To browse Academia. The first account, represented mainly by Anthony Giddens and Brian McNair, concentrates on processes of democratization and emancipation; simply speaking, this approach suggests that modern intimacy contains higher amount of freedom than the pre-modern one. The second account emphasizes significance of processes of commercialization and rationalization of intimacy; according to this approach intimacy becomes more and more dependent to the capitalistic market.
The aim of the article is to analyze abovementioned accounts not as opposite, but as complementary perspectives, which enables to notice highly ambivalent character of modernization of intimacy and modernization in general.
Keywords intimacy, pure relationship, commercialization, colonization, rationalization, modernization". The article discusses two accounts of tyranny of intimacy. The first one is provided by Richard Sennett, and the second one is presented by Eva Illouz.
Although, both approaches explore two various phenomena that occurred in different time, it seem that they can be analysed as compatible descriptions of continuous process. Numerous diagnoses of contemporary transformations of love and eroticism emphasise the fact that the intimate life has become democratised and liberated. Anthony Giddens argues that personal relationships increasingly become compatible with the model of pure relationship, which means that they are more egalitarian and that both partners are free to choose and to negotiate the shape of their relations.
Sociologists like Arlie Russell Hochschild and Eva Illouz recognise the importance of feminism in democratising intimacy, thus they also claim that liberation of women has entailed rationalisation and commercialisation of intimacy. What is more, she argues that instead of humanizing men feminism is capitalising women. On the other hand, Illouz persuades that feminism β together with therapeutic discourse β rationalises intimacy by emphasising the necessity of analysing and quantifying all aspects of intimate life.
