Desire For Intimacy Research Articles

ARTISTIC AXIOLOGY OF THE IMAGE OF THE «NEW KAZAKH WOMAN» IN ABAY’S POETRY

The main leitmotif of this study is the artistic existence of the "new kazakh woman” in the creative context of Abai, their features and axiological character, which have their own gender consciousness. In addition, the content and semantic meaning of the category “value” is analyzed in revealing the axiological facets of Kazakh women, embodied by the poet. The author draws attention to the spiritual world of the kazakh woman and the ontological aspect of female consciousness, which first appears in Abai’s discourse, beyond the stereotypes and cultural clichés of women that once existed in kazakh literature. For centuries, beauty, grace, and external portraiture have been glorified as a way of conveying individuality, personal facets of a kazakh woman and mental phenomena in her spiritual world. Also in the national literature, the emancipatory point of view of Abai, who was the first to sing of women's liberation and women's happiness, is considered. In the literary, cultural, historical context, the asocial realities of kazakh women and their “changed” behavioral strategies are considered, which violate the generally accepted standards of traditional society in Abai’s poetry and introduce new views, new values. It also formulates the artistic world of female characters who openly express love passions and intimate desires in Abai’s works, and a poetic position illustrating feminist traits in accordance with the female worldview. The “new kazakh woman” created by Abai boldly challenges the established conventions of patriarchal society, protesting against the stereotypical views imposed on him (everyday, family, life). Realizing the meaning of her life, her “I,” she manifests herself in the image of the desire to act, to live as she wants for herself. The purpose of the study was also to determine the women's problem in Abai's work, which was previously considered in various aspects, the evolution of their social, psychological, aesthetic and artistic image and the novelty of the poet in interpreting the female theme. Therefore, the article consistently differentiates a new image of the Kazakh woman, who in the previous literary discourse has transformed from a spiritually weak, passive personality into a versatile, mature, active personality.

“We chose PrEP because I wanted to be sure that this child my wife was going to conceive was indeed mine.” Factors influencing the choice of safer conception methods and experiences with its use: a qualitative study among HIV sero-discordant couples in Zimbabwe

BackgroundSafer conception services are needed to minimize HIV transmission among HIV sero-discordant couples desiring pregnancy. Few studies have evaluated the choices couples make when they are offered multiple safer conception methods or real-world method acceptability. This paper addresses an important knowledge gap regarding factors that influence the choice of safer conception methods, couples' actual experiences using safer conception methods, and why some couples switch safer conception methods.MethodsBetween February and June 2019, we conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews among 14 men and 17 women, representing 17 couples who exited the SAFER study—a pilot safer conception study for HIV sero-discordant couples in Zimbabwe that offered couples a choice of ART with monthly viral load monitoring (ART/VL), oral PrEP, vaginal insemination, and semen washing. All couples in SAFER had used at least two safer conception methods.ResultsWe found that safer conception method choice often centered around a desire for intimacy, condomless sex, and certainty in the conception process, particularly for men. Method-related attributes such as familiarity, perceived ease of use, side effects, and perceived level of effectiveness in preventing HIV and achieving pregnancy influenced method choice, switching, and satisfaction. Concerns were expressed about each safer conception method and couples were willing to try different methods until they found method(s) that worked for them. The majority of participants reported having positive experiences using safer conception, especially those using ART/VL + PrEP, citing that they were able to attempt pregnancy for the first time with peace of mind and experienced joy and satisfaction from being able to achieve pregnancy safely.ConclusionsThe differences in method preferences and experiences voiced by participants in this study and in other studies from the region point to the importance of having a variety of safer conception options in the service delivery package and addressing concerns about paternity, intimacy, and method-related attributes to enable HIV sero-discordant couples to safely achieve their reproductive goals.

“Maybe We Can't Actually Have it All?” Egg Freezing, Solo Motherhood by Donor Conception and Intimate Desires and Normativity in a Late Modern Nordic Welfare State

ABSTRACT In this article I discuss the accounts of middle-class women in their 30s living in Norway, who face choices between egg freezing or solo motherhood by donor conception. I show that the women sought Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) as a way of actively managing their intimate and reproductive biography, at a time when their window of fertility was perceived to be closing, and they struggled to establish and maintain a satisfactory heterosexual relationship which could also serve as basis for a nuclear family (“the family package”). Both the ARTs in question, although potentially producing quite different outcomes, could be and were employed to avoid suboptimal relationships solely or mainly for the sake of reproduction. I argue that the women’s engagement with ARTs reveals an inherent tension between late modern heterosexual coupling and the nuclear family as the ideal reproductive formation. “The family package” that the women desired appears to be more a compilation of two different–and somewhat conflicting–functions: individual self-realisation through romance, and reproduction through heterosexual coupledom. Moreover, I suggest that interest in and use of these ARTs both make visible, and contribute to, an emergent symbolic and social dismantling of the nuclear family as a reproductive norm.

Korean Public Bathhouse: Potential of Interiority

This essay introduces the Korean public bathhouse, jjimjil-bang, to understand the concept of interiority from sociocultural and psychological perspectives. The author addresses interiority as a continuous process of defining the range of intimacy that changes with context, space, and time. Interiority involves individuating spatial and situational moments in the blended physical, perceived, and imaged environment. In exploring interiority, the case of jjimjil-bang suggests broad perspectives for understanding spatial circumstances as an integration of the activity, environment, and situation. The author introduces the characteristics of jjimjil-bang in terms of the program, spatial structure, and meaning of memory. To demonstrate the potential of interiority, the concepts of private-public, interiority-exteriority, inclusivity-exclusivity, closeness-openness, and the quotidian issue are discussed. Consequently, the author highlights the individual's subjectivity of spatial perception, the desire for intimacy, and the individual's engagement in shaping interiority. Thus, the range of interiority is expanded from self to outworld beyond the physical space.

Friendship habits questionnaire: A measure of group- versus dyadic-oriented socializing styles.

Friendships are central to our social lives, yet little is known about individual differences associated with the number of friends people enjoy spending time with. Here we present the Friendship Habits Questionnaire (FHQ), a new scale of group versus dyadic-oriented friendship styles. Three studies investigated the psychometric properties of group-oriented friendships and the relevant individual differences. The initially developed questionnaire measured individual differences in extraversion as well as desire for intimacy, competitiveness, and group identification, traits that previous research links with socializing in groups versus one-to-one friendships. In three validation studies involving more than 800 participants (353 men, age M = 25.76) and using principal and confirmatory factor analyses, we found that the structure of the FHQ is best described with four dimensions: extraversion, intimacy, positive group identification, and negative group identification. Therefore, competitiveness was dropped from the final version of the FHQ. Moreover, FHQ scores reliably predicted the size of friendship groups in which people enjoy socializing, suggesting good construct validity. Together, our results document individual differences in pursuing group versus dyadic-oriented friendships and provide a new tool for measuring such differences.

TikTok's Falco tinnunculus: Getting to Know Urban Wildlife through Social Media.

Wildlife residing in cities has made encounters between humans and wild animals a common phenomenon. The perspective of the conflict-laden animal-human relationship has been over-emphasized by traditional media, which neglects the peaceful and harmonious daily encounters between residents and urban wildlife. This paper addresses the lacuna in extant literature by examining the virtual encounters between urban residents and wildlife on TikTok by sharing the living habits of Falco tinnunculus. Participatory observation, semi-structured interviews, and text analysis were adopted to explore the knowledge production process of urban wildlife as well as the emotional response of audiences. We found that displaying urban wildlife in short videos is a dynamic process involving the mutual participation of wildlife and humans. Meanwhile, audiences' anthropocentric gaze of wildlife via TikTok attends to their desires for intimacy with nature and demonstrates the unequal and unbalanced power between wild animals and humans. These findings suggest that more efforts should be made to guide the public to pay attention to native urban wildlife species and to reflect upon the ethics and rationality of such unequal power relations between wild animals and humans.

Minakata Kumagusu and the emergence of queer nature: Civilization theory, Buddhist science, and microbes, 1887–1892

AbstractIn the intellectual history of modern Japan, the late 1880s epitomized the Meiji government’s effort to ‘civilize’ through Westernization, driven by the social Darwinian vision of the survival of the fittest. During this period in the United States, the ideas of civilization theory, informed by the very antithesis of the Meiji state’s understanding, surfaced in the life and work of the aspiring young naturalist-botanist Minakata Kumagusu. He imagined a ‘different kind of civilization’ as he re-examined the nature of social evolution in microbes by turning to Indian-and-Chinese-derived knowledge of his home region of Kii, Japan. Buddhism, persecuted by the Meiji regime, most notably enabled his scientific enquiry, while the encyclopedic work of Wakan Sansai Zue (The Illustrated Three Knowledge of Sino-Japan) became another key inspiration. Chinese historiography and Confucian thoughts additionally facilitated his reasoning.What interconnected all of these strands was what the author refers to as ‘queer nature’: the basis for truths whose ontological and experiential qualities resembled the microbe slime mould. Similar to this microbe that captured Kumagusu’s imagination, with queer nature the process of knowing defied the epistemological dichotomies and hierarchies that were fundamental to the social Darwinian theory of evolution. Experientially, it attracted the knower’s attention, induced their desire for intimacy with strange and curious others, and propelled greater intellectual enquiries. The article thus demonstrates a queer theory of intellectual history rooted in modern Japan, whose intellectual lineage derived from India and China instead of the West.

COVID, Crisis, Conflict, and the Cross: Making Disciples during a Pandemic

Intimate desires characterize one’s last moments with family, friends, or colleagues, often expressed verbally to the hearers. John 17 is one such moment. Jesus passionately, through prayers, shared the desire that His followers be united, for unity in Christ is the essence of soul-winning— the world believing in Jesus (Jn 17:21,23). The disciples of Jesus also contended among themselves concerning greatness. In the history of the Christian Church, unity among the brethren has been elusive. Within the Seventh-day Adventist church, we have witnessed strife among the brethren because of divergent views throughout our history. Such strife is not an emerging issue. One recent conflict was on the church’s position regarding COVID-19 vaccines. This issue has caused some members to leave the church, while others have transferred to churches that accommodate their opinions. We have forgotten the impact of a conflicted church, especially on the spiritual growth among the youth and young adults. This paper aims to discuss the possibility of fostering unity among divergent views and personalities by developing the art of disagreeing while still respecting and being compassionate to one another. To achieve this, the presentation will first appeal to the Bible using sound biblical hermeneutics and, secondly, review the experiences of the Adventist pioneers in overcoming similar challenges.

The Power of the “Knowing Women”

The Power of the “Knowing Women”

The desire for parenthood among individuals with intellectual disabilities : systematic review.

Background: This qualitative systematic review provides an overview of existing studies on the desire for parenthood of people with intellectual disabilities. Method: The scientific studies were identified following the Prisma protocol on 18 databases using keywords relating to sexuality and parenting. Results: Sixteen studies have been included and three categories identified: the obstacles and motivations to becoming a parent; parents' decision making during pregnancy; and the social construction of a parental identity. The results from these studies show that people with intellectual disabilities have a genuine desire for children, which is repressed because of an unfavorable social context. Conclusion: Further clinical and participatory research is needed to better understand the singular modes of expression of people's intimate desires and how to better accompany them on this issue.

Modernistyczny oniryzm w dylogii Brunona Schulza i w noweli Jak we śnie Arthura Schnitzlera

A post-psychoanalytic idea of Jacques Lacan that “Other is a lack inside me” helped the author to develop her interpretive strategy of conceptualizing onirism in Schnitzler’s “Dream Story” (Traumnovelle) and Schulz’s stories collected in Cinnamon Shops and Sanatorium Under the Sign of an Hourglass. In reference to Lacan’s concepts of the Other and the Real, she interpreted the plots, meanings, and the modernist paradigm of narration and the structure of subjectivity in the texts under scrutiny. Freud and Schnitzler believed that dreams and onirism are the most effective ways to make humans’ most intimate desires come true. Schnitzler’s “Dream Story” is a literary confirmation of Freud’s theory of dreamwork: the language of dreams opens up the space for manifestations of the characters’ unconscious and for the fulfillment of the impulses of their libido. Schnitzler’s story presents a sophisticated modernist plot combined with complex composition that demonstrates the dynamic structure of dreams. The borderline between consciousness and the unconscious is blurred, and the intrusion of the latter in the former deeply changes the life of the protagonists. Schulz’s fiction does not provide any answers to questions concerning the text’s idiom which is not a territory for affirming any theories, but is an intentional, pure phenomenon supplied by the senses as a “phenomenological perception” (Edmund Husserl). Schulz’s variant of onirism is not based on any linear order of the plot but remains a free-floating phantasy, a continuous blurring of the borderline separating consciousness and the unconscious, the overt and the covert, the real and the surreal. The language of Schulz’s stories is the unconscious as such, not a space for the realization of an individual unconscious. Referring to Lacan’s categories of the Other and the Real, the author interprets onirism in the Schulzean text as overcoming the trauma of the Real and the dream as trauma.

Zola nataliste ou féministe? Pouvoir féminin et sexualités subversives dans Fécondité

Scholars have described the role of women in Zola's Fécondité (1899) as limited primarily to motherhood, citing Marianne's twelve births as the maternal model idealized by the novelist. However, the dossiers préparatoires reveal a different story. Zola describes in detail his many female characters whose intimate desires express their quest for sexual liberty and for control over their own bodies. Although some of the most subversive elements were softened as Zola composed his novel, one can still discern them in the final text. Does this self-censorship reflect Zola's moral judgment of women? Or is it simply a narrative strategy to integrate his scientific theories on population growth? This article's objective is to study the subtle hints that Zola leaves in the novel and which allow for alternative interpretations of his female characters and their sexuality. I shall argue that these hints demonstrate his tacit approval of such characters and their behaviors. (In French)

Technik und Science-Fiction in der Vormoderne [Technology and science fiction in the premodern age] ed. by Brigitte Burrichter and Dorothea Klein (review).

Reviewed by: Technik und Science-Fiction in der Vormoderne [Technology and science fiction in the premodern age] ed. by Brigitte Burrichter and Dorothea Klein Matthias Riedl (bio) Technik und Science-Fiction in der Vormoderne [Technology and science fiction in the premodern age] Edited by Brigitte Burrichter and Dorothea Klein Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2018. Pp. 312. This volume emerged from a lecture cycle (Ringvorlesung) at Würzburg University in 2016–17. Ringvorlesung is a German academic tradition whereby scholars from different disciplines establish a broad and multifold panorama of perspectives on a certain topic, in this case premodern technology and science fiction. The research area of medieval science fiction is fairly new, but swiftly growing. In 2016, Carl Kears and James Paz edited a collection of essays under the title Medieval Science Fiction, which focuses on English literature and complements the German volume's more continental perspective. Technik und Science-Fiction in der Vormoderne surprises the reader with an unexpected richness and diversity of materials. The reader benefits from following the sequence of the chapters, arranged by the editors in a meaningful, loosely chronological order. Stefan Petersen lays the groundwork and traces the understanding of mechanica from the seventh to the twelfth century. After Isidor of Sevilla broadly defined mechanics as the "fabrication of things," Carolingian theorists downgraded it to an application-oriented practical science for craftsmen and artisans. Later, Hugo of Saint Victor's Didascalicon emphasized the value of mechanica as a scientific diffusion of the practical arts. A full rehabilitation of the practical arts on equal ranking with the liberal arts occurs only with the discovery of Greek and Arab knowledge in the thirteenth century and the combination of mechanics with mathematics. Siegfried Zielinski's well-illustrated contribution highlights the importance of medieval Arabic-Islamic civilization in furthering technical innovation and experimental culture. Udo Friedrich provides insights into the symbolic function of the automat in medieval political, religious, and cultural representation. He especially points to the "ludic" dimension of technology, a new playfulness emerging from a post-Aristotelian nonteleological understanding of nature and creativity. Three contributions deal with similar sources: medieval romances and epics. All three authors emphasize the prominence of machines and automats in the sources and how this articulates a European awareness of the technological superiority of the orient, exemplified in the intercultural narratives of the Alexander Romances. Yet in this context, technology may also symbolize the protagonist's hubris as an attempted transgression of God's natural order, Susanne Fried writes. Christian Buhr points out that accounts of artisan creativity in the novels may constitute reflections on the [End Page 916] narrators' own creativity. The most magnificent example is a French version of the Tristan epic, where the hero commissions the creation of an entire technological ensemble of automatic figures, representing the emotions in his soul: fears, hopes, dreams, and most intimate desires. Brigitte Burrichter shows that in medieval romances, it is often the women who resort to sophisticated "unethical" weapon technology, as they are excluded from chivalric combat. In the French vernacular Roman d'Eneas, Dido equips the walls of her city, Carthage, with a strong magnetic defense mechanism that incapacitates iron-armored warriors. Often, the imagined weapons go beyond the technological possibilities of the time and constitute a science fiction element. Viola Tenge-Wolf explains Ramon Lull's famous thought machine, which aimed at an errorless thought process that could facilitate the reconciliation of mankind. Stefan Bürger then shows how artistic representations of the Tower of Babel complement written accounts of medieval technology, as they help modern researchers understand the function of tools, the application of techniques, and medieval work processes. Elke Lossin offers a broad panorama of "pious machines" to show how they impacted medieval and early modern religious practice. Hania Siebenpfeiffer's richly illustrated chapter looks into the early modern "art of flying" and shows how the literary imagination of flying machines interacts with paradigm shifts in the sciences. Most interesting is the sociological aspect of early modern "science fiction" literature, as it proves the existence of pan-European networks of knowledge distribution. Arguably, the most thought-provoking piece is the concluding chapter by Wolfgang Riedel. His focus on...

To Repair a Broken World: The Life of Henrietta Szold, Founder of Hadassah by Dvora Hacohen

Reviewed by: To Repair a Broken World: The Life of Henrietta Szold, Founder of Hadassah by Dvora Hacohen Shulamit Reinharz (bio) To Repair a Broken World: The Life of Henrietta Szold, Founder of Hadassah. By Dvora Hacohen, translated from Hebrew by Shmuel Sermoneta Gertel. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021. 388 pp. Sitting on my desk is an impressive pile of books about Henrietta Szold, a woman history clearly has not forgotten. Hacohen's task in writing a Szold biography, thus, was not to introduce us to Szold but to broaden or deepen our already existing understanding. Szold (1860-1945) lived and worked in Palestine only in the last twenty-five years of her life. Although like Herzl, who was born the same year, Szold was denied the pleasure of witnessing the creation of the State of Israel, she could take pride in the work she did in laying the State's foundations. Szold was a formidable force in transforming the Yishuv into a more modern society, primarily by improving health conditions and rescuing Jewish children through Youth Aliyah. To say that Szold was indefatigable is an understatement. While still a young woman, she was tireless in her work with immigrants in Baltimore and as an editor in Philadelphia and New York. In her "Palestine Period," in addition to her temporary psychosomatic blindness, she drove herself to near collapse. And yet she continued to toil, dying in Jerusalem only when she reached 85. Work for a cause sustained her. And it seemed she was never without a cause. Hacohen shows how Szold's self-esteem and standing "were a consequence of a social, cultural and professional world entirely dominated by men" (72-73). A remarkable exception was Solomon Schechter, head of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) from 1902 through 1915, and his wife, Mathilde, both of whom became Szold's unwavering friends. Hacohen tells us that Solomon Schechter had "a keen interest in the role of women in the Jewish community" (87). Not so the leadership of the Jewish Publication Society, where Szold toiled for many years under the thumb of Mayer Sulzberger, nor even at the JTS, where she was compelled to sign a document swearing that she would not seek ordination. The lack of female colleagues in both the JTS and the JPS left her to fight these battles largely alone, if at all. From her father, Henrietta learned to accept the abuse of exploitative organizations. Hacohen details the negative effect that Baltimore's Congregation Oheb Shalom had on Henrietta's father, whom the synagogue eventually fired. On several occasions in Henrietta's life, Hacohen writes, "Szold was aware of the discrimination but accepted [the job] anyway" (134). In 1908, when Szold was forty-eight years old, she wanted to marry Professor Louis Ginzberg, an eminent scholar at the JTS. But he never [End Page 212] proposed, and she, in turn, never loved another man. I would suggest that remaining single for the rest of her life contributed to her success. Women of great potential at that time (and even today?) lost prestige, autonomy and recognition when and if they married. Think of Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, Emma Lazarus, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Florence Nightingale and many others who never married, or who became single as widows or divorcees, or women such as Golda Meir who separated from their husbands. Women satisfied their desire for intimacy by forming very close relations with other women. Szold befriended single, accomplished American Jewish women of the Yishuv including Alice Seligsberg, Jessie Sampter, and Nellie Strauss. She also befriended the Russian firebrand and kibbutz founder, Manya Wilbushevitz Shohat, whose unconventional marriage and family life included a husband, Israel Shohat, who lived alone in Tel Aviv while their two young children lived on Kibbutz Kfar Giladi near the Lebanese border. Szold was able to devote herself wholeheartedly to her projects without competing pulls from a husband or children. In an era when American Christian women were creating self-improvement and activist clubs, Szold assembled a small group of Jewish women and deployed her outstanding organizational skills to transform the group into a chapter, and then many chapters, of the ever-growing Hadassah. Her fundraising...

Collective Sex and Committed Relationships: A Qualitative Exploration of Relationship Desires among Gay Men Who Attend Sex Clubs

ABSTRACT Studies have documented gay men’s engagement in collective sex (e.g., group sex in public or commercial environments) but little attention has been paid to these men’s relationship desires or agreements. We report on qualitative interviews with 20 gay men who attended private sex clubs in New York City, asking how participants navigated sometimes conflicting desires for collective sex and committed relationships. Participants felt that collective sex was either a) incompatible with relationships, which should be monogamous; b) complementary to a primary non-monogamous relationship; or c) at least as important as relationships. Gay men attending sex clubs attribute different value to collective sex and to committed relationships, and experience different challenges in satisfying their desires for intimacy. Resources could help gay men navigating these apparently conflicting desires and making suitable choices regarding their relationships and/or sexual agreements.

Incorporating Queer, Housing Insecure Perspectives into Eucharistic Theology

This paper uses queer systematic theology and theological anthropology to argue that the Christian Eucharistic tradition is one of radical table fellowship rooted in desire for intimacy with the margins. Including queer people, the issues facing the community, and queer theory at the Eucharistic table therefore requires that we take homelessness seriously and consider alternative approaches to economic justice.

Love and homophobia in Malawi's spoken-word poetry movement

AbstractBy the early 2010s, a number of Malawian poets in their twenties had begun to substitute the elliptical expression of earlier generations with a language that resonated with popular idioms. As poetry directed at ‘the people’, its medium is spoken word rather than print, performed to live audiences and distributed through CDs, radio programmes and the internet. Crafted predominantly in Chichewa, the poems also address topics of popular interest. The selection of poetry presented here comes from a female and a male poet, who, unbeknown to each other, prepared poems sharply critical of homosexuality and what they regarded as its foreign and local advocacy. The same poets have also gained success for their love poems, which have depicted intimate desires in remarkably compatible ways for both women and men. The poets who performed ‘homophobic’ verse went against popular gender stereotypes in their depictions of romantic love and female and male desires. This introductory essay, as a contribution toAfrica's Local Intellectuals series, discusses the aesthetic challenges that the new poets have launched in the context of Malawi's modern poetry. With regard to gender relations in their love poems, the introduction also considers the poets’ possible countercultural contribution despite their avowed commitment to perform for ‘the people’.

Decolonizing queer modernities: the case for queer (post)colonial studies in critical/cultural communication

ABSTRACT In this essay, we advocate for a queer (post)colonial studies as a continuation of the critical foundational work that has been done by postcolonial feminists, women of color, queer people of color and non-academic activists. In doing so, we make the case for critical/cultural scholars to engage with queerness through postcoloniality and decoloniality as a way to lay bare the geopolitical imbalances and colonial entanglements in which queer scholarship is done. As an exemplar case study to support our argument, we examine the controversy that emerged from the Comprehensive Sexuality Education proposal in Ghana, West Africa. In the end, we argue that queer (post)colonial studies is imperative for critical/cultural communication because it refuses the Western heteronormative structures that claim to have domination over the bodies and future, turning instead to what we may imagine once our intimate desires are loosed from heteronormative, colonial, and homonationalist holds.

Queering public leadership: The case of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender leaders in the Philippines

Research has been lacking in exploring the implications of sexual identity on public leadership and in using discursive approaches to develop gender and public leadership literature. This study utilizes queer analysis to explore how six nonheterosexual public leaders in the Philippines negotiate their leadership identities and practices vis-à-vis a collectivistic, religious, and heteronormative culture. Interview accounts yield a reimagining of public leadership as a desire for intimacy with the people. Embedded in heteronormativity, this unspoken conception positions nonheterosexual subjects as unfit to participate in public leadership spaces, compelling them to make concessions to be allowed entry into the field. Such concessions, however, do not preclude the emergence of queer public leaderships that eventually enable a leadership praxis grounded on intersectionality. These findings reveal possibilities for a radical liberation of leaders and followers from interlocking structures of oppression.

Feeling neoliberal

AbstractWe live in a time of feelings. Anger, disgust, and anxiety abound in the public sphere and in social analyses. Positive feelings are also increasingly demanded and exchanged in the capitalist marketplace, including care and empathy, tenderness and affection. Indeed, the intensity with which feelings traverse these boundaries of individual‐social‐cultural‐political‐economic life is arguably a defining feature of our times. Yet much of the scholarship on neoliberalism has focused squarely upon the extractive and exhausting quality of contemporary affective life. Strikingly, feminist affect theory in particular interprets a fundamental cruelty at the core of cultural demands for optimism (Berlant 2011) or happiness (Ahmed 2010), a dark underbelly that forecloses any other transformative outcomes. In this essay, I suggest that feminist ethnographic analysis requires a more complex account of affective pursuits. I turn to the specific context of the post‐colonial Caribbean island of Barbados, where a new surge in desires for intimacy, emotional expressiveness, and affective life is bound up within the 21st century thrust of neoliberal entrepreneurialism. In a society known more for its conservative 'stiff‐upper lip' and 'grin‐and‐bear‐it' demeanor, 'tough love,' and material, transactional modes of support and exchange than expressions of intimate affection, I chart a growing desire for new modes of feeling, a growing cultural pull toward romantic love and intimacy, and emotional expressivity itself. I read within these Barbadian desires (and even within their disappointments) a profound optimism, pleasure, and bold self‐discovery that does not only/always succumb to despair.