Critical Intimacy

Critical intimacy¹This text was partly funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy in the context of the EXC 2020 Temporal Communities – Project ID 390608380. is a notion aimed at addressing commonality from within some of the things that matter most in life: theory, sex, and art. Echoing Jean-Luc Nancy’s Full reference in Zotero Library position that ‘lovers form the extreme though not external limit of community’, critical intimacy is a loving stance within reading and thinking, relating and establishing closeness, writing and creating, which maintains the possibility of distancing oneself from that with which one engages. It draws on the momentum of the strong presence of theory in the humanities along with the demand for social justice, of the emergence of intimacy as a political concept, and of field literature and socially based art. Critical intimacy allows us to reconsider the “we” of theoretical thinking, relationality, and creation. It is an experience of commonality, rather than community. Instead of inscribing itself in the utopian or contrarian nature of the community (Kelleter/Albers), it is rooted in the praxis of theoretical, corporeal, or artistic work, and allows us to address one’s elective or involuntary affinities with ideas and practices which should be maintained, reassessed, or disappear from the world. It is not an imagined return to a prior experience of closeness, neither is it based on speculation about how togetherness occurs within a higher sphere of existence (Kelleter/Albers). Its modality is that of the from within: whether critical intimacy happens with ideas, with living beings, or within creations, it comprises nuanced proximity and opening to the outside, lovingness and lucidity, criticality as a mode of attachment.

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My assumption is that criticality is inherent in intimacy, although intimacy is frequently associated with everything domestic, private, or even secret, esoteric, and obstruse. Whispering is considered as a tonality appropriate for voicing it, hand-over-mouth as a suitable gesture, and confession as an apt model for sharing it. The same pattern is present in approaches to intimate experiences of literature and art: the personal diary (journal intime) is their key genre, the quiet room is the most apposite space for reading and writing, while pornography, thought of as crudely public intimacy, is perpetually questioned as the end of art. Such a perception of intimacy, placed at the core of privacy, lies in a confrontation with an external eye, whether divine as during confession, or that of a couple’s therapist, or of a voyeur.

Nevertheless, I would lean toward the idea that an external eye is precisely what turns privacy into intimacy. The personal diary, for instance, often written with the purpose of remaining unread, it might forever remain forgotten in a drawer or in a digital folder. But the very act of keeping a diary paves the path from the privacy of the unwritten to the intimacy of the surreptitiously browsed by way of the unforeseen reader’s external eye. In that regard, there is no intimacy without some degree of rupture with the pact of privacy and its opacity. This is precisely where a tension erupts between what is imagined as shared within privacy and what becomes visibly common in the event of intimacy, both between the intimate ones as well as between the intimate ones and those who bear witness to the intimacy. Commonality within privacy is not only usually unacknowledged and undiscussed, but also dubious as such, given that undisclosed privacies assumed as commonality tend to be kept apart from the sphere of the political and, by that, idealised or unreasonably tolerated.

The movement that I am describing here is less that of revealing a sealed and secluded privacy to the public space, and more that of a reverse intrusion of the micro-space that intimacy itself defines into the vast, and supposedly intimacy-free, zone of the outside. This is what Jacques Derrida Full reference in Zotero Library undertakes when writing The Postcard, addressing his intimate writing to an anonymous woman on the back side of destinerrant postcards, open to the hazardous, curious, or judgemental reading of the non-intimate, like the postman. This is also what Nancy Full reference in Zotero Library does when he publishes The Intruder: outlining intimacy with the old and the new heart during a heart transplantation lays the foundation of a paradigm through which, and under the watchful medical gaze, intimacies with the profoundly unknown old heart and the anonymous foreign new one can be watched and understood.

This reversed intrusion of intimacy into an outside is indissociable from the emergence of criticality: if intimacy is interwoven with visibility and if this visibility is not reduced to a mere moment of revelation, it can only depend on a critical eye—critical in the sense of indispensable for the very emergence of intimacy and as bearer of critical understanding. If there is no intimacy without exposure to an outside, and in so far as the outside is likely to be bothered by the visibility of the intimacy and remain reluctant to partake it in, intimacy does not only intrude upon the outside, but it also casts a critical eye upon it. Intimacy reminds us what the limits of the outside are, and forces us to reconsider critically how hospitable or intolerant this is. To sum up, intimacy is an experience of proximity from within-out: not only a proximity which addresses its internal divisions, exposing itself to an external gaze, and letting light in, but also a proximity which sheds light on what lies beyond it.

Reading from within the same unjust world: critical intimacy as a theoretical mode

The origin of the term “critical intimacy” is theoretical. Gayatri Spivak (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library) uses it sporadically to describe Derrida’s take on the texts from within (rather than on) which he works, one can understand it in at least three complementary ways. Firstly, critical intimacy with a text allows one to go beyond the scheme of global textual explanation. Secondly, it readjusts the dialogue with the text under scrutiny, introducing a parallel writing, an alternation between rapprochement through citation and a significant freedom vis-à-vis the commonly held orthodox interpretation of the text. Thirdly, Derrida’s (Full reference in Zotero Library and Full reference in Zotero Library) work from within Oedipus in Colonus opens to hospitality, while work from within Robinson Crusoe gives birth to a theory of sovereignty; hence, readings qualifying as close or immanent form an intimacy that critically opens to a critique of the world.

Mieke Bal Full reference in Zotero Library draws on Spivak’s use of the term. Given the impossibility of ignoring centuries of philosophical thought, she suggests that one should replace ‘unacknowledged complicity’ with such (consecrated, well-established, present in the curricula, dominant, indispensable) discourses by ‘critical intimacy’, that is with work that is judicious, but not hostile, operating from within such discourses. Bal alludes to the fact that becoming critically intimate with the postcolonial happens in institutional and epistemological contexts that are not always the obvious sites of postcolonial, or even less of decolonial, scholarship. In this case, critical intimacy alludes both to the necessary proximity with what is being read (the voice of the subaltern or non-Western thought, in this case), and to a stance both risking and attempting to avoid appropriation of the voice or the ideas that it is seeking to valorise. To this end, Bal Full reference in Zotero Library also talks about ‘participation in the world, with all its lack of justice’. Critical intimacy passes through the awkward and disagreeable acknowledgement of complicity with ideas and conditions that one might be critical of or outright opposed to. It is recognition and avowal of complicity, it is both work from within this world that one dislikes, and an indication of a way out. Neither a utopia nor a voluntarist detachment, criticality and intimacy save one from the credulous dissociation which might equal critical cecity vis-à-vis the limits of one’s own action. Bal Full reference in Zotero Library describes it convincingly when, referring to what should be happening in the classroom she says: ‘For, frustrating as it is to feel forced into complicity, it is also true that denial, disavowal, and bad faith can only lead to condescension, disempowerment, or – the worst sin of Spivak – simplistic one-liner activism’.

I therefore suggest that critical intimacy provides a framework for reading from within theory that is part of the same unjust world as we are. We can find theory appreciable or disturbing without reducing it to either venerable object or object of enmity. Critical intimacy is opposed to putting it on a pedestal and to reproducing unconditional admiration for a theoretical canon. But it is also opposed to declaring its corpus to be adversarial texts, reproducing commonplace certainties, notably under the cover of innovative or radical approaches. Precisely because theory is closely linked to politics, critical intimacy is a way of avoiding ‘simplistic one-liner activism’ and of engaging with theory (literary, cultural, political, queer, or other) through the recognition of both our indebtedness to it and the need always to adjust, renew, and intensify our involvement with it. As a theoretical modus operandi, critical intimacy should allow predetermined readings, as well as predictably radical representations of relationalities, affinities, and filiations to be avoided. Instead, it should allow one to partake in a lucid exploration of one’s commonality with them.

Criticality from within intimacies between living beings

The frequent understanding of intimacy as secrecy or privacy has prevented it from being at the forefront of political concepts, undermined its analytical value, and to an important extent ignored the commonality that intimacy can shape. More recently though, these latter aspects of intimacy have been widely identified and allowed it to gain momentum in several fields, including literary criticism, philosophy, anthropology, visual and cultural studies, economy, and media. Moreover, Oliver Davis and Tim Dean Full reference in Zotero Library have underlined the destabilisation that thinking (from within) sexual intimacy can have on both identity and queer politics, nuancing the idea of commonality performed by them. Interestingly, the term “intimacy” has increased in frequency in contemporary queer literature, theory, and art. For that, Berlant’s Full reference in Zotero Library work is quintessential, as her take on intimacy covers a good part of the semantic scope of corporeal and affective relationality, including suspicion regarding sexuality’s very value, political, emotional, or other. Intimacy crosses paths with friendship and its politics, as in Geoffroy de Lagasnerie’s 3: Une aspiration au dehors Full reference in Zotero Library, aiming to replace the restrictive inward-looking family structure (closer to privacy, in my view) by the outward-looking one of friendship (closer to intimacy).

Nonetheless, I believe that the critical version of intimacy, which I am advocating here, can be an even more pertinent path of critique, given that it encourages the rethinking of all aspects of relationality from within—including imbalance or antagonism in friendship, non-institutionalised and non-formalised relationality, or anonymous, pseudonymous, accidental and furtive intimacies—as a basis for relating. Even more than friendship, critical intimacy could be the key to the critique of the limits of our very openness to alternative relating. Likewise, critical intimacy is meant to offer a way to tackle the awkwardness that discussions around sex are often marked by. Nancy’s (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library) reconsideration of the infinite plurality of what escapes each and every one of us, and Full reference in Zotero Libraryredefinition of relating as ‘an encounter with the estrangement of being in relation’ and as ‘attunement’ are of importance here. Speaking from within sex (cf. S. Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library) is assuming responsibility for one’s intimacies and re-rendering them within the sphere of the public debate where they will, in turn, be renegotiated, rethought, problematised, stigmatised, fought for, or withdrawn from the forefront of the political battles.

As a notion for addressing commonality from within sex, critical intimacy is relevant for a reflexive approach to what intimacy stands for in times of crisis, and how it can be addressed during wars, pandemics, or forced displacements. In this sense, it can only be conceived of as a debt to the victims of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, because it encourages a reconsideration of the intimacies that were at some point, and others that still are nowadays, violently exposed and stigmatised. It also allows for better insights regarding intimacies which arise out of, or are linked to all forms of noble emotions, as well as regarding intimacies that are seen as marginal, excessive, anything but domestic (e.g. public sex), provocative, or experienced as a fundamental element of a given subculture. Finally, it is a way of linking the experiences of intimacies in the era of Prep, progressively becoming accessible in parts of the West and the ones, still potentially fatal, in other parts of the world, such as sub-Saharan Africa.

By recalibrating our way of speaking from within various types of proximities, critical intimacy is meant to cover a broad range of corporeal and affective relationality, including sex in all its complexity. It can thus be the tool for a nuanced analysis of institutionalised, mainstreamed, or commodified sexual commonalities, allowing for an understanding of these practices from within both their everyday and exceptional moments. Critical intimacy remains attentive to the fact that intimacies tend to be forms-of-life that have already constituted or could potentially establish communities of their own (queer night clubs are a good example here), but they could also be a key to understanding less mainstream forms of togetherness.

Literature and art from within intimacies

Working on critical intimacy, I cannot help but wonder if a distinction between critical and uncritical intimacies would be relevant or even possible. If Bal’s ‘unacknowledged complicity’ is understood as undiscussed contentment, sense of harmony, continuity, or unity, inertia within relationality, or even the illusion of ‘holistic cohesion’ or ‘true communion’ (cf. Kelleter/Albers), then critical intimacy would represent a crisis in the unquestioned modalities of relationality and as a testbed for commonality. If critical intimacy is by definition a ‘situated mode’ Full reference in Zotero Library, it is also a tool for fashioning commonality around experiences that some contemporary literature and art address.

More than a few literary texts and artworks are nowadays based on research informed by various disciplines on the topics that they treat. These vary from creations drawing on fieldwork (e.g. what, in the French context, have been theorised as ‘field literature’, Full reference in Zotero Library; Olivia Rosenthal’s On n’est pas là pour disparaître Full reference in Zotero Library or on collaborative and research-based projects (e.g. Elpida Rikou’s project Full reference in Zotero Libraryon aging female corporealities). In many cases, such texts and artworks are based on the hypothesis of a commonality between those who sign the creation and the ones, acknowledged or not, who are part of the creative process, especially the vulnerable, the oppressed, the muted, and the unheard. The most obvious case would be that of many contemporary artistic projects addressing aspects of forced migration and engaging closely with migrants and refugees. Rick Lowe’s ‘social sculptures’, such as the Victoria Square Project in Athens, are a good example of artworks justified by the political engagement of the artists, their involvement in the field (e.g. refugee camps, squats, poor neighbourhoods), and the insights they develop while the artwork is in progress.

Nevertheless, intimacies (cultural, political, ideological, or personal), discrepancies within intimacies, or even the outright lack of intimacies, between the artists and their interlocutors are seldom openly and sufficiently enough addressed in these cases. Reexamining them through the lens of critical intimacy is a way of spelling out a writer’s or artist’s own position within such intimacies, thus offer an antidote to an unacknowledged complicity with, and mainstreaming of, power imbalances and hierarchies implicit in them (cf. Full reference in Zotero Library and Full reference in Zotero Library). It can question and reinforce commonality in/through literature and art, as well as make obvious what is not quite right within intimacy: the unhomely, the unintimate, the impervious.

Once more, critical intimacy is work on and for commonality. It is thinking, reading, and creating from within what one desires to remain close to and what one wishes further to develop an attachment to. It is a way of updating and adjusting that dialogue between literature and art and ongoing realities, and a manner of synchronising theory with the ones it is called to respond to: the newly vulnerable, the newly displaced, the recent victims of climate change, ultimately, those to whom we owe a renewed vocabulary of commonality. Critical intimacy can evolve into a call not only for restoring the possibility of one’s becoming intimate with those with whom intimacy is usually out of scope, or perilous, or even unimaginable, but also for understanding the level of involvement with those one is sympathetic to.

Critical intimacy as a way of understanding and creating literature and art allows us to keep the commonality with those who do not immediately or easily fit in with us alive, it likewise speaks to our understanding of the limits of what literature and art can do. It is, furthermore, a way of pinpointing our failure in timely connecting with the ones who are too foreign to us and the ones who come from places too weird to handle. By addressing the limits, legitimacy, and pertinence of writing and creating with, and in the name of, those with whom we can only be partially intimate, critical intimacy can contribute to understanding symbiotic logics and their intricacies, attachments, tensions, and conflicts, as well as their scope for reconciliation, and even forgiveness.

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All in all, critical intimacy could function in three different ways: from within a critically loving stance vis-à-vis one’s theoretical sources rather than only armed with conceptual tools; from within various forms of affinities and closeness rather than from one’s own individual position; from within new forms of collaborative literary and artistic creation rather than from own’s individual creative work. I started by saying that critical intimacy is a notion aimed at addressing commonality from within some of the things that matter most in life: theory, sex, and art. I would now add that critical intimacy indicates ways to understand one’s positionality not in terms of singularity or strict identity, but rather in terms of a proximate commonality. From within being its mode, critical intimacy allows us to better envisage positionality as an experience indissociable from seeing-, being-, and creating-with the close, the loved, the indispensable, the bothersome and the endearingly foreign.