way to consider communication without limiting it to assumptions about intentional social interaction, and without privileging anthropocentric notions of agency. It should not be overlooked either that embodied experiences, intimate ones in particular, also have psychical relevance. Deeply affective, unconscious interpersonal dynamics are a fundamental part of intimacies, and hence the psyche should not be written out of accounts of intimate relationships when we consider the social or political meanings of intimacies (Frank, Clough & Seidman 2013:2–3). The affective flows in intimate relationships may create a quality or intensity that gives them a persisting and meaningful tone, or the affective flows can play a role in sustaining unequal and even toxic relationships. People also often make strong affective investments in couple relationships, partly because they are valued over other relationship forms. The consequences of these investments are unpredictable: for example, falling in love can make one lose one’s sense as a singular, autonomous individual. This can feel very welcome and ecstatic if we find comfort in mutual and trans-subjective feelings of joy and pleasure, or extremely distressing if love only hurts and intensifies feelings of loneliness and disconnection. In any case, the potential of affecting and being affected is essential for understanding a myriad of intimate entanglements and their consequences for psychological well-being. Thinking through and with affect also enriches our understanding of the social by moving us away from assuming that there are a priori affective domains, even if there are domains of intimacy that are commonly considered to be prime sites for affects, such as couple relationships or care relationships (Lynch, Baker & Lyons 2009). However, as others have pointed out, the operations of intimacy in

Introduction 5

everyday life extend beyond certain types of relationships (Frank et al. 2013; also Woodward 2015). Affectivity can include any form and instance of relatedness that can shape people’s capacities, sense of self, feelings and attachments (cf. Sehlikoglu & Zengin 2015:20–22; Wilson 2012). Because affective encounters are taking place everywhere and all the time, such encounters cannot and should not be confined to any particular predefined fields of social action, such as intimate relationships – even though in this book the latter happen to be the object of study. This being said, a relational understanding of affect is well suited to enriching our understanding of intimate relationships. To work with affect opens up possibilities to attune to and notice the sensations, intensities and textures through which ordinary life is experienced and registered by the body (Coleman & Ringrose 2013; Stewart 2007, 2017) without assuming a predefined affect. Affective registers foster the conditions for experiences of intimacy or the lack of it: while affects mark a body’s belonging as well as non-belonging to the world, they do not only draw us together, whatever our intentions, but also force us apart, or signal the lack of any real intersubjective connection (Hemmings 2012; Juvonen & Kolehmainen 2016; Seigworth & Gregg 2010). Exploring affectivity provides a fruitful tool for identifying belonging and non-belonging, and related inequalities and asymmetries.

Rethinking power relations Conventional approaches to power make it difficult to acknowledge the ways in which many forms of power are mediated affectively. The dynamics of intimate relationships cannot be explained or grasped by relying on predefined structures, institutions or categories – in the case of intimate relationships, ‘patriarchy’, ‘heteronormativity’, ‘gendered conventions’ or ‘sexual orientation’ make little space for noticing the mundane affective encounters which are often crucial for understanding the subtle operations of power in intimate relationships. The relational understanding of affect rejects the privileging of any social structures, institutions or categories as deterministic explanations of social phenomena or as good-enough shorthands for power, as they themselves are seen as demanding explication instead (see Fox & Alldred 2017; Latour 2005; Stewart 2017:194). Working against the simplification of human experiences is, of course, challenging, and requires a welcoming of multiplicity and uncertainty (Ulmer & Koro-Ljungberg 2015). Affect studies, for their part, enable us to address the under-the-radar entanglements of power relations that are essential in shaping the everyday fabrics and textures of intimate relationships. There are, however, already existing approaches that have fruitfully sought ways to scrutinize the links between affect and power. Previous studies have successfully pointed out how norms and hierarchies related to gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class are often articulated in the name of affective judgement (e.g. Ahmed 2004; Kolehmainen 2012; Skeggs 2005; Tyler 2008). When it comes to intimate relationships, what is seen as desirable or disgusting, pleasurable or

6  Marjo Kolehmainen and Tuula Juvonen

painful, exemplifies the connection between affect and moral judgement. In this way, affects can indeed be used to cover, reveal and negotiate power relations and related inequalities. Thus, the norms concerning a dyadic couple or a nuclear family can be mobilized to maintain affective inequalities within or between relationships. Yet even if our affective responses are revealing of wider social power relations, it would be misleading to see affect only as an individual or collective response that straightforwardly points back to wider power relations. For example, leaning on reaction models or causal explanations for the effects of the use of power insists on a vertical, repressive and deterministic understanding of power and forecloses any acknowledgement of the possibility of new becomings. Likewise, a previous body of work has offered some insights into our initial question of why many forms of affective inequality persist. It has been pointed out that often people affectively invest in unequal settings even though it will increase their pain. It is possible to become affectively attached to the very thing that is the source of the inequality we are suffering from (Berlant 2011), be it the relationship we are engaged in or something else. However, affects have a capacity to sediment power imbalances and already existing asymmetries, as well as to provide empowering experiences or pave the way for change. In other words, affects can be sites of change and transformation as well as sites that arrest, stick and solidify (Blackman 2012; Kinnunen & Kolehmainen under review). Hence, paying attention not only to pain but also to moments of happiness, healing or hope is required to understand the complex dynamics around affects and power: why they emerge and exist; how they persist and prevail – and how to end them. Nevertheless, affect theories – or at least some versions of them – have been criticized for justifying apolitical perspectives. It has been argued that if affect is associated with pre-subjective capacities, it loses sight of the subject, and power relations become impossible to address. However, the current body of work on affect does not abandon the subject. Rather, the relational understanding of affect foregrounds the importance of intercorporeality and trans-subjectivity (e.g. Blackman 2012; Seyfert 2012). Hence, it seeks to pose the challenge differently: how to address issues of power when the subject is no longer seen as sovereign, singular and human only? If, for example, gender or sexuality are not seen as simply residing within individuals (cf. Fox & Alldred 2013, 2017), such features as sexual orientation, gender identity or desire cannot be reduced to being ‘internal’ or ‘individual’, either. This paves a way for non-humanist approaches to the study of gender and sexuality, inviting us to look at gendered and sexualized power relations in the context of intimate relationships with new eyes. Thinking about power relations and affect also draws our attention to the mundane and subtle forms of force and power. Although most mundane affective encounters perhaps take place unnoticed during the course of everyday life, it does not mean that they go by without affecting us. On the contrary, they may be the ones that affect us the most profoundly, simply because they may feel ordinary and thus remain undifferentiated, or because their singular effects are so minimal that their accumulation can be noticed best only in retrospect. As there is

Introduction 7

a certain tendency in affect theory to focus on intense experiences such as trauma, the everyday might go unnoticed. Yet ordinary affects are just as central to intimate lives as intense experiences (see Stewart 2007). For example, in intimate relationships, resentment, humiliation and unreciprocated desire are just a few examples of daily forms of suffering – even though they often remain invisible, unlike large-scale consequences of poverty, famine or natural disasters (see Illouz 2012:15). By focusing on affect, even when it is not especially forceful, we can help to denaturalize the everyday as the unthought (see also Seigworth & Gregg 2010:2; Stewart 2017:195). While the affective encounters themselves are open-ended and unpredictable, over time they might become patterned. The (un)just effects of affective encounters can and do accumulate in various ways, to the extent that we can speak of both affective privilege and affective inequality (see Kinnunen & Kolehmainen under review). This is not only a question of singular happenings or events and their potential effects, but refers to embodied, affective and psychical processes. We can notice, for example, how particular encounters enhance capacities to affect or be affected in some while diminishing them in others. Such a weakening of affective capacities in relation to others, as well as affective pulls or attachments to unequal situations, produces affective inequalities, perhaps making certain subjects once again more vulnerable during ensuing encounters. So we maintain that affect studies make it possible to address the questions of power differently, while departing from dualistic conceptualizations. It is also vital to find ways to address affective inequality by developing new tools to attune to affective encounters and their effects, which cannot be known in advance.

Affective methodologies We are currently in a situation where multiple affect theories are in circulation, as the ‘affective turn’ includes a range of different, even contradictory, articulations (e.g. Blackman 2012:9; Seigworth & Gregg 2010:3). Consequently, there is little agreement on the concept of affect (see Hemmings 2005; Koivunen 2010). For some, affect is more or less synonymous with human emotion; for some, emotion refers to cultural expression, while affects are biological in nature; and for some, affects are not emotions but capabilities of bodies to affect and be affected. This raises the question whether affect, as a general concept, has much explanatory potential. This question is also a methodological one, as it relates to the ways of practising research. We argue that it is important to indicate one’s entry point to affect to avoid vague catchphrases. For example, instead of talking about affect in general, by focusing on affective encounters it is possible to identify and examine the powerful forces that set the conditions for making some forms of affect possible and others less likely or impossible (see Skoggard & Waterston 2015:113). Affect studies are not exempt from the rigour necessary to any scholarship: it is crucial to be aware of one’s particular scholarly stance and to ask specific questions stemming from it.

8  Marjo Kolehmainen and Tuula Juvonen

Affect has been deemed a challenging object of study (e.g. Blackman 2015a; Knudsen & Stage 2015; Lury 2015; Wetherell 2012), and despite the theoretical blossoming, empirical research on affect has proved puzzling. In order to rise to this challenge, attempts to prove and verify affect have proliferated. However, many scholars have warned against such positivist endeavours (Pedwell 2017). Affect is not simply an entity that can be captured as an ‘it’ or thing, so the practical challenges are not to be solved by trying to provide evidence of what affect is (see Blackman 2015a:40). Rather, a more fruitful question may be to consider what particular versions of affect do in our theorizing (Blackman & Venn 2010:8– 9). We argue that such affect studies, which rely on non-humanist ontology, make it possible to accept new methodological challenges, which give impetus to new kinds of empirical inquiries. The book maps possibilities to start with, or works through concepts such as assemblage, resonance, orientation, intensity or capacity. These concepts also meet the methodological task to enter the middle, the between: to relate (Coleman & Ringrose 2013:9). When studying intimate relationships, then, this means that the point of departure cannot be fixed; and there is a reason to seek alternatives to privileging the dyad. Yet, the current fascination with affect results partly from the tendency to assume that affect can offer a route to explore life in its authentic forms, as if untouched by the ‘social’. Nevertheless, affects are not lenses onto truth or reality, as it continues to be very difficult to get unmediated access to what is ‘really’ going on (see Hemmings 2012; Pedwell & Whitehead 2012; Wetherell 2012). Nevertheless, exploring affects provides an opportunity to acknowledge one important circuit through which cultural meanings and social (power) relations are felt, imagined, mediated, negotiated and/or contested (Pedwell & Whitehead 2012). Hence, exploring affectivity does not provide us with easy access to the ontological realm of how we exist – in opposition to the ways we describe or understand how we exist – in this world. Rather, the nature of the relationship between ontology and epistemology is dynamic (Hemmings 2012). This is why grasping affectivity does not offer a shortcut to reliable knowledge of the social realm, intimate relationships included. However, it does provide a means to develop methodologies that foreground alternative ways of noticing, registering and attuning to the social as it happens. In this way, affect studies can widen and renew existing methods of knowledge production. The methodologies employed in the humanities and social sciences have been criticized for overly relying on language and sight (Blackman & Venn 2010). Thus far, the liveliest methodological debate concerning affect studies has addressed the relation between language and affect. Undoubtedly, affect studies open a novel path to the study of experiences, memories and knowledge which does not operate through the structures of language, discourse and meaning (Blackman & Venn 2010). Putting emphasis on embodiment has raised the methodological question of whether textual materials (understood widely, from narratives to representations) are at all suitable for studying affect. While some scholars argue that affect takes place beyond language categorization, others hold the view that language is

Introduction 9

capable of expressing affect (Knudsen & Stage 2015:4). Even if language were seen as a suitable medium for studying affect, many questions would remain. It has been pointed out that language tames affect and limits our understanding of complex affective encounters to already available discourses. A focus on language also (re)centres the human subject, which may prove problematic if we wish to depart from privileging anthropocentric notions of agency and embrace relationality. Still, the real challenge lies in the question of how to take embodiment into account – for example, how to examine embodied experiences of affecting and being affected without reducing affect to the responses or reactions of individual human bodies. Taking affect as an autonomic bodily response wrongfully makes affect the equivalent of the empirical measure of bodily effects, registered in individual embodied activity (Clough 2008). This kind of reductive description fails to account for how affects are transferred to others and fed back to the relational self in different encounters, thereby locating the body in a circuit of feeling and response (Hemmings 2005:551). Hence, affects themselves are productive, throwing causality and prediction into question (Lury 2015:238). Because affect is not a result of a causal relation, we consider it essential to explore its complicated entanglements with networks of power. Moreover, understanding affect as an individual reaction may lead to a focus on immediately visible bodily reactions, such as laughter or tears. However, affects do not necessarily manifest themselves in easily identifiable or recognizable ways. Further, paying attention solely to immediate and visible reactions is problematic, because affects do not follow the chronological ticking of time (Ahmed 2004; Wetherell 2012). Rather, affects carry past, present and future within them in non-linear and unpredictable ways. Finally, taking affect seriously shifts conventional approaches to data. We suggest taking on board from post-qualitative research the idea that data is not to be understood as passive, but is ‘data alive’ (Dernikos, this volume). This stresses the importance of relating to data and analysing it in a way that does not iron out its dynamism and movement (see Blackman 2015b). Some scholars stress the potential of embodied-affective data, which is indexically linked to the bodies ‘in’ affect, of both the researcher and the researched (Knudsen & Stage 2015; Walkerdine 2010). Yet other kinds of data may also have their own affective activities, as they may glow and provoke through their ‘hotspots’, and by doing so draw scholarly interest to themselves (MacLure 2013; Ringrose & Renold 2014; also Lahti, this volume). Data may also haunt the scholar (Blackman 2012; also Dernikos, this volume). Likewise, working with affective data is an open-ended process – to the extent that it may change the life course of the scholar (see Juvonen, this volume). In any case, researchers themselves are in many ways entangled within the assemblages they seek to study (Coleman & Ringrose 2013:6) and should also analytically explore their own affective investments in the subject under investigation (Blackman 2015a:25–26). This is to remind us that affectivity is a question pertinent to the research process as a whole.

10  Marjo Kolehmainen and Tuula Juvonen

Once more with feeling: navigating through this volume While compiling this book, we sought to address some of the challenges that theoretically advanced affect studies pose to the empirical study of social, in this case intimate, relationships. As there is no single affect theory but many affect theories, the authors also have theoretically different entry points to affect, partly because they come from different disciplinary backgrounds: gender studies, sociology, social policy, social psychology, psychology, educational sciences, political science and history. Several chapters indeed seek to employ and develop empirically recent conceptualizations, such as affective resonance, affective intensity, affective orientation or affective practice. Many of the contributions work with Deleuzian frameworks while focusing on affective capacities, assemblages or becoming, while others focus on the interplay between ‘affect’ and ‘emotion’. Similarly, the methods chosen by the individual authors vary a lot. Several methodologically innovative chapters of this volume point to a variety of possible ways in which the social realm can be attuned to, registered and felt. These chapters offer novel insights by focusing on listening and touching, or on telepathy and haunting memories. Furthermore, in some chapters the researchers employ novel tools offered by so-called post-qualitative inquiry or Deleuze-inspired methodologies, or engage with creative writing practices. Some chapters contribute to empirical research on affect by extending the analysis of affect to already established methodological choices and analytical strategies, such as surveys, interaction studies or narrative analysis. Yet, regardless of their take, all the chapters in this book rise to the challenge of conducting empirical research on affect by providing tools for the definition, recognition, interpretation and operation of what the authors perceive to be affective inequality. The book is divided into four parts, each of which seeks to address slightly different concerns about the inequalities that are inescapably embedded in the affective, lively and often messy realities of relationships (see Lahti, this volume). Part I, ‘Affective capacities in embodied encounters’, includes chapters exploring bodily capacities. Katie Anderson, Paula Reavey and Zoë Boden analyse interviews with couples in mixed-sex relationships, in which women (unlike men) are usually expected to perform emotional labour. The authors question the traditional approaches of drug studies by asking whether in some cases the joint use of MDMA (ecstasy) as a couple might actually enhance partners’ affective capacities. It may help to overcome affective inequalities that stem from discrepant expectations with regard to gendered emotional expressiveness. Antti Malinen explores emotional wounds in intimate relationships in the aftermath of World War II, opening up a historical perspective on the emotional work conducted by women. Malinen analyses the letters that desperate wives of traumatized Finnish war veterans sent to church relationship counsellors. He finds that the religious advice given to the women may not have improved their situation, but rather instructed them to stay in affectively unequal relationships. Annukka Lahti makes

Introduction 11

a psychosocial interpretation of the affective intensities present in interviews she has conducted with Finnish bisexual women and their ex-spouses, who reflect back on their former relationships in research assemblages which foreground listening to old interviews. Lahti suggests that relationships are always in the process of becoming, and power relations in bisexual people’s relationships cannot be reduced either to the effects of cultural discourses that invalidate and stigmatize bisexuality or to the gendered dichotomies and hierarchies of the heterosexual matrix – contrary to what previous research on bisexuality in relationships has often claimed. In the last chapter of this section, Marjo Kolehmainen applies the idea of the body’s capacity to affect and be affected to the analysis of gender and sexuality. By drawing upon her fieldwork on relationship and sex counselling, she concludes that bodies’ capacities themselves can become gendered and sexualized. Her exploration shows how gendered and sexualized power relations are produced by opening and/or closing bodies’ capacities to act, which opens up a new perspective on affective inequalities. The chapters in Part II, ‘Affective transitions throughout intimate lives’, address experiencing, understanding and coping with subtle life changes that eventually radically disrupt the customary affective engagements of intimate couple relationships. In the chapter that starts this section, Tuula Juvonen contributes to lesbian studies with the analysis of her own diaries, which she reads for the fluctuation of affective resonances between her and her partner. Through such self-study she hopes to understand better the couple’s journey towards an unavoidable break-up. For her, the affective inequality within the relationship grew from her cumulative feelings of being deprived of the intimate reciprocity she expected to be part of an intimate relationship. Yet, her analysis also contributes to the discussion on how affective inequalities interact, intersect and relate to other kinds of inequalities. Liina Sointu combines affect studies with social–political issues as she investigates caring as an affective practice. Drawing upon sensory methodology, she has conducted research on spouses whose partners have fallen permanently ill. Sointu describes how spouses in mixed-sex relationships adopt their new role as caregivers through affective adjustments. While the necessity of care forms a central power dynamic in the changed relationship, its inherent imbalance also becomes a source of affective inequality. While Nina Lykke also focuses on a care relationship, she does so from a very different angle with her contribution to queer death studies. Her autophenomenographic analysis is based on her own affective writings from the time she was engaged in a compassionate companionship with her partner, who was dying of cancer – and she herself was inevitably approaching lesbian widowhood after being corpo-affectively entangled with her partner for decades. With death as her point of reference, Lykke enriches the remarks and openings of the other authors by reminding us that not all differences between partners in an intimate relationship can be accounted simply as signs of inequality. Part III, ‘Affective negotiations between partners’, includes texts that dissect the power dynamics within, around and related to intimate relationships. Raisa Jurva identifies the affective orientations of middle-aged or older Finnish women

12  Marjo Kolehmainen and Tuula Juvonen

who are or have been in relationships with younger men. On the one hand, the interviewed women see a marked improvement in their partnerships compared with their previous relationship experiences with men of their own age or older. On the other hand, many of the women end up resorting to the affective orientations of either independence or vulnerability when imagining their relationship futures. Contributing to feminist studies on heterosexuality, Jurva locates affective inequality in the women’s justified lack of trust in a secure joint future in their mixed-sex relationships. Sociologists Olga Sabido-Ramos and Adriana GarcíaAndrade explore the potential of a survey method for relational affect studies in a chapter that looks at how urban Mexican students envision gender relations and conflicts in their intimate relationships. The authors stress that we live love with and through the body, and hence it makes sense to explore, for example, the implications of menstruation or embodied feelings of jealousy when talking about intimate relationships. Here too, affective inequalities arise from gendered demands and expectations, many of which disadvantage and stigmatize young females. On a more positive note, the chapter by Polona Curk outlines that intimate conflicts between partners also have a potential to disrupt the very gender binaries that may be causing them, especially if the conflicts are used as a point of departure for acknowledging the affective exchange that takes place in a relationship. Curk suggests, drawing upon psychoanalytic theory, that a profound analysis of the elements, moods and responses in conflict situations may help us to register, and possibly to resolve, the conflicts before they amount to unbearable affective inequalities. She demonstrates this by providing an analysis of her own diary entries. The final section, entitled ‘Affective intimacies beyond couples’, widens the scope of this volume beyond couple relationships to other kinds of relational affective intimacies. Katja Chmilewski and Katharina Hajek illustrate how the New Right in Germany uses emotional pedagogy to politicize intimate relationships. The erosion of traditional family models has resulted in insecurity and discomfort, and these collective affective responses are now mobilized to promote the nuclear family and heteronormative intimacies. Chmilewski and Hajek analyse the successful instrumentalization of such emotional pedagogies in video clips of political talks held during the Demo für Alle marches. Verónica Policarpo, for her part, discusses affectivity and intimacy from the perspective of friendship. Policarpo interprets a Portuguese man’s friendships in order to identify the affective figures that made his successful educational and career transitions possible. Her firm sociological analysis also underlines how friendship can provide a sense of affective community, which helps one to cope with many forms of structural inequalities. Relying on interaction studies, Julia Katila investigates the embodied and affective relationship between a child and her mother. She analyses videotaped haptic negotiations for the affective practices established by touch. Although both the mother and her child are present in the same situation, it becomes evident that their embodied capacities are anything but identical. Still, both parties participate in (re)producing the boundaries between subjects through touch. Whereas Katila’s analysis relies firmly on touch, in the final chapter of this book Bessie P. Dernikos

Introduction 13

enquires into telepathy and investigates memories that have been haunting her affectively ever since the sudden death of her former student. For Dernikos, affective inequality works as a critique of the politics of fear that seek to arbitrarily limit the occurrence of intimacies between students and teachers but at the same time miserably fail to acknowledge the full range and potential of affective experiences and encounters in pedagogical settings. The chapter widens the discussion of intimacy to cover intimate relations that take place without the material immanence of embodied encounters. To sum up, all these chapters introduce empirical case studies which offer a perspective on affective processes in diverse relationships, both those that maintain known inequalities and those taking up the unknown promise of change. Hence, while offering new perspectives on the difficulties faced by contemporary intimate relationships, the authors contribute innovative suggestions to the challenging endeavour of conducting empirical social research on affect. Some of the authors focus on particular kinds of intimate relationships, such as heterosexual, lesbian or friendship relationships. Others concentrate on specific events or processes, such as illness, break-up or widowhood. The individual chapters thus shed light on both everyday affectivities that often go unnoticed and intense occasions with a specific affective charge. All the chapters, while focusing on intimacy and affect, also open up novel perspectives on affective inequality. Their approaches to and interpretations of the use of the concept vary, which we hope will spark the imagination for future considerations concerning affective inequalities and their relevance in and beyond the study of intimate relationships.

References Ahmed, S., 2004, ‘Affective economies’, Social Text 22(2), 117–139. Berlant, L., 2011, Cruel optimism, Duke University Press, Durham. Blackman, L., 2012, Immaterial bodies: Affect, embodiment, mediation, Sage, London & New York. Blackman, L., 2015a, ‘Researching affect and embodied hauntologies: Exploring an analytics of experimentation’, in B.T. Knudsen & C. Stage (eds.), Affective methodologies, pp. 25–43, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Blackman, L., 2015b, ‘The haunted life of data’, in, G. Elmer, G. Langlois & J. Redden (eds.), Compromised data: From social media to big data, Bloomsbury, London, New Delhi, New York & Sydney. Blackman, L. & Venn, C., 2010, ‘Affect’, Body & Society 16(1), 7–28. Clough, P.T., 2008, ‘The affective turn: Political economy, biomedia and bodies’, Theory, Culture & Society 25(1), 1–22. Coleman, R. & Ringrose, J., 2013, Deleuze and research methodologies, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Fox, N.J. & Alldred, P., 2013, ‘The sexuality-assemblage: Desire, affect, anti-humanism’, Sociological Review 61(4), 769–789. Fox, N.J. & Alldred, P., 2017, Sociology and the new materialism: Theory, research, action, Sage, London & New York.

14  Marjo Kolehmainen and Tuula Juvonen Frank, A., Clough, P.T. & Seidman, S., 2013, ‘Introduction’, in A. Frank, P.T. Clough & S. Seidman (eds.), Intimacies: A new world of relational life, pp. 1–10, Routledge, New York. Hemmings, C., 2005, ‘Invoking affect: Cultural theory and the ontological turn’, Cultural Studies 19(5), 548–567. Hemmings, C., 2012, ‘Affective solidarity: Feminist reflexivity and political transformation’, Feminist Theory 13(2), 147–161. Illouz, E., 2012, Why love hurts: A sociological explanation, Polity Press, Cambridge. Juvonen, T. & Kolehmainen, M., 2016, ‘Seeing the colors of the rainbows: Affective politics of queer belonging’, SQS Journal 10(2), vi–x. Kinnunen, T. & Kolehmainen, M., under review, ‘Touch and affect: Analysing the archive of touch biographies’, Body & Society. Knudsen, B.T. & Stage, C., 2015, ‘Introduction: Affective methodologies’, in B.T. Knudsen & C. Stage (eds.), Affective Methodologies, pp. 1–22, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Koivunen, A., 2010, ‘An affective turn? Reimagining the subject of feminist theory’, in M. Liljeström & S. Paasonen (eds.), Working with affect in feminist readings: Disturbing differences, pp. 8–27, Routledge, London. Kolehmainen, M., 2012, ‘Tracing ambivalent norms of sexuality: Agony columns, audience responses and parody’, Sexualities 15(8), 978–994. Latour, B., 2005, Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Lury, C., 2015, ‘Postscript: Beside(s) the empirical’, in B.T. Knudsen & C. Stage (eds.), Affective methodologies, pp. 237–246, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Lynch, K., Baker, J. & Lyons, M., 2009, ‘Introduction’, in K. Lynch, J. Baker & M. Lyons (eds.), Affective equality: Love, care and injustice, pp. 1–11, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. MacLure, M., 2013, ‘Classification or wonder? Coding as an analytic practice in qualitative research’, in R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies, pp. 164–183, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Pedwell, C., 2017, ‘Mediated habits: Images, networked affect and social change, Subjectivity 10(2), 147–169. Pedwell, C. & Whitehead, A., 2012, ‘Affecting feminism: Questions of feeling in feminist theory’, Feminist Theory 13(2), 115–129. Ringrose, E. & Renold, J., 2014, ‘ “F**k rape!” Exploring affective intensities in a feminist research assemblage’, Qualitative Inquiry 20(6), 772–780. Sehlikoglu, S. & Zengin, A., 2015, ‘Introduction: Why revisit intimacy?’ Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 33(2), 20–25. Seigworth, G.J. & Gregg, M., 2010, ‘An inventory of shimmers’, in G.J. Seigworth & M. Gregg (eds.), Affect theory reader, Duke University Press, Durham & London. Seyfert, R., 2012, ‘Beyond personal feelings and collective emotions: Towards a theory of social affect’, Theory, Culture & Society 29(6), 27–46. Skeggs, B., 2005, ‘The making of class and gender through visualizing moral subject formation’, Sociology 39(5), 965–982. Skoggard, I. & Waterston, A., 2015, ‘Introduction: Toward an anthropology of affect and evocative ethnography’, Anthropology of Consciousness 26(2), 109–120. Stewart, K., 2007, Ordinary affects, Duke University Press, Durham & London.

Introduction 15 Stewart, K., 2017, ‘In the world that affect proposed’, Cultural Anthropology 32(2), 192–198. Tyler, I., 2008, ‘Chav mun chav scum’: Class disgust in contemporary Britain’, Feminist Media Studies 8(1), 17–34. Ulmer, J.B. & Koro-Ljungberg, M., 2015, ‘Writing visually through (methodological) events and cartography’, Qualitative Inquiry 21(2), 138–152. Walkerdine, V., 2010, ‘Communal beingness and affect: An exploration of trauma in an ex-industrial community’, Body & Society 16(1), 91–116. Wetherell, M., 2012, Affect and emotion: A  new social science understanding, Sage, London. Wilson, A., 2012, ‘Intimacy: A useful category of transnational analysis’, in G. Pratt & V. Rosner (eds.), The global and the intimate: Feminism in our time, pp. 31–56, Columbia University Press, New York. Woodward, K., 2015, Psychosocial studies: An introduction, Routledge, London.

Part I

Affective capacities in embodied encounters

Chapter 1

An affective (re)balancing act? The liminal possibilities for heterosexual partners on MDMA Katie Anderson, Paula Reavey and Zoë Boden

Introduction The fact that MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine or ‘ecstasy’) has been dubbed the ‘love drug’ and is notorious for making people feel ‘loved-up’ invites the question – what is MDMA’s relationship to love? And how might MDMA use influence and intertwine with the experiences of people who love each other? Scholars have considered the way drug use is woven into the social fabric of people’s lives (Farrugia 2015; Foster & Spencer 2013) rather than as an individualized phenomenon determined by pharmacology, which, arguably, has long dominated in the field of drugs research (Foster & Spencer 2013; Moore 2008). However, explorations of complex social dynamics and drug use have been mainly limited to friendships, neglecting some of the key relationships in our lives – those of a romantic nature. We propose these intimate relationships can be productively understood through the lens of affective capacity (Deleuze 1988). Affect allows us to focus on the less visible ways in which romantic partners relate to each other, and the capacity to affect and be affected enables us to shift away from the binary thought which has been used to define drug experiences as, for example, either harmful or unharmful (Farrugia 2015), towards an experiential concern for how someone can be affected by the world around them. This chapter will outline how we might consider differences between the expectations of men and women to comprise an affective inequality and how this can be partially rebalanced while together on MDMA. We will then focus on how tracing affect and affective capacity on MDMA can illuminate the relational effects of MDMA use and the extent to which this affective inequality might or might not be viewed as problematic by all couples, not just those who take MDMA together. These arguments owe much to feminist approaches which have prompted curiosity around gender inequality, manifested in women performing more emotional labour (Erickson 1993, 2005; Hochschild 1983) and household work including childcare and domestic chores (Bianchi et al. 2000; Dryden 1999; Kan, Sullivan & Gershuny 2011; Lyonette & Crompton 2015; Mannino & Deutsch 2007; Pinto & Coltrane 2009) than men. These concerns have largely been articulated

20  Katie Anderson, Paula Reavey and Zoë Boden

in relation to heterosexual couples; same-sex couples tend to be more equal (Connolly 2005; Gottman 2011) and more emotionally attuned to one another (Jonathan 2009). Hence, we will draw only on data with heterosexual couples from the UK, EU and USA.

Feeling close on MDMA MDMA is known for inducing heightened energy levels, euphoric mood, openness and empathy (Ter Bogt et al. 2002). It is most commonly associated with the rave scene (Forsyth 1996; Release 1997) but is taken in a variety of contexts (Olsen 2009). Within drugs research, an epidemiological understanding is dominant; this model depicts drug use as a separate, individuated phenomenon, the ‘risk’ of which is determined largely by pharmacology (Foster & Spencer 2013). This model casts relationships as: eroded by drug use (Fergusson & Boden 2008; Martino, Collins & Ellickson 2005; Newcomb 1994; Topp et al. 1999); a coercive force, in the linear ‘peer pressure’ model (Farrugia 2015; Foster & Spencer 2013); or simply irrelevant, omitted from even lengthy discussions of long-term repercussions (for example, Parrot 2001). These conceptualizations fail to recognize the role relationships play in the meaning people derive from their drug use, such as an enhanced sense of connection to loved ones or connection to the dance community as a whole (Beck & Rosenbaum 1994). Indeed, recent qualitative studies have highlighted the complex ways in which friendships and feelings of closeness intertwine with MDMA use. Moments of intimacy and trust, as well as a lack of accessible alternatives, underscored the reason to use drugs for marginalized young people in Foster and Spencer’s (2013) study. Similarly, intimacy and communication emerge from young men’s accounts of taking MDMA (Farrugia 2015), and bonding effects have also been described as permeating beyond the time and place of ecstasy use, leading to changes in well-being and social behaviour (Hunt, Evan & Kares 2007) and a permanent shift to a more positive outlook regarding other people (Anderson & McGrath 2014). Yet this literature lacks a focus on how drug use might interweave with a romantic relationship and shape the continually unfolding process of building, sustaining and recalibrating intimacy in this context. To date, there have been only three quantitative studies exploring this topic (Topp et al. 1999; Vervaeke & Korf 2006). The resulting picture is mixed, including findings that MDMA’s influence is potentially lasting and beneficial (Rodgers et al. 2006), with over a quarter reporting improved relationships; detrimental (Topp et al. 1999), with 40 per cent of 329 ecstasy users describing ecstasy-related relationship problems in a sixmonth period; and ambiguous (Vervaeke & Korf 2006), depending on whether ecstasy-using partners were still together or not. We assume that if MDMA enhances the bonds of friendship, it might also figure in romantic intimacy. Certainly, its prosocial effects of greater openness and empathy seem aligned with such an outcome. What is required, then, is a shift in

An affective (re)balancing act?  21

focus away from ‘individual behaviour and individual practices’ (Duff 2008:386) of drug use to the relational behaviour and relational practices of couples who take drugs together.

Intimate relationships: a process ontology perspective Intimate relationships are understood within a practices framework as what couples do to build intimacy, such as cooking dinner, listening to the grievances of a long work day or sharing jokes (Gabb & Fink 2015; Jamieson 2005). This draws on a rich sociological tradition of focusing on family practices, what families do, as a way to avoid the preconceptions of what ‘the family’ is (Morgan 2002). Relationships are thus viewed as materialized through everyday practices of relating, which are themselves shaped by cultural and material constraints (Gabb & Fink 2015). This conceptualization is argued to align itself with a process ontology where existence is realized through a continual activity of becoming (Brown & Stenner 2009) rather than fundamentally comprising permanent, stable substances. In other words, a relationship is an ongoing process, rather than a unitary object with fixed attributes. A process ontology also underlies the concept of affect crucial to the framing of this chapter. This focus on affect is seen as helpful in two respects: it enables us to see the less visible ways in which inequalities can structure our intimate relationships, and its experiential undertones allow us to move away from the imposition of top-down (often binary) concepts which have framed drugs research towards an ‘experience-up’ understanding. Affect is defined here in a Deleuzian manner, as an arrangement of the relations between bodies (both human and object) from which a determination to act emerges (Deleuze 1988, 1992). Hence, affect is understood as mediated by our bodies, acknowledging our status as embodied beings compared with the disembodied psyche of Cartesian thought (Cromby 2004). Emotions and affects seem inextricable from ethics; every major philosophical treatise has wound the two together (Stenner 2013). For example, Aristotle holds that a man of virtue does not just perform ethical actions but takes pleasure in them. Deleuze (1988) maintains that relations cannot a priori be labelled good or bad; rather, it is the affective capacities which emerge from a particular ordering of bodies which is important. A good set of relations between bodies entails a greater affective capacity, and a bad set of relations decreases a body’s ability to be affected. This kind of ethical approach has already been argued to be particularly useful for drugs research, which has been beset by simplistic, pre-fixed binaries such as healthy/unhealthy and harmful/unharmful (Farrugia 2015). Here, we apply the same concept of affective capacity, yet interpret the repercussions of increases in affective capacity within the framework of intimate relating practices (Gabb & Fink 2015). This understanding of affect is approached here from a re-engagement with thinkers such as Alfred N. Whitehead and Gilles Deleuze, from the position of

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British social psychologists (Brown 2012; Brown & Reavey 2015; Brown & Stenner 2009; Stenner 2008; Stenner & Moreno-Gabriel 2013). From this perspective, the world is not viewed as made up of things, as in a substance ontology, but ‘begins in the middle’ (p. 13): relations and processes are viewed as ontologically fundamental (Brown & Stenner 2009). Experience is viewed as a product of the relationships between different aspects of the world, such as the biological, the social, the psychological and the spatial, which are themselves conceived as processes.

An affective inequality In order to understand how affective relations can be reformed on MDMA for opposite-sex partners, the ways in which everyday affects tend to be organized and how this intersects with gender must first be considered. We conceptualize affective relations as a helpful orientation to how men and women relate, rather than a deterministic category which ‘fixes’ how men and women behave. Women tend to follow the expectation to be more involved in the ‘emotional dimension’ of life than men (Dryden 1999). This manifests firstly in women taking on more responsibility for maintaining relationships than their male partners (Jonathan & Knudson-Martin 2012). For example, they perform more ‘emotion work’: the practice of being emotionally sensitive and supportive to others (Erickson 1993, 2005). Moreover, the emotion work of a male partner has been linked to relationship satisfaction (Duncombe & Marsden 1993; Erickson 1993), and the lack of emotional intimacy from a male partner is one of the key reasons women give for separation (Jamieson 1998). Secondly, the reluctance of men to discuss and express their emotions is a welldocumented phenomenon (Strazdins & Broom 2004), although it should be noted that this distinction takes place on the expressive rather than experiential level. There is no difference in the frequency of self-reported emotional experiences between men and women (Simon & Nath 2004; cf. Fujita, Diener & Sandvik 1991), but the social sanctions that exist around violating emotion rules are much higher for men (ed. Brooks & Good 2001), such as with the inappropriateness of public displays of sadness. Women tend to be more emotionally expressive and place greater emphasis on emotional support and intimacy than their male partners. This leaves a seeming mismatch between how men and women deal with their own emotions and the emotions of others, which, moreover, seems to impinge upon their experience of romantic fulfilment in a heterosexual relationship. Same-sex couples were not interviewed as part of this research, but do seem to experience less of an affective mismatch in that they are more intentional about creating emotional attunement and are more likely to be attuned to one another (Jonathan 2009). This mismatch between men and women when it comes to emotion collides with research on the personal benefits of being emotionally open and expressive (Pennebaker 1995), including the ability to more fully connect with others

An affective (re)balancing act?  23

(Baumeister & Leary 1995; Brown 2012; Laurenceau & Kleinman 2006), which has its own positive repercussions on well-being (Siedlecki et al. 2014) and health (Umberson & Karas Montez 2010). We want to tentatively frame the different degrees to which men and women are licensed and expected to participate in emotional aspects of life as affective inequality in order to understand how communication can be (re)made on MDMA.

Reassembling affective relations on MDMA ‘Liminality’ has been used to encompass a broad array of meanings, but it is used here to denote a situation where the everyday structures and systems which govern human life are suspended or altered (Stenner & Moreno-Gabriel 2013; Turner 1987). Being on MDMA has been described as a liminal space (Ashenhurst 1996; St  John 2015), a rupture holding new possibilities for the reconfiguration of social codes and conventions, often taking the form of a sense of ‘communitas’ where people experience a sense of oneness with humanity as a whole (Stenner & Moreno-Gabriel 2013:21); here, however, it was the reassembling of gendered affective relations on MDMA which came through in the data. The first author conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with ten couples who had taken MDMA together five times or more. Visual methods were incorporated within the interviews: couples were asked to bring five objects or photos as talking prompts (Del Busso 2009; Majumdar 2011), each item representing a time they had taken MDMA together, as well as to draw a timeline of their relationship (cf. Iantaffi 2011). The decision to use visual methods reflected a concern with the materiality and multimodal nature of existence (ed. Reavey 2011), a crucial constituent of the process perspective taken in this work since we exist within interconnected social and material webs (Stenner 2008). Using visual prompts, such as objects and the timeline, can also provide a safer method of communication – acting as an intermediary between researcher and researched, something for participants to speak through and to (Boden & Eatough 2014). In addition, such physical prompts might further help participants ground their accounts in ‘concrete experiences’ (Silver & Reavey 2010:1643), lending specificity and detail to the discussion while avoiding generalized talk about their experiences (ed. Reavey 2011). All interview transcripts were analysed thematically according to Braun and Clarke’s (2006) guidelines. The data was coded with a specific focus in mind, namely how couples experienced (or did not experience) closeness, and then organized into themes, contextualized by insights from the literature. Braun and Clarke (2006) describe two ‘camps’ of thematic analysis: ‘theoretical’ and ‘latent’ versus ‘inductive’ and ‘semantic’. This analysis falls more into the former, meaning it sought to code for how comments revealed underlying assumptions and ideas participants held, rather than being coded semantically for the surface

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meaning of comments. Two theoretical concerns in particular guided the coding of the data: (1) how our experience is grounded in the material settings and objects of the world (Brown & Reavey 2015; Latour 1996, 2005); (2) the vital role of feeling in human life (Cromby 2007, 2015; Wetherell 2013).

Mark: becoming more affected Mark and Jenny, a cohabiting couple in their thirties who have been together eight years, will be used as a case study to explore gendered affective differences in greater depth. Mark describes his affective experience on MDMA: I don’t have much empathy in normal daily life [. . .] and so I think, erm, that switches me to actually feel empathy for another person, so I think that I am a much better listener, erm, for Jenny. I understand what she’s saying on a level that I can’t when I’m not on the drug. It feels like I get what she’s saying as opposed to just thinking about it. Mark’s lack of empathy in ‘normal daily life’ is congruent with, though perhaps a more extreme example of, a wide selection of research findings that show men display a lessened degree of emotional sensitivity than women (Montagne et al. 2005) and perform less emotion work in their relationships (Erickson 1993, 2005). However, communicating with Jenny on MDMA ‘switches’ him into a different, more empathetic state where he can be a ‘much better listener’ and really ‘get what she’s saying’. The use of ‘switch’ imitates a transition from one state to another, suggested here as representing movement to a liminal realm, away from the everyday affective order – where women are expected to be more emotionally communicative and supportive than men. And, indeed, this liminal switch reconstitutes the relations between bodies, from which a new affective capacity emerges. These bodies can feel things on ‘a level’ they ‘can’t when [. . .] not on the drug’, access a deep affective realm which is arguably restricted for ‘rational’ and ‘unemotional’ (Fischer 2000) men in ordinary life. This deeper understanding resembles ‘knowing of the third kind’, where feelings provide an ‘embodied form of practical–moral knowledge’ (Shotter 1993:40). This is the idea that feelings guide our actions (manifested in common turns of phrase such as ‘go with your gut’); this embodied knowing is distinct from cognitive knowing – as Mark says, ‘as opposed to just thinking about it’ (our emphasis). But this knowing of the third kind is not rootless; rather, it is based in the detail and outcome of our experience of previous encounters, embodied within us. Since feelings are important sensuous guides to how we act (Cromby 2007), it seems clear that Mark’s power to act is increased by this liminal reordering of relations: he has an embodied knowledge of other bodies that he did not have before and indeed that lingers on in everyday life, informing how he relates: ‘I don’t know if it really has made me more empathetic not on the drug but it’s given me the ability to understand what that empathy means’.

An affective (re)balancing act?  25

The liminal possibilities of MDMA space extend beyond Mark’s sensitivity to Jenny’s emotions to his ability to express how he feels, as he explains: You know, the feeling of, erm, being insecure or that you’re gonna be judged [. . .] for some reason when you’re talking about it when you’re on MDMA, you feel like the other person truly understands you [. . .] Erm, and that’s so much, so difficult to, to know if that’s happening in everyday. I think we sort keep ourselves protected, we don’t want to get hurt, but when you’re taking the drug, it allows you to take down those walls and just be open to somebody [. . .] personally I have a very difficult time talking about feelings [. . .] I don’t get upset at funerals, I don’t err express emotion very well. Mark has a ‘very difficult time talking about feelings’ and does not ‘express emotion very well’, drawing on the widely acknowledged phenomenon previously discussed of men’s lessened emotional expressiveness compared with women. However, this is not to say he experiences emotions at a lesser rate than women (Simon & Nath 2004; cf. Fujita et al. 1991). Mark explains his lack of expressiveness stems from feeling ‘insecure’ or that he will ‘be judged’, reflecting the much higher social approbation meted out to men who violate gender emotion norms (Brooks & Good 2001). However, these gender norms are splintered here, and a new affective capacity develops from Mark’s feeling on MDMA that ‘the other person truly understands you’. This allows him to communicate his feelings freely, ‘take down those walls and just be open to somebody’, as such deep understanding could be seen to preclude judgement or ‘hurt’. This spatial metaphor of removing ‘walls’ further solidifies the liminal shift from one set of expectations and norms, where the difficulty of ascertaining true understanding makes him ‘protect’ his feelings, to another set, where understanding is more readily attainable and he can express himself. Crucially, MDMA increases Mark’s capacity for becoming affected – he can both ‘feel empathy for another person’ and ‘feel like the other person truly understands’ him – which has been argued as indicative of transformative, liminal situations (Greco & Stenner 2017). States are ‘switch[ed]’ and ‘walls come down’, marking the transition to a repatterning of relations, from which new affective capabilities arise. These relations widen a body’s affective capacity (Deleuze 1988). This is particularly pertinent in the context of drug use, which has been viewed as a peculiar, moralized category of experience, reduced to measurements of risk and harm. Here, it is possible to see how the relations between bodies are experienced as not harmful but potentially helpful: enhancing communication and connection.

‘Doing’ intimacy on MDMA: disclosure and emotional closeness Practices of couple intimacy resulting from an increased affective capacity will now be explored in greater detail. To reiterate, ‘practices’ of intimacy (Gabb & Fink 2015) ‘enable, generate and sustain a subjective sense of closeness’ (Jamieson

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2011:1) – for example, spending time together, sharing secrets, making a cup of tea. This means that intimacy is ‘done’ and ‘felt’ instead of something a relationship either ‘has’ or ‘does not have’ (see Smart 2007). Talking with and listening to a partner is one of the myriad intimate practices long-term couples engage in which sustain their relationship, valued as one of the few places where a partner feels their voice is heard and they can freely express how they feel and what they think (Gabb & Fink 2015). This seems particularly encouraged by MDMA. Mark can be completely ‘open’ with Jenny – and not worry about keeping up the same ‘walls’ which ‘protect’ him in his daily life, perhaps from the judgements of others who see being expressive as violating masculinity norms. MDMA could therefore be seen as reordering relations between bodies and opening up new affective capacities where men can be intimate with their partners, cushioned by a deeper level of understanding on the drug than can be easily accessed in their daily lives. Another practice of intimacy fostered by this increase in affective capacity is emotional closeness (Gabb & Fink 2015). There is an increased ability to share in a partner’s emotional experience; for example, Mark sees himself as more empathetic towards Jenny and can be present with her to become ‘a much better listener’. Feeling emotionally close to your partner has been argued to have taken on a greater significance in the past few decades (De Botton 2015; Giddens 1992), and both sharing in and responding to a partner emotionally have been flagged as a cornerstone of relationship fulfilment (Knudson-Martin 2012; Scheff 2011). However, this is not to say that relationships are necessarily contingent on everpresent feelings of closeness; they are still deeply embedded in larger familial and friendship networks (Duncan & Smith 2006; Irwin 2005; Jamieson 1998; Smart 2007; Smart & Shipman 2004) and formed and sustained through diverse practices of intimacy such as practical care (Gabb & Fink 2015; Jamieson 1998).

Not a one-way street: reconfiguring expectations for Jenny Mark’s inability to connect with Jenny on an emotional level has been a source of strife – ‘there’s a lot of turmoil over, um, that stuff’ – and Jenny recalls how she would ‘take it personally’ when Mark did not open up to her. Being in this liminal affective space together also has a significant impact for Jenny: I think understanding that Mark expresses his emotions in a different way [. . .] kind of expectations that, um, y’know, that he’d be more open with his emotions and now I know he’s not like hiding anything or, um, or like y’know, closing me off. That’s just how he is. She too comes to a new understanding of Mark – that he ‘expresses his emotions in a different way’ and is not ‘hiding anything’ or ‘closing [her] off’. The power of this affective shift for Jenny is clearly associated with her conventional ‘expectations’ of how open he should be with her being reassembled: his inexpressiveness

An affective (re)balancing act?  27

is ‘just how he is’. This is described as vital by her in decreasing her insecurities around the relationship and building the trust and intimacy between them. Her ‘expectations’ that Mark would be emotionally open conflict with the gender norms previously discussed, namely that men express their emotions less frequently (ed. Brooks & Good 2001; Strazdins & Broom 2004) and women place more emphasis on emotional intimacy than men do (Jamieson 1998). This could be seen as pointing to a broader issue in heterosexual relationships. Sociocultural norms call for an unemotional masculine identity, yet another set of norms centres on a disclosing model of intimacy (Giddens 1992) where partners are emotionally intimate and open with one another, which is arguably a prevailing modern force for at least how we think we should be doing relationships (Brownlie 2014; Furedi 2004; Illouz 2008). Hence, it appears that while everyday relations are reassembled on MDMA, they are not completely suspended. Sociocultural values, in particular the importance of a partner disclosing personal thoughts and feelings, contextualize the value of this new ‘emotional side’ to Mark. But, equally, this increase in affective capacity also allows Jenny to challenge these cultural expectations of emotional expression and openness, reaching what might be called a ‘deep knowing’ of the other (Gabb & Fink 2015:48). This deep knowing is an intimate practice which makes room for alternative interpretations of a partner’s behaviour, one drawing on previous insight about how they might differently navigate situations. For example, Jenny would not now perceive Mark’s silence around a tragic event as ‘closing her off’ but as a manifestation of his different approach to dealing with such events.

Conclusions: an affective inequality? We want to draw attention here to a paradox at the heart of Mark and Jenny’s liminal encounter. Mark embraces this affective repatterning, acknowledging the benefit for Jenny and their relationship – ‘with [the] emotional barriers that I have and I think that’s why MDMA was important because it helped her, she gets a side that she never gets to see really in the relationship’. Simultaneously, he is using this increased affective capacity to resist such a development or expectation in everyday life: And that’s been helpful for me, now that she’s come to that realization [of his lack of expressiveness]. I don’t feel a sense of guilt, I think to be someone else that I’m really not and I think, early on, I was like, I always would think that there was something wrong with me, that I needed to change. And the more I tried to change, the more uncomfortable that made me feel [. . .] and finally she’s, she’s started to back off with it. I feel more comfortable that she appreciates me for me and [. . .] not who she wants me to be. It seems here that the liminal affective possibilities of MDMA involve the becoming of ‘someone else that [he is] really not’ and that he does not want this persona

28  Katie Anderson, Paula Reavey and Zoë Boden

to carry over into everyday life: ‘the more I tried to change, the more uncomfortable that made me feel’. Within this context, it does not seem as though Mark would view the ‘affective inequality’ which has primed this discussion as an inequality at all – understood as an unfair difference for which restitution is sought. Rather, it is part of his authentic self that Jenny should accept and has accepted: ‘she appreciates me for me’. Although the liminal space of MDMA is appreciated for the relations it makes possible on the drug, and the understanding which remains thereafter, it is not a state Mark wishes to emulate. However, other male partners did experience the affective reordering on MDMA as more freeing and described personal transformations in their affective capacities: ‘[MDMA] helped me to, erm, to become an emotional person in real life, like sober too’ (Lars). Indeed, Lars talks about how being extremely ‘emotionally reserved’ prior to taking MDMA severely restricted his capacity to act, to form relationships and participate in ordinary events such as singing ‘Happy birthday’ to a loved one. Within a process ontology, contradictions are not viewed as problems to be ironed out but, rather, as indicative of the complexity and messiness of life. In this instance, this divergence might indicate the different degrees to which men may feel constricted by everyday affective expectations. For some, it may be problematic and hamper their connective possibilities, but others may value a different way of relating more, for example in the performance of traditionally masculine acts of practical care (Gabb & Fink 2015). Regardless, it seemed the affective capacities which emerged on MDMA were appreciated by men and women, although perhaps only as a liminal, rather than more permanent, shift. We have argued in this chapter that the liminal possibilities of MDMA allow an affective repatterning: partners can express what they are feeling and thinking as well as share more fully in each other’s emotional experience. This was suggested to be particularly significant for heterosexual couples who transitioned from sociocultural norms where men were not expected to be as emotionally sensitive or expressive as women; yet such qualities, for instance being able to be emotionally open and responsive to a partner, have been linked with relationship satisfaction (Cohen et al. 2012; Connolly & Sicola 2005; Jonathan & KnudsonMartin 2012). These sociocultural norms were claimed to constitute an affective inequality between the genders which was fragmented by MDMA. Moreover, couples’ ecstasy experiences were set within a Deleuzian ethical understanding, and, as such, these relations, and the increased affective capacity which emerged from them, were regarded as positive, in contrast to the narrow, dominant conception of drug use as solely unhealthy or harmful. Indeed, this increased affective capacity was linked with relational practices such as talking, listening and emotional closeness, which wove into and supported the continual unfolding of couples’ intimacy. Yet, it is finally argued, this affective inequality was not always framed as such by Mark: the reordering of relations was considered helpful for partner intimacy, but so too was an understanding of other ways of (not) being affected. This points

An affective (re)balancing act?  29

to the complexity of what it means to share feeling. For some men, the significance of taking MDMA with their partner was not about feeling guilty about their inexpressiveness or being made to share feelings, but rather about their partner accepting different forms of selfhood which were not always centred on disclosure, implying that it might be the very liminal and transitory nature of the affective space of MDMA which secures its value.

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An affective (re)balancing act?  31 Iantaffi, A., 2011, ‘Travelling along “rivers of experience”: Personal construct psychology and visual metaphors in research’, in P. Reavey (ed.), Visual methods in psychology: Using and interpreting images in qualitative research, pp. 271–283, Routledge, New York. Illouz, E., 2008, Saving the modern soul: Therapy, emotions, and the culture of self-help, University of California Press, Berkeley. Irwin, S., 2005, Reshaping social life, Routledge, London. Jamieson, L., 1998, Intimacy, Polity Press, Cambridge. Jamieson, L., 2005, ‘Boundaries of intimacy’, in L. McKie & S. Cunningham-Burley (eds.), Families in society: Boundaries and relationships, pp. 189–206, Policy Press, Bristol. Jamieson, L., 2011, ‘Intimacy as a concept: Explaining social change in the context of globalisation or another form of ethnocentricism?’, Sociological Research Online 16(4), 1–13. Jonathan, N., 2009, ‘Carrying equal weight: Relational responsibility and attunement among same-sex couples’, in C. Knudson-Martin & A.R. Mahoney (eds.), Couples, gender and power: Creating change in intimate relationships, pp. 79–103, Springer, New York. Jonathan, N. & Knudson-Martin, C., 2012, ‘Building connection: Attunement and gender equality in heterosexual relationships’, Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy 11, 95–111. Kan, M.Y., Sullivan, O. & Gershuny, J., 2011, ‘Gender convergence in domestic work: Discerning the effects of interactional and institutional barriers from large-scale data’, Sociology 45(2), 234–251. Knudson-Martin, C., 2012, ‘Attachment in adult relationships: A feminist perspective’, Journal of Family Theory & Review 4(December), 299–305. Latour, B., 1996, ‘On interobjectivity’, Mind, Culture, and Activity 3(4), 228–245. Latour, B., 2005, Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Laurenceau, J. & Kleinman, B.M., 2006, ‘Intimacy in personal relationships’, in A. Vangelisti & D. Perlman (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of personal relationships, pp. 637– 653, Cambridge Press, New York. Lyonette, C. & Crompton, R., 2015, ‘Sharing the load? Partners’ relative earnings and the division of domestic labour’, Work, Employment and Society 29(1), 23–40. Majumdar, A., 2011, ‘South Asian women’s narratives of intimacy and marriage in the UK: Making sense of experience through cultural scripts, space and objects’, PhD thesis, Department of Psychology, London Southbank University, London. Mannino, C.A. & Deutsch, F.M., 2007, ‘Changing the division of household labor: A negotiated process between partners’, Sex Roles 56(5–6), 309–324. Martino, S.C., Collins, R.L. & Ellickson, P.L., 2005, ‘Cross-lagged relationships between substance use and intimate partner violence among a sample of young adult women’, Journal of Studies on Alcohol 66(1), 139–148. Montagne, B., Kessels, R.P., Frigerio, E., de Haan, E.H. & Perrett, D.I., 2005, ‘Sex differences in the perception of affective facial expressions: Do men really lack emotional sensitivity?’, Cognitive Processing 6(2), 136–141. Moore, D., 2008, ‘Erasing pleasure from public discourse on illicit drugs: On the creation and reproduction of an absence’, International Journal of Drug Policy 19(5), 353–358.

32  Katie Anderson, Paula Reavey and Zoë Boden Morgan, D., 2002, ‘Sociological perspectives on the family’, in A. Carling, S. Duncan & R. Edwards (eds.), Analysing families, pp. 147–164, Routledge, London. Newcomb, M.D., 1994, ‘Drug use and intimate relationships among women and men: Separating specific from general effects in prospective data using structural equation models’, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 62(3), 463. Olsen, A., 2009, ‘Consuming E: Ecstasy use and contemporary social life’, Contemporary Drug Problems 36(1–2), 175–191. Parrot, A.C., 2001, ‘Human psychopharmacology of ecstasy (MDMA): A review of 15 years of empirical research’, Human Psychopharmacology 16(8), 557–577. Pennebaker, J.W., 1995, Emotion, disclosure, & health, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC. Pinto, K.M. & Coltrane, S., 2009, ‘Divisions of labor in Mexican origin and Anglo families: Structure and culture’, Sex Roles 60(7–8), 482–495. Reavey, P. (ed.), 2011, Visual methods in psychology: Using and interpreting images in qualitative research, Routledge, London. Release, 1997, Release drugs and dance survey: An insight into the culture, Release, London. Rodgers, J., Buchanan, T., Pearson, C., Parrott, A. C., Ling, J., Hefferman, T. M. & Scholey, A. B. 2006, ‘Differential experiences of the psychobiological sequelae of ecstasy use: Quantitative and qualitative data from an internet study’, Journal of Psychopharmacology, 20(3), 437–446. doi:0269881105058777 [pii]. Scheff, T.J., 2011, ‘Social-emotional world: Mapping a continent’, Current Sociology 59(3), 347–361. Shotter, J., 1993, Cultural politics of everyday life: Social constructionism, rhetoric and knowing of the third kind, University of Toronto Press, Toronto. Siedlecki, K.L., Salthouse, T.A., Oishi, S. & Jeswani, S., 2014, ‘The relationship between social support and subjective well-being across age’, Social Indicators Research 117(2), 561–576. Silver, J. & Reavey, P., 2010, ‘ “He’s a good-looking chap ain’t he?”: Narrative and visualisations of self in body dysmorphic disorder’, Social Science & Medicine 70(10), 1641–1647. Simon, R.W. & Nath, L.E., 2004, ‘Gender and emotion in the United States: Do men and women differ in self-reports of feelings and expressive behavior?’, American Journal of Sociology 109(5), 1137–1176. Smart, C., 2007, Personal life, Polity Press, Cambridge. Smart, C. & Shipman, B., 2004, ‘Visions in monochrome: Families, marriage and the individualization thesis’, British Journal of Sociology 55(4), 491–509. St John, G., 2015, ‘Liminal being: Electronic dance music cultures, ritualization and the case of psytrance’, in A. Bennett & S. Waksman (eds.), The Sage handbook of popular music, pp. 243–261, Sage, London. Stenner, P., 2008, ‘A.N. Whitehead and subjectivity’, Subjectivity 22(1), 90–109. Stenner, P. & Moreno-Gabriel, E., 2013, ‘Liminality and affectivity: The case of deceased organ donation’, Subjectivity 6(3), 229–253. Strazdins, L. & Broom, D.H., 2004, ‘Acts of love (and work): Gender imbalance in emotional work and women’s psychological distress’, Journal of Family Issues 25(3), 356–378.

An affective (re)balancing act?  33 Ter Bogt, T., Engels, R., Hibbel, B., Van Wel, F. & Verhagen, S., 2002, ‘ “Dancestasy”: Dance and MDMA use in Dutch youth culture’, Contemporary Drug Problems 29(1), 157–181. Topp, L., Hando, J., Dillon, P., Roche, A. & Solowij, N., 1999, ‘Ecstasy use in Australia: Patterns of use and associated harm’, Drug and Alcohol Dependence 55(1), 105–115. Turner, V., 1987, ‘Betwixt and between: The liminal period in rites of passage’, in L.C. Madhi, S. Foster & M. Little (eds.), Betwixt and between: Patterns of masculine and feminine initiation, pp. 3–19, Open Court, La Salle. Umberson, D. & Karas Montez, J., 2010, ‘Social relationships and health: A flashpoint for health policy’, Journal of Health and Social Behavior 51(1), 54–66. Vervaeke, H.K. & Korf, D.J., 2006, ‘Long-term ecstasy use and the management of work and relationships’, International Journal of Drug Policy 17(6), 484–493. Wetherell, M., 2013, ‘Affect and discourse – What’s the problem? From affect as excess to affective/discursive practice’, Subjectivity 6(4), 349–368.

Chapter 2

Boundless care Religious farm women and their emotional practices in post–World War II Finland Antti Malinen

Introduction The end of World War II was a shock with adverse effects on family life all over Europe, Finland included. Family reunifications, inadequate housing, homelessness and scarcity of everyday necessities confronted millions of European families with severe adjustment challenges. Further stress was caused when men returned from the war changed. In Finland during the years 1939–1945, a total of some 700,000 Finnish men out of a population of 3.7 million served in the armed forces. The burdens and stresses of war were not equally shared in society and families. Because public services were not efficient in recognizing veterans’ psychosocial needs for support and rehabilitation, veterans and their significant others were mostly left alone with their problems. Much of the impact of returning soldiers’ experiences and wounds on intimate relations was mediated through relationships within the family. During the immediate post-war era, a large number of Finnish women encountered a need to create practices which would help them to ‘keep on going’ despite their often precarious social environment. In this chapter I take a closer look at the evolution of emotional practices of Lutheran farm women who were members of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church in the 1940s and 1950s, like 93 to 96 per cent of the population. The women believed that managing their own emotional states and attuning to the emotional states of their husbands was the appropriate and meaningful way to make their family and personal life manageable and safe. By using correspondence between pious farm women and counselling pastors as case study material, I take an opportunity to examine the development of a specific ‘emotional practice’ in which the management of emotions, especially the suppression of negative feelings, played a major part. However, as my study will show, it took a bodily toll on them and created a need to readjust. I will conclude my chapter by examining how some of these religious women negotiated their understanding of appropriate caregiving together with counselling pastors. Earlier research has examined how socially and culturally constructed notions of family and wifehood have affected the ways in which women and their caring obligations are positioned and discussed in society (Hartmann 1978; Jarvis

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2009; Markkola 2012; Rose 2004). As in many other countries, in Finland the reconstruction of the war-ravaged society was closely linked to the reconstruction of the family (Markkola 2012; Sihvo 1976). Veterans’ wives were expected to alleviate the psychological shock of war. However, only rarely have researchers investigated in detail whether contemporaries and individuals actually behaved as expected. Women’s help, nurture and caregiving in families should not be taken for granted as something characteristic of all women, but rather subjected to empirical historical scrutiny. Irmeli Hännikäinen’s (1998) study on Finnish war invalids’ family care has pointed out that wives not only had varying resources and skills to cope with problems related to the invalidization of men, but also had differing attitudes regarding caregiving. Although the cultural norm of taking care of homecoming soldiers was strong, it was not universally subscribed to. There were also differences between rural and urban areas in attitudes towards the meaning of marriage and divorce (Allardt 1952). Compared with urban areas, in rural areas, where livelihoods in small rural holdings depended mainly on agriculture and on close working relationships between farmer husbands and wives (Markkola 1990), more traditional and collectivistic values regarding family life and the sanctity of marriage prevailed during the 1940s and 1950s. The concept of ‘emotional practice’ is borrowed from the work of Monique Scheer (2012), who has urged historians to analyse how emotional styles are practically enacted in everyday life. I argue that in order to understand the development of the emotional practice described above, we need to cultivate an understanding of religious farm women’s social environment and especially the behaviour of their husbands. As Monique Scheer (2012:193) has stated, ‘conceiving of emotions as practices means understanding them as emerging from bodily dispositions conditioned by a social context, which always has cultural and historical specificity’. Margaret Wetherell (2012:19–22) has likewise proposed ‘affective practice’ as a useful concept, which in her definition is a ‘figuration where body possibilities and routines become recruited or entangled together with meaning making and with other social and material figurations’. As I will later describe in greater detail, farm women who were committed to Lutheran teachings, living their lives according to the Bible and the idea of marriage as an indissoluble union, perceived it as their duty not only to take care of the everyday chores of farm and family life, but also to manage their emotions, for example feelings of anger which arose from their perceptions of being mistreated. By developing an understanding of the historicity of farm women’s emotional practices, it is also possible to make the actions and behaviour of these women comprehensible in their specific historical, cultural and situational context (cf. Duncombe & Marsden 1998:215). Similarly, I want to emphasize that as previous research shows, only a relatively small group of ex-servicemen suffered from war-related long-term psychosocial problems (Achté, Hillbom & Aalberg 1967; Honkasalo 2000; Kivimäki 2013; Ponteva 1977; Taipale 1982). Not all veterans suffered from symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): mood swings, substance abuse, or trauma-related recurring nightmares. There were

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also ex-servicemen who were able resume their roles as husbands and fathers as engaged and caring men, and who displayed playfulness and warmth in family life (cf. Holmes 2015:180). However, as this case study reveals, for some women the behaviour of their ‘changed men’ brought unwelcome insecurity and instability to everyday life. The end of military action did not end the effects of war. The transition from soldier to civilian life was difficult in itself, especially in times of economic austerity. The work which women did to make their everyday life manageable includes features which can be labelled ‘emotion work’ (Hochschild 2003a). When the women studied suppressed their feelings of disappointment, resentment and even anger, they tried to generate the emotions which were appropriate for the home setting and which met the expectations of their husbands. In the case of pious farm women, the experience and expression of emotions was influenced by their religious beliefs (Hochschild 2003b). However, as in the case of the women whose letters are studied here, only rarely did emotional practices run entirely smoothly. I argue that eventually most of the pious women reached a point at which they no longer felt able to bear the burdens of strained marital life and of managing unpleasant and unwanted feelings such as anxiety, sadness, fear and even pain. This became evident as the women sought pastoral care and counselling.

Sources and methodological considerations To gain new insight into how affective inequalities occurred and were experienced in the lives of religious farm women and negotiated with the help of counselling pastors, I scrutinize the so-far unexplored counselling records of the radio programme Answers to Questions Related to Pastoral Care (Vastauksia sielunhoidollisiin kysymyksiin). The programme was produced by the national ecclesiastical organization the Church Services Association (CSA, Suomen Kirkon Seurakuntatyön Keskusliitto). The radio programme ran from 1946 to 1951 and offered advice and guidance to Finnish individuals dealing with a variety of personal problems. Listeners were able to send letters to the programme and were given responses either on the radio or by letter. The pastors responsible for answering the questions were workers of the Christian Counselling Centre, which was part of the CSA. The CSA was also the producer of the programme. The correspondence between counselling pastors and listeners forms the main research material of this study. In total, some 300 letters from the years 1946– 1951 are stored in the archive of the Church Council (Kirkkohallitus). In most of the letters that women sent to the editors of the programme, they recounted their histories of marital life and their work as wives and caregivers. Typically, the letters were two to three pages long, but some of the letters were as many as ten pages long. There were differences in handwriting and use of language: some writers could express their thoughts succinctly, while others had difficulties finding the ‘right words’. The written answers were typically two pages long. A selection of thirty letters representing religious listeners is subjected to close

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reading. In the selected cases, the women’s marriages were strained due to problems related to their husbands’ psychosocial problems, manifested in drinking and also in infidelity. Most of the psychosocial problems were war-related. Finnish studies on the effects of war-related trauma (Kivimäki 2013; Ponteva 1977), brain injury (Achté et al. 1967), tuberculosis (Honkasalo 2000) and alcoholism (Taipale 1982) suggest that each of these conditions had potential long-term implications for veterans’ working lives, employment, housing and, especially, social and family relations. The exchange of letters and counselling was based on absolute confidentiality and therefore may reveal more about the vulnerability and emotional lives of people than would e.g. public divorce proceedings. One has, however, to take into consideration that clients may have produced idealized self-representations (Friedlander & Schwartz 1985). Yet these communications between women and counselling pastors allow us to study the social institutions of marriage and family as sites of power, negotiation, struggle and emotional attachment (cf. Frevert 2014a; Scheer 2012; Malinen 2017). Because the sources used are confidential and highly sensitive, individuals’ identities are completely anonymized. In my analysis of the correspondence, I take the view that when dealing with pastors the women used concepts which they believed to be understandable and familiar to them. In order to share their experiences, the women had to transform actual events and impressions into discursive and textual form. Experiences were socially constructed in specific cultural and institutional contexts (Scott 1986). As Lutheran women, they already had certain models and conceptions of how to behave towards clergymen and what kind of language should be used in communications (Schechner 2006). A great majority of the Finnish population were members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. In the 1940s and 1950s, less than 2 per cent of the population belonged to the Finnish Orthodox Church, the second-largest national church in the country. Especially in the rural areas of Finland, religion was still an important part of individuals’ everyday lives. According to a Gallup survey conducted in 1951, it was still common practice to have morning and evening prayers at home. Of Finnish women, 79 per cent held the belief that in some way or another, humans were held responsible for their doings after death, whereas 59 per cent of men shared the same belief. Nevertheless, there were major regional differences in how Finns related to Christian teachings. In rural areas, 62 per cent of respondents believed in an afterlife and damnation, but in the capital city of Helsinki only 20 per cent subscribed to this belief (Palo 1952:28). Religious and devout individuals have been shown to hold more conservative values than other groups in society, and this is also reflected in conceptions of marriage as an indissoluble union (Hood et al. 1996). The great majority of the people seeking help were women. To render comprehensible why agony columns and radio programmes were especially important for women living in rural areas, I  briefly contextualize the physical and social environment of these women. For many of the farm wives, especially those living

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in remoter areas, it was in practice impossible to seek face-to-face counselling, for example from the marriage guidance centres or even from the local clergy. These women were in many ways tied to their homes and the everyday chores of farm life. In general, it appears that the smaller the farm, the greater the degree of dependence on female labour. On small farms, men had to seek additional sources of income from forestry and other wage labour. Although the 1929 Marriage Act had prescribed economic equality between spouses, it was typically the husband who controlled the family budget as the head of the family (Melby et al. 2006; Niskanen 2001:146). In the 1940s and 1950s, when the Finnish population was approximately 4 million, about half of Finnish families lived in home environments which included farming. According to agriculture censuses in the 1950s, there were almost 470,000 farms in Finland. Almost 44 per cent of these farms were small, less than two hectares in size. Surveys based on daily time budgets reveal that typically the daily working time of a farm wife was between eleven and thirteen hours (Mead 1953:220). Household work accounted for the greatest part of women’s total labour on the farm. Care of livestock was the second-greatest consumer of time. For the majority of the women studied, the daily working hours were even longer due to their husbands’ diminished capacity or failure to take part in farm and household work.

Return of the men and the need to understand After the end of World War II in Finland, as in other parts of Europe, women’s traditional role as caregivers was strongly emphasized. Indeed, in the immediate post-war years, weighty expectations prevailed that close relatives would become caregivers, should the need arise. Families, and especially wives, were viewed as critical in supporting the emotional states of returning soldiers. Wartime separations had placed a major strain on the ties of Finnish families and marital relationships. Some marriages were already troubled during the war, and not all families were active in communicating by letter (cf. Hagelstam 2012). For many soldiers, the transition from life at the front to civilian life also proved difficult. As Ari Uino (2014) has pointed out in his study of Finnish World War II veterans, many of the returning soldiers had to endure several fundamental sources of stress, which were linked to changes in the family, disabilities and war-related psychosocial problems (cf. ed. Figley & Leventman 1980). Hence, homecoming was a period that held considerable ambivalence, when anxieties were mixed with relief and exhilaration. A substantial body of Finnish literature and newspaper articles was published informing readers about the problems of demobilization, soldier-to-civilian adjustment and resuming family life (Auvinen, Holmila & Lehtimäki 2015; Markkola 2012; cf. Hartmann 1978; cf. Jarvis 2009). Governmental actors and politicians took part in the social construction of family ideals, in which women played an important role as caregivers (Haikari 2006; Holmila 2008). Post-war

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reconstruction placed a considerable burden on citizens, who were nevertheless expected to carry these burdens and control their feelings. A content analysis of wives’ letters sent to counselling pastors reveals that the prevailing problem in the marriages and relationships was stated to be asymmetrical workloads between the spouses. Wives claimed to be responsible not only for taking care of everyday chores of family life but also for farm work. The women who approached the counselling pastors claimed that their husbands were breaking marital contracts and norms of reciprocity. Yet it was poor marital communication between spouses which was pointed out as the major reason for seeking help. Women felt entitled to expect at least some tokens of affection in return for their endurance and hard work. Instead of getting recognition for their physical and emotional labour, women were struggling to achieve any emotionally satisfying connection to their husbands. Many of the wives argued that the unpredictability (and inexplicability) of the spouse’s behaviour was especially burdensome. The otherwise strictly emotionally controlled men might suddenly ‘explode’ right in the middle of a peaceful family dinner. Sudden changes of mood were found especially tiresome. Even the crying of a baby could cause an episode, as one 32-year-old mother explained: I thought it would be all right when the child was born. I was wrong; he couldn’t stand the child’s crying. I believe he became stressed in the war, I always forgive everything. My husband became more irritable as the child grew up and hit him for anything. (client letter, 16 March 1950) I would argue that women, who in their letters stressed the negative atmosphere of their homes, had to invest considerable time and energy in the management of their communicative style and emotional expression. Many of the husbands’ symptoms described in the letters are similar to current descriptions of PTSD, and this may suggest that at least in some cases men may have been suffering from symptoms similar to PTSD. Also, some 10,000 soldiers sustained brain injuries in the 1939–1945 war. Jaakko J. Ranta-Knuuttila (1992:18), who has studied the well-being and coping of brain-injured Finnish war veterans, has pointed out that when external demands overtaxed the brain-injured’s coping capabilities, this led to a variety of physical and mental symptoms, including anxiety, depression, hostile reactions and substance abuse. When addressing the problems of men, wives had to use concepts understandable and familiar to their contemporaries. Symptoms were interpreted according to the prevailing state of medical and social scientific knowledge. I suggest that many of the veterans’ wives adopted the ‘language of nerves’. Examination of the letters shows that without any formal training, wives used diagnostic and medical terms such as ‘psychopathic’ or ‘depressed’ to make sense of their troubled situations (cf. Malinen 2017:118).

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Quite often the problems in their husbands’ behaviour were linked to their wartime experiences: If I could trust my husband I could win him for myself, but I don’t trust his sanity and as I see that he is deranged. Well, he may equally well call me deranged and that I’ll go to the mental home before him, and just this winter I was in a poor state with my nerves [. . .]. My husband was in the wrong job because in the war he was wounded in the head and after that, when he was underground in the mine it made him constantly tense and at home he didn’t behave right. (client letter, 18 May 1950; also client letter, 18 March 1949) The use of psychological terms, the ‘language of nerves’, is quite fascinating, because in the period researched the scientific study of stress and psychological trauma was only in its infancy. Finnish post-war psychiatry did not concede that wartime psychological damage could have any long-term effects, and this affected the ways in which soldiers were treated and viewed. There are no estimates of the extent to which war, for example, exacerbated men’s drinking or aggression, although men’s many psychosocial problems witnessed by their wives were probably war-related. In their letters, many of the wives emphasized how good their men had been before the war: I got married in 1937 and at first my life was as happy as could be, until the war came and it took my husband, took him away from me and the father from the children forever. Not to the grave, but it made him our worst enemy. (client letter, 19 February 1949) By framing their husbands as ‘victims of war’, the wives were able to place themselves in larger, culturally constructed and symbolically ordered narratives of ‘survival’, ‘sacrifice’ and ‘self-control’, which made up a normative framework imparting the meaning of Finland’s post-war transition from war to peace (Holmila 2008). Although these narratives helped women to find meaning in their own troubles, they also needed to make their everyday, often precarious and unstable lives manageable. It is reasonable to claim that women had not only to take care of and manage their own feelings, but also to anticipate the feelings and moods of their husbands. This is also something which women were encouraged to do. The female Finnish author Viena Korhonen stated in 1945 that ‘being friendly is a part of the reconstruction process’ (Korhonen 1945:121–122). When communicating with men, women were advised to speak gently and in a friendly and polite manner (Paatero 1945). It seems that many of the women adopted a behavioural pattern which can be described as continual scrutiny of their environment. If the spouse was physically and/or verbally abusive, the women tried to develop abilities to look out for

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warning signs of mood swings. They became carefully attuned to their husband’s emotional states. They learned to recognize subtle changes in facial expression, voice and body language as signals of anger or intoxication (cf. Herman 2015:99). Yet maintaining continual vigilance was taxing and consumed the women’s resources (cf. Gottlieb 1997). While they struggled, even for years, with a variety of chronic and acute stress factors, their resources were steadily depleted, leaving them exhausted. Yet, even when experiencing distress, they had to find suitable ways of either expressing or containing it. This was due to the fact that their husbands’ reactions to their displays of distress or fatigue varied from empathy to punitive responses, depending on the day and their emotional state. Although the women were fearful and shaken, they tried to control their bodies so as not to upset their children or husbands (Bourke 2005). By managing their bodies, women tried to change the appearance of their feelings. In the theoretical framework proposed by Arlie Hochschild (2003b), this emotional work has been conceptualized as surface acting. Management of emotions also extended to sexual intimacy. Stephen Garton (2008) has examined discussions of the return of Australian World War II soldiers and points out that women were called upon not only to help men to adopt meaningful and productive social roles, but also to rebuild the manhood of returned men. Examination of the Finnish case study material suggests that the remasculinization project even extended to the sphere of sexual intimacy. For example, a 32-year-old farmer’s wife explained in her letter that although she felt ‘sexually cold’, she did not deny her husband sexual intercourse. She admits that during the act she could have displayed more satisfaction. When she was close to giving birth, she asked her husband to decrease the frequency of intercourse, and before that she refused sex only when she was menstruating (client letter, 18 May 1950). This description suggests that there were certain conceptions of how women should even perform their feelings during sex. Although the women might not find their husbands emotionally or sexually attractive, they felt responsible for satisfying their men’s sexual needs. Farmers’ wives in need of pastoral care had a high threshold for contacting pastors. They tried to keep their family and marital troubles to themselves, which reflected the idea of the nuclear family and its privacy (Haavio-Mannila 1984:138). It has been noted that members of faith communities in particular often exercise a strategy of withdrawal and isolation when it comes to dealing with the shame associated with troubles related to family life and marriage. Help was sought only in times of crisis. Traditionally there has been an influential cultural image and ideal of the hardworking, strong and persevering Finnish woman, and these traits became even more accentuated during the war (Markkola 1990). However, the letters show that eventually even the resilient women had to pay the price of coping and emotion work in the form of fatigue and exhaustion. They lacked the energy, time or inclination to provide limitless sympathy to their husbands (cf. Schmitt & Clark 2006:474). At different points in their lives women experienced a critical moment, a sudden sense that something had to change. In my view,

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women were realizing that the behaviour of their men might never change. They were losing hope. In their letters to pastoral counsellors, the women tried to convey feelings of distress and urgency: But the atmosphere in the home is like those who care only about eating and drinking. When I am dissatisfied my husband says ‘what do you lack?’, to which I can answer ‘everything’. Well – I don’t know what this life is ultimately all about, no purpose, joyless work and trouble, it feels as if everything is for nothing. The years go by, emptiness is all that is left. I expected something else from life, but in vain. (client letter, 11 May 1950; cf. client letter, 8 November 1950)

Boundaries of care As women endured chronic stress for years, lived in a constricted world dominated by their husbands’ behaviour and coped with often unreasonable demands imposed on them, they gradually became extremely frustrated (cf. Karp 2001:96). While they were doing their best to salvage marriages and keep the family farm going, their spouses showed little or no interest in changing their behaviour and contributing to family life (see e.g. client letters, 26 January 1950, 11 May 1950, January 1951). Perceived injustice raised a variety of emotions, including anger. Anger was often accompanied by shame, as the display of anger was perceived as sinful (e.g. client letter, 18 June 1949). This emotional dissonance can in part be explained by their religious convictions. How individuals are socialized into the roles of husbands and wives is dependent on the prevailing cultural environment (Hochschild 2003a; Rantalaiho 1994; Räisänen 1995). Women and men begin to learn the rules governing the experience and expression of emotion from the very beginning of their lives. In religious families, even young children were taught that God was good but also prepared to punish, and that He saw everything. The warning that no one could escape the gaze of God could be an instrument for disciplining children. The belief in God was used to inculcate norms or virtues which parents wanted to convey to their children. God guaranteed that sanctions would be imposed when norms were broken. God observed how people lived and doled out rewards or punishments accordingly (cf. Gustavsson 2012:43–44). Since the majority of women were believers, Lutheran doctrine presented them with clear and consistent standards against which to judge their own behaviour. Some of the letters analysed reveal that wives were able to review their thoughts and actions on the basis of the scriptures. For example, forgiveness was asked for breaking certain commandments (see e.g. client letter, 18 March 1949). This suggests that lifelong religious practice facilitated women’s skills and habits of self-monitoring, for example in scrutinizing their consciences. Although women could cognitively understand that their efforts to repair the state of their marriages

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were futile, the idea of seeking divorce seemed not only practically but also morally and emotionally very difficult. Women had very strong conceptions of what it meant to be a moral person (cf. Karp 2001:102). Over the years, spiritual selfmonitoring had gradually become a part of their religious habitus. In the letters studied, women emphasized the importance of having ‘pure’ thoughts. Indeed, as other authors have previously stated (Douglas 2001), several religious faiths emphasize that sinful thoughts can leave one ‘unclean’ (Malinen 2010:71; cf. Frevert 2014b): After all I have a Father in Heaven from whom I get strength for my life. I have so often felt the power of the Holy Ghost from above so that I have no fear for the future. I have only asked for a humble and serving mind so that I could through love keep my home life tolerable. Sometimes the enemy of my soul has gained power over me and then I have said something I regretted the next minute and begged forgiveness. (client letter, 18 June 1949) When contacting counselling pastors, the women not only sought solace and pastoral care, but also contemplated the possibility of setting some limitations to their role as caregivers. They argued that current levels of caregiving were exceeding their capabilities and well-being. Most of the writers expressed no interest in seeking divorce, but something had to be done for the sake of their own and their children’s well-being. Although the pastors viewed women’s grievances and accounts as justified, the focus in the advice emphasized women’s role and obligation to provide caregiving. Women were advised not to make too many demands of their husbands, as these only served to ‘widen the gap between the couples’ (Gulin & Niemi 1949:142; see also reply letter, 14 June 1951). Women were asked to refrain from excessive recriminations, as ‘you too will be judged’ (Gulin & Niemi 1949:163). The authors of the book Marriage: A  Guide for Finnish Homes were referring to Matthew 7:1, which begins: ‘Do not judge, or you too will be judged’. While elaborating their argument, the authors claimed that before judging the behaviour of their husbands, wives should first examine whether there were problems with their own marital behaviour. The pastoral care provided by the counselling pastors can be labelled kerygmatic, as the advice was based mainly on references to the Bible and the scriptures (Viika 1994). Content analysis of this advice indicates that the idea of bearing one’s cross was the most important metaphor used by counselling pastors (see e.g. reply letters, 15 March 1949, 5 February 1951). Although husbands’ behaviour could profoundly upset wives, they were asked to bear heavy burdens in order to preserve their homes and families for their children. The pastors called for respect for suffering in silence. One of the most typical activities in counselling was to help the women to find meaning for their suffering and imbue them with hope. The pastors conceded that in time and with the help of God the men could, and

44  Antti Malinen

should, change their attitude and behaviour towards Christian and family-centred ideals. However, in the meantime it was the wife’s task to ‘bear her cross’ and find meaning in self-sacrifice and suffering in order to salvage her marriage. Divine providence was emphasized, and the women were advised to trust in God and His intentions. In the afterlife, women would be greeted as victorious. The notion of love as self-sacrifice was important in the pastors’ working model. Sacrifice was important not only for the well-being of children, but also for the well-being of communities and society at large (Cancian & Gordon 1988). If we look at the advice literature published in the 1940s and 1950s and written by Lutheran clergy, we can find a strong emphasis on the meaning of marriage as work. Feeling affection was presented as a result of work: ‘You may have taken affection for granted, but it is always in need of nurturing and cherishing’(Gulin & Niemi 1949:162). Pastors advised the women to keep their husband’s minds in their own minds. When men returned from work, it was important for women to consider how important it might be for a man to receive cherishing and relief at their hands. It took presence of mind not to start pouring out worries to him after a day’s work (Gulin & Niemi 1949:162–163). Sometimes pastoral care also included more tangible help. The women were referred, for example, to social welfare, and they were advised on how to direct their husbands towards treatment for their drinking (reply letters, 22 November 1950, 29 December 1950). Although the duty of care was presented as almost limitless, the counselling pastors also drew lines on when it was possible to abandon relationships. In general, it was stated that a true Christian would not seek divorce even if living in an unhappy marriage. One should prioritize responsibility and duty over feelings, and suffer and sacrifice if such was God’s will (Viro 1945:26). If marriage and home life had turned ‘into hell’, then divorce was acceptable (see reply letters, 15 March 1949, November 1949, 8 April 1950). The needs of children also had to be recognized. In the newspaper articles, the pastors quite often referred to the symbol of the road to Jericho and explained that if a client, usually a wife, had ‘fallen into the hands of robbers’, she had to be given an opportunity to divorce. As fellow human beings, pastors had to recognize the suffering in the world.

Conclusion In the years 1946–1951, the radio programme Answers to Questions Related to Pastoral Care offered advice and guidance to Finnish citizens dealing with a variety of personal troubles. Listeners to the programme were able to write in to the programme and receive responses either on the radio or by letter. Most of the letters sent to the editors of the programme addressed issues related to family life and marriage. A considerable number of writers were religious women living in rural and remote areas of Finland. The women who approached counselling pastors made claims that their husbands were breaking marital contracts and norms of reciprocity. While their

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husbands, who had often returned from the war as ‘changed men’, were struggling with a variety of psychosocial problems, the wives had to take care of everyday chores of farm and family life. Yet the main reason for seeking counselling was stated to be poor communication between spouses, especially on the husband’s side. Women felt entitled to expect at least some tokens of affection in exchange for their endurance and hard work. In my analysis, I have read women’s letters to counselling pastors as expressions of affective inequality. Perceived injustice raised a variety of emotions, including anger, which posed a new challenge to women, as the display of anger was considered sinful. In my analysis, I explained this emotional dissonance through the framework of the everyday demands of farm work and women’s religious convictions. By managing their own emotional states and attuning to the emotional states of their husbands, women found an appropriate and spiritually meaningful way to make their family and personal lives manageable and safe. Women’s values were based on ingrained Lutheran teachings of the Bible. An example of this was their practice of religious self-monitoring. However, these women’s identities were based not only on their religious devoutness, but also on relations to their positions as members of the family farm, rural village and nation (Bryant & Pini 2011). Yet religion had a profound role in shaping the gender-specific norms of emotional work and behaviour (cf. Kupari 2014:144). Religious women held such high moral standards for caregiving that when contacting pastoral counsellors, they were already physically and emotionally exhausted. At different points in their lives, the women eventually experienced critical moments when they realized that something had to change. When discussing their situation with the counselling pastors, the women tried to negotiate some limits to their roles as caregivers, and even the possibility of divorce was contemplated. Although the pastors viewed the women’s grievances and accounts as justified, the focus in their advice was on the women’s submissive role and duty of care. This case study substantiates the argument put forth by Monique Scheer (2012) that when studying the history of emotions, including the history of affective inequalities, we must acknowledge the culturally and historically specified social contexts in which emotional practices are enacted, performed, experienced and also negotiated, for example in the institutional contexts of pastoral care and marital counselling as in this case study. Modern societies usually have a variety of emotional communities, all of which create and construct their own rules on feelings, ideals and systems of meaning. Women living in rural areas were devout Christians and attached themselves to the religion of the community, which set norms and rules on feeling and appropriate emotional behaviour. Close study of the communications between pious women and counselling pastors has made it possible to shed new light not only on post-war emotional practices within the family domain, but also on how religious women perceived their status and opportunities for agency in their families and marriages in post-war Finland.

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References Achté, K., Hillbom, E. & Aalberg, V., 1967, Post-traumatic psychosis following war brain injuries, Rehabilitation Institute for Brain Injured Veterans, Helsinki. Allardt, E., 1952, Miljöbetingade differenser i skilsmässofrekvensen: Olika normsystems och andra sociala faktorers inverkan på skilsmässofrekvenserna i Finland 1891–1950 [Contextual variations in divorce rates: The influence of different social factors and normative systems on divorce rates in Finland 1891–1950], Bidrag till kännedom af Finlands natur och folk, Helsinki. Auvinen, T., Holmila, A. & Lehtimäki, N., 2015, ‘Epävarma itsenäisyys: Julkinen keskustelu sodan päättyessä’ [‘Uncertain independence: Public discussion at the end of the war’], in V. Kivimäki & K.-M. Hytönen (eds.), Rauhaton rauha: Suomalaiset ja sodan päättyminen 1944–1950 [Restless peace: Finns and the ending of the war], pp. 209–234, Vastapaino, Tampere. Bourke, J., 2005, Fear: A cultural history, Virago, London. Bryant, L. & Pini, B., 2011, Gender and rurality, Routledge, New York. Cancian, F.M. & Gordon, S.L., 1988, ‘Changing emotion norms in marriage: Love and anger in US women’s magazines since 1900’, Gender & Society 2(3), 308–342. Douglas, M., 2001, Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo, Routledge, London & New York. Duncombe, J. & Marsden, D., 1998, ‘ “Stepford wives” and “hollow men”? Doing emotion work, doing gender and “authenticity” in intimate heterosexual relationships’, in G. Bendelow & S.J. Williams (eds.), Emotions in social life: Critical themes and contemporary issues, pp. 211–227, Routledge, London & New York. Figley, C.R. & Leventman, S. (eds.), 1980, Strangers at home: Vietnam veterans since the war, Brunner/Mazel, New York. Frevert, U., 2014a, ‘The modern history of emotions: A research center in Berlin’, Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea 36, 31–55. Frevert, U., 2014b, ‘Piggy’s shame’, in M. Beljan, P. Eitler, U. Jensen, S. Olsen, B. Gammerl, J. Brauer & M. Pernau (eds.), Learning how to feel: Children’s literature and the history of emotional socialization, 1870–1970, pp. 134–154, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Friedlander, M.L. & Schwartz, G.S., 1985, ‘Toward a theory of strategic self-presentation in counseling and psychotherapy’, Journal of Counseling Psychology 32, 483–501. Garton, S., 2008, ‘ “Fit only for the scrap heap”: Rebuilding returned soldier manhood in Australia after 1945’, Gender & History 20, 48–67. Gottlieb, B.H., 1997, ‘Conceptual and measurement issues in the study of coping with chronic stress’, in B.H. Gottlieb (ed.), Coping with chronic stress, pp. 3–40, Springer Science + Business Media, New York. Gulin, E.G. & Niemi, T., 1949, Avioliitto: Opaskirja Suomen kodeille [Marriage: A guide for Finnish homes], Otava, Helsinki. Gustavsson, A., 2012, Cultural studies on folk religion in Scandinavia, Novus Press, Oslo. Haavio-Mannila, E., 1984, ‘Perhe hoiva- ja tunneyhteisönä’ [‘The family as a community for care and feelings’], in E. Haavio-Mannila, R. Jallinoja & H. Strandell (eds.), Perhe, työ ja tunteet: Ristiriitoja ja ratkaisuja [Family, work and feelings: Conflicts and solutions], pp. 111–183, WSOY, Juva. Hagelstam, S., 2012, ‘Families, separation and emotional coping in war: Bridging letters between home and front, 1941–44’, in T. Kinnunen & V. Kivimäki (eds.), Finland in World War II: History, memory, interpretations, pp. 277–312, Brill, Leiden.

Boundless care  47 Haikari, J., 2006, ‘Kun sota loppuu mutta velvoitteet jatkuvat: Suomen jälleenrakentaminen Kotiliesi-lehdessä 1940–1941’ [‘When the war ended but the obligations continued: The reconstruction of Finland in the magazine Home and Hearth’], in P. Karonen & K. Tarjamo (eds.), Kun sota on ohi: Sodista selviytymisen ongelmia ja niiden ratkaisumalleja 1900-luvulla [When the war is over: Problems in coping with the end of the war and models for their solution in the 1900s], pp. 266–309, Finnish Literature Society, Helsinki. Hännikäinen, I., 1998, Vaimot sotainvalidien rinnalla: Elämäntehtävänä selviytyminen [Wives standing by their war veteran husbands: Mission  – To survive], Gaudeamus, Helsinki. Hartmann, S., 1978, ‘Prescriptions for Penelope: Literature on women’s obligations to returning World War II veterans’, Women’s Studies 5, 223–239. Herman, J., 2015, Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence: From domestic abuse to political terror, Basic Books, New York. Hochschild, A.R., 2003a, The second shift, Penguin Books, New York. Hochschild, A.R., 2003b, The managed heart: Commercialization of feeling, University of California Press, Berkeley & Los Angeles. Holmes, M., 2015, ‘Men’s emotions: Heteromasculinity, emotional reflexivity, and intimate relationships’, Men & Masculinities 18(2), 176–192. Holmila, A., 2008, ‘Jälleenrakentamisen narratiivit ja niiden muotoutuminen Suomen lehdistössä 1944–1945’ [‘Narratives of reconstruction and how they were formed in the Finnish press’], Elore 2, 1–20. Honkasalo, M., 2000, Suomalainen sotainvalidi [Finnish disabled war veteran], Sotainvalidien Keskusliitto, Helsinki. Hood, R.W., Spilka, B., Hunsberger, B. & Gorsuch, R.L., 1996, The psychology of religion: An empirical approach, Guilford, New York. Jarvis, C., 2009, ‘ “If he comes home nervous”: US World War II neuropsychiatric casualties and postwar masculinities’, Journal of Men’s Studies 17(2), 97–115. Karp, D.A., 2001, The burden of sympathy: How families cope with mental illness, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Kivimäki, V., 2013, Battled nerves: Finnish soldiers’ war experience, trauma, and military psychiatry, 1941–44, Åbo Akademi, Turku. Korhonen, V., 1945, ‘Hyvät sanat’ [‘Good words’], Terveydenhoitolehti 57(4), 121–122. Kupari, H., 2014, ‘ “I was both Lutheran and Orthodox”: Evacuee Karelian orthodox women, bidenominational families, and the making of religion’, in T. Utriainen & P. Salmesvuori (eds.), Finnish women making religion, pp. 143–160, Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Malinen, A., 2017, ‘Marriage Guidance, Women, and the Problem(s) of Returning Soldiers in Finland’, Scandinavian Journal of History 43(1), 112–140. Malinen, B., 2010, ‘The nature, origins, and consequences of Finnish shame-proneness: A grounded theory study’, PhD thesis, Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki. Markkola, P., 1990, ‘Women in rural society in the 19th and 20th centuries’, in M. Manninen & P. Setälä (eds.), The lady with the bow, pp. 17–29, Otava, Helsinki. Markkola, P., 2012, ‘Marriage counselling, family values and the Lutheran Church in Finland in the 1950s’, in D. Owetschkin (ed.), Tradierungsprozesse im Wandel der Moderne: Religion und Familie im Spannungsfeld von Konfessionalität und Pluralisierung [The process of tradition in the transformation to the modern: Religion and the family in the tension between confession and pluralization], pp. 181–197, Institut für soziale Bewegungen, Bochum.

48  Antti Malinen Mead, W.R., 1953, Farming in Finland, University of London, London. Melby, K., Pylkkänen, A., Rosenbeck, B. & Wetterberg, C.C., 2006, ‘The Nordic model of marriage’, Women’s History Review 15(4), 651–661. Niskanen, K., 2001, ‘Gender economics in action: Rural women’s economic citizenship in Finland during the twentieth century’, Journal of Women’s History 13(2), 132–152. Paatero, S., 1945, ‘Miehet ovat palanneet’ [‘The men have come back’], Koti 24, 10–12. Palo, T.I., 1952, Kansan käsitys kirkosta Gallup-tutkimuksen valossa [The nation’s conceptions of the Church in the light of a Gallup survey], Suomen Kirkon Seurakuntatyön Keskusliitto, Helsinki. Ponteva, M., 1977, Psykiatriset sairaudet Suomen puolustusvoimissa vv. 1941–1944 [Psychiatric diseases in the Finnish defense forces during the war 1941–1944], University of Helsinki, Helsinki. Räisänen, A.-L., 1995, Onnellisen avioliiton ehdot: Sukupuolijärjestelmän muodostumisprosessi suomalaisissa avioliitto- ja seksuaalivalistusoppaissa 1865–1920 [Preconditions for happy marriage: Formation process of the gender system in Finnish marriage and sexual education guidebooks], Finnish Historical Society, Helsinki. Ranta-Knuuttila, J., 1992, Sodan aivovammaiset [War veterans with brain damage], Yliopistopaino, Helsinki. Rantalaiho, L., 1994, ‘Sukupuolisopimus ja Suomen malli’ [‘The gender contract and the Finnish model’], in A. Anttonen, L. Henriksson & R. Nätkin (eds.), Naisten hyvinvointivaltio [Women’s welfare state], pp. 9–30, Vastapaino, Tampere. Rose, S., 2004, ‘Temperate heroes: Concepts of masculinity in Second World War Britain’, in S. Dudink, K. Hagemann & J. Tosh (eds.), Masculinities in politics and war: Gendering modern history, pp. 177–195, Manchester University Press, Manchester. Schechner, R., 2006, Performance studies: An introduction, Routledge, London & New York. Scheer, M., 2012, ‘Are emotions a kind of practice and is that what makes them have a history?’, History and Theory 51, 193–220. Schmitt, C.S. & Clark, C., 2006, ‘Sympathy’, in J.E. Stets & J.H. Turner (eds.), Handbook of the sociology of emotions, pp. 467–492, Springer, New York. Scott, J., 1986, ‘Gender: A useful category of historical analysis’, American Historical Review 91, 1053–1075. Sihvo, J., 1976, Avioliitto ja avioero: Tutkimus eräistä avioliittoa ja avioeroa koskevista käsityksistä ja käyttäytymismuodoista 1940-luvun lopusta lähtien Suomessa [Marriage and divorce: A  study of certain conceptions of marriage and divorce and modes of behaviour from the end of the 1940s in Finland], Kirkon tutkimuslaitos, Tampere. Taipale, I., 1982, Asunnottomuus ja alkoholi [Homelessness and alcohol], Alkoholitutkimusäätiö, Helsinki. Uino, A., 2014, Sotiemme veteraanit: Rintamalta rakentamaan [Our war veterans: From the front to start building], Finnish Literature Society, Helsinki. Viika, K., 1994, Kirkon perheneuvonnan viisi vuosikymmentä [Five decades of family counselling by the Church], Kirkkohallitus, Helsinki. Viro, V., 1945, ‘Puolen vuoden kihlausaika ja morsiustutkinto pakollisiksi?’ [‘Making compulsory an engagement of sixth months and a bridal qualification in the publication?’], Kotikissa 2, 26–27. Wetherell, M., 2012, Affect and emotion: A  new social science understanding, Sage, London.

Chapter 3

Listening to old tapes Affective intensities and gendered power in bisexual women’s and ex-partners’ relationship assemblages Annukka Lahti

Bisexual people’s relationships are often understood in existing research as strained by powerful heteronormative epistemologies, which cast male and female, men and women, and homo- and heterosexuality as opposite poles (e.g. Hayfield, Clarke & Halliwell 2014; Hayfield & Lahti 2017; Klesse 2011; Lahti 2018b). Bisexuality, as a desire that cannot be tied to only one gender within the dichotomies of the heterosexual matrix (Butler 1990), is persistently culturally associated with wavering between men and women, and homo- and heterosexuality, and is consequently constructed in terms of having multiple partners and being necessarily non-monogamous and promiscuous (Gustavson 2009; Hayfield et al. 2014; Kangasvuo 2014; Klesse 2011). Given the strength of the monogamous norm in Western cultures, research on bisexuality has given important insights into how cultural associations complicate bisexual people’s relationships, whether they wish to engage in monogamous or non-monogamous relationships (Gustavson 2009; Lahti 2018a, 2018b; McLean 2004), and thus also make bisexuals vulnerable to stigma (Klesse 2005, 2011). However, complex power relationships and inequalities in bisexual people’s relationships cannot be captured only by analysing the binary logic of the heterosexual matrix and the effects of the monogamous norm (Fannin et al. 2010). Inequalities are embedded in the affective, lively and often messy realities of relationships. This chapter offers a new perspective on the becoming of affective inequalities in relationships that cannot easily be reduced to binary divisions and hierarchical subject positions in certain discourses. This chapter takes as its starting point a notion of gender, (bi)sexuality and relationships as radically open and unpredictable processes. I am inspired by feminist and queer scholars (e.g. Huuki 2016; ed. Nigianni & Storr 2009; Ringrose & Renold 2014) who through Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s (2004) thought extend subjectivity into a collective which is formed as becoming in and through affective assemblages (Renold & Mellor 2013:24). In this framework, a couple relationship becomes an assemblage where multiple and complex elements come together. Paying attention to the change of flows, surges and arrests of affective intensities in relationship assemblages complicates the analysis of the workings of binary divisions, hierarchies and inequalities related to gender and sexuality in

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bisexual people’s relationships and highlights the ongoing process of a relationship (Fannin et al. 2010; MacLure 2013). The chapter draws on a study of bisexuality and relationships through a longitudinal set of interviews conducted with Finnish bisexual women and their (ex-)partners in 2005 and 2014–2015. In the couple interviews in 2005, the couples held together strongly and sought to fit their relationship into the ideals of an enduring relationship: to form a durable relationship with one person, possibly for the rest of their lives (Lahti 2015). One other-sex relationship was an agreed open relationship, but it ‘had never been tested’. I was puzzled by the unanimity of these relatively young couples’ investment in a relationship discourse that drew strongly on ‘marriage and family’. By the time of the follow-up interviews, most of the bisexual women and their partners had separated and found new partners. Planning the follow-up interviews, I became interested in what the interviewees thought about what now seemed like rather idealized pictures of their relationships presented in the couple interviews. In the follow-up interviews I deployed an affective method of ‘bringing the past to the present’. I chose a passage from the couple interview conducted some ten years earlier, and the interviewee and I listened together to the old tape recording. Approached from Deleuzo–Guattarian line of thought, the passages from the old interview could be conceived as part of an old interview assemblage that was now being plugged into the follow-up interview assemblage (Ringrose & Renold 2014). If we think through Deleuze and Guattari’s (2004) rhizomatic organization of assemblages, a part of an assemblage can always be reassembled into another assemblage, where it can grow along its old line or along a new line. By analysing affective intensities in the follow-up interview assemblage, it is possible to explore how listening to a passage from the previous couple interview affects the possibilities of becoming of the follow-up interview assemblage.

Bisexual women’s and their (ex-)partners’ relationships as assemblages The analysis in my study combined Foucauldian discourse analysis (Arribas-Ayllon  & Walkerdine 2008) and a psychosocial approach (Roseneil 2007) to highlight the paradoxes of bisexual identity. As a desire for more than one gender, bisexuality is often positioned as an excessive sexuality from the perspective of a monogamous relationship (Lahti 2015, 2018a, 2018b). The majority of the interviewed bisexual women and their (ex-)partners lived in monogamous long-term relationships. Yet, these women’s bisexuality, and the presence of their desires for people whose gender(s) were other than their partners’, often brought the monogamous norm under explicit negotiation. Women’s bisexual desires were also present in imaginings in which nonmonogamous practice was seen as an ideal way of organizing relationships. Bisexuality highlighted the typical tension of contemporary relationships: the tension between ‘unstable’ and excessive sexual desire and the wish for a stable

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and secure (monogamous) relationship (Perel 2007; Shaw 2013). Yet, bisexual desires in particular are often posed as a threat to the monogamous norm, and to the normative ideal of one partner who meets all our emotional and sexual needs (Lahti 2018b). My study highlights how the binary logic of the heterosexual matrix together with the strength of the monogamous norm produce conditions of possibility for (bi)sexualities to emerge in relationships (Lahti 2015, 2018b). Through those conditions, bisexuality emerges as a ‘weak’ identity. Often, bisexual identity did not offer a solid frame through which to interpret desires for differently gendered partners. Given the strength of the homo/hetero binary, bisexual women’s accounts of their desires wavered between this binary, which implied that bisexual women did not easily gain ‘a sense of being’ as a bisexual person in a relationship (Lahti 2018b). Bisexuality often disappeared in normative relationship talk (Lahti 2015). Sometimes the women also questioned their bisexual identities (Lahti 2018b). Yet, the affective, lived realities of bisexual women’s and their (ex-)partners’ relationships cannot be reduced to binary divisions, hierarchies and inequalities related to gender and (bi)sexuality. In this chapter, I study relationships from Deleuze and Guattari’s (2004) perspective, as emerging out of the dynamic encounters of multiple elements. Relationships are in a continuous process of becoming, in which for example relationship dynamics between involved people meet gender-, sexuality- and (non-)monogamy-related norms, relationship ideals and previous relationship experiences. Lines of energy are continually becoming through these complex configurations (Ringrose  & Renold 2014). In Deleuzo– Guattarian terms, the lines of energy can be congealing, solidifying, territorializing forces. Yet there is also a possibility that energy lines break off from normative lines and release energy to enable becoming in unpredictable ways (Huuki 2016), in what Deleuze and Guattari (2004) call a ‘line of flight’ (Ringrose & Renold 2014). By paying attention to the point where the energy intensifies, to affective intensities – ‘emissions that lie on the boundary of language and body’ – it becomes possible to explore phenomena such as affect that might ‘belong to both language and body’ (MacLure 2013:170). In relational affect studies, affects are often conceptualized as emerging out of the dynamic encounters of multiple elements (Gregg & Seigworth 2010; Seyfert 2012). Such theorizations of affect strive to capture the situational nature of affects by conceptualizing affect as emerging at the moment when bodies meet, the moment also marking the transformation(s) of the bodies involved (Seyfert 2012:31). In these encounters, different forms of affective interactions come together; for example, material, sensory, physiological, ideological, psychosocial and discursive modes of affect transmission (Kinnunen & Kolehmainen under review; Seyfert 2012). In this sense, affects do not ‘belong’ to anybody and cannot be ascribed only to human bodies (Seyfert 2012:27), but involve encounters with all kinds of bodies: organic, non-organic, artificial and imaginary. Affect is an effect of somebody or something on another and is often not consciously experienced. Yet, embodied affective relationships are also experienced and mediated

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psychically (Blackman 2012:172; Walkerdine 2015:51). Some of the affective effects, however, come to consciousness as sensations and intensities, which often refuse to settle into decisive meanings or words (Helle & Hollsten 2016). As Seyfert (2012:32) remarks, the notion of the body in Deleuze-inspired affect studies stems from Baruch Spinoza (1994). Spinoza’s notion of the body refers to all kinds of bodies, not just human bodies. Bodies (which are multiple bodies) are defined by their capabilities to affect or be affected. The affective transmission and interaction is determined by the affective capabilities of all involved elements and bodies (Jean-Marie Guayu 1887, quoted in Seyfert 2012:31). In this way, bisexual women’s and their (ex-)partners’ relationships are also thought as multiplicities in motion (Deleuze & Guattari 2004). Instead of analysing only one element or dimension as determinant over other others – for example, thinking that relationships are determined by (bi)sexual identities – the affective effects of a relationship assemblage of different elements can be understood through how they increase or diminish the affective capabilities of the involved bodies.

An interview as an assemblage As a researcher, I have experienced interviewing as an affective, bodily and lively method. This is in contrast with critiques of the interview as a ‘traditional qualitative method’ which relies too much on language (Back 2010; Renold & Mellor 2013; see also Blackman & Venn 2010) and is heavily influenced by conventions of narrating life in an ‘interview society’ (Atkinson & Silverman 1997). What seems to be forgotten is what Muller (2007:vii) reminds us about: ‘Speech is both embodied (in sound and gesture) and also produces embodiment (the feelings and actions of the listener)’. I think, contrary to the critiques, that the interview situation is itself a part of the complexity of everyday worlds (Back 2010; Renold & Mellor 2013). It is a situation which consists of multiple elements of different kinds, an assemblage (Deleuze & Guattari 2004). By thinking of collecting and analysing interview data in new ways, as affective methodologies, I strive to make use of the complexity and multisensory modalities of interview data (Timm Knudsen & Stage 2015). I originally interviewed seven couples – Finnish bisexual women and their partners of various genders who did not identify as bisexuals – together in 2005. Of those fourteen people, I was able to reach eleven for the follow-up interviews in 2014–2015. At first, I  approached the follow-up interviews with a preconceived idea of the participants and their (former) relationship, based on the couple interview I had conducted in 2005. In those interviews, relationship stories drawing on ‘marriage and family’ had been dominant, and the woman’s bisexuality easily disappeared from view (Lahti 2015). This idealized picture changed when I contacted the participants and learned that most of the couples had separated; only one other-sex couple was still married. The follow-up interviews made it very evident that one interview is able to give only a snapshot-like picture of a person’s life.

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Planning my follow-up study, I grew more interested in the ways in which affects, desires, memories and imaginings constitute relationships along with normative (or other) relationship discourses. I thought the auditory sensation of listening to a passage from an old interview where participants interacted with their (ex-)partners might produce affective responses that would shed new light on the discursive patterning, self-presenting and gendered power relationships in the couple interviews. I chose a passage from the previous interview to listen to in the follow-up interview, one that highlighted what I thought had been typical of the couple (interview) in question. In the follow-up interview assemblages, interviewees’ past and current relationship experiences, my questions and reactions as the interviewer, relationship events, scenes and ideals came together as a flow, always connecting in new ways and taking new forms. In order to capture how the tape-listening affects the becoming of these assemblages, I pay attention to affectively intense moments before and after the tape-listening. When analysing the affective intensities, I apply a methodological approach inspired by Maggie MacLure (2013). Her work, too, is influenced by the work of Deleuze (2004), who proposes strange relations between language, bodies, things and ideas. MacLure (2013) suggests that affective intensities which refuse to settle into decisive meanings can be treated as glowing data hotspots (Ringrose & Renold 2014). By following the affective intensities, I wish to shed new light on the forms of constituting and challenging inequalities that might hide in the affective flow of relationship events, scenes and experiences that come together in the follow-up interview assemblages. Listening to the old tapes First, I will go through some general observations on how the tape-listening affected the follow-up interview assemblage. Participants’ responses to listening to a passage from an old interview recording were not easily categorizable. The immediate response to the listening was often somewhat neutral and flat. As Johanna (all names are pseudonyms) simply stated: ‘So it was 2005, when you came to us to do the interview’. Usually the interviewees commented briefly on the discussion they had heard on the tape with their ex-partner. It was also common for them to say that they still agreed with what they had just heard themselves say: ‘My opinion is still the same, what I want from a relationship is continuity’ (Sara). Some participants moved quickly to other topics, often to discuss their current relationships. ‘At that time it felt like you can just go ahead and have children – but it’s not so easy’, said Johanna, who with her current partner was struggling with infertility issues. These participants’ talk highlighted affective intensities in relation to their current relationships, which implies that affective intensities are contextbound, tied to specific situations and relationship assemblages. Other participants started commenting on the passage from the interview recording only after a while, straying from answering a completely different interview question. This implies that listening to the tape evoked affective responses that took some time to process.

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In these cases, the auditory sensation of listening to the old tape recording seems to bring to the follow-up interview a new perspective of a ‘past nowness’, to which the participants would not have had access through their memories of the past relationship alone. For example, the affective tone of Rosa’s follow-up interview had been palpably sad when she had accounted for her recent relationship break-up. Yet, in response to hearing herself interact with her ex-partner, she said: It was nice to hear that I actually experienced those things as positive at that time [. . .] which in the end led to the relationship break-up, that there wasn’t enough separateness or [one’s own] friends [. . .] but in the beginning it felt good. The immediacy of the ‘past nowness’ also evoked affective memories that were not marked by positive affectivity (Buchanan 2007). It was often at these points that some painful or problematic aspect of the past relationship would be brought up that had not been mentioned previously. These aspects often showed gendered power in participants’ past relationships in a more complex and fractured light than the idealized discourses of the couple interviews, and problematized feminist analyses of how gendered power operates in intimate relationships (Lahti 2015). For example, what had seemed like an intense aspiration to inhabit the normative position of a married couple in Johanna and Kim’s couple interview appeared more complex when Kim brought up problems in their relationship at that time and said that getting married had never been very important for him. Maybe he had just wanted to please Johanna. Johanna for her part accounted for another failed marriage after their relationship. The affectivity of accounting for these events was not easily detectable at a discursive level, but was often something I registered as a researcher as an affective intensity in the interview situation (Kinnunen & Kolehmainen under review). It was in the tense or quiet tone of the interviewees’ voices, in their facial expressions of distress or sadness, in their postures, as tears in their eyes, or in long silences and pauses in their talk. Next, I will give a detailed analysis of how affective intensities were circulated in the interviews after listening to the old tape in four ex-partners’ interviews: Laura, Jenny, Anna and Joel. In these analyses, affective intensities are used as a starting point of inquiry. The affective effects of relationship assemblages are understood through how they increase or diminish the vitality and affective capabilities of the bodies involved. ‘It feels like the whole of life is like searching for oneself ’ Laura and Jenny are ex-partners. The interview with lesbian-identified Laura seems affectively very coherent, and listening to the old tape recording does not disturb the coherence in any particular way. In contrast, in bisexual-identified Jenny’s interview, affective intensities jump and ‘leak’ in various directions. In my analysis of their follow-up interviews, I pay attention to lesbian and bisexual identities as (re)territorializing forces in segmenting and containing affective intensities.

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The relationship Laura and Jenny were in at the time of the couple interview in 2005 was the first female relationship for both of them. On their tape Laura says they share values of ‘honestly, trust and openness’. They both stress how equal their relationship is compared with heterosexual relationships (Lahti 2015). The easiness, naturalness and equality of their relationship is contrasted with Jenny’s previous relationship, in which her male partner had been mentally and physically abusive. Laura’s and Jenny’s responses to the old tape recording in the follow-up interviews were very different. Laura began her interview with a quite typical lesbian identity narration (Pulkkinen 2000): ‘Well, what if I started with that I’ve always been attracted to women’. She talked about the two long-term relationships she had had with women with deep affectivity, which could be sensed in the warm tone of her voice. Yet, as a ‘non-straight’ person from a conservative, Christian family, she had struggled with contradictory feelings and shame about her feelings for women. Just before the tape-listening, Laura had said affectively: ‘It is really hard for me to put it into words how it is now with Emma [her current spouse]. Like it is such an all-encompassing good feeling to be with her, and we have a child together’. Listening to the old tape recording did not steer affects in a new direction in Laura’s case. She commented briefly that she still agreed with the relationship values she had heard herself describe on the tape. She moved on to talk about her current relationship, and quickly bypassed her previous relationship with Jenny. Hence Laura’s narration is an affectively coherent, romantic lesbian identity narration that comes together in a happy family situation. In contrast, Jenny’s story leaks affectively in many directions, and its ‘end’ remains open. Right after listening to the old tape recording, Jenny reflects on her past relationship with Laura in a slightly critical light: ‘Well, I noticed there that I did say something [on the tape], but you can see there that Laura was stronger pers[onality], quick-witted somehow’. This retrospective account contrasts with the emphasis on the tape on the equality of their relationship. However, she comments: ‘Well, it seems that I cuckooed all the time how easy and normal it was, but that was exactly what it was’. When she ceases to comment on her previous relationships, I go on to ask her the remaining interview question about a situation in which she felt happy in her current or past relationship. Instead of referring to her partners, Jenny says: ‘I think topmost is the birth of my own child’. She says that her child’s birth was the first thing that came to her mind, which indicates an affectively intense memory of it (Buchanan 2007). Then, suddenly, she goes back to ponder the happiness of her relationship with Laura: With Laura, it was for the first time in my life I felt good. I didn’t have to be afraid, I had just ripped myself away from that [her abusive partner]. You felt that you were respected as a person and you felt that it’s good to be with the other person. There was this certain kind of happiness.

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The tone of the interview is melancholic and sad as she goes on to ponder: It was such a difficult place when one started to notice that one’s feelings started to change and everything was all right, but still something was not – it was really hard to let go and again go towards the unknown, when you had just got the happiness in your life for the first time – like this is not what was supposed to happen. At this point, the tone of the interview is very sad. Jenny says that she ruminated for a long time whether it was the right decision to leave the relationship with Laura. Then she says in a very quiet tone: ‘It feels like this life is nothing but searching for oneself ((laughs a little)). I  wonder if one ever finds oneself ((laughs))’. Then, however, she continues in a lighter tone and says that it might be boring if she knew for certain what she wanted in her life. In Jenny’s interview, affective experiences of a violent and abusive heterosexual relationship come together with the experiences of the stable and happy relationship with Laura, together with the felt confusion when she nevertheless wanted to leave the relationship. Currently she is in a sexually intense relationship with a male partner, but she is not sure how long she will put up with his drinking. This wavering and confusion back and forth within the binaries of the heterosexual matrix could be called a form of affective inequality, especially when the assemblage marked by monosexual lesbian identity seems to have an ability to segment and contain affective intensities – a happy lesbian family. Yet, Jenny’s interview seems to be open to a more variable set of affective intensities than her ex-partner’s. ‘You must not be jealous’ Joel and Anna are ex-partners who at the time of their couple interview lived in a committed relationship that Anna described as ‘an open relationship that has never been tested’. From the perspective of Joel’s and Anna’s follow-up interviews, the cherished open relationship ideal appeared affectively tense when put into practice. Yet, analysing how listening to the old tape recording steers and circulates affective intensities in these follow-up interview assemblages troubles the idea that relationships can be understood through a clear distinction between monogamy and non-monogamy. Jealousy is often understood as socially constructed in and through normative relationship discourses and practices that foster monogamous relationship ideals. According to Stenner (2013), jealousy emerges out of an implicit triangular structure of (social) relationships in our culture, where the unity of monogamous romantic relationships is achieved by excluding a ‘third’. Polyamorous relationship ideas aim to deconstruct the normative idea that a third party is necessarily a threat to a relationship, which of course does not mean that people in polyamorous relationships would not feel jealous in any circumstances (Deri 2015). Monogamy has also been critiqued as echoing patriarchal ideas about (men’s) ownership of

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women (Barker & Langdridge 2010; Deri 2015). Through analysing Anna’s and Joel’s interviews, however, my aim is to understand not the meaning of jealousy for the participants, but rather what it does when it is circulated in the interview assemblages (Deleuze & Guattari 2004; Malins 2004). Before we listen to the tape, the dominant tone of Joel’s narration is his own vulnerability and powerlessness in his past relationships. He depicts how his ‘two past relationships ended in nasty ways, so two times I’ve hurt myself really badly’. He describes his last relationship: ‘[one] feels that one was betrayed in the relationship – although one tried to be as free as possible’. Joel thought that the open relationship agreement with Anna was related to her bisexuality: ‘She hadn’t been with a woman and there was that desire – somehow the idea was that it would be ahead of us at some point anyway’. In light of the gendered power relations of the heterosexual matrix, women’s desire for other women was often constructed in interviews as less threatening to a relationship than desire for other men, and could become an exception to the monogamous norm (Lahti 2018b). It was very upsetting for Joel that Anna also wanted to see other men during their open relationship agreement: ‘When these men came along – I reacted to it in a totally different way, and right away it felt so much worse’. Peta Malins (2004:102) writes: ‘an assemblage becomes ethical or unethical depending on the affects it enables and the potentials it opens up or blocks’. The period of an open relationship was experienced as affectively intense by both Joel and Anna. Joel depicts this phase of the relationship with an affective intensity: ‘The feelings I had [for Anna] were somehow so big and they just grew all the time’. Yet, this time had different consequences for both of them. What started as an energizing line of flight from the monogamous order and became an accelerating affective intensity in the open relationship assemblage was arrested when Anna wanted to leave the relationship. For Joel this meant that his body’s vitality and capacity to act were diminished radically (Seyfert 2012:32). It is implied in both Anna’s and Joel’s interviews that he had suicidal thoughts. The sad and vulnerable affectivity of Joel’s follow-up interview, where he accounts for these events, can be sensed from the slow tempo of his and my speech, the quiet tone of our voices and my cautiousness as the interviewer. After this, Joel goes on to reflect on his past relationship with Anna in a more composed way. We go on to listen to a passage from the old tape recording of Joel and Anna’s couple interview where they discuss their relationship. The tone of the conversation in the passage from Joel and Anna’s couple interview is light and giddy. ANNA : 

I have had these arguments with my friends, like ‘that [the idea of an open relationship] is completely insane, like how can you even think that it could ever work’. JOEL : Yeah, for me, the jealousy, which is associated with a kind of ordinary straight marriage, it is just unfathomable, I just cannot understand that at all. I see it as depriving the other person’s freedom, like . . . ANNA :  . . . owning the other person.

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Listening to the old tape recording completely changes the tone of Joel’s interview. Instead of the vulnerable, powerless and sad affectivity that was present only a moment before, there is now a lightness, giddiness and energy that seem to have been transmitted from the old tape recording. Joel’s interpretation of the open relationship ideology present in the old tape recording is now plugged into the follow-up interview assemblage. Aligning with the thoughts about jealousy he presented on the tape, Joel says, laughing: ‘What I spoke there, it still holds true – I have said to my spouse ((laughs)) it is very irritating – I see that kind of jealousy critically’. In Anna’s follow-up interview, the giddy tone of the old tape does not catch in a similar manner. She comments on the old recording in a sad tone: What came after that situation was for me – we were both quite innocent and neither of us knew what was coming, what life brought with it – like the outrageous jealousy on Joel’s part and his agonizing pain [. . .] when it started to become reality that I’m not going to stay in this relationship. Knowing how painful the ending of the relationship had been for Joel, I remember being quite surprised in the interview situation about his outright critique of jealousy. I wove in a question about jealousy in his previous relationships. For a moment, the tone of the interview became serious and sad again as he told me about how he had reacted when Anna had told him about amazing sexual experiences with a woman during their open relationship. He says: ‘Well, I was traumatized because of it for a while, it made me question whether the sexual relationships we had had been good enough for both of us’. Yet, he said he did not regret the openness of his past relationship. When I asked if his current relationship was open like his previous one, he answered by placing jealousy in his new partner: ‘No, no, like clearly my current spouse is jealous – although I have said to her that you must not be jealous’. Joel’s phrase ‘you must not be jealous’ glows like a hotspot in his follow-up interview assemblage. The energy of this utterance cannot be understood solely by paying attention to certain gendered subject positions in a heterosexual relationship, or to monogamous or non-monogamous relationship ideals. It marks the point where a passage from a past relationship assemblage is connected to a new assemblage, marking an interesting hybrid of relationship experiences, monogamous and non-monogamous relationship ideals, and affective intensities. For me it seems that the vulnerability and powerlessness of the situation where Joel could do nothing when Anna wanted to leave their agreed open relationship is now reproduced in the interview situation; such affective intensities give energy to his statement when he forbids his partner this kind of vulnerability by saying forcefully ‘you must not be jealous’. What I have mapped here is a becoming of power relationships and affective inequalities that cannot easily be reduced to gendered power in a heterosexual relationship. The analysis of powerful affective intensities shows that they can

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have enduring effects in partners’ capacities to relate to their partners. Yet, if we think about the body’s capability to affect and be affected, it is not clear how the affective inequality could be thought of. Anna had more power in the separation, because she was the one who wanted to leave the relationship. However, when Joel’s bodily experience of vulnerability was transmitted to his next relationship, it became a segmenting force, as he repeatedly related how he had forbidden his partner to be jealous. Previous relationship experiences can thus jump from an old relationship to the new one and become territorializing affective forces.

Discussion My analysis highlights affective intensities in relationship assemblages and gives new insights into how relationships are always in the process of becoming in interviewees’ everyday worlds (Fannin et al. 2010). The becoming of power relationships and affective inequalities that my analysis has revealed shows that power relations in bisexual people’s relationships can be reduced neither to the effects of cultural discourses that invalidate and stigmatize bisexuality nor to the dichotomies and hierarchies of the heterosexual matrix – contrary to what previous research on bisexuality in relationships has often claimed. Through my Deleuzo–Guattarian methodological approach, it became possible to explore relationships and (bi)sexualities as multiplicities in motion, which both troubles and gives new insights into research on how gendered power and inequalities operate in bisexual women’s relationships. It became possible to analyse the flows and arrests of affective intensities in relationship assemblages by thinking, collecting and analysing interview data in new ways that would capture the affective, bodily and lively nature of the interview situation (see Timm Knudsen & Stage 2015). Qualitative methodologies often lean too much on language and sight (Blackman & Venn 2010; Renold & Mellor 2013). By bringing a passage from an old interview into the follow-up interview assemblage in an auditory form, I wanted to highlight and make use of the multiple sensory modalities of the interview data. In particular, I wanted to explore what kind of affective effects listening to old tape recordings produced in the follow-up interviews. Listening to the old tape recordings did not affect all of the interviewees in a similar manner. Deleuzo–Guattarian rhizomatic thinking about relationship interviews as affective assemblages provides a theoretical framework to analyse these different becomings, which depend on the multiplicities in motion in a given encounter. Instead of pointing to the one dimension of the assemblage (e.g. discursive power) that is determining over other dimensions (Huuki 2016), the analyses evoke observations of bodies’ vitality and their capability of being affected. My analysis reveals the effects of a relationship assemblage through how they increase or diminish the affective capabilities of the bodies involved. When analysing ex-partners Laura and Jenny’s follow-up interviews, I paid attention to lesbian and bisexual identities as (re)territorializing forces segmenting

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and containing affective intensities in an affective assemblage. In Laura’s interview, affective intensities seemed to be organized in a coherent and logical whole, segmented by her lesbian identity, centred on living in a happy lesbian family. Listening to the old tape recording had minimal effects on this affective coherence. This can be thought of as an assemblage increasing the body’s affective capabilities and vitality. Listening to the old tape had a much more disruptive affective effect in bisexual-identified Jenny’s interview, as it put in motion her pondering and sadness about the phase when she had left the happy and stable relationship with Laura. In the ‘bisexual assemblage’, affective intensities leaked and became attached to different things and ex-partners. Jenny stated at the end that she wondered if the whole of life was only a futile searching for oneself. Yet this can also be thought of as an openness of the body and a receptivity to further affective intensities. The analysis of ex-partners Joel and Anna’s follow-up interviews shed light on increasing affective intensity during an open relationship agreement. However, this intensity was interrupted when Anna wanted to leave the relationship. Losing the intense relationship tremendously decreased Joel’s body’s capacity to act, making the ending very difficult for him. Yet, if we think about the body’s capability to affect and be affected, it is not so clear-cut how the affective inequality could be thought of. Anna had more power in the separation, because she was the one who wanted to leave the relationship. However, when Joel’s bodily experience of vulnerability was transmitted to his next relationship, it became a segmenting force. The analyses suggest that a couple relationship is not only about affective dynamics between two people or about the straining effect of normative discourses. Rather, my analysis points to the messy lived realities of relationships and their constant becoming. In addition, affective intensities can be transmitted between people and relationships, for example through bodily experiences and relationship ideologies. While doing so, in the process of becoming they form new hybrids. The analysis of affective intensities does not give any easy answers to the question of affective inequalities in the interviewees’ relationships. Yet, some segmenting and violating forces can be detected in these assemblages. Following affective intensities fractures previously held beliefs about normativity and non-normativity, repressiveness and oppression, and sheds multiple lights on them. (Bi)sexuality and relationships are not something that ‘belong’ to an individual, nor can they be reduced to social structures, discourses or conventions (Fox & Alldred 2013). As Deleuze and Guattari (2004) suggest, paying attention to multiple elements that come together in a relationship assemblage is needed, but we can never know in advance what a body can do in any given encounter.

References Arribas-Ayllon, M. & Walkerdine, V., 2008, ‘Foucauldian discourse analysis’, in C. Willig & W. Stainton-Rogers (eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research in psychology, pp. 91–109, Sage, London.

Listening to old tapes  61 Atkinson, P. & Silverman, D., 1997, ‘Kundera’s Immortality: The interview society and the invention of the self’, Qualitative Inquiry 3(3), 304–325. Back, L., 2010, Broken devices and new opportunities: Re-imagining the tools of qualitative research, viewed 22 October 2017, from http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/1579/1/0810_ broken_devices_Back.pdf. Barker, M. & Langdridge, D., 2010, ‘Whatever happened to non-monogamies? Critical reflections on recent research and theory’, Sexualities 13(6), 748–772. Blackman, L., 2012, Immaterial bodies: Affect, embodiment, mediation, Sage, London. Blackman, L. & Venn, C., 2010, ‘Affect’, Body & Society 16(1), 7–28. Buchanan, T.W., 2007, ‘Retrieval of emotional memories’, Psychological Bulletin 133(5), 761–779. Butler, J., 1990, Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity, Routledge, New York. Deleuze, G., 2004, The logic of sense, Continuum, London. Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F., 2004, A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, Continuum, London. Deri, J., 2015, Love’s refraction: Jealousy and comparison in queer women’s polyamorous relationships, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Buffalo & London. Fannin, M., Jackson, M., Crang, P., Katz, C., Larsen, S., Tolia-Kelly, D. & Stewart, K., 2010, ‘Author meets critics: A set of reviews and a response’, Social and Cultural Geography 11(8), 921–931. Fox, N.J. & Alldred, P., 2013, ‘The sexuality-assemblage: Desire, affect, anti-humanism’, Sociological Review 61(4), 769–789. Gregg, M. & Seigworth, G.J. (eds.), 2010, The affect theory reader, Duke University Press, Durham. Guayu, J., 1887, L’art au point de vue sociologique, Félix Alcan, Paris. Gustavson, M., 2009, ‘Bisexuals in relationships: Uncoupling intimacy from gender ontology’, Journal of Bisexuality 9(3–4), 407–429. Hayfield, N., Clarke, V. & Halliwell, E., 2014, ‘Bisexual women’s understandings of social marginalisation: “The heterosexuals don’t understand us but nor do the lesbians” ’, Feminism & Psychology 24(3), 352–372. Hayfield, N. & Lahti, A., 2017, ‘Reflecting on bisexual identities and relationships: Nikki Hayfield in conversation with Annukka Lahti’, Psychology of Sexualities Review 8(2), 68–75. Helle, A. & Hollsten, A. (eds.), 2016, Tunteita ja tuntemuksia suomalaisessa kirjallisuudessa [Emotions and affections in Finnish literature], Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Helsinki. Huuki, T., 2016, ‘Pinoa, pusua, puserrusta: Vallan sukupuolittuneet virtaukset lasten leikissä’ [‘Piles, kisses and crushes: Historical, material and affective force relations in children’s play’], Sukupuolentutkimus 29(3), 11–24. Kangasvuo, J., 2014, Suomalainen biseksuaalisuus: Käsitteen ja kokemuksen kulttuuriset ehdot [Finnish bisexuality: Cultural terms of the concept and experiences], Acta Universitatis Ouluensis, Series B, Humaniora 121, Oulu. Kinnunen, T. & Kolehmainen, M., under review, ‘Touch and affect: Analysing the archive of touch biographies’, Body & Society. Klesse, C., 2005, ‘Bisexual women, non-monogamy and differentialist anti-promiscuity discourses’, Sexualities 8(4), 445–464. Klesse, C., 2011, ‘Shady characters, untrustworthy partners, and promiscuous sluts: Creating bisexual intimacies in the face of heteronormativity and biphobia’, Journal of Bisexuality 11(2–3), 227–244.

62  Annukka Lahti Lahti, A., 2015, ‘Similar and equal relationships? Negotiating bisexuality in an enduring relationship’, Feminism & Psychology 25(4), 431–448. Lahti, A., 2018a, ‘Too much? Excessive sexual experiences in bisexual women’s life stories’, Subjectivity 11(1), 21–39. Lahti, A., 2018b, ‘Bisexual desires for more than one gender as a challenge to normative relationship ideals’, Psychology & Sexuality, https://doi.org/10.1080/19419899.2018.1 441896. MacLure, M., 2013, ‘Classification or wonder? Coding as an analytic practice in qualitative research’, in R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies, pp. 164–183. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Malins, P., 2004, ‘Machinic assemblages: Deleuze, Guattari and an ethico-aesthetics of drug use’, Janus Head 7, 84–104. McLean, K., 2004, ‘Negotiating (non)monogamy’, Journal of Bisexuality 4(1–2), 83–97. Muller, J.P., 2007, ‘Introduction’, in J.P. Muller & J.G. Tillman (eds.), The embodied subject: Minding the body in psychoanalysis, pp. vii–x, Jason Aronson, New York. Nigianni, C. & Storr, M. (eds.), 2009, Deleuze and queer theory. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Perel, E., 2007, Mating in captivity: Unlocking erotic intelligence, Harper, New York. Pulkkinen, T., 2000, The postmodern and political agency, SoPhi, Jyväskylä. Renold, E. & Mellor, D., 2013, ‘Deleuze and Guattari in the nursery: Towards an ethnographic multi-sensory mapping of gendered bodies’, in R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies, pp. 23–41, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Ringrose, J. & Renold, E., 2014, ‘ “F**k rape!”: Exploring affective intensities in a feminist research assemblage’, Qualitative Inquiry 20(6), 772–780. Roseneil, S., 2007, ‘Queer individualization: The transformation of personal life in the early 21st century’, Nora: Nordic Journal of Women’s Studies 15(2), 84–99. Seyfert, R., 2012, ‘Beyond personal feelings and collective emotions: Toward a theory of social affect’, Theory, Culture & Society 29(6), 27–46. Shaw, D., 2013, ‘Intimacy and ambivalence’, in A. Frank, P.T. Clough & S. Seidman (eds.), Intimacies: A new world of relational life, pp. 98–114, Routledge, London. Spinoza, B., 1994, ‘Ethics’, in E.M. Curley (ed.), A Spinoza reader: The ethics and other works, pp. 85–265, Princeton University Press, Princeton. Stenner, P., 2013, ‘Foundation by exclusion: Jealousy and envy’, in B.F. Malkmus & I. Cooper (eds.), Dialectic and paradox: Configurations of the third in modernity, pp. 53–79, Lang, Oxford. Timm Knudsen, B. & Stage, C. (eds.), 2015, Affective methodologies: Developing cultural research strategies for the study of affect, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke & New York. Walkerdine, V., 2015, ‘Transmitting class across generations’, Theory & Psychology 25(2), 167–183.

Chapter 4

Mapping affective capacities Gender and sexuality in relationship and sex counselling practices 1 Marjo Kolehmainen

You are not allowed to talk about work, wealth, parish or politics. In this camp, we are only wives and husbands.

The quotation above dates back to an interview with the CEO of an organization which organizes marriage camps in Finland (published in Anna magazine in 2017). Although it expresses only one person’s viewpoint, it not only sheds light on the ways intimate relationships are separated from work, wealth, parish or politics, but also summarizes what many think is central for understanding intimate relationships: issues related to gender and sexuality. For example, when the CEO genders the participating partners, she positions the (married) heterosexual couple at the core of intimate relationships. Of course, it is not only organizers and other professionals that employ repertoires of gender and sexuality – clients also draw upon and mobilize different conceptualizations and experiences. This leads one to ponder such questions as whether relationship and sex counselling practices renew normative ideas concerning gender and sexuality, or whether they can subvert, queer or multiply prevalent notions of masculinity, femininity, sexuality and intimacy. The quotation also illustrates how, in the wake of therapeutic cultures, relationships and sexuality are increasingly addressed as in need of labour-intensive work. In many Western countries, therapeutic cultures and markets have proliferated (Furedi 2006; Illouz 2007). This is often connected to the cultural tendency towards individualization, which gives prominence to lifestyle gurus and personal advisers acting as new cultural intermediaries of the self (McRobbie 2009; Wood & Skeggs 2004). This has been seen as overlapping with neoliberal tendencies, which emphasize the ability to self-monitor, self-regulate, make choices and transform oneself – to the extent that individual choice and self-transformation can be called cultural imperatives (see Kolehmainen 2012a). The pervasiveness of therapeutic cultures becomes tangible in the advancement of never-ending selfreflection, self-diagnosis and self-management – it is no longer just ‘sick’ selves but also ‘healthy’ ones who are addressed as potential clients or customers (Oullette & Wilson 2011; Swan 2008). This further fuels the markets and makes therapeutic practices a widespread contemporary phenomenon.

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However, little is known about how gender and sexuality are (re)produced in the processes of advice-giving and advice-seeking. Several organizations and professionals, from healthcare institutions to community colleges, from parishes to LGBTQI organizations, now offer advice and support on relationships and sex for diverse groups such as heterosexual, gay and lesbian couples, the recently divorced and singles. As the emphasis in relationship and sex counselling has shifted from preventing divorce to taking care of relationships (Maksimainen 2014), people who do not actively seek help may also browse advice columns and read self-help books, or otherwise attend and attune to therapeutic practices. In addition to psychotherapists and certified counsellors, sex therapists, sex coaches, dating experts, love consultants and volunteers now offer counselling, guidance and support. There is significant variety in the policies promoted: some Finnish organizations or actors consider lifelong (hetero) marriage the ideal relationship, while others call for greater inclusion of a variety of gender identifications, sexual orientations and intimate practices. In this chapter, I ask how gendered and sexualized power relations are (re)produced in the practices of relationship and sex counselling by diminishing and enhancing bodies’ capacities to affect and be affected. I therefore apply the Deleuzian idea of affective capacities to the analysis of gender and sexuality. From this perspective, gender and sexuality are products of bodies’ relations with other bodies; they are about ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’. This kind of framework builds upon the new materialist ontology, where the focus is on what bodies and things do – rather than what they are (see Coleman 2009; Fox & Alldred 2017:65). Further, affective inequalities within this framework are understood mainly as emerging through such relations, which augment or diminish affective capacities and have the potential to open up or close down possible becomings.

Data and methodology This chapter contributes to ethnographic approaches to relational therapeutic practices. In previous studies on therapeutic cultures, ethnographic orientations have been scarce. Salmenniemi’s (2017) mapping reveals that these studies have been mainly concerned with how therapeutic discourses are mobilized to govern populations in the context of contemporary capitalism. Some scholars connect therapeutic cultures with the weakening of public life and a diminishing commitment to social institutions and politics; several interpret them in the light of increasing individualization at the expense of traditional authority; others identify the rise of ‘psy’ knowledges as part of neoliberal (bio)politics. Hence, the focus has been on top-down approaches, and Salmenniemi suggests that future studies should delve more deeply into the lived, networked, relational and embodied experiences of therapeutic engagements through ethnographic research. By employing ethnographic research methods and using multiple entry points into the practices of relationship and sex counselling, I seek to engage with the multiple, complex, embodied and affective ways therapeutic practices are mobilized.

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In order to analyse how bodies’ affective capacities relate to the processes of gendering and sexualizing, I discuss my fieldwork notes on counselling events and relationship enhancement seminars. I approach these events as event-assemblages, stressing that they are not simply about humans or human agency, but rather about relational networks between the animate and inanimate (Fox & Alldred 2015, 2017). When event-assemblages become the focus of research studies, they interact with the research-assemblage, which entails theories, methods, researchers and so on (Fox & Alldred 2015). For example, the ethnographic methods that I have employed, covering both participant observation and the foregrounding of my researcher-body, are part of the research-assemblage. This kind of employment of ethnographic methods enables me to work with and through embodiedaffective data, that is, data that focuses on the embodied experiences of bodies ‘in’ affect (Kinnunen & Kolehmainen under review; Knudsen & Stage 2015; see also Walkerdine 2010). In my study, this encompasses both observations concerning affective encounters and personal experiences of embodied affect. This kind of approach helps to produce more nuanced accounts of how therapeutic practices are actually employed through affective relations. I view methods not as descriptive, but as performative and productive. Hence, when conducting fieldwork at various relationship enhancement seminars and other events in 2015–2017, I decided not to make a ‘cut’ by separating formal and informal counselling. Cuts refer to processes of including and excluding in the research process; cuts are boundary-drawing processes that come to matter through what they reveal or conceal (Barad 2007). Methodological cuts make some aspects of the explored phenomenon visible but some other aspects less so, and the researcher is responsible for the cuts that are made in the practice of boundary-drawing (Coleman & Ringrose 2013; also Uprichard & Dawney 2016). Hence, events featuring psychotherapists or certified couple counsellors as speakers, events organized by religious or spiritual communities and events featuring relationship bloggers or peer supporters are all included in the data. The inclusion of both formally acknowledged and informal forms of therapeutic cultures makes it possible to make visible their potential entanglements. The majority of these events were targeted at ‘ordinary’ couples, or at people who had been in or were hoping to find relationships. The events in question took place in five different Finnish cities, their venues ranging from libraries to fairs, and from religious sites to conference rooms. Some of them were organized by NGOs or public institutions and charged no attendance fee; some of them were organized by religious or spiritual communities, were free or low-priced and mainly attracted members of pre-existing communities; and some of them were commercial events with attendance fees, sponsoring companies and sales of related products. Many similarities remained, however. Typically, there were one or more experts giving talks, with some time allotted for questions and answers. Nonetheless, these events featured much more than simply giving advice, from musical performances to mindfulness exercises, and from couple discussions to coffee breaks, as my analysis will illustrate.

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I draw upon my fieldwork experiences to provide detailed analysis of four different event-assemblages from a feminist Deleuzian perspective on relationship and sex counselling. From a relational Deleuzian perspective, the methodological task is to apply methods that enable the identification of the relations of a particular event-assemblage (see Fox & Alldred 2015). In particular, I seek to map how gender and sexuality are produced through relations and how bodies’ capacities to affect and be affected connect to the processes of gendering and sexualizing. This kind of approach to gender and sexuality emphasizes relationality and co-production (see Blackman & Venn 2010:22), providing a fruitful way to discuss affective inequalities and how they are produced through relations. In particular, I am interested in widening existing scholarship on how bodies’ capacities to affect and become affected can diminish or increase by exploring how gender and sexuality play a role in the processing of affecting and becoming affected. To supplement my approach, I mobilize the concept of post-feminism as an analytical tool. The concept is often used to refer to a backlash against feminism, such as the assumption of an already-achieved gender equality or the supposed irrelevance of feminism. Yet it is best understood as entailing continuity, change and contradictions – for example, the emergence of popular feminism can coexist with intensifying misogyny – and thus it should not be seen simply as a form of anti-feminism (Gill 2017; Kolehmainen 2012a). Following Gill (2017), I use the term post-feminism analytically by rendering post-feminism an object of analysis, not a descriptive notion. Even though in Finland the widely supported discourse on equality remains the main means of addressing issues related to gender and sexuality, the concept of post-feminism is useful for interpreting the kinds of phenomena where gendered and sexualized power relations are produced in subtle and ambivalent ways (Hasanen, Koivunen & Kolehmainen 2010:44–45). I find this especially relevant in the case of counselling, where new ways of rerouting gender and sexual difference and related classifications and hierarchies continue to emerge.

A Deleuzian approach to affect and embodiment This chapter employs the Deleuzian conceptualization of affect as bodies’ capacities to affect and become affected (Deleuze 1992). Affect as a concept directs attention to relations between (different kinds of) bodies or things without foregrounding the individual human as a subject of feeling and refuses any idea of pre-existing entities that somehow influence each other (see Blackman 2012:51). Putting emphasis on relationality displaces the self from the core of the analysis of therapeutic cultures, even though therapeutic cultures are often framed as if they were mainly about self-management and self-transformation. This kind of relational approach allows one to show how gender and sexuality are not simply ‘residing’ within individual bodies: the

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human body, or an individual, is not seen as the locus of gender or sexuality (see Coleman 2009; Fox & Alldred 2013). Rather, gender and sexuality are produced through multiple assemblages and include elements which do not necessarily foreground a human subject or an individual body, such as affective forces that cannot be reduced to cultural discourses or predefined subject positions (see Lahti, this volume). In order to provide a detailed analysis of how gender and sexuality work in and on therapeutic practices, I rely on an understanding of affect as pre-individual bodily forces that augment or diminish a body’s capacity to act (Clough 2008). This view is widely promoted in Deleuzian approaches, as for Deleuze (1992:625) a body affects other bodies and is affected by other bodies – in other words, relations create certain affects. From a Deleuzian perspective, it is not what a body ‘is’ that matters, but what it is capable of, and in what ways its relations with other bodies diminish or enhance those capacities (Coleman 2009; Coleman & Ringrose 2013:11; see also Anderson, Reavey & Boden, this volume). A relational take on affect directs attention to the relations between bodies (e.g. Fox & Alldred 2013; Paterson 2005). Affect does not ‘belong’ to anybody and cannot be ascribed only to human bodies, but involves encounters with all kinds of bodies: organic, nonorganic, artificial and imaginary (Seyfert 2012). Hence, affect cannot be reduced to the responses or reactions of individual human bodies, nor is it about subjective feelings (Clough 2008). The exploration of affect provides an opportunity to acknowledge one important circuit through which cultural meanings and social (power) relations are felt, imagined, mediated, negotiated and/or contested (Pedwell & Whitehead 2012). However, Deleuze-inspired studies have been criticized for ignoring or neglecting questions of power, and also for leaving the relations between affect and power underexplored. Several scholars have responded to these criticisms by providing readings that foreground issues of power. Within Deleuzian thinking, the dominant systems of power remain: they are the mechanisms which provide the conditions of possibility for certain subjectivities to emerge, while others are less possible or impossible (Renold & Mellor 2013:26). From a Deleuzian perspective, then, power operates by opening up and closing down possibilities of becoming. Contrary to some interpretations, Deleuze’s concept of becoming does not refer to an unrestricted process (Coleman & Ringrose 2013:9; see also Coleman 2009). Rather, a Deleuzian approach to the social is as much a mapping of what is impossible, what becomes stuck or fixed, as it is of flux and flow (Coleman 2009; see also Coleman & Ringrose 2013:9). Power relations are also inherent in Deleuze’s terminology, where territorialization refers to the processes of stabilizing an assemblage and deterritorialization to destabilizing it (Deleuze & Guattari 1988:88–89). A Deleuzian take also provides opportunities to foreground the relational nature of gender and sexuality and how they are about ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’. Hence, to focus on affective capacities is to highlight the relations between bodies

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(Coleman 2009:27) and not to foreground gender and sexuality as predefined categories. My approach is strongly inspired by, and builds upon, previous feminist Deleuzian contributions to empirical studies on gender and sexuality, such as Annie Potts (2004) on whether the use of Viagra promotes a return to (reterritorializing) or subversion of (deterritorializing) conventionally gendered and normative sexual practices and experiences; Rebecca Coleman (2008, 2009) on how girls’ bodies become through their relations with photographs and media images; and Emma Renold and David Mellor (2013) on the ways in which ‘gender’ and ‘sexuality’ work on, in and across bodies and things. Following previous lines of thought, I understand bodies not in terms of gender, sexuality, race or age; rather, they are always in the processes – becoming – of gendering, sexualizing, racing and ageing (see also Coleman 2009:23, 59). Relationship and sex counselling practices also participate in these processes of gendering, sexualizing, racing and ageing, as my analysis will demonstrate. While developing my argument, I also employ Bruno Latour’s (2004) ideas concerning the body and its becomings, as well as its capacities to learn how to become affected, which enrich my attempt to work with the idea of bodily capacities. Latour uses ‘becoming a nose’ in the perfume industry as his example of how bodies are not only capable of affecting and becoming affected: bodies are taught to become affected. Novices in the industry slowly learn with the help of odour kits to become affected by different odours. The more they learn, the more elements they learn to be affected by, and the more differences they become sensitive to (Latour 2004). Even though Latour’s approach to the body is different from Deleuze’s, the ideas concerning learning and teaching are also essential to my analysis of how bodies’ capacities become gendered and sexualized. From a Deleuzian perspective, embodied capacities are increased or decreased by various elements, from sounds and smells to the atmospheres of places and people (Hickey-Moody 2013). This opens up a relevant approach to the study of gender and sexuality, as it sheds light on the processes through which bodies ‘learn’ to become gendered and sexualized. Further, the Latourian conceptualization of bodies points to the way in which bodies can be seen as processual and relational, instead of pre-existing entities that then interact. This kind of relational perspective is especially useful when subjects/bodies are considered to be neither entirely open nor closed (see Blackman 2012:23), as indicated in the idea of bodies’ capacities to affect and be affected. As such, affect refers to the openness of a body (Clough 2008:4); otherwise, it would not make sense to talk about bodily capacities. Yet, the question remains: to what are the bodies taught to open, or learn to open? Which bodies are taught to open and which bodies to close, and what does this have to do with gender and sexuality? However, I wish to take one step further and pose a new question: might the same relations that diminish some capacities increase other capacities? In what follows, I seek to illustrate the relevance of this question to my Deleuzian feminist analysis of event-assemblages in which bodies’ capacities become gendered and sexualized.

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Rethinking bodies’ capacities to affect and become affected In order to illustrate the entanglement of bodily capacities, gender and sexuality, I will now move on to analyse four different event-assemblages – all of which are documented in my fieldwork notes. My first example demonstrates how bodies’ capacities to affect and be affected relate to gender and sexuality. It discusses an event with a focus on well-being. The speakers, Theresa and John (all names are pseudonyms), are famous for their successful well-being business, the services of which are mainly about dieting, exercise and fitness. However, one of the two speakers is also a sex counsellor. Theresa and John debated issues ranging from nutrition to the essence of love, and the audience was encouraged to vote to choose the winner of the debate. In this way, the two speakers provided different views on sexuality through a humorous performance: The fifth claim is: sex is about satisfying one’s needs. Theresa says that this is not correct. John says that even mice lust. You can have sex on your own, with a partner, in a group of three or four, you can play power play or shorthanded. Theresa says that she holds a somewhat deeper attitude towards sex. [.  .  .] For example, many women can find it difficult to enjoy sex; many women suffer when there is no genuine presence. Shopping lists or kids steal over your mind. In that case, your needs won’t get any satisfaction. John says that he wasn’t actually talking about making love. Sex is about satisfying your needs; making love is something different. When John makes love, lakes melt, Kilimanjaro shakes. At this event, women’s sexuality was associated with traditional women’s work, such as grocery shopping or taking care of the children, and men’s sexuality was associated with natural forces. It has been well documented that women’s sexuality is stereotypically connected to emotional fulfilment, here represented by the emphasis on a ‘deep’ attitude, the demand to ‘be present’, and difficulties in getting satisfaction. Likewise, men’s sexuality is stereotypically connected to physical performance, here by associating sex humorously with sport (‘power play’ and ‘playing shorthanded’ are terms used e.g. in ice hockey, while here the connotations attached to those words also refer to BDSM) and by comparing male sexual performance to natural forces. Certainly, the debate was designed to be entertaining, and the use of humorous exaggeration was anything but accidental. Nonetheless, when John claimed that when he made love lakes melted and Kilimanjaro shook, he was portraying the male body as capable of affecting natural phenomena – which is power, too. In this way, male bodies are presented as things that can extend beyond themselves and that have power over other (both human and non-human) bodies. Thus, whereas a man’s body was associated with powerful capacities to affect even natural phenomena, a woman’s body was associated with capacities to

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become affected by mundane household chores and childcare. Female bodies are not thought to have similar capacities as men’s bodies; they are bodies which register unfinished shopping lists or cannot help attuning to kids and are also further affected by the failure to be present. Hence, it was assumed that women had diminished capacities to enjoy sex. As bodies become both extended and stuck at certain points in processes that may involve gendering, sexualizing, racing or classing (Coleman 2009:75), we can think about how female bodies are thought less likely to be ‘open to’ sexual desire; and in the process of opening to sexual desire, they are seen as becoming stuck through their relations with traditional ‘women’s work’. In contrast, male bodies become extended through sexuality. However, while female bodies close down sexual encounters, they open to shopping lists and kids, which is one example of how opening up and closing down are interrelated and may happen at the same time. My second example comes from a wellness fair, whose programme included lectures and workshops related to intimate relationships and sexuality, among other activities. One of the lectures was by Daniel, a psychologist, who while acknowledging same-sex couples became more or less limited to heterosexual couples only. Daniel also suggested that women have too much power – especially over men. This kind of view is a stellar example of the post-feminist argument that equality has ‘gone too far’ (see Hasanen et al. 2010; McRobbie 2009), and Daniel maintains that men have become too kind: Men have become too nice, empathetic, they are too afraid to disagree with their girlfriends, they do not dare to say that ‘we won’t buy this Hästens mattress’. There is some grass inside the mattress and it costs 10,000. Man says no, woman starts to cry, man says ‘let’s buy it’. Woman feels that she can boss the guy around. Well, I don’t mean men should be roughnecks or cavemen, Daniel adds. The idea is that man learns how to live through tense situations. [. . .] Daniel talks about polar energy. There should not be too much polar energy, nor too little, but you should be able to play with it. During his talk, Daniel equated the ‘problem’ in heterosexual relationships with affective relations between genders. Despite the seemingly modern framing and Daniel’s warnings against ‘caveman’-like behaviour, which I see as a way to distance himself from ‘old-fashioned’ gender roles, the lecture also ambivalently reterritorialized masculinity with the old ideals of rationality, control and selfcontainment (see Connell 2000:5; Kolehmainen 2015). Further, women’s capacity to affect men through their tears – here a feminized means of exerting control – was framed as a major challenge in intimate relationships. From a Deleuzian perspective, women’s power, as in their capacity to act and affect, was made into a problem, at least for men. This is also a very interesting statement from the perspective of post-feminism, as it seems that post-feminism has created men’s bodies as capable of being overtly affected by women: the same relations that augment affective capacities in some bodies diminish some other bodies’ capacities to act. Here, women’s capacity to affect men is diminishing men’s capacity to act.

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This highlights the importance of exploring the entanglements of augmenting and diminishing, as well as their interactions with gender and sexuality. Interestingly, if women’s tears were something that should not be allowed to affect men, human bodies in general were assumed to become positively affected by ‘polar energy’, here referring to the erotic tension and play between two opposite poles. Even though it was not made explicit that these poles would equate with ‘opposite’ genders, the idea of polar energy resonates with the ontological assumption of binary gender. In this way, the realm of affect, emotion and energy was territorialized as a crucial site for maintaining gender difference. Interestingly, this also seems to connect with post-feminist ideas of women having too much power over men. Whereas Coleman (2009:144) found that girls experienced their bodies as affected by the bodies of boys but as lacking the capacity to affect them back, in this event-assemblage bodily capacities were organized in a different manner. Rather than framing male bodies as capable of affecting but being affected, viewing them as becoming affected appears to be a way to ground post-feminist ideas: of a ‘good’, reciprocal relationship when affected by ‘polar energy’, and of feminism gone too far when affected by feminine tears. Hence, being affected by women’s bodies was welcome when sexuality and heterosexual desire came into play, and unwelcome when it was about making joint decisions.

Teaching bodies to open up and close down their capacities To take a closer look at how bodies’ capacities to affect and be affected are gendered and sexualized, I will now move on to explore how bodies are taught to open up to and close down particular relations. I will start by discussing an example from a women-only course. Its theme was ‘becoming the woman you are’, and it focused on femininity and sexuality, under the supervision of a female instructor, Daphne. At the beginning of the first meeting, Daphne stated that women had been oppressed for a long time, and after that women had aimed to be on top. Now womanhood had been lost. This again involved an element of post-feminism, as feminism was rendered an irrelevant thing of the past (Gill 2017; McRobbie 2009). Next Daphne advised us to do a short meditation practice, during which she talked about rush and stress as the enemies of sexual desire. From a Deleuzian perspective, rush and stress were seen as elements that diminish bodies’ capacity to act in sexual terms, and avoiding them was offered as a solution to augment sexual desire. Each of us had a colour palette in front of us, and we soon moved on to work with painting: Daphne gives us all glasses, filled with water spiced with floral drops. In addition, she instructs us to paint with our left hands, after checking that we all are right-handed. Both the drink and the left hand are connected to the unconscious. [. . .] Daphne says many kinds of emotions may arise, and we are allowed to cry and rage.

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The elements in this event-assemblage that (potentially) affected our bodies constituted several sensory experiences and material elements, from colour palettes to floral drops. The event-assemblage was anything but random, as our bodies were intentionally affected by being made to enter particular kinds of relations. Many of these relations are possible to identify, such as using the left hand when right-handed and drinking special herbal tinctures. In this way, our bodies were mobilized to ‘open up’ to a particular kind of femininity, as the course aimed to deepen and widen attendees’ sense of femininity and sexuality. The relations through which we were becoming affecting and affected were thus partly predefined – in Latourian terms, we can conceptualize this as a process of teaching and learning about becoming women. For example, saying that many kinds of emotions may arise, and that there is a private space available to us if we feel like crying or raging in privacy, is a potential means both to affect our bodies – by foregrounding certain embodied responses – and to invite us to interpret affected bodies, or bodies ‘in’ affect (see Knudsen & Stage 2015). Likewise, even though we were given the option not to disclose anything about our lives, we were encouraged to at least say something about the paintings we produced. For many, this was read as a possibility to bring forward personal accounts of having been in a vulnerable position or otherwise hurt in the past. The discussion of the paintings was also a way to encourage us to verbalize possible affective states and bodily experiences. The other bodies present, their becomings, and similarly the produced paintings and verbalized accounts, also continued to affect each other. Finally, to deepen my argument concerning how bodily capacities are taught to open up and close down, I discuss my experiences of a mixed-gender tantric workshop. I did not know what to expect but found myself hugging and touching strangers and dancing to rhythmic music. There was a lot of movement, which emphasizes how bodies are taught to open and close to/through different feelings, sensations and rhythms. Overall, attending the workshop was surprisingly fun, although I started to feel irritated when the instructor began to rant about the shame women felt when men looked at their ‘boobs and bottoms’, suggesting that women should learn to enjoy becoming objects of a sexualizing gaze. Soon after that we were divided into two groups: The first group is assigned the task of dancing in a sexy manner. The second group is assigned to look at the first group dancing. My first reaction is irritation; I immediately think this is a way to teach women how to become objects of the male gaze. Nevertheless, my irritation does not rule out the return of good vibes. [. . .] I am a member of the group where we are supposed to look at the dancing others; the instructor says we can put our hands on our waistline. The music starts and the second group start moving. [. . .] A woman seeks intense eye contact with me and dances in a flirtatious way in front of me. The bodies become gendered through the affective relations they are involved in – through the expansion and limitation of their affective capacities, bodies become

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gendered (Coleman 2009:142). During the workshop, bodies became gendered as women’s bodies and as men’s bodies: the bodies dancing were gendered as women’s bodies, and the bodies looking at them were gendered as men’s (despite the fact that these two groups were not formed in terms of ‘being’ any particular gender). Here, becoming a woman or a man happened through certain relations such as the presence of differently gendered bodies, music and movement and engagements with the senses. Thus, even though processes of becoming are openended and uncertain, the relations through which becomings happen can be at least partly predefined and purposefully assembled. This does not make becomings predictable or predefined, but points to one potential way to address power within a Deleuzian framework. It also, once again, highlights how becomings do not equal unrestricted processes, and how becomings may still be open-ended and uncertain. For example, the gendering process and associated heterosexual desire did not prevent a ‘queer’ situation in which a woman approached me in a flirtatious way. To continue Latour’s (2004) idea of bodies that are taught to become affected, in the tantric workshop bodies did not only become gendered as female and male, as those gendered bodies were further taught to become affected in different ways. Further, to enjoy being looked at was framed as enhancing bodies’ capacities in terms of sexuality and sensuality – diminishing shame. This resonates with the post-feminist celebration of femininity, where (hetero)sexuality is seen as an essential part of femininity, and where a shift from sexual objectification to sexual subjectification has taken place (Gill 2008). Indeed, bodies can and do also become in repetitive ways (Coleman 2009:198), and here bodies’ becoming was (re)territorialized by normative ideas concerning two opposite genders. Becoming a masculine woman, or a feminine woman who does not enjoy men’s attention, or a man who wishes to be looked at, seemed not to be available options. While for example capacities to augment femininity or become a feminine woman were increased, other capacities were diminished, and the potential to become in alternative ways decreased. This highlights how diminishing and augmenting are not separate, opposite or alternative processes.

Conclusion: gender, sexuality and affect Therapeutic technologies have been a topic of feminist debate in terms of whether they provide empowerment or ultimately make women endlessly responsible for familial and intimate issues (see Oullette & Wilson 2011). Of course, it is not either/or – as my analysis of four different event-assemblages has shown, relationship and sex counselling practices can become (re)territorialized by normative ideas concerning gender and sexuality, or they can deterritorialize prevalent notions of masculinity, femininity, sexuality and intimacy – even at the same time. Ambivalence, multiplicity and uncertainty are indeed strongly present in the therapeutic practices I have explored in this chapter. Social categorizations, hierarchies and asymmetries are increasingly produced through ambivalence (see Kolehmainen 2012b, 2017; Skeggs 2004:29), and this also holds true in relation

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to the production of gender and sexuality. This ambivalence may pose a challenge to feminist politics and research, since it makes criticism difficult. Also, the post-feminist elements present in therapeutic practices can and do involve both feminist and anti-feminist aspects (Gill 2017), which invites a nuanced analysis of different entanglements, overlaps and ruptures. In particular, I have demonstrated that gendered and sexualized power relations are produced through opening/closing bodies’ capacities to act. In practice, I have applied the Deleuzian take that bodies’ capacities to affect and become affected can diminish or increase the critical study of gender and sexuality. I have argued that not only bodies but also their capacities become gendered and sexualized. My first example of an event-assemblage produced such becomings, where male sexuality was associated with a natural-force-like capacity to affect both human and non-human bodies, and female sexuality was associated with a capacity to become affected by housework and childcare. My second example of an eventassemblage provided female bodies with a capacity to affect male bodies. However, becoming affected by women’s tears was made into a problem, as it was seen as unwelcome; becoming (sexually) affected by ‘polar energy’ was seen as welcome. These examples demonstrate that increasing and diminishing are not opposites or alternatives, as they can actualize simultaneously. The same relations that diminish some capacities may increase other capacities – and the same relations that diminish the capacities of some bodies may increase capacities in other bodies. In other words, bodies’ capacities to affect and become affected are not so much about what bodies are or how to define them, but what they can do – and what they can be made to do. As Patricia Clough (2008:5) puts it, a turn towards affect ‘not only shows what the body can do, [it] show[s] what bodies can be made to do’. From a feminist Deleuzian perspective, it is important to consider how gender and sexuality relate to the ways in which bodies are made to do. In this chapter, I have been interested in what bodies are made to do in the practices of relationship and sex counselling. My analysis of the third event-assemblage shows how bodies were made to enter particular relations as a part of processes of ‘finding’ womanhood and feminine sexuality, varying from drinking special herbal tinctures to producing left-handed paintings. Likewise, my analysis of the fourth event-assemblage highlights how bodies were taught to learn to become through gendering and sexualizing relations – in this case, in a repetitive manner, for example by gendering the bodies to be looked at as women’s bodies and bodies who looked as men’s bodies. However, despite the teaching and learning, not all participants (or bodies) became in the same ways through their relations with the therapeutic practices (cf. Coleman 2008). Finally, when analysing the production of gendered and sexualized (power) relations, it is exactly this simultaneous dynamic which provides a novel perspective on the analysis of complex and affective gendered and sexualized power relations. This kind of conceptual work reminds us how relations enable, widen and increase bodies’ (particular) capacities while at the same time decreasing some

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other capacities. Of course, I am not suggesting that increasing and diminishing always work in concert or trying to reposition femininity and masculinity as separate or opposite things. Rather, my analysis raises the question of whether gender and sexuality should be explored as relations in themselves. From a feminist Deleuzian perspective, they cannot be known in advance, but rather they live, transform, emerge and cease to exist, always in relations. This also poses a challenge for the study of affective inequalities, as bodies’ relations cannot easily be grasped, nor should they be viewed as stable, certain or predictable.

Note 1 This work has been funded by the Academy of Finland project ‘Just the Two of Us? Affective Inequalities in Intimate Relationships’ (grant number 287983).

References Barad, K., 2007, Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning, Duke University Press, Durham. Blackman, L., 2012, Immaterial bodies: Affect, embodiment, mediation, Sage, London & New York. Blackman, L. & Venn, C., 2010, ‘Affect’, Body & Society 16(1), 7–28. Clough, P.T., 2008, ‘The affective turn: Political economy, biomedia and bodies’, Theory, Culture & Society 25(1), 1–22. Coleman, R., 2008, ‘The becoming of bodies: Girls, media effects, and body image’, Feminist Media Studies 8(2), 163–179. Coleman, R., 2009, The becoming of bodies: Girls, images, experience, Manchester University Press, Manchester. Coleman, R. & Ringrose, J., 2013, ‘Introduction: Deleuze and research methodologies’, in R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies, pp. 1–22, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Connell, R.W., 2000, The men and the boys, Polity Press, Cambridge. Deleuze, G., 1992, ‘Ethology: Spinoza and us’, in J. Crary & S. Kwinter (eds.), Incorporations, pp. 625–633, Zone, New York. Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F., 1988, A thousand plateaus, Athlone, London. Fox, N.J. & Alldred, P., 2013, ‘The sexuality-assemblage: Desire, affect, anti-humanism’, Sociological Review 61(4), 769–789. Fox, N.J. & Alldred, P., 2015, ‘New materialist social inquiry: Designs, methods and the research-assemblage’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology 18(4), 399–414. Fox, N.J. & Alldred, P., 2017, Sociology and the mew materialism: Theory, research, action, Sage, London & New York. Furedi, F., 2006, Therapy culture: Cultivating vulnerability in an uncertain time, Routledge, London. Gill, R., 2008, ‘Empowerment/sexism: Figuring female agency in contemporary advertising’, Feminism & Psychology 18(1), 35–60. Gill, R., 2017, ‘The affective, cultural and psychic life of postfeminism: A postfeminist sensibility ten years on’, European Journal of Cultural Studies 20(6), 606–626.

76  Marjo Kolehmainen Hasanen, K. & Koivunen, T. & Kolehmainen, M., 2010, ‘Minä olen muistanut. Huomioita vuosituhannen vaihteen suomalaisesta feminismistä [‘I have remembered. Remarks on contemporary Finnish feminism’], Naistutkimus – Kvinnoforskning 23(1), 35–46. Hickey-Moody, A., 2013, ‘Affect as method: Feelings, aesthetics and affective pedagogy’, in R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies, pp. 79–95, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Illouz, E., 2007, Cold intimacies: The making of emotional capitalism, Polity Press, London. Kinnunen, T. & Kolehmainen, M., under review, ‘Touch and affect: Analysing the archive of touch biographies’, Body & Society. Knudsen, B.T. & Stage, C., 2015, ‘Introduction: Affective methodologies’, in B.T. Knudsen & C. Stage (eds.), Affective methodologies, pp. 1–22, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Kolehmainen, M., 2012a, ‘Managed makeovers? Gendered and sexualized subjectivities in postfeminist media culture’, Subjectivity 5(2), 180–199. Kolehmainen, M., 2012b, ‘Tracing ambivalent norms of sexuality: Agony columns, audience responses and parody’, Sexualities 15(8), 978–994. Kolehmainen, M., 2015, Satiiriset Itse valtiaat: Poliittinen huumori suomalaisessa julkisuudessa [Satirical autocrats: Political humour in the Finnish public sphere], Acta Universitatis Tamperensis 2080, University of Tampere Press, Tampere. Kolehmainen, M., 2017, ‘The material politics of stereotyping white trash: Flexible classmaking’, Sociological Review 65(2), 251–266. Latour, B., 2004, ‘How to talk about the body? The normative dimension of science studies’, Body & Society 10(2–3), 205–229. Maksimainen, J., 2014, ‘Avioliiton pelastamisesta parisuhteen hoitamiseen: Muodosta sisältöön’ [‘From saving marriages to taking care of relationships. Moving from form to content’], Sosiologia 51(2), 123–138. McRobbie, A., 2009, The aftermath of feminism: Gender, culture and social change, Sage, London. Oullette, L. & Wilson, J., 2011, ‘Women’s work: Affective labour and convergence culture’, Cultural Studies 25(4–5), 548–565. Paterson, M., 2005, ‘Affecting touch: Towards a felt phenomenology of therapeutic touch’, in J. Davidson, L. Bondi & M. Smith (eds.), Emotional geographies, pp. 161–176, Ashgate, Aldershot. Pedwell, C. & Whitehead, A., 2012, ‘Affecting feminism: Questions of feeling in feminist theory’, Feminist Theory 13(2), 115–129. Potts, A., 2004, ‘Deleuze on Viagra (or, what can a “Viagra-body” do?)’, Body & Society 10(1), 17–36. Renold, E. & Mellor, D., 2013, ‘Deleuze and Guattari in the nursery: Towards an ethnographic multi-sensory mapping of gendered bodies and becomings’, in R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies, pp. 23–41, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Salmenniemi, S., 2017, ‘ “We can’t live without beliefs”: Self and society in therapeutic engagements’, Sociological Review 65(4), 611–627. Seyfert, R., 2012, ‘Beyond personal feelings and collective emotions: Towards a theory of social affect’, Theory, Culture & Society 29(6), 27–46.

Mapping affective capacities  77 Skeggs, B., 2004, ‘Context and background: Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of class, gender and sexuality’, in B. Skeggs & L. Adkins (eds.), Feminism after Bourdieu, pp. 19–35, Blackwell, Oxford. Swan, E., 2008, ‘Therapeutic cultures and the contagion of femininity’, Gender, Work & Organization 15(1), 88–107. Uprichard, E. & Dawney, L., 2016, ‘Data diffraction: Challenging data integration in mixed methods research’, Journal of Mixed Methods Research, Epub ahead of print, viewed from https://doi.org/10.1177/1558689816674650. Walkerdine, V., 2010, ‘Communal beingness and affect: An exploration of trauma in an ex-industrial community’, Body & Society 16(1), 91–116. Wood, H. & Skeggs, B., 2004, ‘Notes on ethical scenarios of self on British reality television’, Feminist Media Studies 4(2), 205–208.

Part II

Affective transitions throughout intimate lives

Chapter 5

Yet another lesbian breakup? Understanding intimate relationship dynamics through affective resonance Tuula Juvonen

When my relationship of five years with ‘Rémy’ ended in spring 2016, I was both devastated and relieved. I was distraught that once again one of my relationships, which had started with high hopes, had fallen apart. Yet, at the same time, I felt strangely calm, realizing that a wearing situation that had been dragging on for far too long was finally over. However, and even more strongly, I also felt a powerful need to understand ‘what had gone wrong’ and why our relationship had not been able to thrive. I am surely not the only one to ask such questions after a break-up. I had noticed that the lesbians I had been interviewing for my research project on the intimate and social lives of women with same-sex sexual attractions1 were also, even after years or decades, puzzling over the ways their relationships had evolved and the reasons they had ended. Likewise, in recent years a host of scholars have shown interest in same-sex relationships, and particularly in the fact that lesbian couples seem more likely to break up, and to do so sooner, than their gay or straight counterparts, even though lesbians consider their same-sex relationships very rewarding (Andersson et al. 2006; Balsam et al. 2008; Kurdek 2004; Lavner 2017). Such a paradoxical situation begs explanation. Above all, I was intrigued by the question: what is the actual dynamic process during which a flourishing relationship between two people turns into an emotional wasteland over the years? In this chapter, I introduce the method of self-study and explicate my take on affect studies before starting my search for answers to that question.

Practising self-study My engagement with self-study, a process during which I sought to understand my own relationship practices through retrospective analysis, started because I wanted to understand how we as partners had affected each other in such a way that we ended up terminating our relationship. I began the study by reading the diary entries I had written sporadically during the five years I was partnered with Rémy. I had written them to sort out my thoughts and overwhelming feelings, but never with the autoethnographic intention to use them as research material.2

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However, I realized that analysing the diary entries might allow me to notice and map out the creeping changes that had been hard to accept while they were actually happening. Soon I also realized that I had to write about my findings in order to give my thoughts some structure. Although I was writing about a past relationship from my own perspective, it was clear that while doing so I was also bound to reveal intimate details about Rémy’s life. Therefore, I asked my ex-partner for permission to do so. ‘They are your diaries’, she replied, and thus gave me free rein to continue, while also distancing herself from my interpretations. She also chose the pseudonym I could use when writing about her. In retrospect, I  find self-study to have been a particularly useful method for my purposes. It is a method especially practised in teacher training as a means to question oneself by attending to one’s own experiences. Biographical forms of inquiry are one of the many possibilities for reflecting on and contextualizing one’s practices (Ezer 2009) in an attempt to become more conscious of one’s own firmly held beliefs, and consequently to be able to reframe and reconceptualize them so that the practices based on them can be altered (Samaras & Freese 2009:4–5, 10–12). For the sake of my inquiry, I focused on my relationship practices in order to understand better the couple dynamics in our former relationship. In addition to my diaries, I turned to the advice literature for lesbian couples that has increasingly been on the international market since the 1980s. I also consumed vast numbers of research articles about relationships and break-ups, which have gradually started to include same-sex couples as objects of study. Furthermore, and quite importantly, I engaged with relational affect theory.

Focusing on affective resonance When one seeks analytical tools to understand relationship dynamics, relational affect theories that focus on encounters seem like a good place to start. Robert Seyfert (2012) offers one possible take on such an approach. For him, bodies are inherently receptive and continue to mutually constitute each other through the affects that emerge in encounters. Seyfert theorizes these interactive affective encounters through the concept of transmission, which can take place when bodies are ‘attuned to same frequency’ (Seyfert 2012:38). Reiner Mühlhoff’s (2015) conceptualization of affective resonance allows a closer look at such frequencies. In his article ‘Affective resonance and social interaction’, Mühlhoff (2015) presents a general theory with which he seeks to grasp the formation of emotional experiences during the course of social interaction. His theory suggests that we affect each other, and are affected, by being-in-resonance (Mühlhoff 2015:1006– 1007). This becomes possible since we all have an inherent bodily potential to oscillate, and hence to resonate with other bodies (1013). Yet some bodies are more capable of affecting or being affected than others (Seyfert 2012:34–35). In humans, such a capacity to resonate with other bodies is individual, since our previous experiences have shaped us differently, and our particular situational

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circumstances continue to do so (Mühlhoff 2015:1013). But it is not only our capacities that get shaped in affective encounters with others, but also ourselves. Mühlhoff writes that ‘the individual gets constituted processually, as a node in a network of affective relatedness, and at the same time does the individual enact itself through relational actualizations of its potential to resonate’ (1013). This already indicates that the object of self-study, the self, is a relational one. When people embark on relationships, they bring along an individual set of acquired resonative capacities. These capacities are formed by particular social and economic positions, possibly disadvantaged ones. In the course of a relationship, the range of individual resonative capacities continues to shift, depending on the kind of resonative relationships one is involved in. Apart from structural positions, the encounters between people are affected by a vast number of other heterogeneous elements (Seyfert 2012:31–34), only some of which can be addressed in one study. Nevertheless, in my analysis I seek to take into account social and cultural contexts, both past and present, in the knowledge that their effects continue to shape our capacities to resonate, either together or at all. It could also be argued, along with Mühlhoff (2015:1016), that the resonating object of self-study is also necessarily neither a singular entity nor simply an additive one. When a resonative relationship establishes itself between two – or more – bodies, a new collective entity is actualized as qualitatively something unique. The idea that relationships are sites where something novel gets actualized is also reflected in my own experiences of being partnered with and affected by different people. In hindsight, it was sometimes hard for me to recognize myself, due to the unforeseen directions in which being in that particular relationship moved me. This suggests that the self that is the focus of self-study is one that may be not identical with one’s former, or future, self either. Likewise, the newly emerging resonating entity, a couple, is in a constant state of change. When that collective reaches a harmonious point of being-inresonance, it forms a resilient system that can even absorb occasional external turbulences (Mühlhoff 2015:1010). Nevertheless, the system might be just as vulnerable to disruption if one of the bodies, for some reason, fails to keep up its harmonious resonance with the other body. In classical physics, the different kinds of harmonious resonances between oscillating bodies can be analysed by paying attention to the phase, frequency and amplitude with which they resonate together (1009–1010). We can enter into a resonative relationship with someone with whom we resonate in unison and may find that while we are together the frequency of our resonance gets amplified. But it is just as likely that the kind of resonance we experience may be a dissonance, or that we fail to resonate with a particular body altogether (1014). These kinds of resonances, and their subtle shifts in relating that affect our intimate relationship dynamics, are what I sought to identify while reading my diaries. The harmonious resonance that allows a lesbian couple to emerge is often characterized as being markedly equal (see Anderson, Reavey & Boden, this volume; Lykke, this volume). While lesbian feminists surely aim to create equal

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relationships and level out any differences that might put one of the partners in a less advantageous position, equality is hard to maintain in situations where only one of the partners is affected adversely. I also argue that emerging inequalities are likely to take an exceptionally heavy toll on lesbian relationships, precisely because equality is so highly valued in them. Hence, while engaged in my analysis, I focused in particular on affective inequalities, those created and maintained because of how one is affected while being in a resonative relationship. All in all, while attending to self-study through my diaries, I seek to add a method of resonative reading to relational affect theory. This method follows and maps the shifting phase, frequency and amplitude of one particular resonating system, in this case a lesbian couple, over a certain period. By taking into account both the individual social and economic formation of resonative capacities, and their shifts over the course of the relationship, I seek to engage in a reading that allows a more nuanced picture of the dynamics that take place in a resonative relationship, and of the role that affective inequality has in this.3 While I am writing about my particular situation, others may still find in my texts something that resonates productively with their own reflections on their everyday encounters, past or present.

Getting together: establishing a resonance My relationship with Rémy began online. We started emailing each other after I  replied to her profile on a dating site, and when we met in person a month later, we hooked up really well. Although living in different cities, we started visiting each other regularly on alternating weekends. My diary entries following our initial and subsequent meetings are filled with joyous comments about the excitement of the newly found physical closeness, the thrill of sexual exploration and the delight of the overall positive feedback I was giving and receiving in return. All in all, my entries indicate that we were, as the expression goes, ‘on the same wavelength’. For my part, it was no doubt largely due to Rémy’s butchness, which I met with delight and was immediately drawn to. In that respect, our differences were compatible and resonated on the same frequencies, thus amplifying our shared positive emotional vibrations. In addition to emotional vibrations, there were also sexual ones, which could be acutely sensed in embodied sexual encounters. Our initial sexual explorations brought to light that we related very differently to our sexual pasts. Like many lesbians of our 1960s generation, we had previously been in heterosexual relationships. As lesbian sex therapist Margaret Nichols points out, lesbians may have experienced such relationships as inauthentic and non-pleasurable, even outright exploitative. She notes further that even after women have understood their heterosexual histories and have cognitively and intellectually processed them, the early conditioning and emotional baggage these histories have implanted may come to haunt them in their lesbian relationships (Nichols 1987:252–254). That was true

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in our case. Yet my diary entries reveal how our dissatisfying heterosexual relationships had affected our resonative capacities quite differently. Rémy, who had recently left her twenty-five-year marriage with a man, put her focus quite successfully on finally experiencing sexual pleasure in a relationship with a woman. I, for my part, was rather overwhelmed by her straightforward, uncomplicated and expressive sexual style. I was more obsessed with monitoring the equality of our sexual encounters, since I insisted that my lesbian relationships should offer equally satisfying sex for both partners, something that I had failed to experience in my past heterosexual ones (8–9 May 2011). Our sexual resonances were mismatched, as is evident in my difficulties sharing the embodied feeling of being-in-resonance with my partner and thus gaining amplitude to the point of orgasmic relief during our sexual encounters. As our disparate resonative phases became evident in our dissimilar orgasmic patterns, Rémy was left puzzled and less confident in her sexual skills. The established intimacy had also made her vulnerable, and she became worried that I would find her ‘a fucking failure in bed’ (8 July 2011; 11 July 2011). However, we avoided taking our initial orgasmic dissonance, as I would now call it, as a sign of an essentially incompatible individual resonance phase that would compromise our joint frequency for good. Instead, we were able to discuss it and recognize it as something our respective sexual histories had conditioned us into. My diary entries show that while we were getting to know each other better, as persons and as sexual partners, I was more able to find constructive ways to express my own sexual needs and to attend to my own sexual pleasures. Thus, during the first year of our relationship we learned by experimenting to tackle the issue of initially disparate sexual patterns (27 November 2011; 2 March–27 April 2012). Additionally, we were able to establish a shared frequency as a sexual couple so that we could both resonate sexually in a manner that made it possible for us to gain amplitude and thus share and enhance our pleasure in mutually rewarding ways.

Facing adversity: losing amplitude Parallel to the positive developments in our sex life I began to notice in the course of the first year that that something was getting between us, in the ways we resonated or rather failed to resonate together emotionally. When Rémy started to be withdrawn and absent-minded, I was quick to interpret this as diminished sexual interest in and consideration for me. As is evident in my diaries, I reacted to my interpretation with both anxiety and resentment (21 August 2011). However, the negative tensions that were building up between us were relieved remarkably when Rémy eventually admitted that she was going through debilitating physical pain (7 October 2011). The revelation took her quite some time to make, because her self-esteem was closely connected to her butch pride (8 October 2012). This again was fed existentially by her capacities to be capable, self-sufficient and independent (cf. Burch 1987:136–137; Lessing 1984:153–154). Hence it was no

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wonder that she tried to keep up appearances and hid her increasing health problems from me for as long as possible. The improved emotional communication had an immediate positive effect on the quality of our affective resonance in sexual terms as well. The newly found closeness following her confession not only brought our mutual emotional resonance back onto a shared frequency, but also amplified it. In my diary entries, the weekends were again ‘great’, ‘lovely’, ‘enjoyable’, as our successful handling of the relationship crises allowed a more open und trusting sexual intimacy between us (17 October–14 November 2011). But still, over the next months, Rémy’s physical health, and subsequently her earning capacity and financial situation, kept deteriorating. This unforeseen state of affairs introduced novel forms of difference and ultimately inequality into our partnership, namely those based on physical ability and economic capability – the very inequalities that have proven to be toxic stressors for many lesbian relationships (Balsam, Rostosky & Riggle 2017:37–38). There can be various reasons for changes and transitions in partner intimacy, and there may be a disjuncture between the change itself and the realization of it (Bishop 2016). Likewise, although one may be aware of a problem, it does not necessarily mean that one can both interpret it and deal with it appropriately, despite one’s best interests. To counteract Rémy’s dismal situation, I did my very best to support her. However, she accused me of being overly demanding and difficult (8 October 2012), coercive, pushy and interfering with her business, as well as inattentive and domineering (9 December 2013; 3 February 2014). Yet the insight that she was fighting fiercely against her increasing (financial) dependency on me by expressing her dissatisfaction (cf. Loulan 1984:96) was revealed to me only in hindsight through my self-study. At the time, while busy over-nurturing her, I failed to recognize that, for Rémy, my intense efforts only emphasized her increasing dependency on me. This, in response, fuelled her growing resentments towards me. During our ensuing arguments, she said that she was put under too much pressure, and that she was faced with demands she could not fulfil – just as she had never been able to please her demanding mother (12 September 2011). The fact that Rémy brought up her mother indicated once again that the resonative capacities we bring to our intimate relationships have their lineages in the layered experiences we have accumulated over time (Burch 1987; Mühlhoff 2015:1013). Although these experiences may be foreclosed and have a different temporality, they still have the capacity to haunt us (Blackman 2015:38–39). For Rémy, her diminishing physical capabilities created an unbearable situation, in which the regulation of intimacy became her only means of expressing control in the relationship. This, again, negatively affected her capacity to respond to me sexually (cf. Berlant & Edelman 2014:xii; Burch 1987:128). By the end of our second year, I described Rémy in my worried and frustrated entries as joyless and lacking any interest in sex (3 December 2012; 3 January 2013). As that situation prevailed over weeks and months to come, I became not only increasingly

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upset about my partner’s emotional non-responsiveness and withdrawal from mutual communication (25 June 2013; 12 July 2013; cf. Umberson, Thomeer & Lodge 2015), but also manifestly desperate and anxious because of the apparent lack of shared intimacy and sexual pleasure in our relationship. To complicate the situation further, my diary entries reveal that in times of adversity I kept looking for comfort and emotional relief in bodily intimacy (6 February 2014; 24 March 2014). Using sex as a source of relief in stressful times is of course a well-known practice (Hartmann & Crockett 2016:313; Loulan 1984:110–111). Yet, when Rémy was not able or willing to respond to my pressing needs and wishes concerning sexual intimacy, my – and by extension our – problems kept amplifying (24 February 2014; 2 March 2014). While Rémy’s evident disinterest in sex upset me, not feeling up to it was difficult for her as well, since it made her feel ‘insufficient’ as a partner (14 May 2014) – a feeling that must have further fed her disinterest in having sex with me (cf. Loulan 1984:91). This again severed our sexual bond, which might otherwise have helped us to persist through difficult times (Loulan 1987:104). All the while, I became concerned that the lack of sex would have negative effects not only on our relationship, but also on my own mental well-being (4 February 2013; 6 April 2013; 8–10 July 2013; 3 October 2013). When Rémy eventually received her diagnosis of a moderate depressive disorder (30 October 2013), it came as no surprise, since my desperate diary entries about her read pretty much as the clinical symptoms of depression: Depressed mood; A significantly reduced level of interest or pleasure in most or all activities; Behavior that is agitated or slowed down; Feeling fatigued, or diminished energy; Thoughts of worthlessness or extreme guilt; The person’s symptoms are a cause of great distress or difficulty in functioning at home, work, or other important areas. (Price-Evans n.d.) As Rémy started seeing her ‘shrink’, she started to open up to me and was also able to take some initiative. Hence, our third year ended on a positive note with an entry about a relaxed and pleasurable Christmas holiday (1 January 2014). But even though we were still able to hit more or less the same emotional and sexual frequency every now and then, Rémy’s scarcely veiled anger and ongoing refusal to engage with me, and my inability to cope with that, over the passing months and years had quite effectively flattened the amplitude of our mutual frequencies. For me, it felt as if our mutual resonance had lost amplitude altogether.

Moving apart: affective dissonance Despite our continuing difficulties, I  had continued to perceive us as a stable entity, a couple. Yet the enduring problems, and especially the apparently unproductive ways we dealt with them, started to undermine this understanding. In

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the fourth year of the relationship, I asked myself a question in my diary: what am I to do if this state of affairs continues and there will ‘never again’ be sex in this relationship (3 March 2014)? Such a categorical prospect, together with the decreasing number of diary entries, suggests that I had reached a point where it no longer made sense to me to invest in a deteriorating relationship. I started to view my relationship as having reached a dead end (28 April 2014). In hindsight, this was likely one of the moments when the joint entity ceased to resonate together and started to fall apart, back into two separate entities. Rationally speaking, I was aware that the antidepressants prescribed to Rémy were preventing her despair from deepening to the point where it would become life-threatening. So I kept waiting for her depression to go away, in order to let our intimate relationship recover from there. But Rémy’s medication continued to level out her positive sentiments (30 January 2015) and kept negatively affecting her interest in intimacy and sex. While emotionally starved, I was terribly missing the embodied feeling of being-in-resonance and gaining amplitude that I could best experience with my partner while having pleasurable sex with her. Since the bodily sense of being in a loving and nurturing couple relationship had vanished, I acutely felt that I had been left alone (2 January 2015; 10 August 2015). The way I started to be affected by the resonative relationship had much to do with the affective inequality of being deprived of the love and attention in my intimate relationship that I so needed in order to thrive (Lynch 2014:178). The lack of sexual communication and the overall dysfunctional couple dynamic were making me increasingly miserable, and I described my relationship as draining, as one that was ‘eating me up’ (30 January 2015). Fluent sexual communication is important not only for maintaining a resonative sexual relationship but also for building up personal resonative capacities in that respect. Consequently, Rémy’s ongoing rejections of my sexual advances continually undermined my self-worth and made me painfully question my own value as an attractive and sexually desirable partner. Such self-doubts made it increasingly difficult for me to take part in our infrequent sexual encounters with a positive attitude, which in turn made them even less enjoyable and pleasurable for me (31 July 2015; 15 December 2015). Likewise, since my sexually laden expectations concerning a cosy evening or pleasurable holiday failed to be fulfilled over and over again (31 July 2015), it became impossible for me to dwell in joyful anticipation with regard to upcoming sex and thus to attend to ‘twentyfour-hour foreplay’ to increase my likelihood of immersion in sexual pleasure (cf. Corwin 2010:195–211). All in all, Rémy’s ongoing refusal of intimacy provoked unbearably intense feelings of disappointment in me, while at the same time the ongoing sexual want took its toll on me. Although reading my entries makes it quite clear that I wanted to be in a relationship where there was mutuality and sex, I nevertheless remained in one where there was neither (15 May 2014; 31 July 2015). No wonder I was puzzled about my own irrational behaviour. Apparently, I was stuck in what Lauren Berlant and Lee Edelman (2014:vii) call an affective paradox. Partly the paradox was due

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to the nature of intimacy. Once it is established, it creates not only closeness, but also commitment and a sense of duty (Meßmer, Schmidbauer & Villa 2014). One could also say that relationships, as resonative systems, can be strong and resilient, and consequently their affective pull can be hard to resist. In my diaries, I reasoned that I ‘would not want to leave’ Rémy, not only because I was emotionally attached to her, but also because I felt protective of her and did not want to add the emotional and financial aftermath of a break-up to her existing burdens (30 January 2015). In terms of sexual frequency, it could be said that by then our relationship exemplified a case of ‘lesbian bed death’ (for a critique of the concept, see Bridges & Horne 2007:43–44). However, in our case the declining amount of partnered sex was not simply a straightforward function of time, as is often presented in studies on lesbian sexual desire and satisfaction. I would rather argue, along with Marny Hall (1984:145–146), that over time our shared intimacy had brought forward issues that were too difficult for us to handle, and they were now taking shape in the area of sexuality and affecting it adversely. Therefore, as my retrospective self-study reveals, my insistence on staying was fuelled by more than just noble reasoning. I was trapped in cruel optimism (Berlant 2011:24), apparently assuming that the very thing, sex, that I saw as the cause of my misery would be the thing that would set me free. For me, feeling the resonances of an embodied sexual relationship became the ultimate proof of loving acceptance from my partner (cf. Goldsmith et al. 2016:193). To be deprived of that proof created in me unbearable feelings of abandonment similar to those I recalled from my childhood, when I had felt overlooked and neglected by my father (15 May 2014). I realized that my obsessive insistence on having sex with my disinclined partner, and the repeated rejections I kept receiving (10 February 2015), returned me over and over again to that traumatic experience (cf. Berlant 2011:81–82). For me, giving up the relationship with Rémy would have meant giving up the possibility of having sex and hence the belated proof that I was lovable after all. At the time, however, I was unable to see that, or to change my ineffective choice of action: either I continued to make sexual advances to the reluctant Rémy, which resulted in increasingly dissatisfying sexual encounters, or I stopped making them, and likewise ended up being utterly frustrated and quarrelling with her. In either case, she withdrew emotionally from me, her demanding partner, whose actions she perceived as a constant ‘poking, picking and fixing’ (31 July 2015; 10 August 2015). As the previously coupled entity that used to resonate together started to fall apart, we too started to resonate in dissonance with each other. By this point, our lack of communication had made it impossible for us to relate and attend to each other’s situation, and mutual projections and resentments clouded our judgement. To add to my misery, a good colleague, friend and confidant of mine died unexpectedly. My diary entries reveal that two weeks later I was still beside myself about his death. True to my habits, I once again sought comfort and nurturance from my partner.

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My diary entry meticulously captures the course of our break-up: I asked Rémy if we could have sex, and she said she did not feel like it. To that I responded by asking whether she could not just humour me for once. Rémy gave in and came to bed, and I wrapped myself around her comforting body. Yet after she had pleased me, she did not want to be touched in turn, and she left the bed absolutely furious and wordless (5 March 2016). It was only then that I realized to my horror that our interpretations of the situation were irreconcilable: what I considered casual sexual compliance (Hartmann & Crockett 2016) to provide one’s distressed partner with a long-awaited, kind-hearted, intimate gesture of bodily solace had been for Rémy forced sex. The terribly failed intimate moment undeniably forced out into the open the unequal positions and power dynamics of our relationship (cf. McEwan 2007, discussed in Hyvärinen, Oinonen & Saari 2015). With hindsight, I could also piece them together from my diary entries. Previous sexual experiences were one of the sources of inequality between us. Although many self-help books on lesbian sexuality advocate the praxis of responsive desire – i.e. the idea that you do not always have to feel desire to sexually comply with your partner, as desire might well ensue from the act itself (Corwin 2010:34–35) – such advice neglects the fact that many women have a sexual history where they have not been able to negotiate having or not having sex. The distance offered by self-study allowed me to realize that for someone like Rémy, who had had her sexual boundaries violated in the past (28 August 2011), the idea of submitting to sex with a partner without one’s expressed consent was by no means a neutral affair. Whereas sexual compliance can be stressful for anyone (Hartmann & Crockett 2016), for Rémy sex on demand could never be just a kind-hearted, intimate gesture of solace in the way the advice literature guided me to assume. Another important source of affective inequality I had overlooked resulted from Rémy’s financial dependency on me. She had moved in to live with me in my apartment (13 August 2015), but from my securely privileged position I simply failed to acknowledge that she might feel she was no longer in a position to say ‘no, go fuck yourself!’ in response to my unwanted sexual advances. It did not register with me that Rémy might understand my request as a demand with possibly adverse consequences for her if she refused. I just naively assumed that since we were partners, and lesbians at that, we were on an equal footing. The disastrous encounter made acutely evident that we no longer resonated on the same emotional wavelength. The cleft in our communication, made apparent in the clash, had become too huge to bridge. For both of us it became the event that radically undid our understanding of us as a couple and hence propelled new kinds of subjectivities (Baraitser & Frosh 2007:79, 91–92). Although I apologized to Rémy immediately after realizing the weight of my misunderstanding, from that moment on it was clear to both of us that our relationship was over. Rémy did not talk to me for ten days, and two weeks later she had found herself an apartment and moved out.

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Conclusions In this chapter, I have suggested that a resonative reading of diary entries allows us to notice that in a relationship ‘apparently everything happens, even when nothing remarkable happens’ (Ezer 2009:84). Putting an emphasis on both recurring or failing complaints and utterances of joy in those entries makes it possible to follow the ebb and flow of affective resonances in the relationship. The shifting phases of felt resonance move people to and from each other, depending on the harmony or disharmony of its joint frequency. Likewise, a harmonious amplitude of resonative frequency intensifies mutual affects, but by the same token its disharmony may well level them out. In this case at least, embodied sexual encounters also became the site where the quality of affective resonance could be felt most vividly. Similarly, it can be noted that emotional and sexual intimacy became intertwined and hard to tell apart. The affective resonances felt in a relationship are not set, since the external circumstances that continue to affect the partners will inevitably transform them. Also, individual resonative capacities may have hidden surprises to offer when unresolved traumatic experiences from childhood and past intimate relationships start to resonate affectively in a current relationship. Not only can the ensuing fears and anxieties diminish one’s capacities to resonate, but haunting traumatic experiences may also distort one’s view of one’s current partner and relationship. This can be especially true for lesbians, who might encounter disproportionate amounts of everyday discrimination, both as individuals and as couples, and bring more emotional baggage from their earlier intimate relationships than others, having had to negotiate their non-normative desires – and possibly even their nonnormative gender identifications – in a punitive heteronormative world. How one becomes affected while in a resonative relationship is the key to affective inequality in intimate relationships. When one fails to thrive in a relationship marked by low amplitudes of resonance or increasingly disharmonious resonative frequencies, it will take its toll on both the forming couple and the resonative capacities of the individual partners. The resonative reading of affects in this intimate partnership also suggests that when the affective resonance of the couple turns into dissonance, the sense of duty evoked by shared intimacy may no longer apply to the relationship as such, but mostly to individual partners’ deep-seated desires and needs to feel loved and respected. If these needs are not met, the dissonance between the intimate partners may become so emotionally unbearable that it forces one to leave the very relationship that was actualized through the shared affective resonances in the first place.

Epilogue Conducting a process of self-study based on my diaries was an intensely emotional journey. Reading the notes about my relationship brought back the good times but also made evident the amount of hardship and pain Rémy and I went

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through as a couple. The self-study I engaged in enriched my awareness and gave additional perspectives on the insights that were already looming in my diary entries, the painful relevance of which I had nevertheless vigorously pushed aside at the time. As I came to an understanding of ‘why’, it evoked in me a new kind of empathy and compassion towards us. Thus, formulating the results of my self-study in conference papers and rewriting them for this publication was a therapeutic process. By doing this I had taken up Marny Hall’s (1984:146) relationship advice: ‘the remedy is better communication – not with one’s partner, but with the sides of ourselves we have excluded from the relationship’. I also share the sentiments of Tuija Saresma (2003:615), who states that ‘by writing about my personal experiences of bereavement while also trying to write in a scholarly way about grief and coping, I feel I have added another layer to my recovery’. Although Rémy had given me her permission to write about our relationship, it was crucially important for me that I should also offer her my paper to read, since I had to know that she could live with it. My sharing my analysis with Rémy gave her not only an opportunity to be seen, but also a chance to see our past relationship from my point of view. I was very nervous when I gave her my first draft to read some five months after our separation, but she just noted ‘you write beautifully’, and left it at that. Two weeks after Rémy read my first paper, we decided to approach each other anew as a couple, while continuing to live separately. These days we communicate much better than we did before. Because our problems and differences are now out in the open, we notice sooner the moments when we are about to fall back into our dysfunctional patterns. We can also address the existing inequalities head-on, and more productively seek agreeable solutions to unequal situations. Consequently, we feel the harmonious affective resonance once again actualizing and amplifying in and through our relationship. What could easily have been just another lesbian break-up for me became, with the help of self-study, a turning point both personally and professionally. Through the concepts of affective resonance and affective inequalities, I was able not only to gain a novel perspective on my own relationship dynamics, but also to theorize about them in ways that may even offer insights for others about how paying attention to affectivity might help us to better understand intimate relationships in flux.

Notes 1 This article was written as part of my Academy of Finland–funded research project ‘Queer narratives: Intimate and social lives of women with same-sex sexual attractions in Tampere 1971–2011’ (grant number 249652, 2012–2017). 2 The total number of diary entries discussing my relationship with Rémy was ninety-one. However, the number fell annually: forty-three in 2011, twenty in 2012, eighteen in 2013, nine in 2014, nine in 2015, and two in 2016, the year of the break-up. Instead of writing full sentences, I usually make all my handwritten notes, diaries included, as mind maps (Buzan & Buzan 1999). While reading my own notes, I can recall the items I was addressing, although direct quotes from the maps would make no sense to other readers.

Yet another lesbian breakup?  93 3 Quite another approach to studying mutual resonance in gay and lesbian relationships is explored by Mordechai et al. (2003). They rely on physiological measurements, perceptions of interaction and affective behaviour when analysing and predicting relationship quality.

References Andersson, G., Noack, T., Seirstad, A. & Weedon-Fekjær, H., 2006, ‘The demographics of same-sex “marriages” in Norway and Sweden’, Demography 43(1), 79–98. Balsam, K.F., Beauchaine, T., Rothblum, E.D. & Solomon, S.E., 2008, ‘Three-year followup of same-sex couples who had civil unions in Vermont, same-sex couples not in civil unions, and heterosexual married couples’, Developmental Psychology 44(1), 102–116. Balsam, K.F., Rostosky, S.S. & Riggle, E.D., 2017, ‘Breaking up is hard to do: Women’s experience of dissolving their same-sex relationship’, Journal of Lesbian Studies 21(1), 30–46. Baraitser, L. & Frosh, S., 2007, ‘Affect and encounter in psychoanalysis’, Critical Psychology 21, 76–93. Berlant, L., 2011, Cruel optimism, Duke University Press, Durham. Berlant, L. & Edelman, L., 2014, Sex, or the unbearable, Duke University Press, Durham. Bishop, K., 2016, ‘Body modification and trans men: The lived realities of gender transition and partner intimacy’, Body and Society 22(1), 62–91. Blackman, L., 2015, ‘Researching affect and embodied hauntologies: Exploring an analytics of experimentation’, in B. Timm Knudsen & C. Stage (eds.), Affective methodologies: Developing cultural research strategies for the study of affect, pp. 25–44, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Bridges, S. & Horne, S.G., 2007, ‘Sexual satisfaction and desire discrepancy in same sex women’s relationships’, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy 33(1), 41–53. Burch, B., 1987, ‘Barriers to intimacy: Conflicts over power, dependency, and nurturing in lesbian relationships’, in Boston Lesbian Psychologies Collective (eds.), Lesbian psychologies: Explorations and challenges, pp. 126–141, University of Illinois Press, Urbana. Buzan, T. & Buzan, B., 1999, The mind map book, BBC Books, London. Corwin, G., 2010, Sexual intimacy for women: A guide for same-sex couples, Seal Press, Seattle. Ezer, H., 2009, Self-study approaches and the teacher–inquirer: Instructional situations case analysis, critical autobiography, and action research, Sense, Rotterdam. Goldsmith, K.M., Dunkley, C.R., Dang, S.S. & Gorzalka, B.B., 2016, ‘Sexuality and romantic relationships: Investigating the relation between attachment style and sexual satisfaction’, Sexual and Relationship Therapy 31(2), 190–206. Hall, M., 1984, ‘Lesbians, limerence and long-term relationships’, in J. Loulan (ed.), Lesbian sex, pp. 141–150, Spinster Ink, San Francisco. Hartmann, A.J. & Crockett, E.E., 2016, ‘When sex isn’t the answer: Examining sexual compliance, restraint, and physiological stress’, Sexual and Relationship Therapy 13(3), 312–324. Hyvärinen, M., Oinonen, E. & Saari, T. (eds.), 2015, Hajoava perhe: Romaani monitieteisen tutkimuksen välineenä. [A dissolving family: A novel as a tool for multidisciplinary research], pp. 164–188, Vastapaino, Tampere. Kurdek, L.A., 2004, ‘Are gay and lesbian cohabiting couples really different from heterosexual married couples?’, Journal of Marriage and Family 66(4), 880–900.

94  Tuula Juvonen Lavner, J.A., 2017, ‘Relationship satisfaction in lesbian couples: Review, methodological critique, and research agenda’, Journal of Lesbian Studies 21(1), 7–29. Lessing, J., 1984, ‘Sex and disability’, in J. Loulan (ed.), Lesbian sex, pp. 151–158, Spinster Ink, San Francisco. Loulan, J., 1984, Lesbian sex, Spinster Ink, San Francisco. Loulan, J. & Nelson, M.B., 1987, Lesbian passion: Loving ourselves and each other, Spinster Book Co., San Francisco. Lynch, K., 2014, ‘Why love, care, and solidarity are political matters’, in A.G. Jonasdottir & A. Ferguson (eds.), Love: A question for feminism in the twenty-first century, pp. 173–189, Routledge, New York. McEwan, I., 2007, On Chesil beach, Jonathan Cape, London. Meßmer, A., Schmidbauer, M. & Villa, P., 2014, ‘Einleitung: Intimitäten – Wie politisch ist das Vertraute?’, feministische studien 32(1). Mordechai, J., Levenson, R.W., Gross, J., Frederickson, B.L., McCoy, K., Rosenthal, L., Ruef, A. & Yoshimoto, D., 2003, ‘Correlates of gay and lesbian couples’ relationship satisfaction and relationship dissolution’, Journal of Homosexuality 45(1), 23–43. Mühlhoff, R., 2015, ‘Affective resonance and social interaction’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14, 1001–1019. Nichols, M., 1987, ‘Doing sex therapy with lesbians: Bending a heterosexual paradigm to fit a gay life-style’, in Boston Lesbian Psychologies Collective (eds.), Lesbian psychologies: Explorations and challenges, pp. 242–260, University of Illinois Press, Urbana. Price-Evans, P., n.d., Major depressive disorder, viewed 18 January 2018, from www.allaboutdepression.com/dia_03.html. Samaras, A.P. & Freese, A.R., 2009, ‘Looking back and looking forward’, in C.A. Lassonde, S. Galman & C. Kosnik (eds.), Self-study research methodologies for teacher educators, pp. 3–19, Sense, Rotterdam. Saresma, T., 2003, ‘ “Art as a way to life”: Bereavement and the healing power of arts and writing’, Qualitative Inquiry 9(4), 603–620. Seyfert, R., 2012, ‘Beyond personal feelings and collective emotions: Toward a theory of social affect’, Theory, Culture & Society 29(6), 27–46. Umberson, D., Thomeer, M.B. & Lodge, A.C., 2015, ‘Intimacy and emotion work in lesbian, gay, and heterosexual relationships’, Journal of Marriage and Family 77(2), 542–556.

Chapter 6

Slipping into ‘that nurse’s dress’ Caring as affective practice in mixed-sex couples’ relationships Liina Sointu Introduction Sometimes, like in that photograph of our morning when he’s still asleep, and I’m reading, then I sometimes kiss and cuddle him. But that nurse’s dress, I start wearing it immediately after we get out of the bed.

In this quotation, Kristiina1, a woman I interviewed for my doctoral dissertation (Sointu 2016), describes a moment in bed before she rises and starts the day. Her partner has advanced Alzheimer’s disease. On some days he recognizes Kristiina, and on other days he does not. He could not manage living at home without her constant care. What initially caught my attention in Kristiina’s account was the metaphor of the nurse’s dress. In many ways, this metaphor captures what it means to provide care to one’s partner at home on a daily and nightly basis. It points to the embodied dimension of having responsibility for care while simultaneously living together at home as a couple. The metaphor implies wearing a uniform. I interpret it to refer to different aspects of managing embodied care, such as controlling one’s tone of voice, facial expressions and ways of touching, which are needed to maintain the calmness and good spirits of the partner whose relation to the world has been altered by dementia. In research, this kind of activity has been analysed as emotion work in both formal (e.g. Hochschild 1983; James 1992; Twigg 2000) and informal care settings (Thomas, Morris & Harman 2002). Yet in the context of family, the notion of work is somewhat problematic, as it fades out the distinctive features of intimacy in family relations (Twigg et al. 2011:173). Thus, there is a need for novel concepts to analyse the everyday realities of informal care that acknowledge the complexities of emotion, embodiment, power and intimacy in family relationships. In this chapter, I suggest that the concept of affective practice offers a useful tool for broadening our understanding of care in intimate relationships. Drawing on Margaret Wetherell’s (2012, 2015) concept of affective practice, combined with Patricia Benner and Suzanne Gordon’s (1996) concept of caring practice, I further develop the conceptual apparatus with which to approach care in the context of intimate relationships. Conceptualizing caring as affective practice allows

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us to conceive of caring as an activity that entails personal, sentient, thinking and feeling involvement without assuming that these feelings and sentiments are always positive, or that they are individual possessions or characteristics of those who engage in them. Moreover, the concept of affective practice brings together the sentient/embodied and the discursive without assuming that either precedes the other (Wetherell 2012). Most importantly, conceiving of caring as affective practice enables us to grasp how the dynamics of a care relationship are also dynamics of power and take place in a mesh of affective inequalities. Drawing on interviews with older people whose partners have fallen ill with dementia, I focus on how they make sense of what has happened to them as they have taken up caring and how they have settled into the affective practice of caring. As the focus is on affect, it is crucial not to lose sight of the embodied and sensory aspect of becoming engaged with the practice of caring. For this purpose, I draw on sensory methodology (Mason & Davies 2009) in collecting and interpreting the data. I start the chapter by elaborating the idea of caring as affective practice, drawing from care research and Margaret Wetherell’s (2012) concept of affective practice. Next, I present the methodology of this study. The subsequent three sections are empirical and focus on the process in which a mixed-sex couple relationship turns into a care relationship. Finally, I present the main conclusions and contributions to research on care in intimate relationships, with an emphasis on discussions that concern power as an integral element of the care relationship (Dominelli & Gollins 1997; Lynch, Lyons & Cantillon 2009; Milne & Larkin 2015:8; Simplican 2015; Twigg 2000).

Caring as affective practice I suggest that the concept of affective practice offers a useful tool for examining care, since it addresses some of the key characteristics of caring as a social activity. In particular, it helps us to understand how caring for a spouse with dementia involves operating in and through inherent affective inequality within the relationship. The imbalance of power in the care relationship arises from the premise that without another person’s help, the one who needs care would not survive. This makes the one who needs care vulnerable and dependent on the caregiver. For this reason, providing care for a person who is unable to fulfil her basic needs has been called caring for dependents (Wærness 1984:189), to separate it from other forms of care that lack the backdrop of physical, social and psychological dependency (cf. Conradson 2003; Cooper 2007). Dementia threatens the emotional and practical safety of the person who has fallen ill. Care, therefore, is needed to ensure that the person with dementia still eats, drinks and is safe, both physically and emotionally. Because dementia ultimately involves loss of meanings, social conventions and a coherent sense of self, creating an atmosphere that maintains emotional safety is particularly important when providing care for a person with dementia (Evans & Lee 2014; Schillmeier

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2009). The position of caregiver is intrinsically a position of power, as through her responses the caregiver can either maintain or disrupt the safety of the person with dementia. Care researchers have pointed out that providing care involves the personal engagement of the caregiver, who needs to utilize embodied and situated knowledge rooted in the relationship (Benner & Gordon 1996:45; Graham 1983; Hamington 2004; Mason 1996; Wærness 1984). Sociologist Kari Wærness (1984) developed what she called the rationality of caring, the idea that caring for dependent persons involves a particular kind of rationality to which the actor as a sentient being is integral. Later, Jennifer Mason (1996) introduced concepts such as sentient activity and active sensibility. With them, Mason aimed to shift the focus from conceiving of feeling and thinking as individual states of a caregiver’s mind towards an understanding of feelings as part of the caring activity embedded in relations between people. Yet Mason did not explore in detail how in the activities of caring the sentient elements, namely thinking and feeling, entwine with the norms and discourses that guide how family members should relate to each other. This is why the concept of practice is useful: it enables us to understand single actions, feelings and thoughts as part of wider arrays of actions, personal histories, norms and cultural understandings (Schatzki 2001; Wetherell 2012:12–13). In conceptualizing caring as affective practice, I draw on Patricia Benner and Suzanne Gordon’s (1996:43–44) take on caring practice as a ‘culturally constituted, socially embedded way of being in a situation and with others’. Caring practice consists of embodied actions, feelings or sentiments and responses, arrayed together for the purpose of contributing to another person’s well-being. In order to respond to the care need, the caregiver interprets the care receiver’s embodied appearance, such as facial expression and gestures, and responds to them in her own embodied appearance (Hamington 2004). These embodied responses, however corporeal, are nevertheless based on a more or less shared cultural understanding concerning appropriate responses in that situation. The interconnection of corporeal responses and discourses in caring can be clarified by a more recent take on the concept of practice by Margaret Wetherell (2012). Her concept of affective practice helps to elucidate how affect and discourse intertwine in the practice of caring. According to Wetherell (2012:13–14), ‘in affective practice, bits of the body [. . .] get patterned together with feelings and thoughts, interaction patterns [. . .] and interpretative repertoires, social relations, personal histories, and ways of life’. In other words, appropriate embodied responses to care needs are not defined solely in the interaction of two people; instead, caregivers engage in a practice that is informed by discourses. These discourses concern the appropriate, desired and required affective responses in the context of care and couple relationships. On the one hand, living with a spouse who has dementia is informed by discourses concerning care and what it means to be caring. To be caring, for example, is to embody such qualities as patience and selflessness as personal characteristics (Skeggs 1997:67– 68). These norms are circulated in the education for formal care workers, and

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increasingly also for informal carers (Winch 2006). On the other hand, living together as spouses is informed by discourses concerning adulthood and companionship in a couple relationship. In a couple relationship, partners are usually relatively autonomous when it comes to such basic tasks as taking care of personal hygiene and eating. Although in reality partners are far from autonomous and self-sufficient, this norm nevertheless stands out as an important premise for adulthood. These and other norms become negotiated over time in each relationship, with a unique history (Wetherell 2012:96). Caring as affective practice is thus embedded in the history of the couple, however long or brief. The shared history persists as memories and habitual ways of being together (Smart 2007). Through the analysis of care as affective practice in intimate relationships, this chapter adds to the feminist critique that has aimed to decouple the concept of care from romanticized notions of care as ‘a labour of love’ (Cooper 2007; Kelly 2017; Mason 1996; Simplican 2015). Perceiving care as a labour of love – as something people do in families and intimate relationships out of love and devotion for each other – leaves aside fundamental aspects of the care relationship. One such aspect is power. Although power was understood as constitutive of care relationships even in early care research (Wærness 1984), the significance of power dynamics has nevertheless been neglected in empirical research on informal care. Thus far, discussions of power in the care relationship have concentrated on formal care (Dominelli & Gollins 1997; Lee-Treweek 1996; Twigg 2000). In informal care, the discussion has circled around whether the caregiver or the care receiver has authority and control in the relationship (e.g. Lynch et al. 2009). There is a lack of understanding concerning the dynamics of power in the care relationship (Dominelli & Gollins 1997:412; Simplican 2015:225). In the analysis, I focus on how the affective practice of caring emerges in concrete embodied encounters between partners. Through close reading of caregivers’ interviews, I illustrate how one of the central tensions apparent in caregivers’ narratives of the early days of care concerns the changing power dynamics. Whereas the focus in this chapter is on the early days, I suggest that this tension is inherent and continuous in the affective practice of caring where family relationships are concerned.

Sensory methodology of the research This chapter is derived from a larger project in which I studied everyday lives of older informal carers in Finland. For the study, I interviewed fifteen persons between 59 and 82 years of age living in mixed-sex marriages and giving care to their partners at home on a long-term basis (Sointu 2016). The interviewees’ spouses all needed constant care, assistance and attention, for which the interviewees had responsibility at the time of the interviews. For this chapter, I have chosen interviews with seven interviewees (six women and one man) whose partners had been diagnosed with advanced dementia and whose partners’ care needs

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had emerged gradually. Their stories illustrate poignantly the tensions that arise with the onset of the affective practice of caring. Because affective practice by definition involves the body, it is important not to lose sight of the sensory aspects of the caregivers’ experiences. For this purpose, I drew on sensory methodology (Mason & Davies 2009) in collecting and interpreting the data. This is a research strategy that is ‘attuned to the complex ways in which the senses are tangled with other forms of experience or ways of knowing’ (Mason & Davies 2009:587). The idea is to tease out, in different phases of the research, sensory experience and knowledge. In the data collection, this approach implies using methods to evoke reflection on the sensory that might not always be easy to verbalize in a more traditional interview setting. Photographs are one such stimulus that have been a particularly useful way to evoke such reflection (Harper 2002; Mason & Davies 2009). In this study, I used photographs taken by the participants and other stimuli as part of the interviews to elicit detailed talk about the lived and sentient experience of caring (Harper 2002; Sointu 2016). Initially I planned to carry out photo elicitation with all the participants, but not everyone felt comfortable with or capable of taking up the task. Therefore, I decided to use whatever stimuli the participants brought into the interview situation. Of the interviews used in this chapter, in four the photographing task was used; other stimuli included poems written about the loss of a husband, photographs taken to demonstrate to one’s friends the extremity of one’s everyday life, a guidebook for relatives about dementia and a carethemed written autobiography. In the data analysis in this study, attuning to the sensory involves reading the interviewees’ narratives as told by sentient beings about their concrete surroundings. In analysing the transformation of a couple relationship into a care relationship, I pay attention to embodied encounters and reflections, concrete aspects of everyday living and the affective textures of being together at home and living as a couple whose lives have been upended by illness and need of care. I interpret the affective practice of caring as embedded in these affective textures and mundane activities (cf. Wetherell 2012:4). While I find Wetherell’s (2012) concept useful for bridging the sentient and the discursive in the practice of caring, my methodological approach differs significantly from hers. Instead of focusing on situated interaction in naturally occurring situations like Wetherell, I analyse how people make sense of what has happened to them in interview talk. I assume the interviewees’ talk to express their personal experiences of what it has meant for them to become caregivers for their spouses. I read the interviewees’ accounts as reflecting their personal experience, which also contain conflicts and tensions originating from societal power relations (McNay 2004). Although my analysis does not focus on situated interaction, I wish to retain the idea of the situational as the limit to my interpretation. By this I mean that even though the interviewees’ relationships with their partners are now significantly organized around care, there are still

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dimensions to their relationship that are beyond the scope of care and beyond this study. The transformation of the couple relationship into a care relationship is not necessarily all-encompassing. Through narrative analysis (Polkinghorne 1995) of the caregivers’ accounts, I construct a narrative organized around a central tension arising between the ideals of two (supposedly) equal adults and the requirements of the new circumstances in which one partner depends on the other for care. I further suggest that this tension – and its constant resolution in everyday encounters with the partner – remains central to the affective practice of caring, even after initial settling. I focus on the activities and tensions involved in the process in which the couple relationship becomes a care relationship.

Becoming unsettled: emerging awareness of care needs As the interviewees look back on the time they later perceive as the early phase of care, they describe a period of gradually growing confusion, irritation, worry, frustration and anger regarding their partners. Ulla, a 66-year-old woman, for example, recalls that her husband little by little stopped taking care of what had been ‘his duties’ at home, such as renovating the house. In addition, he sometimes did things that deeply upset her. For example, once, while gardening, he cut flowers that were very dear to her. At the time, her husband’s action in the garden seemed like an intentional attempt to hurt her, as she had no idea that her husband might be incapable of taking her feelings into account due to the onset of dementia. The stories of the early phase of care convey a sense of becoming unsettled in two ways. The first concerns habitual ways of being together. A couple who lives together for years, sometimes decades, accumulates knowledge of each other’s characters, habits, personality and ways of doing things. In addition, they establish conventions and rules for how things are done in the household and how partners may treat each other (Smart & Neale 1999:69; cf. Wetherell 2012:121–122, 129). The interviewees’ narratives reflect the breakdown of habitual ways of being and living together in various ways. Kaarina, a woman aged 66, describes how, in addition to paying attention to what she calls ‘small oddities’, she noticed how her husband began to ‘vanish’. She refers to his changing embodied appearance: ‘it was very rare that he had any expression on his face any more’, she recalls. For Helena, a 65-year-old woman, the most upsetting disruption had been her husband’s changing personality: he got angry more often than before, and he was easily irritated. And of course I didn’t know that he was sick, he hadn’t been diagnosed yet, so I yelled and gave him orders and threw tantrums. I often found myself shouting at him: ‘what the heck are [you] doing!’

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The interviewees’ narratives express the growing puzzlement and distress they sometimes sense in their bodies. Ulla, for example, tells how she used to – and sometimes still does – experience palpitations if her partner did not follow her instructions. Secondly, the balance of power within the couple’s relationship becomes unsettled. The power balance is challenged by the partner’s care need, which is not yet perceived as a care need. Awareness arises as a feeling of worry or irritation over the partner’s actions or appearance. Soile, a 66-year-old woman, recalls those early days: It was about that time I first got nervous [shows a photo of a middle-aged man with an expressionless face]. I guess we both thought that he had cancer because he had begun to lose weight. [. . .] I didn’t notice it because he had always eaten in the evening, and I had eaten in the morning. And we were both of mature age when we got together, so there was no reason to change our habits. So it took a while until it dawned on me that he was losing weight because he had stopped eating. We went to the grocer’s together, but I didn’t always pay attention to what he bought. Soile’s story illustrates how the need for care disrupts the couple’s status quo. Needing help to fulfil such basic needs as eating implies dependence on another person (Wærness 1984). This unbalances the relationship between spouses and creates tension. For Soile to become aware of her husband’s care need, she has to pay attention to him in ways that can be regarded as intrusive. Through their rising worry and irritation, the interviewees slowly become aware of what is happening in their lives. Growing unsettlement is actually the first step towards the affective practice of caring, as it contributes to one’s becoming aware of the partner’s care need. The balance of power begins to shift and creates tension in their everyday dealings. Those tensions intensify when the caregivers begin to take more conscious actions to help.

Settling into the affective practice of caring In the next phase of the story, interviewees discuss the difficulties after they finally become aware that the partner is in fact sick and in need of help. At this point, the caregivers attempt to interfere in their spouses’ personal affairs in various ways. David Conradson (2003:508) has suggested caring should be conceived as the caregiver’s movement towards the one needing care in response to rising need. In light of this idea, I interpret interfering in the partner’s personal affairs as an attempt to move towards the care need. However, at this point, these efforts are hesitant and illegitimate, as they question the partner’s authority as an independent adult. As Soile puts it: ‘I’m not used to giving care to adults, but when I noticed the situation, I tried to begin to give care’.

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This phase of the story reflects the difficulties in altering the habits and conventions of a couple relationship. The inability to move generates frustration. Pentti, a man aged 70, describes this situation: she has changed little by little, but she resists and says, ‘I don’t have this disease. I don’t want to have this disease!’ Then you get this terrible feeling. [. . .] How will we manage and live with this thing? Pentti’s account of his wife’s unwillingness to comply with the identity of a person with a serious illness illustrates how the affective practice of caring involves both parties of the relationship. Coming to terms with long-term care needs is not only about changing the caregivers’ mindset. Responding to the care need requires that the partner, at least to some degree, consents to the sick role in everyday dealings and interactions. Yet complying with the sick role can be threatening because it questions one’s authority over one’s own life. The early stage of dementia can be a confusing and frightening experience as one slowly loses control over mundane and obvious matters. The difficulties in moving towards the care need do not arise exclusively from the partner’s resistance. They also connect to how interfering in the partner’s decision-making means contravening the norm according to which adults usually perform certain activities independently. As such, the source of the difficulties can be found in the caregivers’ attempts to cross the boundaries of acceptable treatment of one’s partner. These boundaries are set by discourses that stipulate what two adults, even those who share an intimate relationship, should do for each other (Parker 1993). Deciding on behalf of another person about matters such as eating, sleeping and visiting the doctor questions the partner’s authority and independence in matters usually understood as each adult’s own responsibility. Yet needing care inevitably means that one is, to an extent, incapable of caring independently for oneself (Isaksen 2002; Twigg 2000). As the caregivers engage with the affective practice of caring, they find themselves manoeuvring through these conflicting discourses. Here it is evident how the sentient and the discursive intertwine in the practice of caring (Wetherell 2012, 2015). In the interviewees’ accounts, the conflict often culminates in attempts to get the partner to agree to go to the doctor. For example, when 59-year-old Kristiina, whose husband has Alzheimer’s disease, first suggests going to the doctor and having a memory test, her husband becomes angry and accuses her of treating him as a ‘lunatic’. Attempting to interfere in one’s partner’s affairs is questionable in the context of a couple relationship. Once the caregiving partners perceive themselves and their partners in the context of a care relationship, however, they find it easier to make decisions and act in certain ways in relation to the partner. Helena’s remark illustrates this transition: There was a time when I said to him that because you’re so mean, and you do all these nasty things, I do not want to grow old with you. You can live your

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life as you will, and I will leave and be on my own. I felt sad that it would all end like that. But then fortunately, he got the diagnosis that he had dementia. [. . .] You should not get stuck in thinking and insisting that you have a spouse. You won’t cope that way. I wouldn’t have coped that way. Perceiving the relationship as a care relationship enables one to tolerate behaviour that does not comply with the ideal of how spouses should treat each other. This is illustrated in Helena’s account of how the threat of divorce is dissolved with the diagnosis. Perceiving the relationship as a care relationship also enables one to undertake actions that would be (morally) questionable in the context of a couple relationship. Kristiina, for example, states that she tells ‘white lies’ to keep her husband calm. She states that it is acceptable to lie to him now that he is sick, whereas earlier in the relationship, honesty was a given.

Getting in and out of the nurse’s dress The interviewees’ accounts of how they come to care for their partners communicate a change in their understanding of their partners, themselves and their relationship. In many ways, the change entails letting go of the expectations and conventions of a couple relationship. In the caregivers’ narratives, this change is seen as a necessary condition for assuming responsibility for the partner’s care. As part of this responsibility, the caregivers pursue affective states that they consider appropriate and compatible with the purposes of caring, such as patience, tenderness and calmness. For example, Helena, who has attended a course on how to interact with a person with dementia, talks about the importance of her voice: [tone of voice] is one of the most important things. If I’m tired, and I say something with a snappy tone of voice, he flinches. So irritation is really contagious. It is something that you really have to try to get out of your system. Similarly, Kristiina says that she tries to ‘keep her mouth shut’ and Oili that she attempts to ‘swallow her anger’ in order not to show their irritation to their respective husbands. Both expressions refer to concealing feelings of anger from the partner by managing one’s appearance. Moreover, the interviewees reflect on the connection between their inner state and communicating with their partners. Kristiina and Ulla, for example, both ponder in the interviews how they feel that they should use more touching to calm their husbands down, but they find it difficult if they feel irritated. Ulla says that if she is in a ‘very good mood’, then she might go and hug her husband. These difficulties illustrate how the shift to a care relationship does not mean a complete break with life as a couple. Although managing one’s emotions and affective expressions is important in the caregivers’ everyday lives, they do not transform into ideal types of caregivers who have no feelings of their own. Even if the interviewees to some extent come to terms with their partners’ constant need

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for monitoring and care, they still occasionally struggle with feelings of sadness, irritation and anger while relating to their partners. Here we return to the metaphor of the nurse’s dress. In Kristiina’s account, the dress is not on constantly. The way she slips in and out of the dress illustrates how the practice of caring is never completed. Instead, the continuous pursuit of certain affective states is an important part of the caring practice. In these pursuits, the bodily appearance of the partner is also important. Some interviewees find it difficult to maintain the idea that the partner really is sick and in need of care if their partner’s physical appearance remains untouched by dementia. For example, Kristiina connects her ‘uncaring’ feelings, such as anger, with difficulties in perceiving her husband as sick: I tend to lose my temper, and then I curse and shout. Because the thing is, he appears physically as if he is okay. It’s hard to get it in your head that he’s sick. Then you just throw a tantrum at him. I don’t know how to get into the thought that he really isn’t all right because he looks all right. I think it would be easier if he had something more visible. So far, I have considered the shifting power balance in the relationship as if a couple relationship were a relationship of two equals to start with. That, of course, is not always – if ever – the case. For example, Oili, an 82-year-old woman, describes having suffered psychological abuse from her husband throughout her marriage. She has stayed in the marriage out of a sense of duty and attachment that has deepened over the years, despite the abusive elements. She reflects that her husband’s dementia has turned the power balance upside down. Finally, she is the one capable of hurting her husband, who is now helpless and dependent on her: OILI: 

I’ve thought about how this ambivalence in our marriage might be reflected in the caring relationship. This is what I have been thinking. We have all these difficulties, and they can be reflected in the caring work. But I don’t know – I have tried being patient with him, but still I’m afraid that it might be reflected. ME:  What do you mean, that they might be reflected? OILI:  Well, I mean that I would never – I’m afraid that if I sometimes flare up so badly, that I might do something, hurt him. This is what I’m afraid of. But I haven’t flared up. Oili’s story illustrates that the past weaves into the affective practice of care in complex ways. Here the past creates an unstable – even threatening – foundation for caring. In situations like these, the caring practice requires careful balancing between providing care and giving treatment that can be close to mistreatment or abuse (cf. Twigg 2000). Oili’s story shows how, even though the affective practice of caring becomes more settled over time, unbalanced power remains a central dynamic of the affective practice of caring in some ways. In situations like that

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described by Oili, this dynamic can become a source of affective inequality for both parties in the relationship.

Conclusions In this chapter, I have analysed activities and tensions in the process of a couple relationship becoming a care relationship. Focusing on caring as affective practice in the early phase of care, I have found that a central tension arises from the shifting power dynamics in the intimate relationship. To respond to the partner’s care need requires exercising power in ways that differ from both the ideals and the lived realities of a couple relationship. The caregivers find themselves manoeuvring through conflicting discourses that set limits on how partners should treat each other. Finding a resolution of this tension by conceiving of the relationship as a care relationship makes it easier for the caregivers to find appropriate sentient, emotional and embodied responses to the partner’s care need. Yet, even after this initial resolution, it seems that affective inequality remains an integral underlying tension, constantly waiting to be resolved in everyday encounters with the partner. Based on my analysis, I suggest that the concept of affective practice is especially useful in research concerned with the everyday lives of older couples. This is because the concept of affective practice opens a view on how personal, sentient, thinking and feeling involvement in providing care are entangled with discourses that regulate appropriate involvement (Wetherell 2012). The concept also captures the ambivalences of power relations inherent in the caring practice. By offering an account of caring as affective practice, this chapter contributes to calls for conceptual approaches with which to shed light on care from a non-idealizing perspective, acknowledging the complex dynamics of power in care (Dominelli & Gollins 1997; Kelly 2017; Lynch et al. 2009; Milne & Larkin 2015:8; Simplican 2015; Twigg 2000). The concept of affective practice offers one way forward to analyse care in intimate relationships without losing sight of societal power. This study raises concerns about how inequality is mediated affectively in the context of informal care and intimate relationships. These concerns relate to how and why older couples end up in informal care situations, and whether they have the opportunity to arrange long-term care in other ways. In Finland, as in many other mature welfare states, the restructuring of public elder care services over the past thirty years has increasingly returned responsibility for care to families (Kröger & Leinonen 2012). In the absence of affordable and reliable care services, couples and families may have no choice but to arrange care informally at home. Yet forced care creates a hazard situation for both caregivers and care receivers. Intense neediness and vulnerability affect intimate relationships in ways that can sometimes be erratic, inflicting tensions that cannot be completely avoided in even the most harmonious relationships. Unresolved issues from the past may create hazard situations for care, as illustrated in this chapter. Forced care is a significant form of affective inequality for both parties in the intimate relationship. At worst, the caregiver’s suffering in providing care might contribute to abuse and

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violence towards the care receiver. Presently the issue of violence and abuse in care policy remains completely unacknowledged, at least in Finland. This study raises a concern about the trend towards formalizing informal care. Currently, informal care is becoming increasingly formalized as European welfare states continue to introduce schemes to support informal carers (Ungerson & Yeandle 2007). In addition to government action, informal carers’ organizations have become important in arranging peer support. There are positive elements in these trends: for example, through public support the gendered nature of previously hidden and undervalued informal care work, mainly performed by women, becomes increasingly acknowledged. Yet these tendencies also carry elements that might become a source of affective inequality. Both government action to support informal care and peer activity contribute to growing awareness, norms and standards of what it means to be a good carer (Heaton 1999; Pickard 2010; Winch 2006). This chapter has demonstrated how such personal matters as using one’s voice may become an object of self-reflection and self-regulation as part of the affective practice of caring. It is worth considering what kinds of norms about good care are reasonable, so as not to add extra pressure in a demanding life situation. Furthermore, more research is needed to shed light on the consequences of the increasingly formalized informal care for everyday experiences, practices and intimate relationships. Approaching care as affective practice might be useful in future research, as this concept directly addresses the interplay of sentient, personal and intimate elements in care as they become entwined with discourses and societal power.

Note 1 All the names have been changed to protect the interviewees’ anonymity. This work has been funded by the Academy of Finland project Insurance and the Problem of Insecurity (grant number 283447) and Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland project Dwellers in Agile Cities (grant number 303481).

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Slipping into ‘that nurse’s dress’  107 Graham, H., 1983, ‘Caring: A labour of love’, in J. Finch & D. Groves (eds.), A labour of love: Women, work and caring, pp. 13–30, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Hamington, M., 2004, Embodied care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and feminist ethics, University of Illinois, Urbana & Chicago. Harper, D., 2002, ‘Talking about pictures: A case for photo elicitation’, Visual Studies 17(1), 13–26. Heaton, J., 1999, ‘The gaze and visibility of the carer: A Foucauldian analysis of the discourse of informal care’, Sociology of Health & Illness 21(6), 759–777. Hochschild, A.R., 1983, The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling, University of California Press, Berkeley. Isaksen, W.L., 2002, ‘Towards a sociology of (gendered) disgust: Images of bodily decay and the social organization of care work’, Journal of Family Issues 23(7), 791–811. James, N., 1992, ‘Care = organisation + physical labour + emotional labour’, Sociology of Health & Illness 14(4), 488–509. Kelly, C., 2017, ‘Care and violence through the lens of personal support workers’, International Journal of Care and Caring 1(1), 97–113. Kröger, T. & Leinonen, A., 2012, ‘Transformation by stealth: The retargeting of home care services in Finland’, Health and Social Care in the Community 20(3), 319–327. Lee-Treweek, G., 1996, ‘Emotion work, order, and emotional power in care assistant work’, in V. James & J. Gabe (eds.), Health and the sociology of emotions, pp. 115–132, Blackwell, Oxford. Lynch, K., Lyons, M. & Cantillon, S., 2009, ‘Love labouring: Power and mutuality’, in K. Lynch, J. Baker & M. Lyons (eds.), Affective equality: Love, care and injustice, pp. 114– 131, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills. Mason, J., 1996, ‘Gender, care and sensibility in family and kin relationships’, in J. Holland & L. Adkins (eds.), Sex, sensibility, and the gendered body, pp. 15–36, Macmillan, Houndmills. Mason, J. & Davies, K., 2009, ‘Coming to our senses? A critical approach to sensory methodology’, Qualitative Research 9(5), 587–603. McNay, L., 2004, ‘Agency and experience: Gender as lived relation’, Sociological Review 52(2), 175–190. Milne, A. & Larkin, M., 2015, ‘Knowledge generation about care-giving in the UK: A critical review of research paradigms’, Health and Social Care in the Community 23(1), 4–13. Parker, G., 1993, With this body: Caring and disability in marriage, Open University Press, Buckingham. Pickard, S., 2010, ‘The “good carer”: Moral practices in late modernity’, Sociology 44(3), 471–487. Polkinghorne, D.E., 1995, ‘Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis’, in J.A. Hatch & R. Wisniewski (eds.), Life history and narrative, pp. 5–23, Falmer Press, London. Schatzki, T.R., 2001, ‘Introduction’, in T.R. Schatzki, K. Knorr-Cetina & E. Von Savigny (eds.), The practice turn in contemporary theory, pp. 10–23, Routledge, London. Schillmeier, M., 2009, ‘Actor-networks of dementia’, in J. Latimer & M. Schillmeier (eds.), Un/knowing bodies, pp. 141–158, Blackwell, Malden. Simplican, S.C., 2015, ‘Care, disability, and violence: Theorizing complex dependency in Eva Kittay and Judith Butler’, Hypatia 30(1), 217–233. Skeggs, B., 1997, Formations of class and gender, Sage, London.

108  Liina Sointu Smart, C., 2007, Personal life: New directions in sociological thinking, Polity Press, Cambridge. Smart, C. & Neale, B., 1999, Family fragments? Polity Press, Cambridge. Sointu, L., 2016, Hoiva suhteessa: Tutkimus puolisoaan hoivaavien arjesta [Care in a relationship: A  study of everyday lives of informal care], Tampere University Press, Tampere. Thomas, C., Morris, S.M. & Harman, J.C., 2002, ‘Companions through cancer: The care given by informal carers in cancer contexts’, Social Science & Medicine 54(4), 529–544. Twigg, J., 2000, Bathing: The body and community care, Routledge, London. Twigg, J., Wolkowitz, C., Cohen, R. & Nettleton, S., 2011, ‘Conceptualising body work in health and social care’, Sociology of Health and Illness 33(2), 171–188. Ungerson, C. & Yeandle, S. (eds.), 2007, Cash for care in developed welfare states, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills. Wærness, K., 1984, ‘The rationality of caring’, Economic and Industrial Democracy 5(2), 185–211. Wetherell, M., 2012, Affect and emotion: A  new social science understanding, Sage, London. Wetherell, M., 2015, ‘Tears, bubbles and disappointment – New approaches for the analysis of affective-discursive practices: A commentary on “Researching the Psychosocial” ’, Journal of Qualitative Research in Psychology 12(1), 83–90. Winch, S., 2006, ‘Constructing a morality of caring: Codes and values in Australian carer discourse’, Nursing Ethics 13(1), 5–16.

Chapter 7

When death cuts apart On affective difference, compassionate companionship and lesbian widowhood Nina Lykke

What does it mean to become a lesbian widow and to lose a partner with whom you have been corpo-affectively entangled for decades?1 Which corpo-affectivities are involved? These are the questions addressed in this chapter. My empirical focus is a specific case. I unfold my reflections on compassionate companionship and affective difference when death cuts companions apart against the background of my own story of the loss of my long-term lesbian partner, who died from cancer some years ago after four years of illness. Against this background, I am committed to a discussion of affective difference in intimate relationships, brought about when dying and death are cutting partners apart. What I will discuss is the existential difference that is created by transformations beyond human control. The lens is a notion of compassionate companionship. I use this as a queer resistance to the notion of a ‘relative’, which, in discourses of healthcare systems, is the standard term for accompanying persons in ‘the kingdom of the sick’ and ‘dying’ (Rieff 2008; Sontag 1991), i.e. persons who follow intimate relations into these gloomy communities, while not (yet) belonging there themselves. ‘Relative’ is traditionally associated with a relation defined by either biological kinship or heterosexual partnership, and the terminology often works normatively and exclusionarily vis-à-vis queer partners. With the notion of ‘compassionate companionship’, I reframe the notion of ‘relative’, both queering and posthumanizing it.2 In queering the notion of ‘relative’, I align my analysis with this volume’s broad and inclusive definition of intimate relationships. At the same time, I posthumanize the concept by paying special attention to corpo-affective dimensions and to processes of bodily becoming that extend into the more-than-human world. From a point of departure in a Spinozist-Deleuzian and feminist–materialist framework, I discuss the entangled, but existentially different, corpo-affective processes in which companions become involved when one of them is in a process of becoming-widow, while the other is entering a process of becoming-corpse and becoming-imperceptible (Deleuze 1988). The analysis is part of a more comprehensive research project on queer widowhood, mourning, death and dying. The method that I use in this overall project – and

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adopt here – is autophenomenography (Allen-Collinson 2009, 2010), i.e. autoethnography with a phenomenological approach in which bodily relations and affective intensities are given central attention. My autophenomenographic research is based on a book-length collection of narrative and poetic texts on compassionate companionship, death and dying, which I wrote as part of mourning my partner’s death (Lykke, forthcoming). Grounded in an understanding of writing as a method of inquiry (Richardson 2000), I use this autobiographical collection of texts as material for a rethinking and reontologizing of the corpo-affectivities of death, dying and widowhood within a framework of theories of affect (Massumi 2015), philosophies of immanence (Deleuze 1988; Deleuze & Guattari 1988; Spinoza 1996) and feminist neovitalist materialism (Bennett 2010; Braidotti 2006). The material I shall explore consists of excerpts from my autobiographical collection. The chapter starts with three excerpts from my much longer autobiographical text, addressing the compassionate companionship between my partner and me, and the affective differences that emerged when she was about to die. Secondly, I introduce the notion of compassionate companionship, through which I theorize my relation to my dying and dead partner. Thirdly, with my notion of compassionate companionship as frame, I analyse the text excerpts with a focus on the use of the pronouns ‘I/you/we’, spelling out both the existential corpo-affective differences at stake in the texts and the ways in which these differences are performed against the background of the strong corpo-affective entanglement of my partner and me. In the conclusion, I summarize my reflections on compassionate companionship and the ways in which they are aligned with key issues addressed in this volume. I ask for a critical rethinking of the notion of affective inequalities from the perspective of affective difference implied in an ethics of non-hierarchical difference (Braidotti 1994).

Excerpts from Nina Lykke, Laments (forthcoming, unpublished manuscript) Sorrowful pleasures Three weeks before you died, you got the idea that we should go on a weekend trip to Copenhagen to have dinner at Alberto K, a gourmet restaurant located on the 20th floor, with a view over the whole city. More than a month earlier, the hospital had given us a final prognosis: ‘Between two weeks and two months!’ So we both knew that the end was close. You were physically very weak and could not walk without someone helping you. You were also using an oxygen apparatus 24 hours a day due to a chronic lack of breath. When you suggested the weekend in Copenhagen and the dinner at Alberto K, I could not help thinking that it was impossible. However, when I understood that you meant it very seriously, and that you were really keen to do it, I first became terribly stressed. How could I make sure that you would not get too cold during the approximately two-hour-long drive to Copenhagen, putting you at risk of catching pneumonia, which in your

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extremely weakened condition could easily kill you? What if I had to change the cylinder of the oxygen apparatus in the emergency lane of the highway, while the cold January wind filled the car, increasing the risk of pneumonia even more? Would you be able to sit in a restaurant where there might be no really comfortable chairs? Thousands of worried thoughts rushed through my head. But in the middle of all my worries, your resilient appetite for life and pleasure, even in these gloomy times, made me enormously happy. To go for a weekend like this is something we have loved to do together for many years. And now, you wanted us to do it again. Enjoy life together. Don’t let cancer and death block the pleasure. Just go ahead. What could prevent us from doing this but my fear of all the things that might happen? But why let fear reign? You were not afraid. It became an unforgettable evening. It was, of course, evident to everyone in the restaurant how ill you were. Thin as skin and bones. With a bandana around your bald crown. Supported by a cane and by my body, you walked, bowed, into the restaurant with the breathing apparatus in your nose – I carried the big oxygen cylinder in a shoulder bag. The waiters bustled about us, politely and professionally keeping up the illusion that this was a totally ordinary restaurant visit. Did we want to start with an aperitif? And so on. We ordered fish and a bottle of the finest vintage champagne, the most expensive one we have ever bought in a restaurant. The city lights beamed up against us, while we slowly enjoyed the champagne and the fish. I no longer remember what we talked about. But lucidly clear is the feeling of sitting up there on the 20th floor together with you, my love, while, in a growing champagne ecstasy, we observed how the different neighbourhoods of the city unfolded themselves in front of our eyes – the city in which we had both lived for many years during our childhood and youth. To become a powerless prosthesis One morning, exactly a week before you died, you could no longer walk down the staircase from our bedroom to the living room. For several weeks, I had had to support you heavily, when walking up and down the staircase to the bedroom, morning and evening. You leaned upon me so that I could free you of part of your own body weight, which, even though you were now only skin and bones, was nevertheless too heavy for you in your weakened and cancer-starved condition. However, with my support, you had until now been able to laboriously climb up and down the stairs, one step at a time, and your resilient will and perseverance prompted you to never give up. It had always been easier for you to climb down than up the stairs. When going down, it was not only the support from my body which had made it easier for you to move your feet from step to step, but also the pull of gravity. But this morning, one week before you died, the pull on your legs, generated by gravity, instead made you lose your balance. Your legs were so weak now that you could not control your feet as each in turn lost touch with the firm surface of a step in order to move to the next one right below. Each foot now just fell like a stone when you

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moved it out into the void between the steps, and the fall made your whole body waver dangerously. At the beginning of this slow, wavering and laborious journey downstairs from step to step, I succeeded in supporting you enough for your body not to completely lose its balance. But when we still had the last four or five steps to go, your knees suddenly collapsed under you, you lost your balance completely and fell, slipping down a couple of steps without me being able to do anything except somewhat mitigate the fall by helping you to sit down on the last step. But then you sat there, stuck. For a long, long time after this – I think an hour or so went by – we both worked hard to get you to stand on your legs in an upright position, so that we could continue our walk to your big armchair in the living room, so close, and yet so far away. But you could not get up by yourself, and your body was much too heavy for me to lift you to your feet. We tried to get you up on a kitchen chair, which I had brought to the stair where you were sitting now, stuck, in the hope that we could get you from there into a standing position. But, for a very long time, we could not even get you up on this chair. At first, you sat on the last step of the staircase. Later you slipped down to the floor, while we both worked hard and desperately to find ways to jointly succeed in getting you up on the kitchen chair. I no longer remember what it was that, finally, enabled us to manage it, and from there got you to stand up so that, supported by me, you could walk the few remaining steps to your armchair. But I do very clearly remember the feelings of powerlessness and grief. Your feeling of powerlessness and grief that you were no longer capable of controlling your legs. And my feeling of powerlessness and grief that your body was much too heavy for me to be able to help you to stand up, when you did not have any strength in your legs or arms to help me lift you. Why had the cancer made your long, strong, beautiful, and until now very fit legs powerless and useless? Why had my body been transformed from capable to an incapable prosthesis? Tears 1. You burst into tears once when listening to Kathleen Ferrier singing Orpheus’ lament to Eurydice, his despairing cry ‘Eurydice, Eurydice!’ You burst into tears for the deep wound you knew that your death would leave in me, your beloved.

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You burst into tears for the abyss of grief into which you knew you would throw both me and your children, when leaving us. You could not bear the thought of the unending sorrow you could not help inflicting upon us, whom you loved most of all. You could not bear the thought that there was nothing you could do to relieve our pain. You heard us calling you in vain: ‘Eurydice, Eurydice!’ and it filled you with an immense sorrow that it was not in your power to comfort us. 2. We cried together, each time the cancer relapsed. We cried together, as long as there was hope that it could be stopped. We cried together the day we got the message that there was no hope left. I knelt by your chair sobbing with my head in your lap. You caressed my head carefully. I clutched your hands. ‘Eurydice, Eurydice!’ 3. From time to time I also cried alone, without your eyes upon me. I saw your gaze full of sorrow, as you mourned the loss of the life, you loved, mourned the relentless

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decay of your body, mourned having to leave us, your loved ones, with our grief at losing you. But you refused to let yourself be absorbed by sorrow. ‘Enough! There is too much snivelling here!’ you said, when we had cried together for some time. Instead I cried behind your back, my love, hid my tears from you. Perhaps you also hid yours from me? I sobbed and sobbed, because I was going to lose you, because I saw your immense sorrow, because I could not the bear the grief that was in you, in me, between us. 4. ‘Eurydice, Eurydice!’ I cried out in the days, weeks, months and years after your death, throwing myself sobbing against the accursed wall that now separated us, and only returned the echo of my voice, ‘Eury-Eurydice!’ My hands bled from hammering against the wall, tears blinded my eyes, so that I could not clearly see if the wall dissolved, and if you really walked behind me on the way out of the land of death. 5. Now I miss the wild crying, the all-consuming grief. Tears as cloudburst, opening all locks of heaven. Tears as fine drops,

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rolling incessantly down my cheeks. Tears like pounding November rain, cutting my skin, relentlessly. I miss the sobbing that bursts from the body with strangling power, that cannot be suppressed, the sobbing that rises in spasms from the diaphragm, breaking its way through the chest like an avalanche roaring upwards, the sobbing, which explodes from the throat in gasping cries. 6. When the crying stopped, and the tears dried up, I was mired in sadness and gloom. You were with me when I cried, my sobbing called you to life as an intensely present absence. Now, when I no longer cry you are really gone. Imperceptible. Vanished. But I will not let you go. You must not leave me like this. Stay with me! Dwell close to me! I want to feel you here! So let me keep the tears! Give the mourning back to me! Reawaken my sobbing!

Compassionate companionship As a frame for the analysis of these text excerpts, I shall introduce the notion of compassionate companionship. I begin with the Collins English Dictionary (n.d.), which defines companionship as ‘having someone you know and like with you, instead of being on your own’. I start from this open-ended dictionary definition because it can encompass many different kinds of personal relations, conventional

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heterosexual and queer relations, human and non-human ones. In line with Donna Haraway (2008), I prioritize a definition which includes non-human companions and thus disrupts an understanding of the term as an exceptionally human affair. However, my main focus here is on two other issues, underscored by the dictionary definition. Firstly, a companion is someone you know and like; i.e. there is a personal bond between you and your companion. Your relationship is defined by friendship, love or other positive feelings of mutual attachment. This is what creates the bond. In accordance with this definition, merely professional relations cannot be defined as companionship. You can have a more than professional relationship with, for example, colleagues or business partners. But, in such cases, the companionship consists of that which is in excess of the professional relations. Secondly, in the dictionary definition, a companion is someone who is with you. You can be with people and other beings in many ways, of course. You may have a distant friend living far away from you, but you and this friend can still be companions when the bond between you is intensely alive and you feel close even though physically far away from each other. Against this background, I  shall define a relation of companionship as based on a personal bond of love, friendship or other positive attachments, implying mutuality in terms of an active commitment to a being-for and a being-with each other. In this sense, companionship is a deeply affective relation, which I understand along the lines of the Spinozist tradition, as revived by Gilles Deleuze (1988), Rosi Braidotti (2006) and Brian Massumi (2015) and also discussed by Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (2010:6–7). Affect and affectivity are here to be understood as linked to what bodies do and can do in a relational sense, i.e. to the ways in which bodies affect and are affected within a framework of events and encounters with other bodies. Within this framework, companionship is understood as being made up of a series of micro events within everyday life which imply embodied encounters between the companions. Companionship, based on friendship and/or love, can entail all kinds of bodily encounters, including sexual ones. When the companionship is a long-term relation of love and friendship, it can, I suggest, generate a corpo-affective attunement, an intense sensitivity to the other’s body and affective condition, based on what the philosopher Ralph Acampora (2006:76), in a Spinozist sense, called symphysis. Acampora suggests symphysis as an embodied rethinking of the notion of sympathy, stressing the component of corpo-affectivity, i.e. underscoring that this is not only a question of feeling for and caring about the other, but also implying that the subject, in a material, corpo-affective sense, is affected by and co-experiences the ways in which hir significant others are bodily affected. Horror movies build on this aspect of corpo-affective co-experiencing or vicariously experiencing: your heart beats faster and your stomach clenches when the person on screen is threatened. Translating symphysis into a verb form, symphysizing, I stress that the bonding between companions builds on bodily, corpo-affective processes. Moreover, I suggest that

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close, long-term and intimate companionships of love and/or friendship can create bonds that continuously materialize a mutual corpo-affective co-experiencing, i.e. a generation of vicarious experiences related to the intimate companion’s experiences. Secondly, against the background of the dictionary definition, I  also want to underscore that companionship must involve an important dimension of active striving, a will and desire to accompany the other in terms of a being-with and a being-for. In committing themselves to a mutual companionship, the companions act on their desire to accompany and be accompanied by each other, striving to materialize their desire to be with each other in the sense of the dictionary definition, which also implies a striving to be for the other. To be with the companion presupposes that you try to keep track of where this companion is located. To enact this being-with as a simultaneous being-for this other in the sense of not just coincidentally being in the same place, physically or symbolically, but also striving to actively materialize a mutually willed, desired and wished-for accompanying, the companions will need to try to symphysize corpo-affectively and subjectively with each other’s needs and desires, and to be actively prepared to support and help each other when needed. From the definition of companionship, I turn to the adjective: compassionate. According to Dictionary.com (n.d.), ‘compassion’ is ‘a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering’. Compassion implies both a relation of entanglement in terms of being deeply corpo-affectively involved with another being, and a situation in which this other is suffering in some way, and in which your commitment includes a strong desire to alleviate hir suffering. This scenario also implies that the companions are located in existentially different positions. One partner, partner A, is suffering – for example, from a serious illness. The other partner, partner B, is addressing the suffering of partner A and thus engaging in a kind of co-suffering, i.e. showing compassion. By this, I mean that the compassionate individual, partner B, is empathizing and symphysizing with partner A’s suffering, but not suffering in the same way hirself. The target of alleviation of partner B is partner A’s suffering, not hir own. In this sense, the term ‘compassion’ introduces an asymmetrical relation of difference in what is, at least potentially, an equal situation of companionship. It is this asymmetry to which I am referring when I suggest that the term co-suffering, referring to partner B, should be distinguished from the suffering of partner A, the individual to whom partner B as companion has a relation of compassion.

Suffering and co-suffering/compassion The distinction between suffering and co-suffering, which I make as part of defining the notions of compassion and compassionate companionship, means neither that the compassionate individual, partner B, is not suffering, nor that co-suffering cannot be as corpo-affectively intense as suffering. Finally, it does not exclude

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the possibility that the partner who is suffering, for example from illness, i.e. partner A, is also compassionately co-suffering with hir compassionate companion’s, partner B’s, suffering. There is no hierarchy of pain and suffering involved in the distinction, only non-hierarchical difference (Braidotti 1994). The point I am making with this distinction between suffering and compassion/co-suffering is that the relationship between the positions involved is asymmetrical and existentially different, and for ethical reasons they should not be collapsed into one another. Let me briefly illustrate this. My long-term partner died after four years of struggling with cancer. When speaking of her suffering, I am referring to the ways in which the cancer took a fierce toll on her body, as well as to the pain and sadness she felt when, towards the end, she was told that she had only ‘between two weeks and two months’ left to live. She deeply mourned the prospect of losing her life and the capabilities of her body. As her lifelong partner, companion, lover and friend, I was totally immersed in both the physical and symbolic aspects of my partner’s suffering. Both plunged me into a deeply corpo-affective state of co-suffering, which the above definition of compassion grasps well, including as it does a deeply felt, corpo-affectively grounded desire to do everything possible to alleviate the suffering of my partner. This part of my suffering was corpo-affectively absorbing and profound. It prompted me to work hard to take care of my partner when the illness stole more and more of her strength and power to take care of herself. The situations in which I could not help her also caused me to suffer deeply, as exemplified in the second narrative text above, where I try to act as a prosthetic for my partner when she can barely use her legs any more. But I define all this as co-suffering or compassion. My concern here was my partner’s suffering, not my own. What was at stake for me was the concern generated by co-experiencing, a vicarious experiencing, of my partner’s suffering, and a desire to alleviate it. However, I shall now make the picture yet more complex and draw attention to other dimensions that also need to be taken into account. Alongside her own suffering, my partner was also co-suffering with my (and her children’s) immense sorrow at the prospect of losing her, and a parallel complexity applied to me. I was not only co-suffering with my partner. I also mourned my own process of becoming-widow. I shall discuss the complicating aspects of our companionship below, through analyses of the autobiographical texts.

I/you/we With my definition of compassionate companionship in place, I now turn to the analysis of the text excerpts. I focus on the use of pronouns, which articulate the ways in which the corpo-affectivities of my partner and me are attuned but are also becoming cut apart. The situations of corpo-affective attunement are characterized by the ‘we’ form, while I articulate the cutting apart by positioning myself as an ‘I’ vis-à-vis a ‘you’. What interests me here is the existential difference articulated in the ‘I/you’ situations. However, the attunement that appears in the

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‘we’ situations should also be noticed as a backdrop for the cutting apart happening in the ‘I/you’ situations. Let me take a closer look at these complexities. In the ‘we (us)’ situations, the wilfulness and corpo-affective desires of my partner and me to enact our companionship of being-with and being-for each other come together. The first narrative text, about a trip to Copenhagen to dine at a restaurant a few weeks before my partner died, provides a snapshot of one of the ways in which, despite the gloomy circumstances, we tried until the very end to establish momentary spaces of joy and pleasure around us. The second narrative text gives a glimpse of the innumerable ways in which, towards the end of my partner’s life, when she was very physically weakened by the cancer, we worked hard to jointly find ways to get her body to perform a minimum of everyday routines, such as walking up and down the stairs between our bedroom and living room. This work gave us both an empowered feeling of still being able, in spite of approaching death, to enact our everyday life together. Finally, the few ‘we’ situations of the poem ‘Tears’ account for some of our many shared moments of mourning at the approaching becoming cut apart by death. By contrast to the coming together of our corpo-affective desires and wilfulness in the ‘we’ situations, the ‘I/you’ situations articulate existential corpo-affective difference. They spell out how my partner and I were thrown into processes of being cut apart by material existential forces beyond human control. My partner’s cancerdeath could not be prevented by any biomedical interventions, although we kept looking for new treatment options. By the time addressed in these narrative texts, the doctors had given up. All they could offer now were palliative measures to alleviate pain and make death as easy as possible. My partner’s closeness to death as an unavoidable condition of existence was relentlessly making our corpoaffective situations radically different: I was close to her death, but not to my own. A key concept in my analysis of the different strivings articulated in the narrative texts is conatus. This is the philosopher Benedict de Spinoza’s (1996:75) term for the dynamic endeavours of all bodies and matter to persevere. Firstly, the strivings, articulated by the ‘we’ situations of the narrative texts, aim to counteract the becoming-different and to sustain my partner’s endeavours to persevere. But secondly, at the same time, the conatus of the cancer cells, their striving to persevere, is about to overpower the conatus of the parts of my partner’s body that are still working to keep her alive. The relentlessly proceeding effects of this process of overpowering, generated by the conatus of the proliferating cancer cells, threw my partner and me into different processes of becoming – her becoming-imperceptible and becomingcorpse, and my becoming-widow. This unavoidable becoming-different implied that our individual suffering and our compassionate co-suffering for each other’s suffering were taking off in different directions. The ‘I/you’ situations in the second narrative text and in the poem articulate this in various ways. In the first narrative text, the ‘I/you’ perspective of affective difference is introduced through my many worries about driving to Copenhagen with my very ill partner. I overcome these worries, and, in the end, we become corpo-affectively

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attuned again as a ‘we’. In the second narrative text, the differences are exposed in terms of a textual ‘I’ doing care work, making its body into a prosthesis for the extremely cancer-weakened body of the textual ‘you’. The text recounts the traumatic moment of breakdown of the prosthetic function of my body – i.e. the moment when the cancer cells’ process of overpowering has advanced so far in the brain of the ‘you’ that the latter can no longer control her legs when moving them vertically from one level to another on the staircase. This moment of breakdown is traumatic for both the ‘I’ and the ‘you’, but in different ways. It is traumatic for the textual ‘you’, who suffers physically from the loss of control of her legs and moreover from the heavy symbolic significance adhering to this loss of control, which forcefully signals cancer-generated bodily decay and closeness to death. For the textual ‘I’, compassionately co-suffering with the physical and symbolic pain of the ‘you’, the situation is also traumatic, but in an existentially different way. The ‘I’ is not suffering physically, but as co-suffering companion compassionately committed to alleviating the pain of the partner. However, her will and desire to support her partner are fundamentally thwarted by her inability to help appropriately. This hurts her deeply in her corpoaffective desire to be with and for her partner. Her compassionate striving to alleviate and ease her partner’s painful situation by prosthetic bodywork does not work. Instead, she becomes an incapable prosthesis, unable to give her companion the much-needed help. In the poem, the existential difference between the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ is spelled out in the description of the complex, asymmetrically different sufferings and cosufferings of the ‘I’ and the ‘you’, but with an emphasis on the suffering of the ‘I’ and the co-suffering of the ‘you’, which I shall focus on now. Next to co-suffering with the cancerdeath of the textual ‘you’, the ‘I’ of the poem experiences her own suffering. This latter suffering of the ‘I’ can be summed up in terms of the process of becoming-widow, mourning that her companion, friend and lover is being violently cut apart from her in terms of becoming-imperceptible in a Deleuzian sense. This implies that the corpo-affective bond of companionship, her being-with and being-for the ‘you’ and vice versa, is also becomingimperceptible, i.e. corpo-affectively not perceptible. This is framed by the poem’s overall image of Eurydice finally vanishing, no longer possible to call back from the world of death. As the poem articulates it through the many different modes of crying of the ‘I’, the loss entailed by the companion’s becoming-imperceptible is not a one-off event. On the contrary, it is articulated as a long and continuous corpo-affective process, which has already started before the death of the textual ‘you’ and continues after her death with overwhelmingly disorienting and disrupting effects, taking ever-new, unexpected and unimaginable turns for the ‘I’. These are turns which, I suggest, call for a profound challenge to Sigmund Freud’s (1946) classic distinction between mourning and melancholia in terms of its rationalistic, health-normative purpose of restoring the mourning person to a state called ‘mental health’, in which mourning is supposed to end and a ‘new life’ begin. As I have reflected elsewhere (Lykke 2015), I agree with Ann Cvetkovich

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(2012), who, in her discussion on depression, advocates the need for a ‘resting in sadness’ as a resistance to neoliberal health-normative discourses on happiness, which have been critically exposed by Sara Ahmed (2010). This is also important when mourning the death and the becoming-imperceptible of loved ones. The poem’s ‘you’, too, is corpo-affectively immersed in a complex mixture of suffering and co-suffering. The co-suffering of the ‘you’ is related to the deep pain caused by her symphysizing and empathizing with the sorrow she is sensing that the ‘I’ and her children are feeling at the prospect of losing her. Next to the suffering brought by her cancer, due to the bodily decay it causes, and due to the sad and scary prospect of imminent death, the poem’s ‘you’ is also co-suffering with her loved ones, compassionately empathizing and symphysizing with their corpo-affective anticipation of the loss of her. What I try to articulate in the poem is that, knowing my partner well, I sensed that her strong will and desire to try to stay alive were prompted by both her bodily conatus and her strong will to persevere in a Spinozist sense, and her compassion and co-suffering with my and her children’s suffering. Next to her strong desire and will to continue living, because she loved life, she also had a strong desire to alleviate our suffering by not giving in to death; she articulated a profound pain when bad prognoses made it clearer and clearer that she could ease neither her own pain nor ours, and that both were bound to increase, because the cancer was causing her death to approach relentlessly.

Conclusion I have reflected upon the affective difference occurring as an existential condition in an intimate relationship when the process of dying and death cuts the relationship apart. I defined it as a companionship, a queer relation of corpo-affectively being-with and being-for each other. To sustain the definition, I drew on a Spinozist–Deleuzian understanding of bodies, their relations and their potential to affect and become affected. Furthermore, I used the notion of compassionate companionship to reflect upon the asymmetry between suffering and co-suffering in order to frame the affective difference that it was my overall aim to explore. These reflections were based on a particular case, my own story of becoming-widow when my long-term lesbian partner died from cancer. Methodologically, the case was explored through an autophenomenographic approach and embedded in the methodology of autobiographical narrative and poetic writing as a method of inquiry. Through the theorizing of compassionate companionship, through exploring the corpo-affectivities of such a companionship in autobiographical narrative and poetic writing and finally through an analysis of the resonances between theorizing, narrativizing and poeticizing, I have tried to show that affective difference is an important issue in the case at hand. But in this way I also hope, implicitly, to indicate a need for more analyses of the operations of affective difference in intimate relationships. The important distinction between ‘difference’ and

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‘inequality’, as stressed by Rosi Braidotti (1994), is that difference need not imply a hierarchical relation of one partner’s subordination to the other, which is necessarily implied in inequality. In working towards a new ethics of intimate relations, inequalities, including affective inequalities, are of course to be resisted, but at the same time the unfolding of an ethics of difference, which allows space for the articulation of affective difference, is also important. In this chapter, I wanted to give a personally situated argument for the need to work towards such an ethics.

Notes 1 Thanks to Liz Sourbut for language editing. 2 My use of ‘companion’ as an alternative to ‘relative’ is indebted to Dr Magdalena Górska, University of Utrecht, who suggested it as part of our work on a joint application within the framework of a project on ‘cancercultures’.

References Acampora, R.R., 2006, Corporal compassion: Animal ethics and philosophy of body, Pittsburgh University Press, Pittsburgh. Ahmed, S., 2010, The promise of happiness, Duke University Press, Durham & London. Allen-Collinson, J., 2009, ‘Sporting embodiment: Sport studies and the (continuing) promise of phenomenology’, Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise 1(3), 279–296. Allen-Collinson, J., 2010, ‘Running embodiment, power and vulnerability: Notes towards a feminist phenomenology of female running’, in E. Kennedy & P. Markula (eds.), Women and exercise: The body, health and consumerism, pp. 280–298, Routledge, London. Bennett, J., 2010, Vibrant matter: A  political ecology of things, Duke University Press, Durham & London. Braidotti, R., 1994, Nomadic subjects: Embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory, Columbia University Press, New York. Braidotti, R., 2006, Transpositions: On nomadic ethics, Polity, Cambridge. Collins English Dictionary, n.d., Companionship, viewed 25 May 2017, from www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/companionship. Cvetkovich, A., 2012, Depression: A  public feeling, Duke University Press, Durham & London. Deleuze, G., 1988, Spinoza: Practical philosophy: City Lights Books, San Francisco. Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F., 1988, A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, Continuum, New York & London. Dictionary.com, n.d., Compassion, viewed 25 May 2017, from www.dictionary.com/ browse/compassion?s=t. Freud, S., 1946, ‘Trauer und Melancholie’, in Gesammelte Werke: Werke aus den Jahren 1913–1917, pp. 427–446, S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main. Gregg, M. & Seigworth, G.J. (eds.), 2010, ‘An inventory of shimmers’, in M. Gregg & G.J. Seigworth (eds.), The affect theory reader, pp. 1–25, Duke University Press, Durham & London. Haraway, D., 2008, When species meet, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Lykke, N., 2015, ‘Queer widowhood’, Lambda Nordica 4, 85–111. Lykke, N., forthcoming, Laments, Odense: Unpublished Manuscript.

When death cuts apart  123 Massumi, B., 2015, Politics of affect, Polity, Cambridge. Richardson, L., 2000, ‘Writing as a method of inquiry’, in N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (eds.), Handbook of qualitative research, pp. 923–948, Sage, London. Rieff, D., 2008, Swimming in a sea of death: A son’s memoir, Granta, London. Sontag, S., 1991, Illness as metaphor & aids and its metaphors, Penguin, London. Spinoza, B., 1996, Ethics, Penguin, London.

Part III

Affective negotiations between partners

Chapter 8

Independence and vulnerability Affective orientations in imagining futurities for heterosexual relationships Raisa Jurva

Introduction Do I have some kind of tendency to get involved with guys like that? When I got divorced I thought, how wonderful, now I don’t have any men in the house and there will be no socks on the hat rack or dirty underwear lying around. But, alas, they always keep appearing, men. —Anneli, 621

Anneli is one of the nineteen mid- to later-life women in Finland whom I have interviewed concerning heterosexual relationships. All of the interviewees have experience of a relationship with a younger man. In the excerpt above, Anneli, accompanied with both laughter and annoyance, reflects on a recurrent problem in her relationships, namely men neglecting housework. Even though her unsatisfactory situation with cleaning and tidying has not improved, the theme of ‘doing things differently’ from previous relationships appears in her interview, as in most of the other interviews. The issues at stake in the interviewees’ aspirations for something different centre on inequalities within heterosexual relationships that have been documented and discussed in feminist research but which seem to continue despite the critique. In the interviews, women problematize the unequal sharing of household work and childcare responsibilities, and furthermore they criticize men’s domination through economic advantages, such as having sole ownership of a shared home or a higher income. The interviewees also elaborate on other upsetting features that can be difficult to pinpoint, let alone measure. Here, the interviewees discuss such problems as their partners’ lack of attentiveness to other people’s needs and the way partners excuse themselves from providing support and doing emotional work. In the interviewed women’s narrations, the aspired-for situations are starkly juxtaposed with those the interviewees wish to avoid. The interviewees recall problems in their earlier relationships or their observations of unpleasant and damaging situations in their parents’ or friends’ relationships. Further, the women’s

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critique is directed at ideals and norms concerning coupledom in general. In this way, aspirations for something else are discussed through negation. Such comparisons are partly enabled by the interviewees’ age: being in mid- to later life, they already have experience of relationships. While the interviewees’ imagined favourable scenarios make visible women’s hopes regarding relationships, they are also indicative of the threats to them, which are expressed through the juxtapositions with unwanted scenarios. In women’s narrations, experiences of past and present relationships tangle with the imagined future in a way which forms the conditions for hopes, fears and wishes for the future. In other words, these entanglements inform what is imaginable for their relationships in the future. It has been suggested that nowadays intimacy, rather than marriage, family, love or sex, constitutes the core of relational life (ed. Frank, Clough & Seidman 2013). In Patricia T. Clough’s (2013) theorization, intimacy includes both the continuum of traits, such as trust, openness, authenticity and belonging, and the exploitation of these traits. According to Clough, the latter does not indicate a failure or lack of intimacy, but instead constitutes an essential part of it. Moreover, it has been argued that in an intimate relationship, a paradox arises between intimacy and securing one’s independence, which is why longing for intimacy and closeness could be seen as a basic tension in intimate relationships (Holmes 2004:186). The interviews with mid- to later-life women consist of elaborate narrations of relationships that women have engaged in during different periods of their lives. A main theme that organizes experiences of intimacy in the interviewees’ narrations is the tension between independence and vulnerability, as the interviewees reflect on having been either suffocated by being too close to their previous partner and now trying to avoid it, or disappointed and anxious due to lack of closeness. This oscillation moves through different temporalities, past, present and future, in the interviewees’ narrations. In this chapter, I propose affective orientation as a concept for analysing affect in narration. The concept of affective orientation resonates with Ann Cvetkovich’s (2012:4) description of feeling, which she refers to as the ‘undifferentiated stuff of feeling [. . .] retaining the ambiguity between feelings as embodied sensations and feelings as psychic or cognitive experiences’. Such a description acknowledges how difficult and problematic the task of producing distinct demarcations between the social and the pre-discursive is, which has been one of the central debates within affect theorizations. Moreover, arguments favouring the pre-discursive nature of affect have been criticized for enabling a depoliticizing move (Hemmings 2005). In my analysis, the ‘sense’ that is read as affective orientation relies on understanding affect as a sense that marks the body’s belonging or non-belonging to a world of encounters (Seigworth & Gregg 2010:2), emphasizing the social dimension of sensing. In this chapter, the social dimension refers more specifically to the conditions for heterosexual relationships which enable the maintenance of hierarchies and power asymmetries within heterosexual couples. In order to grasp the entanglements of sensing and power in intimate relationships, I will

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analyse affective orientation in parallel with feminist and queer studies discussions of hierarchies within heterosexual couples.

Inequalities and heterosexuality During the interviews, the mid- to later-life women reflect on unfair and disappointing situations and even abuse that they have experienced in their relationships with men. Such accounts of unsatisfactory situations in their past or present relationships and their aspirations for something else are understandable in the Finnish relationship context, which can be seen as characterized by a paradox. Finland, like other Nordic countries, is in a leading position in international equality rankings. At the same time, however, many relationship-related inequalities concerning gender and sexuality prevail.2 Nordic research on heterosexual couples shows that everyday experiences of doing heterosexuality are still founded through gendered boundaries and conventions (Jokinen 2005, 2004; Magnusson 2008, 2005). Unequal conventions seem to persist despite material possibilities for more equality, for example, in sharing childcare responsibilities due to the affordable day care and parental leave system in Finland (Social Insurance Institution in Finland n.d.). This paradox suggests that the gendered conventions that maintain inequality within heterosexual relationships cannot be challenged solely through legislation or social policies, as power operates through affects as well. Furthermore, reflecting upon gender and gendered inequalities is a wellrehearsed activity, especially among women (Jokinen 2004). However, reflection does not necessarily lead to any action, let alone to a change in gendered inequalities. According to Eva Magnusson (2005, 2008), both women’s and men’s ways of reflecting on heterosexual relationships may end up reinforcing gendered conventions. There are culturally available, established ways of making sense of inequalities in heterosexual relationships. They enable the reframing of situations as something other than inequalities, for example as innate gender differences or individual character traits. Men can be considered incapable of taking full responsibility for care because of their gender, and likewise men can be allowed to withdraw from childcare because of their work ambitions, something that women allegedly lack (Magnusson 2005, 2008). Moreover, there are challenges in politicizing the problems in heterosexual relationships and taking collective action when the problems are understood as between individuals instead of groups (Halleröd, Díaz & Stocks 2007:151), which is further strengthened by the aforementioned available ways of making sense, which operate at the level of individuals. As Magnusson’s (2005, 2008) and Jokinen’s (2004) studies suggest, people recognize the power dynamics in heterosexual relationships, even though the frames that are available for making sense of them might rely on highly individualistic or gender-stereotypical premises. The persistency of gendered conventions

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in heterosexual relationships in parallel with the critique of them is a challenge for research, and in this study, I draw on affect discussions in order to grasp this tension.

Data and methodology The research material consists of nineteen interviews with mid- to later-life women from different cities and towns in Finland who have experience of a relationship with a substantially younger man. The age of the interviewees ranges from 41 to 68 years. The mean average of the age differences between the interviewees and their younger partners is fourteen years. Nearly all the relationships that women refer to are ongoing at the time of the interview, except three of them, which are relationships that have already ended. Most of the relationships with younger men could be described as committed long-term relationships, although two of them are lighter relationships. The duration of the relationships varies from eight months to thirty years. The interviews are loosely structured by twelve questions concerning women’s relationship experiences. Most of the interviews are discussion-like, with interviewees also reflecting beyond the questions, which I encourage. Even though the interviewees were selected based on their experience of a relationship with a younger man, it turned out that the interviewees discussed their other previous relationships at length as well. The duration of the interviews varied from approximately one to three hours. In analysing women’s narrations about the future of their relationships, I will use the concept of ‘affective orientation’ in order to analyse the ways of sensing that characterize the interviewees’ future relationship scenarios. The future that can be imagined is based on a sense of what might be (im)possible, which connects the interviewees’ reflections to issues of gendered power relations. The concept of affective orientation draws on affect theories where ways of sensing are connected to hierarchies and social categories. According to Sara Ahmed (2004), who does not make a separation between affect and emotion, emotions keep us invested in power relations. In addition, ‘emotions may be crucial to showing us why transformations are so difficult (we remain invested in what we critique), but also how they are possible (our investments move as we move)’ (Ahmed 2004:172). Here, affect carries the potential both for ‘emancipation and for enslavement’ (Kristensen 2016:26), and, importantly, it situates emotions as a basis for political reflection (Love 2010:112). Furthermore, the focus on affective orientation emphasizes the entanglements of sensing with the social by paying attention to ideals and norms concerning gender in the context of heterosexual relationships. Here, the affective dimension connects to power and inequalities through ‘augmentation and diminution of the human power to act’ (Kristensen 2016:14) in the material–discursive context of a heterosexual relationship. The interview technique enables the foregrounding of temporal aspects of experiences. In the interviews, one of the standard questions I pose to each interviewee

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targets the temporal dimension of narration explicitly: ‘how do you see the future of your relationship?’ However, the interviewees also ponder the future prior to my question. The additional questions outside that interview question focus on changes and continuities in women’s perceptions and experiences of relationships which are located at different times of their lives. A typical follow-up question of mine is ‘has it always been like that for you?’, ‘it’ being for example interviewees’ firm belief that it is important to have freedom in a relationship or that it is crucial to have one’s own money. Even though some of the questions towards the end of the interviews invite life course narration, such as questions concerning possible changes in women’s experiences and viewpoints on relationships throughout their course of life, reflections about past relationships often come up even before such questions. Sometimes the majority of the narration during an interview is tightly framed by previous relationships. A narrative approach provides a suitable methodological frame for using the concept of affective orientation with interview data, as it directs the focus on events as temporally organized and evaluated. Women’s narration during the interview consists of opinions, ponderings on different topics, and narratives as such. From each interview I have formed a temporal line, starting from the interviewees’ future scenarios and moving backwards in time, in order to make visible the events and evaluations from past and present relationships that condition the interviewees’ sense concerning the future. I approach the future scenarios as implying the present, which is informed by the past. Moreover, analysis of affective orientations draws methodologically on modalities in narration, paying attention to what is presented as possible, desirable, unlikely and so forth. As social change requires narrative imagination (Andrews 2014), affective orientations inform us about what kind of future it is possible for mid- to later-life women to imagine for their heterosexual relationships with a younger man. In this way, analysing affective orientations sheds light on the temporal dimension of affective inequalities in heterosexual relationships. The topic of relationship future, which I introduce in the interviews, can be dismissed by simply noting a wish for things to continue as they are, emphasizing the comfortable flow of everyday life. However, the topic also invokes more elaborate narrations infused with graphic descriptions of painful and unsatisfactory events in the past, which set the tone for the ponderings about the future. In this article, I focus on the latter narrations, in which I have identified two affective orientations that characterize the approach towards the future: an affective orientation of independence and an affective orientation of vulnerability. As these affective orientations are entangled with frictions in the interviewees’ relationships, they provide a way to analyse inequalities in the context of heterosexual relationships.

Disrupted temporal conventions The conventions in heterosexual relationships that foster inequalities are connected not only to gender but also to temporality. Time can be seen as a central logic that

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organizes bodies in chrononormative ways and provides a belonging that feels natural (Freeman 2010). The temporal belonging that a heterosexual relationship offers in the form of acknowledged social positions within the reproductive family lineage, such as mother and grandmother, is not self-evidently available in an age-difference relationship. The futurity that is patterned by straight time (Halberstam 2005) is disrupted in these relationships, as the normalcy of reproduction is challenged in a new way when the interviewees are post-menopausal while their younger partners still have their potential reproductive capacity. Further, the scenario of growing old together does not apply to these couples, as the women will retire when their younger partners still have many years of work ahead of them, and women will also likely be in need of care much sooner than their younger partners due to the age difference. Many of the problems in heterosexual relationships that feminist research has pointed out are connected to a certain kind of domestic situation. The lives of women and men in heterosexual relationships drift apart, mostly after having children, due to men being excused from care responsibilities (Sevón 2012). Such a domestic situation, which demands time and effort, does not apply to the mid- to later-life interviewees’ situation, which potentially enables them to negotiate the heterosexual relationship differently. Moreover, Angela Meah and colleagues (2011:69) have suggested that the traditional discourses on older women, which include the cultural and social limitations of ageing bodies and gendered sexual expectations, might actually provide older women with the resources for agency. Furthermore, temporal distance is important for how experiences can be narrated. Laura Clarke (2005) analysed women’s narrations of their previous marriages in contrast to current relationships, and found these ways of narrating very different. While first marriages were described through experiences of neglect and abuse, the latter were characterized as the ideal relationship they had wished for. The women I interviewed have experienced their relationships in different periods of their lives. Even though the interviewees took part in the interview due to their experience of a relationship with a younger man, during the interviews women quite extensively discussed past relationships where there had been no age difference. This can be partly explained by the questions that I posed to the interviewees, which were not limited to the age-difference relationship. Some of the questions invoked a life course perspective on narration, which required looking back at previous relationships as well as at current ones. The temporal dimension is important in affective orientations as well, as affects bring together the past, the present and the future. Future relationship scenarios are mirrored against experiences in the past in order to evaluate the kinds of potential change that might eventually be possible. These reflections characterize the present and provide an identifiable tone for it. In the analysis, instead of paying attention to the singular emotional expressions in the interviewees’ narration, I focus on the tone through which the future is portrayed.

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Affective orientation of independence: one’s own home, own money, own life Many have struggled with being economically and materially dependent on the male partner to the point of losing themselves in the heterosexual relationship. The personal history of being defined through men financially, socially and emotionally in the past echoes in the interviewees’ narrations considering the future. Hence, the aspiration to hold onto one’s independence despite threats to it strongly frames women’s affective orientation towards the future. At this stage of the interviewees’ lives, however, there are more practically and socially available options for arranging life in couple relationships than there are for families with small children. The interviewees discuss how at this point in their lives, living together no longer appears such a tempting option or self-evident aim as it used to. Seven of the nineteen interviewees do not live together with their partners despite having been together for many years. At the very beginning of the interview, Ritva, 66, tells me that the only problem in her current relationship with a man who is 44 years old is their different views on marriage. They have been together for fifteen years, and during that time she has rejected his marriage proposals repeatedly, which does not please him. The rejection causes tension, especially when he has been drinking. After retiring from her work as a cosmetics salesperson, Ritva has managed to reach a state of financial security, which she is not willing to risk. Ritva describes how marriage could open up her financial assets to her husband, unless they reached a prenuptial agreement. Refusing marriage also means another kind of independence for Ritva, as she continues: And perhaps because I have life experience this much, then, well, you never know, he might one day come to me and say that ‘hey now I have found another woman and I’m off’, and then it is much easier for me to say that okay, there is the door, just leave. My life would continue as it is or in any way I want it to continue. Perhaps, perhaps this kind of minor insecurity, well, you never know, and I have been married two times and that has not worked out with a man of my age either so [laughter], on the other hand. A separation is a different situation for a married rather than an unmarried couple, as Ritva points out. In addition to financial arrangements, refusing marriage seems to promise some kind of buffer in the face of potential rejection. Not being fully immersed in the relationship and keeping a distance would perhaps provide protection from an all-too-overwhelming separation. After I ask Ritva whether she sees her current relationship differently from her previous marriages, she gives me an affirmative answer. The connection between finances and independence is something that the men also recognize, according to the interviewees. Marjatta, 68, looks back on her

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second marriage and points out that her ex-husband’s increasing jealousy was a problem in the relationship, as it led him to control her life. She describes opening her own bank account when she started to work outside the home after having been home with the children. She recalls that her ex-husband took the separate bank account as a sign that entailed divorce, because the bank account made it possible for her to accumulate savings of her own, which was not possible with a shared bank account. For him, having her own bank account marked a starting point for a strategic plan enabling financial independence and thus leaving him. Kirsti, 58, also recalled how arrangements that are seemingly based on sharing turn out to be forms of control in everyday life. She states that she and her current younger partner both have bitter memories about unequal sharing of funds in their previous relationships. Yes, money is probably even more important to me [than to the younger partner], that we have separate funds. Previously I was in an economic situation where we had a shared car, as couples have a shared car that usually is registered under the man’s name. Then, when I needed it, he said ‘so are you going to take my car’. This was kind of, always a crappy thing, sort of a financial kind of reminder of your place in this house. Even though I had a good salary. Kirsti’s account shows how economic power imbalances can be used in a relationship. She distances herself from a male-breadwinner situation by emphasizing that she had a good salary, which enabled economic equality. Even though her former husband was not financially supporting her, she describes how hierarchy between the spouses could be marked and maintained through property, such as the legal ownership of a car that both spouses used. While financial security can to a certain extent be ensured by conscious decisions about private finances, other issues related to independence are more difficult to manage with such decisions in a relationship context. In women’s narrations, independence is threatened in many ways in heterosexual relationships, not only through money, property and space, which resonates with feminist theorizations about the possibilities of autonomous female subjectivity within the existing gender system. I asked Sari, 58, whether her understanding of relationships or her way of experiencing them had changed during her life course, which was one of my standard questions in the interviews. She described her experiences of getting immersed in her romantic relationships as follows: Perhaps I have tended to go too much into other people’s lives, especially when I was younger. I have not been holding onto my own interests. [. . .] I have been completely absorbed in his life in a way that I sort of haven’t had a selfhood at all. In Sari’s account, the immersion is described as total and seems quite allencompassing. The contours of her selfhood have at times vanished in her absorption into her partner’s life. Sari presents the current shift, from neglecting her own

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interests and losing her selfhood to maintaining a separateness in coupledom, as the key change in her relationship trajectory. The future looks very different for her, as she is hoping for a life with lots of freedom in her relationship with a younger partner. In women’s narrations about their past, there is a great deal of critical reflection on the gendered conventions of heterosexual relationships. Consequently, women contemplate their wishes for things to be different, either in the present moment or in the future. These critical reflections concern inequalities in a domestic setting that includes children and cohabitation. Women portray this kind of life as suffocating, invoking many problems for themselves and for women in heterosexual relationships in general. Susanna, 41, who has been seeing a 22-year-old man for the last year, is going through a divorce with her husband at the time of the interview. Susanna and her husband have a shared history of twenty-three years. When I ask her about the future of her relationship with the younger man, she explains that the difficult divorce process is the biggest thing in her life at the moment, and that the hardest part of the process is yet to come. She continues to answer my question as follows: My topmost feeling is that I want my own life back. Now I have been married for a long time and I have perhaps been in a relationship where the other one is jealous and wants so bad to know where I am, who I am with, when am I coming home and so forth. He doesn’t forbid anything but still he is kind of a, kind of an intense person who likes to keep his family close to him. With her younger partner, Susanna does not wish for a family life or shared living arrangements. She emphasizes the newfound possibilities to do what she wants, travel, see her friends, do yoga and read books without anyone having anything to say about her activities. This is something she finds pleasurable in her new relationship. However, not all the women share such a suffocating view of domestic life. For Marjatta, 68, an ideal relationship does not require taking distance from the traditional family setting. Such a setting, and especially marriage, through which Marjatta generally discusses relationships, is based on reciprocity and mutual support. On the contrary, marriage for her means sharing everyday life within a reliable companionship. She has been together with her 53-year-old partner for the past eighteen years, although they have had break-ups as well. They are living-apart-together in different cities in Finland, and according to Marjatta, her partner keeps a certain kind of distance from her. She is not allowed to call him at work, and he has difficulties discussing his relationship with an older woman with his friends: This is not what I wished for myself, that I would be living alone. It has not been a wish of mine, it is a coincidence and a practicality in this situation. He is how he is and it is not possible to have it all. I did not get a marriage. I never pursued this kind of situation in any way but I have had to adjust myself to it.

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Marjatta also discusses the problems she had in her previous relationship, such as unequal sharing of household chores, and lack of acknowledgement and empathy. However, these experiences of gendered conventions in heterosexuality have not made her lose her faith in marriage as a living arrangement that provides support and care for both parties.

Affective orientation of vulnerability: fear of being neglected While the interviewees’ future orientation is partly characterized by the pursuit of maintaining their independence from their partner, independence also appears as problematic. In women’s narrations, independence becomes useless in situations that cannot be managed by oneself but require help from other people. Caregiving, which the interviewees ponder, is a highly gendered phenomenon, as both paid and unpaid labour. From the 1970s onwards, research consistently suggests that men gain many kinds of benefits in their heterosexual relationships, such as better health and emotional support (Seymour-Smith & Wetherell 2006). Consequently, men’s withdrawal of emotional validation has been suggested as a form of heterosexual domination (Duncombe & Marsden 1993). As men continue to be excused from caregiving responsibilities and women are required to give care, the expectations for caregiving and receiving also show a gendered pattern. Women cannot rely on their partners to care for them in their old age, whereas in men’s expectations, the receipt of spousal care is self-evident (Spitze & Ward 2000). One of the most intensive topics that highlights the age difference between the interviewees and their younger partners is caregiving in the future. The interviewees are likely to face situations of vulnerability sooner than their younger partners, which invokes fearful scenarios. Anneli, 62, has been together with her 48-year-old partner for the past twenty years, on and off. Anneli’s ideas about marriage and relationships are probably the most explicit when it comes to experiences of being deprived of care. She describes her relationship as follows: There are such things like my partner has not been able to cope with me, if I have been sick. At one point I was diagnosed with depression and he could not stand it at all and we were separated. [. . .] Once I had an operation, they suspected cancer and well, this man, for some reason, he said that he does not. . ., well he visited me once in the hospital and dropped two kilos of mandarins on my newly operated stomach. He doesn’t have, he kind of does not get this at all, how I am feeling. After that we were separated for a while. I have friends, male friends, who understood my situation at that point, something that this man did not. But it has nothing to do with [his] age but his personality, he should take others more into consideration. But he’s not used to it so [long pause] this is a problem.

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Anneli also states in a laconic way that she probably just has to hope that she will not fall ill. The bitterness is tangible throughout the interview, and it characterizes the affective orientation that guides her reflections about the future with her current partner. Marjatta, 68, whose wish for companionship with a husband has not been fulfilled with the younger man, reflects upon health issues when I ask her about the positive and negative features of life as a woman of her age. She emphasizes the importance of a security net, especially for people who are not married. Even though ideally a husband is the one that would provide security and care when needed, in practice Marjatta has found another solution. She keeps in close contact with her 77-year-old female neighbour, and they provide mutual care to each other. I continue the topic by asking whether her current younger partner might provide support when needed. According to Marjatta, he might provide some mental and financial support, but something is still missing. He provides support, kind of, but then again, he is not supportive in a way that a husband is, if the marriage is good. Such support I obviously can’t get from him and I can’t bother him with it either. The kind of support that a husband would provide is not something that I can get from him. Although it can be that a husband is nothing but a nuisance, but if we think what it can be at its best. The potential situation of ending up in a vulnerable position when facing physical problems is also discussed in 65-year-old Ulla’s interview. She lives together with her partner, who is 44 years old, and they have been together for eight years. When I ask Ulla what kinds of situations make the age difference visible, if any, she replies: Well, there was a, well, a minor incident, I was at the hospital and well, he called and said that he cannot visit me because he does not like hospitals. I asked him that do you like me. Well, you see, we did not discuss this through and it is a peculiar thing that he can’t come and see me at the hospital. If I would have to stay in a hospital for a long time, so would he not visit me at all. This of course should be discussed. Ulla reflects upon the enigma of her partner’s inability to visit hospitals and ponders if the man is afraid of his own ageing. Ulla reflects upon different explanations for such behaviour, but all in all she is left puzzled in the face of this situation. While the previous affective orientation of holding onto one’s independence includes uncomfortableness and insecurity, there is still a sense of agency in actions that pursue that aim. In securing one’s life in vulnerability, however, such a sense is missing, and imagining the future is almost blocked by the fear of being left without care.

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Conclusion In this chapter, I have focused on two affective orientations that guide mid- to later-life women’s reflections on the future of their relationships with substantially younger men. These affective orientations are connected to a tension between independence and vulnerability, which organizes women’s narrations. The first affective orientation of independence is characterized by aims of maintaining separateness from the partner, including in the future. This separateness is discussed as holding onto one’s own property, one’s own life beyond the domestic realm, and even one’s own selfhood. This orientation is strongly informed by the interviewees’ past, as the interviewees had to learn such safeguarding of their boundaries the hard way. It has been pointed out that men’s independence is not threatened in heterosexual relationships in the way that women’s is (Halleröd, Díaz & Stocks 2007:147), which suggests that the tension between independence and vulnerability in the context of intimacy is gendered. My analysis is not a comparison between women’s and men’s narrations, but it does highlight the centrality of the tension in heterosexual relationships for women. In women’s narrations, safeguarding the contours of one’s property and selfhood characterizes the affective orientation of independence. Here, losing one’s independence looms as a possible threat, but this threat does not create a sense of constraint as the interviewees reflect on their future. Instead, it invokes strategies that enable them to tackle this problem, such as making efforts to maintain mutual relations of caregiving with other people, not only the partner. However, the ideal of the woman’s separateness from the male partner, which appears in the interviewees’ narrations, becomes problematic in the second affective orientation that I have identified, which is characterized by vulnerability. The threat of being left without support or care if women should lose their physical capabilities manifests as a tangible insecurity. Women are left puzzled, hurt and scared when contemplating possible scenarios of neglect. Furthermore, the first orientation, which builds on the threat of being immersed in the partner economically, emotionally and socially, is connected to the interviewees’ previous experiences. The second affective orientation, which is characterized by worry and fearfulness when anticipating expected abandonment, for its part is grounded in experiences within the current relationship. Experiences of neglect sensitize the interviewees to vulnerability, which haunts them due to their age-related weakening in the future. Consequently, the analysis suggests that age-dissimilar relationships seem to foreground and intensify the gendered nature of care, as older women are at risk of facing physical deterioration prior to their younger partners. Moreover, the interviewees distance themselves from conventions they find problematic in heterosexual relationships, such as prioritizing coupledom over one’s own life, or joint finances and property. Such insights have been formed during their life course after they have experienced or witnessed the negative effects of these conventions. According to my analysis, the explicit ‘doing differently’ of heterosexual relationships could have emancipatory effects in situations

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where the interviewees have the capability for independence. In situations and scenarios where women become vulnerable, pursuing independence does not provide a solution or a sense of relief. In women’s narrations, the second affective orientation of vulnerability leaves the interviewees perplexed, bitter and hurt in the face of a future that can be safe only as long as they maintain their health and physical capability. The interviewees have taken up strategies to tackle the prospect of being abandoned by their younger spouses, such as relying on other people and maintaining a network of people close by. This does not, however, seem to transform the orientation towards the future, but instead the insecurity remains. Even though the traditional heterosexual relationship, and especially marriage, can be seen as carrying a problematic historical burden, which the interviewees themselves also criticize, it seems difficult to find an alternative that would fulfil expectations of mutuality, reciprocity and equality. Consequently, not all doing differently is transgressive (Beasley, Brook & Holmes 2012). With the concept of ‘affective orientation’, it is possible to grasp how a sense of the future is formed by entanglements of various temporalities. Moreover, the analysis makes visible a form of affective inequality in which anticipations of future neglect can burden the present in a relationship context.

Notes 1 All the names are pseudonyms. 2 This paradox is one of the starting points in the research project ‘Just the Two of Us? Affective Inequalities in Intimate Relationships’ (2015–2019), which is funded by the Academy of Finland (287983), and of which my research forms a part.

References Ahmed, S., 2004, Cultural politics of emotion, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Andrews, M., 2014, Narrative imagination and everyday life, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Beasley, C., Brook, H. & Holmes, M., 2012, Heterosexuality in theory and practice, Routledge, New York. Clarke, L., 2005, ‘Remarriage in later life: Older women’s negotiation of power, resources and domestic labor’, Journal of Women & Aging 17(4), 21–41. Clough, P., 2013, ‘Intimacy, lateral relationships and biopolitical governance’, in A. Frank, P. Clough & S. Seidman (eds.), Intimacies: A new world of relational life, pp. 165–180, Routledge, London. Cvetkovich, A., 2012, Depression: A public feeling, Duke University Press, London. Duncombe, J. & Marsden, M., 1993, ‘Love and intimacy: The gender division of emotion and “emotion work”: A neglected aspect of sociological discussion of heterosexual relationships’, Sociology 27(2), 221–241. Frank, A., Clough, P. & Seidman, S. (eds.), 2013, Intimacies: A new world of relational life, Routledge, London. Freeman, E., 2010, Time binds: Queer temporalities, queer histories, Duke University Press, Durham.

140  Raisa Jurva Halberstam, J., 2005, In a queer time and place: Transgender bodies, subcultural lives, New York University Press, New York. Halleröd, B., Díaz, C. & Stocks, J., 2007, ‘Doing gender while doing couple: Concluding remarks’, in J. Stocks, C. Díaz & B. Halleröd (eds.), Modern couples sharing money, sharing life, pp. 143–155, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Hemmings, C., 2005, ‘Invoking affect: Cultural theory and the ontological turn’, Cultural Studies 19(5), 548–567. Holmes, M., 2004, ‘An equal distance? Individualisation, gender and intimacy in distance relationships’, Sociological Review 52(2), 180–200. Jokinen, E., 2004, ‘Kodin työt, tavat, tasa-arvo ja rento refleksiivisyys’, in E. Jokinen, M. Kaskisaari & M. Husso (eds.), Ruumis töihin! Käsite ja käytäntö, pp. 285–304, Vastapaino, Tampere. Jokinen, E., 2005, Aikuisten arki, Gaudeamus, Helsinki. Kristensen, K., 2016, ‘What can an affect do? Notes on the Spinozist–Deleuzean account’, LIR.journal 7, 11–32. Love, H., 2010, ‘Feeling bad in 1963’, in J. Staiger, A. Cvetkovich & A. Reynolds (eds.), Political emotions: New agendas in communication, pp. 112–134, Routledge, New York. Magnusson, E., 2005, ‘Gendering or equality in the lives of Nordic heterosexual couples with children: No well-paved avenues yet’, Nora: Nordic Journal of Women’s Studies 13(3), 153–163. Magnusson, E., 2008, ‘The rhetoric of inequality: Nordic women and men argue against sharing house-work’, Nora: Nordic Journal of Women’s Studies 16(2), 79–95. Meah, A., Hockey, J. & Robinson, V., 2011, ‘I’m a sex kitten, aren’t I . . .’, Australian Feminist Studies 26(67), 57–71. Seigworth, G.J. & Gregg, M., 2010, ‘An inventory of shimmers’, in M. Gregg & G.J. Seigworth (eds.), The affect theory reader, pp. 1–25, Duke University Press, Durham. Sevón, E., 2012, ‘My life has changed, but his life hasn’t: Making sense of the gendering of parenthood during transition to motherhood’, Feminism & Psychology 22(1), 60–80. Seymour-Smith, S. & Wetherell, M., 2006, ‘ “What he hasn’t told you . . .”: Investigating the micro-politics of gendered support in heterosexual couples’ co-constructed accounts of illness’, Feminism & Psychology 16(1), 105–127. Social Insurance Institution of Finland, n.d., Perhevapaat tietopaketti, viewed 13 December 2017, from www.kela.fi/perhevapaat-tietopaketti. Spitze, G. & Ward, R., 2000, ‘Gender, marriage and expectations for personal care’, Research on Aging 22(5), 451–469.

Chapter 9

In the name of love A relational approach to young people’s relationships in urban Mexico Olga Sabido-Ramos and Adriana García-Andrade

This chapter is part of a larger research project addressing romantic partnerships, in which we propose that love is an affective and sensorial experience (see García-Andrade & Sabido-Ramos 2016, 2017, in press; Sabido-Ramos & GarcíaAndrade 2015). We live love with the body and through the body. Even though love is an embodied experience, it is contingent on the presence of a significant other. Love, then, is also an affective bond. In this study, we examine couples’ love from a relational approach (Elias 1978; García-Andrade & Sabido-Ramos 2016, 2017, in press; Simmel 2009). Drawing on Simmel’s (1950:40, 2009:22, 23) notion that a relationship presupposes the condition of affecting and being affected, we show how loving relationships include material conditions (i.e. money), corporeal–sensorial experiences (i.e. menstruation), and emotional content (i.e. jealousy) that generate mutual affections between lovers. As Simmel (2009:85) has pointed out, the relational forms in a historical period and cultural milieu can be seen as affective structures, with a relative permanence and autonomy from individuals. An affective structure, following Simmel, implies that intimacy built into a relationship is characterized by the rules and norms that are part of the society in which the relationship is taking place. These rules may generate tensions and conflicts in relationships but can also be changed by the participants in their continuous interactions. We also engage with Elias’s (1987:287–316) concepts of affective bonds and gender balances to address the ‘shades and grades in the power differentials of human groups’ and the emotional nature of these bonds. Based on these theoretical insights (i.e. relationality, affective bonding, affective structure, and gender balances), we designed a questionnaire and administered it to 105 undergraduate sociology students at a public university in Mexico City in 2015. When we talk about the relational experience of embodied love, we do not limit it to sexual experience. It involves intimacy in a broader sense, that is, day-to-day living together and negotiating the bodily presence of one’s partner. In this chapter, we identify the meanings young people in an affective, loving bond attribute to certain intimate situations, and whether these meanings are mediated by gender imbalances. We think that this kind of exercise contributes to what Ahmed (2014) calls the ‘politics of love’. For her, this understanding of love ‘is necessary in the

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sense that how one loves matters; it has effects on the texture of everyday life and on the intimate “withness” of social relations’ (Ahmed 2014:140). The chapter consists of three sections. The first section presents the theoretical premises underlying the construction of embodied love and affective bonds in a loving couple. We show the relevance of using a relational approach within the context of the recent ‘turn to affect’ (Ahmed 2014; Clough 2007; Wetherell 2012). The second section shares some of the methodological challenges we faced during the process and the strategies we used to address them. The third section provides three examples where gender (im)balance in love relationships can be seen in its diversity: (1) negotiations over expenses, (2) gender imbalance inscribed in the body (menstruation), and (3) colonization of the other (jealousy and control). The chapter ends with reflections on the paradoxical nature of romantic love and how the balance of power between genders continuously changes through time.

Embodied love as an affective bond: a relational approach The sociological study of romantic love presents significant theoretical and methodological challenges. Here we address two of those challenges: the attempt to establish a relational perspective to analyse love and how love involves power balances that are gendered. We explored various authors and fields in order to approach romantic partnerships from a relational perspective (García-Andrade & Sabido-Ramos 2016, 2017). In this chapter, we focus on two of these sources, Georg Simmel and Norbert Elias, engaging with their works from a contemporary perspective and in dialogue with other authors. In our opinion, revisiting these sources is relevant for both contemporary debates regarding affectivity and empirical research, since it allows us to address the topic the ‘turn to affect’ explores: how we are mutually affected in visible and invisible ways. In line with some of the current debates regarding affect (Ahmed 2014; Blackman 2012; Blackman & Venn 2010), the impact of affecting and being affected constitutes the central focus of Simmel’s historical and philosophical sociology. According to his theory, our actions interact with and impact on others, while the actions of others interact with and impact on us – we are affecting others while simultaneously being affected by them, in the present, but also in the past and in the future. Within this context, Simmel provides an opportunity to consider the emotional and affective implications of any and all social interactions (Cantó-Milà 2012; Gerhards 1986; Watier 2009), including love (Frisby 1988; Sabido-Ramos 2015; Seebach 2017). On the basis of this relational perspective, we can engage with Simmel’s sociology of romantic partnerships and see them as social relationships: ‘lovers “have” a relationship (Verhältnis); they are as a sociological entity “a relationship” ’ (Simmel 2009:561). Simmel’s work is circumscribed by a traditional definition of ‘romantic love’, in other words, the heterosexual couple. For the

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purposes of this study, we adopt a broader definition of romantic love that is not exclusively heterosexual. A romantic relationship is at least partly characterized by its intimate nature, distinguishing it from other types of relationships. In this respect, Simmel’s concept of intimacy is also useful. According to Simmel (2009:85), intimacy is an ‘affective structure on that [information] which each one gives or shows exclusively only to their own and to no one else’. In this way, secrecy is important even in intimate relationships. Intimate relationships are not built on complete and total knowledge of one’s partner, which can in fact be counterproductive and result in an overload of information that stalls or hinders the relationship (Simmel 2009:324). Nick Crossley (2011) continues this line of thought, proposing that the creation of an intimate relationship implies a gradual process of disclosing information. Intimacy, then, can include rules (what to disclose to whom) but also tensions and conflicts. Additionally, we considered how lovers in a romantic relationship create their own ‘world of meanings’ (Berger & Kellner 1992) based on their historical and semantic context, for example the particular history of their relationship and the specific details of their intimacy (García-Andrade & Sabido-Ramos in press). In order to describe this complexity, we used the relational perspective proposed by Elias (2003:131) to establish the peculiarities of couple relationships, understood as ‘a specific configuration of people [. . . with] its specific dynamics, which are determined as much by the structure of society at large as by that of the two constituents of that society most immediately concerned’ (see Sabido-Ramos & García-Andrade 2015). Elias (1978:134) also insists on the importance of incorporating the dimension of ‘affective bonds’ in order to explain social ties. Based on this, we returned to Elias’s (1978:122) proposal of utilizing ‘personal pronouns as a figuration model’. For Elias, the use of personal pronouns is an analytical strategy focused on the relational use of concepts, to the extent that each pronoun (I, you, he, she, we, they) reflects the interdependent nature of each individual, both socially and affectively. Taking into account these relational perspectives, we propose that romantic love implies a dynamic of affective bonds, creating a we in which each member of the couple contributes to the creation of a ‘world of meaning’ from an I-perspective while also always considering the other as a you. Based on this perspective, we have called amorous couple relationships we-loving relationships. Beyond Simmel’s concept of intimate relationships, Elias facilitates our understanding of how the figuration of a romantic relationship is not homogeneous; although different relationships share specific meanings, the particular history of each relationship is not a blend of these meanings. The use of personal pronouns incorporates sex and gender variables into the concept of the relationship, since the construction of we is based on the contrasting relationships between he/she, he/he, she/she. Additionally, personal pronouns allow a closer look at ‘power differentials’ (Elias 1978) that can be present in a romantic relationship. According to Elias

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(1987:288), in relationships between the sexes, the ‘balance of power’ has traditionally tipped in favour of men, but these power imbalances are varied and offer a possibility of resignification. Based on Elias’s ‘power differentials’ it can be shown that, within a we-loving relationship figuration, its members can occupy a hierarchical structure at a certain point, without the structure necessarily being absolute. In other words, the notion of ‘power differentials’ allows us to see how the hierarchies associated with gender differences or gender imbalances can in fact represent a more complex dynamic that goes beyond the standard idea of total domination of one gender by another. Secondly, we focused on the need to go beyond the study of cultural representations of love and to connect it with the cultural bodily experience. As previously shown (García-Andrade & Sabido-Ramos 2017), love is generally disembodied when it is the subject of study, or the body is reduced to representing the sexual aspects of a romantic relationship. Since love implies more than just cultural representations (Illouz 1997) that are disembodied (or outside the bodies), we are approaching romantic partnerships as bodily experiences mediated by culture.1 The term embodied love indicates an understanding that love is in fact an experience that is also lived with and through each partner’s body and in a material setting. Embodied love allows us to conceive of a broader category of intimacy. In line with Simmel’s argument, intimacy includes an everyday coexistence that requires interacting with one’s own body as well as one’s partner’s body, including their fluids, excretions, and other aspects that are not shared with anyone else. This may include situations of affective tension, such as the establishment and negotiation of personal limits associated with surveillance, control, or colonization of the other. Including the body in the study of love helps explain how a weloving relationship is not based only on the presence of a single emotion such as empathy or happiness, but rather that different situations and gendered expectations can sometimes lead to experiencing more complicated emotions, such as worry, irritation, jealousy, shame, or even disgust. In other words, as presented by Simmel (2009:85), intimacy can be understood as an affective structure that can simultaneously encompass mutual care and discretion, as well as an ‘awareness of personal vulnerability’ (Zelizer 2005:14) with one’s partner, but also conflicts and tensions, depending on the social semantics associated with love, varying gendered expectations related to the body, and the couple’s personal history.

Methodological challenges in the study of embodied love as an affective bond Although social science research on couples tends to employ instruments such as interviews, ethnographies, or personal narratives (García-Andrade 2014), we decided to use a questionnaire. This decision was based on the consideration that the selections of options by the respondents would allow us to find certain commonalities, in other words, constants that illustrate some of the semantics

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associated with the cultural meaning of embodied love. At the same time, the open-ended questions allowed us to record the particular meanings that each participant associated with their specific we-loving relationship. One of the initial challenges was designing a data collection instrument that would efficiently record the relational nature of the we-loving relationship. Although the expectation was that each individual participant would answer the questionnaire independently, the objective was to ask what meanings respondents associated with their own bodily experience within the context of their we-loving relationship, current or past. In other words, we devised questions related to the participant’s partner.2 The second methodological challenge we faced was designing a strategy that would allow us to understand the meanings associated with the embodied experience of intimate situations. To address this challenge, we used images (two cartoons) to enable what Sarah Pink (2015) has referred to as ‘sensory elicitation’. As Pink (2015:88) shows, the use of images ‘can evoke memories, knowledge and more in the research participant, which might otherwise have been inaccessible’. In this particular case, we used image elicitation about two intimate situations: travelling together and sharing a bathroom. The images allowed us to activate each viewer’s dispositions (Bourdieu 1990:13) or, in other words, each viewer’s tendency to perceive and appreciate physical contact with his or her partner. The questionnaire was distributed to 105 young urban residents of Mexico City enrolled on the sociology programme at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana’s Azcapotzalco campus. The purpose of the questionnaire was to identify how these public university students lend meaning to their we-loving relationships from an I-perspective. The questionnaire was administered to sixty-six women (63 per cent) and thirty-nine men (37 per cent) aged 18 to 32. The average age of the participants was 22.5 years. Ninety-two per cent of participants selfidentified as heterosexual, while 2 per cent self-identified as homosexual, and 6 per cent self-identified as bisexual. In terms of relationships, 60 per cent of the participants stated that they were in a romantic relationship when the questionnaire was administered. All 105 said that they had had a romantic partner at some point in their lives. Most participants (eighty-nine) declared that they had had heterosexual relationships, while eleven participants stated that they had had non-heterosexual relationships, and five omitted the information. Although the concept of romantic partnership is still dominated by a heterosexual understanding where the we includes a she/he, this study also considered romantic partnerships where the we consists of she/she or he/he. As we stated earlier, in order to understand the meanings young couples in Mexico attribute to their loved ones, it is essential to have some knowledge of how relations between the sexes take place in our country. First of all, as in other Latin American countries, in Mexico until the 1950s urban middle-class women had a passive participation in courtship (De la Peza Casares 2001; Esteinou 2014).3 Recent research acknowledges a generational change in the way women

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act in relationships (Collignon & Rodríguez Morales 2010) – not only urban and middle-class but also rural and indigenous women (Adonon & Asakura 2011:171–196). Dating practices have changed, allowing a proactive position for both urban and rural women. Sexual relationships for women used to be allowed only after marriage. Nowadays having sex before marriage is less sanctioned and more explicitly accepted by women (Casique 2013:170).

Love relationships: money, menstruation, and jealousy In the questionnaire, the first image we included was called ‘The things I thought about during our first trip together’. In it, a young woman is shown in six separate frames that represent the following concerns: bad breath in the morning, hair removal, money and expenses, dirty underwear, excrement, and menstruation. Respondents were asked to choose the concern that they most identified with, and to explain why. In this part of the questionnaire, the questions were open-ended. Love and material conditions: who has to pay? The first, most pressing concern for young women and men was trip expenses. In the responses obtained from the questionnaire, it is striking how often money is a source of conflict for young people (30 per cent of respondents, nineteen women and eleven men) and how it has the potential to create affective tensions within the couple: ‘because it’s important and needs to be discussed because it could cause conflict’; ‘it’s really common for couples to fight about money (including my relationship)’; ‘it’s hard to share our expenses’. Although money and expenses are a fundamental concern for both sexes, our research shows gendered differences associated with it. Seventy-five per cent of the female participants considered money and expenses to be something that had implications for their relationship. In other words, they worried about who should pay, as well as how to avoid conflict or disapproval if one partner paid more or less. Conversely, 63 per cent of male participants considered the issue of money and expenses an economic issue and were concerned with how they would acquire money. Semantically, the expectation still remains that the male partner should take responsibility for money and expenses. Responses from some of the participants included: ‘[if we were to go on a trip] I would have to figure out a way to pay the bills’; ‘I would have to ask my parents for a loan’. In this case, the emphasis is placed on money as a means of facilitating the trip, rather than its relation to the couple’s well-being. Despite this difference in terms of the expression of concerns about money, some male participants also mentioned splitting expenses as an issue within the context of the relationship. One of the participants stated: ‘at first, guys think they should pay for everything, but women want to split things evenly’. In this case, we can see the start of a transformation in the expectations associated with the male gender role, which previously expected men to serve as

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providers. Women’s challenge to men’s role as providers indicates a change in the balance of power between men and women within the relationship, although there are few instances where this shift results in a true balance. Love and bodily fluids: is menstruation an issue? While the most pressing concern within the hypothetical first trip together was money, the second concern, and a bodily one, was menstruation. Nineteen respondents identified this as a preoccupation. Of these, seventeen were women (25 per cent of the female respondents) and two were men (5 per cent of the male respondents). Female participants identified discomfort, embarrassment, and disgust about menstruation as the primary reasons for their concern: ‘because sometimes it’s embarrassing if you have your period and someone sees a stain. It’s like “who died?” ’; ‘because they’re not pleasant smells’; ‘because if you stain yourself, then what do you do? Hide?’ Menstrual blood continues to be regarded as a stigmatized female bodily fluid (Sosa-Sánchez, Lerner & Erviti 2014) that should be hidden. One participant even mentioned that her understanding of herself in relation to her partner might be affected: ‘because he might think poorly of me, like I wasn’t careful about my personal hygiene’. Despite the fact that menstruation is part of most young women’s everyday lives, some of them said that they did not think of it as something that should be shared with their partners: ‘trust is one thing, but totally lacking modesty is quite different’. We also noted the significance of this reaction in another section of the questionnaire, in which we asked young people if they considered menstruation to be a barrier to having sexual relations. While 75 per cent of participants have had sex with their partners, 60 per cent of respondents (forty-one women and twenty-one men) considered menstruation to be an impediment to having sexual relations. Among the female respondents that said yes, the primary concerns were related to ‘discomfort’, ‘cleanliness’, ‘hygiene’, ‘unpleasant smells’, and ‘embarrassment’. One woman mentioned that it made her feel ‘disgusted’, despite the fact that she had been in a relationship with her partner for seven years. Even for the five women that self-identified as bisexual (four of them with a female partner at the time), menstruation was a barrier to having sexual intercourse. Likewise, half of the male respondents indicated that menstruation was an obstacle to having sexual relations, saying that it was ‘dirty’, ‘unpleasant’, ‘unhygienic’, or ‘unhealthy’. We also noted six men who were uncomfortable with the idea, but from a perspective that was focused on their partner, in other words, on her: ‘I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable’; ‘it makes her uncomfortable’; ‘she’s not into it’. There were also three cases in which male participants responded from a perspective focused on both members of the couple, that is, from a weperspective: ‘it’s uncomfortable for both of us’. Among the 41 per cent of men who said that menstruation would not be an issue (sixteen respondents), one even remarked ‘unless it made her uncomfortable’.

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As seen in the responses presented here, the sensations associated with menstruation within an intimate context are primarily discomfort, shame, displeasure, and even disgust. The creation of intimacy implies a complex affective structure (Simmel 2009) in which diverse emotional experiences intersect or circulate (Ahmed 2014:60) between the lovers. These create affective inequalities that are also associated with gendered expectations. In the case of menstruation, the responses reflect the demands associated with the female body, including how it should look and even how it should smell (Low 2009; Synnott 1991). An answer from one participant reflected this concern: ‘because if I stain the sheets, it’s really hard to get the stain out. Also, it’s a really strong smell’. It is hardly surprising that women’s experience of shame or embarrassment is linked with not conforming to gendered expectations regarding their bodies which extend to intimate contexts: ‘it’s uncomfortable for me as a woman, the smell and the feeling. It’s uncomfortable for me as a girl’. In the case of menstruation, it is important to note how the affective inequality remains unquestioned and goes unnoticed by women in the study. It is also interesting to note how information about women’s bodies is hidden, or at least they attempt to conceal this information from their partner. Returning to Crossley (2011), we can say that the creation of a we-loving relationship also involves the creation of limits. In the case of a couple, limits are established to indicate how much information each individual (I) feels comfortable sharing in relation to the other (you), and how those boundaries are also associated with gender roles. In the case of menstruation, these gender roles clearly confine women. Love and the colonization of the other: I checked your mobile and I’m jealous We considered jealousy had to be considered when addressing intimacy as an affective structure regarding the other’s bodily presence. The topic was included in our questionnaire by asking: ‘does your partner go through your things (email, social networks, contacts, and/or mobile phone)?’ Given the relational focus of the questionnaire, we also asked the same question from the opposite perspective: ‘do you go through your partner’s things . . .?’4 Despite the fact that everyday conversations about love demonize jealousy, portraying it as something that ruins romantic intimacy and should be avoided entirely, Simmel (2009:254) argued that jealousy is the result of the affective closeness of the individuals involved in a social relationship. This challenges the general idea that romantic intimacy is a space free from conflict. In our research, we found that jealousy was present in the we-loving relationships. The general assumption might be that there is a gender difference in expressing jealousy; in other words, that he feels jealous or is controlling towards her within the context of a heterosexual relationship. However, our data showed that in the eighty-nine heterosexual couples in our sample, jealous feelings were present in 57 per cent of cases. Moreover, of the fifty-eight heterosexual women

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who participated, 58 per cent reported that the feelings of jealousy were reciprocal within the relationship. Of the thirty-one heterosexual men who participated, seventeen (55 per cent) also indicated that the feelings of jealousy were reciprocal. In other words, not feeling jealous was the exception to the norm. Out of the ninety-nine heterosexual and non-heterosexual couples, only 16 per cent reported never having experienced feelings of jealousy related to their partner, or from their partner, whereas all the non-heterosexuals had experienced jealousy. Is the presence or absence of jealousy an issue associated with how the respondents conceive of their relationships within the traditional understanding of romantic love? Is it a result of how this age group understands what love should be like? Is it the result of a pernicious shift in the balance of power? Or is Simmel right in asserting that intimacy brings jealousy forward more often than not? We cannot provide a definitive reason based on the data we have. However, we can say that within this social group, both women and men are capable of feeling jealousy and/ or of openly sharing these jealous feelings. The declaration of these feelings is not something that pertains to only one gender, but instead is something that can be experienced by both members of a couple, whether or not they are of the same gender. In this respect, experiencing feelings of jealousy towards one’s partner, as well as from one’s partner, seems to be equally possible for both women and men, irrespective of the length of their relationship.5 Thus, the data gathered during this study corroborated that feelings of jealousy are present in romantic love (Jimeno 2004). We were especially interested in the way these jealous feelings were expressed through new technologies (as we included mobile phones, social networks, and email in the question). We found that thirty of the participants (one-third) were not only jealous, but also checked their partner’s things (email, social networks, mobile phone) and had their things checked by them. Hence, they adopted a similar attitude towards jealousy and reviewing their partner’s things. Among these couples, the proportion of men and women was the same. Through our survey, we were able to observe various control mechanisms and ways of colonizing the other. They took place through emotional behaviours, such as jealousy, and actions, such as invading one’s partner’s personal space or overstepping one’s partner’s boundaries. These attitudes seem to be balanced between genders: both men and women adopt these attitudes and controlling behaviours. This could be written off as an anomaly. However, considering that these behaviours were present in one-third of the respondents, one can assume that they are part of an affective structure that has developed in the loving relationships between young people. As Elias (1987:288) mentions, cultural norms in a society can turn into social habits individuals possess. In order to interpret this information contextually, we referred to the recent research conducted by Tania Rodríguez Salazar and Zeyda Rodríguez Morales (2016), who have explored how new technologies have impacted on the romantic relationships of urban Mexican youth. Among their findings, the authors highlight that young people’s practices reinforce romantic love, which implies loving a single

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individual without conditions or limits, and includes ‘high expectations of unity, presence, and total trust’ (Rodríguez Salazar & Rodríguez Morales 2016:17). Here, what ‘total trust’ means is also contextual. For example, in their sample, the respondents mentioned that a proof of love is to give your password to the other (35), while in another context, trust could mean respecting your partner’s space in her/his networks. In their research, they found that young people use social networks such as Facebook and WhatsApp to monitor and control their partners. According to the authors, the information gathered from various devices ‘triggers feelings of distrust and jealousy’ (33). Their conclusion is that these new communication methods are not only creating ‘increased freedom and ability to [. . .] communicate, [but are also] creating increased conflicts and feelings of control and ownership’ (39). Do these findings mean that the balance of power within these relationships is equal? At first glance, there appears to be a pernicious balance of power in terms of the control both men and women exert over their partners. However, the structural conditions that go beyond the we of the couple cannot and should not be ignored. Another research project conducted by Rodríguez Salazar found that young men and women used the Tinder application in equal numbers to find romantic and/or sexual partners. However, women were often judged and/or punished by family members, friends, and peers who discovered that they were using the app (Rodriguez 2017). Irene Casique (2013:192) asserts that even though some surveys show that both women and men in Mexico experience violence in their romantic relationships, ‘the conditions that put them at risk of suffering from it are clearly different’. Casique presents data from various research projects on violence towards women in Mexico to prove her point. In these studies, women accept violence as ‘evidence of love’. That is why, in their responses, acts of violence from their male partners are not evaluated as such, or are normalized as ‘how things should be’ in a love relationship (Casique 2013:193–194). In other words, it is important to have a deeper understanding of the different meanings jealousy and invasion of privacy have for men and women in order to see how the balance of power is in each relationship.

Conclusions In this chapter, we wanted to highlight the usefulness of data-gathering techniques such as the questionnaire when dealing with issues that are not usually addressed in the sociological literature. With this technique, we were able to create a relational mapping of the couples by formulating questions in such a way that the I (individual member of a couple) also reflected on the we (the couple as a pair), explicitly observing how the I perceived this reciprocal connection with the other and the other with them. Moreover, the use of images enabled participants to discuss taboo topics without our having to include an explicit question on bodily fluids (e.g. excrement, menstruation, or bad breath) in the questionnaire. Finally, filling in the questionnaire allowed respondents to provide anonymous and uncensored answers that were not influenced by the direct presence of an interviewer or researcher.

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In terms of the findings, a material aspect we found in the loving relationships between young people in Mexico was the concern they have with expenses. Public university students, although a small proportion of the population, are from the middle and lower classes. That could explain the emphasis on money. But, as we showed, the concern is gendered. Expenses are signified differently. For women, it is a relationship issue: who will pay, how, what conflicts this might entail for the couple. For most men, money is seen as a resource they are obliged to provide for the couple. This shows changes in how women see partnerships and their own position in them. It shows a proactive position in how the couple is arranged, in spite of the problems this may entail. The bodily–sensorial features of the loving relationship were approached using the example of menstruation. In this case, shaming continues to be clearly against women. There is still a societal stigma against menstruation, dictating that it should be hidden due to its smell, its association with poor hygiene, and the perception that menstruation is something women should hide because it is shameful. In consequence, the flow of information regarding a woman’s body that is shared with her partner is limited by the expectations associated with women’s bodies as they should be (e.g. without fluids, smelling like flowers, ethereal). Because this stigmatization of menstruation exists among both men and women, no effort is made to negotiate or resignify menstruation within the context of intimacy; instead, it is regarded as something that must be concealed. Regarding jealousy, we were surprised by how normalized it was in our sample. Contrary to common understandings, both men and women can feel equally jealous towards their partner and act on this jealousy. This normalization of jealousy is startling in light of ongoing government and NGO campaigns focused on increasing awareness of intimate partner violence (understood as an extension of jealousy), particularly considering that the participants were university students, since only 30 per cent of young people in Mexico have access to undergraduate studies. We found that the relationships established between men and women are steeped in elements of control and possible colonization of one member of the couple by the other; we suggest that further study of these issues is needed. Considering the results we have presented, our conclusion is that the affective structure of intimacy in Mexican young people’s romantic relationships includes situations which tend towards balance (a sometimes harmful balance, as in the case of controlling the other), while others reflect an attempted shift towards equilibrium (such as negotiating expenses), and still others are entirely unbalanced in disfavour of one gender (as in the case of menstruation and the female body).

Notes 1 For us, bodies are gendered and associated with hegemonic expectations regarding performance of female and male bodies (West & Zimmerman 1987) and with ‘heterosexuality as an ideal coupling’ (Ahmed 2014:145). 2 We also included questions that touched on the specific ways in which each participant engaged with their partner, for example: ‘how often do you look into the eyes of your partner?’; ‘how often do you and your partner dress more or less alike without

152  Olga Sabido-Ramos and Adriana García-Andrade agreeing to do so?’; ‘mention one bodily activity you perform that your partner is very attentive of’. In other words, we tried to phrase the questions in ways that facilitated answers from an I-perspective, while also encouraging reflection from a you- and weperspective. The questionnaire also made it possible to identify the meanings attributed to her versus him. 3 For example, to go out, they needed their parents’ permission and supervision outside the household, they had to be asked to dance, and all expenses in the courtship process were meant to be covered by the male partner. 4 In this part we took into account the survey conducted by the National Institute of Geography and Information (INEGI-IMJ 2007), Encuesta nacional sobre violencia en el noviazgo [National survey on violence in relationships]. 5 Feelings of jealousy, or the lack thereof, were not associated with the length of relationship. The duration of the relationships of couples that shared that both partners had experienced jealousy ranged from one month to seven years. The duration of the relationships of the couples that stated that neither partner had ever experienced jealousy ranged from two months to three years.

References Adonon, A. & Asakura, H., 2011, ‘Identidades de género en Los Altos de Chiapas: Análisis desde la antropología jurídica y la perspectiva de género’, in A. Adonon, J. Galindo, H. Asakura & L. Carballido (eds.), Identidades: Explorando la diversidad, pp. 197–217, Anthropos, Barcelona. Ahmed, S., 2014, The cultural politics of emotion, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Berger, P. & Kellner, H., 1992, ‘Marriage and the construction of reality’, in B. Byers (ed.), Readings in social psychology: Perspective and method, pp. 220–229, Allyn & Bacon, Boston. Blackman, L., 2012, Immaterial bodies: Affect, embodiment, mediation, Sage, London. Blackman, L. & Venn, C., 2010, ‘Affect’, Body & Society 16(1), 7–28. Bourdieu, P., 1990, In other words: Essays towards a reflexive sociology, Stanford University Press, Stanford. Cantó-Milà, N., 2012, ‘Gratitude – Invisibly webbing society together’, Journal of Classical Sociology 13(1), 8–19. Casique, I., 2013, ‘Factores asociados a la violencia en el noviazgo en México’, in C. Agoff, I. Casique & R. Castro (eds.), Visible en todas partes: Estudios sobre violencia contra mujeres en múltiples ámbitos, pp. 169–198, Miguel Ángel Porrúa, Mexico City. Clough, P.T., 2007, ‘Introduction’, in P.T. Clough & J. Halley (eds.), The affective turn, pp. 1–33, Duke University Press, Durham & London. Collignon, M.M. & Rodríguez Morales, Z., 2010, ‘Afectividad y sexualidad entre los jóvenes: Tres escenarios para la experiencia íntima en el siglo XX’, in R. Reguillo (ed.), Los jóvenes en México, pp. 262–315, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico City. Crossley, N., 2011, Towards relational sociology, Routledge, New York. De la Peza Casares, M., 2001, El bolero y la educación sentimental en México, UAMX & Miguel Angel Porrúa, Mexico City. Elias, N., 1978, What is sociology? Columbia University Press, New York. Elias, N., 1987, ‘The changing balance of power between the sexes: A process-sociological study: The example of the ancient Roman state’, Theory, Culture & Society 4, 287–316. Elias, N., 2003, ‘Sociology and psychiatry’, in S. Foulkes & P. Stewart (eds.), Psychiatry in a changing society, pp. 117–144, Routledge, London.

In the name of love  153 Esteinou, R., 2014, ‘Intimacy in twentieth-century Mexico’, in D. Nehring, R. Esteinou & E. Alvarado (eds.), Intimacies and cultural change, pp. 35–56, Ashgate, Farnham. Frisby, D., 1988, ‘Introduction to Georg Simmel’s “On the sociology of the family” ’, Theory, Culture & Society 15(3–4), 277–281. García-Andrade, A., 2014, ‘Dibujando los contornos del amor: Cuatro regiones científicas’, in A. García-Andrade & O. Sabido-Ramos (eds.), Cuerpo y afectividad en la sociedad contemporánea, pp. 81–129, UAM Azcapotzalco, Mexico City. García-Andrade, A. & Sabido-Ramos, O., 2016, ‘Los amantes y su mundo: Una propuesta teórico-metodológica’, in M. Pozas & M.A. Estrada (eds.), Disonancias y resonancias: Investigaciones en teoría social y su función en la observación empírica, pp. 179–203, El Colegio de México, Mexico City. García-Andrade, A. & Sabido-Ramos, O., 2017, ‘El estudio sociológico del amor corporeizado: La construcción de un objeto de estudio entrelazando teorías y niveles analíticos’, Estudios sociológicos 105, 653–675. García-Andrade, A. & Sabido-Ramos, O., in press, ‘The invisible ties we share: A relational analysis of the contemporary loving couple’, in A. García-Andrade, L. Gunnarsson & A. Jónasdótttir (eds.), Feminism and the power of love: Interdisciplinary interventions, Routledge, London & New York. Gerhards, J., 1986, ‘Georg Simmel’s contribution to a theory of emotions’, Social Science Information 25(4), 901–924. Illouz, E., 1997, Consuming the romantic utopia, University of California Press, Berkeley. INEGI-IMJ, 2007, Enivinov: Encuesta nacional sobre violencia en el noviazgo, viewed 10 September 2017, from www.beta.inegi.org.mx/contenidos/proyectos/enchogares/historicas/envin/doc/cuest_mod_jov_envin07.pdf. Jimeno, M., 2004, Crimen pasional: Contribución a una antropología de las emociones, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá. Low, K.E., 2009, Scents and scent-sibilities: Smell and everyday life experiences, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle. Pink, S., 2015, Doing sensory ethnography, Sage, London. Rodríguez Salazar, T. & Rodríguez Morales, Z., 2016, ‘El amor y las nuevas tecnologías: Experiencias de comunicación y conflicto’, Comunicación y Sociedad 25, 15–41. Rodríguez, T., 2017, El amor y la pareja: Nuevas rutas en las representaciones y prácticas juveniles, Universidad de Guadalajara, Guadalajara. Sabido-Ramos, O., 2015, ‘Fragmentos amorosos en el pensamiento de Georg Simmel’, in G. Díaz (ed.), Una actitud del espíritu: Interpretaciones en torno a Georg Simmel, pp. 205–235, Editorial de la Facultad de Ciencias Humanas de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá. Sabido-Ramos, O. & García-Andrade, A., 2015, ‘El amor como vínculo social: Con Elias y más allá de Elias’, Revista Sociológica 30(86), 31–63. Seebach, S., 2017, Love and society: Special social forms and the master emotion, Routledge, New York & London. Simmel, G., 1950, ‘Sociability’, in K. Wolff (ed.), The sociology of Georg Simmel, pp. 40–56, Free Press, New York. Simmel, G., 2009, Sociology: Inquiries into the construction of social forms, Brill, Boston & Leiden. Sosa-Sánchez, I., Lerner, S. & Erviti, J., 2014, ‘Civilidad menstrual y género en mujeres mexicanas: Un estudio de caso en el estado de Morelos’, Estudios sociológicos 32(95), 355–383.

154  Olga Sabido-Ramos and Adriana García-Andrade Synnott, A., 1991, ‘A sociology of smell’, Canadian Review of Sociology 28, 437–459. Watier, P., 2009, ‘Psychosocial feelings within Simmel’s sociology’, in C. Rol & C. Papilloud (eds.), 100 Jahre Georg Simmels Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung, pp. 199–216, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden. West, C. & Zimmerman, D., 1987, ‘Doing gender’, Gender and Society 1(2), 125–151. Wetherell, M., 2012, Affect and emotion: A  new social science understanding, Sage, London. Zelizer, V., 2005, The purchase of intimacy, Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Chapter 10

Affective dissonances Resources to disrupt gender binaries? Polona Curk

With the occurrence of each affective state, something has happened and the closer we get to capturing that event [. . .] the closer we get to the truth. —Spezzano (1993:209)

In psychoanalysis, affects are seen as the origin of human subjectivity, and yet not a property of the individual psyche but emerging out of the connection between two selves. As ‘the primary way in which one person has an impact on another’ (Baraitser & Frosh 2007:89), affects are characterized as events: shifts in the interconnected selves, underlying their meaning-making process and engendering the ‘affective truth’ seen as essential for each person’s psychological survival (Spezzano 1993:215). With psychological survival at stake, moments of affective dissonance from an intimate partner can be frightening and make us vulnerable, disrupting our psychological balance with a ‘war’ in our ‘theatre of visceral experience’ (Van der Kolk 2014:65). The experience of intense vulnerability creates a danger that these moments become sites of power dynamics and inequalities. How we are able to resolve conflicts in relationships is thus an essential part of the intimate space where we are linked as well as separate: it enables us to be related individuals rather than symbiotic co-dependents. It makes sense that the discussion of affective inequality would look closely at how the couple are able to resolve dissonances between them. This chapter first looks at how intimate partners acquire different affective capacities not only through their personal histories but also through social and power contexts, especially gender-related binaries that often skew the intimate dynamics. I then propose that by paying attention to the minute details of intimate interactions, partners can sometimes deploy their different capacities to subvert these same social binaries that shape and restrict them. I argue that this understanding of intimate dynamics could help the couple use particular strengths of each partner as shareable resources through which they can achieve positive transformations of the relationship, including recognizing each self’s sensitivity to certain affective states and challenging their power undertones.

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I show this through three short personal vignettes from my diary of tense or dissonant moments in my own intimate relationship and ways in which my partner1 and I approached and sometimes resolved inequalities created in the moments. I focus on my feeling states as well as their potential for knowledge about our relationship and sometimes ‘resolution’ of the conflict, enabled by our willingness both to show care and to think about our differences. The method is loosely based on past psychoanalytic attempts at self-analysis, which have tended to analyse moments that feel important for the affective shifts they produce rather than the content. This was most systematically developed in the 1930s by Marion Milner (1986:13), whose ‘study of living’ focused on meaningful moments from her diary, in her case those that made her feel happy. She soon discovered that rather than a rational analysis of events, it was keeping the process within a ‘wide focus which meant knowing with the whole of my body’ (Milner 1986:15) that provided her with a richer understanding of events. In the sense of its being an impressionistic rather than systematic collection, a similar method underlies Jane Gallop’s (2002) ‘anecdotal theory’. Gallop, like Milner almost seventy years earlier, wants to honour ‘lived experience’ (Gallop 2002:2; Milner 1986:14), something she thinks might be done by short accounts of interesting incidents which allow one to focus on smaller, marginal matters. Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips (2000:xv) similarly argues for an impressionistic approach to investigating questions of what would make people’s lives more interesting, preferring ‘small gains to revelations’. Although limited in that it does not capture the whole experience of the relationship, being guided by shifts in moods and evoked curiosity about a particular interaction seems like a good method to attend to affective exchanges in everyday intimate relationality and to highlight moments where proposed transformations and challenges could happen.

The imprint of the (m)other Psychoanalytic framing provides the idea that affects carry a certain emotional truth representing the self in its relational environment. Freud’s (2001:60) initial view of affects as parcels of instinctual energy, a ‘sum of excitation’ that can be split from the accompanying ideational content as a means for disguising their unwelcome aspects, alternates throughout his writings with the equation of affects with feelings, troubling any clear division. For example, whilst the representational part can be deceived by psychical activities, hallucinations, displacements and the like, affects cannot – ‘the body keeps the score’, as trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk put it (2014; see also Davoine and Gaudillière 2004; McDougall 1989). In this sense, the affective part continues to carry information about the internal state of the body connected with a particular representation (Green 1977:132). It is also relevant that Freud theorized affects as the reproduction of an experience rather than the experience itself, a result of a memory trace (cathexis)

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towards the representation of the object, which is precisely what is thought to induce excitation. In this sense, affect is ‘not a question of the physical body, but of the body in its relation to the system Ψ [psychic system]’ (Green 1977:131), as well as a question of a relation to the other. The relational roots of affects were also indicated in the discovery of transference in Breuer and Freud’s first psychoanalytic case of Anna O. (Breuer & Freud 2001), which became the basis of perhaps Freud’s most important idea: that a person possesses an unconscious instrument with which they can perceive and interpret the unconscious of other people. This is a precursor of the present psychoanalytic views of the transmission of affect in countertransference (Rusbridger 2012:144), as well as of our understanding of affective exchanges in intimate relationship. Relational psychoanalytic perspectives further explored the relation affect– representation–other. Melanie Klein (1975) firmly connected bodily sensations with extensive phantasizing, theorizing the baby’s first affective impulses as envious and destructive due to its anxious sense of dependency in relation to the mother’s body. Seeing affects as mostly innate, Klein gave limited attention to the affective responses of the parents. Nonetheless, her ideas of continuous projections and introjections provided the model of the self as permeable to the other, whilst her therapeutic work of helping her young patients symbolize their anxieties indicated our need for the other to help us make sense of the world. Later relational theorists saw the affective capacities of the mother as crucial, a condition of symbolic capacity. Donald Winnicott described the meaning-making process as based in primary affective exchange. The affectively attuned mother, who is able to present the breast to the baby in the exact moment when it is hungry so that the baby feels it has itself created the breast, is seen as creating for the baby the illusion of its creativity. The use of illusion is considered essential for the meaning of the relationship with an object, as it creates a connection between reality and our subjective meanings in relation to others (Winnicott 2005:15). This happens in the transitional space of multiplicity and potential, of ‘both reality and fantasy; both me and not-me; both omnipotent, protective, internal-object-mother and external-object-thing with its own fixed sensory qualities’ (Ogden 1987:488). The mother’s accommodation of the baby is something the baby is gradually able to respond to: ‘the baby matches the mother’s matching’ (Benjamin 2004:17), forming the basis for enjoyment in sharing states of mind (Benjamin 1988). This takes place not only through language – the mother naming the child’s feelings, helping the child’s ability ‘to make meaning’ (Frosh 2006:367) – but also primarily through sharing self-states. Heinz Kohut (1971) speaks about the mother lending the child parts of her self; similarly, Christopher Bollas (1987:13) sees the mother as the infant’s ‘other’ self, whilst Ogden (1992:219–220) describes how a child not only borrows from the parent’s personal identities but through this also accesses the surrounding social and cultural symbols. On the other hand, by destroying the mother in fantasy and the mother surviving the destructiveness (by not retaliating or giving in), the infant manages to use the mother as a person

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external to its fantasy (Winnicott 2005:120–121; see also Benjamin 1988). Transitional space represents both a connection and a separation between the two selves. A central claim of psychoanalysis has been that primary affective exchanges imprint relating patterns on the very core of one’s subjectivity. In his seminal The Shadow of the Object, Bollas (1987:14) argues not only that the affective base of the mothering idiom, including feeding, soothing, playing and general negotiation, becomes a feature of the infant’s self, but also that this ‘becoming’ is the first experience of self-transformation, which informs all relations and ‘objectseeking in adult life’. This takes place ‘through intense affective experience’ (both: Bollas 1987:14). The search for transformation of the self becomes meaningful in itself, with its various aims. For example, couple therapists highlight how often we choose partners seeking intimate fusion with the lost ideal mother, or a partner–receptor of our repudiated parts and unmanageable affects, creating ‘a shared phantasy that these difficult parts of the self need never be faced again’ (Rosenthall 2007:412). In a more positive view, even the most useless patternrepeating behaviour can be seen as ‘an attempt to get back to something that was good in the past or to put right something that was unsatisfactory’ (Balint 1993:41). We seem to search for the other in response to our affective imprint, an other to act as a medium that would engage our fantasies, protect us from the pain of everyday life and give it meaning; help us transform the self in the present, and even reorganize the meanings of our past. Fittingly, Lacanian theorist Mladen Dolar (1996:134) describes the feeling of falling in love as literally a moment of making meaning: ‘life didn’t “make sense” before, but now, suddenly, it does’.

Theatres of the body: meanings through affects Winnicott (2005:18) posited a paradox as a condition for the functioning of transitional space in adult relationships, which is for him at the origin of all meaningmaking in our intimate as well as our social life, creativity, art, philosophy and religion. This space is to remain unchallenged in regard to its belonging to inner or external (shared) reality (as it is for the infant), but at the same time one is to distinguish between its subjective nature and objectivity: that is, one can enjoy its meanings, but without making claims on others of their objectivity. In other words, the only way we can make anything external meaningful is through the use of illusion in this space, which (we need to recognize) is inherently subjective; yet, its multiple meanings, including desires and anxieties that are inconsistent and incommunicable, can be shared with others – through affects: bodily sensations connected to our unconscious and meaning-making processes. As mentioned above, our ability to symbolize develops on the basis of the primary experience that there is a recipient for the communication who will be able to contain the corresponding affects in the intersubjective space. A person unable to express their affective states except through somatic symptoms ‘could be described not as lacking speech or symbolic capacity, but as lacking a relationship that is the condition of that capacity’ (Benjamin 1998:26–27). Nonetheless,

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even in a containing relationship, a certain affect always exceeds the linguistic exchange. Charles Spezzano (1993:110) describes affect as a mental event directly experienced in the body. Joyce McDougall (1989) even sees affects as essentially psychosomatic events: we are all liable to partly discharge overflowing internal conflicts through what she calls theatres of the body, from headaches, allergies and sleep disturbances to rheumatism and heart attacks. In addition, psychoanalytic clinicians often give examples of their patients seemingly separating affects from the content of their communications and evoking particular corresponding states in their therapists, in order to be able to say what has previously not been sayable or evoke in others the feelings they cannot identify with. In other words, it would seem we are liable to express affects not only through our own but sometimes also through the other’s body states. Affective exchanges, then, can carry a sense of intention beyond the actual words, part of which might be an embodied sensation that can also be induced in the other. Baraitser and Frosh suggest precisely that the inducement of affect in the encounter is what makes the exchange meaningful, even producing the experience of a certain kind of affective, psychic truth. Affects can be understood as ‘a mode of communication of unconscious feeling-states and aspects of the self’ (Baraitser & Frosh 2007:79). Importantly, an attuned response from another is thought to be able to shift us in and out of particular affective states. Whether called attunement, empathic mirroring, affective resonance or recognition, being held in someone’s mind means our physiology can calm down, heal and grow, and we can exercise, as it were, our ‘executive function’ (Van der Kolk 2014:62), such as planning. We are getting up at 5am, to make a two-day journey across Europe. We went to sleep late and I haven’t slept well. Having lived between two countries for the last five years, I’m tired of the moves, and each time it feels more difficult leaving my family and friends at either side. Furthermore, we have been doing the journey by car because we now have a dog; an interesting road trip the first time round, the thought of its never-ending hours of driving now feels exhausting in itself. When the alarm goes off, I feel my body is too heavy to move and I have a headache. ‘I can’t go . . . I’m too tired. I just can’t do it again . . . ’ ‘Come on, you can do it. I will drive the first part so you can rest in the car. We will take it slowly and stop a lot. We’ll put on nice music. It will be ok’, my partner replies in a calming voice. Suddenly I feel better, the tension in my chest releases. My mind starts planning the order of things I should do to make the departure fast and efficient. My expectation in that moment was that my partner understood my tiredness and despair, not that he would change the reality of the journey. Whilst nothing improves in the external circumstances, the other’s understanding can change the energy one has for going on with difficult things. It matters not only that the intimate other cares, but also that I feel he cares because his2 own well-being is

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connected to mine (Kittay 2008). Eva Feder Kittay (2008:149) describes such care in a loving relationship as profoundly defining of our identity: ‘who cares for us, and how well that person (or persons) cares for us helps define our sense of self-worth’. More than the other’s actions, it is the experience of their affective connection that brings meaningfulness, literally lifting one up. Even one’s internal resource for stability and self-soothing is thought to be based on ‘the mother’s narcissistic investment in her baby’ (McDougall 1989:82): it is the affective connection that matters. Affective exchanges, however, can change our physiology both ways: ‘knowing that we are seen and heard by the important people in our lives can make us feel calm and safe, and [. . .] being ignored or dismissed can precipitate rage reactions or mental collapse’ (Van der Kolk 2014:78). Imagine a different ending to this minute relational event: my partner gets annoyed, says that it is also hard for him to get up but one has to be able to contain this and do what needs to be done. Instead of lifting up, my bodily coordination becomes slow and clumsy; the routine tasks, such as getting dressed, that one would normally do in a semiautomatic way become difficult. I might start humming absent-mindedly to calm myself down whilst building resentment. The tension increases, we get into an argument, perhaps miss our planned departure. Several things can interfere with the affective resonance needed to offer each other understanding. Perhaps in the second, imagined scenario, my partner finds it hard to give emotional support because he cannot reconcile it with his view that it is meaningful to have the ‘strength’ to simply do what needs to be done. Perhaps it is hard for him to accept that he has upset someone with something he does not find a legitimate cause of upset, that resolving this requires acknowledging his link to his partner with a different affective experience over which he does not have control, his distinguishing between care and guilt. Each relationship is woven through thousands of such subtle moments of intimate interactions, each one opening the possibility for affective resonance or its failure, each one being interfered with by our internal identities, past and present, our expectations, external contexts. Each one, also, an opening for subtle inequalities to play out.

In the social envelope Intimate affective exchanges are a process of meaning-making, producing the experience of ‘truth’ through a continuous check and realignment with the other. Each divergence instigates a process of negotiation of views, feelings, affective states and parts of self, a constant background process of the relationship. This negotiation, however, is not only influenced by the general tone and power dynamics of the relationship (echoing both partners’ primary affective patterns) but is also embedded in the societal context and meanings that envelop them. In her influential book The Bonds of Love (1988), Jessica Benjamin builds on

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Winnicott’s idea of discovering externality, in connection to Hegel’s dialectic of recognition, to describe intimate negotiating dynamics as essentially a search for a balance between self-assertion and recognition in relation to the intimate other who we need to recognize our subjectivity. This search is, indeed, coloured by re-enactment of our primary dynamics in its successful as well as in its unsuccessful (domination/submission) resolutions. Principally, it highlights our mutual dependency as a continuing and dialectical part of a close relationship. However, Benjamin highlighted how the gender binary and its power differential within our social context can skew the outcome of our intimate relationships, in particular in the value-tones this context attaches to the dependency of the human subject. She and other feminist theorists (such as Chodorow 1978; Eichenbaum & Orbach 1985; Layton 2004; Segal 1994) have drawn attention to how the essentially related and fluid positions within intersubjectivity become split within social contexts. Subtle mechanisms (such as disapproval of a girl’s or boy’s identifications with the father or mother respectively, social idealizing or neglecting the mother’s subjectivity), the values-tones attached to various perceived binaries (such as dependency and autonomy, attachment and excitement) and their links to conventional feminine and masculine traits in particular areas of life taint all the little patterns of relating that we internalize. Being warm, aloof, passive, caring, reliable, forthcoming, flirty or independent becomes imbued with evaluative subtexts of what is acceptable and constricted for whom, a process that defensively forecloses multiplicity (Layton 2004:37). Rather than approaching our intimate negotiations and reconfiguring our primary affective patterns in creative ways, conventionally gendered patterns of relating attempt to bypass relational dilemmas, particularly overwhelming affects and dependency needs. But in doing so they actually intensify them (Goldner 1991), limiting how we can allow each other to be in each moment, which is especially crucial in moments of conflict. Importantly, however, these critiques describe gender as a mode of relating rather than a core identity, with multiple and competing internalizations, exposing dominant gender interpretations not only as always contingent and something that can be challenged, but also as something that can be deployed in creative and even subversive ways. Consider two different ways of communicating with a partner: We are driving towards Regent’s Park. ‘Let’s have a coffee in that glass pavilion’, I say. ‘Which glass pavilion? You are mixing it up with Hyde Park’, he replies confidently. ‘No, no, that small glass coffee place on the little hill’, I reply, anxious to prove that I’m not. ‘Ah, that one’, he accepts finally, without mentioning his mistake or apologizing for accusing me of one. We are driving towards Regent’s Park. ‘Let’s have a coffee in that glass pavilion’, he says. ‘Which glass pavilion?’ I ask, digging through my memory for an image of a glass structure with a cafe. ‘Where? How does it look?’ ‘Yes, the small glass coffee place on the little hill’, he says confidently. ‘Ah, that one’, I say, relieved that I was brought out of my confusion.

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Only the first communication describes an entry from my diary, but similar entries to the second one exist. When communication fails, he looks for an external fault first (‘you are mixing it up with . . .’), whilst I first question myself. He leaves me the responsibility to challenge his accusation, to explain and clarify. He then accepts that the point has been cleared up to his satisfaction, without acknowledging that the misunderstanding was his, or that he might have caused some injustice. In the end, it was only a small thing, right? Yet in the opposite scenario, I feel anxious for not automatically getting what was said. I take his taking trouble to explain as an act of politeness, not as my self-understood right, coming neither from the other’s wish that I understand nor from his simply taking responsibility for making himself clear. With each similar instance, the belief that I will be heard slowly wears out and the tension in my chest increases, building up my half-conscious general anxiety, further added to by the times when I actually do not clearly recognize what has made me sad or angry. It is an unequal dynamic, destined to cause resentment in the long term. Nonetheless, this time I try to explain; the words are slow to come out, my mouth is dry, and my memory cannot seem to find the right expressions in English. I feel as if I am making a big deal out of nothing: Look, this is what happened, I say to him. This is how I respond to you, and this is how you respond to me. Look, it’s unfair. It’s making me tired. ‘I understand. When you describe it this way . . . I see what you mean’. I feel a sense of relief, I ‘lighten up’. I think of the ambiguous affect lingering on. How much are these different reactions a result of myriad small ways in our histories in which the gender frames have shaped us? I envy such confidence that one’s view is by default right, that one will be understood, that one is entitled to have things clarified. I would want to have it, too. But I also feel pride that I was able to capture this event, so small and minute. To use my ability to attune to such micro-interactions to make the dynamics transparent for a moment; to transform the tension in my chest into a new point of connection between us.

Theatres of the ‘truth’ As the stars in the theatre of the body, affects invoke a deep feeling of truth. In this sense, they play a part in another theatre with an intimate partner: theatres of affective truth. Affective resonance creates a feeling of shared truth. The unspoken but shared meanings create the feel of intimacy with another person. The intimate other, in turn, makes our fantasies credible and our reality meaningful (Butler 2000; see also Curk 2013). The most delicate piece of this theatre, as Virginia Goldner (2003) calls it, is the erotic part of intimacy, which requires a partial suspension of disbelief. Goldner paints the self as partially unknown to oneself in the thrill of discovering oneself through another, fuelled by the spell of fantasy – the felt but unknown and unspoken. Her point is that there is pleasure in

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this exercise of dissociation, where the interaction of multiple ‘selves’ as well as a crowd of body parts and self-objectifications meet with the lover’s counterparts. It is an affective exchange that requires letting go of the ‘concrete’ and complying with the fantasy, the ‘story’ being played: As the mise-en-scène unfolds and the crowd gathers, the resulting condition of sexual passion both entails and produces an intensification of shifting selfstates. Each erotic grouping of parts and wholes must surrender to the story, must enact the scene with the single-minded conviction of a Method actor. Otherwise, all will be driven away by ordinary daylight and its conventional expectations. (Goldner 2003:124) The innermost domains of the selves are exposed to each other and transformed through this exposure – in ways beyond what we could name and express. The intimate situation as deconstructive and fantastical suggests a momentary suspension of one’s stable self and an experience of oneself in a fluid state where everything, including a different self, seems possible, indeed appears. With such transformational exchanges, an embodied experience beyond our intellectual understanding, we may be forgiven for ambiguous feelings towards the person who ‘co-convened’ this intimate theatre. Intimacy makes for some difficult affects, from opening oneself to being rejected to our seeing the other person’s real features that might fracture our own fantasies. Perhaps the main question is whether afterwards, when the lights are turned on, as Goldner puts it, we are able to feel comfortable with the self-parts that emerged in the presence of the other when our guarded boundaries were suspended. Our choices in each moment of what to engage with in a shared affective experience can have various functions, both meaningful and defensive. Psychoanalyst Christopher Bonovitz gives an example of the latter from one of his patients, but it can easily be imagined happening between two intimate partners. He describes a developing atmosphere of erotic fantasies and tensions, a dance of flirtatious interchanges, comments about appearances, stories of suspense that revolved around bodies, feelings and positions of power and status in society. Suddenly, when he attempted an interpretation of these feelings, the exchange collapsed, the patient rejecting it: ‘if you’re having those kinds of feelings towards me . . .’ (Bonovitz 2010:637). Suddenly, the shared affective experience became misrepresentation, a conflict of owning and repudiating certain affects, including shame and embarrassment, as if the analyst were the only one experiencing it: ‘the fantasies, what had felt to be mutual, devolve into a concrete reality devoid of imaginings and symbolic potential’ (Bonovitz 2010:638). This being an analytic setting, the analyst managed to articulate his sense of feeling cut off and in doubt, as well as later on to connect it to the patient’s early conflicting experiences with her seductive father. What would happen if this were an intimate partners’ exchange instead, where one partner, perhaps for reasons

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external to this relationship (for instance, another relationship), or due to particular identities or affects (difficulties acknowledging feelings, embarrassment), was not able to own her part in the affective entanglement? Bonovitz argues the intersubjective space is constantly being fed into by the private fantasies of each party, and if some cannot be talked about, it might mean one or both parties are using the space in a defensive way. Every affective exchange exposes a delicate balance with moral undertones, some felt and explicit and some perhaps accumulating invisibly in anxiety, tiredness, bitterness, loss of belief. Unaddressed, even minute differences accumulate: Each party to the relationship is always aware (or defensively unaware) of the balance of fairness. Are we being recognized for who we are and appreciated for what we do and give, or are we being neglected and misused? Are we being unfair to our partner, or are we mistreating our partner? Clearly, morality is a relational category. (Goldner 2004:349) But clearly, too, this morality consists of judgements founded in the value-tones of our social and personal contexts, often creating more questions than answers. Does being unfair to one’s partner depend on what one understands as unfair, what the partner does, or perhaps someone outside the relationship, a therapist or a colleague? Someone from another culture? What if both partners feel something is unfair? When the affective resonance fails, whose affects are ‘truthful’? I phone my bank, trying to get an appointment with a mortgage advisor. The agent is reciting her written script, rushing me through questions that require precision with a speed difficult to follow and without consideration that it is a phone conversation. I find her unpleasant and impolite, even unprofessional with her open distrustfulness of my self-employed status and dual nationality. Before even getting a chance for a meeting with an advisor, I am made to feel ineligible, failing her expectations of an appropriate applicant. I come away from the phone call drained from almost an hour-long discussion of my finances, but also severely down in my mood, feeling unconfident and unfit as a human being. ‘She was so . . .’ I say desperately, turning to my partner, who had heard the conversation, hoping he will say something to restore my spirit. Instead, he is annoyed: ‘Why do you let these people bring you down?’ I can feel my heart sink, my face turning into a speechless ‘how is a rude agent my fault’ surprise. A moment later my anger with the agent relocates onto my partner. Couple therapist Mary Gerson (2007) argues that moments of one partner’s distress can be particularly risky for inducing arguments. Feeling vulnerable whilst the other partner fails to respond by providing psychological proximity can result

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in resentment. But as someone who keeps very firm lines with any kind of service provider, my partner was prevented from being able to help me because he simply could not understand why I would be vulnerable to such a person in the first place; in fact, he was quite annoyed that I was. ‘Showing psychological proximity’ to someone who clearly did not hold the same safe boundaries against outsiders as himself induced a reaction to separate rather than seek closeness. I, on the other hand, felt not only that he had failed to support me, but that he had conditioned his help on his judgement whether my boundaries were suitable. How were we to avoid an argument? What would be needed in this moment is the recognition of one’s link to the other. However, Gerson (2007) contends that our embeddedness in Western ‘righteous individualism’ instead escalates conflicts, because it presents this link as a compromise of self-expression or self-reliance. This leads to each partner’s heated arguing for their own view and a critique of the partner’s. However, the shared ‘truth’ cannot emerge by getting to the bottom of who did/should do what (if this is ever possible3), because this positions two individuals as logically in conflict and is not typically conducive to improving the closeness needed to resolve the dissonance. As another couple therapist, Evelyn Cleavely (1993:57), put it, conflict can be ‘healthy, but its potential for growth is dependent upon the couple’s capacity to regulate conflict in relation to their individual and shared internal worlds’. The task, then, seems to be to improve closeness in the moment of affective dissonance. Gerson (2007) suggests that such a situation requires doing something for the other simply because you recognize that she is, at that moment, incapable of dealing with the situation. Benjamin (2004:7) has theorized the need for holding both one’s own and the other’s position in mind, to develop the space of ‘thirdness’ between two subjects where negotiation in the construction of experience can take place. Similarly, Pizer and Pizer (2006:79–80, original emphases) argue that a certain recognition of each other ‘must precede any sort of agreement (or agreement to differ)’, and a lot is at stake here since ‘to the extent that relationships cannot be negotiated on the basis of mutual recognition, they are negotiated on the basis of power’. Negotiating moments of flaring affect on the basis of power is not only threatening but is also a failure to recognize something about oneself. Using identity-related binaries to project dependency feelings onto the other reveals ‘a bizarre and gendered presumption of entitlement to be shielded [. . .] from all painful affect’ (Goldner 2004:353) that can escalate a conflict into violent outbursts against one’s partner. Recognizing one’s link to the other, and regulating the conflict within the shared internal world where one holds both one’s own and the intimate partner’s position in mind, is important. But what I want to suggest here is that the psychoanalytic view of transitional space as allowing for the borrowing and sharing of parts of the self means we can, and should, actively try to make such self-resources, including the different affective capacities that we have acquired through the social binaries that have shaped us, safely available to the intimate other for identification, letting

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them ‘borrow’ parts of ourselves and experiment with them. For example, if the next time I speak to a complicated agent on the phone, and my partner manages to stay calm and understanding with me rather than getting annoyed, I might be more able to try to imitate his cool-headed confidence rather than reply with my typical anxiety. Conversely, when my partner sees me expressing sadness, tiredness or insecurity, as in some of the examples above, it might help him share his difficult and vulnerable affective states better, rather than avoid them. For this to happen, perhaps we also need to reflect on how this affects the way we perceive each other or expect each other to be, and what support we are able to give.

The potential of affective dissonances Managing affective reactions in relation to an intimate partner with whom you feel entangled in the very way you make sense of the world, especially where the affects are rooted in childhood, is difficult. In this chapter, I have argued that conflicts are moments of both vulnerability and opportunity. I have shown how an awareness of the ways arguments are infused with accumulated affects and fantasies from our personal histories and social contexts might allow us to be more attentive to the emotional truth of the other. I have proposed that collecting, in the form of a diary, everyday intimacy’s affective elements, moods and responses in moments of conflict, and analysing them, can help us register affective inequalities that emerge. It may help us challenge each partner’s habitual ways of communication, like some presented above, or use them more consciously to increase connection rather than accumulate resentment. We might be more able to notice each partner’s sensitivity to certain affective states, for example how one partner avoids vulnerability feelings or another gets upset with agents on the phone, and challenge the power-tones of these states, by noticing how we might be enclosing someone within our views or pushing them away when they need closeness. In this way, we can observe minute details of how our meaning-making takes place in the shared transitional space of intimacy, acknowledge our need for it and attune to the other in ways that they need rather than in ways we think are right. Taking interest in and responsibility for the affective state of the other in moments of conflict fosters the conditions for intimacy, because it adds reliability and depth to the experiences of its good, loving moments. Only then can the intimate other be able to think, be and relate to the self in a way that discovers and transforms each through their relationship.

Notes 1 My partner at the time gave permission to use these vignettes. 2 The examples are from a heterosexual relationship, so I am using a descriptive ‘he’ when referring to my partner, which is a specific case and not intended in a general sense. 3 That is, if the boundaries of safety of the relationship were assured – there is no abuse in this relationship. In cases of violence, it should be clearly recognized who caused it and boundaries put in place first (see Goldner 2004).

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References Balint, E., 1993, ‘Unconscious communications between husband and wife’, in S. Ruszczynski (ed.), Psychotherapy with couples, pp. 30–43, Karnac, London. Baraitser, L. & Frosh, S., 2007, ‘Affect and encounter in psychoanalysis’, Critical Psychology 21, 76–93. Benjamin, J., 1988, The bonds of love: Psychoanalysis, feminism, and the problem of domination, Pantheon, New York. Benjamin, J., 1998, Shadow of the other: Intersubjectivity and gender in psychoanalysis, Taylor & Francis/Routledge, Florence, KY. Benjamin, J., 2004, ‘Beyond doer and done to: An intersubjective view of thirdness’, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 73(1), 5–46. Bollas, C., 1987, The shadow of the object, Free Association Books, London. Bonovitz, C., 2010, ‘The interpersonalization of fantasy: The linking and de-linking of fantasy and reality’, Psychoanalytic Dialogues 20(6), 627–641. Breuer, J. & Freud, S., 2001, ‘Studies on hysteria’, in J. Strachey (ed.), Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, Volume 2, Vintage, London. Butler, J., 2000, ‘Longing for recognition: Commentary on the work of Jessica Benjamin’, Studies in Gender and Sexuality 1(3), 271–290. Chodorow, N., 1978, The reproduction of mothering: Psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender, University of California Press, Berkeley & London. Cleavely, E., 1993, ‘Relationships: Interaction, defences, and transformation’, in S. Ruszczynski (ed.), Psychotherapy with couples, pp. 55–69, Karnac, London. Curk, P., 2013, ‘Dangerous ethics: Exploring attachment and destructiveness through the work of Judith Butler and Jessica Benjamin’, in G. Peters & F. Peters (eds.), Thoughts of love, pp. 28–46, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne. Davoine, F. & Gaudillière, J.-M., 2004, History beyond trauma: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one cannot stay silent, Other Press, New York. Dolar, M., 1996, ‘At first sight’, in R.S. Zizek (ed.), Gaze and voice as love objects, pp. 129–153, Duke University Press, Durham. Eichenbaum, L. & Orbach, S., 1985, Understanding women, Penguin, Harmondsworth. Freud, S., 2001, ‘The neuropsychoses of defence’, in J. Strachey (ed.), Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, Volume 3, pp. 45–61, Vintage, London. Frosh, S., 2006, ‘Melancholy without the other’, Studies in Gender and Sexuality 7(4), 363–378. Gallop, J., 2002, Anecdotal theory, Duke University Press, London. Gerson, M.J., 2007, ‘The justice of intimacy: Beyond the golden rule’, Contemporary Psychoanalysis 43(2), 247–260. Goldner, V., 1991, ‘Toward a critical relational theory of gender’, Psychoanalytic Dialogues 1(3), 249–272. Goldner, V., 2003, ‘Ironic gender/authentic sex’, Studies in Gender and Sexuality 4, 113–139. Goldner, V., 2004, ‘When love hurts: Treating abusive relationships’, Psychoanalytic Inquiry 24(3), 346–372. Green, A., 1977, ‘Conceptions of affect’, International Journal of Psychoanalysis 58, 129–156. Kittay, E.F., 2008, ‘The global heart transplant and caring across national boundaries’, Southern Journal of Philosophy 46, 138–165.

168  Polona Curk Klein, M., 1975, Envy and gratitude, and other works 1946–1963, Hogarth Press/Institute of Psychoanalysis, London. Kohut, H., 1971, The analysis of the self, Hogarth Press, London. Layton, L., 2004, Who’s that girl? Who’s that boy? Clinical practice meets postmodern gender theory, Analytic Press, London. McDougall, J., 1989, Theatre of the body: A psychoanalytic approach to psychosomatic illness, Free Association Books, London. Milner, M., 1986, A life of one’s own, Virago, London. Ogden, T., 1987, ‘The transitional Oedipal relationship in female development’, International Journal of Psychoanalysis 68, 485–498. Ogden, T.H., 1992, The matrix of the mind: Object relations and the psychoanalytic dialogue, Karnac, London. Phillips, A., 2000, Promises promises, Faber & Faber, London. Pizer, B. & Pizer, S.A., 2006, ‘ “The gift of an apple or the twist of an arm”: Negotiation in couples and couple therapy’, Psychoanalytic Dialogues 16(1), 71–92. Rosenthall, J., 2007, ‘Sharing a heart: The dilemma of a fused couple’, British Journal of Psychotherapy 23(3), 411–429. Rusbridger, R., 2012, ‘Affects in Melanie Klein’, International Journal of Psychoanalysis 93, 139–150. Segal, L., 1994, Straight sex: The politics of pleasure, Virago, London. Spezzano, C., 1993, Affect in psychoanalysis: A clinical synthesis, Analytic Press, London. Van der Kolk, B., 2014, The body keeps the score: Mind, brain and body in the transformation of trauma, Penguin, London. Winnicott, D.W., 2005, Playing and reality, Routledge, New York.

Part IV

Affective intimacies beyond couples

Chapter 11

Mobilizing affects about intimate relationships Emotional pedagogy among the New Right in Germany Katja Chmilewski and Katharina Hajek

We have to make the unaware . . . affected. Only as affected people can we be proactive. —Kuhla (2014)

Introduction With the rise of the New Right and the party Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD) since 2013, Germany has witnessed a politicization of intimate relationships unprecedented for decades. One of the most prominent sites of this contestation is the Demo für Alle (Demonstration for All). Eleven major demonstrations have been organized to date at irregular intervals in several major German cities under the slogan ‘Marriage and family first! Stop the gender ideology and the sexualization of our children’. The protests were sparked initially by the plans of the provincial government of Baden-Württemberg in 2013 to include the topics of sexual diversity and non-normative intimacies in educational curricula. The demonstrations, with up to 5,000 participants, from 2014 to 2015, and their online appearance, however, soon became a platform to promote the nuclear family and heteronormative forms of intimate relationships. The interesting thing considering the German context is that, in contrast to other forms of right-wing mobilizations such as the Pegida demonstrations (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West), these marches managed to attract people beyond narrow radical right-wing and fundamentalist clerical circles. It is mostly white middle-class supporters who are marching at the Demo für Alle, with banners and balloons all showing the same emblem: the white silhouettes of a man and woman joining hands with two children against the signature colours of cobalt blue and antique pink. More like family events than political demonstrations, the demonstrations presented themselves as peaceful get-togethers of families and people of all ages marching for the allegedly most natural reasons in the world: the protection of the nuclear family and the preservation of heteronormative forms of identity. In this chapter, we ask what role the nuclear family and normative forms of intimate relations play in affective politics and successful1 right-wing political

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mobilizations. Beyond the simple observation that right-wing politicians and activists defend the nuclear family, we are asking how these mobilizations draw on heteronormative intimacies and the identities related to them to attract broader sections of the population. Based on our focus on the affective politics of the New Right in Germany, we aim to contribute to the debate on affects, politics and intimacies in three ways. Firstly, although there is a growing body of literature on the gender politics of the New Right (see Kuhar & Paternotte 2017), we focus on the hitherto understudied but pivotal role of the family and intimate relationships in right-wing narratives. Secondly, there is significant academic attention paid to right-wing populism and affect, concentrating primarily on individual affective dispositions and related political and party preferences (see Demertzis 2006; Rico, Guinjoan & Anduiza 2017). We, however, want to look at right-wing populist rhetoric and mobilizations (cf. Caiani & della Porta 2011; Wodak 2015). Here, too, surprisingly little attention has yet been paid to the emotional dimension of these politics (see, however, Kølvraa 2015). This is all the more striking as the New Right is especially characterized by its preferred reliance on highly emotionalized language and vocabulary to frame its anti-EU, anti-immigration, anti-elite and, not least, gender politics. Thirdly, we draw on the literature of the emotional turn in social movement studies (cf. Flam & King 2005; Goodwin, Jasper & Polletta 2007; Jasper 2011). Most of the literature, however, focuses on leftist or progressive mobilizations. The concentration on right-wing movements, by contrast, is still relatively rare (see, however, Boykoff & Laschever 2011). We aim to expand the understanding of the dynamics and specifics of the mobilizations of the New Right by analysing the activism of the Demo für Alle. Two concepts are central to our understanding of affects and emotions. Firstly, we assume that successful movements always build on specific ‘affective states’ (Gould 2010:33). They constitute ‘fertile ground’ (30) for political mobilization as elusive forces and pre-discursive bodily intensities. In the case of the Demo für Alle and its successful promotion of the topics of family and intimacies, we argue that this must be contextualized in the crisis of the nuclear family and the malebreadwinner model in Germany. We refer to this as a crisis of a specific normative and institutionalized form of intimate relations of heterosexual men and women with their biological children. Referring to its rhetoric and mobilization, we argue that the New Right and especially the Demo für Alle address the so far unanswered insecurity and discomfort connected with the erosion of the traditional family model. They provide a language for these affective states and make them socially intelligible. Hence, and secondly, we demonstrate that the Demo für Alle offers an emotional pedagogy (Gould 2010:33). The latter implies not only a specific explanation of the crisis experienced – the alleged state-driven threat to the traditional family and its interference in intimate relationships – but also a way to process this insecurity: the reactivation of traditional heteronormative intimacies. This has simultaneously been read as the reactivation of specific forms of affective inequalities. In this

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chapter, affective inequalities are not conceived as interpersonal experiences, but as an affective – and, thus, subjectivizing – dimension of heteronormative intimacies. Affective inequalities are what seemingly get lost in the crisis of the family and are promoted in this emotional pedagogy. The nuclear family is rendered an affect-laden asset and integral part of a promoted right-wing conservative social ontology. The dependencies and vulnerabilities which are part of these affective inequalities within the heterosexual couple, as well as between parents and children, are being negated. Instead, the interpellation of the nuclear family and its affective relations by the Demo für Alle functions as the historical code for security, stability and a specific distribution of gendered roles. In the following, we will firstly outline the recent rise of the New Right and its conservative gender politics in Germany, and then reconstruct the decline of the traditional family model and the post-war regime of intimate relations leading to its crisis. Subsequently, and drawing on the work of Deborah Gould on mobilization and affect, we go into further detail concerning our conceptual framework for understanding the affective dimensions of this development. Finally, we will demonstrate the emotional pedagogy of the New Right in three dimensions by analysing the online appearance and videotapes of speeches that were held during the demonstrations and which are accessible on the website of the Demo für Alle. In the conclusion, we highlight the contributions of the chapter regarding the discussion of the role of emotions in political mobilization processes and the understanding of the current repoliticization and contestation of intimate relationships.

The Demo für Alle and the New Right in Germany The Demos für Alle are organized by the aristocrat Hedwig von Beverfoerde, a right-wing conservative activist, and her organization Initiative Familienschutz (Initiative for the Protection of the Family). The Initiative Familienschutz (n.d.) emphasizes the nuclear family ‘as the foundation of society’ in its self-definition and aims to fight ‘gender mainstreaming and the state-aided early sexualization of children’. Hence, it is not surprising that it targeted the provincial government of Baden-Württemberg and its reform of school curricula to integrate sexual diversity and non-normative relationships as topics in syllabi for school children. Inspired by the successful mobilizations of the Manif pour tous in France in 2013, and following a petition against the reform signed by 192,000 people, the Initiative Familienschutz called for Demo für Alle marches from spring 2014 on and soon organized large demonstrations against similar reforms in other German states. Although the Initiative Familienschutz (n.d.) characterizes itself repeatedly as a grassroots movement and ‘an independent, non-party and non-governmental initiative’, it is closely connected to the far right in Germany. The Initiative Familienschutz is part of the Zivile Koalition (Civil Coalition), the central campaign platform of Beatrix von Storch. She not only serves as the chairperson of the right-wing populist party AfD but can also be characterized as a central figure in

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the articulation of the clerical fundamentalist gender and biopolitics of the party. Hence, both organizations, the Demo für Alle and the Initiative Familienschutz, constitute important parts of the civil society network on which the AfD builds (Plehwe & Schlögl 2014). This is also confirmed by regular speeches of AfD politicians at the Demo für Alle.

The crisis of the family as the hegemonic form of intimate relationship We want to argue that the successful mobilization of the Demo für Alle cannot be explained solely by its propagated anti-feminism and homophobia or as a defence reaction to seemingly successful gender equality policies. We think, however, that the success of these protests must be contextualized in the transformation of familial life and intimacies which evolved during the last few decades in Germany and its affective dimensions. Referring to feminist research, we want to highlight the crisis of the heteronormative family as the dominant, institutionalized and normative form of intimate relationships here. Germany was characterized by a specific ‘reproduction model’, namely the male-breadwinner model (Jürgens 2010:561), in the post– World War II era and until the 1980s. In the case of West Germany, this comprised the married, heterosexual couple living in a two-generation family with their biological children. Furthermore, this arrangement was based on a gendered division of labour and the allocation of reproductive duties to the private sphere. While women were expected to stay at home to look after the household and children, men worked full-time outside the home to provide income and social insurance entitlements for family members. Although this model was never lived by the whole population, it was nonetheless ‘hegemonic’ in that it was institutionalized and therefore backed by social security systems (dependants’ co-insurance), the principle of subsidiarity in the welfare state (few public childcare facilities), labour law (standard employment), collective wage agreements (implementation of family wages) and the labour market (full-time male versus part-time female jobs) (Jürgens 2010). This reproduction model, the respective form of the nuclear family and normative intimate relationships have been in decline since the 1980s. The decrease in real wages during the last thirty years, and the subsequent disappearance of family wages, makes it financially increasingly impossible for families to choose the male-breadwinner model – even if they want to. Several reforms in the field of German family policy, such as those in alimony and spousal support, the development of public childcare facilities and shorter entitlement to parental allowance, add to this development (cf. Jüttner, Leitner & Rüling 2011). The increased integration of women into the labour market and precarious working conditions further undermine the traditional family as a model of intimate relationships based on a gendered division of labour. It renders traditional forms of familial

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life increasingly impossible and initiates new, hitherto unexperienced forms of gendered roles and subjectivities within families. Feminist research in this field refers to these processes as a ‘crisis of social reproduction’ (ed. Bezanson & Luxton 2006; Brodie 2003) or a ‘care crisis’ (Beneria 2008; Yeates 2009). Moreover, these processes must be contextualized in the discursive and symbolic transformation of gendered relationships, such as the erosion of traditional images of masculinity and femininity, as well as the increased visibility of non-patriarchal and non-heteronormative subjectivities and intimate relationships in the fields of public discourse, and cultural and media representation. Here, we want to point to the intimate, affective and subjective dimensions of these processes. Traditional images of gendered identities and intimacies related to the traditional heteronormative family are being rendered impossible to perform without yet having been replaced by new ones. The heteronormative family, as the traditional form of intimacy, and its subjectivities are indeed threatened. The unequal allocation of caring and affective responsibilities, and the affective inequalities associated with it, is increasingly being rendered anachronistic without being replaced by new and more sustainable models of intimacies and familial life. These experiences of precarization cannot be reduced to mere problems with reconciliation between work and family. Rather, they foster a comprehensive feeling of insecurity and disorientation, and an impression that the traditional social and cultural landmarks can no longer be trusted. In the following section, we will explain how we consider these feelings to be fertile ground for successful mobilization around heterosexual intimacies and identities.

Right-wing mobilization and affect Drawing on the work of Gould, we seek to understand right-wing political actors’ politicization of intimate relationships by focusing on the affective dimension of political mobilization. Referring to the example of Act Up (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), Gould raises the question: why do people participate in social protest? Therefore, she seeks to explain the emergence or absence of ‘emotional resonance’ (Gould 2004:159–160) in processes of political mobilization. Gould states that the emotional turn in social movement studies, however, has not gone far enough (Gould 2010). Referring to the work of Jeff Goodwin, James Jasper and Francesca Polletta (2007), Gould identifies a tendency to render emotion again in cognitive and rationalist terms in the debate on political emotions. Gould turns against the notion that cognition precedes political feeling, claiming that feelings cannot be understood as rationally derived from perception. She therefore rejects ‘a dominant version of rationality that appears devoid of emotional components and enmeshed in a Western logic that feminists have criticized for decades’ (Ruiz-Junco 2013:45). The focus on the affective dimension, therefore, indicates a new attention to the body and the material in social sciences, challenging ‘mind–body dualisms,

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as well as the distinction between reason and passion’ (Ahmed 2014:206). The main stake is ‘to theorize the social and the subjective in new ways’ (Koivunen 2010:24) without reproducing traditional binaries. Referring to Brian Massumi’s distinction between affect and emotion, Gould argues for acknowledging the ‘noncognitive, nonconscious, nonlinguistic and nonrational qualities of emotions’ (Gould 2010:25), which she defines as affect. Gould introduces the notion of ‘affective states’ (33). These function as fertile ground for political mobilization. Gould points out that affect can be understood as the ‘body’s ongoing and relatively amorphous inventory-taking of coming into contact and interacting with the world’ (26). She describes these pre-discursive bodily intensities, which cannot be expressed in language, as loaded with a motivational force that is directed to the understanding of this rather diffuse sentiment ‘that you have been moved’ (33). Following Gould, emotions can be understood as a concrete articulation of such affective states. Emotions canalize affects, correspond to the need to make sense of specific experiences and articulate them in a socially intelligible way. Gould (2010:33) uses the notion of emotional pedagogy as an analytical concept to explain how ‘movements [. . .] “make sense” of inchoate affective states and authorize selected feelings and actions while downplaying and even invalidating others’. In addition to being an explanation for the affective states experienced, a core element of emotional pedagogies, therefore, is to offer a behavioural repertoire and forms of relating to each other to cope with these affective states (Opratko 2017). Carving out the emotional pedagogy of social movements enables one to explain how ‘emotional resonance’ is produced in processes of political mobilization, and why people get (affectively) attached to certain issues. Hence, we suggest that the crisis of heteronormative intimate relationships and (gendered) subjectivities outlined above refers to affective states which are characterized by insecurity, fear and disorientation. These affective states are evoked by a precarization of traditional forms of intimate relationships, of gendered subjectivities and affective inequalities within intimate relationships (partners and children). However, the crisis of intimate relationships may not be perceived as an objectively determinable event or a clearly definable state. Rather, it is a contested discursive field in which different social actors try to intervene. Here, the New Right engages by seizing on real problems and experiences, such as the precarization of traditional forms of intimate relationships, and articulates them within right-wing authoritarian politics (Opratko 2017). Therefore, it is in this sense that we argue that the Demo für Alle offers an emotional pedagogy that implies an alleged explanation for the crisis experienced – the decline of the traditional family and the crisis of intimate relationships – as well as an apparent solution for coping with the diffused discomfort: the reactivation of heteronormative identities, the heterosexual family and the traditional form of intimate relationships. In doing so, the Demo für Alle, as part of the New

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Right, provides specific forms of subjectivation. This is not to equate them with a solution for the problems and experiences of precarization that foster these affective states. However, this right-wing emotional pedagogy thereby offers a language to put these problems and contradictions into words and to translate affects into feelings. The material for our analysis of the emotional pedagogy of the Demo für Alle consists of videotaped speeches from the demonstrations held between 2014 and 2016. We selected nine videos from sixty-seven speeches accessible on the website of the Demo für Alle. Our sample focuses initially on longer and programmatic speeches and leaves out shorter statements such as greetings. Secondly, we intend to mirror the variety of civil society actors present at the demonstrations, such as representatives of the Catholic Church, politicians and journalists, as well as citizens representing seemingly normal families. Our analysis focuses on the narratives provided in these speeches concerning issues of intimacies and the nuclear family. Since political communication is based mainly on the verbal exchange of statements, the textual/linguistic form remains the main site of our analysis (cf. Kølvraa 2015:183). We draw on Jochen Kleres (2010), who, referring to classical narrative analysis, states that narration is inextricably linked to emotionality. Based on this understanding of the emotionality of text (Ahmed 2014; Gould 2009), we carried out an inductive content analysis and identified three narratives as the main elements of the emotional pedagogy offered by the Demo für Alle. These narratives are analysed in terms of how they generate emotional resonance. What is considered the threat or problem, and what kind of crisis is articulated within the speeches? How is this crisis made sense of, and what kind of explanation is offered for it? What is adequately ‘to be felt’ about it? How is it aiming to ‘move’ the audience? And how is the crisis to be overcome? What is to be done?

Intimate relationships in the emotional pedagogy of the Demo für Alle The emotional pedagogy of the Demo für Alle builds on at least three narratives that are mediated through the emotionality of the speeches: (1) the crisis of the family as a fundamental crisis of society; (2) the contradictory interpellation of the state as threatening the privacy of the family while simultaneously protecting it; (3) stylization of the heterosexist family as normal, and therefore deserving protection. The crisis of intimate relationships as the crisis of society The first narrative in the emotional pedagogy of the Demo für Alle points to the specific articulation of the crisis. The crisis of normative intimate relationships, that is, heteronormative families, is linked to the erosion of society as such and

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is thus rearticulated as a fundamental crisis. The speeches of Gabriele Kuby, the Christian-conservative author and activist who speaks regularly at the marches, are illuminating on this point: We are here to defend the foundations of our culture, the foundations of the family, the well-being of our children, the future of the whole society. [. . .] Heterosexuality is the precondition for the existence of mankind, it is the precondition of marriage and family, and it belongs to the foundations which sustain life itself. (Kuby 2014) A seemingly natural relation between heterosexual identity, family and society is articulated here. Hence, binary and complementary gendered identities and forms of desire in this narrative constitute not only the basis of heteronormative forms of intimate relationships, but subsequently also the basis of the whole society. This relates the crisis of gendered identities and the heterosexual family directly to the erosion of society. Without these heterosexual families, so the narration goes, the reproduction of society is in danger. This points to the specific world view articulated in the emotional pedagogy of the Demo für Alle and the New Right, in which the heteronormative family is assigned an essential role. In drawing on – though by no means entirely adopting – the authoritarian concept of society of the traditional far right in Germany, it conceives society as anti-individualist and strictly hierarchical. Complementary, unambiguous gender identities play an important role here, as they assign social positions and allocate reproductive and protective responsibilities and different forms of participation (cf. Lang 2015). The family is the very site in which these gendered identities are arranged and stabilized. Society, as articulated in this emotional pedagogy, depends on gendered identities, organized within the specific setting of the family defined by the gendered division of labour and by naturalized and affective inequalities. Society threatens to dissolve if gendered identities and their hierarchical arrangement within normative intimacies become contested – as was seen to happen in the diversification of the educational curricula. This exceeds by far the conservative fear of the social and symbolic relativization of ‘marriage and family as a guiding principle’ (Hausmann 2014). The heteronormative family literally becomes a ‘nucleus’ (Schultner 2014) in the emotional pedagogy of the Demo für Alle and thus the central vehicle for the reproduction of society. In the questioning of this ‘nucleus’, the continuity of society is at stake, because ‘the social and biological sustainability of every society depends on these complementary genders’, as Anette Schultner (2014, our emphasis), chairperson of the initiative Christians in the Alternative for Germany, expresses it. The heteronormative family is linked to reproduction firstly by addressing the family as the endangered site of the ‘biological’, that is, physical reproduction of the

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population. In the context of German history, this refers clearly to a racist and ethnic concept of population. Secondly, and even more importantly, the emphasis on the traditional family for the social and cultural reproduction of society indicates that only heteronormative intimacies with a father and a mother secure the socialization of children. It is exclusively this constellation which enables and ensures the passing on of intelligible, heteronormative identity and the ‘values’ connected to it. The child here figures ‘as a dense site for the transfer and reproduction of culture, where “culture” carries with it implicit norms of racial purity and domination’ (Butler 2002:22). All this is apparently at stake in the erosion of the family as currently observed. In this narration, the New Right links the erosion of the heteronormative family to a scenario of the devastation and collapse of the whole society. We argue that this linking is successful, because it draws on an old discursive repertoire of bourgeois societies in which the coupling of the family with social order takes a central role. The success of this pedagogy can be explained because the emotionally charged image of intimate and social disintegration ‘speaks’ to the experienced precarization of intimate relations and subjectivities. Following Gould, it articulates and provides a ‘language’ by linking these affective states to the erosion of the traditional family. The narrative makes sense of these affects and authorizes people to ‘feel’ them. It designates a ‘cause’ for those who are discontented and insecure, and encourages the participants to ‘understand themselves and their situations in new ways and indeed to feel differently’ (Gould 2010:34, original emphasis): in our case, angry instead of alienated. Furthermore, it links the feeling of fear stemming from the erosion of traditional families to an even bigger threat scenario: the erosion of society as a whole. This suggests urgency, as the speeches continuously highlight the consequences if gendered identities and normative intimacies are not sustained: ‘the rootlessness of humans, the destruction of the family, social anarchy’ (Kuby 2014). The demolition of the traditional family is deemed a project of liberal, bureaucratic elites, which must be conquered, as we will demonstrate in the following. The contradictory reference to the state: threatening biopolitical bureaucracy versus protective executive forces The contradictory reference to the state is a second narrative running through the speeches at the Demo für Alle. Bureaucracy, seemingly inhabited by liberal–leftist and feminist elites, is rejected. The speeches repeatedly address the demonstrators as a (yet) vulnerable, silenced and powerless people and position them discursively in opposition to this ‘arrogant’, ‘impudent and bold’ (Schupeck 2014) political elite. By doing so, an opponent is identified which, moreover, encompasses ‘the United Nations, the EU, leftist governments, green governments, globally operating organizations like the WHO, International Planned Parenthood, Pro Familia in Germany, and big money’ (Kuby 2014).

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According to Gould (2010:33), the bodily intensity of the protesters plays an important role in emotional pedagogies. During the demonstrations, the dichotomy between the people and the elites is made ‘to feel’ like a tangible experience. On the one hand, it is articulated spatially. The speeches address the audience as literal bodies on the street: ‘right now, while we are here, standing and demonstrating in the rain, people in the ministries are busy implementing the ludicrous concept of gender mainstreaming in our schools’ (Kelle 2014, our emphases). The right-wing populist dichotomy is mirrored in the picture of unworldly bureaucrats working unchallenged in their safe and dry offices, shielded from and in opposition to the people exposed to the ‘real world’. On the other hand, this dichotomy is made visible by exposing gendered and familial bodies and subjectivities on the stage. The invisible technocratic expert is being countered by the visible exhibition of a down-to-earth mother capable of articulating the feelings of the people. One speaker (Dürrkopf 2014) introduces herself as a ‘mother of six’ and ‘trained nurse, at home for my children for sixteen years’. She claims to speak to the demonstrators ‘not as an expert, but as a mother’ and emphasizes her authenticity by articulating her ‘shock’ over the draft proposal for school curricula. The biopolitical state is opposed and fought against by targeting the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, Youth and Sports, which is in charge of the curriculum reform. These state apparatuses are referred to not only as ‘ivory towers’, but also as actively dismantling the sovereignty of the heteronormative family by ‘grasping’ at the traditional, patriarchal and parental right to rear and raise one’s children. The state is sketched as threatening the ‘air sovereignty over our children’s beds’ (Kelle 2014), as trying to break into the private sphere of the family to enable and secure biopolitical access to the children. The state ‘grabs for the children to sexualize and re-educate them’ (Kuby 2014), to ‘push back the parental influence on the education of the children and to simultaneously expand the influence of the state’ (Kelle 2014). This alleged ‘seizure’ by the state is compared to the ‘sexual abuse of children and young adults’ (Kuby 2014). This invokes the picture of an external force intruding into the familial sphere to harm one’s children. In this emotional pedagogy, sex education in schools is equated with the sexual abuse of children, which equally threatens the intimate sphere of normative intimate relationships and the parental sovereignty related to it. Here again, ‘movements [. . .] “make sense” of inchoate affective states and authorize selected feelings and actions while downplaying and even invalidating others’ (Gould 2010:33). Insecurity connected to the precarization of the family is deliberately traced back to an offensive biopolitical state, whereas the economic and social developments involved are negated. However, it is not the state as a whole which is rejected. Whereas the biopolitical state is framed as harming normative intimacies, its executive forces, by contrast, are addressed positively. The online appearance of the Demos für Alle stages the police accompanying the marches as a protective institution. Photos and videos presented on the website do not try to hide the massive police presence, but instead actively integrate them into the visual representation. They show

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heavily armed policemen arresting counterdemonstrators and stage police as protecting and supporting the marches (Demo für Alle n.d.a, n.d.b). The articulated threat of normative intimacies is made visible in these pictures: the presence of the police seems to be necessary to ‘protect’ the concerns of the people marching for the preservation of normative intimacies. The police, who apparently protect the marchers from counterprotesters and solidarize with the demonstrations, thus become a further source of legitimization for the demands. As such, they are also actively integrated into the speeches: it is the police who march alongside the people against the biopolitical bureaucracy ‘to fight for the right to educate our children by ourselves’ (Kelle 2014), and it is police that have ‘trouble dealing with all the leftist–extremist activists here. Many thanks to the police’ (Schultner 2014). ‘Reasonable and not extremist’: normalizing normative intimacies A third narrative of the emotional pedagogy is the self-representation of protesters on the Demo für Alle as reasonable, normal citizens fighting for freedom of opinion, religion, conscience and speech. This self-representation is contrasted with the characterization of the proponents of the reforms, the liberal–leftist elites mentioned above, as a radical minority imposing their will on the people by aiming to integrate sexual diversity into school curricula (Kuby 2014). The promotion of sexual diversity here constitutes a state-aided repressive ‘ideology’, enforced against nature and the will of families and the population (Laun 2016). Paradoxically, ‘diversity’ here is reframed as signifying precisely the opposite of ‘freedom of expression, diversity and tolerance’ (Kelle 2014). Citizenship rights are claimed based on heteronormative intimacies and identities. With the emphasis on speaking on behalf of most of the population, the Demo für Alle aims to gain social legitimation and claims the right to be heard as the ‘centre of society’. As the organizer Beverfoerde (2014) formulates it: ‘we are not extremists’ but ‘citizens of a free, democratic country’. At the same time, this is part of a subjectivizing process. It delegitimizes counterprotest and serves to distance one from the upset ‘radical leftist’ mob. This form of self-representation as normal citizens with the right to speak out is amplified by the continued reference to the notion of tolerance. On the one hand, the insistence on the universal and ‘natural’ right of parents to raise their children leads to the recognition of other religious communities, as long as they share the traditional concept of the family. In contrast to other right-wing mobilizations in Germany, as well as in an interesting contradiction to the ethnic concept of the population which was referred to above, the Muslim community is explicitly included in the protests (Beverfoerde 2014; Hausmann 2014). On the other hand, and to stress the picture of a repressive counterpart, tolerance is demanded of the apparent opponent. Or, as Kelle puts it, ‘tolerance is not a one-way street’ (Kelle 2014). This indicates the deliberate and strategic appropriation of the discursive repertoire of progressive movements.

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If we refer to Gould, it becomes clear that the emotional pedagogy here links to the affective disorientation which feeds on the precarization of intimacies and heteronormative subjectivities and on the erosion of gendered allocations of roles. When the Demo für Alle stresses its concerns as legitimate, normal and expressed from the centre of society, the effects of the fear and insecurity its participants have are normalized and canalized into the socially intelligible desire for the reparation of the nuclear family, and thus for security, stability and a clear allocation of (gendered) roles and subjectivities. The endeavour to speak as the ‘centre of society’ and the naturalization of the heterosexual nuclear family thus provide modes of identification. The activating and politicizing moment, in turn, functions by evoking a threat to all citizens. In this way, the Demo für Alle offers coping strategies that enable the articulation of feelings, such as insecurity and the sense of being threatened, while mobilizing the demand to reactivate the nuclear family.

Conclusion While the defence of heteronormative intimacies by right-wing actors by itself is not surprising, we asked how successful right-wing affective politics and mobilizations evolve around questions of (normative) intimacies and familial identities. How do these topics produce an emotional resonance, and are they therefore suitable to attract broader segments of society? We argue that the success of the New Right can, in large part, be explained by its emotional pedagogy focusing on intimate relationships. It provides a programmatic reaction to a yet unarticulated crisis of intimate relationships which articulates itself essentially as an affective crisis. It not only corresponds to the need to ‘make sense’ of these critical experiences, but also furnishes a ‘guide of what and how to feel and for what to do in light of those feelings’ (Gould 2010:33), namely, to fight for the reactivation of the traditional family, corresponding affective inequalities and the promised security and stability related to it. We demonstrated the attraction of this emotional pedagogy in a threefold way. Firstly, by linking the threat of normative intimacies emotionally to the impending erosion of society as such, the precarization and insecurity experienced are legitimized and reframed as a fundamental crisis. Secondly, regarding the liberal elites and the biopolitical state, explanations and opponents are named which are destroying and seizing the ‘most private’ of intimate relationships, one’s ‘own’ children. Finally, the interpellation of participants as a ‘silent majority’ and a civic centre calls for identification and action. Affective states and emotional pedagogies play a pivotal role in conservative and right-wing movements, as we have demonstrated by analysing the narratives of the Demo für Alle. Hence, affect, a ‘key force in social change’, as Gould (2010:32) puts it, does not function only in an emancipatory manner. As our study shows, much more attention should be drawn to the fact that the indecisiveness of affect means that it can also be mobilized as fertile ground for producing

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exclusions and reinforcing gendered affective inequalities. We contribute to the discussion on populism and affect by highlighting the pivotal role of the family and heteronormative intimacies in conceptualizing emotions not as individual dispositions, but within the programmatic context of successful affective politics. The emphasis on the seemingly natural character of the heteronormative family can be read as an important example of populist anti-establishment narratives (Caiani & della Porta 2011). Furthermore, in ‘affecting’ the most private spheres, such ‘intimate emotional pedagogies’ are programmatic and comprehensive: they not only mobilize by creating a sense of bodily urgency, but also articulate and offer a whole world view and image of society connected to such normative forms of intimacies.

Note 1 The AfD earned 12.6 per cent of votes and hence third place in the German general election in October 2017.

References Ahmed, S., 2014, The cultural politics of emotion, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Beneria, L., 2008, ‘The crisis of care, international migration, and public policy’, Feminist Economics 14(3), 1–21. Beverfoerde, H. von, 2014, untitled speech, viewed 24 October 2016, from https://demofueralle.wordpress.com/service/demo-22-nov-14/videos/. Bezanson, K. & Luxton, M. (eds.), 2006, Social reproduction, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal. Boykoff, J. & Laschever, E., 2011, ‘The Tea Party movement, framing, and the US media’, Social Movement Studies 10(4), 341–366. Brodie, J., 2003, ‘Globalization, in/security, and the paradoxes of the social’, in I. Bakker & S. Gill (eds.), Power, production and social reproduction, pp. 47–65, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Butler, J., 2002, ‘Is kinship always already heterosexual?’ Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 13(1), 14–44. Caiani, M. & della Porta, D., 2011, ‘The elitist populism of the extreme right: A frame analysis of extreme right-wing discourses in Italy and Germany’, Acta Politica 46(2), 180–202. Demertzis, N., 2006, ‘Emotions and populism’, in S. Clarke, P. Hoggett & S. Thompson (eds.), Emotion, politics and society, pp. 103–22, Palgrave Macmillan, London. Demo für Alle, n.d.a, Fotos, viewed 25 May 2017, from https://demofueralle.wordpress. com/service/demo-fur-alle-am-5-april-2014-in-stuttgart/fotos/. Demo für Alle, n.d.b, Fotos, viewed 25 May 2017, from https://demofueralle.wordpress. com/service/demo-19-oktober-14/fotos/. Dürrkopf, L., 2014, untitled speech, viewed 24 October 2016, from https://demofueralle. wordpress.com/service/demo-22-nov-14/videos/. Flam, H. & King, D., 2005, ‘Introduction’, in H. Flam & D. King (eds.), Emotions and social movements, pp. 1–18, Routledge, London & New York.

184  Katja Chmilewski and Katharina Hajek Goodwin, J., Jasper, J.M. & Polletta, F., 2007, ‘Emotional dimension of social movements’, in D.A. Snow, S.A. Soule & H. Kriesi (eds.), The Blackwell companion of social movements, pp. 413–432, Blackwell, Oxford. Gould, D., 2004, ‘Passionate politics processes: Bringing emotions back into the study of social movements’, in J. Goodwin & J.M. Jasper (eds.), Rethinking social movements, pp. 155–176, Rowman & Littlefield, Oxford. Gould, D., 2009, ‘Introduction: Why emotion?’, in D. Gould (ed.), Moving politics, pp. 1–48, Chicago University Press, Chicago & London. Gould, D., 2010, ‘On affect and protest’, in J. Staiger, A. Cvetkovich & A. Reynolds (eds.), Political emotions, pp. 18–44, Routledge, London & New York. Hausmann, K.-C., 2014, untitled speech, viewed 26 October 2016, from https://demofueralle.wordpress.com/service/demo-fur-alle-am-28-juni-2014/videos/. Initiative Familienschutz, n.d., Wer wir sind, viewed 25 May 2017, from www.familienschutz.de/wer-wir-sind. Jasper, J.M., 2011, ‘Emotions and social movements: Twenty years of theory and research’, Annual Review of Sociology 37, 285–303. Jürgens, K., 2010, ‘Deutschland in der Reproduktionskrise’, Leviathan 38, 559–587. Jüttner, A.-K., Leitner, S. & Rüling, A., 2011, ‘Increasing returns: The new economy of family policy in Britain and Germany’, in J. Clasen (ed.), Converging worlds of welfare? British and German social policy in the 21st century, pp. 91–109, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Kelle, B., 2014, untitled speech, viewed 26 October 2016, from https://demofueralle.wordpress.com/service/demo-fur-alle-am-28-juni-2014/videos/. Kleres, J., 2010, ‘Emotions and narrative analysis: A methodological approach’, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 41(2), 182–202. Koivunen, A., 2010, ‘An affective turn? Reimagining the subject of feminist theory’, in M. Liljeström & S. Paasonen (eds.), Working with affect in feminist readings: Disturbing differences, pp. 8–28, Routledge, London. Kølvraa, C., 2015, ‘Affect, provocation, and far right rhetoric’, in B.T. Knudsen & C. Stage (eds.), Affective methodologies, pp. 183–200, Palgrave Macmillan, London. Kuby, G., 2014, untitled speech, viewed 26 October 2016, from https://demofueralle.wordpress.com/service/demo-fur-alle-am-5-april-2014-in-stuttgart/videos/. Kuhar, R. & Paternotte, D. (eds.), 2017, Anti-gender campaigns in Europe, Rowman & Littlefield, London. Kuhla, E., 2014, untitled speech, viewed 26 October 2016, from https://demofueralle. wordpress.com/service/demo-fur-alle-am-28-juni-2014/videos/. Lang, J., 2015, ‘Familie und Vaterland in der Krise’, in S. Hark & I.-P. Villa (eds.), Antigenderismus, pp. 167–182, Transcript, Bielefeld. Laun, A., 2016, untitled speech, viewed 26 October 2016, from https://demofueralle.wordpress.com/service/demo-28-februar-16/videos/. Opratko, B., 2017, ‘Rechtspopulismus als Krisenbearbeitung’, Prokla 186, 123–130. Plehwe, D. & Schlögl, M., 2014, ‘Europäische und zivilgesellschaftliche Hintergründe der euro(pa)skeptischen Partei Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)’, discussion paper SP III 2014–501r, Social Science Research Centre (WZB), Berlin. Rico, G., Guinjoan, M. & Anduiza, E., 2017, ‘The emotional underpinnings of populism: How anger and fear affect populist attitudes’, Swiss Political Science Review, doi:10.1111/spsr.12261.

Mobilizing affects in intimate relationships  185 Ruiz-Junco, N., 2013, ‘Feeling social movements: Theoretical contributions to social movement research on emotions’, Sociology Compass 7(1), 45–54. Schultner, A., 2014, untitled speech, viewed 26 October 2016, from https://demofueralle. wordpress.com/service/demo-22-nov-14/videos/. Schupeck, A., 2014, untitled speech, viewed 24 October 2016, from https://demofueralle. wordpress.com/service/demo-19-oktober-14/videos/. Wodak, R., 2015, The politics of fear: What right-wing populist discourses mean, Sage, London. Yeates, Y., 2009, Globalizing care economies and migrant workers, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.

Chapter 12

The power(s) of friendship Affects and inequalities between friends Verónica Policarpo

Introduction: following the trail of affects and inequalities between friends What is the role of affects among friends in processes of upward social mobility? Do affects between friends challenge, or rather enact, inequalities and differences of power that are embedded in their larger societal context? And to what extent do these translate into affective inequalities? In this chapter, I explore these questions by placing in dialogue two theoretical traditions: the sociology of friendship and affect theory. In doing so, I expect to contribute by helping to move forward the sociological understanding of friendship, as well as the empirical grounding of affect theory. Friendship is a particularly interesting relationship through which to observe this link between affects, power, and inequality, precisely because equality is its main constitutive feature. This is so in two ways. Firstly, this kind of relationship is based on reciprocity, implying an equivalence of exchanges between friends. Secondly, friends are expected to be equals, with no hierarchical relation existing between them. Rather, they are expected to behave in horizontal, symmetrical ways. That is why friends tend to share similar social characteristics and a common location within the social structure which guarantees them a shared basis of experiences, values, and interests, as well as similar resources to enable equal exchanges (Allan 1986, 1989, 1998, 2008). Nevertheless, under certain conditions this balance is challenged: for example, in situations of long-term dependency and care (for reasons of ill health, old age, or disability; see Allan 1986), or when relationships are felt to have become (too) uneven. In the latter case, friendships are often reported as difficult but are nevertheless endured, as the costs of rupture are emotionally high and often unbearable for one’s sense of self, particularly for women (Heaphy & Davies 2012; Smart et al. 2012). Such difficult relationships are composed of intense intersubjective ties, and their intensity signals the affective nature of these informal bonds. Moreover, although they may arise for a variety of reasons, it is mainly when they become (too) uneven that their affective dimension becomes intertwined with power and questions of (in)equality. Also, a friend who demands too much endangers the

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promise of equal exchange contained in friendship. Difficult friendships thus illuminate the complex ways in which power operates in personal relations through affect. Moreover, friends may crystallize and embody particular moments of one’s life. Whether these are happy or hard moments, certain affects seem to ‘stick’ to certain friends, who embody either the positive or the negative aspects of these experiences. That is why reuniting with old friends may become a source of distress and discomfort (Smart et al. 2012). Friendship is, hence, powerful in building, or threatening, one’s sense of self and ontological security. How it develops affects its participants in critical and long-lasting ways. Through friendship practices, power flows between interpersonal and societal levels. Sometimes it breaks the promise of equality contained in friendship. At other times, it helps to compensate for power imbalances in other types of relations – such as gender differences within the couple (Harrison 1998; O’Connor 1991). This is possible mainly because friendship is based on affects, and friendship practices are actually affective practices. But what do I mean by affect and affective practices? Capturing the affective dimensions of friendship In this chapter, I try to capture the affective dimensions of friendship by means of three conceptual tools. Firstly, I draw inspiration from Sarah Ahmed’s (2004) theory concerning the circulation of affect through cultural texts by borrowing her notion of the sticky figure. She explains how affect accumulates around specific signs or figures and attaches certain ‘qualities’ to these figures, which become ‘sticky surfaces’ on which affects cluster. As it moves and circulates between objects and subjects, affect can intensify and accumulate, creating circuits of social value. A particular emotion constructs an object as a specific thing, since it is about ‘something’. But it also constructs the subject as a particular kind of being. For instance, gratitude towards one’s friends establishes them as worthy and the subject as grateful. Through the repetition and performance of these emotions, affect works to materialize specific forms of social power and domination. In this capacity, affect is about the relation between objects and subjects. ‘It does not reside in an object or sign, but it is an effect of the circulation between objects and signs (= the accumulation of affective value over time)’ (Ahmed 2004:120). Also, affect works by sticking figures together (adherence) and concealing the history behind that process. This sticking, in turn, creates the effect of a collective (coherence). In this process, individuals are aligned with communities. Thus, affect is binding: subjects and objects are bound together, both among themselves and among each other (Ahmed 2004). Secondly, I follow in the footsteps of Valerie Walkerdine (2010) and her concept of affective community. What makes a community stick together? To answer this apparently simple question, Walkerdine draws on psychoanalytic thinking, applying it to the understanding of social groups. She suggests that community relations provide a safe and containing ‘skin’ that protects the community’s

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members against uncertainty, thus bestowing a feeling of ontological security. Community groups that share the same location are held together by the affective web of relations that constitute them and of which they are part. The ‘whos’ at the centre of this affective web are actually made and accomplished through affect. She suggests that this skin creates the boundaries of the group and is formed through a range of affective relations and practices. These include organizing time and place, experiencing community relations and family, keeping strangers apart, sticking to that location, and carefully managing silence and talk. Thirdly, still following Walkerdine, I argue that these affective communities can only be captured through their affective practices. Drawing on the theory of practice (Bourdieu 1977; Schatzki, Cetina & Savigny 2005) and its application to the study of affect by Margaret Wetherell (2012, 2013, 2015), I understand affective activity as a form of social practice, a field of open and flexible patterns, and an ongoing flow of forming and changing bodyscapes, comprising certain subjective states and actions that shift in response to the context (Wetherell 2015:147). Wetherell proposes the concept of affective practice as the unit of analysis, which, she argues, places relationality at the centre of observation. Methodologically, she argues that the analysis of practices should be articulated with that of discourses. Affective practices can be defined broadly as flow, patterns, and relations of power. They are configured and reconfigured constantly rather than determined in advance; patterns are often, but not always, routinized; and although past practices set the context for present practice, they do so only in part (Wetherell 2015:148). ‘An affective practice is a figuration where body possibilities and routines become recruited or entangled together with meaningmaking and with other social and material figurations. It is an organic complex in which all the parts relationally constitute each other’ (Wetherell 2012:19). With the help of these conceptual tools from affect studies, I will approach the imbricated links between affects, friendship, and structural socio-economic inequalities. I  will explore how affects among friends influence the way they cope with structural imbalances of power. To this end, I ask how the way certain affects ‘stick’ to friends helps to form a path of upward social mobility. Inspired by Ahmed’s description of affects sticking to specific figures (‘sticky surfaces’), I advance the notion of the affective figure: something that results from ‘sticking’ affects in connection with processes of upward social mobility and ‘individual success’ within capitalist societies. I explore how such affects become powerful mediators of friendship relations, with friends reorganizing their interactions and relationships as a result of the circulation of affects, and of the fluctuating ways in which they cope with them. Moreover, I use the concept of affective community to inquire how friendships may constitute, through specific affective practices, a shield against the uncertainty of navigating social worlds marked by structural imbalances of power. I argue that friendships as affective communities may help individuals to cope with the hardships of such inequalities. Furthermore, one of the normative expectations of friends is that they can read our moods and help us to cope with arduous

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feelings. By reinterpreting (and resignifying) one’s emotions, friends become active members of an affective community which acts as a safe and containing skin, as proposed by Walkerdine (2010), supporting one’s identity both at critical moments and throughout the life course.

Questions of method: retrospectively capturing the relations between affects and inequalities This chapter intends to make a contribution to the empirical study of affects through the lens of social sciences. It draws on qualitative data from a research project about friendship in Portugal,1 in which thirty women and men aged 21 to 65, from various socio-economic backgrounds, and living in urban contexts, were interviewed between 2014 and 2015. In these interviews, participants were asked to reconstruct their personal communities (Spencer & Pahl 2006) with the help of a map, and to explore in depth the histories, meanings, and relational practices amongst the community’s members. The sample was selected according to a principle of maximum internal diversification in terms of sex, age, and socioeconomic background, both via snowball and by recourse to the professional services of a multinational company specializing in qualitative research (IPSOS). I focus on one particular biography, that of David, which I believe highlights the intricate links between affects and social structure, specifically regarding differences in power relations. It shows the affective implications of upward social mobility, and the demands of living up to the image of the ‘high achiever’, in both academic and professional life. David’s story must, nevertheless, be contextualized within the processes of social reconfiguration that Portuguese society has undergone during the last five decades, linked to structural changes in both education (generalization of access, including to tertiary level) and the labour market (drastic reduction of professions in the primary sector and marked increase in the tertiary). Women have played a major part in such changes, as attested by prominent feminization rates both in education (that is, at university level) and in the labour market (at tertiary level). David clearly stands out as an outlier in these processes, representing an extreme case of upward social mobility. He embodies an improbable trajectory of educational success (Lahire 1995), leading to a more privileged socio-economic position than that of the previous generation, rather than a trajectory of social reproduction (Bourdieu & Passeron 1964, 1970). With some exceptions (for example, Friedman 2014, 2016; Illouz 2008; Wang 2016), sociologists have often disregarded the affective sides of these changes of position in the social structure. David decided to participate in the study through the influence of a friend, and thus joined the sample via snowball. I personally conducted the 2.5-hour interview. This chapter must be read as a theoretical and methodological experiment: that is, I wish to explore the importance of affects through data that were not collected with this specific intention. Rather, the data were collected with the aim of exploring the place and meanings of friends within personal communities in

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contemporary Portugal, for which purpose all materials were initially subjected to content and narrative analysis. However, as the investigation progressed, the importance of affects in the interviewees’ experiences began to emerge spontaneously, calling for closer attention. That is why I ventured to reanalyse the same material, experimenting with a methodological approach that, while still resorting to narrative analysis, might unveil the force of affects in the particular interviewee’s history. Thus, the chapter is the result of a kind of second-order collection of the ‘right material’ for observing the links between affect and power in friendship relations. Such material comprises an ‘emotional recollection of previous states of affect or spatial atmospheres, and practices of sticking certain affects/ emotions to certain objects/bodies’ (Knudsen & Stage 2015:9). It results from an excursion whose aim was to retrieve the intense affective experiences of the participants in my study. The process follows two steps and two levels of meaning. Firstly, we have the interview and all related material: transcriptions, audio recordings, and field notes. Secondly, I try to look at these materials from an ‘affective’ point of view, calling on analytical constructs of affect theory such as affective community or affective practice. Following Maggie MacLure (2013:180), I defend the view that affective moments can be retrieved from verbal discourses via new ways of coding data, seen as an ‘ongoing construction of a cabinet of curiosities’, which display a logic of assemblage. As I follow the trail of elements that arouse wonder, the data may ‘glow’ to unveil the affective facets of social life. The practice of focusing mainly on verbal data, collected in the specific social situation of a scientific interview, has some major implications in terms of its adequacy for the investigation of affects. My interviewee’s experience is reconstituted through a narrative process, triggered both by the interview disposition and by the interaction between interviewee and interviewer. Therefore, the affective qualities of the social situation I am investigating are mainly a product of remembrance, reconstituted through an exercise of memory. This also means that my approach, like Walkerdine’s (2010), is primarily language-based. I assume that affect, as an experience that is ‘both subjective and cognitive’, can be expressed through ‘articulations of meaning’ (Knudsen & Stage 2015:8), namely by the spoken word. Using narrative analysis, I dig into David’s biography, searching for its affective dimensions as he recalls them. All personal information is fully anonymized.

Power, inequalities, and affects between friends In this part of the chapter, I focus on three aspects of the relations between affects and inequalities for which I wish to make a case. Firstly, I argue that friendship relations are also composed of inequalities that may be both affective (as when one feels no longer esteemed and cared for by one’s friend) and

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structural (as when friends come from very different socio-economic backgrounds). These are two complementary dimensions of intimate inequalities that reinforce each other and underline the affective nature of social life. Secondly, I argue that the affects involved in relations between friends mediate access to the resources made available to individuals through friendship, be they material or affective. Consequently, affects may intrinsically enhance (or limit) those resources and mitigate (or exacerbate) such inequalities. And, thirdly, I argue that friendship relations may constitute affective communities (Walkerdine 2010) that help individuals to navigate the uncertainty of environments perceived as threatening or uncomfortable, and to cope with feelings of ontological insecurity. Let us, then, be guided by David through the intricate tracery of structural and affective elements in his story. David’s story of success: a tale of two tales At the time our interview takes place, David is a 36-year-old businessman, the successful marketing director of a multinational company, married with two children (aged 12 and 8). He was born and raised in an industrial city near the capital, in a poorly educated family. His father, from the rural north, had attended elementary school until he was 10, grew up to be a farmer, and later became an employee in the kitchens of a big restaurant chain. His mother, from the rural south, also attended elementary school, and later became a hotel room maid. Like many other parents of their generation, they worked hard and made the education of their two children a priority, thus facilitating the children’s upward trajectory towards a more privileged socio-economic position than their own. From the very beginning of the interview, even before the voice recorder was on, this was David’s positioning: someone from a very modest background who had nevertheless succeeded notably, due both to his own merit and to the good guidance of influential figures whom he regarded as role models and as decisive in his life’s course. David’s narration of friendship is articulated around these affective characters, with whom he associates specific affects and affective states. He organizes his map around their contribution to his own selfconstruction and enhancement. Three main groups arise (see Figure 12.1): his close family (children, cousin, wife, parents, and brother); his psychotherapists, whom he explicitly identifies as friends, although non-reciprocal ones; and figures from his academic and professional past. I focus on this last group, the people from his academic past, since they were important mediators of his successful journey from one world to another. I cast a glance at his story from the angle of the affects that were involved in its construction and preservation and were sometimes even a condition of its possibility. Let us travel this path in two steps: revisiting David in secondary school and accompanying him into tertiary education and university.

FfW (F) FfW (M) (deceased)

1st therapist (F)

Figure 12.1  Map of personal relationships

FfU (F) (upper-class)

FfU (M) (upper-class)

Son

Wife

FfU (M) (‘relocated’) FfU (F) (‘relocated’)

Father

Social worker (F) (university)

Priest (M)

Professor (M) (university)

Brother David Cousin (F) 2nd therapist (F) Daughter Mother

Parents of BF (M and F) (from university) FfU (M) (upper-class) BF (M) FfW (F) (university)

FfU (F) (‘relocated’)

Boss/chief (M) (current)

Ex-chief (M) (former job)

Some figures are in transi on between circles (2nd therapist, brother)

BF – best friend (belongs to the ‘relocated’) FfW – Friend from work FfU – Friend from university

David, 36, married, 2 children, ter ary educa on, marke ng director

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The ‘Good Tutor’ makes the ‘Good Pupil’: the construction of an affective figure Our journey begins in a secondary school in the industrial city, 100 kilometres from Lisbon, where David obtained his secondary diploma. Interestingly, it begins precisely with a character who is no longer present on his personal life map. His teacher, Daniel, was very influential, a ‘role model’ that David very much wanted to live up to. David remembers him as a very cultivated person in whose steps he would gladly follow. The teacher had attended a very prestigious university, one which David had never thought of choosing, due to its elitist profile. Nevertheless, as a result of this teacher’s impact on his life, he ultimately did choose that university and thereby changed the course of his academic career. This step was the result of their intense conversations – which can be seen as important affective practices: semi-routinized patterns of conversation in which affects flowed openly and flexibly, leading to specific subjective states, such as enthusiasm, interest, disinterest, or curiosity. The affective dimension of their relationship and its impact on David’s future emerges particularly in one episode of their relationship. Daniel used to be a friend, all right. He was an influencer. He was part of those who were very striking in my training. Those I felt really close to. But then, more or less suddenly, I felt withdrawn . . . I will even use the word ‘rejected’. There’s an episode, by the end of grade ten, that I think is a turning point of that estrangement. I was the best student at everything, and therefore, also at his discipline. But I soon realized that it was not always good to be the best, especially in the socialization process with the other students; it has advantages and disadvantages. There’s a class in which Daniel says something like ‘This question is only achievable by the great brains. David, let’s see if you can answer!’ And I have a reaction . . . an epidermal one . . . Out loud . . . to a teacher that cultivated some authority . . . (the challenge was all about the content, because the form, that was always formal . . .) And I answer, loud and clear, ‘But why the hell do I have to be the one to respond?’ And he suddenly becomes bewildered by that confrontation, and the relationship was never the same again! [. . .] Gradually, I felt him as less available, in our short encounters – and I did not see in him, nor felt, the energy of the joy of seeing someone you like, even if it were to say ‘Hi, how are you, is everything all right?’ [. . .] And that’s what makes me accept that, if I don’t feel I’m liked by him, in those seconds of eye contact, why should I continue? This episode encapsulates the difficulty of coping with the pressure felt by David as a Good Pupil, a figure around whom certain affects accumulated: mainly stemming from his tutor, but also from his colleagues and family. This can be illustrated

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by one encounter with his father. When David turned 16, he began to date a girl (whom he would eventually marry, and to whom he is still married today). At this time, as he recounts: [my father] fell short of his role as a father when he learned that I had begun dating Sandra. Because I was in tenth grade, I had always been the best student . . . and he signals: ‘You are not old enough to date. You date your books’. David was an ‘exemplary student’, bright and sharp, participative, and willing to cooperate. This attitude could be interpreted as ‘goodwill’ on the part of those who aspire to a position in a social space higher than their current one. But that is not the angle I wish to explore. Rather, I wish to focus on the importance of affects in the shaping of this ethos, its values and attitudes – and why they form an assemblage of social entities. In contrast to the conversations David and Daniel usually had, in which affects were built and maintained through repeated discursive practices, this episode represents the unbidden side of their relationship, emerging when affects are unleashed and return unexpected results. Firstly, it tells of the difficulty David felt in having to continuously keep up with the affective demands attached to his image as the Good Pupil. Following Ahmed (2004), one might say that the emotion felt by Daniel in relation to his student David constructed the latter as a particular kind of being – the Good Pupil, an affective entity in which several positive affects were crystallized. But it also constructed Daniel as the Good Tutor, capable of developing brilliant students and marvelling at his own creation. The in-class question-and-answer ritual emerges as an affective performance, in which subject (the Good Tutor) and object (the Good Pupil) are materialized and their boundaries defined. When David refuses to answer Daniel’s question, he is not only challenging his authority but is also resisting the affective position that had been assigned to him. He disrupts the intensification and circulation of affects that constitute him as the Good Pupil. Secondly, this episode calls attention to the fact that this was an affective relationship between unequal parties. The distribution of power was uneven, the teacher holding the upper hand, based on ‘authority’ and ‘formality’ (a characteristic of traditional educational relationships). This difference in power seemed not to interfere with conversations outside class, where affects apparently bridged (if they did not erase) these differences. However, they did seem to matter inside the classroom, where affects, and their circulation between both characters, supported and accentuated such differences. Also, David’s reaction must be contextualized within the pressure that he felt his peers exerted on him to maintain the role of ‘colleague’, identifying with his classmates rather than with the teacher, whose authority he was expected to challenge. The estrangement that followed this episode, and which eventually turned into disappointment and break-up, is also measured by the intensity of the affects

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involved – or their absence. There was no longer a sense of ‘energy’ flowing from one to another, or of the positive feelings, such as joy, that signal affection and love and are conveyed by certain bodily expressions. In these encounters, meaning is produced through the performance of the body (e.g. eye contact), signalling that the affectionate relationship between mentor and pupil is no longer in force. Rather, proximity has given way to progressive disaffection, disappointment, and the shattering of friendship. Upward mobility and affects: friends as affective communities Let us now take a leap in time and enter, with David, the next phase of his academic career: his university entrance. Moved by the influence of his mentor Daniel, David ended up choosing the same prestigious university Daniel had attended. Here, David found a very elitist milieu and atmosphere, in which students flocked together according to their socio-economic origins and similarities in terms of practices and values. To navigate this environment, where he initially felt like a stranger (Simmel 1950), David developed several skills and practices, to which the affective ties he had formed with certain colleagues were crucial. These were competences and practices that he would be able to activate later in his professional life, transferring them to different settings and actors. Reflecting back on the clash between colleagues from very different socio-economic backgrounds, he wonders: ‘what kept me going? Having met people, high and low from the point of view of family income, which pleased me, I found many that did not [please me]!’ These colleagues, both men and women, are represented today mainly in the third circle of his map of personal relationships (Figure 12.1). Thus, David begins a journey in which he will skilfully navigate this unfamiliar environment, through the landscape of ‘stereotypical images of the elitist students’ who were known to attend that particular university. He will choose those who will enable him to take an active part in their world and access the new resources (e.g. influential people, money, privileged information, expert knowledge), including affective ones, that are necessary if he is to overcome his always unequal point of departure and succeed in his academic and professional career. He will do this mainly by embodying the affective figure of a Bridge Builder between what he feels are incommensurable worlds: the sons of the socio-economic elite; the sons of the urban middle classes; and those who come from outside the big metropolis: I think, from my course period, I’m probably the person who made the most bridges, within the course year – among the group of those who attended a prestigious, elite private school; the group of those who inhabited one of Lisbon’s upper-middle-class neighbourhoods; and the group of those who were not from Lisbon. If we all joined together, I’m probably the one who knows the most about many people.

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The fact that he does not belong to any of these worlds (with the exception of the third one, with which he partly identifies) gives him a hybrid status and puts him in a privileged position from which to circulate among them and construct for himself the affective figure of the Bridge Builder. This becomes his way of gaining legitimate access to those worlds and coping with the structural inequalities that distance him from others. As a stranger, he becomes a (legitimate) member of the group itself, simultaneously being outside it and confronting it (Simmel 1950:402–403). What enables this circulation between groups is the affects involved in their interactions, encounters, and relations. Friendship arises as the moral referent for these interactions and as the affective scenario in which they become possible. This is particularly visible in the relationship he develops with the ‘relocated’, a group formed of colleagues ‘from outside Lisbon’. They share outlander origins and, by implication, shared experiences, such as feeling the novelty of the big city’s affective atmosphere: I used to attend a music school in Lisbon, and for me, the strong shade of what Lisbon was, was to come to do the exams of the music school. And, then, celebrate the possibility of going to the zoo or to the popular fair. [. . .] So when we started to walk inside Lisbon, to perceive the size of the city, the wealth of the city, and listen, and be, and look at this distance . . . The members of the group are also identified as outlanders in relation to their social origins, as they are all daughters and sons of white-collar intermediate employees. Most of all, David marks their distance from the sons of the socioeconomic elites: ‘we would also have in common not being part of the stereotype of the rich or very prominent Lisbon elite, whose children and grandchildren went to that university’. The five friends worked closely together in assigned group tasks to achieve the necessary results. This constant teamwork may be seen as a kind of affective practice, organized around specific kinds of knowledge, skills, materials (including the body, disciplined to endure the long hours of study), and meanings. The group is held together by an intense web of affects that protects its members against the uncertainty provoked by insertion into a competitive environment, governed by unfamiliar (and often hidden) rules, where the narrative of merit conceals the privilege of the ‘héritiers’ (heirs) (Bourdieu & Passeron 1964). This web of affects still links them today. They form an ‘affective community’ whose members are actually constituted by the affective practices that flow between them, in a more or less patterned and routinized way. Also, these gatherings will develop into different friendship practices that are themselves affective: exchanges of text messages (‘in warm messages of friendship, we often use the word “brother” for each other’); regular encounters (usually lunches); or more infrequent events, following a yearly calendar, where friendship is re-enacted (‘we speak on birthdays, usually we meet in the summer, at special

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events . . . last Christmas we exchanged some impressions’). Moreover, these different friendship practices facilitate access to different resources (affective, material, relational) that can be activated at any point: ‘we may be three months without speaking. But if I need him today to come to me with a word, with money, with a phone call to someone to help me, or something, he’ll do it today!’ What makes these friends stick together? I am arguing that it is the affective side of these practices – here seen in its routinized form, in which past actions to a certain extent inform present actions, friendship is performed, bodies are moved, objects used, and the world around understood (Wetherell 2015). Through affective practices such as group work, friends make it easier to navigate the tacit rules of, and therefore their inclusion in, unfamiliar cultural and social environments which they must fit into if they want to succeed. The group is therefore able to form a ‘protective skin’ that guards its members against feelings of ontological insecurity because of not belonging to these privileged social milieus that differ so strongly from their own socio-economic backgrounds. This ‘skin’ will be transferred from academia to the professional world, and to the future course of their lives.

Final remarks: ‘intensity is the antechamber of risk’ In this chapter, I have tried to answer two main questions: what is the role of affects among friends in processes of upward social mobility? And how do affects mediate the experience of unequal distribution of power and resources within friendship? With David’s guidance, we travelled across two different situations in which inequalities manifest themselves between friends: the case of a hierarchical relationship, that of teacher/student; and the case of new friends coming from very different socio-economic backgrounds. I have looked at affective inequalities as imbalances of power in intimate relations, in which affects are determinant, from two main perspectives. The first explores inequalities that have roots in the affective relations and dynamics themselves, though linked to social imbalances of power, such as those based on generation or hierarchical position in a specific organization (e.g. student versus teacher). The second explores inequalities rooted in the structural distribution of several types of resources and capital (cultural, social, economic). I have argued that affects are important for coping with social inequalities that result from structural imbalances of power and differences in access to resources at several points in one’s trajectory. More particularly, I argued that friendship ties, through the affective practices that they entail, constitute an affective community that helps individuals to cope with the hardships of changing place in the social structure. This is accomplished by certain affective practices, such as flocking together and collaborating in groups of ‘similar’ people, thus creating a ‘safe’ affective environment in which to navigate the uncertainty of an unfamiliar context where one does not occupy the dominant position. Such affective

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practices work as ‘social glue’ to build and reinforce these friendships within the wider context of structural power relations. This helps us to understand David’s friendships with certain tutorial figures from his past (e.g. parents of friends from higher classes, chiefs, or bosses), to whom he feels grateful for recognizing him, for being unpretentious in spite of their socio-economic power, and for having welcomed him as one of their own: as a ‘son’, ‘brother’, or protégé. Furthermore, I have tried to show that affects involve several types of inequalities, as in the case of David’s relation with his teacher(s) or other tutorial figures throughout his trajectory. One might even say that such inequality may constitute the condition of possibility of a relationship that is, nevertheless, felt as friendship, defying norms that define friendship on the basis of reciprocity. However, despite the fact that these friendships originate in inequalities, it is also true that power circulates, changing places and hands. This phenomenon is closely linked with affective exchanges, their contingency and uncanniness. The circulation of affects makes it possible to interchange places in power relations, with an impact on the development of friendship itself. This helps us to understand David’s outburst in the classroom, in the face of his teacher’s demand that he conform to the definition of the Good Pupil – an affective image made of sticking affects that circulate in capitalist societies, contributing to the hegemonic narrative of upward social mobility and stories of individual merit and success. Moreover, David embodies the circulation of affects among friends when he claims for himself the identity of a Bridge Builder – promoting ties and connections between incommensurable worlds that only his affective performance can bring together. At this point, it is important to recall that friendships are not gender-neutral. Sometimes, they challenge the hegemonic gender order; at other times, they reproduce it. David’s most meaningful friendships formed at the university were with both men and women. Likewise, his two best friends were female (first circle of his map) and male (second circle). This suggests a more equal distribution of affects that may offset the gender order. Nevertheless, the mentoring figures to whom he ascribes such importance (fourth circle) are mostly male. This is not surprising given their positions of power, which are highly segregated and unequal in terms of gender. To the extent that they helped to boost David’s path of upward social mobility into occupations mainly filled by men, these male friendships with older mentoring figures also reproduced the gender order. These were friendships where power flowed by way of the intersecting effects of gender, social class, and age. Hence, friendship seems to be a type of personal relationship in which these intersections between affects and power relations become interestingly visible, highlighting the patterned, routinized, ongoing flows of affects, but also the uncanny moments when affects impact unexpectedly on intimate relationships. In this situation, affects between friends may paradoxically increase the sense of risk and insecurity. If, on the one hand, certain affective practices and performances seem to reduce a certain kind of risk, namely that involved in navigating unfamiliar contexts marked by structural inequalities, on the other hand the uncanny side of affects seems to create another type of risk, that of destabilizing relationships,

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and therefore is another type of affective inequality. This perception of intensity and risk as twin realities of friendship is well summarized in David’s words, and certainly suggests a future line of inquiry: It is a bit like money and friendship – if it goes well, it’s very good; if it goes wrong, it’s very bad. Yeah, because it’s intense. Work is very intense, friendship is very intense, so intensity is multiplied. And intensity is the antechamber of risk – and intensity is a proxy of risk. So, it’s good, but risky. When it’s good it’s very good and when it’s bad, it’s very bad! And when you go for it, you’ll believe the upside.

Note 1 This was a postdoctoral project called ‘Friends will be friends? Personal communities and the role of friendship in times of uncertainty’, funded by an individual scholarship from the Portuguese FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (SFRH BPD 85809 2012).

References Ahmed, S., 2004, ‘Affective economies’, Social Text 22(2), 117–139. Allan, G.A., 1986, ‘Friendship and care for elderly people’, Ageing and Society 6(1), 1–12. Allan, G.A., 1989, Friendship: Developing a sociological perspective, Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York. Allan, G.A., 1998, ‘Friendship, sociology and social structure’, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 15(5), 685–702. Allan, G.A., 2008, ‘Flexibility, friendship, and family’, Personal Relationships 15(1–16), 1–16. Bourdieu, P., 1977, Outline of a theory of practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, J.-C., 1964, Les héritiers: Les étudiants et la culture, Minuit, Paris. Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, J.-C., 1970, La reproduction: Éléments pour une théorie du système d’enseignement, Minuit, Paris. Friedman, S., 2014, ‘The price of the ticket: Rethinking the experience of social mobility’, Sociology 48(2), 352–368. Friedman, S., 2016, ‘Habitus clivé and the emotional imprint of social mobility’, Sociological Review 64(1), 129–147. Harrison, K., 1998, ‘Rich friendships, affluent friends: Middle-class practices of friendship’, in R. Adams & G.A. Allan (eds.), Placing friendship in context, pp. 92–116, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Heaphy, B. & Davies, K., 2012, ‘Critical friendships’, Families, Relationships and Societies 1(3), 311–326. Illouz, E., 2008, Saving the modern soul: Therapy, emotions, and the culture of self-help, University of California Press, Berkeley & Los Angeles. Knudsen, B.T. & Stage, C., 2015, Affective methodologies: Developing cultural research strategies for the study of affect, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Lahire, B., 1995, Tableaux de famille: Heurs et malheurs scolaires en milieux populaires, Seuil, Paris.

200  Verónica Policarpo MacLure, M., 2013, ‘Classification or wonder? Coding as an analytic practice in qualitative research’, in R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies, pp. 164–183, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. O’Connor, P., 1991, ‘Women’s confidants outside marriage: Shared or competing sources of intimacy?’ Sociology 25(2), 241–254. Schatzki, T.R., Cetina, K.K. & Savigny, E. von, 2005, The practice turn in contemporary theory, Routledge, London & New York. Simmel, G., 1950, ‘The stranger’, in K.H. Wolff (ed.), The sociology of Georg Simmel, pp. 402–408, Free Press, Glencoe, IL. Smart, C., Davies, K., Heaphy, B. & Mason, J., 2012, ‘Difficult friendships and ontological insecurity’, Sociological Review 60(1), 91–109. Spencer, L. & Pahl, R., 2006, Rethinking friendship: Hidden solidarities today, Princeton University Press, London. Walkerdine, V., 2010, ‘Communal beingness and affect: An exploration of trauma in an ex-industrial community’, Body & Society 16(1), 91–116. Wang, S., 2016, ‘Souffrances psychiques et mobilité sociale ascendante’, Hommes & Migrations 1314, 11–18. Wetherell, M., 2012, Affect and emotion: A  new social science understanding, Sage, London. Wetherell, M., 2013, ‘Feeling rules, atmospheres and affective practice: Some reflections on the analysis of emotional episodes’, in C. Maxwell & P. Aggleton (eds.), Privilege, agency and affect, pp. 221–239, Palgrave Macmillan, London. Wetherell, M., 2015, ‘Trends in the turn to affect: A social psychological critique’, Body & Society 21(2), 139–166.

Chapter 13

Touch between child and mother as an affective practice (Re)producing bodies in haptic negotiations of intimate space Julia Katila Introduction Experimental psychological studies have shown the importance of an intimate caregiver relationship for children’s healthy development (e.g. Bowlby 1969) and that the caregiver–child touch is crucial for establishing this embodied tie (e.g. Feldman 2011). Furthermore, psychological studies (e.g. Hernstein 2002; Jean & Stack 2009), affect studies (e.g. Kinnunen & Kolehmainen under review; Paterson 2005) and interaction studies (e.g. Cekaite 2016; Cekaite & Holm 2017; Goodwin 2017) have shown that touch and affect are strongly intertwined. Nevertheless, empirical studies on the connections between affect and touch in naturally occurring caregiver–child interactions are still scarce. There are a few recent interaction studies that discuss the intersections between affect and interpersonal touch (e.g. Cekaite 2016; Cekaite & Holm 2017; Goodwin 2017; Goodwin & Cekaite 2013), but these studies have mostly focused on caregivers’ touch and caregivers’ ability to control the embodied actions of children. The manner in which children touch their caregivers and are able to control their caregivers’ actions has remained understudied. To fill this gap, this study examines touch between a child and mother in naturally occurring settings and focuses on the haptic actions of the child. Specifically, the study investigates the detailed manner in which a child claims embodied access to her mother’s body and how the mother responds to these haptic actions. The chapter identifies and analyses two different haptic affective practices (Wetherell 2012), haptic offer and haptic home base, through which a child can momentarily negotiate the bodily separation and unity with her mother and establish a specific relation to her mother’s body in the interpersonal space. Moreover, the study analyses how, through these haptic affective practices, a child and her mother are able to do and undo their bodily borders in momentby-moment flowing embodied negotiation of the bodies’ separation and unity. The study suggests that these haptic affective practices construct a platform to (re)produce affective inequalities in an intimate relationship.

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Touch and affect intersect in caregiver–child interactions Recent interaction studies (e.g. Cekaite 2016; Cekaite & Holm 2017; Goodwin & Cekaite 2013) have established that touch and affect are strongly intertwined in caregiver–child interactions. In studies on caregivers’ control touch, Cekaite and Goodwin (e.g. Cekaite 2016; Goodwin & Cekaite 2013) established how caregivers are able to modify the embodied affective alignment of children with different haptic controlling practices. Furthermore, Cekaite and Holm (2017), who studied caregivers’ soothing practices, showed how caregivers adopted soothing touch as a haptic resource to regulate the emotions of crying children. Together, these studies have established that the affectivity of touch is closely intertwined with intimacy in relationships with bodily asymmetries (Cekaite & Holm 2017:119–124), such as asymmetries in body size, cognitive skills and social roles (caregiver–child). Nevertheless, these studies have primarily focused on caregivers’ haptic actions and how caregivers are able to manage children’s bodies through touch (e.g. Cekaite 2016; Cekaite & Holm 2017; Goodwin & Cekaite 2013). To complement these studies, this chapter focuses on the haptic actions of a child, or how a child is able to control her mother’s body in haptic negotiations over bodily asymmetries and levels of bodily intimacy unfolding moment-by-moment. Interaction studies can provide affect studies with a method to study affect As the field of interaction studies has established empirical tools to study how participants in interaction produce and negotiate affect in naturally occurring interactions (e.g. Cekaite 2012; Goodwin 2008; Goodwin, Cekaite & Goodwin 2012; Kaukomaa, Peräkylä & Ruusuvuori 2015), it can provide a method to study the relativity and affectivity of bodies established by affect studies (Blackman & Venn 2010). Consequently, I adopt methodological ideas from interaction studies on how to study the negotiation of bodies in affective encounters in everyday life. Emphasizing the moment-by-moment unfolding negotiation of affect and emotion in interactions, interaction studies have analysed affect as emotional stance (e.g. Cekaite 2012; Goodwin 2008; Goodwin et al. 2012; Kaukomaa et al. 2015). Emotional stance refers to an ongoing display of affective alignment with one’s fellow participants. Within this line of thought, the organization of affect is examined as a public practice within which interactors display their rapidly changing stances towards each other (Goodwin et al. 2012). Affect studies, on the other hand, have focused on the embodied side of affect (e.g. Blackman 2012; Knudsen & Stage 2015; Seigworth & Gregg 2010; Seyfert 2012). For instance, following Spinoza (1994), affect can be understood as something that defines and (re)constitutes the very nature of a body. Consequently, bodies are defined by their ability to affect or be affected (Seyfert 2012:32–33). Following the affect studies line of thought, this chapter understands bodies as relational and continuously renegotiated in affective encounters (Blackman & Venn 2010). Nevertheless, little is still known about

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how people in practice manage this bodily relativity and affectivity, and how they (re)negotiate their bodies in everyday interactions. Therefore, adopting interaction studies as a method allows us to examine how affect appears in everyday interactions. The research takes as its case a video recording of a naturally occurring interaction between a mother and her 2½-year-old child. The analysis focuses on how the two touch each other as they organize their intimate space and on how affect as emotional stance is managed in these haptic negotiations. Specifically, the study analyses how the child on the one hand claims embodied entitlement to her mother’s body, adopting her caregiver’s body as an unlimited resource; and how the mother, on the other hand, both passively and actively resists these haptic demands of the child. The study thus places emphasis on the distressing and displeased affects that the intimate haptic negotiation of one’s personal space may contain. In this chapter, I investigate the detailed manner in which the various haptic actions occur, how they are oriented to by the interactors, how specifically the child utilizes her mother’s body and what kind of embodied options there are for the mother to either adjust to or resist the actions of the child. Touch in intimate relationships as an affective practice Touch in this study refers to all kinds of interpersonal haptic actions, including bodies passively being with each other in haptic contact, as well as actively touching and being touched by each other. Therefore, the object of study is embodied haptic sociality (Goodwin 2017) within which a mother and child negotiate their interpersonal space through haptic actions on an ongoing haptic continuum. Given that the haptic actions occur on this reciprocal continuum, both the active and passive forms of touch, and the roles of subject and object of touch, become blurred. As the roles of subject and object become intertwined in touch (MerleauPonty 1962), touch enables an unbalancing of bodily integrity (Cekaite 2016:40). Subsequently, an ongoingness of bodily contact on the haptic continuum also calls into question the presumed separation of bodies (Barad 2012), as bodies in intimate relationships sometimes move as if they were one body. Therefore, touch on the ongoing haptic continuum is also an ongoing negotiation over unity and separation – over the moment-by-moment unfolding of the boundaries of the bodies. Consequently, I understand the bodies of mother and child as in a state of constant movement and becoming, not stable or definite (e.g. Renold & Mellor 2013:25). To examine the intersections between touch and affect, I analyse interpersonal touch in an intimate relationship as a spectrum of affective practices. According to Wetherell (2012), affective practice refers to how affect appears in social life as a practical, communicative and organized cluster of emotional actions. In affective practices, bits of body get patterned together with feelings and thoughts, interaction patterns and relationships, social relations and ways of life (Wetherell 2012:4–14.) Consequently, touch as an affective practice is a mode of embodied meaning-making unfolding moment-by-moment, where both the lived life of the

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bodies and the bodies’ ongoing state of becoming intersect. Affective practices thus overcome both the dualism between the inner and outer body and the dualism between affect as individual experience and social signal. I understand affective practices as interpersonally felt and environmentally local relationship habits. Consequently, affective practices are neither just mere performances characteristic of an individual body nor ‘outer forces’ that ‘hit’ human bodies; rather, they are inherent in the encounters between bodies and are embedded in those bodies (e.g. Blackman & Venn 2010:10; Seyfert 2012:28). Therefore, I study how a child and her mother collaboratively (re)produce their bodies in touch, and how touch as an affective practice evolves as a continuum from the history of the relationship into an ongoing momentary negotiation of bodies.

Methodology and data The data consist of video recordings of a group of non-native Finnish mothers and their children at a House for Girls. House for Girls is a non-governmental organization that provides leisure activities, groups and support for girls and women aged 12 to 28. I convened, planned and tutored the group that appears in the data. The data were first gathered for my thesis, ‘Haptic practices for social actions: A micro study of interactions in a group of non-native Finnish mothers and their children’ (Katila forthcoming). The participants gave their written informed consent for the study. The group was for mothers who had immigrated into Finland and/or whose native language was not Finnish. The purpose of the group was to give members an opportunity to share and reflect on their emotions, past life events and daily lives with group tutors and other mothers. The group members’ children were present at most of the group sessions. The data are naturally occurring, as the group would have existed in the same form with or without the study (Silverman 2010:131–132). The study concentrates on one episode in the sessions when a mother and her child negotiate their bodily limits, attention and the spatial order of the physical environment. The methodological background for the study draws from micro-interaction studies (e.g. Goodwin et al. 2012). Micro-interaction studies have their roots in conversation analysis. Conversation analysis studies social interactions as structured intersubjective spaces within which the interactors construct social reality through embodied social actions (e.g. Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson 1974). Conversation analysis is based on a data-driven ideal whereby the aim is to bring out the orientations of the interactors by understanding how they are accomplished in mundane interactions. Given the emphasis on the concerns of the interactors, which are embodied in their social actions, the analyst cannot rule out any detail as irrelevant to the analysis a priori (Heritage 1984:241). The pioneers of conversation analysis focused on uncovering the structures of verbal action (e.g. Sacks et al. 1974), but soon afterwards interaction studies expanded the study of the structures of interaction to include non-verbal action and its intersections with verbal action (e.g. Goodwin 1980). Following this line of thought, this chapter

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understands the haptic actions of a mother and her child – such as the child sitting in her mother’s lap – as social actions in which the social reality of the particular relationship is negotiated and renewed. Moreover, the analysis concentrates on the haptic actions of mother and child at a detailed level, paying careful attention to how the participants themselves orientate to each other’s haptic actions. Studying affect in observable interaction can be challenging, as it is not often made explicit; affect may also be considered sensitive and therefore smoothed away (Ruusuvuori 2013:330). Furthermore, not all experiences and affects operate through discourse, as there are various different forms of embodied knowing (Blackman & Venn 2010:11). Therefore, the affective practices analysed in this chapter are not always unambiguously explicit. This is particularly the case since the phenomenon of interest – interpersonal touch – is primarily managed through haptic modality, and therefore cannot easily be reduced to observable action (Knudsen & Stage 2015). Studying affect as non-verbal haptic practices is nevertheless crucial, particularly when the participants have a limited vocabulary (Renold & Mellor 2013), as in this study. Consequently, alongside observable cues, my embodied knowledge as an analyst was a crucial vehicle through which the interactions and affect in the interactions were interpreted (De Jaegher et al. 2016; Renold & Mellor 2013). In what follows, I will present a micro analysis of interactions between one child and her mother in the House for Girls group. The analysis is divided into three sections. The first two sections present two different haptic interaction practices through which the child negotiates embodied access to her mother’s body: the interaction practice of haptic offers and the interaction practice of haptic home base. The third section analyses how the mother is able to resist these practices through her superior physical strength.

Micro-interaction analysis of haptic negotiations of a mother and child In the group session of interest, there are seven interactors present: group members Celine, Alina, Bertha and Diana (the last two are not shown in Figure 13.1); Alina’s son Kim and Celine’s daughter Lisa, both around two to three years old at the time of the recording; and the group tutor. The participants have been given pseudonyms in what follows, and the stills from the video recordings have been anonymized. Haptic offer as an affective practice to negotiate the continuum of bodily separation and unity When the occasion of interest begins, the group members are about to start some solitary work as part of a group task. The children present, Kim and Lisa, are not very familiar with each other, but before Extract 1 (Figure 13.2) begins they have exchanged mutual gazes many times, albeit without initiating verbal interaction with each other.

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Figure 13.1  Participation map

In Figure  13.2(1), Kim  – not visible in the figure, but just to the left of it  – moves from the beanbags towards Lisa as Lisa offers Kim a pair of scissors. As the embodied offer is declined, Lisa rushes to hand the scissors to her mother, Celine, who is orientating to the group task (Figure 13.2(2)). The manner in which Celine actively disorientates from the offer (Figures 13.2(2–4)) indicates that she is treating it as either not an offer at all or dispreferred to the extent that she ignores it. Consequently, in Figure 13.2(5), Lisa heightens the offer with a specifically addressed verbal command (‘mum take it’) and sustained touch with the scissors, still facing her body towards Kim. The sharp end of the scissors is directly touching Celine (Figure 13.2(3)). Perhaps orientating to the unpleasant sensation of the sharp end of the scissors, Celine reorganizes her body into a preventive position (Figure 13.2(3)). Lisa sustains the offer by moving the scissors along Celine’s body; Celine, her face in a grimace, exploits her arm as a shield to protect herself from the scissors (Figure 13.2(4)). After Lisa once more intensifies the offer (Figure 13.2(5)), the occasion escalates into Celine’s cry, which clearly indicates a rejection of and negative emotional stance towards the offer (Figure 13.2(6)). Even before this explicit rejection of Lisa’s offer, Celine’s negative emotional stance can be empathically co-felt in the way she positions her body and the dramatized not-paying-attention posture (Figures 13.2(3–5)). Extract 1 (Figure 13.2) captures well the recognizable phenomenon in which two simultaneous relationship projects conflict: a child on the one hand claiming

Figure 13.2  Extract 1

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the availability of her caregiver’s body, and a caregiver on the other hand negotiating over her bodily integrity. Even if the occasion includes features that are unique to these specific participants, it still captures something that anyone who has built an intimate relationship with a child can recognize. The phenomenon is not only recognizable through the visible organization of bodies and facial expressions, but also through the feelings that these observations arouse in the researcher. It is recognizable through the human body, and by human bodies’ intercorporeal ability to affect and be affected by others (e.g. Blackman 2008:138; Fuchs 2017), even if the affect evoked by watching the video can never be exactly the same as the affect that was co-lived by Lisa and Celine in the moment, as bodies, body histories and moments are always unique. The occasion escalates in Figure 13.2(6) to an affective peak, where the rhythm of the bodies changes (Kinnunen & Kolehmainen under review; Knudsen & Stage 2015:8–9). The change in rhythm occurs as Celine changes her emotional stance (Goodwin et al. 2012) from active disorientation to explicit affective production: her interaction project consisting of active disorientation towards Lisa breaks down, discharging the affect accumulated during the previous events (Figures 13.2(1–5)). Thus, a rich affective outburst stems from a seemingly trivial interaction practice, i.e. the offering of an object. The offer is conducted through haptic actions, both enabling the extension of the temporality of the offer (e.g. Cekaite 2016) and heightening the offer with concrete unpleasant sensations on the body. The sharp end of the scissors hurts, making evident the possibility of the concrete penetration of a body. Lisa’s action is masked to look like a solidary action of offering something, but Celine treats it as a utilization of the conditional relevance invested in offers to ‘force’ her to attend to, be available to and support Lisa in her interaction with Kim. Therefore, Celine is also being forced to stop and give secondary attention to the group task she was conducting. The context of Lisa and Kim’s relationship history is embedded in the moment of affective peak (Kinnunen & Kolehmainen under review; Knudsen & Stage 2015:8–9). The level of intensity in the interaction between Lisa and Kim in Extract 1 is unique in the history of the group sessions, as the children have not often played with each other during the sessions before. Consequently, the suddenly occurring interaction may be socially demanding for Lisa as Kim approaches her more closely than he has ever done before during a group session. Given the novelty of the occasion, Lisa’s persistence in insisting on her mother’s embodied attention makes sense in a new way: her demand that her mother take the scissors has nothing to do with the scissors themselves but acts to secure the ongoing availability of her mother. Consequently, Lisa is utilizing the action of handing over an object as an interactionally binding practice as it makes strongly relevant the acceptance of (or at least some response to) the offer (Schegloff 1968). Lisa’s action of handing over the scissors penetrates Celine’s intimate space through touch. Therefore, the action also momentarily obligates Celine’s body to respond, as touching and being touched are inevitably simultaneous.

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Furthermore, while the action of touching Celine with the scissors is an active, object-mediated haptic action that Lisa addresses to Celine, it also feels different from the mere haptic co-presence that Lisa and Celine are continuously sharing. Touching and being touched are not the same sensation. For instance, given Lisa’s age-related embodied skills, her scissor-mediated touch could potentially hurt Celine. The scissors cannot hurt Lisa in the same way, as she can manipulate the scissors in relation to her own kinaesthetic body. Therefore, the roles of the one who touches and the one who is being touched are complementary, but also momentarily diverge (Merleau-Ponty 1962). The action of touching Celine with the scissors negotiates the continuum of bodily separation and unity. Haptic home base as an affective practice to establish specific relations between bodies A moment after Extract 1, in Extract 2 (Figure 13.3) the cat and mouse game between Kim and Lisa continues, this time with Celine’s body as a platform for the game. By Figure 13.3(1), Kim has retreated to the beanbags in the corner of the room, and Lisa initiates a mutual interaction with him by handing him the scissors. Lisa does not leave her mother’s proximity, thus implicitly also requesting Kim to come to her. Celine is orientating towards a group task, at the same time letting Lisa circle and access her body freely. The manner in which Lisa and Celine disattend to each other’s movements in the ongoing haptic contact constructs touch as an ordinary manner of being together for these two. It is as if the other’s body is taken for granted until further notice. As Kim starts to approach Lisa, Lisa slides the scissors with the sharp end towards and almost through Celine’s face (Figure 13.3(2)) and then leaves them in Celine’s lap. When Kim arrives at Lisa, Lisa has called off the offer of the scissors, as she no longer has them (Figure 13.3(3)). Immediately afterwards, Lisa rushes to the other side of her mother, crawling across her mother’s body, only to find that Kim has also rushed around Celine from behind (Figure 13.3(4)). It seems that Lisa has initiated a game in which she ‘tricks’ Kim into coming to her by acting as if she is offering the scissors. As she no longer has them when Kim comes over to her, she then needs to adopt her mother’s body as a safety base as he starts to ‘chase’ her in playful revenge for not giving him the scissors. For Lisa, Celine’s body is not only an open-access platform to play on but is also ‘a shelter’ to shield her from Kim when necessary, as it can be supposed that he does not have an intimate history of affective touch practices with Celine in the way that Lisa has. Thus, the permission to access the other’s intimate space and touch him or her is relationship-particular. Celine remains non-attentive towards the children’s play until Lisa suddenly rushes into her lap (Figure 13.3(4)). Celine gazes at Kim, who is on her left side (Figure 13.3(4)), and as a result Kim retreats from playing with Lisa (Figure 13.3(5)). Lisa tries to get into her mother’s lap, but this time Celine positions her hand to prevent access (Figure 13.3(5)). After

Figure 13.3  Extract 2

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being denied access, Lisa forces her body into Celine’s lap, with Celine first resisting the movement by disaligning her body from Lisa before finally giving in (Figure 13.3(6)). I suggest that the habitualized proximity between Lisa and Celine attests to a certain relationship-based haptic interaction practice that I call home base: a particular, body-to-body relational location in space, or a manner of locating oneself in haptic distance from a particular other in any space. The idea of a home base for bodies resembles the concept of home position. Sacks and Schegloff’s (2002:137) term ‘home position’ refers to a tendency of gestures and other body movements to start and end in the same position, to ‘depart from home and return home’. In a similar vein, each person tends to construct a social location in space to which they seem to return, in constant relation to situationally constructed conventional and relationship-specific proximities to each other. While there is certainly a great variation in each local physical environment that either constrains or encourages close or distant proximity, the concept of home base concentrates on relationshipspecific expectations about locating oneself in physical space that are not directly tied to that physical space. The expected proximity and manner of relating vary according to relationship, time and context. Given that Lisa and Celine manage and relate to each other’s bodies in constant haptic contact in this specific place-, time- and relationship-particular context, haptic togetherness seems to be Lisa and Celine’s momentarily constructed home base. Through haptic home base Lisa and Celine reproduce the intimacy of their relationship: they are available to each other all the time, and the ongoing touch enables them to monitor this availability. Thus, the affective intimacy of the relationship is managed in ongoing haptic sociality (Goodwin 2017). Home base is both produced by the specific relationship history and under constant negotiation, as in the case of Lisa and Celine. Given the intimacy that is embodied in the haptic home base and the expectations that are built in through it, haptic home base can be adopted as an affective practice. Lisa and Celine are continuously negotiating over the levels of intimacy of the home base. Home base builds expectations of the other in the sense that the other can be held accountable for violating those expectations, or even half-forced to comply with them. For instance, in Extract 2 (Figure 13.3) Lisa forces her body into her mother’s lap, as reclaiming her home base. The haptic negotiation encompasses not only the borders of the interactionally organized home base, but also the borders of the bodies themselves. As Lisa and Celine are in constant haptic contact, they are also negotiating all the time over their bodily borders, through the sense of touch and the kinaesthetic ability of the bodies to sense their own (Sheet-Johnstone 2011), but not the other’s, movement. As this haptic negotiation unfolds moment-by-moment, the separation and unity of the bodies is also in a constantly evolving flow. Lisa treats her mother’s body as an unlimited resource for her interaction, a platform or if necessary a protection to which she is entitled. Still, even if Celine allows her child to freely access her body, the control embedded in the affective practice of home base is by no means one-way. By

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passively accepting Lisa’s rights to her body, Celine is able to avoid open conflict and thus to have overall control over the social occasion, which includes multiple overlapping interactions. This allows the caregiver to monitor the actions of her child in multi-activity settings through sustained touch (Cekaite 2016:37–40). Through fine-tuned embodied management of multiple interactions, Celine is able to silently control the children and her own task. This silent management is highly affective, as it requires her to let her own body be available as a resource. Furthermore, exerting control by passively accepting Lisa’s haptic demands is not the only way for Celine to resist the intimate expectations embedded in affective practices. In Extract 1 (Figure 13.2) we saw how Celine was able to mitigate the haptic offer by actively disorientating her body from Lisa, at least for a moment. Furthermore, Celine has the physical power not to have to orientate to Lisa’s embodied offers if she does not want to. She is stronger than Lisa, and her body position cannot be manipulated through embodied actions in the way that caregivers are generally able to manipulate their small children’s embodied attention (Cekaite 2016). Similarly, Celine has the option to use her physical power to manipulate the interactional borders of home base and cancel her child’s access to her body. In the next section, I will analyse how this kind of occasion occurs in interaction. Eviction from home base: a dramatic means to reconstruct intimate power relations? A few minutes later the group members are given cardboard sheets as part of the group task. Celine has started to write on her cardboard, but Lisa continually snatches the cardboard from her. As Extract 3 (Figure 13.4) starts, Lisa takes the cardboard from her mother for the third time in a row. In Figure 13.4(1), Lisa snatches the cardboard from Celine in such a way that the sharp corner of the cardboard hits her mother’s face. Until now Celine has simply taken the cardboard back from Lisa, but this time Celine’s reaction changes dramatically. She grabs Lisa’s body and tosses both Lisa and the cardboard away from her onto the beanbag (Figures 13.4(2–3)). This resembles and lives a completely dispreferred and negative affect through which she withdraws both from the action of writing on the cardboard and, importantly, from the haptic home base with Lisa. The tossing movement is gentle and the landing is soft, but the action is charged with a powerful affect: Celine literally evicts Lisa from the home base, strongly doing separate bodies by demanding and forcing a moment of separation. Celine shows her physical ability and power to move her daughter’s body. The occasion does not lead to long-lasting confusion or physical distance; Lisa almost immediately approaches Celine again (Figure 13.4(4)) and returns to her mother’s lap, with Celine passively opening her body to allow access (Figure 13.4(5)), enclosing Lisa in a tight cuddle (Figure 13.4(6)). It is noteworthy that the purpose of Lisa’s actions is very different in Extract 3 from her purposes in Extracts 1 and 2. In those extracts Lisa made claims for

Figure 13.4  Extract 3

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her mother’s attention (Extract 1, Figure 13.2) and access to her body (Extract 2, Figure 13.3) to secure support from her mother, whereas snatching the cardboard from her mother in Extract 3 is treated as ‘pure’ distraction or teasing. Subsequently, the occasion escalates into a dramatic production of negative emotional stance through immediate embodied ejection from home base. The occasion represents a strong affective peak (Knudsen & Stage 2015:8–9), a leak in the affective interaction pattern through a momentary withdrawal from the practice. The action is not violent, but it is a symbolically strong sign from Celine to Lisa that the latter has gone beyond the limit. Even though the home base is renewed soon afterwards (Figure 13.4(6)), Celine has still been able to demonstrate her ability to take final control over the boundaries of home base.

Discussion: affective inequalities reproduced through haptic affective practices The analysis in this chapter suggests that haptic affective practices between child and mother produced an ongoing embodied platform for a negotiation of intimate power relations, as the practices could be harnessed to claim or cancel the availability of the other’s body. The chapter identified and analysed two different interactionally binding affective practices, haptic offer and haptic home base, through which these intimate power relations were experienced. The practices act as vehicles through which intimate mother–child relationships are managed, including both the ability to claim the availability and attention of the other’s body and the negotiation over the bodies’ separation and unity. The analysis of Extract 1 (Figure 13.2) established that the child was able to secure the availability of her mother through an embodied offer while interacting with another child. In Extract 2 (Figure 13.3), the child was able to adopt her mother’s body as a platform for action and an embodied shelter from unwarranted bodies by orientating to the affective practice of haptic home base. The analysis of Extract 3 (Figure 13.4) showed that the home base as established affective practice was not inflexible, as the mother was physically able to evict the child from the home base as a sanction for continually distracting her from her own interaction project. Therefore, the participants’ previous habitualized haptic intimacy in these haptic affective practices worked as both a resource and a restriction for the embodied negotiation over the bodies’ separation and unity. Studying touch between child and mother as relationship-specific haptic affective practices enables us to understand both how certain ways of being or not being in body-to-body contact become habitualized (Bourdieu 1991) and how the process of habitualization is under constant negotiation. In other words, the relationship’s history of haptic affective practices builds expectations of certain levels of intimacy and haptic availability, but haptic affective practices are also a vehicle through which the bodies’ continuously unfolding dynamics of separation and unity can be differently produced. Furthermore, the extracts in this study can also be understood in terms of the time frame of Celine and Lisa’s relationship. At the time of the video recording

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Lisa is around 2½ years old, and no longer a baby. Given that within this time frame Lisa is growing bigger, it is corporeally harder for her to fit in her mother’s lap. Consequently, this is perhaps a time frame within which the terms and conditions of separation from the mother are being negotiated (Bowlby 1969). The detailed micro analysis suggests that the affective incident between Lisa and her mother Celine was co-lived as a haptic negotiation of bodily borders, in constant relation to an intimate relationship habit consisting of unlimited availability. Overall, the study argues that haptic affective practices in intimate relationships are a vehicle through which affective inequalities in intimate relationships are established, renewed and reconstructed. The study suggests that these haptic affective practices are embedded with embodied control that has to do with both the intimacy of the relationship and doing and undoing bodies in an intimate relationship. Touch in intimate mother–child relationships organizes the relationship’s affective practices. Embodied control does not refer to anything dramatic, but rather to what is already present in the simultaneous and complementary sensations of touching and being touched. While both the person who initiates the touch and the one who is being touched are affected by the encounter, the one who initiates the act of touch holds more power in deciding the manner in which the touch occurs. The one who is being touched is in a potentially more vulnerable position – being touched by a body they cannot kinaesthetically sense at the same time. This means momentarily letting the other person both do and undo the intimacy of the relationship and produce and reproduce bodies. Detailed interaction analysis has shown that this embodied negotiation over intimate space and bodies, generated by embodied control embedded in touch, is a moment-by-moment unfolding (re)production of haptic affective practices.

References Barad, K., 2012, ‘On touching: The inhuman that therefore I am’, Differences 23(3), 206–223. Blackman, L., 2008, The body: The key concepts, Berg, Oxford & New York. Blackman, L., 2012, Immaterial bodies: Affect, embodiment, mediation, Sage, London & New York. Blackman, L. & Venn, C., 2010, ‘Affect’, Body & Society 16(1), 7–28. Bourdieu, P., 1991, Language and symbolic power, Polity Press, Cambridge. Bowlby, J., 1969, Attachment and loss: Vol. 1: Attachment, Hogarth Press, London. Cekaite, A., 2012, ‘Affective stances in teacher-novice student interactions: Language, embodiment, and willingness to learn’, Language in Society 41, 641–670. Cekaite, A., 2016, ‘Touch as social control: Haptic organization of attention in adult-child interactions’, Journal of Pragmatics 92, 30–42. Cekaite, A. & Holm, M.K., 2017, ‘The comforting touch: Tactile intimacy and talk in managing children’s distress’, Research on Language and Social Interaction 50(2), 109–127. De Jaegher, H., Pieper, P., Clénin, D. & Fuchs, T., 2016, ‘Grasping intersubjectivity: An invitation to embody social interaction research’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 16(3), 491–523.

216  Julia Katila Feldman, R., 2011, ‘Maternal touch and the developing infant’, in M.J. Hertenstein & S. Weiss (eds.), The handbook of touch: Neuroscience, behavioral, and health perspectives, pp. 238–257, Springer, New York. Fuchs, T., 2017, ‘Intercorporeality and interaffectivity’, in C. Meyer, J. Streeck & J. Scott Jordan (eds.), Intercorporeality: Beyond the body, pp. 3–23, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Goodwin, C., 1980, ‘Restarts, pauses, and the achievement of a state of mutual gaze at turn-beginning’, Sociological Inquiry 50(3–4), 272–302. Goodwin, M.H., 2008, ‘The embodiment of friendship, power and marginalization in a multi-ethnic, multi-class preadolescent US girls’ peer group’, Girlhood Studies 1(2), 72–94. Goodwin, M.H., 2017, ‘Haptic sociality: The embodied interactive construction of intimacy through touch’, in C. Meyer, J. Streeck & J. Scott Jordan (eds.), Intercorporeality: Beyond the body, pp. 73–102, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Goodwin, M.H. & Cekaite, A., 2013, ‘Calibration in directive-response trajectories in family interactions’, Journal of Pragmatics 46, 122–138. Goodwin, M.H., Cekaite, A. & Goodwin, C., 2012, ‘Emotion as stance’, in A. Peräkylä & M.-L. Sorjonen (eds.), Emotion in interaction, pp. 16–63, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Heritage, J., 1984, Harold Garfinkel and ethnomethodology, Polity Press, Cambridge. Hernstein, M.J., 2002, ‘Touch: Its communicative functions in infancy’, Human Development 45, 70–94. Jean, A.D.L. & Stack, D.M., 2009, ‘Functions of maternal touch and infants’ affect during face-to-face interactions: New directions for the still-face’, Infant Behavior and Development 32, 123–128. Katila, J., forthcoming, ‘Haptic practices for social actions: A micro study of interactions in a group of non-native Finnish mothers and their children’, PhD thesis, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tampere. Kaukomaa, T., Peräkylä, A. & Ruusuvuori, J., 2015, ‘How listeners use facial expression to shift the emotional stance of the speaker’s utterance’, Research on Language and Social Interaction 48(3), 319–341. Kinnunen, T. & Kolehmainen, M., under review, ‘Touch and affect: Analysing the archive of touch biographies’, Body & Society. Knudsen, B.T. & Stage, C., 2015, ‘Introduction: Affective methodologies’, in B.T. Knudsen & C. Stage (eds.), Affective methodologies: Developing cultural research strategies for the study of affect, pp. 1–22, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Merleau-Ponty, M., 1962, Phenomenology of perception, Routledge, London. Paterson, M., 2005, ‘Affecting touch: Towards a felt phenomenology of therapeutic touch’, in J. Davidson, L. Bondi & M. Smith (eds.), Emotional geographies, pp. 161–176, Ashgate, Aldershot. Renold, E. & Mellor, D., 2013, ‘Deleuze and Guattari in the nursery: Towards an ethnographic multi-sensory mapping of gendered bodies and becomings’, in R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies, pp. 23–41, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Ruusuvuori, J., 2013, ‘Emotion, affect and conversation analysis’, in J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (eds.), Handbook of conversation analysis, pp. 330–349, John Wiley, Chichester. Sacks, H. & Schegloff, E., 2002, ‘Home position’, Gesture 2(2), 133–146.

Touch between child and mother  217 Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. & Jefferson, G., 1974, ‘A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation’, Language 4(50), 696–735. Schegloff, E., 1968, ‘Sequencing in conversational openings’, American Anthropologist 70(6), 1075–1095. Seigworth, G.J. & Gregg, M., 2010, ‘An inventory of shimmers’, in M. Gregg & G.J. Seigworth (eds.), The affect theory reader, pp. 1–25, Duke University Press, Durham. Seyfert, R., 2012, ‘Beyond personal feelings and collective emotions: Towards a theory of social affect’, Theory, Culture & Society 29(6), 27–46. Sheet-Johnstone, M., 2011, The primacy of movement, John Benjamins, Amsterdam. Silverman, D., 2010, Doing qualitative research: A practical handbook, Sage, London. Spinoza, B., 1994, ‘Ethics’, in E. Curley (ed.), A Spinoza reader: The ethics and other works, pp. 85–265, Princeton University Press, Princeton. Wetherell, M., 2012, Affect and emotion: A new social science understanding, Sage, Thousand Oaks.

Chapter 14

Reviving ghostly bodies Student–teacher intimacies as affective hauntings Bessie P. Dernikos

The renewed attention to affect within the humanities, social sciences and, more recently, educational research has greatly influenced our understandings and analyses of ontologies of subjectivity and corporeality – what a body ‘is’ and can do (Dernikos et al. forthcoming). Enabling a radical refiguring of the human body, this affective turn (Clough 2007) seeks to disrupt the Cartesian notion of the self-contained, rational subject by embracing a view of bodies as porous and permeable human and non-human assemblages (Blackman 2012; Dernikos 2018; Seigworth & Gregg 2010). Instead, then, of attending to the human body as a distinct entity or ideological/discursive formation, affect theorists highlight the openness, interconnectedness, and vulnerability of subjects: the inexplicable ways affects move between and attach to bodies (writ large), things, ideas, sensations, and even other affects (Niccolini 2016a). As Seigworth and Gregg (2010:1) note, affect: is the name we give to those forces – visceral forces beneath, alongside, or generally other than conscious knowing, vital forces insisting beyond emotion – that can serve to drive us toward movement, toward thought and extension, that can likewise suspend us (as if in neutral) across a barely registering accretion of force-relations, or that can even leave us overwhelmed by the world’s apparent intractability. Indeed, affect is persistent proof of a body’s never less than ongoing immersion in and among the world’s obstinancies and rhythms, its refusals as much as its invitations. As there is no single theory of affect, scholars have referred to these forces in a number of ways: for example, as energies, moods, atmospheres, feelings, emotions, intensities, flows, mobilities, and vibrations (for a review of this literature, see Dernikos et al. forthcoming). Despite the various metaphors employed, affect scholars generally theorize human subjects as conduits for such forces: ‘dynamic, responsive and autonomous from intentionality and cognition [while being] open and permeable to the other’ (Blackman 2012:22, 30). Yet, according to Blackman (2012), such theories of affect problematically assume that the investment or capture of affect requires a lively neurophysiological or material body and

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not a conscious human subject, who, it seems, remains largely unaware of his/ her body’s affective potential. She goes on to say that this view of the mind as a kind of disembodied consciousness both privileges materiality and inadequately addresses the body’s capacity for psychic and psychological attunement, what she refers to as immateriality. In consequence, material theories of affect often work to exclude, marginalize, and/or repress telepathic connections between individuals, which, I will argue, has important consequences for how we understand human relationships, especially as it relates to student–teacher intimacies. This chapter begins by examining the role of the body within more widely accepted theories of affect in order to address the question of whether an embodied, physical contact is even needed for affects to register or materialize. Following Blackman (2012), I am interested in the body’s psychic or psychological potential, that is, its ability to communicate in largely immaterial ways. Using an autoethnographic approach, I explore what openings are created for an affective immateriality in the context of student–teacher relationships, specifically through revisiting my own relationship with a former student of mine, whom I refer to as John. While John is no longer physically with us, he very much lives on in my memory. I position these memories of John, along with my dreams, as haunted data (see Blackman 2015). In this way, I am not studying John as an embodied participant. Rather, I am attending to the moments leading up to and shortly after John’s suicide: moments where John came to me through a whisper and a dream; moments where I could clearly hear his voice and see his finger pull the trigger in the shadows of some telepathic portal I cannot name. Drawing upon the concept of haunting as a methodological and analytical tool (Blackman 2012; Gordon 1997), I follow the traces, absences, gaps, and movements within these seemingly nonsensical encounters. I do so as a way to honour the body’s immateriality and potential for psychic attunement, as well as complicate current perceptions of student–teacher intimacies – what it means to affect one’s students or to be affected by them. I argue that turning attention toward the immateriality of bodies opens up spaces to both challenge the pathologizing of student–teacher intimacies (Jones 2001) and keep alive that which is potentially forgotten or erased by more popular notions of affect and what a body can do (Massumi 1987). In the conclusion, I propose that we remember, rather than refuse, immaterial matters, and suggest that doing so enables us to revive those ghostly bodies (e.g. of teachers, students, affective intimacies) that continue to be displaced, devalued, and/or marginalized within traditional educational environments.

Debate: affects and im/materiality? Largely drawing upon the Spinozist-inspired philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari (1987), contemporary affect theorists tend to characterize affect as an immanent social force, rather than an embodied emotion or personal feeling (Blackman 2012; Massumi 1987; Stewart 2007; Zembylas 2014). Although some affect theorists do use affect in a more generic sense as a category that includes emotions

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(Cvetkovich 2012; Dernikos 2016, 2018; Zembylas 2014), many post/Deleuzian scholars clearly differentiate between the two. As Massumi (1995) argues, affects and emotions follow different logics and orders, making the distinction between them not only necessary, but also crucial. For Massumi, emotions are both personal and social, whereas affects are pre-personal and pre-cognitive intensities that augment or diminish a body’s capacity to act. In other words, bodies move collectively through the social and are invested with capacity, that is, the power to affect other social bodies and, in turn, be affected. Affects or intensities describe the forces between bodies and the change that occurs when bodies make contact (Leander & Rowe 2006). Within embodied contact, the potential for movement, change, and becoming unfolds – where we might possibly go in a different direction, become someone or something we were not a moment ago, and even enter a virtual world with infinite potentialities (Deleuze  & Guattari 1987). According to Deleuze (1994), the virtual is not a mental realm but, rather, an abstract relational one where the body can escape actuality – the material world or life as we know it. For instance, an old song playing on the radio might take you back to another time and place – a moment that is abstract but nonetheless real and ripe with potential or the possibility for something different to unfold. That said, once the subject becomes conscious of its capacity to act, for example once affect is experienced as emotion, affect’s virtual potential is presumably contained or captured. Despite such containment, affects are thought to constantly move and vibrate through the social world, building intensities across bodies and objects of all kinds. Their significance lies not in their semantic meaning, but ‘in the intensities they build and in what thoughts and feelings they make possible’ (Stewart 2007:3). While post/Deleuzian scholars strive to posit a non-dualistic perception of thinking and embodiment and suggest that, within a virtual realm, a physical, embodied contact is not needed for affects to materialize, Blackman (2012) argues they nevertheless succumb to a kind of binary logic that assumes affect is (1) separate from, and even prior to, cognition (see also Zembylas 2014), and (2) always connected relationally to a neurophysiological body (see also Leys 2011). Citing Massumi (1995:89) specifically, Blackman (2012) notes how affects are always conceptualized as ‘irreducibly bodily and autonomic’. According to Massumi (1995:85), affect as intensity is always a ‘nonconscious, never-to-conscious autonomic remainder. It is outside expectation and adaptation. [. . .] The autonomy of affect is its participation in the virtual. Its autonomy is its openness’. What this suggests is that human bodies are open to and absorb sensations and vibrations of all kinds in ways that do not immediately register in the mind. Massumi (1995:89) describes this process as ‘the mystery of the missing half-second’, where we are unexpectedly caught up in something quite unconsciously, if even for a moment. Even though these affective processes catch us by surprise to open us up to virtual worlds, they do inevitably actualize on our skin and in our physical bodies (e.g. causing one’s body to perspire or heartbeat to race), as they all the while influence our thinking: what Massumi (2015) elsewhere refers to as thinking–feeling.

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Although Massumi would argue that there is a kind of immateriality to this view of affect (as humans symbolically enter virtual worlds), the assumption is that once consciousness occurs, that is, once affective intensities register in the body long enough for them to be felt/experienced as something (e.g. anger, joy, frustration), affect’s virtual potential is inevitably thwarted (Blackman 2012). While elsewhere I have drawn upon a Deleuzian notion of affect as forcerelations (Dernikos 2016, 2018), within this chapter I would like to consider a theory which acknowledges the intimate ways minds/bodies are psychically attuned to one another in order to extend our understandings of intimacy, embodiment, and affective processes, namely in relation to student–teacher relationships. According to Blackman (2012:62), telepathic communication (e.g. voice hearing, suggestion, mediumship), or what she calls threshold phenomena, has historically been discounted within the sciences due to fear over the subject’s ‘danger of possession or automatism’. There is a sense, then, that the autonomic nature of affect puts individual subjects at risk, as it potentially opens us up to another’s influence in ways that might impact our will or agency. Within educational spaces, this possibility becomes especially troubling given the ‘risk-aware era’ (Jones 2004:54) that characterizes much of teaching and learning in the Western world, especially in the United States. As Johnson (2005:132) notes, professional or ‘good’ teachers are not seen as having bodies or desires, because education is supposed to be about transferring knowledge to students’ minds – an attitude that dates back to Descartes and the Enlightenment. [. . .] Historically, the solution for the ‘problem’ of teachers’ bodies and desires has been to deny, mask, contain, and suppress them. Jones (2004) adds that risk management has become an everyday concern for teachers, with many schools developing rigid rules, regulations, and policies to suppress and police intimacy, which interestingly enough becomes associated with physical touch. In fact, touching a child in any place that is considered a sexual part of the body (e.g. on the cheek, as opposed to the upper back or shoulder) puts teachers at risk of accusations of sexual and psychological abuse, as well as assault. To manage these risks, teachers must learn to become ‘safe teachers’ (Jones 2004:53) who resist particular behaviours: inappropriate touching, being alone with children, and even being in close proximity to student bodies. While educational researchers have indeed considered how such (self-)surveillance produces a culture of fear (e.g. Johnson 2005; Jones 2004), less attention has been given to the ways it has also contributed to a state of affective inequality and impoverishment: a strict dividing line between teachers and students forms to preclude physical connections, as different modes of intimacy (e.g. telepathic communication) go unacknowledged. Thus, the prohibition and policing of touch suggests that material affects alone are recognized, perhaps because, within modernist discourses, touch has been primarily associated with sexual desire (McWilliams 1996), or the ultimate threat to free will.

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Whether deliberately or not, contemporary affect theorists have found a way to mitigate this concern over the subject’s potential loss of agency or automatism by calling attention to the body’s ability to neurologically respond to and interrupt affective flows. As Blackman (2012:95) notes: ‘Massumi turns to cognitive neuroscience to find a conceptual language for cultural theory that will allow affect to take form’. In other words, if the thinking–feeling subject is always somehow able to contain the flow or movement of virtual worlds – i.e. through physiological bodily responses – then the autonomy of affect seems less threatening. Consequently, telepathic understandings of affect, which already ‘suggest some kind of transport between the self and other, inside and outside, and material and immaterial’ (Blackman 2012:20), take on less scientific importance and become relegated to the ‘irrational’ world of the paranormal. In what follows, I explore telepathy, not as a form of irrationality, but rather, as an affective mode of communication that highlights the complex immaterial ways we as human beings are connected to one another – to the past, present, future, and even to worlds that cannot yet be known (Blackman 2012). As I hope my relationship with John will illustrate, affects, whether intentional or not, cannot be divorced from psychic consciousness: a ‘thing’ that can never quite be contained. I believe that until we better understand these immaterial affects, they will continue to remain not only ghostly (i.e. hidden, unaddressed) but also an untapped resource for pedagogy.

Hauntings My interest in understanding bodies as both intimately and psychically connected led me to utilize autoethnographic methods (Ellis, Adams & Bochner 2011; Ellis & Bochner 2000) to plug (Jackson & Mazzei 2012) my qualitative inquiry into psychomediated theories of affect honouring immateriality (Blackman 2012). As a genre of research writing, autoethnography combines elements of autobiography and ethnography, and invites researchers to personally reflect on their social worlds and life experiences in order to write about those lived moments using a variety of formats, e.g. short stories, poetry, personal essays. While autoethnography has evolved considerably over the last few decades, making it somewhat difficult to define (Ellis & Bochner 2000), it tends to privilege storytelling over more traditional forms of analysis. The overall aim is not to represent reality, but rather, to evoke emotional responses that elicit new lines of thought. Instead of laying out a set of generalizable findings, autoethnographic narratives strive to offer up intimate conversations that ask readers to consider a number of questions, e.g. what do particular stories produce? How might they shape readers? What new possibilities emerge as a result of these narratives, and how might readers put those possibilities to use? With this in mind, I seek to use narrative storytelling to describe and explore my own personal experiences, as well as psychic connection, with my student John, who – over a decade later – continues to haunt me. By haunt, I mean that my

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contact with John has forever changed the way I view my relationships with my students, as well as the way I understand affective intimacies. As Avery Gordon (1997:22) argues: To be haunted and to write from that location, to take on the condition of what you study, is not a methodology or a consciousness you can simply adopt or adapt as a set of rules or an identity; it produces its own insights and blindnesses. Following the ghosts is about making a contact that changes you and refashions the social relations in which you are located. [. . .] The method here is everything and nothing much really . . . I do not devise procedures for the application of theories because one major goal of this book is to get us to consider a different way of seeing, one that is less mechanical, more willing to be surprised, to link imagination and critique, one that is more attuned to the task of ‘conjur[ing] up the appearances of something that [is] absent’. Taking up Gordon’s concept of haunting as both a methodological and analytical tool (see Blackman 2012), I ‘plug in’ or think with affect theories (Jackson & Mazzei 2012) in order to attune myself to what is absent and present, here and there, past/present/future within my memories and dreams of John. That said, I do not position these dreams and memories as inanimate data that can be dissected and examined for conclusive patterns or recurring themes. Instead, appropriating a ‘what if’ stance (Handsfield 2007), I view all data as alive – as active matter with which I might engage in ongoing and open-ended conversation – even wonder (MacLure 2013). Rather than asking what an encounter definitively means, I repeatedly revisit/reread/reinterpret moments with John, asking: how does this encounter work affectively? What material bodies are connecting/assembling or not within these moments? What are the effects of these encounters (see Jackson & Mazzei 2012)? Following Gordon, I am concerned less with representational fidelity (see also Niccolini 2016b) and more with working with the data in the hopes of making a contact that surprises me, shakes up my social world, and profoundly changes me – and perhaps you, as well. As such, I am not interested in writing from a paranoid critical stance (Sedgwick 2003:5) that seeks to judge and tear apart. Instead, I wish to tell a ghost story that can invariably take many different forms, as it all the while links the past with the present, thereby keeping it, and John’s memory, alive. If inquiry is an uncertain doing (Guttorm, Hohti & Paakkari 2015) and writing is a method of inquiry (Richardson 2005), then I write to understand, question, and reimagine affects and the role they play within my relationship with my student John, as well as student-teacher intimacies writ large. My intention is not to prove that these moments with John definitively represent or signify a singular reality. Rather, I hope to put the ‘ludicrous back into circulation’ (Blackman 2015) by honouring that which has been historically marginalized, displaced, and even erased within more popular conceptions of affect and what teacher-student bodies can do.

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Ghost stories ‘That’s the effect of living backwards,’ the Queen said kindly: ‘it always makes one a little giddy at first –’   ‘Living backwards!’ Alice repeated in great astonishment. ‘I never heard of such a thing!’   ‘– but there’s one great advantage in it, that one’s memory works both ways’.   ‘I’m sure MINE only works one way,’ Alice remarked. ‘I can’t remember things before they happen’.   ‘It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,’ the Queen remarked. —Carroll 1971

Memory lane It’s hard for me to write this; as I write I remember. As I remember, I feel John with me again and again and again. Memory connects me to the past, but also to the present and the future. I’m a bit of a time traveller, you see. I can remember things even before they actually happen, although these days my memory isn’t quite what it used to be. My last physical interaction with John happened on a Monday. That much I can recall. It was a typical day, no different than any other really. I had just finished teaching my English classes for the day and desperately longed to go home. In truth, I found my first year of teaching exhausting. Hollywood, Florida, with its bustling nightlife and vibrant beach scene, was nothing like Providence, Rhode Island, the small New England city I had grown up in. Oh, how I missed Providence, especially in the fall: the crisp New England air and the earthy smell of autumn leaves had always signalled the end of summer and the start of a new school year with new possibilities. I was no longer a student, though, and being a first-year teacher somehow felt more threatening than promising. To be sure, working with high schoolers had its own unique challenges. I tried my best to relate to my students, who incidentally were not that much younger than me, but was constantly warned to not let my guard down and to remain professional, which generally meant: demanding that students address me by my last name, having other adults around whenever possible, and never interacting with a student behind closed doors (see Jones 2004; McWilliam & Jones 2005). I learned fairly quickly that in order to be both a ‘safe’ and ‘good’ teacher, I had to become a functional ‘no/body’ (see McWilliam 1996). This meant understanding that any form of intimacy, especially touching, could potentially cost me my job. After a while, it seemed to me that everyone around me (students, teachers, parents, administrators) was watching my every move, and before I knew it, I even began engaging in selfsurveillance, because evidently, teaching is risky business (Johnson 2005). I was mostly ‘at-risk’ around my male students, who managed to constantly find ways

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to ‘inappropriately’ touch me: a brush of their hand on my lower back, a slip of their arm around my waist. John, however, was different. For starters, he was essentially my age. A college student at a nearby state school, John came to see me once a week for help with his college essays. There are certain things I still remember vividly, things that still matter to me even after all this time: John’s short blond hair, which seemed to wildly stick up in places in the most peculiar way, and the unassuming way he would ask me about the world, as if he were truly interested in hearing what I had to say. I have to admit I did enjoy my talks with John, mainly because we spoke about classic literature I could connect to. I think F. Scott Fitzgerald said it best: ‘That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong’ (Vettorino 2017, my emphasis). But, as I would soon discover, belonging is a fleeting notion really, as I had absolutely no idea that on that particular Monday our discussion of Dante’s Inferno would be the last conversation John and I would ever have before his suicide. According to Gordon (1997:18), to ‘write stories concerning exclusions and invisibilities is to write ghost stories’. Ghosts don’t have to necessarily be dead, although they certainly can be. They can describe something or someone that has been lost or forgotten, often in violent ways. What makes this story ghostly is not simply the fact that John is no longer in the land of the living, although there is that. It is also ghostly because it conjures up absences – hidden intimacies, telepathic exchanges, and moments that (presumably) could never be: for John, for myself, for the two of us together. For that reason, I have only shared John’s story with a few people over the years, for fear I would be judged as strange or, worse, chemically imbalanced. And while I have decided to share it with you now, I – like the character Alice, who finds herself in a strange wonderland – cannot help but ask, ‘Which way do I go from here?’ That is: how do I describe my experiences with John in a way that both honours him and brings him back to life? How do I start at the beginning and stop at the end, if memory works backwards and forwards? ‘Write what you know’ The last thing I read of John’s was a short story written in response to his reading of Dante: a strange story about the pleasure of accidental death that, sadly, I didn’t seem to grasp until it was too late. At times, I still wonder: if I had known then that John was suicidal, would it have changed anything? Would John still be physically with us today? The truth is there wasn’t much to his story, or at least there didn’t seem to be at the time. It was a seemingly simple tale about a boy driving a car on some old abandoned road in the middle of the night. I wish I could detail

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it more for you, but the story ended before it even began when the boy accidently (yet suddenly) killed a deer with his car: JOHN: Yeah,

the deer is always getting hunted, so it’s a relief, you know. The oozing blood felt good to the deer because he finally doesn’t have to worry anymore. He can be at peace with it all. MISS DERNIKOS:  Yeah, I still don’t get it. It seems like a violent way to die. No? JOHN:  What do you think happens when you die? Do you think hell and purgatory are real? MISS DERNIKOS:  I don’t know. I sometimes see what I think is heaven in my dreams. JOHN: Really? MISS DERNIKOS:  Yeah. I think so. JOHN:  What’s it look like? MISS DERNIKOS:  There’s a lot of light. I feel drawn to it [laughs]. But, enough about that, let’s get back to your essay! [There was a moment of intensity that passed between us, an intimacy that I was not completely comfortable with. Had I acted unprofessionally by letting John into my innermost thoughts and feelings?] JOHN:  Well, I’ll keep working on it. Honestly, I just wanted your opinion, but I think I can fix it by myself. So . . . I probably won’t be seeing you for a while. MISS DERNIKOS: Huh? JOHN:  Yeah, I don’t really need tutoring. My dad has been making me come. So, if I don’t see you . . . um, well, I wanted to thank you and say goodbye. MISS DERNIKOS:  Goodbye? It sounds like you’re saying have a nice life [laughs]. I’m sure I’ll see you again. Surprised by John’s admission, I hesitated for a moment. Was this really goodbye? If so, should I hug him? I had just confided in him about my dreams, after all. Didn’t that mean something? While I began to worry that maybe I had revealed too much about myself, I also couldn’t help but wonder: maybe this would be the last time I’d ever see John. Still, I thought: better not touch him, even if the classroom door was open. Dream a little dream Even though I never physically saw John again, he did come to me later that night in a dream: through some telepathic portal I don’t quite know how to explain. It almost felt as if I were watching television, in that I could clearly see and hear him, understand his thoughts even. But he couldn’t see me, or at least he wasn’t responding to me, no matter how loudly I screamed, and no matter how much I pleaded with him to put the gun down.

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‘No, John, don’t do it! Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it!’ It was a sight I had never imagined: I saw John in a dark room, sitting in a chair, holding a gun to his head. I remember being terrified; it felt like my heart was beating out of my chest. But how could that be? My body, which was in my bed, wasn’t actually there in that space (John’s bedroom?) after all. Or, was it? All I knew was that I had entered some other realm of consciousness. I hadn’t intended to go there – wherever there was – but I was present at the very moment John took his own life. In fact, I woke up the second he pulled the trigger. Afraid, I kept telling myself it wasn’t real, but it sure felt real. I didn’t want to see what I saw, but I couldn’t undo it, either. The image of John pulling the trigger kept floating in and out of my mind, so much so that I couldn’t bear to shut my eyes again for fear I might see something even more disturbing. The next day was a blur. I hadn’t gotten much sleep and didn’t know how I was going to teach my classes. I decided to confide in a colleague about my dream; I guess deep down I was hoping she would tell me it was nothing more than fantasy. Instead, she immediately blurted out the painful truth: it wasn’t a dream. John Smith killed himself last night, around three in the morning. Raising the dead Though painful at the time, my experience with John has forever changed the way I think about student–teacher relationships: how silly it now seems that I refused to hug John goodbye, simply because it felt inappropriate to do so. But who could blame me, really; after all, teachers are constantly told day in and day out that a distant relationship between teacher and student is always better and more professional than an intimate one (Jones 2004). Sadly, that sentiment ignores psychomediated theories of affect, which highlight the fact that we as humans are entangled beings: telepathically connected to one another in ways that cannot easily be seen or perceived (Blackman 2012). Yet, the question remains: how can teachers be expected to create and maintain distance if they are already always intimately connected to students on a psychic level? While I do not claim to have the answers, I do not believe that erasure of intimacy should ever be the goal. As Johnson notes (2005), rather than avoid or judge student–teacher intimacies, it is far more productive to share our stories of pedagogical pleasure, pain, and even transgression. Building on that idea, I would like to offer up the telling of ghost stories as a means of raising the dead (Gordon 1997). By that, I mean bringing to light the ways immaterial affects have been largely hidden, buried, or simply unacknowledged within classroom spaces, thereby leading to a kind of affective inequality which demands distance. While my relationship with John suggests that there is no such thing as true distance between teachers and students, it is still nevertheless assumed that the foreclosure of intimacy makes teaching possible. Yet, if distance is really the natural state of things, then why must teachers actively strive to create and

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keep it, often at the expense of inquiry and creativity? For that matter, how is it that ghostly bodies keep finding ways to tug at us both emotionally and psychically, letting us know time and time again that some connections just will not be contained? If we accept that memory works both ways (that is, backwards and forwards), then how might we think with John’s ghost story to reimagine time and space, as well as our own teaching and learning? If I understand Gordon (1997:22) correctly, it seems to me that ‘following the ghosts’ is an uncertain path that involves not answers per se, but questions, and a willingness to be surprised. And although my questions may change over time, at the moment I wonder: what conversations might have ensued between John and me if I had embraced the pleasure I felt when (initially) sharing bits and pieces of myself with him? What might have unfolded for John, specifically, if I had followed that charge that passed between us, instead of fearfully brushing it off? And from this: what new understandings of myself, my students, and the social worlds we live in will emerge if we each allow ourselves to be open to and surprised by the affective assemblages in which we find ourselves participating? In the end, what I would like to suggest is this: if the field of education were to acknowledge the im/material affects present within all pedagogical encounters, it might very well open up the possibility for deeper connections, insights, and revelations between teachers and students – as well as between all human beings. Rather than disavow the fact that we are, as Blackman (2012:xxiii) argues, ‘one yet many’, this acknowledgment would serve to honour our interconnectedness by reminding us that we are never alone and always in the company of others, that is, affectively haunted. While affects are often widely regarded as both pre-cognitive and unconscious (see Massumi 1987, 2015), John reminds us that affects are much more than autonomic forces. As human beings, we have the affective capacity to mentally or telepathically touch those around us, even as the social world tries to thwart our attempts. Reviving ghostly bodies not only brings these immaterial affects to light but also asks us to consider: what happens when the virtual world becomes much more than a fleeting moment contained, to some extent, by material bodies? What if we reimagine the virtual as a space of time travel and memory work that human beings can consciously tap into or visit again and again (see Blackman 2015) in order to revive those affective intimacies that have long been dead and buried? Perhaps if we came to see the interconnectedness of the virtual and the actual, we would be more inclined to understand teachers and students as having an array of im/material bodies – as opposed to no/body at all. It is my hope that telling John’s ghost story not only keeps him alive, but also enables a far more complex understanding of both affective processes and pedagogical encounters. Teaching and learning are truly haunting – and that is not necessarily a bad thing. As Gordon (1997) notes, to be haunted is to be forever changed in ways that force us to reimagine and rethink the social worlds we live in. It is about living backwards and forwards, conjuring up absences, and carrying

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the past with us always so as to relive – and potentially rewrite – the present and future. John has taught me (and continues to teach me) that both student–teacher intimacies and time travel are not only possible, but also vital. As teachers, students, and human beings, we have the immense power to affect and be affected in largely immaterial ways, as we are always entangled within a sea of telepathic and quantum possibilities. Thus, contrary to more popular conceptions of affect, we can be (and often are) consciously aware of our affective capacities to alter our experiences with both time and space. After all, as Lewis Carroll reminds us, ‘memory works both ways. [. . .] It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards’.

References Blackman, L., 2012, Immaterial bodies: Affect, embodiment, mediation, Sage, Thousand Oaks. Blackman, L., 2015, Queer adventures in affect studies: Feeling the future, viewed 17 January 2018, from http://wtfaffect.com/lisa-blackman/. Carroll, L., 1971 edition, Through the looking glass, Oxford University Press, London & Oxford. Clough, P., 2007, ‘Foreword: What affects are good for’, in P.T. Clough (ed.), The affective turn: Theorizing the social, pp. ix–xiii, Duke University Press, Durham. Cvetkovich, A., 2012, Depression: A public feeling, Duke University Press, Durham. Deleuze, G., 1994, Difference and repetition, Columbia University Press, New York. Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F., 1987, A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Dernikos, B.P., 2016, ‘ “Queering” #BlackLivesMatter: Unpredictable intimacies and political affects’, SQS 10(1/2), 46–56. Dernikos, B.P., 2018, ‘  “It’s like you don’t want to read it again”: Exploring affects, trauma, and “willful” literacies,’ Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, doi:10.1177/1468798418756187. Dernikos, B.P., Lesko, N., McCall, S. & Niccolini, A., eds., forthcoming, Feeling education: Affect, encounters, pedagogy. Ellis, C., Adams, T.E. & Bochner, A.P., 2011, ‘Autoethnography: An overview’, FQS 12(1), 733–768. Ellis, C.  & Bochner, A.P., 2000, ‘Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity: Researcher as subject’, in N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (eds.), Handbook of qualitative research, pp. 733–768, Sage, Thousand Oaks. Gordon, A., 1997, Ghostly matters: Haunting and the sociological imagination, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Guttorm, H., Hohti, R. & Paakkari, A., 2015, ‘ “Do the next thing”: An interview with Elizabeth Adams St. Pierre on post-qualitative methodology’, Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology 6(1), 15–22. Handsfield, L.J., 2007, ‘From discontinuity to simultaneity: Mapping the “what ifs” in a classroom literacy event using rhizoanalysis’, National Reading Conference Yearbook 56, 235–253. Jackson, A.Y. & Mazzei, L.A., 2012, Thinking with theory in qualitative research, Routledge, New York.

230  Bessie P. Dernikos Johnson, T., 2005, ‘The “problem” of bodies and desires in teaching’, Teaching Education 16(2), 131–149. Jones, A., 2001, ‘Learning proper masculine pleasure: Santa clauses and teachers’, in A. Jones (ed.), Touchy subject: Teachers touching children, pp. 109–116, Otago University Press, Dunedin. Jones, A., 2004, ‘Social anxiety, sex, surveillance, and the “safe” teacher’, British Journal of Sociology of Education 25(1), 53–66. Leander, K.M. & Rowe, D.W., 2006, ‘Mapping literacy spaces in motion: A rhizomatic analysis of a classroom literacy performance’, Reading Research Quarterly 41(4), 428–460. Leys, R., 2011, ‘The turn to affect: A critique’, Critical Inquiry 37, 433–472. MacLure, M., 2013, ‘Classification or wonder? Coding as an analytic practice in qualitative research’, in R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies, pp. 164–183, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Massumi, B., 1987, ‘Translator’s foreword: Pleasures of philosophy’, in G. Deleuze & F. Guattari (eds.), A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, pp. ix–xix, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Massumi, B., 1995, ‘The autonomy of affect’, Cultural Critique 31, 83–109. Massumi, B., 2015, Q&A with Brian Massumi, viewed 17 January 2018, from https:// dukeupress.wordpress.com/2015/08/19/qa-with-brian-massumi/. McWilliam, E., 1996, ‘Touchy subjects: A risky inquiry into pedagogical pleasure’, British Educational Research Journal 22(3), 305–317. McWilliam, E.L. & Jones, A., 2005, ‘An unprotected species? On teachers as risky subjects’, British Educational Research Journal 31(1), 109–120. Niccolini, A., 2016a, ‘Affect’, in N.M. Rodriguez, W.J. Martino, J.C. Ingrey & E. Brockenbrough (eds.), Critical concepts in queer studies and education, pp. 1–14, Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Niccolini, A., 2016b, ‘Animate affects: Censorship, reckless pedagogies, and beautiful feelings’, Gender and Education 28(2), 230–249. Richardson, L., 2005, ‘Writing: A method of inquiry’, in E.A. St Pierre, N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research, third edition, pp. 959– 978, Sage, Thousand Oaks. Sedgwick, E.K., 2003, Touching feeling: Affect, pedagogy, performativity, Duke University Press, Durham. Seigworth, G.J. & Gregg, M., 2010, ‘An inventory of shimmers’, in M. Gregg & G.J. Seigworth (eds.), The affect theory reader, pp. 1–25, Duke University Press, Durham. Stewart, K., 2007, Ordinary affects, Duke University Press, Durham. Vettorino, M.Z., 2017, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 10 most amazing quotes, viewed 19 January 2018, from www.theodysseyonline.com/fitzgeraldquoted. Zembylas, M., 2014, ‘Theorizing “difficult knowledge” in the aftermath of the “affective turn”: Implications for curriculum and pedagogy in handling traumatic representations’, Curriculum Inquiry 44(3), 390–412.

Index

Acampora, R. 116 Act Up (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) 175 affect: relational understanding of 3 – 5; and temporality 86, 128 – 139, 141, 222 – 223; theories 6, 8, 51 – 52, 82, 130, 142, 176, 218 – 222; touch and 202 – 204 affective assemblage 49 – 50, 59 – 60, 228 affective bonds 142 – 146 affective capacities 19, 21, 25, 28, 64 – 65, 67 – 68, 70 – 73, 157, 165, 229; see also Deleuze, G. affective communities 187 – 188, 191, 195 – 197 affective difference 109 – 110, 119, 121 – 122 affective dissonance: imprint of the (m)other 156 – 158; in lesbian relationships 87 – 91; potential of 166 affective encounters 4 – 7, 65, 82 – 83, 202 affective exchanges 159 – 160, 163 – 164, 196, 198 affective figures 188, 193 – 196 affective inequality: caused by heterosexual matrix 56; as economic power imbalance 90, 133 – 136, 146 – 147; in gendered expectations 19, 23, 39 – 42, 144, 146 – 148; in policing intimacy 221; as sense of deprivation 88; as structural inequality 198; and touch 214 – 205; as vulnerability 136 – 139, 155 affective intensities 49 – 50, 53 – 54, 58 – 60, 110, 221 affective orientation: concept of 128; in imagining futurities for heterosexual relationships 127 – 139; of independence 133 – 136, 138 – 139; of vulnerability 136 – 139

affective practice: caring as 95 – 98, 105; concept of 188; friendship practices as 196 – 197; haptic practices as 203 – 204; see also Wetherell, M. affective resonance 82 – 84, 91, 162 – 163 affective structures 141 – 142 Ahmed, S. 121, 130, 141 – 142, 187 – 188, 194 Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD) 171; see also Demo für Alle (Demonstration for All); New Right in Germany Baraitser, L. 159 becoming 21, 49 – 53, 59 – 60, 64, 67 – 68, 70 – 73, 109, 118 – 120, 203 – 204, 220 Benjamin, J. 160 – 161 Benner, P. 95, 97 bisexual women: identity 51; their relationships as assemblages 50 – 51 Blackman, L. 219 – 222, 228 bodies: Deleuzian conceptualization of 68, 74; Latourian conceptualization of 68, 73 bodily capacities: stereotypes of female and male sexuality 69 – 71; teaching bodies to open up and close down their 71 – 73 Bollas, C. 157 – 158 Bourdieu, P. 188 Braidotti, R. 116, 122 caregiver–child interactions 202 caregiving: boundaries of care 42 – 45; caring as affective practice 95 – 98, 105; forced care 105 – 106; informal care 106; moral standards for 45; pastoral care 37, 39 – 45; settling into affective practice of caring 101 – 103; as wives’ obligation 34 – 45

232 Index Clarke, L. 132 Clarke, V. 23 Cleavely, E. 165 Clough, P. 74 compassion 117 – 118 compassionate companionship 109 – 110, 115 – 117 conatus 119 Conradson, D. 101 corpo-affectivity 109 – 110, 116 – 121 co-suffering 100, 117 – 118, 121 crisis of the family 173 – 175, 177 – 179 Cvetkovich, A. 120 – 121 data sets used for analyzing affect: autobiographical texts 110, 222; diaries 81 – 82, 156; ethnographic fieldnotes 64 – 66; interviews 23, 50 – 53, 98, 127 – 128, 189 – 190; letters 36 – 37; questionnaires 144 – 145; videotapes 177, 203 – 205 Deleuze, G. 19, 21, 25, 49, 51, 60, 66 – 67, 109, 116, 219 – 220 Demo für Alle (Demonstration for All) 173 Dolar, M. 158 Elias, N. 142 embodiment 52, 66 – 68, 95, 147 – 151, 220 – 221 emotional closeness 26 emotional pedagogy: among the New Right 171 – 183; intimate relationships and 177 – 182 emotional practice: concept of 35; of farm women in post–World War II Finland 34 – 45 emotion regulation as religious selfmonitoring 42 – 45 emotion work 36, 95 event-assemblages 65, 66, 68, 69, 71, 72, 73, 74 family 172 – 175, 177 – 179 feminism: lesbian 84; post- 66 – 74 feminist critique: of care 98; of gendered roles 54, 132, 161, 175; of heteronormative family 174; of inequalities within heterosexual relationships 19 – 20, 127 feminist-materialism 109 Foster, K. 20 Freud, S. 120

friendship: affective dimensions of 187 – 189; affects and inequalities between friends 186 – 199; companionship and 116 – 117; friends as affective communities 195 – 197 Gallop, J. 156 Garton, S. 41 gender: bisexuality and 50 – 51; concept of 64; inequalities and heterosexuality 129 – 130; as mode of relating 161; process of becoming gendered 72 – 75; role in shaping norms of emotional work and behaviour 37; role of religion in shaping gendered norms 42 – 45 Gerson, M. 164 – 165 ghost story 226 – 229 Gill, R. 66 Goldner, V. 162 – 164 Goodwin, J. 175 Gordon, A. 223, 228 Gordon, S. 95 Gould, D. 173, 175 – 176, 180, 182 Gregg, M. 116, 218 Guattari, F. 49, 51, 60, 219 Hall, M. 89, 92 haptic home base 209 – 214 haptic offer 205 – 209 haunting 91; concept of 219, 222 – 223 heteronormativity 171 – 183 heterosexual relationships 19 – 29, 63 – 75, 95 – 106, 127 – 139, 161 – 166: affective inequality of 22 – 23, 56 – 59; affective orientation of independence 138 – 139; affective orientation of vulnerability 136 – 137; affective orientations in imagining futurities for 127 – 139; bisexual identity and 51; economic power imbalances 133 – 136; inequalities within 127 – 130; normalizing normative intimacies for 181 – 182; stereotypes of female and male sexuality 69 – 71 House for Girls 204 housework 127 independence 133 – 136, 138 – 139 intimacy 4 – 5, 12 – 13, 20, 21, 22, 25 – 26, 27, 28, 41, 85, 86 – 87, 88 – 89, 91, 95, 128, 138, 141, 143 – 144, 148 – 149, 151, 162 – 163, 166, 175, 202, 211, 214 – 215, 221, 224, 227

Index 233 Jasper, J. 175 jealousy 56, 148 – 150 Johnson, T. 221, 227 Jones, A. 221 Kittay, E.F. 160 Klein, M. 157 Kohut, H. 157 Korhonen, V. 40 Laments (Lykke) 110 – 115 lesbian feminism 84 lesbian relationships 54 – 56, 81 – 92, 109 – 121 love: as affective bond 142 – 151; affective exchange of 163; care as a labour of 98; companionship and 116 – 117; falling in 158; jealousy and 148 – 151; MDMA’s relationship to 19 – 29; as self-sacrifice 44; sexuality and 69 – 70, 88, 91 MacLure, M. 51, 190 Malins, P. 57 Massumi, B. 116, 176, 220 McDougall, J. 159 MDMA: affective repatterning on 28 – 29; feeling close on 20 – 21; liminal possibilities for heterosexual partners on 19 – 29; practices of intimacy on 25 – 26; reassembling affective relations on 23 – 24 Mellor, D. 68 memory 55, 156, 162, 190, 224 – 225, 228 – 229 menstruation 148 – 151 methodologies 7 – 9: sensory methodology 98 – 100 methods for approaching affects: auto­ ethnography 222; autophenomenography 109 – 110; ethnographic fieldwork 64 – 65; Foucauldian discourse analysis 50; micro-interaction analysis of haptic negotiations 205 – 214; narrative analysis 100, 131, 177; narrative storytelling 222; psychosocial approach 50; resonative reading 82 – 84; selfanalysis 156; self-study 81 – 82, 91 – 92; thematic analysis 23 – 24 Milner, M. 156 monogamy 56 – 57

mother–child relationships: as a haptic relationship 201 – 201; in psychoanalytic theory 156 – 158 mourning 120 – 121 Mühlhoff, R. 82 – 83 Muller, J.P. 52 new materialist ontology 64 New Right in Germany: Demo für Alle and 173 – 174; right-wing mobilization and affect 175 – 177 Nichols, M. 84 non-heterosexual relationships 145, 149 normalizing normative intimacies 181 Ogden, T.H. 157 personal pronouns: as a figuration model 143 – 144; as in ‘I/you/we’ situations 118 – 121 Pizer, B. 165 Pizer, S.A. 165 Polletta, F. 175 polyamorous relationships 56 – 57 post-feminism 66 – 74 psychoanalysis 155, 158 queer approaches to intimate relationships 49, 63, 109, 121, 129 Ranta-Knuuttila, J.J. 39 relationship and sex counselling practices 63 – 75 religion 37, 42 – 45 Renold, E. 68 research-assemblages 65 romantic relationships 144 – 146 Salmenniemi, S. 64 Saresma, T. 92 Seigworth, G.J. 116, 218 separation 22, 38, 59, 60, 92, 133, 201, 203, 205 – 209, 211, 212, 214 – 215 sexuality: concept of 64; lesbian 84 – 90; love and 69 – 70, 88, 91; stereotypes of female and male 69 – 71, 74 – 75 Seyfert, R. 52, 82 – 83 Simmel, G. 142 – 143 Spencer, D. 20 Spezzano, C. 159 Spinoza, B. 52, 109 – 110, 116, 119, 121, 219

234 Index student–teacher relationships 219, 222 – 229 suffering 117 – 118, 121 symphysis 116 – 117 therapeutic practices 64 – 66, 73 – 74 touch: affect and 202 – 204; between child and mother as an affective practice 201 – 215; and haptic home base 209 – 214; and haptic offer 205 – 209; prohibition of 221

von Beverfoerde, H. 173 vulnerability 136 – 139 Wærness, K. 97 Walkerdine, V. 187 – 188 Wetherell, M. 35, 95, 99, 102, 105, 188, 201, 203 Whitehead, A.N. 21 widowhood 109 – 122 Winnicott, D.W. 157 – 158, 161