Tied Together by Death – Post-Mortem Forms of Affective Intimacy in LGBTQ People’s Stories of Partner Loss

Abstract

In the Western social imaginary, death cuts people apart from their loved ones on the embodied level while the connection may persist on the emotional level. In bereavement studies, this has been theorized as continuing bonds. In this article, I explore these bonds by focusing on their affective and intimate nature. I examine the topic through 10 in-depth interviews conducted with LGBTQ(1) people who have lost partners and expartners to death. Following feminist and queer theories of affect and intimacy, I ask how post-mortem forms of affective intimacy appeared in the interviewees' stories, how they felt about it, and how it had affected their new romantic relationships. For many, affective intimacy was an important, yet sometimes involuntary, part of grieving and remembrance. It appeared as complex and enduring entanglements of both positive and negative affects with an ability to interfere with the interviewees' relationships, challenging the boundaries of monogamy. Following the logics of queer death studies, this article rethinks bereavement studies by bringing affective intimacy into focus and deepening the analysis of LGBTQ people's stories of partner loss.