Alecs Ștefănescu reviewed Cold Intimacies by Eva Illouz
The critique aged well, though some other parts did not
5 stars
I'll start with the only thing that I didn't enjoy: the fact that Eva Illouz repeatedly uses the categories of "man" and "woman" as though they had very distinct borders and as though they were the only two possibilities out there. When she writes that the professional realm has been feminized, under capitalist modernity, and the intimate realm encourages autonomy and self-determination, which are male qualities, it irked me tremendously, almost enough to make me want to quit the book.
However, the critique and the historical perspective in the book are both very valuable. In the three chapters, Illouz puts forth three main points that build up on each other: 1. that psychoanalysis took shape in the midst of rising individualism, and gave a language to an institutionalized form of psychology that, then, permeated everything from the professional to the intimate spheres 2. that the public / professional sphere …
I'll start with the only thing that I didn't enjoy: the fact that Eva Illouz repeatedly uses the categories of "man" and "woman" as though they had very distinct borders and as though they were the only two possibilities out there. When she writes that the professional realm has been feminized, under capitalist modernity, and the intimate realm encourages autonomy and self-determination, which are male qualities, it irked me tremendously, almost enough to make me want to quit the book.
However, the critique and the historical perspective in the book are both very valuable. In the three chapters, Illouz puts forth three main points that build up on each other: 1. that psychoanalysis took shape in the midst of rising individualism, and gave a language to an institutionalized form of psychology that, then, permeated everything from the professional to the intimate spheres 2. that the public / professional sphere disguised class inequalities under a blanket psychological myth-building about "personality" and the private / intimate sphere stripped people of their ability to live with alterity by turning intimate connections into a commodity and applying market dynamics to it 3. that online dating and the internet in general has captured the process of commodification of the private sphere and has exacerbated it into its textual and visual forms, through words and images; this, in turn, erased the embodied experience of connection and encouraged people to treat togetherness as a quantifiable phenomenon that can be optimized.
In the final chapter of the book, Illouz makes the excellent point that psychoanalysis and critique gave us two distinct things: both the means to thrive and be resilient and also the means to become individualistic, sick and disconnected. She cautions against throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
