Intimate Experience Research Articles

Intimate Partner Violence Survivors' Daily Experiences of Social Disconnection, Substance Use, and Sex with Secondary Partners.

Women who have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) are disproportionately likely to engage in sexual risk behavior, including sex with a secondary partner (i.e., sex partners outside their primary relationship). Social disconnection has been identified as a social determinant of health that may enhance understanding of sex with a secondary partner. This study extends past research by using an intensive longitudinal design consisting of multiple daily assessments to examine event-level associations between women IPV survivors' social disconnection and sex with a secondary partner concurrently (i.e., during the same aggregated assessment) and temporally (i.e., social disconnection during one assessment predicting sex with a secondary partner in a subsequent assessment) over a 14-day period, in consideration of physical, psychological, and sexual IPV, and alcohol and drug use. Participants (N = 244) were recruited from New England through 2017. Results from multilevel logistic regression models indicate that women who experienced greater social disconnection on average were more likely to report sex with a secondary partner. However, after including IPV and substance use in the model, the strength of this relationship was attenuated. Sexual IPV emerged as a between-person predictor of sex with a secondary partner in temporally lagged models. Results provide insight into the relationships between daily social disconnection and sex with a secondary partner among IPV survivors, particularly regarding the effects of substance use and IPV both concurrently and temporally. Taken together, findings emphasize the importance of social connection for women's well-being and highlight the need for interventions that enhance interpersonal connectedness.

Collectivizing justice: Participatory witnessing, sense memory, and emotional communities

This article describes and analyzes the practices made possible by the temporary exhibition of AMA y No Olvida, Museum of Memory Against Impunity, a community and transmedia museum project in Nicaragua, in tandem with the embodied performances of the families of the victims of state violence and visitors during repression and a state of exception. I theorize how the witnessing performed by the audience surpasses the framework of memory museums for human rights with a participatory framework that uses activist and performative expressions. Participatory witnessing is made possible by expanding the exhibition into a performative and political space in which society at large can participate and witness the victims’ struggle for justice through sharing intimate experiences of embodied pain and grief and demands for justice and reparations. Such witnessing then creates an emotional community with solidarity and a moral and political commitment that recognizes and centers the victims as active survivors, activists, and protagonists.

Performance, Protest, and Feminism in Latin America

How do activists in Latin America fight for change both online and in the streets? This piece narrates a course on Feminist Protest and Performance in Latin America that explores the limits and possibilities of feminist activism in physical and digital spaces. At this critical historical juncture, feminists across the hemisphere are organizing en masse to demand change and justice, to denounce pervasive misogyny and gender violence, and to envision and realize another world. Drawing on a long history of struggle, they are engaging in performance artivism across multiple platforms including Las Tesis piece El Violador Eres Tu (The rapist is you), under the hashtags #NiUnaMenos (#NotOneWomanLess) and #AbortoLegalYa (#LegalizeAbortionNow), and in massive physical occupations and protests like #OcupaEscola (#OccupyTheSchools). They are mobilizing to condemn femicide, to advocate access to legal abortions in public hospitals, and to introduce comprehensive sex education in public schools. Drawing on these interconnected forms of performance and protest, what Marcela Fuentes refers to as “performance constellations,” women and disidencias sexuales are fighting together for the right to live without fear, to make decisions about their own bodies, and to exist in a more just world. This class asks students to learn from Latin American feminst movements and to connect their insights to our intimate and collective experiences. Beyond the syllabus, this piece offers reflections on the philosophy of co-teaching, transnational activism across the Americas, and modes of embodiment that can happen online. We invite students and educators alike to consider what it might mean to “perform well” in a university class focused on pleasure and solidarity.

(095) The Elicitors of Intimacy: A Behavioral Checklist

Abstract Introduction Intimacy is crucial for developing successful relationships as it strengthens bonds between partners. Intimacy has been ill-defined and inconsistently measured for decades; however, theorists and researchers consistently agree that intimacy features components of love, affection, self-disclosure, and mutual validation. These constructs feature both cognitive and behavioral aspects of human connection. Despite the importance of intimacy in relationships, there is no widely accepted measure that captures the full spectrum of this multidimensional construct. Popular measures like the Miller Social Intimacy Scale (MSIS), the Personal Assessment of Intimacy in Relationships (PAIR), and the Fear of Intimacy Scale (FIS) each address assess subjective feelings of intimacy. Though they may include behavioral items, the outcome of the scale is cognitive conceptualizations of feelings of intimacy. Extant scales do not sufficiently focus on the behavioral aspect of intimacy in relationships. The widely-accepted Interpersonal Process Model of Intimacy suggests that the exchange of intimate behaviors and experiences over time create these feelings of intimacy and its theorized components in a couple. As such, the development of a more inclusive, behavioral intimacy assessment would benefit both researchers and clinicians and help advance our understanding of this construct. Objective The current study aimed to identify specific acts or behaviors that elicited feelings of intimacy for individuals in order to develop a more nuanced, behavioral measure for use in future research and clinical practice. Methods In Study 1, 297 participants nominated over 2,700 items that “elicited feelings of intimacy” for them. Examples of nominations included: trust, communication, touch, attraction, and sex. Trained raters condensed duplicate items (e.g., kiss, kissing) and created a final list of unique nominations for use in Study 2. Five experts in the field of sex research submitted additional items for consideration in Study 2 based on previous conceptualizations of this construct. This process results in 45 distinct items; however, some of the items were behaviors like “sex, acts of service, and attention.” As such, the authors created items for self and partner initiated acts to reflect both the giving and receiving of intimate behaviors (e.g. giving and receiving acts of service). 105 items were compiled from Study 1 and Study 2. Results These 105 behavioral elicitors of intimacy comprise the Intimacy Checklist. In Study 2, 301 participants rated and confirmed that the items created in Study 1 were important to intimacy in varying degrees. Study 2 attempted but failed to identify a significant factor structure for the items. Conclusions The lack of a clear factor structure speaks to the complexity of this multidimensional construct; this is actually consistent with previous literature as there are numerous studies that suggest different factor structures of the same construct (i.e., 4 factor versus 8 factor models). The resulting Intimacy Checklist is a potentially powerful tool for identifying person-specific experiences of intimacy and preferences for intimate interactions in both clinical work and research. A follow up study will be conducted to determine if individuals who feel more satisfied with their intimate interactions are more sexually and relationally satisfied overall. Disclosure No

Literary, Found and Research Poetry: New Approaches to Representations of Aging and Aged Care.

At a time when rapid population aging is producing an emphasis on questions of healthy aging in the public discourse, conditions such as dementia, physical, and other disabilities still too often remain taboo, and this is particularly true in relation to the confronting subjects of aged care, neglect, and failures of care provision. This article considers the transformative potential of 2 different but complementary forms of poetry-research poetry and lyric poetry-to break these silences and represent experiences across the physical and emotional spectrum of aging, including the perspectives of older people and their families whose experiences are neutral, negative, or even distressing, as well as challenge and counter existing negative stereotypes of aging in the public and literary realms. Neither research poetry nor lyric poetry is common in gerontological research; however, they offer the radical potential to offer insight into the lived realities of older people and their loved ones. Research poetry uses the direct words of older people, drawing on transcripts and found texts, and giving voice to people who otherwise would not be heard. Lyric poetry, by contrast, draws more heavily on literary techniques such as metaphor and direct address to evoke sensory and intimate experiences of aging and aged care. This paper presents 2 poems comparing and contrasting the respective processes and techniques of these different poetic forms to represent the imaginary, feared, and hoped-for futures of older people, including those in aged care.

A Pregnant Pause? Reproduction, waiting and silences in the relational endurance of austerity

This paper brings together relational geographical writings on the politics of waiting, austerity and social reproduction, and also speaks to feminist methodology and praxis. I draw on a recent research project exploring experiences of reproduction in austerity, in particular having any or more children, to think about how austerity in the UK is endured in everyday life. I engage with geographical ideas about temporality – pauses, silences and futures – to unpick everyday and intimate experiences of economic change in the UK. I offer multiple interpretations of 'a pregnant pause' in this context. Firstly, of pausing and waiting ‘with’ decisions to having any or more children as a direct result of changes in the name of ‘austerity’: welfare cuts, precarious housing, unaffordable childcare etc. Secondly, the pauses and silences in public discussions about the economic impacts of austerity on reproduction, as a rarely shared experience and one that participants seldom spoke to anyone else about. And thirdly, the literal pauses and silences in verbal discussions on this topic, and how to respond in method and praxis. In doing so, I refocus discussions about the everyday life of austerity towards a relational politics of endurance.

Gendered meanings and mechanisms of intimacy for people living with chronic pain

Cisheteronormative assumptions about women as able-bodied caregivers responsible for men’s sexual pleasure compound the stigma associated with chronic pain because of an assumed inability to fulfil gender roles in intimate relationships. There is a need to move beyond this deficit model of gender, chronic pain and intimacy. People of all gender identities live with chronic pain, forming fulfilling intimate relationships regardless of their condition(s). Starting from a strengths-based assumption that individuals living with chronic pain develop their own understanding of and pathways to intimacy, I conducted written interviews with thirteen people living with a range of pain and pain-related conditions to theorise gendered differences in understandings and experiences of intimacy in the context of dating. Findings show that intimacy is associated with vulnerability and authenticity. These connotations vary between men, women and gender diverse participants, aligning with gendered socialisation about intimacy and relationships. Men tend to prioritise physical intimacy. Women and gender diverse participants emphasise their obligation to perform the labour necessary for forming and maintaining connections. However, regardless of gender, experiencing intimacy requires implementing flexible approaches to dating because doing so makes closeness accessible.

Untangling Intimate Care Experiences for Patients Admitted to Public Hospitals in South Africa

Background: Hospital admission can be a traumatic and humiliating experience for patients due to the institutionalised attire they must wear. Intimate care may trigger experiences of helplessness and disrespect due to exposure to their body parts and having to be touched by nurses. Objective: This research aimed to explore and describe patients’ perceptions of their bodies and their experiences of intimate care execution during their hospital stay. Methods: A qualitative explorative-descriptive design and Trauma-informed care framework were used to explore and describe the participants’ perceptions and experiences of intimate care execution during admission to the two sampled hospitals. Twenty participants admitted to medical and surgical units were purposively recruited. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews, and thematic analysis was used to give meaning to the data. Results: Three overarching themes emerged from the data: the sacredness of the human body; Patients want their dignity to be respected during intimate care and touch; and creating the nurse-patient intimate care relationship. Patients wish the nurses to maintain their dignity and privacy. Intimate care and touch should be initiated in a safe environment where patients can make informed decisions. Implications for Nursing: Declothing of personal attire during admission violates patients’ dignity and privacy and is dehumanising. During intimate care and touch, nurses should create a cultural, religious and gender safe environment, allowing inpatients to make informed decisions regarding the care provided to their bodies. Conclusion: Patients’ beliefs system should be incorporated into autonomy and informed decisions about the care to be provided to naked bodies. Hospitalisation should not reinforce physical and psychological trauma. Respect and dignity are paramount when caring for the patient’s body.

How satisfactory are empathetic care and robotic assistance in telemedicine services?

ABSTRACT Telemedicine healthcare and assistive robotic technologies are gaining popularity as support systems for traditional healthcare practices. However, there are concerns regarding the use of these digital services due to their lack of empathy and intimacy. This paper investigates the impact of physicians’ empathetic care and telepresence robot assistance on patients’ intimate experience and satisfaction. We employ a multi-method design to achieve our research objective. The first study utilizes a 2 (digital empathetic care: high vs. low) × 2 (telepresence robot assistance: present vs. absent) × 2 (severity of illness: high vs. low) between-subject experimental design involving 287 participants who have used robotic assistance and telemedicine services. The findings from this study confirm that the telepresence robotic assistance and empathetic care by physicians positively impact intimate experience and patient satisfaction significantly more for patients with low severity of illness, thus confirming the significant moderated-moderated mediation effect. The second study employs field data (n = 4629 reviews) to further validate the telepresence robots’ usability in establishing intimate patient experiences in digital settings. The study recommends to healthcare practitioners that empathetic care and robotic assistance are essential factors for building intimate experience and patient satisfaction in telehealthcare services.

Understanding sexual health concerns among adolescents and young adults with differences of sex development: a qualitative study

ABSTRACT Purpose Differences of sex development (DSD) are congenital conditions that involve variations in individuals’ sex chromosomes, genes, external and/or internal genitalia, hormones, and/or secondary sex characteristics. This study sought to elucidate the experiences of adolescents and young adults living with DSD by focusing on their experiences of intimacy and sexual health. Methods An interpretative phenomenological research design was adopted. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 11 Norwegian adolescents and young adults aged 16–26 years who had five different DSD conditions. The interview findings were analysed by means of a reflexive thematic analysis. Results The participants reported feeling different, both in terms of how their body functioned and how their body looked. Lack of knowledge increased this feeling of differentness. Moreover, lack of everyday language with which to talk about intimacy and sexual concerns resulted in the participants feeling stigma. Anticipating stigmatization and lacking everyday language complicated the participants’ communication regarding their DSD and sexual health. Conclusions The sexual experiences of adolescents and young adults with DSD are diverse. Fear of stigmatization and lack of everyday language complicate communication with healthcare professionals and others. Understanding their unique needs is crucial to helping individuals achieve good sexual health.

Parental role in intimate relationships: Comparing adults with and without intellectual disabilities

ABSTRACT Background Adults with intellectual disabilities experience higher rates of exploitative intimate relationships. Parents of these adults play important roles in their lives. This study examined the role of parents in the intimate relationship experiences of adults with intellectual disabilities. Method A mixed methods design was utilised. Parents compared experiences between their adult child with intellectual disabilities and typically developing adult child. An online survey was completed by 50 parents in the United States, and follow-up phone/video interviews were completed concurrently with a subset of 20 parents. Results Parents reported increased involvement in relationships of their adults with intellectual disabilities. They discussed different barriers and expectations for these relationships compared to typically developing children. Parents struggled to determine appropriate levels of involvement in the romantic relationships of their children with intellectual disabilities. Conclusion This study highlights the need for coaching and mentoring for parents to help them navigate experiences successfully.

Untangling Intimate Care Experiences for Patients Admitted to Public Hospitals in South Africa

Background: Hospital admission can be a traumatic and humiliating experience for patients due to the institutionalised attire they must wear. Intimate care may trigger experiences of helplessness and disrespect due to exposure to their body parts and having to be touched by nurses. Objective: This research aimed to explore and describe patients’ perceptions of their bodies and their experiences of intimate care execution during their hospital stay. Methods: A qualitative explorative-descriptive design and Trauma-informed care framework were used to explore and describe the participants’ perceptions and experiences of intimate care execution during admission to the two sampled hospitals. Twenty participants admitted to medical and surgical units were purposively recruited. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews, and thematic analysis was used to give meaning to the data. Results: Three overarching themes emerged from the data: the sacredness of the human body; Patients want their dignity to be respected during intimate care and touch; and creating the nurse-patient intimate care relationship. Patients wish the nurses to maintain their dignity and privacy. Intimate care and touch should be initiated in a safe environment where patients can make informed decisions. Implications for Nursing: Declothing of personal attire during admission violates patients’ dignity and privacy and is dehumanising. During intimate care and touch, nurses should create a cultural, religious and gender safe environment, allowing inpatients to make informed decisions regarding the care provided to their bodies. Conclusion: Patients’ beliefs system should be incorporated into autonomy and informed decisions about the care to be provided to naked bodies. Hospitalisation should not reinforce physical and psychological trauma. Respect and dignity are paramount when caring for the patient’s body.

Spiritually significant hallucinations: a patient-centred approach to tackle epistemic injustice.

This article uses three fictitious case vignettes to raise questions and educate on how clinicians can appropriately approach patients experiencing spiritually significant hallucinations. Religious hallucinations are common but are not pathognomonic of mental illness. They are often intimate experiences for the patient that raise complex questions about psychopathology for clinicians. When assessing a patient with religious hallucinations it is important that clinicians hold at the centre that person's personal experience and create a safe space in which they are listened to and epistemic injustices are avoided. Involvement of chaplaincy services is important not just to support the patient but also to ensure that as clinicians we seek support in understanding the religious nature of these experiences.

Friendship, Intimacy, and the Contradictions of Therapy Culture

While therapy culture has long been a part of the repertoires through which people think about and practice their romantic relationships, it has been less prominent in how they envision friendship. However, based on our interviews on experiences of friendlessness in an Atlantic Canadian city, we show that therapeutic styles increasingly shape how people orient to friendship, even as friends rarely seek formal therapy to manage their conflicts. This article focuses on how modern therapy culture, with its emphasis on individual wellbeing, self-knowledge, and ‘healthy’ rather than ‘toxic’ relationships, presents people with conflicting cultural imperatives for how to practice their friendships. On the one hand, therapy culture encourages people to seek out friends to whom they can disclose their most intimate feelings and experiences – friends who will offer support, understanding, and validation. On the other hand, therapy culture equally cautions that one must maintain ‘boundaries’ to protect oneself from friends’ personal revelations or ‘traumas.’ We ask what these dual imperatives mean for modern friendship and how people experience the tension between them. We argue that one reason modern friendship can be difficult is that divulging one’s intimate feelings or experiences to a friend can be interpreted as either building intimacy or burdening others with one’s problems, or crucially, both at the same time. Our findings lead us to ask how therapy culture might increasingly turn friendship into a reflexive object or something else to ‘optimize’ rather than providing an escape from relationships that demand ‘work.’

Evidence of Gender Asymmetry in Intimate Partner Violence Experience at the Population-Level.

Claims of "gender symmetry" in intimate partner violence (IPV) prevalence are contested, with resolution of the issue complicated by methodological and measurement challenges. This study explores gendered differences in the distribution of IPV exposure at the population-level, considering multiple types of IPV exposure. The subjects comprised of 1,431 ever-partnered women and 1,355 ever-partnered men. Data from a nationally representative population-based cross-sectional survey were used to compare men and women's IPV experiences. Twenty-three IPV acts were assessed across IPV types (moderate physical, severe physical, sexual, psychological, controlling behaviors, economic). Proportions were presented by gender for the number of individual IPV acts experienced per IPV type, and the frequency of these acts (none, once, few times, or many times). A composite exposure score was developed to assess the number of acts and their frequency within types by comparing scores in tertiles and across types by correlations. Women reported greater overall prevalence of 20 of the 23 individual IPV acts assessed. Across all assessed acts, women comprised a substantially greater proportion of those who reported experiencing individual acts "many times." Women experienced more severe and more frequent IPV than men based on self-reported experience of IPV acts, and by the frequency with which acts were experienced. Significant differences between men and women's exposure scores were observed for all six assessed types, with greater proportions of women scoring in the upper tertiles. This study provides evidence of gender asymmetry in experiences of IPV at the population level. While men do experience IPV victimization, there remains need for directed and substantial resource allocation for intervention and therapeutic responses to women's exposure to IPV, and for primary prevention with men. Going forward, IPV measurement tools that consider frequency, severity, or co-occurring types of IPV are needed.

Podcasting as a feminist space for the disclosure of trauma and intimate embodied experience: The Heart as a case study of quiet activism

The ‘#MeToo’ movement established the disclosure of sexual violence via social media as mainstream and offered participants space to share experiences, receive support and create a sense of community. As a response, we explore the use of podcasting as a conduit to describe embodied experiences and how non-visual media can provide a safe environment to reveal deeply personal experiences. We use the podcast The Heart (mini-series No) as a case study to highlight patriarchal power and sexual violence myths. The result is profoundly discomforting but also emancipatory – talking about sexual violence can constitute a revolutionary act given the stigma and victim blaming prevalent in western society. The Heart makes private, intimate experiences public and centres female perspectives, highlighting disparate, gendered perceptions. As ‘#MeToo’ underscored the universality of women’s experiences of male harassment, we argue that The Heart is an example of ‘quiet activism’ and public scholarship that challenges patriarchal assumptions.

Сексуальный дебют в контексте возрастных переходов молодых инвалидов

Youth as a stage of a person's life path is the most intense period in terms of age transitions. Despite the presence of many transitions, most researchers identify several basic age transitions. The current stage of development of society is characterized by the complication, lengthening, increasing variability and risks of liminality (incompleteness) of age transitions. For some categories of the population, the complexity and risks of transition processes are higher. The variety of transitions, the variability of their implementation strategies and individual determinants do not eliminate the possibility of identifying common patterns in their implementation and specifics for each specific group. An urgent task for sociology is to study the general patterns and specifics of age transitions of youth with disabilities. This article reveals the general patterns of one of the age transitions – the acquisition of the first intimate experience. Sexual debut is important for young people, determining the success of solving age-related tasks. The social consequences of disability can add additional context to this process. The results of the study allowed us to conclude that there is a negative impact of the status of a disabled person on the nature and success of sexual debut: the risks of liminality are higher, the stretching of the transition, the presence of objective and subjective barriers. The risks of liminality differ depending on the nature of the nosology. The optimal age of sexual debut (18– 24 years) has no significant gender, nosological, territorial differences. The real age of sexual debut is prolonged both towards adolescence and towards the age of maturity. The risks of liminality increase after 24 years. Gender differences allow us to talk about an earlier age of sexual debut in young men, clearer and less stretched boundaries of experience acquisition in girls. The risks of liminality in young men are higher, the subjective perception of disability as a barrier to transition is also higher. Rural residents have lower chances of success in acquiring sexual experience, the age of sexual debut is less, but the stretching of the age limits of its acquisition is significant.

:Unfinished Spirit: Muriel Rukeyser’s Twentieth Century

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Pooled analysis of the association between food insecurity and violence against women: Evidence from low- and middle-income settings.

Intimate partner violence impacts relationships across the socioeconomic spectrum, nonetheless its prevalence is reported to be highest in areas that are most socio-economically deprived. Poverty has direct and indirect impacts on intimate partner violence (IPV) risk, however, one of the postulated pathways is through food insecurity. The aim of this paper is to describe the association between food insecurity (household hunger) and women's experiences, and men's perpetration, of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence in data from Africa and Asia. We conducted a pooled analysis of data from baseline interviews with men and women participating in six Violence Against Women prevention intervention evaluations and present a meta-analysis using mixed-effects Poisson regression models. Data were from South Africa (two studies), Ghana, Rwanda (two data sets), and Afghanistan and comprised interviews with 6545 adult women and 8104 adult men. We assessed food insecurity with the Household Hunger Scale. Overall, 27.9% of women experienced moderate food insecurity (range from 11.1% to 44.4%), while 28.8% of women reported severe food insecurity (range from 7.1 to 54.7%). Overall food insecurity was associated with an increased likelihood of women experiencing physical intimate partner violence, adjusted incidence rate ratio (aIRR) = 1.40 (95% CI = 1.23 to 1.60) for moderate food insecurity and aIRR = 1.73 (95% CI = 1.41 to 2.12) for severe food insecurity. It was also associated with an increased likelihood of men reporting perpetration of physical IPV, with aIRR = 1.24 (95% CI = 1.11 to 1.39) for moderate food insecurity and aIRR = 1.18 (95% CI = 1.02 to 1.37) for severe food insecurity. Food insecurity was not significantly associated with women's experience of non-partner sexual violence, aIRR = 1.27 (95% CI = 0.93 to 1.74) for moderate or severe food insecurity vs none, nor men's perpetration of non-partner sexual violence aIRR = 1.02 (95% CI = 0.90 to 1.15). Food insecurity is associated with increased physical intimate partner violence perpetration and experience reported by men and women. It was not associated with non-partner sexual violence perpetration, although there was some evidence to suggest an elevated risk of non-partner sexual violence among food-insecure women. Prevention programming needs to embrace food insecurity as a driver of intimate partner violence perpetration, however, non-partner sexual violence prevention needs to be shaped around a separate understanding of its drivers.

Séculaires par Olivier Barbarant

Reviewed by: Séculaires par Olivier Barbarant Khadija Khalifé and Deborah Gaensbauer Barbarant, Olivier. Séculaires. Gallimard, 2022. ISBN 978-2-07-298386-3. Pp. 128. In his latest autobiographical collection, composed in Barbarant's characteristic supple blend of diverse forms of poetry and sonorous prose pieces, the poet, born in 1966, meditates at a mid-point in his life on both intimate and broadly historical memories and experiences spanning forty years. Crucially for Barbarant, they bridge a change of centuries and altered personal perspectives, hence the title conjuring a significant sweep of time. "Jadis j'étais l'été/À présent je le vois" (38). The first section, essentially an affective balance sheet, continues in the lyrical and sensual vein of his Un grand instant (prix Apollinaire 2019). Barbarant probes in "ma mémoire grenier en désordre" childhood vignettes blended by time into dream-memory hybrids, conjurations of intimate moments with lovers, and confrontations with aging (20). Engagingly, too, he chronicles the relationship to words, sounds and rhythms that has impelled him to "faire entendre quelque chose de sa perception de son émotion, dans le corps respiratoire du langage" (49). His melancholic meditations become more searingly political in the second section, which he opens by declaring: "[i]l n'y a plus de paille dans l'étable espérance" (55). An extensive segment entitled "Complainte à la charnière des temps" limns consequential events for each year from 1981 through 2020. The strongest pieces, corroborating his conviction that "[c]'est à l'intérieur que la vérité creuse son sillon," capture his acute sense of light and color in evocations of intimate experiences that bear historical weight (95). The prose elegy on the fire-ravaged Notre-Dame Cathedral, for example, conjures student memories of emerging from the train "directement sous son soleil/Elle était maternelle volumineuse et couleur de blé tendre," to render the momentous reverberations of the cultural loss with poignant simplicity (18). "C'était comme si chaque pierre était un sable cristallisé/un morceau du pays mêlé à l'intime mémoire" (95). As the calendar moves toward the millennium, the poetic reflections increasingly focus on social injustice: "[d]es violences du temps naissent celles des êtres/Brillent dans les regards l'éclat d'affreux couteaux" (99). Séculaires advances toward a grim finale with "Fils de feu," ten poems concerning a global rash of self-immolations. Barbarant concludes, nonetheless, by juxtaposing darkness with a positive entreaty. "Que vaut un siècle dont les fils/souffrent tant qu'ils se font bûcher?" (125). This despairing query in the final poem, "Envoi," is followed by a plea that alters the strictly personal context of his earlier paeans to corporeal intimacy: "[e]nfants, brûlez/de colère/et [End Page 217] de désir, mais laissez/l'ardeur à l'âme, à la langue,/et que d'étreinte seule/flambent vos paumes nues" (125). "Envoi" connects to previous affirmations of life in the collection but responds to concrete socio-political violence by tempering the ferocity of an earlier exhortation: "cri ou couteau mais que/ la vie/ déborde" (20). A disciple of Louis Aragon, Barbarant fears neither emotions nor the mundane: "[i]l sut que frémir ne serait jamais ridicule" (45). Although a few poems in Séculaires come across as palely sentimental and nostalgic, his intertwining of personal intimacy, public history, and combat against the "grésil des écrans" creates overall a compelling work (105). [End Page 218] Deborah Gaensbauer Regis University (CO), emerita Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French