ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 analyses love and intimacy as a concrete site for investigating moral understandings and experiences. Framed by Bauman’s (2003) account of ‘liquid love’, the chapter introduces three groups of bloggers: the liquid ‘perpetrators’, ‘victims’ and ‘resistors’. The ‘perpetrators’ depict commitment-avoidance as part of a consumer anxiety of missing out on ‘new and improved attractions’ in the future. The ‘victims’ represent the ‘waste’ or leftovers of ‘moving on’ culture, while the ‘resistors’ replace ‘until further notice’ love with ‘soul-mate’ love (Carroll, 2001). The chapter argues that the blog narratives highlight a bridge between Bauman’s dismissal of ‘liquid love’ as an amoral outgrowth of consumerist modernity and Taylor’s (1992) and Giddens’s (1991) more sanguine view of love as a space for the working-out of identity and notions of authenticity.
