Self-help emotional commodities substitute defectively for lost intimacy rituals

Evidence

Illouz (2019) focuses her critique on the “emotional commodities” (228) offered by self-help and the therapeutic industry as defective substitutes for the “ritual structure and normative anchors” (157) of previous sexual interactions. In the absence of such normative rituals with which to generate emotional focus, our attempts at self-reflection are thus doomed to fail, giving way instead to the unmanageable uncertainty of self-management, self-help, and spirituality. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 229

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The ‘ritual structure and normative anchors’ framing echoes the sacrifices/immodesty chapters’ interest in how ritual scaffolds social and intimate life; loss of ritual anchors parallels those cases.
• XREF: connects to: Gifts create feeling-bonds that commodities do not — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 98