Towards Feminist Ethics of Love and the New Emotional Culture of Late Capitalism

Abstract

My paper explores contemporary socio-political aspects of love-as-power within the newly emerging context of feminist ethics of love, as well as in a broader sense of neoliberal commodification of self-centrism and philosophical urgency for articulating love as togetherness, responsibility and solidarity with others. My theoretical analysis begins with the tensions between the early 20th century collective consciousness represented by the feminist socialist formulations of love as responsibility for the outside world and the existentialist anxiety as related to individual alienation. My analysis culminates in the re-emergence of non-monogamous bonding in Europe as a trope for a new precariousness of family enactments extending beyond the nuclear heteronormativity in the 21st century.