Violeta Vicheva

The study asks whether, after the dominance of individualism as the main life principle in postmodern times, there is a rethinking of the importance of intersubjective relationships and their renewal. The focus of the study is the representation of the heterosexual love relationship in the novel „Allegro Pastel“ by the contemporary German-language writer Laif Rand. It is examined against the background of theories about the postmodern community and the place of love in it by iconic sociologists and philosophers such as Ulrich Beck, Jürgen Habermas, Sygmut Bauman, Erich Fromm, and in comparison with even more recent studies on love such as those of Eva Iluz, Angelica Krebs, Aron Ben’Zeev. The text attempts to defend the thesis that Rand‘s novel presents a new, unprejudiced notion of love, which, through irony as the main tool, is opposed to the established (and problematic) notion of romantic love.