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The Empire of Love: Towards a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality. Elizabeth Povinelli. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. 285 pp.
Consisting of introduction and three chapters, Elizabeth Povinelli's new work is an attempt at further deepening her hitherto established field of inquiry. This book takes up the interrelation between liberal governance, on the one hand, and love, sociality, and carnality, on the other hand. In so doing, Povinelli gives the reader guidelines consisting of her neologisms, including autological subject ("discourses, practices, and fantasies about self-making, self-sovereignty, and the value of individual freedom associated with the Enlightenment project of contractual constitutional democracy and capitalism"); genealogical society ("discourses, practices, and fantasies about social constraints placed on the autological subject by various kinds of inheritances"); and intimate event ("the way in which the event of normative love is formed at the intersection-and crisis-of these two discourses" [p. 4]).
The first chapter revolves around, among others, the sores that Povinelli had on her shoulder and how indigenous healing from Australia's Northern Territory and biomedical physicians in the West (Montreal and Chicago) each dealt with...