ABSTRACT
Introduction Many feminist theorists have made political interventions into theoretical analysis. Lauren Berlant’s (1991, 1993, 1998, 2008a and 2008b) work on emotion and affect focuses on the intrusion of the private into the public by showing how intimacy and sexual practices which do not subscribe to a normative framework can be seen as a threat to established values, including traditional family values and heterosexuality. In this chapter I analyse Berlant’s contribution to this area and to her work on the relationship between intimacy and therapy. Her work highlights how the concept of therapy has been taken to an extreme in U.S. society and shapes the relationship of emotion and the public sphere. In fact much of Berlant’s work is concerned with the history of the relationship of intimacy and its intersection with the public sphere as well as providing a critique of sentimental ideology in a range of literary genres. Berlant (2010: 116), like other feminist theorists is interested in how emotion and affect can lead to transformation and change, although she is aware that changes on the personal level do not directly impact on structural transformation. Berlant’s work shows a historical development from a critique of sentimental ideology in literary genre to a more developed theoretical analysis of emotions and affect in contemporary society. I trace the genealogical development of Berlant’s treatment of intimacy and emotion in the body of her work.
