On the Lives of Modern State Law

Modern state law is an expansive force that permeates life and politics. Law's histories—colonial, revolutionary, and postcolonial—tell of its constitutive centrality to the making of colonies and modern states. Its powers intertwine with life itself; they attempt to direct it, shape its most intimate spheres, decide on the constitutive line dividing public from private, and take over the space and time in which life unfolds. These powers settle in the present, eliminate past authorities, and dictate futures. Gendering and constitutive of sexual difference, law's powers endeavor to mold subjects and alter how they orient themselves to others and to the world. But these powers are neither coherent nor finite. They are ripe with contradictions and conflicting desires. They are also incapable of eliminating other authorities, paths, and horizons of living; these do not vanish but remain not only thinkable and articulable but also a resource for the living. Such are some of the overlapping and accumulative interventions of the two books under review: Sara Pursley's Familiar Futures and Judith Surkis's Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria. What follows is an attempt to further develop these interventions by thinking with some of the books’ underlying arguments. Familiar Futures is a history of Iraq, beginning with the British colonial-mandate period and concluding with the 1958 Revolution and its immediate aftermath. Sex, Law, and Sovereignty is a history of “French Algeria” that covers a century of French colonization from 1830 to 1930. The books converge on key questions concerning how modern law and the modern state—colonial and postcolonial—articulated sexual difference and governed social and intimate life, including through the rise of personal-status law as a separate domain of law constitutive of the conjugal family. Both books are consequently also preoccupied with the relationship between sex, gender, and sovereignty. And both contain resources for living along paths not charted by the modern state and its juridical apparatus.

Postfeminist Versions of Equality? An Analysis of Relationship and Sex Counseling Practices in Finland

Relationship and sex counseling are pivotal components of the “therapeutization of society,” which has been identified and widely examined as a key transformation of 21st-century modern Western societies. The particular understandings of gender and sexuality that circulate in those practices contribute to the wider everyday conceptions of intimate life and are thus important to investigate from a feminist perspective. Combining insights from studies on therapeutic cultures, research on intimate relationships, scholarship on postfeminism, and affect theory, this article taps into the often ambivalent ways in which gender equality and sexual rights are articulated in relationship and sex counseling practices. My data are derived from an ethnographic investigation of relationship enhancement events in Finland. Equality was widely supported at these events, but there was no consensus regarding what desirable equality actually looked like. My analysis identifies several contradictory patterns in the data. First, there are statements to the effect that equality has “gone too far.” Second, many experts express tokenized critiques yet remain invested in depoliticizing views. Third, there are acts of resistance that embrace diversity and expand everyday understandings of gender and sexuality. I argue that these patterns constitute a postfeminist sensibility, thus complicating the belief that Nordic countries are exceptionally supportive of equality.

Erobots and the deterritorialization of eroticism

As a result of its accelerated evolution in the early 21st Century, technology has already extended far beyond mere instrumental status. In the not too distant future we can expect technology to move towards a new dimension in terms of fusing with human nature; most notably in the field of intimacy towards what are known as erobots (i.e., sexbots, augmented erotic characters, erotic chatbots, erotic avatars, etc.). Given that these erobots have every chance to become part of a future eroticism, this places erobots beyond the onto-metaphysical grounding of the Western tradition regarding objects. This is an aspect that attracts the dissolution of the anthropocentric legacy of Western metaphysics, within the parameters of OOO, by showing that, in this paradigm, so-called human uniqueness is suffering an ontological twist. To show this I am investigating, the scenario that involves the relationship between a sexbot and a human, alongside of that between two sexbots, within the limits of OOO. Consequently, I am addressing the issue of how a sexbot relates to both a human agent and to another sexbot. I am also analyzing the perspective in which a future presence of erobots in the intimate life of the individual will twist the traditional image of eroticism in Western culture. This perspective is opening a deconstructing process with regard to human exceptionalism – analyzed within the limits of the ‘deterritorialization’ of eroticism – from the traditional structures of Western metaphysical heritage. Such deterritorialization emphasizes the paradigm shift in which eroticism is leaving the familiar terrain of the metaphysics of presence and the fixed structures of societies’ ‘strata’. Thus, following the philosophical thinking of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the ‘reterritorialization’ of eroticism – in the fluid, transversal and rhizomatic network of technology – is an ongoing, ever-changing process, taking place in the immanent sphere of techno-eroticism’s ‘plane of consistency’.

Microbial redox interplay enhances biodiversity and ecosystem productivity

A significant portion of the Earth’s biodiversity and biomass is from the subsurface biosphere, where chemotrophic microbial species harness diverse inorganic oxidation-reduction reactions (redox reactions) as a major source of metabolic energy while driving biogeochemical cycles. Given the limited availability of energy in the anaerobic environment, a fundamental question concerns what interplay between the chemical environment and chemotrophic community enables the persistence of whole biogeochemical systems. Here, using a thermodynamics-based mechanistic model that maps the interplay between diverse chemotrophic species and chemical compounds onto a redox network, we show that cycles of redox reactions mediate chemotrophic interactions in a way that increases the complexity of both redox reaction networks and microbial communities and enhances the community-level efficiency of energy metabolism. The high efficiency and complexity of biogeochemical systems arises from the self-organised ecological niche segmentation of microbes. More specifically, a consortium of chemotrophic species that subdivide a long-reaction pathway into shorter-reaction segments enhance each other’s population growth, replaces the species that monopolises the long-reaction pathway, and increases ecosystem productivity. An ecologically driven ‘division of metabolic labour’ in the chemotrophic community provides a novel mechanism through which an intimate life-environment interplay concurrently enhances biodiversity and ecosystem productivity.

Everyday Intimacies and Inter-Ethnic Relationships: Tracing Entanglements of Gender and Race in Multicultural Singapore

Through the proposed frame of ‘everyday intimacies’, this article explores the entanglements of race and gender in inter-ethnic relationships. ‘Everyday intimacies’ brings together the minority experiences of everyday racism, the state practices and policies of multiculturalism, and their inflections in intimate relationships of marriage, friendship, and dating. This approach demonstrates not just how the state regulates people’s intimate life through policies of marriage and family, but also how other indirect processes of multicultural governance mediate intimate life. Drawing on biographical narratives of mainly Indian women from in-depth life story interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, the article brings the literature on intimacies in conversation with the scholarship on race and ethnic relations in Singapore. Through a focus on intimacy, the article illustrates how tacit knowledge and embodied effects of everyday racism relate to larger trends of intermarriages, rising singlehood among Indian women and possibilities of co-ethnic friendships and solidarities. In doing so, the article presents novel insight into race and gender relations in Singapore.

Silencing the single woman: Negotiating the ‘failed’ feminine subject in contemporary UK society

Despite a growth in single women in UK society over the past two decades, single femininity continues to be highly stigmatised. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of the heterosexual matrix and applying this to qualitative interview data with 25 single women, I argue that single femininity is produced as abject through processes of silencing which render the single female a ‘failed’ subject and reinscribe heteronormative coupled femininity. Yet while deeply painful, such ‘failures’ may also be productive, offering moments where the boundaries of heteronormative feminine subjectivity and hierarchies of intimate life are troubled and transformed. This article complicates understandings of stigma and resistance through a nuanced analysis of processes of abjectification and ambivalence.

Sexual dysfunction as a consequence of coronavirus infection and quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic

В статье рассматриваются факторы, связанные с пандемией COVID-19, влияющие на интимную жизнь в постоянных парах. Исследования сексологов, психологов, психотерапевтов, репродуктологов, объединение разносторонних проявлений самооценки и взаимоотношений в интимной сфере демонстрируют довольно стройную картину явлений, связанных с психологическими, психическими и физиологическими запросами и возможностями как отдельных индивидуумов, так и макросоциальных образований. Отмечается зависимость проявлений сексуальности от напряженности инфекционной ситуации и карантинной политики. Предлагаются практические подходы для стабилизации и улучшения интимного поведения в супружеских парах при проживании в ограниченных условиях в присутствии других членов семьи, направленные на снижение риска депрессии и сексуальных расстройств в условиях самоограничения при пандемии COVID-19. В настоящее время, после зимы 2020-2021 гг., сопровождающейся прогрессивным снижением уровня заболеваемости и смертности, растет число людей с рациональным отношением к происходящему, которые активно адаптируются внутри семьи, а также в социуме. The article examines the factors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting intimate life in long-term couples. Research by sexologists, psychologists, psychotherapists, reproductologists, combining versatile manifestations of self-esteem and relationships in the intimate sphere demonstrate a fairly harmonious picture of phenomena associated with psychological, mental and physiological needs and capabilities of both individuals and macrosocial formations. The dependence of manifestations of sexuality on the intensity of the infectious situation and quarantine policy is noted. Practical approaches are proposed to stabilize and improve intimate behavior in married couples living in limited conditions in the presence of other family members, aimed at reducing the risk of depression and sexual dysfunction in self-restraint conditions in the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, after the winter of 2020-2021, accompanied by a progressive decrease in the level of morbidity and mortality, the number of people with a rational attitude to what is happening is growing, who are actively adapting within the family, as well as in society.

RATIONING OF THE INTIMATE LIFE OF COMMUNISTS AND KOMSOMOL MEMBERS IN THE ACTIVITIES OF THE CONTROL COMMISSIONS OF THE RKP(B) IN THE 1920s (THE CASE OF PERM REGION)

The article highlights the practice of rationing the intimate life of communists and Komsomol members in the activities of the control commissions of the RKP(b) Perm region in the 1920s. It analyzes both the norms translated by Bolshevik ideologists and their application by such a significant institution as control commissions. The use of microhistorical analysis methods made it possible to make significant observations based on a relatively small circle of sources - on materials deposited in the Perm archives of the control commissions and other bodies of the RCP(b), as well as court cases. The publication deepens and concretizes the ideas about the tools for controlling private life in Soviet Russia in the 1920s. The authors come to the conclusion that the norms of intimate relations between men and women supported by the control commissions completely fit into the framework of “traditional” morality, which, in particular, was also preached by the Orthodox Church. At the same time, party ideologists and functionaries of the control commissions preferred to derive these norms from the prevailing ideologues about the "interests of the proletariat".