PWNC LLOSG - Radical Intimacy with Sophie K Rosa and Sam james. a blog by amira hayat

Pwnc Llosg is a youth led group that strives to cultivate opportunities for anyone to engage in discussions on current issues, making space for interacting with challenging topics and opening your mind to new ideas and perspectives. Our events are informed by our local context in Cardiff and wider Cymru. We develop topical questions as a collective, informed by our lived experiences in Cymru and through Cymraeg. 

            The first reading room session was on Sophie K. Rosa’s ‘Radical Intimacy’, facilitated by Sam Rogers, community organiser, activist, and writer. Pwnc Llosg collective members Dan Southhall, PhD researcher and writer whose work focuses on philosophy and Welsh identity and Samia Yassine, International Relations Masters student and activist, opened the conversation, asking how the title of the book relates to the Cymraeg-speaking perspective. Dan Southall and Samia Yassine shared that  Radical Intimacy translates most closely to Revolutionary Closeness in Cymraeg. This got us thinking about how this differs from Radical Intimacy and reframed how we approached the first question:  ‘What is Radical Intimacy?’. 

Sophie shared that she originally wanted to name the book ‘Intimate Comrades’, but after reviewing and editing, Radical Intimacy was the title that was settled on (which she actually prefers). The word intimacy in this book is to be defined as ‘forms of connection’ and ‘care’, to be present not absent, whilst radical is the kind of political radicalism that seeks to transform the world. The book itself aims to get to the ‘root of intimacy as we know it’. These themes are carried through the conversations held in the room.

In discussing and exploring the theme of non-transactional relationships, we began by thinking about what are non-transactional relationships and what they look like. One of the first examples is our relationship to and with the world. Rosa shares that, in order to truly love in any kind of relationship, we must battle against our own weaknesses and flaws such as narcissism and ego and that can be extremely difficult to do. We experience people as a separate universe, including behaviours and experiences that are separate from ourselves. Many participants shared that they believe that contemporary society lacks compassion and the need for real human connection, leaving little to no room for getting to the root of people, and what makes them who they truly are. In the context of Cymru, members of the group talked about their experience in growing up in Cymru in the 90s and early 2000s, and expressed that there was a real sense of friendship, kinship and community. They knew they could spend time with their neighbours because they had built strong relationships with people in their neighbourhood and this therefore led to a strong sense of community and belonging. These relationships were non-transactional, as they spent time with each other out of care, not to gain. Many of the participants feel like this is something that does not really exist to that same extent, we may know of some of our neighbours and we greet them in passing, but there is no deep sense of friendship, community and trust as there once was.

Rosa shares from her own experience in running a community co-op that building relationships in the community means that relationships cannot be transactional. You have no choice but to work together, developing personal resilience and patience with others, and this can be applied to activism, learning to navigate tension as well as maintaining solidarity amongst each other. Similarly, the sense of community and trust that has been lost in communities also happens in activist groups. Unfortunately, many groups become further divided by minor differences and this can impact trust, solidarity and community. With the idea of non-transactional relationships, we can learn to navigate around our differences whilst still working towards achieving the main goal. This is crucial to Pwnc Llosg as a youth led group that does not shy away from discussions on current topics that impact people from all walks of life. Many of us will have different life experiences, but it is important to bear in mind that we can learn from one another and still work towards our goal of learning, discussing and opening our minds to other perspectives.

The next conversation explores themes of motherhood, care, and compassion, discussing how common it is for someone in a group to take on the caring labour role as a ‘mother’ and this can, in some ways, be seen as extractive and oppressive. This can lead to other issues such as gender conditioning, gender socialisation and how they can impact care. Instead, it would be healthier to be able to teach others how to be compassionate and caring as well, therefore, being able to care for each other.

In relation to Cymru, specifically Cardiff, how do we imagine the future of Cardiff in the context of care? To discuss this, the second part of the event had everyone break off into smaller groups of four to five people to discuss different ideas, when we came back together to share, the room was vibrant with ideas and experiences, talking about Tiger Bay and its culture and heritage, the ways in which people used to interact with each other in contrast to contemporary society. Others suggested that capitalism has impacted the community, using examples of big events such as concerts, football and rugby games, taking place in the city and its impacts on the locals in terms of race, accessibility, living, leading to conversations around gentrification and its impact on the community. Many shared that Cardiff feels much safer compared to other cities such as London and Manchester, but they feel as though it is changing more and more and adopting the same characteristics as bigger cities. People in Cardiff are described as kind, friendly and helpful, however, they also feel as though Cardiff as a whole in its current state ‘lacks real relationships and connections’ and that therefore, can feel performative. The more Cardiff becomes like a big city, the more we recognise the power of building and maintaining a revolutionary closeness. This is why spaces like The Canopi and collectives like Pwnc Llosg are crucial in building and maintaining a revolutionary closeness, bringing people from local communities together to talk, learn and discuss.