Chapter 4 - Searching for Intimacy

Summary

The chapter analyses what alternative leftists did to produce the subversive feelings they so desperately missed in capitalism. The struggle against this emotionally damaging society called for developing and expressing feelings, ‘fixing’ damaged personalities, overcoming isolation, and disrupting the fear-inducing emotional regime of capitalism. In that sense, politics became a kind of self-therapeutization that required constantly working on the self. The chapter discusses how leftists tried to accomplish their therapeutic goals, e.g., in consciousness-raising groups, in communes, and in moments of collective activism, such as festivals and demonstrations, that created a sense of intense exuberance. It particularly highlights the role of bodily intimacy, including questions of sexuality. Building on Monique Scheer’s conceptualization of emotions as practices, it analyses what leftists did in order to have the feelings of intimacy and intensity they longed for. Based on an understanding of how emotions work, leftists tried to produce feelings, with varying success, by engaging in a variety of emotional and bodily experiments. The chapter provides a discussion of left-wing critiques of these therapeutic practices.