So, I feel I must preface the following response to Against Love by telling you all how much I truly disliked this text. I offer this up here (since it will, I’m sure, be apparent in what follows) only to apologize ahead of time if I resort to the same rhetorical tactics when discussing Kipnis’s book as I’m about to criticize her for. Such hypocrisy seems inevitable to me at this point as I consider my reaction to this work, so I want to own up to it now. And it seems that Erika and I share many of the same concerns about this book, so forgive any overlap that might occur.
Now that that’s out of the way, I can try to work through the specific and numerous criticisms I have about Against Love. Initially, I believed that my concerns had to do just with the content of Kipnis’s claims, and this is something I will eventually return to. But as I continued to read what seemed like an extra 150 pages or so of unnecessary repetition, I realized that there are elements of Kipnis’s style that irk me more than her actual argument does. And recalling our discussions about style in Arnold (whose ideas I also find problematic but whose writing style I find so enjoyable to read) and Hebdige, I thought this could be a productive place to start.
Let me begin with Kipnis’s repeated and frustrating use of metaphors and similes to describe love, adultery, and other admittedly nebulous ideas. The first page of the “Reader Advisory” presents love as a car ride or roller coaster, as “conscription,” “vital plasma,” and an “exclusive club.” On subsequent pages, one’s libido is described as a “freedom fighter,” “Janis Joplin,”and “Barry Manilow” (pg. 5). Kipnis discusses the “examining table of your relationship” on pg. 76 (your relationship, not hers). Or how about this one: “All of us risk drowning in those swirling tidal waves of emotion and lust… having thought ourselves shrewd and agile enough to surf the crest despite the posted danger signs” (48). Is she kidding? She proceeds to describe the exposure of a lie as an “emotional auto wreck” (130) and she actually compares “restless adulterers” to “moldering POWs” (133). Marriage is a “gulag,” a “barren landscape” (121), an adulterer is a “dust-bowl farmer whose dry scrubby fields have been transformed into lush verdant plains by a miracle rainfall” (109), and love is like “scurvy” (OK, I made that last one up, but you believed me for a second, didn’t you?) I realize that this is largely a question of aesthetics, and I do appreciate a finely-wrought metaphor when used carefully and judiciously , but Kipnis’s seemingly endless circumvention of what she is actually talking about frustrates me to no end. Does she think her audience is so simple-minded that we need her to explain the intricacies of her theory in this manner? (I think Erika brought this up as well). Does this accumulation of stand-ins reveal her own inability or unwillingness to commit to a single definition (even though she seems to be doing so in the opening pages of the book?) Of course, most linguistic exchanges depend on metaphor of some sort, but I kept wishing that Kipnis would just get to the point and do so without the bad metaphors.
I’m also bothered by the contradictions that pop up in Kipnis’s argument. I would draw your attention to one of the passages Erika highlighted in her post: “Race, class, gender, age, or sexual orientation will cause minor or ultimately insignificant variations in response” (83). Here Kipnis clearly seeks to diminish these boundaries by rendering them as unimportant to her claim, yet she invokes the issue of miscegenation in the final pages of the novel (an issue in which race is of ultimate importance) as support for her assertion that we should in fact be concerned that the “state’s vision of love and [ours] are [not] in happy coincidence” (170). She also makes the statement that “political consent is itself rather fictive” (185). But wouldn’t that render her own theories about the political consent inherent in coupled relationships fictive as well? Kipnis just seems a bit too willing to reside in these spaces of contradiction without addressing them in any meaningful way.
And for good measure, let me throw in this logical gem: “As we see, it’s also impossible to say exactly why polygamy is illegal. . . . The reason is that’s against the law” (172). I don’t think I’ve seen a finer example of circular reasoning in a long time.
In terms of the actual content of Kipnis’s claims, of what she says as opposed to how she says it, I do find some of her ideas rather compelling. The whole concept of collectivism vs. individualism raises some similar, interesting questions to those in Arnold, and Kipnis’s discussion about the “wronged” spouse inhabiting a physical space within both participants in an adulterous relationship is, I think, an important insight. Unfortunately for me, however, I simply cannot divorce what she says from how she says it (I’m not really sure why this is).
Finally, I feel compelled to at least mention the generalities present in Kipnis’s text that others have already commented on in ways I can’t hope to improve upon. But this is where my real problem with her content arises, so I have to say something here. When did it become acceptable practice to ignore the experiential distinctions between those of different genders, races, ages, or religions? From a purely practical standpoint, I think Kipnis’s willingness to construct a monolithic marital experience reveals a rather sloppy and ineffective approach to cultural observation (a point that Erika also makes). Who actually still believes that there is a single human experience (at least in the context of culture?)
I think I will end here. I hope I’ve been able to articulate more than a simple rant against Against Love, and I hope that people continue to post the reasons they like this work. See you all on Thursday!
-Jessica
