Abstract
AbstractRecent developments in the history of modern Britain have led to the emergence of a history of intimacy, whether or not it is recognized as such. This historiographical review argues that intimacy is a useful category of historical analysis. Thinking in terms of inter-relationships between different forms of intimacy allows us to think with greater conceptual clarity about these forms, as well as types of intimacy that are difficult to categorize. The first section reviews recent and significant contributions to the literature and seeks to draw out existing connections and crosscurrents between subfields. The second section turns to recent work on the histories of selfhood and the emotions and considers what thinking about intimacy might add to these fields; it then builds on this recent work to propose that one way to ‘do’ the history of intimacy is to think in terms of ‘intimate practices’.
Highlights
Recent developments in the history of modern Britain have led to the emergence of a history of intimacy, whether or not it is recognized as such
The second section turns to recent work on the histories of selfhood and the emotions and considers what thinking about intimacy might add to these fields; it builds on this recent work to propose that one way to ‘do’ the history of intimacy is to think in terms of ‘intimate practices’
We should consider what intimacy as a category of historical analysis does to our sense of periodization and chronology; how do we map the different stories of social change to be found in literature on love, family, sexuality, and friendship onto one another, and what is revealed in the process of doing so? This historiographical review has not sought to answer these questions, but rather to prompt them, and to suggest methods by which they might be addressed
Summary
Recent developments in the history of modern Britain have led to the emergence of a history of intimacy, whether or not it is recognized as such. Historians of modern Britain have produced subtle and nuanced histories of various forms of intimacy – love, friendship, family, touch, sexuality, and privacy – enabled and shaped by broader movements in the field.
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