Bond-dissolution has become the dominant social form under capitalism

Evidence

Unlike the proponents of a self-reflexive intimacy, then, Illouz is greatly skeptical of the ideas and possibilities of freedom circulating in the vestiges of risk society. Adopting a rather more pessimistic tone, she suggests that the dissolution of bonds itself becomes the dominant social form (Illouz 2019, 22); the more we linger in the space of uncertainty, the more prone we become to “unloving.” Increasingly, we practice what Illouz calls negative choice, that is, the choice to unchoose. To translate it for our world of speculative technologies, we may choose to “unfollow,” to “unfriend,” to “leave someone on read,” or to “ghost”—or to dispose of a Tinder match altogether like any other commodity. Under contemporary capitalism, Illouz contends, love no longer is. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 230

Categorization

• XREF: ‘Choice to unchoose’ / unloving resonates with the negative-choice logic in dating-app speculation and with Horkheimer and Adorno’s account of freedom-as-emptiness.