Intimacy updated

Posted on | February 9, 2012 | 3 Comments

I finally finished my course outline and reader! I am teaching “Intimacy, Love & Friendship” back-to-back this semester, because the second half of the year I will be on sabbatical.

There are some changes to the content this time around, although not as many as I was going to make. The feedback was too good!

Additions include:

- Sherry Turkle, Alone Together. A great book for teaching – her writing is clear and motivated, and has the benefit of long term observation across different studies. While her arguments aren’t popular with some of the digerati (please send me more reviews if you know of them), she makes use of cultural theories I use in other parts of the course, e.g. Goffman and some classic psychoanalysis. Having this applied so directly to intimacy is a gift.

- Password intimacy: This story broke at the right time. I’ve decided to teach with it instead of The Social Network for another year. Although the assignment last term was fun, I don’t think I can expect students to get their head around film analysis as well as the critical content of the course. Too many variables.

- To talk about privacy, I’ve taught Emily Nussbaum’s article for several years now, but it’s not quite helping students move beyond generational stereotypes… or tech-determinist approaches to history. This can be a bad combination and I worry that the article leads them to both, even though in my view it remains a brilliant, sympathetic piece of journalism.

Christina Nippert Eng wrote a fabulous and influential book, Home and Work: Negotiating Boundaries Through Everyday Life back in 1996. Her new book, Islands of Privacy: Selective Concealment and Disclosure in Everyday Life, is just as exciting as a complement to some of danah’s work.

“When you are breaking up, the medium is part of the message”, writes Illana Gershon, in The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting Over New Media. One of her strongest insights is that all the emphasis on connection in new media commentary overlooks how technologies facilitate “new forms of disconnection”. While her sample demographic is limited – like many scholars in this field, she writes about her own students – in a teaching context this presents an opportunity for self-reflexivity (one hopes).

Amidst a range of interesting observations about Facebook, Gershon notes how broken-hearted girls use their profiles to perform resilience. (This adds momentum to some of the things we were highlighting in our Facebook paper, I think). Following a break-up, students feign happiness in their status updates, post staged photos of going out and having fun, and ask male friends to fake flirt on their wall – all for the ex to witness. An example:

The worst part is having to make all my statuses so darn happy. Even though I’m glad this is over, I’m still a little sad, you know? Hurt… angry… the typical post-breakup emotions. But instead of saying “Kathy is sad and hurt and sick of assholes,” I have to be all, “Kathy can’t wait for the weekend!” or some lie like that because he’s probably looking. And he probably wants me to be sad and hurt and angry and he probably wants to take great satisfaction in knowing that he’s the one who caused all that. And I absolutely refuse to give him that satisfaction. The next part of my master Facebook plan is to have friends take a ton of pictures of me this weekend looking like I’m having an absolutely wonderful time doing whatever we’re doing. Then I’ll make a new album with some random name that implies an inside joke he isn’t part of, and it’ll be great except for the fact that I’ll probably still feel like crap. However, my Facebook page will portray me as a bundle of happiness and joy, and that is all that matters. (186)

I’ve added Gershon to a new week on intimate media, mourning and death. Heavy! More on the rest of the course soon.

Category: Teaching

Comments

3 Responses to “Intimacy updated”

  1. Clare
    February 14th, 2012 @ 8:15 pm

    Hi Mel, I am sure you will have seen this article by Winterson on reclaiming love, but just in case… http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/14/money-gone-love-alternative-currency
    Thought students of your course might find it interesting.
    Cheers,
    Clare

  2. melgregg
    February 16th, 2012 @ 8:48 am

    Hadn’t seen it Clare – thanks so much!

  3. Adultery technologies : home cooked theory
    March 10th, 2012 @ 2:14 pm

    [...] This paper brings together some of my home/work research with theories of intimacy and love that are taken from my course. [...]

Leave a Reply