Stellenbosch University: Subtle and complex processes of knowing and showing explored at conference

Prof Gabeba Baderoon, a poet and scholar from Pennsylvania State University in the USA and the keynote speaker at the Slow Intimacy Conference that was recently held at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, was raised on the Cape Flats.

She recalls how, as a child, she heard her beloved father lamenting not being able to get his roses to bloom in the sandy soil of Athlone where the family was moved during apartheid. Yet, after some 47 years, his Athlone garden is a place of great beauty – all because of his determined, intimate connection with the soil.

This is just one of the examples of presentations at the conference, which took place from 12 to 14 October in Stellenbosch and was convened by Prof Amanda Gouws, SARChi Chair in Gender Politics at SU. Professor Lou-Marié Kruger from SU’s Department of Psychology was the co-convenor.

The three-day conference saw an exploration of the concept of slow intimacy, which relates to “intimate interactions that are enduring, long-standing, in process, and in development over time”.

The aim was to explore the “subtle, nuanced, complex, multi-layered and intricate” processes of knowing and showing associated with slow intimacy and to discuss questions like: Who gets to know and who gets to show? In what conditions are knowing and showing possible? How is intimacy tied to power? How is intimacy informed or shaped by larger societal processes (political, social, economic)?

​Kruger, a clinical psychologist, related how, while sitting in the waiting room of a government clinic in the low-income Dwarsrivier Valley outside Stellenbosch, she watched a patient fall to the floor and die in front of her. She contrasted the intimacy of being present for the death of this man, a complete stranger, with the intimacy at the deathbed of her mother, with whom she had a close relationship.

Three scholars – Vivienne Bozalek, Nike Romano and Tamara Shefer – described their intimacy with the “more-than-human” when they go wild sea swimming together – and how their thinking and writing is influenced whilst “encrusted with ocean bacteria, shivering with underwater creatures and plants …”

History professor Sandra Swart talked about her intimate relationship with her horse Aztec, “a gentle mare of melancholy loveliness” and the mare’s daughter, Voodoo, who is “short, stubborn and with strong opinions”. She narrated how intimacy has grown between her and her horses through “peering into their shit every day to predict their health … running my hands along their legs, opening their gums, reaching between their udders for ticks …”

Two friends, Marion Stevens and Makhosazana Xaba, described their friendship over a number of years through their shared interests and solidarity.

In a documentary which depicted the intimacy of gay relationships and the intimacy of violence, filmmakers Prof Siona O’Connell and Prof Vasu Reddy described how a young Indian man, along with his partner, are beaten “to a pulp” in Durban by his own father in front of his community because he has shamed them by being gay.

Intimacy versus slow intimacy

Opening the conference, Gouws said her feminist study group, comprising nine women in different disciplines – political science, philosophy, history, psychology, English, theology and fine arts – decided to host a conference on slow intimacy in 2021.

“The subject of intimacy has been investigated by feminist scholars, including Lauren Berland, for at least a decade,” she said. “But we want to distinguish slow intimacy from intimacy.

“We can think of slow intimacy as the other side of the coin of slow violence – our connection to being human, to be vulnerable, to open ourselves up to the humanity of others, engaging the post human through other species and planetary connections,” she added.

“Therefore, this conference is an engagement with a broader global context of brutality, social exclusion, deepening poverty and precariousness. Right now it is as though the world is waiting to exhale in the face of what could be apocalyptic events. How far is Vladimir Putin willing to go? How will Europe survive the deadly cold of its winter? What will the next climate disaster be and where? Will we all eventually learn to live without electricity?

“In the face of these possible catastrophes, we turn to intimate spaces and attachments.”

Gouws said slow intimacy takes place “in different sites, on different scales and involves different types of showing”.

The conference was not purely academic but also creative, including engagement with poetry, novels, films and art. Presentations also looked at intimacy relating to food, sex and consumption, among others.

Mourning in the time of Covid; intimacy fault lines

In her presentation entitled ‘Mourning the More than Human’, philosophy professor Louise du Toit discussed the concept of grief as a “pre-reflexive, embodied kind of knowing and showing”. She described how Covid has challenged and upended many habits and prior understandings of grieving.

“During this time, many had to die alone, and many more were left bereft of familiar ways of sending off their loved ones. As we experience the unfolding catastrophes associated with the Anthropocene, these unprecedented dislocations with respect to the death of others, will only intensify. This upheaval extends to other forms of unprecedented grieving in our time. My question then becomes … how to conceive of human grieving for the more-than-human losses we incur, and whether such mourning might constitute a politics of commemoration.”

In her presentation, ‘Intimacy and its Limits’, Prof Vasti Roodt from SU’s Department of Philosophy, discussed the “fault line that runs between the public and the private, the political and the intimate” – and spoke about how intimacy becomes perverted when it is transplanted into the public domain.

“We are both particular individuals, who love and want to be loved in turn and citizens of a world we share with others who are not our intimates. The satisfaction of the one always comes at some cost to the other. Intimacy can only flourish in private and thus needs protection from the public gaze. The public domain, on the other hand, needs protection from the demands of intimacy which threaten the conditions for living together with others.”

Law professor Jaco Barnard Naudé spoke about the concept of ‘extimacy’, which exposes us to the ‘other’ that hides in the core of our intimacy – and “lies in wait in our most intimate thoughts”.

Gouws said the concept of slow intimacy is important to contemplate in this day and age. “Our world is so saturated with violence and despair which have become part of our subconscious. This is a moment to talk about intimacy; not the spectacular issues we talk about daily, but the slow embodied emotions and ways we relate to the world, because it is critical that we don’t lose our humanity and the ability to relate to each other.”

The conference also involved discussions between older and younger feminists about how these different generations experience life.

The conference was multidisciplinary, multi-layered and in some ways intensely personal. The organising team intends to publish a book featuring the high quality papers that were presented.