How is it that "private matters" are analyzed endlessly and daily in public forums? Why is it assumed that "getting a life" means having a private relationship? Intended to unravel some of the tangled relations that fall under the broad category of "intimacy", this provocative collection articulates the ways in which intimate lives are connected with institutions, ideologies, and desires.

Locating its domain in the familiar spaces of friendship, love, sex, family, and feeling "at home", Intimacy also examines the estrangement, betrayal, loneliness, and even violence that may accompany the demise of relationships, both personal and political. These include intimacies among strangers, which can happen in times of national scandal or habits of everyday life. The contributors to this volume traverse many disciplines and cultures, tracking the processes by which intimate lives absorb and repel the dominant rhetoric, law, ethics, and ideologies of public spheres. Drawing on examples from contemporary culture, history, art, literature, and music, the contributors illuminate ways in which intimacy has become linked with stories of citizenship, capitalism, aesthetic forms, and the writing of history.