Ada's thesis outline

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⭐ intro (what is this text about)

Yet the autobiographical isn’t the personal. […]All sorts of narratives are read as autobiographies of collective experience. The personal is the general. Publics presume intimacy (Berlant, 2008).

⭐ chapter 1 = Online Intimate Publics

Intimate publics were originally defined by Berlant as physical and emotional spaces made up of strangers and centred around media and culture. The first key issue my thesis touches upon is an imagined but very real conception of these intimate publics as possible without their physicality. To reimagine them in a body-less, digital space, however, we first must understand their original conception.

Generally, intimate publics are scenes where personal, self, and political aspects are turned into commodities. These spaces can serve as arenas for pedagogical discourse, addressing normativity and normative intimate desires across diverse subject groups. Intimate publics function as settings that promise and deliver sentiments of belonging and solace. In simpler terms, they create an "experience of belonging" and encompass a mix of comfort, affirmation, guidance, and conversations about living a certain way (2008, p. viii).

For the scope of my thesis I am interested in how these dynamics of intimacy and publicness are being performed on a web-based infrastructure. When intimate publics are online they can become radical, disruptive performances of togetherness. My claim does not go against the public construction of these virtual publics as ‘failed intimacies that disrupt the flow of a good life lived right, that is, a life that involves coupling and kids, or at least, coupling and consumption’ (McGlotten, 2013, p. 7). Instead I wish to lean into this dichotomy of "real" versus "virtual" intimacy as a means to imagine more fluid forms of connection and belonging. Forms that exist outside normative relational construction and behind, above and underneath institutions, states, nations, and the ideal of publicness (Berlant 1998, p. 284).

This becomes especially interesting when you start to look into who makes up these intimate publics online. In spaces of digression from normative society, closeness, vulnerability and understanding seem to grow parallel to anonymity. Diverse groups of individuals that deviate from the norm navigate through intimate publics to foster forms of insider acknowledgment and cultural self-growth. Despite or perhaps due to their devaluation by mainstream society, marginalised people create a sense of social belonging near the technologies that turn the physical world into a place of emotional investment and identification. They create online intimacies of the unbearable.

⭐ chapter 2 = Online Intimacies of the Unbearable

The second key point my thesis wants to highlight is the nature of the online intimacies in between communities and publics centred around unbearable human experiences. These groups of people form themselves around sharing content that is characterised by digressions and alienation. The content shared within these communities, due to its intimate nature, adds layers of vulnerability, creating a dichotomy and paradox where the more gruesome the story, the gentler the approach.

It is inescapable that the human desire to be like other be with other and be understood and respected exposes individuals to a state of deep vulnerability. Seeking intimacy, connection, and community becomes a risk-laden endeavour, and it is this very vulnerability—the quest to belong and be seen—that binds these communities together (Dahl, 2016).

As marginalised people navigate the intricacies of digital existence, holding onto the lifeline of the network and each other in mediated co-presence and embodied connectivity, a shared vulnerability emerges. This vulnerability, carried collectively, possesses a transcendent potential. In the darkest moments, a digitally mediated promise takes shape—a commitment to be there for one another online (Lagerkvist & Andersson, 2017).

It is in this commitment that people find antidotes to their cultural dislocation and placement as "unbearable". The intertwining of online and offline experiences provides a space to explore an identity outside societal norms. Socially marginalised individuals thus leverage these online connections to understand and contest their societal status (Adler and Adler, 2005, 2008).

In essence, online communities emerge as havens where individuals can seek refuge while still receiving emotional support. Within this paradoxical landscape, where fragility and tenderness coexist with the gruesome, a narrative unfolds, illustrating resilience and communal strength amid the digital vulnerabilities of these unique cybercommunities.In light of the studied lifelines of the internet, we have shown that in the sharing of vulnerability online, the digital technology itself plays a vital role—for mourners, the sick, and for others. Hence, for some people in dire straits, the internet seems to offer salvation and a refuge; a quality of the medium that relates to its arguably all-encompassing role. Whether this makes potential disconnections and glitches into major threats to life itself remains to be answered. But as informants stress, it also actualizes debilitating risks of becoming “stuck” in grief. In this context, lifeline communication insinuates a key dimension that explains why digital media are of existential import, while posing particular existential burdens—at the same time.

⭐chapter 3 = Unbearable Intimate Publics

⭐ conclusion

⭐ references

Adler, P.A. and Adler, P. (2008) ‘The Cyber Worlds of self-injurers: Deviant communities, relationships, and selves’, Symbolic Interaction, 31(1), pp. 33–56. doi:10.1525/si.2008.31.1.33.

Andreassen, R. (2017) ‘New Kinships, new family formations and negotiations of intimacy via Social Media Sites’, Journal of Gender Studies, 26(3), pp. 361–371. doi:10.1080/09589236.2017.1287683.

Berlant, L.G. (2008) The female complaint the unfinished business of sentimentality in American culture. Durham: Duke University Press.

Dahl, U. (2016) ‘Femmebodiment: Notes on queer feminine shapes of vulnerability’, Feminist Theory, 18(1), pp. 35–53. doi:10.1177/1464700116683902.

Lagerkvist, A. and Andersson, Y. (2017) ‘The grand interruption: Death online and mediated lifelines of shared vulnerability’, Feminist Media Studies, 17(4), pp. 550–564. doi:10.1080/14680777.2017.1326554.

Mesch, G.S. (2011) ‘Minority status and the use of computer-mediated communication’, Communication Research, 39(3), pp. 317–337. doi:10.1177/0093650211398865.

Schwartz, A. (2020) ‘Soft femme theory: Femme internet aesthetics and the politics of “softness”’, Social Media + Society, 6(4), p. 205630512097836. doi:10.1177/2056305120978366.

Shields Dobson, A., Robards, B. and Carah, N. (2019) Digital Intimate Publics and social media. Palgrave Macmillian (Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change).

Smith, N., Wickes, R. and Underwood, M. (2013) ‘Managing a marginalised identity in pro-anorexia and fat acceptance cybercommunities’, Journal of Sociology, 51(4), pp. 950–967. doi:10.1177/1440783313486220.