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Love in the Time of Contagion: A Diagnosis
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2/99
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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
"The passage is a good example of where Kipnis can take a step forward and another back: An indictment of capitalism's totalizing intrusion into our lives quickly followed by the assertion that a similar encroachment, in the form of unprovoked sexual intrusions, simply 'makes life worth living' ..."
"How is it possible that the same Kipnis who pitched a Diet Coke across the room at her boyfriend would find anything compelling about the minutiae of her former student's digital life?"
"In essays that wander far afield without losing sight of their central topic, the author interweaves autobiography, cultural criticism, psychology, philosophy, feminism, and gender studies ..."
"Love in the Time of Contagion does not refute [Kipnis's previous book] Against Love so much as bicker with it, finish its sentences, and, like many a married couple, occasionally pass off the other's thoughts as its own ..."
"So it's a relief to reach the book's coda, which collects short dispatches ..."
"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 ..."
"Disarmingly honest, voyeuristically campy, Kipnis' discussion of COVID-19-influenced coupledom is both witty and wise."
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