Books by Annukka Lahti
Manchester University Press, 2022
Affective intimacies volume provides a novel platform to re-evaluate the notion of open-ended int... more Affective intimacies volume provides a novel platform to re-evaluate the notion of open-ended intimacies through the lens of affect theories. Contributors address the embodied, affective and psychic, sensorial and embodied aspects of their ongoing intimate entanglements across various timely phenomena. This fascinating collection asks how the study of affect enables us to rethink intimacies, what affect theories can do to the prevailing notion of intimacy and how they renew and enrich theories of intimacy in a manner which also considers its normative and violent forms.
This collection brings together a selection of original chapters which invite readers to rethink such concepts as care, closeness and connectivity through the notion of affective intimacies. Based on rigorous research, it offers novel insights on a variety of themes from austerity culture to online discussions on regretting motherhood, from anti-ableist notions of health to teletherapies in the era of COVID-19, and from queer intimacies to critiques of empathy.
Lively and thought-provoking, this collection contributes to timely topics across the social sciences, representing multiple disciplines from gender studies, sociology and cultural studies to anthropology and queer studies. By so doing, it advances the value of interdisciplinary perspectives and creative methodologies for understanding affective intimacies.
Peer-reviewed articles etc. (In English) by Annukka Lahti
NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research
Feminism & Psychology, Mar 4, 2015
In the public debate in Finland, same-sex couples’ right to legal recognition is routinely defend... more In the public debate in Finland, same-sex couples’ right to legal recognition is routinely defended by stressing their sameness to heterosexual couples within the discourse of romantic love. This article explores how bisexual women and their partners use these discourses. The five couple interviews were analyzed by implementing discourse analysis. The results highlight how, when taking positions within the discourse of the enduring couple relationship, the interviewees drew on the discourse of romantic love. Woman’s bisexuality disappeared easily in this talk. Although it seemed effortless at first sight, negotiations and affective tensions arose when the interviewees tried to fit their relationship into the normative discourse: Is our relationship like traditional heterosexual relationship or is it more equal? Are we similar or are we different? What role does woman’s bisexuality have in our relationship? Close reading of these negotiations revealed the hierarchies and norms related to gender and (bi)sexuality that constitute the enduring relationship discourse.
Normative western understandings of intimate relationships continue to draw upon the discourses o... more Normative western understandings of intimate relationships continue to draw upon the discourses of romantic love and the ideal of finding ‘the one’ who meets all our romantic and sexual needs. As desire is not sexually or emotionally exclusive, even people in normative relationships have to make sense of desires beyond the monogamous ideal. Bisexual people engage in these negotiations from a challenging cultural position. As a desire for more than one gender, bisexuality is persistently culturally associated with wavering desire, promiscuity and multiple partners. In light of these cultural conditions, I explore how Finnish bisexual women – and their (ex-)partners of various genders who do not identify as bisexual – negotiate desires that exceed the boundaries of normative relationships, such as attraction to ‘someone else’. I draw on the follow-up interviews of a longitudinal interview set conducted in 2005 and 2014–2015. The majority of the interviewed bisexual women and their (ex-)partners lived in monogamous long-term relationships. Yet women’s bisexuality often brought the monogamous norm under explicit negotiation. In many cases, bisexuality as a culturally ‘weak’ identity did not offer a solid frame for women to interpret their desires for people of more than one gender. The notion of bisexuality highlights the excess of sexuality beyond any normative relationship, but makes bisexual women especially vulnerable to stigma. The negotiations around women’s bisexual desires, however, broadened the participants’ (normative) ideas of relationships, and made space for women’s bisexuality in their monogamous relationships.
Subjectivity, 2017
This article explores bisexual women’s sexual experiences at the edges of or between relationship... more This article explores bisexual women’s sexual experiences at the edges of or between relationships. It draws on the follow-up interviews of a longitudinal interview set conducted in 2005 and 2014–2015 with bisexual women and their partners, who do not identify as bisexuals. Bisexual women’s spontaneous, detailed and affective narrations of sexual experiences in the follow-up interviews caught the author’s attention. Although the experiences were often narrated as pleasurable, they could be overwhelming, and women also expressed concern that they were excessive, “too much”. The analysis of the women’s accounts utilizes and develops a psychosocial concept of excess. It reveals that the excessiveness of the women’s sexual experiences is constituted by bisexuality and monogamy-related norms that restrict women’s sexuality, and also by the non-rational psychic dimensions of these experiences. Within the normative limits of feminine sexuality, sexuality’s excess often plays a propulsive role as the women strive to become sexual subjects.
NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research
Subjectivity
This article explores bisexual women’s sexual experiences at the edges of or between relationship... more This article explores bisexual women’s sexual experiences at the edges of or between relationships. It draws on the follow-up interviews of a longitudinal interview set conducted in 2005 and 2014–2015 with bisexual women and their partners, who do not identify as bisexuals. Bisexual women’s spontaneous, detailed and affective narrations of sexual experiences in the follow-up interviews caught the author’s attention. Although the experiences were often narrated as pleasurable, they could be overwhelming, and women also expressed concern that they were excessive, “too much”. The analysis of the women’s accounts utilizes and develops a psychosocial concept of excess. It reveals that the excessiveness of the women’s sexual experiences is constituted by bisexuality and monogamy-related norms that restrict women’s sexuality, and also by the non-rational psychic dimensions of these experiences. Within the normative limits of feminine sexuality, sexuality’s excess often plays a propulsive role as the women strive to become sexual subjects.
This Special Issue offers a novel platform to rethink intimacies through the lens of affect theor... more This Special Issue offers a novel platform to rethink intimacies through the lens of affect theories. In particular, it introduces new ways of understanding affective intimacies, encompassing explorations that tap into the questions of what affect theories and methodologies can provide in terms of their theoretical and methodological potential to renew feminist debates concerning intimacy. The authors of the six ground-breaking articles of this Special Issue offer alternative ways of researching and understanding these topics by not only grasping affective intimacies as a locus of their inquiry, but also by developing analytical tools to reassess the entanglements of affect and intimacy—in particular by considering affective intimacies through their multiple matterings and by carefully locating their studies in different disciplinary and interdisciplinary settings. As a whole, this Special Issue on Affective Intimacies maps the potential of affect theories in renewing feminist debat...
Journal of Sociology, 2020
This article explores Finnish LGBTIQ+ people’s break-ups. The long battle for equal rights has pl... more This article explores Finnish LGBTIQ+ people’s break-ups. The long battle for equal rights has placed LGBTIQ+ people’s relationships under pressure to succeed. Previous studies argue that partners in LGBTIQ+ relationships try to appear as ordinary and happy as possible, and remain silent about the challenges they face in their relationships. Consequently, they may miss out on opportunities to receive institutional and familial support. This study aims to move beyond recurrent frameworks that take the similarity or difference between LGBTIQ+ relationships/break-ups and mixed-sex relationships as a predefined point of departure. The analysis draws on ethnographic observations of relationship seminars for the recently separated, an online counselling site for LGBTIQ+ people, survey data, and interviews with LGBTIQ+ people who have experienced recent break-ups. It employs the Deleuzo-Guattarian concept of assemblages in order to show how different components and manifold power relations...
Feminism & Psychology, 2015
In the public debate in Finland, same-sex couples’ right to legal recognition is routinely defend... more In the public debate in Finland, same-sex couples’ right to legal recognition is routinely defended by stressing their sameness to heterosexual couples within the discourse of romantic love. This article explores how bisexual women and their partners use these discourses. The five couple interviews were analyzed by implementing discourse analysis. The results highlight how, when taking positions within the discourse of the enduring couple relationship, the interviewees drew on the discourse of romantic love. Woman’s bisexuality disappeared easily in this talk. Although it seemed effortless at first sight, negotiations and affective tensions arose when the interviewees tried to fit their relationship into the normative discourse: Is our relationship like traditional heterosexual relationship or is it more equal? Are we similar or are we different? What role does woman’s bisexuality have in our relationship? Close reading of these negotiations revealed the hierarchies and norms relate...
Sociology
The number of people living without a partner is growing globally, but this demographic shift has... more The number of people living without a partner is growing globally, but this demographic shift has barely disrupted the tenacity of the couple norm. Researchers have identified several concrete mechanisms of singlism – practices that feed the unequal treatment of single people. Nevertheless, there is still a need to develop an understanding of how singlism operates affectively. To provide insights into the affective intensities of single lives, we incorporate the notion of affective inequality into an analysis of singlehood and temporality, bringing together a range of data sets to further develop this idea. We examine the varying affective and psychic experiences that characterise how singles feel about their singlehood, how they experience the current moment and how they view the future. We argue that these experiences are shaped by singlism, and that affective inequalities and affective privileges co-condition the possibilities for different types of relationships.
Affective intimacies, 2022
I think that sharing everyday life with a woman is somehow very easy going and smooth, being toge... more I think that sharing everyday life with a woman is somehow very easy going and smooth, being together and separate, it intertwines much more easily [than with a man]. Communicating is easier and it is easier to stay on board [with] what the other person is going to do, wants and wishes, the communication is somehow open.
SQS – Suomen Queer-tutkimuksen Seuran lehti, Jun 30, 2007
Journal of Family Violence, 2023
Purpose This article analyzes violence and abuse in LGBTIQ + people's former relationships. Combi... more Purpose This article analyzes violence and abuse in LGBTIQ + people's former relationships. Combining assemblage theory with intersectionality, it rethinks queer and feminist understandings by analyzing intimate partner violence as assemblages. This offers a nuanced approach that does not rely on simplistic causal models. Methods The article draws on a dataset of interviews with separated LGBTIQ + people, 30 in Finland and 28 in England. It focuses on 13 interviewees who gave accounts of mental, physical, and sexual violence within previous relationships. Following a Deleuze-inspired rhizomatic methodology, the analysis "enters in the middle" of complex abusive assemblages and identifies the most central elements and affective entanglements that helped to maintain and/or diminish the abuse. Results Assemblages that engender and maintain abuse are complex and multiple. Nevertheless, they are not random: the rhizomatic workings of heteronormativity, the social status of LGBTIQ + relationships, and gender-related elements entangle in assemblages that amplify the effects of abuse and constrain participants' bodies. Conclusions Abuse in LGBTIQ + people's relationships can be understood through the posthuman theoretical idea of distributed agency: abuse gains force in and through its entanglements with other elements within an assemblage. This does not absolve abusive persons of responsibility for their actions. Rather, it reveals that the efficacy of agency depends on the interactive forces and elements within an assemblage. Abuse and violence often accumulate, as the exposure of bodies to injurious conditions produces affective relations that can become patterned in LGBTIQ + people's lives.
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Books by Annukka Lahti
This collection brings together a selection of original chapters which invite readers to rethink such concepts as care, closeness and connectivity through the notion of affective intimacies. Based on rigorous research, it offers novel insights on a variety of themes from austerity culture to online discussions on regretting motherhood, from anti-ableist notions of health to teletherapies in the era of COVID-19, and from queer intimacies to critiques of empathy.
Lively and thought-provoking, this collection contributes to timely topics across the social sciences, representing multiple disciplines from gender studies, sociology and cultural studies to anthropology and queer studies. By so doing, it advances the value of interdisciplinary perspectives and creative methodologies for understanding affective intimacies.
Peer-reviewed articles etc. (In English) by Annukka Lahti
This collection brings together a selection of original chapters which invite readers to rethink such concepts as care, closeness and connectivity through the notion of affective intimacies. Based on rigorous research, it offers novel insights on a variety of themes from austerity culture to online discussions on regretting motherhood, from anti-ableist notions of health to teletherapies in the era of COVID-19, and from queer intimacies to critiques of empathy.
Lively and thought-provoking, this collection contributes to timely topics across the social sciences, representing multiple disciplines from gender studies, sociology and cultural studies to anthropology and queer studies. By so doing, it advances the value of interdisciplinary perspectives and creative methodologies for understanding affective intimacies.
at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland1. Before starting her doctoral studies, she taught psychology at The
Open University of the University of Jyväskylä. In her Doctoral studies, she explores how bisexuality – which
is persistently culturally associated with temporariness, multiple partners and promiscuity – fits, fights and
expands the normative cultural understandings of relationships. Her research specifically examines how a
sample of Finnish bisexual women and their (ex-)partners of various genders negotiate bisexuality in their
relationships, as psychosocial subjects. She considers how intersecting cultural constructions of relationships,
genders and (bi)sexualities shape those negotiations and analyses her interview data through a psychosocial
lens. Her analysis shows that negotiations around bisexuality and relationships are made not only through
discursive regulation, but are also shaped in interaction with affective, non-rational psychic dimensions of
being in a relationship. She has recently published on bisexual women’s and their partners’ relationships
in Feminism & Psychology and has a number of papers under review. She is currently finishing her
dissertation and plans to start her post-doctoral research project focusing on the separation experiences of
LGBTIQ persons. Nikki Hayfield had an email discussion with Annukka over the summer to find out more
about her research and interest in bisexuality.
The concept of ‘heterosexual dynamics’ refers to the ways how gendered power actualizes when forming, maintaining and ending intimate relationships (Jurva, 2012). In my analysis of the discrepancy between the two sets of interviews, I will ask: what kind of relational contexts, and what kind of discursive and mental resources it requires to resist this hierarchical power dynamics of actualizing?
I argue, that exploring the decline in the investments in the equality discourse reveals some important aspects of how power dynamics operate in relationships. They are always embedded in gendered power hierarchies, but also affectively constructed and linked to the psycho-biographical aspects of participants’ relational life (e.g. Hollway & Jefferson, 2000; Johnson, 2015). These features do not exclude each other, but hopefully expand the analysis of gendered power in relationships and help to identify means to resist heterosexual dynamics’ persistent pull.