Marie Kondo and the Joy of Things: Affective Discourses of Housekeeping

Abstract

This essay argues that the discourses of love and affective attachments are remapped from our primary social relationships onto our household objects, providing further insight into our current crisis of social reproduction. Turning to Marie Kondo's widely circulated imperative to retain only those objects (socks, furniture, household goods) that "spark joy," and to cultivate affective attachment to those objects, this essay explores the directive toward intense consumerism as a means to manage personal and cultural anxieties during times of neoliberal precarity.