Abstract

LUNA C., María Teresa. Intimacy and the experience of the public sphere. Rev.latinoam.cienc.soc.niñez juv [online]. 2007, vol.5, n.1, pp.367-389. ISSN 1692-715X.

This research project follows the approach proposed by Alfred Schütz in the phenomenology of the social world; intimacy and subjetive experience are discussed as categories that show the experience of constructing an "I" and a "Thou". In the process, new meanings for the relationship to oneself and to others are produced, thus seemingly creating public action patterns, where the public space is understood as the one that is physically and symbolically shared with those nearby. Extensive autobiographical interviews were held with three women and one man strongly committed to public service, who were affiliated with Non-Governmental Organizations in the city of Medellín (Colombia). The unit of analysis was the narrative, understood as a story with a beginning, a development and an end, and biographical events were selected, understood as those events that produce a turning point in one’s biography, either because they break a sequence or because they initiate a new one. Results show intimacy as an experience of self-positioning in those moral problems found at the basis of public action; they also show that intimate relationships with friends, peers and partners are based on confidence, care and respect, which act as determinants of transits in the public sphere.

Keywords : Intimacy; public sphere; ego; self; subjectivity; political subject; phenomenology.

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