Love in the Time of Contagion: A Diagnosis (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780593316283)

In this timely, insightful, and darkly funny investigation, the acclaimed author of Against Love asks: 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 backdrop: 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.

Author: Laura Kipnis
ISBN-10: 0593316282
ISBN-13: 9780593316283
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Language: English
Published: 02/08/2022
Pages: 224
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 7.10h x 5.60w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 09/01/2021 pg. 16
Kirkus Reviews 11/15/2021
Publishers Weekly 11/29/2021
Booklist 02/01/2022 pg. 5