Introduction

To stand beneath the towering steel- and- glass edifices of Sydney's latest commercial development, Barangaroo, is to witness – and feel – the smoothed- out, friction- free flows promised by contemporary financial capitalism. Formally known as East Darling Harbour and situated on the unceded lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, Barangaroo is a key pillar of the Global Sydney project, built with the intent of attracting the interests of capital and shaping the future of Sydney's landscape accordingly (Baker and Ruming, 2015; Harris, 2018). Spanning 22 hectares of previously industrial land to the west of the Harbour Bridge, Barangaroo is the largest urban redevelopment project in Sydney since the 2000 Olympics and was announced by the then New South Wales premier, Bob Carr, as a ‘historic opportunity to return a substantial part of Sydney's foreshore back to the people’ (NSW Government, 2005). However, as the development reaches its final phase, Barangaroo is increasingly proving to be a ‘placed’ landscape, built for – and by – the ‘progressive’ and ‘virtuous’ allure of finance. Populated by premium financial firms, a scandal- plagued casino and the homogenized blur of white faces, dark suits and crisp shirts, Barangaroo stands as an isolated cluster removed from the surrounding areas. Like so many urban regeneration projects, Barangaroo is designed to create a space that transforms its host city into a key strategic hub of global financial exchange (Harris, 2018; Burns, 2019). Walk along the slicken wooden promenade, the stains of labour and history have been removed, instead the curated presence of manicured waterfront eateries, designer shops and financial institutions, all swarmed by beaming faces, slip into and become one to imbue this space with the affective atmosphere of place and, with it, belonging.

If place making is about creating and sustaining an imaginary, giving form to a non- representable idea (Ranciere, 2007) or, more precisely, giving ‘figurative shape to presence’ (Abraham and Torok, 1972: 128), then affective atmospheres describe the impact such force of presence has on the bodies who occupy (or are excluded from) space (Bohme, 1993; Brand, 2023). The affective atmospheres of finance, in other words, bring into sharp focus the dynamic, productive and felt interplay between spatiality, affect and assembling of bodies, emotion, discourse, materiality and technology (Brand, 2023).

This Sex and Intimacy in Later Life book series will explore, interrogate and enlighten upon the sensual, sexual and intimate lives of older people. The motivation for launching this series was a concern with the relative lack of attention in public, professional and academic/ intellectual spheres to sex and intimacy in later life (indicatively, Hafford- Letchfield, 2008; Simpson et al, 2018a, 2018b). The series is intended to contribute to and enrich the development of the field of studies in the intersections of age, sex, sexuality and intimacy as a critical and important area of scholarship. It is only beginning to be recognised as an important social, cultural and political issue within and beyond the ‘Western’ academy, from which it has emerged. Its earliest contributions, of which this volume are a part, are motivated by a desire to recognise and reject the pathologies and prejudices that have infused this intersection – what Simpson has termed ‘ageist erotophobia’ (Simpson et al, 2018b: p 1479) – and fuels the failure to acknowledge older people as sexual agents. This is both an intellectual and a political agenda, to question and evaluate the impact of real rather than assumed losses of cognitive, physical, social and sexual capacity, and to recuperate older people as sexual agents from dismissal, ridicule and trivialisation.

If the latter half of the twentieth century was characterised by challenges to the pathologies of social identities – particularly gender, ethnicity and race, disability, sexuality – and struggles for recognition, rights and liberties, more intersectional struggles and recognitions characterise the twenty- first century (on intersectionality, see indicatively Hancock, 2016; Hill Collins and Bilge, 2016). Significant among these has been the re- evaluation of what it is to age and to be an older agent in contemporary societies. Older people have historically experienced both veneration and respect and neglect and pathology, largely based on differing cultural stereotypes of the value of age (Ylanne, 2012). The most common characterisation is that older people are not sexual, past being sexual or represent a problematic sexuality – or their sexuality is a superficial concern and secondary to concerns of health, care, life course and support by public services and engagement and pensions/ resources. Such concerns are those mainly of ‘Western’ cultures and reflected in the Western influence across the globe in respect of state intervention and provision, but elsewhere they have been subsumed and often rendered invisible into family and kinship structures.

Introduction

An enormous amount of attention has been dedicated to Western views of sexuality and ageing and subsequently, has occluded the majority world. Thus, this volume has focused on the intersections of age, sex, sexuality and intimacy of individuals within the latter. Older adults’ sexuality has been relegated to a position of silence, and/ or abnormality, as if they are not sexual beings with desires, but rather with dysfunction. For LGBTQ adults, their sexuality has been marginalised and silenced or paraded as abnormality throughout their lives. Older adults’ sexuality and intimacy have been gendered and, especially for older women, considered taboo for discussion or participation. Themes and issues emerging from contributors against the backdrop of geographical and cultural rigidity in this volume are identified and their implications discussed.

How ageing and getting older are defined is multifaceted and involves a numerical/ chronological existence that is measured in time, culturally and perceptually. Ageing is further contextualised depending on identity, for example, older trans sex workers in India are perceived to have reached old age between 35 and 40 years old because their beauty is seen as beginning to fade. Older age is by far the largest period along the developmental continuum plagued by misconceptions and stereotypes (Dudek et al, 2022).

Intimacy, sexuality and sexual identities are commonly understood as natural (or naturalised) human expressions that are present across the life span and contribute to a meaningful personal life. In fact, expressions of intimacy and sexuality constitute one of our basic human needs and rights (Gewirtz- Meydan et al, 2018). Unfortunately, we have seen in this volume how stereotypes persist (part- imposed, part home- grown in some instances) regarding sexuality, intimacy and ageing, and especially for individuals who are constructed or identify as sexual minorities. These biases are culturally centred and influenced by political ideology and by religion and its importance in people's lives. The sexuality of older women is observed and commonly normalised through a patriarchal perspective and medical or biological function and dysfunction. Women from different cultural groups have different attitudes, different comfort levels about getting older, and concerning whether it is normal for a woman to continue to value sex as she gets older (Thomas, 2015).

Key issues and themes

The book series, Sex and Intimacy in Later Life, was created to develop and add to the under- researched but emerging field of knowledge concerning sexual practices, pleasures and relations in later life. The relative paucity of research on this subject reflects how sexual and intimate relations among older people, largely in post- industrial Western or global North regions, have traditionally been framed within various pathologies, which, in turn, reflect prejudices and stereotypes of desexualised status (Simpson et al, 2018). The kind of thinking just referred to is predicated upon presumptions of ageing as decrepitude and typically associated with lack of sexual appetite and allure (Simpson, 2021).

Given the greater economic resources and prestige of Western/ Northern academies in terms of recognition and ability to publish and marginalisation of global South scholars and their work (Go, 2017), it is no surprise that extant studies of ageing sexualities have emerged largely from the former. Two of the first three edited volumes in this book series reflect this phenomenon and address, respectively, diversity and inequality in relation to sexual citizenship and desexualisation in later life. These two themes and that of resexualisation motifs are present in this volume, albeit reflecting diverse local conditions.

However, it was envisaged from inception that the series would look beyond (self- )obsession with Western/ global North accounts of experience of sexuality in later life. (The terms ‘later’ life and ‘sexuality’, and their intersection, are defined in the series editors’ introduction). The third volume in this book series, HIV, Sex and Sexuality in Later Life (Henricksen et al, 2022), in featuring work from and/ or about diverse countries such as Bangladesh, Hong Kong, India, Kenya and Ukraine, was the first important step towards wider, global coverage. The intention of this book series and this present volume all- along was to develop and bring to light critical work by scholars from and/ or knowledgeable about cultures in the global South and East. Accounts of experience of ageing sexualities and sexual expression from these regions are obscured by global economic, political and cultural inequalities that privilege Western/ Northern theorisations and thus maintain the latter's intellectual hegemony.

This chapter explores the social, political, and legal implications of irony use. People do not simply employ irony for the sake of expressing ironical meanings alone, but use irony, especially in public spheres, to communicate a variety of pragmatic, or perlocutionary, messages. Many verbal ironies convey meanings that are strategically negotiated to affect different social, political, and legal outcomes. Irony often has significant, concrete consequences in real-life discourse contexts. Simpson presents various attested examples to exemplify how irony may be differently enacted in private and public spheres of communication, but can also be readily transferred, and sometimes transformed, from private conversations to larger public discussions. He appeals to critical discourse analysis as one possible approach to uncovering the social work that irony often accomplishes (e.g., power and ideology), and outlines some of the perils and pitfalls of irony in different discourse contexts (e.g., public sports conversations, legal discourse, politics, twitter). Simpson ends with a fascinating exploration of whether irony may be “the last refuge of the scoundrel,” a place inhabited by some politicians who appear to use irony as an option in any difficult situation where they must “apologize-or-deny-or-ironize.”