Adultery scandals involving politicians. Dating websites for married women and men. News reports on raids of polygamous communities. It seems that non-monogamy is everywhere: in popular culture, in the news, and before the courts. In Fraught Intimacies, Nathan Rambukkana delves into how polygamy, adultery, and polyamory are represented in the public sphere. His intricate analysis reveals how some forms of non-monogamy are tacitly accepted, even glamourized, while others are vilified and reviled. By questioning what this says about intimacy, power, and privilege, this book offers an innovative framework for understanding the status of non-monogamy in Western society. Reviews: Rambukkana’s study covers wide ground and is unusual for its relational and inter-textual analysis. His discussion not only highlights differences, but much common discursive ground across which different styles of intimacy are constructed. Rambukkana explores communalities, even if they may be uncomfortable and brush against the grain of cherished taken-for-granted wisdoms. Truly impressive is Rambukkana’s consistency in working along intersectional lines of inquiry, thereby enriching polyamory scholarship with an approach that is attentive to race, class and gender perspectives. — C. Klesse, Sexualities, March 2017 Undoing Monogamy and Fraught Intimacies both attempt ambitious theoretical interventions into the study of intimacy, and are indispensable resources to those already engaged in the study of non/monogamies. Through the diversity of their archives and the breadth of their thoroughly intersectional critiques, Rambukkana and Willey demonstrate that the contemporary study of non/monogamy does not, and cannot, proceed in isolation. In their discussions of non/monogamy as it appears in colonialism, border control, life sciences, comic strips and the law, these two very different books demonstrate the diverse pleasures of intellectual promiscuity. — Jessica Kean, University of Sydney, Australian Feminist Studies, Vol. 31 No. 90, March 2017 About the Author: Nathan Rambukkana is an assistant professor in communication studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. |