Love and the Politics of Intimacy

Love and the Politics of Intimacy
Author: Stanislava Dikova
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2023-01-12
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501387391

Love and the Politics of Intimacy articulates the concept of love within the relationship between the intimate and the social, rethinking how intimacy is conceived and experienced in the context of 21st-century neoliberalism. Reflecting on experiences of intimate, romantic and sexual love, and the role of individual identity, these essays explore historical trajectories that have culminated in particular, contemporary experiences of intimate love. Politically, this work links identity and articulation of the self to liberatory practices in the arenas of friendship, romance and sex. This interdisciplinary exploration of what love means in the 21st century incorporates academic writing and original creative work from established and emerging scholars around the globe. Essays from across the humanities and social sciences – including literary studies, sociology, psychology, philosophy and gender studies – interrogate the role of relational intimacy on topics of 'Love and Romance', 'Love and Liberation' and 'Love and Technologies of Intimacy'. The volume looks at the past, present and future in search of inspiration for transforming and re-charting the pathways of love, seeking a more diverse and emancipatory model of social life and what it would take to restore love to social and institutional spaces.

Love Stories in China

Love Stories in China
Author: Wanning Sun
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 439
Release: 2019-07-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000497232

This book explores how political, economic, social, cultural and technological forces are (re)shaping the meanings of love and intimacy in China's public culture. It focuses on a range of cultural and media forms including literature, film, television, music and new media, examines new cultural practices such as online activism, virtual intimacy and relationship counselling, and discusses how far love and romance have come to assume new shapes and forms in the twenty-first century. Love Stories in China offers deep insights into how the huge transformation of China over the last four decades has impacted the micro lives of ordinary Chinese people.

Regulating Sex

Regulating Sex
Author: Elizabeth Bernstein
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2005
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780415948685

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Transformation of Intimacy

The Transformation of Intimacy
Author: Anthony Giddens
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2013-04-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0745666507

The sexual revolution: an evocative term, but what meaning can be given to it today? How does 'sexuality' come into being and what connections does it have with the changes that have affected personal life on a more general plane? In answering these questions, Anthony Giddens disputes many of the dominant interpretations of the role of sexuality in modern culture. The emergence of what the author calls plastic sexuality - sexuality freed from its intrinsic relation to reproduction - is analysed in terms of the long-term development of the modern social order and social influences of the last few decades. Giddens argues that the transformation of intimacy, in which women have played the major part, holds out the possibility of a radical democratization of the personal sphere. This book will appeal to a large general audience as well as being essential reading for students and professionals.

Sex, Love and the Dangers of Intimacy

Sex, Love and the Dangers of Intimacy
Author: Helena Lovendale
Publisher: Lone Arrow Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2002
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780007100897

Case studies offer insight into how to make relationships work. Each chapter contains such exercises as breathing exercises, making a timeline of the relationship, and thoughts to ponder.

I Love You, But I Hate Your Politics

I Love You, But I Hate Your Politics
Author: Jeanne Safer
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Total Pages: 124
Release: 2019-07-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1785905090

We've all been there – the family dinners turned full-fledged political debates, the awkward chat in the kitchen at work, the difficulty of discussing politics on a first date or even at dinner with a long-time partner. Today's divisive climate – and the seemingly neverending circus of Brexit – has made discussion of current events uncomfortable and often uncivil. So, how exactly do we find ways to reach across the aisle to those whose views we find unpalatable? Psychotherapist and lifetime liberal Jeanne Safer hopes to shed some light on the situation. Combining her professional expertise with personal experience gleaned from over forty years of happy marriage to her stalwart conservative husband Richard Brookhiser, as well as a wealth of interviews with politically mixed couples, Safer offers frank advice for salvaging and strengthening relationships strained by political differences. Part relationship guide, part anthropological study, I Love You, But I Hate Your Politics is a helpful and entertaining how-to for anyone who has felt they are walking on eggshells in these increasingly uncertain times.

Radical Intimacy

Radical Intimacy
Author: Zoë Kors
Publisher: Hachette GO
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2022-04-12
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780306826603

A practical step‑by‑step methodology for nurturing and sustaining our intimate relationships through first focusing on self, extending to partners, and the world We can apply the law of attraction, love languages, and every hack in the world. We can do all the yoga, spa days, workshops, and retreats we can make time for. But without an underpinning of intimacy, our experience of ourselves is soft and dreamy and lacks the kind of specificity necessary to truly know ourselves through and through. With intimacy as the foundational principle of our existence, we can build a life based on what we truly need, not what have been told we need, think we need, or what we think we should need. No matter who you are and who you like to have sex with, my intention is to arm you with a new toolkit and consciousness for cultivating the deeply connected relationships you desire and the life you deserve. Zoe Kors draws on her experience as an intimacy coach, workshop leader and sex and relationships writer, sharing her powerful--and practical--step‑by‑step methodology for nurturing and sustaining our intimate relationships over time. It addresses the essential truth that is almost universally missed in discussions of sex and intimacy: We can meet each other only to the extent that we can meet ourselves. Kors guides the reader on a five‑part journey through nine areas of opportunity for deepening intimacy with themselves, their partner, and their world, inviting them to embrace emotional, physical, and energetic self‑mastery, which is required to skillfully relate with others. Voice-driven, accessible--with the right amount of tough love--Radical Intimacy rewrites the rules (and The Rules) by: Introducing the concept of "Energetic Intimacy" as a real thing. I talk about concepts like presence and energy, in a way that is accessible and makes sense to the mainstream market (not woo-woo!) Defining and busting "The Attachment Myth"--my term for the rampant and erroneous belief that women emotionally attach to their sexual partners--rewriting the common narrative, giving women freedom and agency to own their embodied sexuality without guilt or shame. Shifting the vocabulary around sex and intimacy to feel real, organic, and unapologetic by speaking with ease and confidence about sex and sexuality--no euphemisms, no air quotes, no beating around the bush (so to speak). Telling the truth that sex is not effortless. Great sex is cultivated over time through practice. Evangelizing intimacy as an ongoing and life-altering practice that happens not just between two people, but on an individual level first. Dismantling porn-culture's stronghold on the misperception of women's bodies and sexuality so that we may respect, revere, and fall love with women (and ourselves) for the magical and varied creatures we are.

When Angels Speak of Love

When Angels Speak of Love
Author: bell hooks
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 113
Release: 2007-02-06
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1416538232

Feminist icon bell hooks reminds us of the full spectrum of feeling we spend in love through her inspiring collection of love poetry, with a new introduction by Cole Arthur Riley, author of Black Liturgies. Written from the heart, When Angels Speak of Love is a book of fifty love poems by bell hooks, one our most beloved public intellectuals, and author of over twenty books, including the bestselling All About Love. Poem after poem, hooks challenges our views and experiences with love—tracing the links between seduction and surrender, the intensity of desire, and the anguish of death. “Love must clean house, choose memories to keep, and memories to let go,” she writes. These verses are expansive yet accessible—encompassing romantic love, to love of family, friends, or oneself. In any iteration, these poems remind us of both the beauty and possibility of love.

Conditions of Love

Conditions of Love
Author: John Armstrong
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2002
Genre: Love
ISBN: 9780140294712

What does it really mean to love another person? Is there such a thing as the 'perfect' partner? How does infatuation differ from the real thing?The need to love is central to our idea of happiness, yet it sometimes seems that the more we reflect on it the more elusive it becomes. In this lucid and graceful meditation on the deeper meanings of intimacy, John Armstrong explores the ideas that have shaped how we view affairs of the heart. Drawing on poetry, novels, philosophy, paintings and music, he shows how love is inextricably bound up with perception and the imagination: that loving a real, complicated person and being understood and valued by them in turn is not something we find, but rather something we create.

After Love

After Love
Author: Noelle M. Stout
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2014-04-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0822376598

Focused on the intimate effects of large-scale economic transformations, After Love illuminates the ways that everyday efforts to imagine, resist, and enact market reforms shape sexual desires and subjectivities. Anthropologist Noelle M. Stout arrived in Havana in 2002 to study the widely publicized emergence of gay tolerance in Cuba but discovered that the sex trade was dominating everyday discussions among gays, lesbians, and travestis. Largely eradicated after the Revolution, sex work, including same-sex prostitution, exploded in Havana when the island was opened to foreign tourism in the early 1990s. The booming sex trade led to unprecedented encounters between Cuban gays and lesbians, and straight male sex workers and foreign tourists. As many gay Cuban men in their thirties and forties abandoned relationships with other gay men in favor of intimacies with straight male sex workers, these bonds complicated ideas about "true love" for queer Cubans at large. From openly homophobic hustlers having sex with urban gays for room and board, to lesbians disparaging sex workers but initiating relationships with foreign men for money, to gay tourists espousing communist rhetoric while handing out Calvin Klein bikini briefs, the shifting economic terrain raised fundamental questions about the boundaries between labor and love in late-socialist Cuba.