Queer Companions: Religion, Public Intimacy, and Saintly Affects in Pakistan By Omar Kasmani

Rachel Daniel explores Madea’s popularity among Black women and also demonstrates how the character successfully functions at the center of Perry’s media output. She explores the many complicated and often contradictory layers of appeal that Perry’s performances of Madea encourage. In doing so, she grapples with some of the ideological and political limitations of this character by investigating Perry’s use of drag as a “false disguise” to perform Madea. Her exploration crests around the investigation of specific social and cultural values that motivate Perry’s unique construction of his famous character. In Daniel’s theorization, Perry’s fan base around Madea represents a powerful, critical, and vocal discourse community--an intimated public--that has supported the media mogul and his contested character despite rampant critiques of the character’s flawed presentation or of Perry’s motives in constructing her.

Humans are spatial creatures. Everywhere we walk, we assess in a spatial tapestry; this place feels like this. The exploration and learning of a space turns it into a place, investing it with emotions and memories. This transfer was first outlined by French neo-Marxist Guy Debord, who dubbed this enriched landscape psychogeography. Walking in famous cities, it is an eerie yet common experience to look at a certain landmark, one you have never been to before, and have a moment of recognition. I discovered this on a trip to New York, a place which felt haunted by memories I had no right to possess. The city had taken on a cinematic familiarity. It was as though, long before I booked my flights, I had already been many times. Of course, in a sense I had. One of cinema's chief pleasures is its ability to provide the illusion of travel. In the medium's first days, motion pictures were projected out of the windows of stationary train carriages, so that the spectator could experience a journey they could never afford to take otherwise.3 In its earlier forms, cinema was a mode of mass virtual transportation. Even without the elaborate ruse of stationary train carriages, watching a film can feel like being lifted out of the room, and transported into the world on screen. I in-tend to demonstrate that the impact a film can have on the spectator's psychogeography goes beyond illusory transportation. An examination of how the spectator perceives the landscape behind the screen reveals that the distinction between material geography and psychogeography is collapsing.

ABSTRACTThis article presents a qualitative analysis of conversations about rape in the comments sections of two popular feminist websites: Jezebel and xoJane. Focussing on comment threads about first-hand experiences of sexual violence and problematic heterosex, I show that commenters produced an analysis of rape as on a continuum with less extreme forms of sexual coercion, as heterogeneous and as a predictable product of heterosexual norms. I argue that the intimate publics fostered by popular feminist websites enable such conversations to take place. Intimate publics presuppose consumers who share an emotional literacy based in similar life experiences: commenters assumed fellow consumers of popular feminist media possessed the emotional literacy to comprehend rape stories which did not follow the hegemonic rape script. Thus, popular feminist intimate publics may provide a forum for conversations about sexual violence which resemble feminist consciousness-raising as a mode of knowledge production. However, misogynists may seek out such conversations to engage participants in debate. Thus, digital commenting platforms which facilitate the exclusion of disruptive or abusive commenters provide essential context for feminist intimate publics to flourish. Participants also contribute to the construction of feminist intimate publics by communicating empathy and affect, and by policing trolls.

ABSTRACTOn May 12, 2013, two men opened fire on a Mother’s Day second line parade in New Orleans’s Seventh Ward. This essay attends to discourses from public officials and news media following the shooting that reified what we describe as affective divestment from the suffering of historically marginalized bodies and communities. Specifically, public discourse characterized the shooting as an episode of “street violence” that did not warrant sustained national attention. Affective divestment is the consequence of rhetorical maneuvers that signal a pushing away from certain bodies by intimate publics—an estrangement at the symbolic level that has naturalized or rationalized the neglect of certain forms of suffering. Such estrangement, we argue, is a function of neoliberal logics that devalue and, at times, necessitate the suffering of disposable populations.

While developing and nurturing creativity is increasingly a centerpiece of economic, cultural and arts policies, notions of what creativity is in an educational sense remain problematic to both policymakers and to the educators who seek to define, measure, and nurture it in their environments. In this chapter we use current research on creativity in education to highlight the ways performance and drama education currently approach the teaching and learning of creativity. We consider a recent relational ‘pop up poetry’ performance that embodies a kind of ‘one-to-one’ applied theatre that draws everyday audience members into relationship with the public poet, and in so doing creates a ‘politics of encounter’ which offers creative, pedagogical and political opportunities for social change. Such methods ask us to reconsider our ideas about the role of creativity in education contexts by claiming public space as a classroom and using performance encounters as creative rehearsal for social change. The ‘intimate publics’ created in such performances engage participants in a person-to-person encounter marked by collaborative learning and creative activism and citizenship.

This article analyses the mediated affective practices of the network of #justice-seeking mothers in Iran, who campaign for justice for their children’s deaths at the hands of the state. I situate their melancholic performance of maternal mourning as central to the mediation of a ‘wild’ public intimacy, which contests the state’s attempts to limit and foreclose the spaces of political appearance. This intimate public, I argue, draws on the affordances of visuality and hashtags on Instagram and Twitter to invoke expanded notions of ‘home’ and ‘motherhood’that affectively sustain its political activism. Recent feminist scholarship has emphasised the counter-hegemonic potentials of mourning practices that go beyond the patriarchal family as a reference point, especially in campaigns that seek justice for and recognition of the dead, whether these practices are offline or online. I argue, however, that attention to the ‘relational’ (cultural, social, physical) affordances of digital mourning in this case s reveals that grassroots maternalism may draw its emotional resources from a shifting combination of conventional (familial) and non-conventional forms of kinship. It is this fluid and provisional approach to emotional and political ties that enables the #justice-seeking mothers’ network to mobilise a variety of intimate registers in constructing an affective space of political appearance.

Public intimacy. Architecture and the visual arts

The essays collected in Stage Mothers make a strong case for the importance of theatrical motherhood to the study of eighteenth-century maternity. The figure of the stage mother encompasses both the female performer, who was often (but not always) herself a mother, as well as the maternal roles she played on the eighteenth-century stage. The concept of stage motherhood, then, contributes to what Diana Solomon calls ‘betweenness’, the overlap between the actress’s persona and the character that she plays. Maternity, either in real life or in the world of the play, could also form part of the way in which an actress constructed her persona for an audience using what, in studies of female performers and celebrity culture, Joseph Roach terms ‘public intimacy’ and Felicity Nussbaum has named an ‘interiority effect’. Furthermore, the apparently inevitable sexualization of the actress by some of her audience gives new resonance to the erotic connotations of motherhood (a state which while idealized also draws attention to the woman as a sexual being). This volume provides a welcome addition to recent scholarship on motherhood in the eighteenth century by Toni Bowers, Marilyn Francus and Ruth Perry, amongst others. The editors and contributors acknowledge their indebtedness to this work, with Francus’s concept of the ‘spectral mother’, a figure absent yet haunting, applied frequently in the case studies offered here. The essays also extend research on the topic in important new directions. Engel, McGirr and their contributors demonstrate that stage mothers are uniquely positioned to provide insight into the various dimensions of maternity because of the complex interplay between their on-stage and off-stage identities.

This study presents a novel analysis of social network sites as a staged performance of interpersonal ties in front of a third party, here defined as public intimacy. This concept moves away from the current focus on the presentation of self in social media to the performance of relationships. Users of social media are compared to an interactive audience in a round theater. As inner circle network members display their exclusive ties in front of ther users they may also tease them into joining the conversation. Building on studies of Simmelian ties, interactive exchange, and phatic communication the study presents six characteristics of public intimacy along with brief examples drawn from users’ experiences on Facebook and Twitter. It is concluded that by mediating the shift from dyad to triad and from triad to mass community social media do not necessarily entail a reduction in intimacy but rather a concretization of social relations. The recursive relationship between interpersonal ties and mass solidarity is sustained and reaffirmed thanks to triadic interactions of public intimacy.

Reviewed by: Theatre and Celebrity in Britain, 1660–2000 Tracy C. Davis Theatre and Celebrity in Britain, 1660–2000. Mary Luckhurst and Jane Moody , eds. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Pp. xii + 248. $74.95 (cloth). Until recently, biography was one of the most prevalent approaches to theater studies. Approaching the theater primarily through actors, and then only through starring actors, proved intractable prior to the impact of social and cultural history, feminist theory, and postmodernism. Mary Luckhurst and Jane Moody's collection re-evaluates the origins, and selected subsequent instances, of why celebrity became synonymous with actors and how "the discourses of celebrity are central to our understanding of agency, institutional politics and the economic structures of theatrical cultures" (10). Their premise is that fame—based on either notoriety or qualitative exceptionalism, and sometimes both—rather than celebrity has been the category that preoccupied historians. Celebrity, in their view, arises specifically from the interaction of "individuals and institutions, markets and media" (1). They concentrate on the eighteenth century, when fame became characteristically modern through the operation of media that, at the end of the twenty-first century, are still either intact or, if supplanted, function in similar ways. Neither the lexicon nor the strategies are stable or continuous, but it is persuasively demonstrated that celebrity significantly pre-dates cinema. The editors favor a through-line that emphasizes British nationalist interests. Perhaps more consistently compelling, however, is the challenge Joseph Roach sets out in his chapter about "It": the aura, charm, radiance, magnetism, presence, and attraction of stars that combine with the vulnerability of their bodies. Celebrities with "It" are extraordinary individuals whose "images circulate widely in the absence of their persons" (16) and instill an impression of communion with those who see and admire them. United by such force fields, the celebrants of celebrities evince continuity not only with late-seventeenth-century modes of admiration or regard but also an earlier tradition of wonder and reverence instilled in anyone who admires the saintly or beatified. Among the seven chapters on actors, only one focuses on the twentieth century. Felicity Nussbaum's overview of the economics of eighteenth-century actresses' celebrity notes the unprecedented opportunities [End Page 153] for upward mobility that also made women subject to gossip and scandal. This "public intimacy" (150) put the concept of womanhood at odds with acting, and celebrity adhered to the actress and her part alike: offstage personalities, rather than privacy, resulted when the women's roles could not be regarded separately from her lives. Peter Thomson dubs Colley Cibber (a playwright and manager as well as actor) one of a new type of post-Restoration social climber who successfully bartered fame and commanded social acceptance. The public delighted in thinking of him in opposition to the kinds of roles he performed on stage. A successor at Drury Lane, the indomitable David Garrick, held a place in society through talent and charisma as well as scrupulous image-management, but Garrick won this place through a well-publicized rivalry with James Quin, his elder by two dozen years. Triumphing in a rivalry is not the only way to benefit from it, as Garrick's early career shows, provided that publicity ensues. As Jane Moody observes in her essay on Samuel Foote, the public adjudicates the authenticity of celebrities' fame, and may or may not care how the contest officially comes out. Foote mocked others' desire for fame through mimicry, even employing a butcher to portray Garrick in order to take him down a peg. Flashpoints of anxiety verify the public's recognition of the media's role in controlling "images, institutions, and performances" (84), and Foote illuminated this process through satire. Shearer West's study of Sarah Siddons tracks how this consummate tragedienne achieved celebrity and lasting fame through consistent demonstration of womanly (and later) regal sensibility which, by the same logic that Nussbaum presents, let her stage personae spill into a domestic and dynastic perception of her private self. Edmund Kean, loathed by Sarah Siddons, catapulted to fame in 1814 when he captured the public and some critics' admiration for a series of Shakespearean roles. This regard—always contentious—shattered in 1825 when he...

The actress often features as the embodiment of the phenomenon of celebrity culture and “public intimacy”, but the playwright, specifically the female playwright has received less attention in this development. This chapter examines how the highly successful early eighteenth-century playwright, Susanna Centlivre, was involved in the promotion of actresses’ “public intimacy” through the unusual stage direction of “peeping”. It argues that the act of “peeping”; a half-concealed, half-revealed position that provided the audience with unique access to the actress compared with “asides” is similar to how we now read celebrity culture to function. The chapter explores the literary context of “peeping” and related issues of privacy, desire, control and power to demonstrate further the significance and impact of Centlivre’s use of the device.

(autonomie, pédagogie, etc.). Nevertheless, Soëtard’s essay offers much food for thought on the continued relevance of Rousseau’s Idea of education to pedagogical practices today, and the potential perils involved when reading Rousseau à la lettre. Sonoma State University (CA) Suzanne Toczyski Spector, Céline, éd. Modernités de Rousseau—Lumières 15.1. Pessac: CIBEL/PU de Bordeaux, 2010. ISBN 978-2-86781-681-9. Pp. 231. 22 a. This bi-annual issue offers ten penetrating essays on the continuing influence of Rousseau’s political thought on current debates, for the most part, within the AngloSaxon and German worlds of political theory. One would not immediately associate Rousseau’s thought with the likes of Rawls,Walzer, Nussbaum, Benhabib, Horkheimer, Adorno, Althusser, Habermas, or Honneth. Yet, strikingly cogent cases are made here linking directly or dialectically many of Rousseau’s key political concepts to those of modern and contemporary political theorists. Counter to the belief that the Marxist Althusser held Rousseau’s political theory in contempt, Kenta Ohji traces the author’s lifelong meditation on Rousseau cum philosopher of history whose notion of historical mutation (Second Discourse) helped mold his own work on contingency and necessity. Florent Guénard examines the central role (and misreading) of Rousseau’s notion of pity, self-love, self-esteem, and recognition in the ongoing debates between Walzer and Rawls on the question of social equality and justice. Fabienne Brugère studies the delicate relationship between Rousseau’s ideas of the moral self and those of Martha Nussbaum and Joan Tronto on liberal democracy and a theory of care. While they acknowledge Rousseau’s importance in positing both moral sentiment (Second Discourse) and moral education (Émile) as key to the development of a sense of social justice, they are equally uncomfortable with his treatment of women as moral and political actors on unequal footing. Authors Florian Nicodème and Isabelle Aubert offer surprising insight into the role Rousseau plays as the forerunner of social philosophy or ‘founding father’ of Critical Theory. Nicodème’s study is genealogical, tracing both hostility and receptivity of respective generations of the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer/ Adorno; Habermas; Honneth) to Rousseau’s anthropology and political theory, in particular, his concept of socialization as a process of ‘dénaturation’(this becomes key to Honneth’s formulation of ‘social pathology’).Aubert traces the profound influence that Rousseau had on Habermas whose earliest work on the public sphere finds inspiration in Rousseau’s creative works, seeing in him the earliest great theorist of individualism who placed value on intimacy and introspection of the domestic sphere (Nouvelle Héloïse, Confessions); to continue with Rousseau’s reflections on ‘public opinion’(Second Discourse) and its absence, to a large degree, from the Social Contract that paves the way for Habermas’s theory of deliberative, rather than a cognitive, form of democracy. Two essays reassess Rousseau’s influence on political institutions of the 244 FRENCH REVIEW 87.2 Reviews 245 Third Republic, revealing a surprising reticence among late nineteenth-century French republican thinkers to embrace Rousseau’s legacy. Finally, Carla Hesse’s essay on“Lire Rousseau sous la Révolution française”convincingly argues the question of Rousseau’s impact on revolutionary politics from a phenomenological rather than a hermeneutical , approach: How was Rousseau being read by whom? While radicals tended to read excerpts of Rousseau, gleaned from pamphlets or speeches, conservative factions worked from the full text.Ironically,the latter,more‘learned’readings tended to pervert his thought, while ‘Rousseau as slogan’ became moments of ‘public intimacy’ where these new citizens brought Rousseau’s words to life. University of Kansas Diane Fourny Vitali, Ilaria, éd. Intrangers (I): post-migration et nouvelles frontières de la littérature beur. Louvain-la-Neuve: Academia, 2011. ISBN 978-2-8061-0020-7. Pp. 147. 19 a. , éd. Intrangers (II): littérature beur, de l’écriture à la traduction. Louvain-laNeuve : Academia, 2011. ISBN 978-2-8061-0047-4. Pp. 189. 25 a. These volumes constitute the second and third publications of the Sefar collection that explore multiple forms of displacement, exile, and crossings between the global South and the global North. The essays and theoretical approaches showcased herein...

Omar Kasmani, Queer Companions: Religion, Public Intimacy, and Saintly Affects in Pakistan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022, pp. xvi + 208, US$99.95 (hb), US$25.95 (pb), ISBN 978-1-4780-1541-3 (hb), ISBN 978-1-4780-1803-2 (pb), ISBN 978-1-4780-2265-7 (eb).

Hook-up apps are an increasingly popular way for women to meet other people for sex, dating, relationships, and more. As a mundane and habitual form of media, the multiple uses of hook-up apps allow for the production of intimacy in surprising and complex ways. This paper draws on narrative interviews with 15 self-identifying women to explore how dating and hook-up apps help produce ‘intimate publics’ for women. The field of intimate publics available to women users of hook-up apps is broader than those afforded by in-app interactions; there is an entire network of intimacy, sociality, and publicity that forms around hook-up apps. Our findings show that while both queer and straight women use hook-up apps to find sex, hook-ups, dates, and relationships, they are also central to building community, friendship, and sociality between women.

Based on archival and interview research in the US and South Africa, this paper examines two moments of public debate around access to the space of department stores in Johannesburg and in Baltimore in the 1960s. In Baltimore, African American students organized a sit-in protest at lunch counters and restaurants of major department stores to contest not being served. In Johannesburg, the National Union of Distributive Workers (NUDW), campaigned against job reservation in service and clerical work in stores in Johannesburg to argue for black workers’ access to employment. The paper contends that as “intimate publics,” department stores offer a site to compare the affective articulations of race, class, and gender in both places, which track differing political imaginaries at a moment when consumption was expanding and workforces were changing.