ABSTRACT
The introduction draws on the dual crises of Covid-19 and Brexit which characterised the end of the decade that this book’s analysis focuses on to introduce its context, rationale and main arguments. The discursive framing of ‘exceptionality’ that commonly attached to the politics of austerity, crisis and neoliberalisation in 2010s Britain is first unpacked; here I argue that the decade has been marked by a continuous back and forth between various ‘crises’ and the crisis-making, neoliberalising responses to them – usually with the effect of growing inequality. Next, I highlight another key way in which exceptionality features in the logics of austerity, crisis and neoliberalism, as British exceptionalism, with the effect of not just fostering new (or renewed) hegemonic notions of Britishness, but also sustaining the nation-state frame more generally. The discussions of these two separate but related framings of ‘exceptionality’ also serve to introduce the book’s temporal and geographical context – 2010s Britain – albeit one with constantly shifting boundaries. Third, the introduction unpacks my approach to sexuality and intimacy in more detail. In particular, I make the case for an expansive conceptualisation of sexuality that encompasses a range of relations, narratives and subjectivities (and so on), beyond what is perhaps more commonly understood to be the primary relationship between sexuality and politics: namely, those political concerns and claims that relate to our being certain kinds of sexual subjects. Finally, the introduction outlines the rest of the book’s chapters.
