Gripes
1. Auflage Oktober 2009
224 Seiten, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
We all know what it's like to be annoyed by little things that our
husband, wife or partner does - leaving the cap off the
toothpaste tube, leaving the toilet lid up, leaving dirty clothes
on the floor - and we know how easily these little grievances
of everyday life can spin out of control. In this brilliant new
book the sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann shows us how and why
sparks can suddenly fly even in the most well-adjusted couples.
They see themselves as being in total harmony but they are
mistaken! The clash between their uniquely individual attitudes to
life rumbles on in silence until suddenly erupting in emotional
outbursts each time an object or an attitude reveals for the
thousandth time the unbearable and incomprehensible otherness of
the partner.
When this occurs, a whole panoply of tactics is deployed,
ranging from the combative (secret acts of revenge) through the
neutral (sulking) to the subtly loving. But these stormy episodes
within relationships can have a happy ending, for it is through
learning to overcome these irritations and aggravations that love
is ultimately strengthened.
PART ONE : 1 + 1 = 4
1. The conjugal adventure
Domestic emotions
1 + 1 = 1?
Sparks start to fly
The comfort zone
Doubly irritating objects
Key episodes
2. Men and women - different or complementary?
The different approaches
Glitches
Are men less irritated?
Irritated by a spectre
Millions of Peter Pans?
Stubborn macho reactions
PART TWO : IN THE EYE OF THE STORM
3. The causes
The symbolic toothpaste tube
Forced proximity
A waltz in double time
Traces of the self
Money matters
Secret worlds
Too close
Too distant
4. The mechanics
The list
Crystallisation
Letting off steam
Aspects of identity
'Passion killers' and the magic of love
Confused feelings
A certain notion of the truth
Dissonance
5. The wider picture
Family baggage
"Mummy's boy"
"That slut"
Inattentiveness and humiliation
Dissatisfaction
Disgust
Pathological irritability
Aggravating social circumstances
PART THREE : SMALL ACTS OF REVENGE AND ROMANTIC TACTICS
6. Communication difficulties
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth
Hot and cold
The language of gestures
The use of laughter
Inside the mind of the irritator
Secret acts of revenge
7. Love's secret ways
Minuscule victories
The about-turn
When irritation melts away
Physical therapy
Judicious use of sulking
Seeing reason
Reframing the scene
The little cinema and voice off
Accentuating the positive
Conclusion
Methodological Appendix
A new research technique
My direct correspondents
A research project cannot be emptied out like a bag
My other sources
# Bibliography
Goffman, by fashion magazines, and by kittenish and cougarish
women. He is the voice of the annoyed, the vexed, the fearful, and
the comforted."
Contemporary Sociology
"Living in an increasingly detraditionalised world opens up
glorious new opportunities for individual autonomy and
self-realisation. It also creates unprecedented pressures on
long-term relationships. Kaufmann
brilliantly captures this paradox of life in late modernity,
analysing the seemingly limitless sources of mutual irritation in
everyday life, as well as spouses' inventive revenge and
peacemaking tactics."
Véronique Mottier, Jesus College, Cambridge &
University of Lausanne
"Jean-Claude Kaufman's Gripes is one of those rare books
that brings into focus a seemingly unimportant fact of life.
Irritation and the slow abrasive effect of the gripes it causes are
sands that grind down the gears of relationships. Behavioral
scientists and self-help advisers make so much of the powerful
passions. Kaufman brilliantly illuminates the simpler forces of
social disruption."
Charles C. Lemert, author of Muhammad Ali: Trickster in the
Culture of Irony
V, Sorbonne
Translated by
Helen Morrison
