TY - JOUR

T1 - Attachment as Affective Assimilation

T2 - Discourses on Love and Kinship in the Context of Transnational Adoption in Denmark

AU - Bissenbakker, Mons

AU - Myong, Lene

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - This article attempts to initiate a critical dialogue on the politics of love and attachment by investigating the way in which the concept of attachment governs the field of transnational adoption. We take our starting point in an analysis of a collection of background articles, teaching materials, and interviews produced by child psychologists as well as instructions to and testimonies from adopters. Reading the material through Sara Ahmed’s notion of affective orientation and Lauren Berlant’s critical deconstruction of love, we argue that the texts popularise and instrumentalise John Bowlby’s framework of attachment theory in ways that connect attachment to specific notions of love. Even though the aim seems to be the strengthening of intimate familial ties in adoptive families and ensuring feelings of kinship and security for the adoptee, the notion of attachment-as-love simultaneously organises a narrative logic that positions the adoptee in a deadlock between pathologisation and the demand for affective assimilation into the adoptive family. Our reading seeks to invite a more critical approach to notions of the attachment paradigm as an idealised route to affective belonging and psychological well-being for adoptees.

AB - This article attempts to initiate a critical dialogue on the politics of love and attachment by investigating the way in which the concept of attachment governs the field of transnational adoption. We take our starting point in an analysis of a collection of background articles, teaching materials, and interviews produced by child psychologists as well as instructions to and testimonies from adopters. Reading the material through Sara Ahmed’s notion of affective orientation and Lauren Berlant’s critical deconstruction of love, we argue that the texts popularise and instrumentalise John Bowlby’s framework of attachment theory in ways that connect attachment to specific notions of love. Even though the aim seems to be the strengthening of intimate familial ties in adoptive families and ensuring feelings of kinship and security for the adoptee, the notion of attachment-as-love simultaneously organises a narrative logic that positions the adoptee in a deadlock between pathologisation and the demand for affective assimilation into the adoptive family. Our reading seeks to invite a more critical approach to notions of the attachment paradigm as an idealised route to affective belonging and psychological well-being for adoptees.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - transnational adoption

KW - Intimacy

KW - emotion

KW - love

KW - pathologisation

U2 - 10.1080/08038740.2021.1891133

DO - 10.1080/08038740.2021.1891133

M3 - Journal article

VL - 29

SP - 165

EP - 177

JO - NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research

JF - NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research

SN - 0803-8740

IS - 3

M1 - 2

ER -