Disentangling Privacy and Intimacy: Intimate Citizenship, Private Boundaries and Public Transgressions

P. Reynolds

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (journal)peer-review

    13 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Recent theorisations of transformations of intimacy—like Ken Plummer's (2003) Intimate Citizenship project—concentrate on social and cultural transformations that erode the containment of intimacy within the private sphere. They have less to say about the character of and oppositions to that erosion, and specifically how far the idea of the private stands in opposition to intimacy transgressing into the public. In this essay, the private is explored through its constitutive features—liberal codifications of rights, liberty and property, medico-moral discourses and conservative values and legal and political regulation—to give a more political and critical reading. This reading suggests that an explicit disentangling of the private and the intimate is necessary if tendencies toward public and emancipated intimacies are to become meaningful transformations, and this involves a dissembling of and critical engagement with the powerful historically entrenched idea of privacy in western societies.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)33-42
    JournalHuman Affairs
    Volume20
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Mar 2010

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