Against Love: A Polemic

What it is about

Against Love is Laura Kipnis’s polemic on how modern coupledom is policed as work and as domestic surveillance. She describes the demand for transparency, emotional labour, and constant improvement of the relationship, and she treats adultery in the essay as a rebellion against that regime rather than as a practice she is teaching. The book is kept on this shelf to be read against the how-to books, as an argument about what commitment has been made to cost, not as a manual for affairs and not as a balanced history of marriage. It does not offer exercises, and it does not claim that every bond is a mistake.

Questions it can answer

• What kinds of work and surveillance does Kipnis say modern coupledom asks of the two people?
• How does the polemic treat the wish to be elsewhere, without becoming a set of instructions?
• What is this argument for, when it is read next to the how-to books on the same shelf?

What you will not find

• A manual for affairs, secrecy, or leaving without a word
• Exercises for a couple’s next quarrel
• A historical survey that replaces a history of marriage, or a claim that commitment is always bad faith