by Laura Kipnis, it's a thought provoking read that deserves a place in your e-reader or on your bookshelf.
As with all polemics, the author means to provoke and incite reaction - she is, after all, poking at something taken for granted in our society. She's making the case against love, defined as love expressed through monogamous companionate coupledom. She acknowledges that there are other expressions of love, but that she's not here to deal with outliers and exceptions, and it'd be hard to argue that the monogamous couple model is anything other than our current hegemony.
To frame the argument, Kipnis wastes no time going right for the emotional jugular - she begins her piece by talking about adultery, and about the idea that you can learn a lot about a thing by exploring and understanding its opposite. If the monogamous life long couple is canon, then adultery is heresy. Adultery incites scandal and scorn, shame and social stigma.
And yet, as Kipnis maps out, the move toward adultery can feel natural, so gradual, and can fill one with energy and vitality, and indeed with love. Just not socially sanctioned love. Statistics vary on adultery, with studies reporting anywhere from 30% - 70% of respondents having committed adultery. No matter how you look at it, though, it all points to adultery not being all that uncommon.
So, then, when it's clearly difficult for mere mortals to fulfill the goal of life long monogamous coupledom, and if the rate of adultery points to an undercurrent of unhappiness or ambivalence in the modern couple, the question becomes why.
Why is our current version of love's ideal expression something so difficult to achieve? Why does our model require so much effort and work?
Having set the stage, she begins to explore love, as the monogamous couple social ideal, as a political institution. She maps out how the language of the factory is now applied to private home life (Good Relationships Take Work), and how that means that all of us are pulling double shifts. Living in the coupled household isolates and requires compromise; it requires you to settle and put aside thoughts of there being something more.
And isn't this exactly what a government might want? How might it benefit a government to have a citizenry trained not to expect much from life because that's just how it is, or maybe they're not working hard enough? When ambivalence becomes the default setting at home, doesn't it become that much easier to acquiesce to a life of working drudgery and political abuses of power?
If we're trained out of speaking up and inciting change at home, and pass this on to the children raised in these households, then there's not likely to be a political revolution any time soon. If we continue in the illusion that we consent to be ruled at home by the idea of love, perhaps it makes it easier to concede to the illusion that we are also governed by consent.
Against Love: A Polemic is incredibly well written, with exceptional timing and delivery. Kipnis lands her points like an experienced boxer lands blows, often when your not expecting it or looking elsewhere. This book will challenge deeply held cultural assumptions, often in an extreme way, which, even if you don't agree with everything, will illuminate these beliefs and make it easier to examine them.
This book spoke directly to me. Two years ago, my marriage ended and I watched my whole world fall down. The depth of shame and terror I felt in the following months was excruciating. I went to a very dark place. I took this as an opportunity to begin deeply examining my life. What I found were the deeply held beliefs that Kipnis articulated so clearly in this book.
I also found was that life wasn't over because I had failed at love - in fact, I found a new freedom to love in a more natural, personal way. I don't have to work at it any more. I discovered my agency and my ability to make change, and I want to share it with others.
The love that she writes against in this polemic was the thing that 'kept me in my place' and kept me so distracted that I didn't have time for anything else, aside from work. How could someone distracted like that ever be found agitating for social change or striking at work? While Kipnis might not be right about everything, she makes a strong case that love does a remarkably good job of creating a docile and distracted electorate.
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