Among committed readers of romantic fiction in Malaysia, constructed ideals of intimacy are mobilised as a matter of personal moral enterprise and a panacea for emotional asymmetry between the sexes. Yet, such ideals are as much an outcome of collective meaning-making as an individual one. As this article will show, the affective rewards of mediated romance are relational and have a distributive, contagious, transformative as well as spatial effect crossing spaces both ‘private’ and ‘public’, work and leisure, personal and community. I argue that aspirations for marital success and personal self-actualisation motivate a range of affective creative labour for sustaining ethical relationships with the self, significant others, family, and community in what I call the counterpublics of care, which refer to social assemblages committed to the revaluation of intimacy, emotion work, and love.
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I began my field research on the social and commercial practices that underpin the Malay romance industry in February 2017. A series of focus group discussions was organised with readers between ages 19 and 29 and with those aged 30 to 50 who were either married or divorced, and were parents, married and/or single. They were segregated into the two age groups to anticipate different media habits and thematic interests. Although the invitation to participate was not gender-specific, all focus group participants who attended the sessions identified as Malay-Muslim women and committed readers of the Malay romance genre. I also met with five popular and emerging authors, several publishers, booksellers, editors, and individual readers of romance novels for audio recorded in-depth interviews. (5)
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women’s emotion work lies at the foundation of Malay romance and conservative ideas about romantic love. As a resource it often goes unappreciated and uncompensated in domestic relationships, but the Malay romance industry taps on it. Stories repurpose cultural ideas of women as emotional creatures responsible for the delicate management of peacekeeping in the household to produce a social text and a version of care. Social spaces of the romance industry provide opportunities for women to become a source of emotional support and validation for each other in ways both direct and indirect. (5)
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