Postdigital Intimacies : Relational lives in the networked public-private

Abstract

Postdigital Intimacies presents a unique and timely collection of research into the complex interplay and entanglement between digital and analogue relationships. Set within the normalisation of digital technology, cultures, AI and algorithms, the book explores social, political and cultural implications of intimacy in a blurry public–private. Chapters are informed by intersectional feminist, queer, anti-racist and postcolonial theories, and show how research can be part of creating affirmative, collective worlds that are more equitable and socially just. Through these lenses, contributors uncover vibrant digitally mediated lives and sociality. They investigate the vibey, emotional and affective sensibilities evolving online – excitement, boredom, mental health, survival – and reveal new activisms formed through digital belonging and a networked identity that responds to and resists marginality. Consideration is given to the capacity for digital affordances to enable new forms of connection, community and solidarity as well as harm. Authors explore vulnerability and risk through image-based abuse and gendered and sexual violence. They also analyse the forms of digital surveillance, labour and platformed capitalism that shape intimate relations created in kinship and domesticity. By addressing these relationalities as postdigital intimacies, the chapters offer fascinating insights and timely analyses of the intimate relations that emerge from our current cultural and postdigital condition.