Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

matter, or result in unsatisfying and even toxic relationships. However, affective textures also can and do change
over time, which may convince partners to revise their understanding about their current or past relationships. The
papers presented in this panel introduce those novel ways for approaching affective temporalities in intimate
relationships, which have been developed in the Academy of Finland funded research project “Just the Two of Us?
Affective Inequalities in Intimate Relationships”.
Raisa Jurva Regret, Bitterness and Resourcefulness in Hindsight: Affective Attachments in Creating Futurities for
Heterosexual Relationships
Having interviewed mid- to later-life women on their heterosexual relationships in general and on
relationships with substantially younger men in particular, a major part of the interviews revolves around
reflections on abusive and oppressive aspects of their past relationships. This narration is often affectively
intense, for example as strong regret and self-blame for being stuck in destructive situations or assertive
demonstrations of one’s own triumphant resourcefulness in resisting being a helpless female victim in the
middle of abusive situations. Inspired by Sara Ahmed’s (2004) ideas on emotions and norms, I approach this
narration as manifestations of affective attachments in the context of gendered conventions of heterosexual
relationships. In this paper I ask, what kinds of futurities for heterosexual relationships are created through
these affective attachments that are constructed in hindsight and how are these affective attachments
negotiated in women’s narration of their current relationships.
Katrina Jaworski
What it means to live: queer youth suicide and kinship
Terms such as resilience are commonly used in approaches of understanding and preventing queer youth
suicide. As useful as resilience can be, its largely psychological makeup cannot explain fully how surviving
suicide might be more than a matter of individually persevering against the odds. Drawing on unstructured
in-depth interviews with queer young people, in this paper I argue that resilience needs a healthy dose of
queer kinship if we are to respond to queer young people’s experiences of suicide in ways that do not
pathologise them. This kind of kinship, I also argue, is relational without which the courage to persevere is
not viable. In so doing, my purpose is two fold. First, I want to offer a frame through which we can recognise
the pleasure of being young and queer without forgetting the wounds young people sustain as a result of
suicide. Second, I want to consider the possibility of queer courage as an ethic, part of the bonds that sustain
young lives often framed as unlivable.
Tuula Juvonen Affective Traces of Desire
Emotional intimacy between the partners is often understood to rely on the embodied exchange of desire.
Showing and sharing desire in a relationship is a form of affective communication, which “draws attention to
what passes between bodies, which can be felt but perhaps not easily articulated” (Blackman 2012). This
paper takes a look at an intimate relationship, in which the embodied affective communication fell apart. It
is based on the reading of diaries written by a lesbian woman during the course of her five-year relationship.
How is the gradual erosion of sexual intimacy reflected in the diary entries? What kind of articulations and
affective traces did the process leave in the text? The analysis seeks to articulate and contextualize her
affective entries, in order to make sense why continuing the relationship became intolerable for her, and
made a breakup unavoidable.
Marjo Kolehmainen
Investing in Dyadic Futures? Affective Work within Therapeutic Cultures
My post-doctoral research re-examines the widespread therapeutic cultures as a form of affective work,
focusing especially on relationship and sex counselling. I explore various counselling practices targeted at
244