Full Description
Undoubtedly Romantic love has come to saturate our culture and is often considered to be a, or even the, major existential goal of our lives, capable of providing us with both our sense of worth and way of being in the world. The Radicalism of Romantic Love interrogates the purported radicalism of Romantic love from philosophical, cultural and psychoanalytic perspectives, exploring whether it is a subversive force capable of breaking down entrenched social, political and cultural norms and structures, or whether, in spite of its role in the fight against certain barriers, it is in fact a highly conservative impulse. Exploring both the grounds for the central place of Romantic love in contemporary lives and the meaning, extent and nature of its supposed radicalism, this volume considers love from a variety of theoretical perspectives, with attention to matters of gender, sexuality, class and ethnicity. With authors examining a range of questions, including the role of love in the same-sex marriage debate, polyamory and the notion of love as a political force, The Radicalism of Romantic Love illuminates a fundamental but perplexing aspect of our contemporary lives and will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in the emotions and love as a social and political phenomenon.
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction (Renata Grossi and David West)
1. Love as a Political Force: Romantic Love, Love-Politics and Solidarity (Ann Ferguson)
2. Beyond the Romantic Constellation of Sex, Marriage and Love (David West)
3. The Rise and Fall of the Romantic Ideal (Berit Brogaard)
4. Freud on Romantic Love: Strange, Disappointing, and Satisfying (Michael P. Levine)
5. Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Radical Romantic Love (Skye Cleary)
6. Depressive Love: A Social Pathology (Emma Engdahl)
7. Libertine Reveries: Romantic Love in the Time of Radical Terror (Clara Tuite)
8. What Kind of Love is Nietzsche's Amor fati? (James Martel)
9. Falling for the Collective: When Love Embraces the Political (Nagore García Fernández)
10. Romantic Love as a Political Strategy in the Same-sex Marriage Debate (Renata Grossi)
Index
