To Şeyda Kurt, Radikale Zärtlichkeit (‘Radical Tenderness’) isn’t just a worldview, but the title of her latest book, published in German earlier this year – a treatise on how being kind to yourself and others can change the world. And for her, as an author, this philosophy extends to her day-to-day thoughts as well, as our discussion becomes an opportunity for political reflection. Calling on us to liberate ourselves and do away with the norms attached to words such as ‘love’, ‘tenderness’ and ‘relationships’, the 29-year-old journalist from Cologne told us more.
SLEEK: What’s happened to love?
Şeyda Kurt: Oh [laughs]. I think the same has happened to love that has happened to our society, which is steeped in certain capitalist, patriarchal, racist and other misanthropic traditions. One familiar criticism Eva Illouz [a Moroccan-born sociologist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem] sets forth in her works is that love in the bourgeois, romantic sense has been made disposable, like an object. The biggest problem lies in the perception that love is thought of in a kind of vacuum. It’s as if it has nothing to do with anything that’s going on out there in society, or with historical realities of colonial racism, National Socialism or the presence of our neoliberal meritocracy. But of course, it does have to do with all of those things.
Your book begins exploring the question of what we mean when we talk about love through personal reflection. How has your life influenced your work?
The society we live in is governed by certain norms, especially those that exist within our understanding of hierarchy. I can’t see any major diversity there, nor any horizon of different shapes and ideas around love and tenderness. Instead, the structures are hierarchical. At the top of the hierarchy is the classic, romantic, monogamous ‘couple relationship’. All other relationships are subordinated to that. The idea of the romantic relationship between a couple as the ultimate life goal has such a strong presence that any other kind of relationship is considered inferior.
I grew up in a family where the prevailing norms that govern relationships were vehemently defended. With us, it’s partly because my parents came from a very rural background, where everything was shaped by a certain poverty. This background was etched into the DNA of my parents’ thinking, and the focus was very much on financial security. In their way of thinking, it was also clear that we daughters would marry to ensure our security. That was the only scenario they could envisage. And yet there is also something very true about it, because in many parts of society, there are lots of marriages that exist as a form of financial safe harbour. Then, when my parents split up, I wandered around feeling totally disorientated.
I once described the feeling of losing your familiar frame of reference as like being in freefall …
Yes, that’s exactly what it feels like. But it took me a long time to recognise that the devastation and collapse of my value system could also provide the foundation for something new. It took time to understand that, if I built up something new, it wouldn’t have to be completely dissociated from my parents’ story. One of the reasons my parents’ marriage failed was the norm of monogamy, and I had to learn from my trauma to stop defending monogamy. The question I faced was, in the future, how would I build up lasting, caring relationships with others that aren’t based on these norms?
Full interview available via SLEEK #70 – Truth.