The ‘private’ life of US politics part two: affect, intimacy and public bathrooms

In part one of this two-part blog post, I looked at the rise in popularity of populist politics in the US, as represented by Donald Trump. In light of the presidential elections it seemed timely to try to understand why there has been such a shift in the political climate here (although it is by no means confined to this region). I sought to provide an alternative analysis to the more usual economic, historical and socio-political explanations and in reading Lauren Berlant’s introductory chapter to Intimacy: a special issue [1] (1998), it struck me that her theoretical insights could be applied as away of thinking about the affective life of US politics. Therefore in this second post I once more consider Berlant’s thoughts on public intimacies to examine a significant debate which has taken place as a backdrop to the elections, dubbed a ‘culture war’ – transgender rights and the use of bathrooms in public schools.