CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, our intimacies were altered. In Argentina, within the framework of a 150-day Social, Preventive and Compulsory Isolation experience, middle-classes were forced to produce intimacy in the contours of our homes. Therefore, we manage our daily lives by means of artefacts and objects; by setting up support and nurturing networks with neighbours; and by articulating care strategies. In effect, our routines were redefined and thus our priorities. Some of the questions that underlie this proposal are: How intimacies are produced in the pandemic context? How "being close" (bodily and affectively) is (forced on people by the pandemic) reshaping everyday life and relations? What mediations took place in order to agency oneself amid the crisis? To what extent this forced intimacy intersects with issues such as class and gender in the Argentinian context? In this presentation, we analyse what we call forced intimacies and its tensions. We revisit and put in dialogue our fieldwork results from our own individual research: the one linked to the body and sports practices is derived from the work of Nemesia Hijós with runners and amateur athletes in training groups, and the other referring to the house and domestic life in Morón (Province of Buenos Aires) from María Florencia Blanco Esmoris study. Both investigations present ways in which gender roles and class demands are articulated in diverse scenarios in the framework of a forced production of intimacy. In this line, we understand that intimacy is a process that involves diverse actors, spaces, and goods; therefore, we consider intimacy in its complex character. Finally, we found that forced intimacies revealed with harshness how our bodies and spaces are moralized and embedded with narratives related to individual success, personal fulfillment, and wellness as a sign of mental and physical health.

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