Reveal your intimate space on social networks, affirm yourself?

Concept history. BeReal, the social network that requires posting a photo at a random time of day, regardless of the location or situation we find ourselves in, is the latest trend for Generation Z, born between 1996 and 2010. Unlike other apps such as Instagram, photos are taken instantly and without a filter, in settings that are not necessarily idyllic: this “authentic” revelation of oneself is called “extimacy”.

Coined by Jacques Lacan in 1969 in opposition to the term “intimacy,” this idea he defines as…“Intimate exterior”It was initially intended to emphasize the absence of a rupture between public space and private space. There is good continuity between them. In the early 2000s, the concept of extimacy resurfaced with Extremist diaryby Michel Tournier (La Musardine, 2002), which explores the narrator’s intimacy by describing the external details of his life: the development of his garden, his house, etc.

In the same year, psychiatrist Serge Tisseron put this idea in the news to refute the alleged arousal of participants in the reality TV show “Loft Story.” “For show-offs, the reaction they elicit from others should be predictable. Details of the psychiatrist in world, While these young men [de Loft Story] They wanted to show sides of themselves that they had never shown before, but without knowing anything about the reactions of those they would discover. »

Therefore, according to the psychiatrist, it is “The desire to tell stories is inherent in humanity, which first manifested itself in the family sphere, and then witnessed great development with the invention of coffee shops, before television and the Internet.”. If this can improve self-esteem and expand one’s social circle, this self-promotion also allows a person to define their own intimate space through… “Merchant” : By choosing what we decide to show or not.

The concept of intimacy has not always been defined in the same way, as its linguistic development tells us. In the seventeenth century^H Horn, root “intimate” It is used in French to refer to an external relationship, i.e. a friend in whom one has great confidence. Then in the eighteenth century^H a century, “intimate” Become a super label “What is the deepest”, the concept that Rousseau will explain in his book Confessions, Although this term is not used at all.

That was only on the nineteenth^H century that the word assumed its current meaning of “internal and”. Secret », a movement that goes hand in hand with the recognition of a physical space dedicated to intimacy. With the emergence of individual spaces in Western society – the famous “Private room” Virginia Woolf demands—intimate shifts definitively to the inner dimension.

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