Cold Intimacies E-Book

Eva Illouz

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 233

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

It is commonly assumed that capitalism has created an a-emotionalworld dominated by bureaucratic rationality; that economic behaviorconflicts with intimate, authentic relationships; that the publicand private spheres are irremediably opposed to each other; andthat true love is opposed to calculation and self-interest. Eva Illouz rejects these conventional ideas and argues that theculture of capitalism has fostered an intensely emotional culturein the workplace, in the family, and in our own relationship toourselves. She argues that economic relations have become deeplyemotional, while close, intimate relationships have becomeincreasingly defined by economic and political models ofbargaining, exchange, and equity. This dual process by whichemotional and economic relationships come to define and shape eachother is called emotional capitalism. Illouz finds evidence of thisprocess of emotional capitalism in various social sites: self-helpliterature, women's magazines, talk shows, support groups, and theInternet dating sites. How did this happen? What are the socialconsequences of the current preoccupation with emotions? How didthe public sphere become saturated with the exposure of privatelife? Why does suffering occupy a central place in contemporaryidentity? How has emotional capitalism transformed our romanticchoices and experiences? Building on and revising the intellectuallegacy of critical theory, this book addresses these questions andoffers a new interpretation of the reasons why the public and theprivate, the economic and the emotional spheres have becomeinextricably intertwined.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Dedication

Title page

Copyright page

Acknowledgments

1 The Rise of Homo Sentimentalis

Freud and the Clark lectures

A new emotional style

The communicative ethic as the spirit of the corporation

The roses and thorns of the modern family

Conclusion

2 Suffering, Emotional Fields, and Emotional Capital

Introduction

The self-realization narrative

Emotional fields, emotional habitus

The pragmatics of psychology

Conclusion

3 Romantic Webs

Romancing the Internet

Virtual meetings

Ontological self-presentation

Fantasy and disappointment

Conclusion: A new Machiavellian move

Index

To Elchanan

Copyright © Eva Illouz 2007

The right of Eva Illouz to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2007 by Polity Press

Polity Press

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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK.

Polity Press

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Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-10: 0-7456-3904-6

ISBN-13: 978-07456-3904-8

ISBN-10: 0-7456-3905-4 (pb)

ISBN-13: 978-07456-3905-5 (pb)

ISBN-13: 978-07456-5807-0 (Multi-user ebook)

ISBN-13: 978-07456-5808-7 (Single-user ebook)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Acknowledgments

Few books owe their existence to the initiative of a single person. This book is one of them. When he invited me to deliver the Adorno Lectures in Frankfurt, Axel Honneth compelled me to stop and think again about what I was working on at the time, namely the role of psychology in shaping the ordinary cultural frames of middle-class men and women in much of the contemporary world. I re-read critical theorists, and came to realize with a renewed acuity that the long tradition of critical theory starting, from Theodor Adorno to Axel Honneth via Habermas, has yet to be surpassed in its capacity to make sense of the conflicting tendencies at work in modernity. Axel’s towering intellectual vision, his generosity and relentless energy stand squarely behind the making of this book.

I thank wholeheartedly Viviana Zelizer for having made possible a visiting position at the department of Sociology at Princeton University during which I wrote these lectures. My deep gratitude goes to the cheerful and efficient librarians of the Institute for Advanced Study.

Beatrice Smedley read all three chapters, and with her exceptional kindness and sharpness offered a lot to reflect about and to improve on. Carol Kidron’s own work on trauma as well as her critical insights contributed to the book. Eitan Wilf must be thanked for reading the manuscript and offering, with his usual directness, sharp criticisms and judicious bibliographical additions. Lior Flum has been an invaluable help in the sometimes difficult process of making a book presentable.

I thank wholeheartedly Sarah Dancy, Emma Hutchinson, and Gail Ferguson at Polity Press for their thoroughness, professionalism, and kindness.

Finally, I dedicate this book to my husband and best friend, Elchanan, who did more than his share of reading, criticizing, discussing the book, spent a considerable amount of his time listening to many confused hesitations, and shared in more than a few moments of unthinking happiness.

Eva Illouz

1

The Rise of Homo Sentimentalis

Sociologists have traditionally conceived of modernity in terms of the advent of capitalism, the rise of democratic political institutions, or the moral force of the idea of individualism, but have taken little notice of the fact that, along with the familiar concepts of surplus value, exploitation, rationalization, disenchantment, or division of labor, most grand sociological accounts of modernity contained, in a minor key, another story: namely descriptions or accounts of the advent of modernity in terms of emotions. To take a few glaring yet seemingly trivial examples, Weber’s Protestant ethic contains at its core a thesis about the role of emotions in economic action, for it is the anxiety provoked by an inscrutable divinity which is at the heart of the capitalist entrepreneur’s frantic activity.1 Marx’s alienation – which was central in explaining the worker’s relation to the process and product of labor – had strong emotional overtones, as when Marx, in The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, discusses alienated labor as a loss of reality, in his words, a loss of the bond to the object.2 When Marx’s “alienation” was appropriated – and distorted – by popular culture, it was mostly for its emotional implications: modernity and capitalism were alienating in the sense that they created a form of emotional numbness which separated people from one another, from their community, and from their own deep selves. Or still we may evoke Simmel’s famous depiction of Metropolis which contains an account of emotional life. For Simmel, urban life creates an endless flow of nervous stimulations and stands in contrast to small-town life which rests on emotional relationships. The typically modern attitude, for Simmel, is that of the “blasé,” a mix of reserve, coldness and indifference, and, Simmel adds, always in danger of turning into hatred. Finally, Durkheim’s sociology is – perhaps surprisingly for the neo-Kantian that he was – most obviously concerned with emotions. Indeed, “solidarity,” the linchpin of Durkheim’s sociology, is nothing but a bundle of emotions binding social actors to the central symbols of society (what Durkheim called “effervescence” in the ). (In the conclusion of , Durkheim and Mauss claim that symbolic classifications – cognitive entities – have an emotional core.) Durkheim’s view of modernity was even more directly concerned with emotions as he tried to understand how, given that the social differentiation of modern societies lacked emotional intensity, modern society still “held together.”