ABSTRACT

The Contradictions of Love: Towards a feminist-realist ontology of sociosexuality offers a robust and multifaceted theoretical account of how, in contemporary western societies, women continue to be subordinated to men through sexual love. The book defends and elaborates Anna G. Jónasdóttir’s thesis that men tend to exploit women of their ‘love power’, by means of an innovative application of critical realism, dialectical critical realism and the philosophy of metaReality. Gunnarsson also offers a critique of the state of affairs of contemporary feminist theory.

The author demonstrates that the meta-theoretical framework of critical realism offers the tools that can counter the poststructuralist hegemony still prevailing in feminist theory. On a general level, The Contradictions of Love attempts at reconciling theoretical positions which tend to appear in opposition to one another. In particular, it offers a way of bridging the gap between the notion of love as a locus of exploitation and that of love as a force which can conquer oppression.

This book is a unique and timely contribution in the field of feminist theory, in that it offers the first elaborate assessment and development of Jónasdóttir’s important but relatively sidestepped work, and in that it counters poststructuralist trends from the point of view of a robust critical realist framework that has hitherto been spectacularly absent in feminist theory, although it offers solutions to metatheoretical problems at the forefront of feminist debates; in the field of critical realism broadly defined, in that it elaborates on crucial ontological themes of (dialectical) critical realism and the philosophy of metaReality via a discussion of the issues of love, sexuality, gender and power; and finally, in the field of love studies, in that it offers a sophisticated account of how gender asymmetries prevail in love despite norms of gender equality and reciprocity, and in that it reconciles feminist, conflict-oriented perspectives on love with notions of love as transcending conflict.

chapter 1|21 pages

Introduction

part I|38 pages

Feminist modes of theorizing sexuality and gendered power

part II|35 pages

Meta-theoretical interlude: Challenging poststructuralist feminism

chapter 4|16 pages

Feminist theory and nature

chapter 5|17 pages

Women and men as theoretical categories

part III|74 pages

The reality of love and power: A feminist-realist depth approach

chapter 6|13 pages

Loving him for who he is

The microsociology of power

chapter 7|19 pages

Love

Exploitable resource or ‘no-lose situation'?

chapter 8|16 pages

Men in love

The work of repressing reality

chapter 9|19 pages

Reality and change

chapter 10|5 pages

Conclusion

Necessity and the power of love