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Love in the Time of Contagion: A Diagnosis
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40/99
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2/99
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77/99
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About This Book
In this timely, insightful, and darkly funny investigation, the acclaimed author of Against Love what does living in dystopic times do to our ability to love each other and the world? COVID-19 has produced new taxonomies of love, intimacy, and vulnerability. Will its cultural afterlife be as lasting as that of HIV, which reshaped consciousness about sex and love even after AIDS itself had been beaten back by medical science? Will COVID end up making us more relationally conservative, as some think HIV did within gay culture? Will it send us fleeing into emotional silos or coupled cocoons, despite the fact that, pre-COVID, domestic coupledom had been steadily losing fans? Just as COVID revealed our nation to itself, so did it hold a mirror up to our relationships. In Love in the Time of Contagion, Laura Kipnis weaves (often hilariously) her own (ambivalent) coupled lockdown experiences together with those of others and sets them against a larger the politics of the virus, economic disparities, changing gender relations, and the ongoing institutional crack-ups prompted by #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, mapping their effects on the everyday routines and occasional solaces of love and sex.
Reviews
"Fearless and sharply observed, this book suggests that future post-pandemic challenges will have less to do with its biological legacy to humanity and more to do with the impact of a virus on interpersonal closeness ..."
"This, however, can feel confusing, because elsewhere we find Kipnis in forensic, dialectic mode."
"You detect that crampedness in the book's small, comprehensively interrogated cast of characters."
"All the missing raisins can, it turns out, be found in the fourth essay, which is a tour through the social-mediated romantic life of one of Kipnis's former students, Zelda."
"Here's hoping that by the end of all this, we're not too exhausted to keep asking them."
"Readers won't always agree, but they'll relish grappling with this bracing study of modern life."
"Disarmingly honest, voyeuristically campy, Kipnis' discussion of COVID-19-influenced coupledom is both witty and wise."
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