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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
"There is much to unpack in the 'Vile Bodies' chapter: a discussion of BDE; the downfalls of Anthony Weiner and Jeffrey Toobin; the policing of out-of-office behavior...Asia Argento; and 'sexually liminal' behaviors like 'innuendos, come-ons, banter, "stolen kisses"' ..."
"'I'm a critic: I want to see the world clearly,' Kipnis writes, adding: 'Maybe that overstates it — I just want to have interesting things to say about the world.' And she does!"
"By tapping into the Zoom-fueled zeitgeist, Kipnis brings an ironic perspective to this most intimate of subjects."
"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 ..."
"Though Kipnis's take on relationship dynamics feels pessimistic and somewhat cynical, she is an ardent and astute interrogator of accepted wisdom."
"Its circling obsessiveness and sometimes-distorted sense of scale feel like outgrowths of this moment: a period when many of us have retreated, discouraged from making unexpected new connections, our mental habits grooved by feeds that algorithmically deliver whatever triggers us."
"Her swashbuckling style can distract from the serious and well-stocked mind at work beneath ..."
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