Strange/r/ness: (Post)digital Intimacies in Uncanny Worlds

Abstract

In this article, we interrogate strange intimacies in digital culture by engaging with the multiplicity and ambiguities of the strange, the stranger, and strangeness. We situate our accounts in critical intimacies research, and those that apply this in context of digital, mediated, data, and postdigital cultures. We argue for a foregrounding of the strange, and recognise the parallels between intimacy’s resistance to singularity and the way the strange can only be approached as plurality and multiplicity. Experimenting with strange/r/ness, we then draw on a heteroglossic framework to explore four examples that differently position the strange, exploring how the strange is found, what it does, and what feelings of belonging or non-belonging it creates. Our examples broadly map onto bodily intimacies, our intimate knowledge of ourselves, belonging in communities, and the relationship between intimacy, society, and politics. They run from the micro to the macro, while the distinctions between these elements always remain permeable. We finish with a discussion of the value of bringing the intimate and the strange together, revealing their relationship to one another, and highlighting the critical capacity that developing these two concepts together permits