All happy families

This forum contribution explores the strengths and limits of Noam Yuran’s innovative call for a new political economy of sex and desire. It has three prongs. First, I discuss Yuran’s compelling focus on the curious durability of monogamy as an institution. Second, I examine his analysis of thinkers such as Mandeville and Weber. Finally, I turn to the question of love. I suggest that Yuran’s approach opens a pathway to a more loving and more realistic political economy of intimacy and familial love, one that I suggest is missing in much critical theory today, particularly in the rhetoric of family abolitionists.