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“Affective emotions”: Romantic love, absence and jealousy in Roland Barthes’

Fragments d’un discours amoureux

Léonie A. J. Mol 5884780 rMA Cultural Analysis Final thesis Supervisor : J. G. C. de Bloois University of Amsterdam June 17, 2016 Table of contents Introduction: “Shimmerings”: Barthes, Romantic Love and Affect ...... 3 Barthes, romantic love, affect ...... 3 Methodology ...... 9 Organization of the thesis ...... 12 Chapter One: Love as absence ...... 16 The Discourse of the Absent: Barthes’ Analysis of Absence, Discourse and Love ...... 17 Truth and Absence ...... 19 The Knight of Resignation: Romantic Love as Self-Containment ...... 21 An Encounter between Me and the : Kierkegaard and Levinas ...... 23 Splendid Isolation and Absence ...... 24 Chapter Two: Love as Jealousy ...... 29 Jealousy as Affect: Barthes’ Explanation ...... 31 Love, Creativity and Concept Formation ...... 33 Desire and the Annihilation of the Self ...... 36 What Is there to be Jealous of: Ideas of Possession ...... 38 Chapter Three: Love as Vulnerability ...... 44 From Possession to the Annihilation of the Self ...... 45 Love as Specific “Scene” ...... 47 Love Politics ...... 49 Love as Indomitable Force: Notions of Authenticity ...... 52 The Future of Love: A Tentative Conclusion ...... 57 Bibliography ...... 63

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Introduction: “Shimmerings”: Barthes, Romantic Love and Affect

Bisher hat alles Das, was dem Farbe gegeben hat, noch keine Geschichte: oder wo gäbe es eine Geschichte der Liebe, der Habsucht, des Neides, des Gewissens, der Pietät, der Grausamkeit? (, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft §7)

So far, all that has given color to our existence still lacks a history: where could you find a history of love, of avarice, of envy, of conscience, of piety, of cruelty? Even a comparative history of law or even of punishment is so far lacking entirely. (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science §7)

Nue effacée ensommeillée Choisie sublime solitaire Profonde oblique matinale Fraîche nacrée ébouriffée Ravivée première régnante […] Sommes-nous deux ou suis-je solitaire ? (Paul Éluard, Poésie ininterrompue, 9-10)

Naked wiped out fallen asleep Chosen sublime solitary Profound oblique early Fresh nacreous wild Revived first reigning […] Are we together or am I alone? (Paul Éluard, Uninterrupted )

Barthes, romantic love, affect about the things “that matter” in life is a difficult task, as Nietzsche remarks. In this thesis, I want to focus on one of the things that has made life “meaningful”: love. What? Love, again? Did cultural theorists, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists and not write enough about this topic yet? Has nobody since Nietzsche’s aphorism was published in 1882, written a proper history of love? And why should we, the reader and I, care? Not surprisingly, my answer is we should. and cross-disciplinary analysis are

3 the right tools to analyze such a complex human phenomenon as love. Because I think the answer to the question “What is love” is still unanswered – luckily for me, and all the real lovers outside of this text. But also because “love” is a concept which has inspired so many people, both inside and outside of the academic domain. It is therefore I want to scrutinize the concept of romantic love, not to write its history or give an exact definition of it, but how it can manifest itself and what this means for our understanding of love. In this thesis, I focus on the concept of romantic love and its manifestation in particular relational or social settings. I use the concept of “romantic love” as portrayed in Roland Barthes’ Fragments d’un discours amoureux (1975) and analyze it as a methodological tool, paying in particular attention to its possible affect. I argue that Barthes’ book has a particularly rich potential to develop valuable tools for critical analysis. I draw from Barthes’ affect as “effet de réel” and “sense” [of a text] that has an effect outside of this text itself (Le Plaisir du Texte, L’Effet de Réel). In these texts, Barthes discusses how literature can produce an “affect” that cannot be reduced to or discourse. I interpret the concept of “romantic love” as such and use it as a methodological tool to analyze three cultural texts. Before introducing my main theorists, I want to slow down a bit and return to the quote I started with. Nietzsche writes the things that have “colored” life suffer from a lack of history. In line with Nietzsche, I ask: does the concept of love lack historical analysis? And if so, why? The field of cultural studies and cultural analysis – which, we should remember, were developed far after Nietzsche’s mental breakdown and death in 1900 – seem to have taken their task seriously. “Cultural studies” is an academic field of studies which originated in Britain in the 1980s, combing sociological and literary research methods to analyze contemporary social concepts and phenomenal. It is an interdisciplinary field of conducting research that investigates the ways in which “culture” creates and transforms individual experiences, everyday life, social relations and power.1 “Cultural analysis” is commonly traced back to Mieke Bal, who coined the discipline as “ in the present”, by which she meant the attention paid to contemporary cultural “objects”. Bal has argued the notion of close is also a practice of framing; in old close reading, “critique is more important than the object” (Travelling concepts, 8-9). Newer or new close reading, Bal argues, takes the object as a starting point (ibid.:18). In this thesis, I refer to close reading as “new close reading”. Contemporary scholars in the field of cultural analysis, , but also biology and the neurosciences have by now written hundreds and thousands of pages about love as romantic illusion, social phenomenon tied to economic warfare, or as programmed in our brain, far from the spheres of what we think is our “free will”. In the Netherlands, debates are organized about

1 See http://culturalstudies.web.unc.edu/resources-2/what-is-cultural-studies/ (accessed June 14, 2016 and , 175).

4 the future of love, monogamous relationships are being thoroughly questioned and polyamorous discussion evenings seem to have become mainstream in the capital Amsterdam.2 Books as We Are Our Brains (Wij zijn ons brein, Swaab 2010), The Free Will does not exist (Lamme 2010) and biodeterministic analyses and tv-shows coining that “whom we will love” is a matter of predetermined genetics flourish today. Does this mean love has too much of a history by now? Romantic love and relationships have been discussed – and explained, in the eyes of many – as a socially or biologically determined phenomenon. What might there be useful to add, then? In The Dialectic of Sex, Shulamith Firestone writes: “[Love] is portrayed in novels, even metaphysics, but in them it is described, or better, recreated, not analyzed. Love has never been understood” (Dialectic of Sex, 126). In this thesis, I do not want to focus on the diachronic aspects of love. Just as Nietzsche, Barthes and Firestone, I think crucial and careful analysis of love in its contemporary manifestations is important since it tells us about how love as both a concept and practice travel and change through time. Analyzing how concepts travel through time, how their and use changes and how this influences their manifestation is an important task. Countless historians, philosophers and social scientists have taken up this complicated yet fascinating task. How love is (said to be) experienced and what kind of expectations it creates in the cultural domain are important topic to study. They tell us more about the organization of (romantic) relationships in society, and about how public and private emotions and feelings are intertwined and influence each other. In the same vein as Firestone, I agree that studying culture and its manifestations is always linked to these normative practices; hegemonic discourses on love then inform us about dominant discourses (Orientalism, 239; Structure and Superstructure, 192-193). Analyzing has, in this respect, both a political and an aesthetical dimension; it tells us about the contemporary ideas about love. The importance of narrative cannot be overstated, as points out:

Narrative asserts the power of men to be born, develop, and die, the tendency of institutions and actualities to change, the likelihood that modernity and contemporaneity will finally overtake “classical” civilizations; above all, it asserts that the domination of reality by vision is no more than a , a will to truth and interpretation, and not an objective condition of history. (Orientalism, 240)

Yet, my goal is not to lay out a grand narrative about love. Whereas Said and Firestone focuses in particular on narrative and on its hegemonic purposes, I want to move in a different direction. I

2 See http://www.debalie.nl/agenda/cinema/the-future-of-love%3A-the-lobster/e_9781926/p_11742710/ (accessed March 5, 2016).

5 fully agree with Saids characterization of narrative of powerful tool; yet, since his quote also highlights, the importance of narrative might also be found elsewhere than its discursive elements. To paraphrase Firestone, I boldly ask: should love be understood? Analyzing manifestations and ideas about love indeed might give us insights into how love is portrayed, characterized, justified. Yet, in this thesis I aim to undertake a different project. I do not wish to give a full explanation of romantic love. I want to analyze several “affective images” of it. In line with Firestone, I think the available analyses of love focus on a totalitarian, diachronic image of love. By doing so, these analysis relentlessly recreate and portray love as… biological, social, psychological phenomenon. Does this tell us about what love actually does? People do not seem to bother so much if love is “real”, a beautiful fiction or the inevitable work of neurons in our brain. So there must be something else, something more important, and this is specifically what I want to address. I am not interested in what love is, but what love does. I try to capture this “does” by invoking the concept “affect”. The term “affect” has recently received a lot of attention within the social sciences and ; yet, it remains a quite difficult concept to understand or work with, since it lacks a clear definition. As mentioned, I draw from Roland Barthes’ use of the concept and will also relate it to how “affect” has been discussed within The Affect Theory Reader, a helpful volume in this respect, edited by Melissa Gregg and Gregorgy Seighworth in 2010. In this book, Gregg and Seigworth distinguish nine approaches and uses of the term. I will come back to their discussion of affect a bit later in this introduction. As Barthes’ analysis of “the effect of reality” states, texts have effects that cannot be reduced to mere discursive elements. It is in this “affect” of love I am interested in this thesis, and that I will work out in my chapters. Important concepts that I will use are “romantic love” and “affect”. “Romantic love” is what I take to be the relationship between lover and beloved, drawing from Barthes Fragments. I take the Fragments both as a starting point for the analysis, as well as methodological tool. Just like Barthes, I oppose various cultural objects or texts in this thesis, analyzing them through a Barthian lens.

Within this thesis, I propose three “manifestations or “situations” of love. These situations will be analyzed in their context but also relate to how love is expected – and limited – in how it can and should manifest itself. The thesis consists of three separate chapters, in which a specific aspect or manifestation of love is discussed. These manifestations are figures taken from Barthes’ book A Lover’s Discourse (Fragments d’un discours amoureux), first published in 1975. In his Fragments d’un discours amoureux, Barthes lays out a fascinating analysis of romantic love, combining concepts borrowed from psychology and psychoanalysis, all sorts of literary works, zen theory and

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Buddhism, his personal life and . This complex and rich compilation of concepts Barthes uses give, as I will argue, a possible counterhegemonic methodology for reading and thinking about love. By invoking such a variety of theories, Barthes is not simply assuming love is a chaotic emotion or feeling; rather, he is showing the complex interrelations between cultural ideas, objects, feelings and thoughts. “Romantic love” seems at first sight a quite simple or at least often used concept. It has been discussed by classical phenomenologists, structuralists, novelists, poets. It is the topic of many tv-shows and popular magazines. To highlight the possible meanings, uses, and effects love has, Barthes’ methodological approach which focuses on the affect of texts, is highly useful. Before I explain how I use the concept of “affect”, it is necessary to make a few remarks on Barthes’ different approaches and his shift towards affect. Before Barthes published his Fragments, he was mostly known for his theory of semiology and analysis how produce meaning. He published his book titled in 1957, in which he works according to his “semiotic” method, which aims to “demystify” signs (Mythologies, 9). What do cultural images and objects – such as the Citroën DS, steak frites, photo booths, de Tour de , mean? What do they convey and what do they hide? Barthes meticulously analyzes a wide range of cultural phenomena, inspired by linguist ’s theory of signs which claims that a only has meaning in opposition to another sign. Languages are internally organized structures, which can be disentangled. This method is most often referred to as semiotics, which means studying the cultural “text” as an autonomous phenomenon. The text is thus not explained by the message the author wanted to convey by it, but as an independent object. Semiotic scholars disentangle the different “at work” in the text, look at how they relate to each other and how they produce meaning by interacting with each other. A text, as the Mythologies show, are not texts in the literal sense of the word. A photograph, painting and magazine are as well part of the cultural fabric of texts. Barthes initially claimed texts are compilations of symbols, representing and carrying cultural , ideas and presuppositions. His method is most often referred to as semiotics, which means studying the cultural “text” as an autonomous phenomenon. The text is thus not explained by the message the author wanted to convey by it, but as an independent object. Semiotic scholars disentangle the different symbols “at work” in the text, look at how they relate to each other and how they produce meaning by interacting with each other. A text, as the Mythologies show, are not texts in the literal sense of the word. A photograph, painting and magazine are as well part of the cultural fabric of texts. In his later works, Barthes’ publications seem to shift in a different direction.

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Yet, in his later works, as for example Le Plaisir du Texte but also Fragments d’un discours amoureux, Barthes uses a different vocabulary and method to analyze the things he is interested in. From De Saussure and Lacan’s faithful student, constantly in dialogue with psychoanalysis, his work seems to be affected by what I call here “the affective turn” (‘Sensing the Image’, 71). It is with this Barthian concept of affect I will work, which is to be distinguished from his early analyses, inspired by . In the chapters to come, I will work with the notion of affect Barthes introduces in works as Le Plaisir du Texte and his short L’effet de Réel. From De Saussure and Lacan’s faithful student, constantly in dialogue with psychoanalysis, his work seems to be affected by what I call here “the affective turn” (‘Sensing the Image’, 71). Barthes shift from structuralism to this new approach, in which he pays attention to very different effects and aspects of texts, is often characterized as “the affective turn” (“Sensing the Image”, 71). “Affect” here means the “sense” or “meaning” a text can produces out of the realm of text. “Affect” is what a text “does” which cannot be reduced to mere discourse (L’Effet de Réel, 89). In works such as Le Plaisir du Texte (The Pleasure of the Text) and L’effet de Réel (The Effect of the Real) Barthes introduces a different way of reading and appreciate texts. He lays out ways of reading with more attention to sensual and bodily affects of reading. In Le Plaisir du texte (Pleasure of the Text, 1971), Barthes writes that the production of meaning happpens through sensual perceptions (ibid. :61, see also ‘Sensing the Image’, 76). In the chapters to come, I will draw upon the loose notion of affect as an effect produced by the text which cannot be reduced to mere discourse. In The Affect Theory Reader, Melissa Gregg and Gregory Seighworth write: “Affect arises in the midst of in between-ness: in the capacities to act and be acted upon” (1). In Le Plaisir du Texte, Barthes writes :

Le texte est un objet fétiche et ce fétiche me désire. Le texte me choisit, part toute disposition d’écrans invisibles, de chicanes sélectives: le vocabulaire, les références, la lisibilité, etc; et, perdu au milieu du texte (non pas derrière lui à la façon d’un dieu de machinerie), il y a toujours l’autre, l’auteur. (Le Plaisir du Texte, 45)

The text is a fetish object, and this fetish desires me. The text chooses me, by a whole disposition of invisible screens, selective baffles: vocabulary, references, readability, etc.; and, lost in the midst of a text (not behind it, like a deus ex machina) there is always the other, the author. (The Pleasure of the Text, 27)

In The Affect Theory Reader, Melissa Gregg and Gregory Seigworth stress Barthes’ original use of the concept affect as following:

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Here affect theory is, at one level, an “inventory of shimmers” while, upon another register, it is a matter of affectual composition (in a couple of senses of the word "composition" – as an ontology always coming to formation but also, more prosaically, as creative/writerly task). This is a passion for differences as continuous, shimmering gradations of intensities. Making an inventory (of singularities). And in the interval, is the stretching: unfolding a patho-logy (of “not yets”).? (Affect Theory Reader, 11)

This idea of “stretching” and “not yet” is interesting, since it both highlights the flexibility of the concept as well as its power to be applied to various themes, in various ways. The objects I have chosen each have their own cultural importance and relevance. In the first chapter, I read Barthes’ figure “Absence” with Kierkegaard’s concept of “resignation”. In the second chapter, I focus on the figure “Jealousy” which I analyze with Semir Zeki’s interpretation of love as striving for “unity”. In the third and final chapter, I discuss the figure “Vouloir-Saisir” and Emma Goldman’s essay Love and Marriage. I have chosen these objects to highlight the “affect” of love in a theological, scientific and political context. By drawing from several texts, I explore both the meaning of Barthes’ figure as well as reviewing hiss methodology of making and analyzing “affective emotions”. Like Barthes, in the chapters to come, I will juxtapose several texts and concepts, putting in dialogue ideas coming from very different disciplines. Therefore my thesis can partly be viewed as an analysis and experiment in Barthes’ literary theory. Fragments d’un discours amoureux consists of haphazardly ordered “figures”, in alphabetical order (10). Barthes justifies the book in the prologue by stating that the lover’s discourse is characterized by “extreme solitude (Fragments, 5). This makes the book a double statement: it problematizes at one the solitude of love as a discourse and a practice. The fragments are an affirmation of a discourse which is talked by millions, but supported by no one (Fragments, 5). This becomes all the more clear in Barthes’ introduction: he refuses to approach the lover as “symptomatic subject”, but rather wants to show the “untreatable” aspect of his discourse (ibid:7). And love, for Barthes, it at least problematic in this sense that is seems to completely change the lover’s relation to the world (ibid:11). This “horizontal discourse” is important to analyze, Barthes argues. The lover’s discourse needs an affirmation. How is this affirmation conducted? And what does it look like? In the chapters to come, I will work with these questions and analyze several “affirmations” of romantic love.

Methodology In this thesis, I will analyze the possible affects of romantic love, guided by Barthes’ Fragments d’un discours amoureux. I do so by proposing several close- of three figures, which I related to other texts. This approach of “close reading” in combination with an intertextual dialogue is

9 based upon literary research techniques. From Gerard Genette’s analysis of , I take the idea of texts as autonomous structures, but see its interpretation as an infinite process “at work”. This is different from Genette. As Derrida’s concept of “not yet” in Force the loi shows, interpreting texts is a task we can never “finish”. We stay in an infinite “not yet’ (pas encore) (Literary Theory, 133). In line with Barthes’ project, I aim to explore possible affective actions of the concept of romantic love, by putting it in dialogue with various other objects and theorists. I look at how Barthes’ figures can help us to create critical concepts for detailed analysis of romantic love and its affects. This project is therefore significantly different from both narratology and . Yet, drawing from methods such as close reading and using concepts such as “discourse” and “narrative” ask for a short introduction. “Narrative” is often coined as a term introduced by the structuralist literary scholar Gérard Genette, who argued textual structures can be seen as a set or relations (Literary Theory). Genette, who wrote in the early 70s, was inspired by early twentieth century literary theories of the Russian Formalists, in particular Victor Schklovsky and Boris Tomashevski. Tomashevski’s theory distinguished the “fabula” and “suzhet”. The fabula is the actual series of events a text describe, the fabula is the narrative manipulation of a text (Literary Theory, 36). In Le discours narrative (Narrative Discourse), Genette argues there are three important relational aspects in (literary texts). First, there is the order of events, secondly the relationship of duration and thirdly the relationship of frequency (ibid:72). An important contribution of Genette’s is the introduction of the implied author. As a structuralist, Genette refuses to let the narrator(s) of a story coincide with the actual of the author. The introduces the implied author, “a third-person narration must have a narrator and that this narrator is always present in the story” (ibid.:73). Just as Genette (and Barthes) I dismiss the notion of “the author of flesh and blood” to explain my analysis. I work with the notion of the implied author and it is to this author I refer when I mention Barthes’ name in the text. Structural analysis approach a text as speaking for itself and an autonomous structure that needs to be deciphered through scrutinizing analysis or, as I call it, “discourse analysis” and “close reading”. For the analysis I aim to undertake I will use theorists who refer to cultural or political dimensions of love. By “discourse analysis” I mean the analysis of discursive events as explained by the French scholar (Les mots et les choses, 46). Discourse analysis tries to disentangle the relationship between discursive utterances. Foucault explicitly distances himself from structuralism: his analyses of discursive formations and the disentangling of genealogies if part of his analysis of the “philosophy of the subject” and how this is related to the “modern concept of the self” (Sexualité et solitude, 150).

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In three separate chapters, I will close-read the figures and highlight their meaning by involving several concepts I borrow from other theorists. I propose to combine each figure with a different cultural object or text. By doing so, I aim to create an intertextual dialogue between the different texts. In a way, this method is similar to how Barthes himself analyzes and explains his affective figures. I write “affective” here, since what Barthes aims for is precisely more than a correct “” or “description” of love:

Une figure est fondée si au moins quelqu’un peut dire: « Comme c’est vrai, ça! Je reconnais cette scène de langage.» (8)

A figure is established if at least someone can say : “That’s so true! I recognize that scene of language.” (4)

Thus, a text can claim a certain truth (reality) when it establishes something outside of this text. I use the term “affect” to designate this effect. What this affect precisely is and why a Barthian analysis of the texts I propose highlights different aspects of these texts will be discussed more in depth in each separate chapter. I do so because the concept “affect” lacks a clear definition, which, in this context should not be interpreted as a simple “lack”. Yes, the question “What is affect?”, is not so easy to answer. It knows different uses in literary theory, classical philosophy and the neurosciences. Yet, I take this as a possible strength of the concept rather than a weakness. Originally, the concept is traced back to Baruch Spinoza, whose concept of affect is closely related to a forceful encounter, a tension or suspense because of the infinite “not yet” that is inherent to affect (ibid.:3). “Affect theory” has further developed several approaches, which Greg and Seighworth initially categorize as two distinct directions; the first line of theorists interpreting affect as a prime “interest motivator”, the second as a “entire, vital and modulating field of becomings” (5). Greg and Seighworth distinguish five approaches and uses of “affect”, varying from the critical study of emotions to contemporary neurosciences.3 But an important first move in the use of affect is to state that it “…emerges out of muddy, unmediated relatedness and not in some dialectical reconciliation of cleanly oppositional elements or primary units, it makes easy compartmentalisms give way to thresholds and tensions, blends and blurs” (4).

3 The first one found in post-phenomenal theories of embodiment, the second in the analysis of the intertwined relations among humans and non-humans, the third in a non-humanist and non-Cartesian philosophical tradition, the fourth in contemporary psychological and psychoanalytic approaches, often underpinned by biologism, the fifth in the stream of science portraying the everyday and every-night life with a focus on performativity, the sixth as the school of thought attempting to move away from the linguistic turn, and is also influence by neurophilosophy. The sixth line of thought is characterized as the critical study of emotions, and the eighth, finally, in practices of science and science studies (8-9).

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Seighworth and Gregg characterize this as the promise contained by affect theory: “…casting illumination upon the “not yet”” (4). In their introduction, the authors distinguish eight different approaches, as an attempt to give a concise overview of the use. These are characterized as affect as used in post-phemenological theory, cybernetics, non-humanist philosophy, psychological inquiry, political theory, pragmatist theory, post-cogito inquiries and science studies. My approach can be situated somewhere in between the sixth approach, focusing on “practice” literary theory and the seventh, critical discourses of the emotions. Barthes’ structural approach of how love and emotions inspired by love are clearly intertwined with the cultural display of emotions is both linked to this idea Seigworth and Gregg coin as “contagions of feeling” as well as an idea of performativity and (The Affect Theory Reader, 7). Barthes’ analysis moves past the binaries of structuralism, as Seighworth and Gregg point out, in order to “…register a form that is rarely taken into account: the stretching” (10-11). In this thesis, I quote from texts written in different languages. This is why I want to make a final point about the notion of “translation”. In Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers (The Task of the Translator) wonders if a translation is meant for those who do not understand the original (9). “[K]ein Gedicht gilt dem Leser.”4 Translation is a form, and to understand this form, we must go back to the original. The original is not directed towards the reader: a translation intended to serve the reader can therefore only be a bad translation (ibid.:9-10). Benjamin writes: “Übersetzungen dagegen erweisen sich unübersetzbar nicht wegen der Schwere, sondern wege der allzu grossen Flüchtigkeit, mit welcher der Sinn an ihnen haftet” (ibid.:20).5 This is why I quote all the sources in the original language and have quoted their English translation in the footnotes.

Organization of the thesis The thesis will be structured as follows;

1) Chapter One: Love as absence The beloved person and love itself as something that “cannot be grasped”, a liminal experience almost, is one of the “classic” interpretations of love. It has been portrayed as such from Plato on (love as the ultimate goal of the , almost impossible to attain), idealists and romantic poets whose ultimate dream it was to die for love. Barthes writes: “L’absence amoureuse va

4 “No poem is intended for the reader” (The Task, 253). 5 “Translations, in contrast, prove to be untranslatable not because of any inherent difficulty but because of the looseness with which meaning attaches to them” (The Task, 262).

12 seulement dans un sens”, affirming love as a lonely – think of the introduction – experience. The “I” is always present, while “you” are always absent (Fragments, 19). In the first chapter, I take this idea of the ever-present “I” and always-absent “you” and analyze how these relate to each other, what this absence means for the relationship and how it can be linked to a narrative of “ideal” love. I use Barthes’ figure and read it through Nietzsche’s conceptualization of the “other” as someone I can never know (Mörgenrote §126). I also use Kierkegaard’s analysis of the “knight of infinite resignation” as described in Fear and Trembling. Kierkegaard’s concept is particularly relevant since it describes what happens to a “failed” lover, who keeps his beloved one forever present in his mind and is faithful to the love story, but at the same time is condemned to repeat the same movements of despair forever. Kierkegaard portrays the knight of resignation as someone who never gives up upon his love; however, the destiny of his love story is sealed (Fear and Trembling, 55). The love is entirely dependent of how the “I” nourishes it, idealizing a present beloved in vain. I use Barthes’ figure of “Absence” to lay out some thoughts about how absence ins conceptualized as self-containment in Kierkegaard’s texts. I invoke Levinas’ concept of hospitality to counter this analysis, and shows to reading Kierkegaard and Levinas with Barthes offers possibilities to read absence other than a deprivation.

2) Chapter Two: Love as jealousy Barthes’ figure of jealousy describes the feeling of dissatisfaction the idea that the loved one has to be “shared” makes arise. “I am not alone”, Barthes writes, and neither is the person I love: there are always others around us (Fragments, 172). In the second chapter, I analyze this idea of love and exclusiveness further. Barthes describes jealousy as “the norm”: not being jealous would mean to be perfect, which is a transgression per se (ibid.). This implies jealousy is a common experience, but also a “bourgeois” (as Barthes portrays it) norm, an expectation people have about their romantic relationship (175). I use Semir Zeki’s analysis of love as the desire for unity. Zeki, a British neurologist, has written a book in which he interprets love as the desire of lovers to “become one”. This desire for unity is, according to Zeki, a universal aspect of romantic relationships. In his book Splendors and Miseries of the Brain: Love, Creativity and the Quest for Human Happiness (2009), Zeki combines neuroscientific research and practice, and literary and cultural works to elaborate a theory about the human brain. Zeki argues that the main function of the human brain is to produce knowledge, and that this knowledge is acquired through the formation of concepts. The concept of “love” is an example of a “universal concept”. According to Zeki, disappointment (“miseries”)

13 come forth out of “dissatisfaction” mismatches between “the real world” and the ideal concepts our brain has produced (Splendors and Miseries, 47). By critically reviewing Zeki’s analysis and discussing his uses of literary texts, I use Barthes’ figure to highlight how jealousy might be read as a corollary by-product of love, but in a different sense than Zeki’s biological determinism argues. I use Eva Illouz’ concept of “love markets” and Shulamith Firestone’s analysis of love to interpret jealousy differently.

3) Chapter Three: Love as Vulnerability The third situation is love as a space for multiple intimacies. If not being jealous would not mean “to be perfect” but just “to be different”, to paraphrase Barthes’ figure on jealousy, what kind of love can be presented as an alternative? What happens when love is not about “absence” nor “jealousy”? Barthes’ figure “Vouloir Saisir” is a fascinating description of the lover “letting go” of his jealousy. The lover who finally understands that all the difficulties of the relationship are inspired by his wish to fully “appropriate” his loved one, decides to give up (Fragments, 273). I argue this fatalistic figure and abandoning jealousy does not have to necessarily represent the end of the romantic relationship. Can we oppose something different to this “Vouloir-saisir”? Barthes’ concept of “Non-Vouloir-Saisir” seems to be giving up the possibility of a romantic relationship altogether. Are there also different alternatives that can be drawn? I contextualize this figure with Emma Goldman’s essay Marriage and Love (1912) to highlight possible alternatives for love and romantic relationship. Goldman applies an anarchistic interpretation to modern love and marriage and lays out a different view on love, which also comes with other underlying ideas about what love “is” or is “supposed to be”. I draw from Nietzsche’s idea of reality as “grades” of truth as opposed to authenticity and put this in dialogue with both Goldman and Barthes’ idea of true love. I also use ’s analysis and critique of the romantic ideal of love as becoming one. In Éloge de l’amour (2009) Badiou argues this conception of love is preoccupied with death (the two lovers, against the world, in an ultimate union, as the myths of Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde show) (Eloge, 40). This radical interpretation of love is “too metaphysical”, according to Badiou. “After all, love happens in the world” (ibid., emphasis mine). Rethinking love and what love does is for love engaging the lover’s into a new kind of temporality (ibid.:42). Love is a “reinvention of life” (ibid.).

What I aim to do, is explore and analyze different manifestations of love. I draw from Barthes Fragments to develop a notion of “affect” of romantic love, which in turn I will put into dialogue

14 with several cultural texts and objects. In the chapters to come, I want to see if Barthes’ method can offer us the tools to re-think affect in the context of romantic love, evaluating Barthes’ own methodology in turn. By invoking a variety of texts on and about love, I aim to show the many facets and explanations of romantic love, and examine the potential of Barthes’ critical reading methodology.

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Chapter One: Love as absence

Ils méditent leur absence Et se cachent dans leur ombre Ils ont été au présent Ceci entre parenthèses. (Paul Éluard, Poésie Ininterrompue, 29)

They mediate their absence And hide within their shadows They have been in the present This between brackets. (Paul Éluard, Poésie Ininterrompue, 29)

What our age lacks is not reflection but passion. (Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 47)

In this chapter, I analyze the affect of love in the domain of the theological. I do so by setting up a dialogue between Roland Barthes’ figure of “Absence” and Søren Kierkegaard’s concept of endless resignation. I invoke Friedrich Nietzsche’s aphorism on the other as ungraspable entity and ’ meditations on the other as representing a moral encounter and duty. The goal of this chapter is to highlight the possible affect of love within a theological context. I want to highlight how interpreting love as a tool for analysis with both attention for the discursive effects and effects outside of this discourse, which I coin as “affect”, open up a space to understand love in the theological domain. As I mentioned in the introduction, I take affect as an effect which cannot be reduced to discourse. “Affect” is a complicated concept, described and portrayed from Spinoza to Deleuze en Barthes. As Gregory Seigworth and Melissa Gregg write in the introduction of The Affect Theory Reader (2010), “…How to being when, after all, there is not pure or somehow originary state for affect?” (1). Yet, as cultural analysts before have critically asked and reviewed before me, I question the use and need for a “pure” or “originary” definition of a concept. Instead, like Seighworth and Gregg write, paraphrasing Deleuze and Barthes, maybe this complicated and undefinable “affect” can be turned into the strength of the concept instead of its weakness. Barthes’ use of the concept as bodily and sensual experience, overthrowing the binaries of structuralism, as a means to pay attention to plus-minus (instead of the structural “yes” or “no”), “…accounting for […] shimmer, the stretching of process underway, not position taken” (10-11). In the chapters to come, I take from Barthes the notion of affect as effect outside of discourse.

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In Le Plaisir du Texte, Barthes discusses a particular sensual, bodily effect a text can establish (63). I take, in line with Barthes affect as an effect or consequence of produced by, in this example, a text or a concept. This affect produced cannot be limited or reduced to mere discourse itself. In this chapter, I focus on the figure of absence. Questions that I will ask in this context are: How can absence be viewed as an affect of romantic love? And what kind of effects is absence producing itself? To highlight these questions, I have chosen to discuss several theorists which I will relate to Barthes’ figure. I invoke Søren Kierkegaard’s book Fear and Trembling (in Danish: Frygt og bæven) (1843), Emmanuel Levinas’ Totalité et infini: essai sur l’extériorité (1971) (translated as Totality and Infinity: an Essay on Exteriority) and ’s book Donner la mort (1999) I use Jacques Derrida’s work to bridge between Kierkegaard and Levinas. Whereas Kierkegaard and Levinas can, and rightly so be interpreted as respectively an iconic, classical Christian-humanist thinker, whereas Levinas’ work has precisely anti-European, Jewish philosophy, reading those texts through Barthes’ lens opens up possibilities with regard to the concept of “Absence”. How the “absence” of the other relates to a possible encounter with the other, and how this encounter as particular event is related to responsibility, transcendence and hospitality is what I aim to highlight in this chapter. I focus therefore in particular on specific concepts of the theorists mentioned above. Kierkegaard’s “knight of resignation”, Levinas’ notion of “hospitality” and Derrida’s concept of the secret are all related to a kind of Absence, as I will show in the sections that follow.

The Discourse of the Absent: Barthes’ Analysis of Absence, Discourse and Love Barthes’ figure of “Absence” starts with a short definition of the concept:

Absence. Tout épisode de langage qui met en scène l’absence de l’objet aimé – quelles qu’en soient la cause et la durée – et tend à transformer cette absence en épreuve d’abandon. (19)

Absence/absence. Any episode of language which stages the absence of the loved object – whatever its cause and its duration – and which tends to transform this absence into an ordeal of abandonment. (13).

This definition portrays the absence of the loved one (or object) as a drama. The absence is staged as ordeal: absence is interpreted as abandonment. Whatever the cause or length of this experience are, it is experienced as ordeal. The situation is actively transformed and manipulated by the lover. This definition of absence entirely rests upon this manipulation of the lover. The loved one – described as mute object – does not speak back. This might at first sight seem logical since this loved one is absent, but is important to emphasize. Who stages what, and how, will help us

17 understand what is going on in this scene. “Scene” is an important concept in this respect. Barthes uses it to describe the manipulation of the lover, who understands (and presupposes) the absence is abandonment. The lover imagines that he has been abandoned. Barthes description of “Absence” continues with the staged and framed abandonment. The lover imagines all sorts of scenarios of abandonment. The other moves, I remain (19/13). Absence only goes in one direction: you leave, I stay. This absence is not only about what is missing; the absent you partly constitutes the remaining I (ibid.). These positions cannot be permuted, Barthes writes. “You” and “I” can never be present at the same time at the same place. This means to say: “I am loved less than I love” (ibid.). The ordeal seems to come forth out of a manipulated interpretation of the absence. Absence is interpreted as “rejection”. This rejection and being expulsed (out of the romantic episode with the beloved) constitutes the “I”.6 Even if the beloved is not present, the “I” should remain faithful. Forgetting the beloved’s absence is “betrayal”. “Je suis, par intermittence, infidèle.”7 Being intermittently unfaithful is necessary to stay alive; lovers who do not forget die of exhaustion (ibid.). This complex relationship between the act of forgetting, infidelity and normality is important to scrutinize further. “Being normal” means not being obsessed with someone’s absence in this context, or: not transforming someone’s absence into abandonment. The absence of the beloved is so possessive since the lover both desires and needs the beloved; this is also why forgetting this is characterized as treachery. If the lover does not remember who he needs and desires, he cannot perform his identity as a lover. By transforming the absence into an experience of “forgetting”, Barthes emphasizes the practical (and exhausting) experience being in love is. These moments of forgetting (these infidelities) last, most of the time, for only a short period of time: “De cet outbli, très vite, je me reveille. Hâtivement, je mets en place un mémoire, un désarroi” (21).8 The lover’s identity and memory have to be restored after the experience of forgetting. The “discourse of the beloved’s absence is restored,” addressing myself to the other, invoking his presence as person to whom the lover speaks, however absent as referent (as physically present). The “I” (re)starts to blame the absent beloved, shifting between two temporal regimes (tense of reference and tense of allocution). The lover shifts back and forth, fearfully trying to avoid the present, which consists at that moment “a pure portion of anxiety” (22/16). This anxiety makes time an ordeal to endure; the lover needs to manipulate it in order not to be suffocated by it. “Le langage naît de l’absence”, the active practice of absence creates a

6 This is similar to Freud’s analysis of the constitution of the “ego”, which can only take place after the child separates from the beloved Mother. 7 “I am, intermittently, unfaithful” (14). 8 “I waken out of this forgetfulness very quickly. In a great haste, I reconstitute a memory, a confusion” (15).

18 business which keeps the lover so preoccupied he cannot do anything else (ibid.).9 This business and practice is staged in order to deal with the “pure” anxiety, but, more importantly: “Manipuler l’absence, c’est allonger ce moment, retarder aussi longtemps que possible l’instant où l’autre pourrait basculer sèchement de l’absence dans la mort.”10 The absence is thus a shifting between tenses, a dialogue between the absent “You” and waiting “I”. It is also reinforcing the different positions the lover and the beloved occupy, as I mentioned above. But most important, it is a defusing practice, trying to keep the beloved present, and to delay the moment “the other might topple into death”. Drowning because if the absence of the other, the “I” is almost asphyxiated and reconstituting his “truth” (brackets in the original text) preparing what is “intractable”, which, in turn, consists of what is the lover’s identity and his “truth” (the truth of his love). Important in this figure are the idea that absence possibly can contribute to an – imagined – dialogue between the two entities. The “I” turns the beloved’s absence in a practical matter, a pastime. The discourse coming forth out of this absence is also a topic I will come back to. And the relation between absence, reality and truth will be addressed more in depth, invoking in particular Kierkegaard’s notion of finitude.

Truth and Absence The figure problematizes the romantic relationship as a confrontation between non-permutable actors. The “you” and “I” can never really meet, which urges the “I” to stage an act of self- torture and abandonment. Absence is therefore not only a result of romantic love: romantic love actively produces and maintains this absence. The lamentation of being abandoned is not coming forth out of irrational fear or jealousy only; “speaking absence” gives form to the static relationship between the lover and beloved. The infidelity Barthes writes about is threefold: it is about the “forgotten” beloved, the truthfulness to the love itself, and finally, to the truth the lover cultivates in himself. This “truth” can be interpreted as how Barthes portrays the intractable and truth in two other figures:

Envers et contre tout, le sujet confirme l’amour comme valeur. (29)

Against and in spite of everything, the subject affirms love as . (22)

If we take this alienating aspect of love into consideration, it becomes clearer what the absence of the other means. The “absence” refers to the distance (physical, psychological) between me and the other: it also refers to the absent of “the world” in the love story. “Love” creates and isolated

9 “Language is born of absence” (16). 10 “To manipulate absence is to extend this interval, to delay as long as possible the moment when the other might topple sharply from absence into death” (ibid.).

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“I”. This perception of truth holds in itself an alienating force per se, since the value of love is something that is affirmed in spite of the objections of the (normal, rational) world. Indeed, just as Barthes describes in the introduction, the “love story” is that which the lover must pay to the world in order to reconcile himself with it (11/7). But this “truth” Barthes mentions is also related to the unique and exclusive relationship that the I wishes to establish:

L’autre est mon bien et mon savoir: moi seul le connaît, le fait exister dans sa vérité. […] L’autre me fonde en vérité : ce n’est qu’avec l’autre que je me sens « moi-même ». (271)

“The other is my good and my knowledge: only I know him, only I make him exist in his truth. […] The other establishes me in truth: it is only with the other that I feel that I am “myself”” (229).

Absence is related to the other and what I “know” about him, and also how the “I” conversely is established. The other establishes “me” in my truth. In psychoanalytic and literary criticism, this position has been theorized by Freud, Lacan and Levinas. I briefly position Barthes in this discussion before moving on. In psychoanalysis, the constitution of a subject (“me”) is preceded by the mirror phase; the infant sees itself in a mirror, and enchanted by the wholeness and beauty of the reflection, creates a (fictional) image of himself (Theory and criticism, 1281). For Freud, this marks also the beginning of language. The discovery of the infant that the continuity between himself, the world in the mother is an illusion creates feelings of loss,, which result in (insatiable) desires, and language (Literary Theory, 918). Lacan takes this analysis further and argues that the mirror stage marks the entering of the “Symbolic”, in which the real is represented through language. This “Real” (the real world) remains inaccessible to us, because it can never be fully represented. Language is the consequence of this fragmented and incomplete subject we are, as opposed to the whole subject we would want to be. Derrida’s analysis of the subject as created through linguistic practices adds to this analysis that the real outside of language is not only inaccessible, but that all our encounters (with others and ourselves) also happen through language (Marges de la philosophie, 16). Language, in these theories, is a means to deal with absence. . “Love” is a affective transfer, in Lacan’s vocabulary (Les quatre concepts, 139). Love are projected desires onto the other. Barthes claims that the other establishes the “I”. Yet, how “real” this establishment of the “I” is, is questionable: the relationship between the two lovers is repeatedly conceptualized as incompatible with the real. For Barthes, love means creating a different kind of real, or reality. In the third chapter, when discussing Alain Badiou’s Éloge de l’amour (In Praise of Love), love as new

20 temporality, simultaneously criticizing love as solely romantic encounter or experience, I will come back to this idea that love establishes a different kind of reality. Badiou explicitly dismisses the romantic, utopian idea of love as fusional emotion. Love is the celebration of “Two” (Deux) (Éloge de l’amour, 38). How we relate to each other is isolating (because it is exclusive) but also produces a specific kind of reality, a truth to which only the lovers have access. That is, how this constitution takes place remains rather vague. Barthes characterizes the beloved “you” as someone who does not speak back and is always absent (7, 21). The intense loneliness resulting from this process is also enabling the lover to prepare his “truth”. This truth holds the midst between a monopoly of the knowledge I have over the other, but is intertwined with the value of the love story. Important to stress, finally, is the manipulative power the lover tries to exert: on the one hand, he wishes and needs to “forget” the beloved, which Barthes describes as temporal infidelity. On the other hand, the lover’s manipulation also changes the absence in “ordeal”; the lover interprets absence as abandonment, in turn modifying the love story and experience as a whole.

The Knight of Resignation: Romantic Love as Self-Containment I now turn to Søren Kierkegaard’s knight of endless resignation. Kierkegaard’s knight of resignation enters the stage when Kierkegaard has explained the interpretational difficulties of the story of Abraham as introduced in the Old Testament, offering his son Isaac. In Fear and Trembling (1843), Kierkegaard discusses Abraham as religious figure and possible interpretations of the offering of Isaac. How is it possible that we admire Abraham as a hero, if we recognize the tension between the ethical and religious plights he had to fulfill? (The “we” in this respect refers to Christian believers.) The book is written from the first-person perspective (I), whom is referred to as Johannes de silentio and which is used as pseudonym throughout the whole book.11 From an ethical perspective, Johannes de silentio explains, Abraham must be interpreted as a father who attempted to kill his son. But from a theological point of view, Abraham is perceived as a hero. Consequently, Kierkegaard argues, the Christian faith must be able to change this action from a possible murder into a holy action. How does this transformation from murder to offer work? We need courage to understand the real implications of the above. We need courage and we need faith, for if we leave faith out of our analysis, the only interpretation left is the ethical meaning of the series of events. This would make Abraham a murderer. Understanding Abraham’s actions requires two moves: that of resignation, which one makes in a first leap, and the second leap towards faith. Resignation is unconditional faith in God’s love and

11 In literary theory, a concept to describe the distance between the actual writer and narrator is solved by the concept of the “implied author”, whom is the narrator of the storyline. In this context, Johannes de silentio is referred to as a pseudonym since he is actively presented as protagonist and narrator (Literary Theory, 73).

21 goodness: but it remains a fixed, a finite move, whereas Abraham’s offer can only be understood if one has made the second leap and reached the “infinity of the real faith”. In the “Preliminary Expectorations”, Kierkegaard introduces the knight of endless resignation. The knight of endless resignation stays within the first regime, that of finitude. “A young man fell in love with a princess”, Kierkegaard writes, “and this love contains his whole life” (46). This love, however, is doomed to fail. It cannot be realized, never, not in this world. Does this refrain the knight from loving his princess? Far from it. He will never give up his love. “He is not a fool.” Nor is he a coward: he is not afraid to live his love and let it perpetrate him in every fiber of his body (ibid.). If the love he experiences turns out to be unhappy, doomed and impossible to realize, so will he be. This “leap” the knight of endless resignation makes, is a move of infinitude. But still, the knight remains within the domain of “finitude”. Johannes de silentio writes:

Deep natures never forget themselves and never become something different than they were. The knight will remember everything, and precisely this remembrance is his grief. (44)

The knight of resignation remains faithful, although he had realized that the love he cherishes is impossible to realize. He continues to love and to remember the princess, in vain. The fact that his love is vain does not refrain him from loving her. This is a courageous act, according to Johannes de silentio, yet it is not enough to make the second :

He has understood the deep secret that a human needs to be enough for himself in love. (46)

This is precisely the heart of the problem, and at the same time explains why the knight of endless resignation loses his princess. This endless resignation means the knight resigns; he makes an infinite move and is condemned to repeat this movement forever. He has made the first leap of faith: now, he is caught in the infinitude of endless resignation. He does not reach out anymore, not to the princess but to nothing else. Romantic love isolates, because the knight believes in his love and nothing more than that. The impossibility of realizing this love leaves him with nothing than being faithful to an idea that will never become “true”. “Who has resigned endlessly, is enough for himself”. And this, according to Johannes de silentio, is precisely what the knight of faith does not. Kierkegaard’s analysis points out endless resignation is isolating since the one who resigns is not reaching out and has locked himself up within his own finitude. The knight who resigns makes the first move necessary for “true faith”, but gets stuck thereafter. “By means of faith

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Abraham did not offer Isaac, but by means of faith he got Isaac back” (40). The point is to make the first unconditional move, Kierkegaard writes, and then move on. If one does not (such as the knight does not), one loses “finitude”. And it is precisely this finitude that should not be lost (54). The knight of faith, as opposed to the knight of resignation, regains this finitude by making a second move after having resigned. The knight of faith knows that his love is impossible, but still believes it will be realized (51). This second move is what characterizes as recognizing the impossible but still believing by virtue of the absurd (ibid.). This absurd is incommensurable with man’s rationality, since it presupposes putting one’s faith in a different entity than oneself. Endless resignation is possible to do on your own, but the second move requires believing in something different. The knight of resignation does not let himself be “affected” by the absence, by containing his grief to himself. This makes the creation of a different reality, to think of Barthes, impossible. Kierkegaard’s knight of resignation does not let himself be affected. The absence of the beloved is here resulting in self-containment. In the sections below, I explore different options.

An Encounter between Me and the Other: Kierkegaard and Levinas I interpreted affect as an encounter, an open space where “what affects” and “what can be affected” meet. Barthes’ figure of “Absence” characterizes this by invoking the notion of two tenses, in between which the lover tries to shift. The absence of the other, in Barthes’ work, results in a break between me and the world. Yet, this absence could also result in a new type of encounter, if this very absence is not interpreted as abandonment, I claim below. “Absence” is a possible opening up, if it is not viewed as a deprivation of something (the other, in this context). The discourse of absence gives form to the privation of the beloved, and both invokes his presence and laments the fact that he is physically not there (22/15). This discourse tries to set up a kind of relationship, but utterly fails. In the introduction of the Fragments, Barthes already touches upon this problem. By portraying the lover’s discourse as ignored and disparaged, Barthes underscores the needs for his affirmation. Barthes’ Fragments as affirmative discourse addresses precisely this problem; the necessity for the book is because of this solitude (5/1). As ignored and driven into the “unreal” (inactuel), the lover’s discourse can only be affirmed. But what is this affirmation about? Barthes writes:

C’est un portrait, si l’on veut, qui est proposé ; mais ce portrait n’est pas psychologique ; il est structural : il donne à lire une place de parole : la place de quelqu’un qui parle en lui-même, amoureusement, face à l’autre (l’objet aimé), qui ne parle pas. (7)

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What is proposed, then, is a portrait – but not a psychological portrait; instead, a structural one which offers the reader a discursive site: the site of someone speaking within himself, amorously, confronting the other (the loved object), who does not speak” (3).

An important parallel to make here with Kierkegaard’s knight of endless resignation is the question of to whom the lover speaks. Both Barthes and Kierkegaard portray the “other”, the loved one, as silent entity. The other does not speak, Barthes write (7). As the figure “Absence” bitterly states, the loved object is always absent (21/15). The lover’s discourse tries to bring the other back, invoking it in discourse, but precisely this discourse isolates and intensifies the experience of loneliness. Romantic love produces loneliness: “Je ne suis pas un autre, c’est ce que je constate avec effroi” (142).12 In the first place, this loneliness can be interpreted as the inevitable distance between the lover and the beloved. But the lover’s discourse actively cultivates this distance. This is where the notion of affect comes into play. The isolating experience of “romantic love” is produced and maintained by the lover’s affirmation. “Le désir n’est-il pas toujours le même, que l’objet soit présent ou absent ?” (21), Barthes rhetorically asks.13 This forever-absent object of desire is clearly inspired by how Lacan framed the “objet a”, a projection of our desire that we can never grasp (Les quatre concepts, 89). By asking if the lover’s desire remains the same, independently of the object of desire is present or absent seems at first sight or reading a reinforcement of Lacan’s analysis of the objet a. Yet, if we think again of absence as produced by romantic love because of the longing for a different kind of real, it becomes clear how Barthes pays with this psychoanalytic notion of desire. Barthes writes how the discourse “of” absence – produced by the very absence – keeps invoking the other’s presence as the one who is addressed (through ). Barthes, then, offers a frame in which we think of language as actively producing the lover’s discourse, and therefore making absence an “active practice”.14 This discourse can be interpreted as an attempt to make the other present. I now turn to absence as affective consequence and its relation to romantic love as something taking placing also outside of discourse.

Splendid Isolation and Absence Compared to Barthes’ analysis of absence as both an endeavor because of the isolating experience as well as constitutive factor, the possible affect of love in as a theological process gets more sense. For Kierkegaard, the romantic love the knight of resignation for his princess is

12 “I am not someone else: that is what I realize with horror” (121). 13 “Isn’t the object always absent?” (15). 14 Classical psychoanalysis as developed by Freud and later Lacan work with the concept of “Imaginary”, which refers to an imagined phantasy of an ideal continuum between Mother, baby and the world (Literary Theory, 86, 158- 159). As we grow up, we realize this is a phantasy but this yearning for completeness never ends.

24 isolating because it makes him retire into himself. This kind of romantic love refuses and is therefore doomed; it gets stuck in “finitude”. Barthes’ absence consists of a similar experience: by invoking and addressing the other, the lover affirms the lover’s absence and the inability of the two lovers to meet. For Kierkegaard, the knight of resignation is lost because he confines within self-containment. A lack of trust (“Believing in the absurd”) means that the knight of resignation cannot move further and make the second leap of faith. For Barthes, language is born out of absence. The “discourse” produced by absence is thus confirming the lover’s isolation. Absence gives form to privation: the lover desires and needs simultaneously without ever being satisfied (22/16). The meaning Barthes gives to language is twofold here: it isolates the lover from the lover and it shapes a tensions between presence and absence. “Tu es parti (de quoi je me plains) tu es là (puisque je m’adresse à toi” (22/16). But this absence and language both are also constitutive of this “I”, or at least a form of this “I” as well. In Totalité et Infini (1971), Levinas writes that language can also be used to share a world with the other (230). Naming things, designating them, shows a possible joint world and the description of this world. Language is used to reach out and relate to the other. In Giving an account of oneself, writes: “Let us remember that one gives an account of oneself to another, and that every accounting takes place in the context of an address. I give an account of myself to you” (31). Language is a means to establish a relationship with the other. Barthes, on the contrary, problematizes the lover’s discourse as being in a state of extreme solitude. If a discourse is structurally being driven into to “unreal” (inactuel); the only recourse possible is its affirmation. This affirmation needs to be recognized by someone outside of the text:

Le livre, idéalement, serait une coopérative : « Aux Lecteurs – aux Amoureux – Réunis » (9)

Ideally, the book would be a cooperative: “To the United Readers and Lovers”. (5)

The book serves as a confrontation, but not only between lover and beloved, but between the expulsed (ignored) “I” who speaks amorously, and the reader. The book therefore actively reaches out to the reader. The affect of the figure absence becomes the possibility of an encounter between the reader and the “I”. “Absence” is not only a deprivation, but also a possibility to reach out (to the reader, or the beloved.). Consequently, Barthes figures need to be recognized by the readers. The success of the project depends on this re-actualization of the portrayed figures. If we put this next to respectively Kierkegaard’s knight of resignation and knight of faith, this opens up an interesting

25 space for analysis. Kierkegaard’s knight of resignation resides within self-containment. He is doomed to repeat the same move forever, lost within infinite. Because of his self-containment, the temporal aspect of his movements is lost. The knight of faith however acquires this finitude again, after having made the first move of resignation. This acquiring of finitude happens through believing “by virtue of the absurd”. “It drives me out of my mind, and if not because if another reason, than because of jealousy”, Kierkegaard’s narrator exclaims (45). This jealousy comes out of the impossibility to understand this “by virtue of the absurd”. The absurd makes the move unable to understand. Secondly, the knight of fait actually makes the second leap, something which the narrator is not able to do. This “absurd” is not absurd because it is senseless (38). It rests upon the knights faith, his believe, his trust. “Absurd” refers to the incommensurable relationship between “faith”, the second leap the knight of faith makes, and our human minds (43). Just as Barthes trusts his readers to recognize the figures he has so haphazardly assembled, the knight of faith handles out of a secret arrangement. Love as affect within the theological domain and more specifically within Kierkegaard’s work therefore underscores the necessity to trust. The knight of faith is everything but self-contained. He acknowledges his own finitude, without limiting his beliefs to this same finitude. This acknowledgment can be read as a reaching-out: “absence”, in this respect, becomes the opposite of “lack”. It is the opportunity for something else to enter. But this “entering” requires a certain attitude, which Kierkegaard’s knight does not have. The knight of faith knows how to relate himself to the “infinite”. This leads towards isolation and, finally, self- containment. Remember Barthes’ figure in which the other’s “Absence” is not only used to imagine abandonment, but also to instore an (imagined, for that matter), dialogue. The lover continues to address the beloved, even if he is not there. InTotalité et Infini: essai sur l’extériorité (translated as Totality and Infinity: Essay on Exteriority), first published in 1971, the French-Lithuanian philosopher Emmanuel Levinas portrays subjectivity as hospitality. The encounter between the other and me is a transcendental moment per se: the face of the other being something that cannot be grasped, opens up a space to the infinite (9, 23). The moral task of the “I” is to welcome this other (23). Discourse, for Levinas, is linked to signification. Meaning possibilizes signs; meaning therefore precedes language (226). “La signification c’est l’infine, c’est-à-dire Autrui” (227). Language is constituted because of a face-to-face encounter (228). It is the face of the other that makes the first meaning and signification possible (ibid.). Meaning is thus linked to infinity and to the welcoming of the other. Barthes’ analysis of language as born out of absence thus might be interpreted not as a “lack” of presence of the other. Precisely the fact that the other is absent

26 makes the ethical encounter possible. If I do not try to grasp the other as “mine”, in Levinas’ words, I understand the other has not abandoned me but that it is precisely the infinity he represents that makes a true encounter possible. This encounter is for Levinas closely intertwined with approaching the other ethically; I need to abandon the idea I have a “right” or “power” over the other. The truth Barthes describes as the ultimate knowledge over the other (271) does not hold here. It is precisely because the other is not me and I know this, that we can truly meet. The absence produces by romantic love is also constitutive of the language that allows for reaching out – towards the reader, as Barthes would argue, the absurd or the infinite for both Kierkegaard and Levinas. “The reader”, infinite and absurd are in this respect at the same time that what cannot be “grasped”, but also enable for constituting identity and dialogue. Levinas’ concept of hospitality and other as impossible to be contained fully sheds light on this idea. The other is “infinite” and should be acknowledged as such (252). The “other” is therefore veiled in a kind of secret: inaccessible to me, with regard what I can know about him, and how I can grasp him (252, 257). In Donner la mort, Jacques Derrida decribes the relationship between Abraham and God as a secret, but not just any secret. “Un secret fait toujours trembler”, Derrida writes in Donner la mort (87). I want to read this secret, unknown, absence, as possibility for something else to come in. Kierkegaard’s knight of resignation closes himself of in absence: instead of using it to reach out, it results in self-containment.

Dans la mesure où ne disant pas l’essentiel, à savoir le secret entre Dieu et lui, Abraham ne parle pas, il assume cette responsabilité qui consiste à être toujours seul et retranche dans sa propre singularité au moment de la décision. De même que personne ne peut mourir à ma place, personne ne peut prendre une décision, ce qui s’appelle une décision, à ma place. (Donner la mort, 87)

Since he does not say what is essential, which is the secret between God and himself, Abraham does not speak. He assumes this responsibility which consists of being alone, and actualizes his own singularity in the moment the decision is made. Just as no-one can die in my place, no-one can take a decision, which is coined as decision, in my place.

The “secret” between Abraham and God cannot be conveyed in language; Abraham cannot talk about it. The responsibility Abraham is endowed with is too big. Such a responsibility, Derrida writes, must keep its secret (89). Abraham has a duty towards God to fulfill, and therefore must betray his family (Sarah and Isaac). His secret particularizes his situation: he can only present himself “truthful” towards God: “… a unique, jealous God” (90). Consequently, this secret cannot be spoken about, nor be shared or explained. It is therefore, to invoke Levinas again, an

27 encounter with infinity. “Absence”, in this respect, can be read not only as a deprivation of the other, but also a possibility to acknowledge this transcendent other.

In this chapter, I have analyzed Barthes’ figure of “Absence” as affect of romantic love and related it to Barthes’ analysis of language, Kierkegaard’s knight of resignation and knight of faith and finally Levinas’ interpretation of the ethical encounter. Taking Barthes’ analysis of “Absence” a constituting a possible dialogue offers therefore possible different readings of Levinas and Kierkegaard. The inaccessible “secret” Derrida invokes in Donner la mort highlights how the concept “encounter” entails a kind of responsibility. I have highlighted that love and its affect in the theological domain are related to ideas about truth, trust and uncertainty. These ideas are intertwined with how one relates to the uncertain. I have demonstrated that if we read “Absence” along with Barthes’ project of the book as a cooperative between readers and writer, absence is no longer a privation but enables a true encounter between “me” and the other”. As affect in the theological domain, this opens up possibilities for the use and interpretation of love as affect. If we take Barthes’ description of “Absence” and read Kierkegaard and Levinas through this figure, it becomes clear that the affect of absence is more than a deprivation or lack of someone or something. What I have aimed to show is that Levinas’ and Kierkegaard’s transcendental interpretations of a possible encounter (between me and God for Kierkegaard and me and the other for Levinas) can be seen as an encounter made possible by and partly realized because of absence. “The affective of absence” or an affective reading of absence opens up possibilities to read Levinas and Kierkegaard’s absence as transcendent, but not in the classical meaning of the word. Barthes’ “Absence” could change Levinas’ and Kierkegaard’s interpretation of absence as deprivation into a potential encounter. This creates interesting possibilities with regard to absence as possible counter-concept, able to open up texts such as Kierkegaard’s and Levinas’ work on the other as transcendent. My aim has been to show that invoking Barthes involves a possibility to read the encounter (between “me” and “the other”) as an affective result of absence.

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Chapter Two: Love as Jealousy

Ut melius vigilare sit ante, Qua docui ratione, cavreque ne inliciaris. Nam vitare, plaga s in amors ne iaciamur, Non ita difficile est quam captum reitbus ipsis Exire et validos Veneris perrumpere nodos.

For to avoid being drawn caught, into the meshes of love, is not hard a task as when caught amid the toils to issue out and break through the strong bonds of Venus” ((Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Librum IV, 1144-1148, translation Cyril Bailey, 1910)

Il y a plus longtemps encore J’ai été seul Et j’en frémis encore.

And even longer ago I used to be lonely And it still makes me shiver. (Paul Éluard, Poésie ininterrompue, 54).

In this second chapter I discuss Roland Barthes figure of “Jalousie” (Jealousy) from Fragments d’un discours amoureux. I do so by analyzing the figure from the Fragments, and scrutinizing the meaning and effects of this emotion. As explained previously, I take the notion of “affect” as an effect of romantic love as laid out in Fragments d’un discours amoureux, in which Barthes lays out a “structural” analysis of love, by identifying its key themes and how these cultural notions of love are intertwined with personal emotions and expectations. “Romantic love”, refers to the emotion the lover has for the silent beloved, affirmed by and through the lover’s discourse (Fragments, 5). “Affect” refers to the effects of a texts outside of the text. Affect is, to draw from Gregg and Seighworth who explain Barthes, a concept arising from in-betweenness. Affect is about the encounter between me and you, the reader and the writer. In this chapter, I analyze jealousy as possible affect from romantic love and how it is portrayed in different texts. Can jealousy be thought and experienced as an affect of love? To do so, I take Barthes’ analysis of “Jealousy” in the Fragments as a starting point. I set this “Jealousy” in dialogue with a concept I borrow from the neurosciences: unity-in-love. This unity-in-love is, according to British neuroscientist Semir Zeki, a synthetic inherited concept formed by the brain,

29 resulting in an all-encompassing and universal desire to become one with the beloved (2009). I discuss how Zeki’s concept of unity in love is portrayed as biological affect of romantic love, and in turn how this affect is “objectified” in the scientific domain. Semir Zeki’s project is to give objective, “hard” evidences for how romantic love functions and to what desires being in love can be traced to. Love as scientifically “proved” emotion, and how this relates to jealousy, and how this can be linked about ideas of how romantic relationships are shaped are questions I will address. I use several texts from different disciplines to highlight possible explanations of jealousy as “affect”. Furthermore, I will also use different affects of jealousy by invoking different authors. In a way, how I proceed can be seen as a way of analyzing Barthian research tools invoking Barthes’ own method. I juxtapose several texts to come to a better understanding of the concept I explore. Semir Zeki’s analysis is an example of the tendency to look for “hard” or “scientific” proofs, in the field of the exact sciences but also in the humanities and social sciences. “Neuroscientific” basis for emotions, for example, but also brain images to explain behavior or feelings have gained a lot in popularity over the last few years. A wide range of books proving that “we are our brain” or that love can be traced back to “neurobiological processes” are some examples of this, just as the debate about monogamy as “cultural construct” as opposed to “polyamory”, which would be part of our “original”, biological make-up, are some examples of this. The list of popular scientific publications explaining love, the free will, marriage and monogamy over the last few years is but an example of this. Dutch neurobiologist Dick Swaab published a widely read book titled We Are Our Brains: A Neuro Biography of the Brain from the Womb to Alzheimer, which led to a heated debate about biological determinism. Philosopher Victor Lamme wrote De Vrije Wil Bestaat Niet (Free Will Does Not Exist), arguing the same vein that our deicisions, preferences and choices are the result of unrevealed biological processes. And what to think of journalist Mark Mieras’ book, Liefde. Wat Hersenonderzoek over de Klik, de Kus en al het Andere (Love. What Brain Research Reveals about the Chemistry, the Kiss and Everything Else). Especially what is revealed about “everything else” is telling. “Grand Narratives” or all-explaining stories are far from death, as Lyotard proclaimed them to be in La Condition Postmoderne. Instead, there seems to be a new risen hunger for all-encompassing narratives and explanations of why we do what we do, think what we think and love whom we love. The end of “grand narratives” (grand récits) Lyotard describes, seem to be replaced by new stories we tell. Invoking Barthes’ Fragments and concept of romantic love and affect, I do not want to counter these developments by creating a grand narrative myself. Instead, I wish to show how a Barthian reading and use of concepts can create openings for other ways of analyzing such

30 concepts as “love”, without seeking refuge by these all-explaining histories. The search for deterministic answers to what emotions are, or what they can do, represent a danger to a way of reading texts with an eye for other possible effects. Invoking Roland Barthes’ playful notion of “romantic love” is a way to re-open the possibility of other effects of romantic love. I now turn to Barthes’ figure of Jealousy. I aim to explore the possibility of a counter-narrative of Jealousy, which simultaneously challenges Zeki’s deterministic account as well as proposes a new way of reading Zeki’s text. I will do so by critically reviewing Zeki’s use of literary texts as well as exploring the “origins” and reasons for jealousy, and how Barthes’ figure enables us to critically review Zeki’s narrative.

Jealousy as Affect: Barthes’ Explanation Roland Barthes’ figure of jealousy starts with the following characterization of jealousy:

Jalousie. « Sentiment qui naît dans l’amour et qui est produit par la crainte que le personne aimée ne préfère quelque autre » (Littré).

A sentiment which is born in love and which is produced by the fear that the loved person prefers someone else. (Littré) (144)

Barthes’ description highlights several important aspects of jealousy: first, the sentiment of jealousy is born out of love and something else than, for example, a transformed or project sentiment of the lover. Jealousy arises from a fear that the beloved might “prefer someone else”. Jealousy can therefore be interpreted as a result of an unequal relationship between the lover and beloved. It is a relational concept, which concerns the anxiety that this relationship is not the relationship cherished most by the beloved. Second, the fear is about how the beloved perceives the lover. Remarkable is the with the figure “Absence” I analyzed in the first chapter: the fear the lover experiences is not the result of a manipulation or abstracted into horrific scenarios. The beloved is not imagined death, or departed. The lover is not afraid of what might happen to the lover, but fear being considered not “good” or special enough. As I have argued in the first chapter, the “affect of absence” can also be read as a constitutive element for the lover’s subjectivity. Language comes forth out of absence. Is, in this respect, death-drive something that comes out of jealousy? Barthes continues with an analysis of Werther’s jealousy (from Goethe’s Das Leiden des jungen Werthers). Werther’s jealousy concerns images, not thoughts (170). Werther finds himself in a tragic disposition, not a psychological one (ibid.). Jealousy concerns the other’s position with

31 regard to the beloved; it is not about the person himself. But when Werther is no longer confident, the jealousy and rivalry becomes acute. “Comme si la jalousie advenait par ce simple passage du je au il, d’un discours imaginaire (saturé de l’autre) à un discours de l’Autre – dont le Récit est la voix statutaire”, Barthes writes (171).15 Jealousy is an emotion rising from an experienced threat (the exchange of confidence). The “I” becomes “he”: his own identity (as lover) is not assured anymore. This jealousy is not about the person who is in the place the “I” desires; it is about the fact that the beloved is shared:

Charlotte [Werther’s beloved] est un gâteau, et ce gâteau se partage : à chacun sa tranche : je ne suis pas le seul – en rien je ne suis le seul, j’ai des frères, des sœurs, je dois partager, je dois m’incliner devant le partage : les déesses du Destin ne sont-elles pas aussi les déesses du Partage, les Moires – dont la dernière est la Muette, la Mort ? (171)

Charlotte is a cake, and this cake is divided up: each has his slice: I am not the only one – I am alone in nothing, I have brothers, sisters, I am to share, I must yield to the law of division: are not the goddesses of Destiny also the goddesses of the human Lot, of allotment – the Moirai, the last of whom is the Silent One, Death? (145).

The lover wants to be the only one whom the beloved has the be “shared with”, although he understands that denying the fact that the beloved has to be shared would mean denying the beloved’s perfection (ibid.). This, according to Barthes, makes the experience of jealousy doubly cruel. In the first place, the lover wants to be “alone” and the only one (for the beloved). Secondly, this very jealousy makes the lover aware of his weaknesses. Weakness, in this respect, means both the lover’s vulnerability (he is afraid to be hurt) and also the inability to share the beloved’s perfection. Jealousy also has a peculiar relationship with social norms and “bourgeois” emotions. Refusing to be jealous means refuting imperfection; the one who dismisses jealousy pretends to be flawless, to be perfect (172-173). The “I” fears that someone else is cherished more than he is. At the same time, he is aware of the almost childish demand of this hope. But he cannot escape from it, since this would mean to claim to be perfect. These sentences gives rise to several questions: Is jealousy an inevitable corollary emotion of love? How could we understand more precisely the relation between jealousy and perfection? And, last but not least , what exactly, is there to be jealous of? These are questions I will attempt to answer in my analysis. “Je souffre d’être exclu, d’être agressif, d’être fou et d’être commun”, Barthes concludes (173). Each of these reasons to suffer center around one single fear: “that the

15 “It is only when confidence is exchanged for the final narrative that the rivalry becomes acute, acrimonious, as if jealousy appeared in this simple transition from I to he, from an imaginary discourse (saturated by the other) to a discourse of the Other – of which Narrative is the statutory voice” (144).

32 beloved might prefer someone else”. What this exactly is about is what I will examine in the sections below. What is so refreshing about Barthes’ analysis of jealousy, is that he analyzes it as a helpless refusal of a certain image, which seems the materialization of fear (that the beloved might prefer someone else). Love produces images we fear, but not simply because of inevitable brain processes in our heads. Barthes’ fine-grained analysis shows that jealousy is not only linked to the desire to possess someone else, but also to cultural ideas about what ideal love “is”. This leads simultaneously to the fear of being “banal” because of being jealous: the lover knows that his jealousy is “common”, an accepted or even a “required” emotion. By juxtaposing several texts, Barthes shows that jealousy is linked to fear that the beloved prefers someone else, but also much more than that. The jealous lover simultaneously accuses and hurts himself by the very emotional experience, because he accuses himself of being jealous, but also because he is afraid of hurting the beloved because of his jealousy. Not in the least, jealousy is such a penible experience because it reminds the lover of his own banality; and this does not only represent a threat to himself, but also to the relationship with the beloved and therefore to the lover’s identity, and his “truth” (Fragments, 272). Barthes’ analysis both affirms and questions jealousy. To highlight the importance of Barthes’ analysis, I now turn to the first text I will discuss. Love, Creativity and Concept Formation In his book Splendors and Miseries of the Brain: Love, Creativity and the Quest for Human Happiness (2009), the British neuroscientist Semir Zeki lays out a theory which relates concept forming in the brain to universal desires. Zeki relates “universal” desires that arise in romantic relationships to concepts that our brain forms. Zeki supports this hypothesis by analyzing several “iconic” works of and literature, which are, according to hum, “products of the brain” and can therefore be interpreted as mirroring certain brain concepts (3).16 One of Zeki’s premises is that the primordial function of the brain is to acquire knowledge, and that this knowledge is obtained through the formation of concepts (1). He distinguishes between synthetic, a-posteriori concepts which are formed through experience and inherited brain concepts (22-23). Our idea of romantic love is “regulated by an inherited concept”: unity-in-love (23). This unity-in-love means that we want to become “one” with the lover (ibid). It is expressed through a longing of melting together with the Other, and an annihilation of our “self” (ibid.). Zeki pinpoints this argument by writing that “…the evidence for this inherited concept of “unity-in-love” comes from examining scientific literature, but from examining the world literature of love” (ibid.). This is at least

16 It is worth noting here that Zeki uses “iconic” in the sense of what is termed “high culture” in cultural studies. As Hans Bertens points out, “The idea that high culture is essentially different from other forms of culture and that it has an inherently oppositional role to play with regard to other cultural expressions explains the missionary zeal and the moral urgency that we so often encounter in classic humanist criticism” (Literary Theory, 172). Zeki clearly adheres to this “classical humanist” tradition he lays out.

33 remarkable for a neuroscientist, and it adds another dimension to Zeki’s notion of “world literature”. The works of art he discusses are not only the most beautiful and finest works of art, but also match with modes of thought and feeling as organized in our brain (4-5). Zeki quotes from literary works as examples and proofs of his theory about love. Zeki believes love bears universal characteristic (ibid.). “It is part of our biological make-up to fall in love”, Zeki argues later on (132). Falling in love and striving for an exclusive relationship which expresses itself through the desire for unity in love are biological “necessities”, part of our brain system. “Free will is restricted, even in love”, Zeki writes. Striving for a “perfect” and “unique” relationship, then, are desires fundamental to our being as humans. They are expressions of how our brain conceptualizes love (133). It is thus inevitable not to want this unity, but it is at the same time a source of misery, since unity-in-love cannot be attained. “Unity-in-love is a brain concept that invokes splendors of heaven”, Zeki argues, but this heaven “can never be attained on earth; it is against reality” (ibid.). Being-in-love, a necessity in itself, comes with another inevitable demand, both of the beloved as from the lover’s self. Thus, love comes along with wishes which cannot be realized. Zeki argues this desire for unity and, consequently, the impossibility to achieve it is proven by the high rate of suicides and unhappy endings of so many love stories. Passionate love and death are closely intertwined, because of the high and impossible desires arising from love, which undoubtedly lead to frustration and disappointment. Badiou criticizes this very delimited attention to the first romantic encounter. Instead of only looking at the first arousal or emotional affects, he argues, we need to direct or attention to what love does in the long term (Éloge, 38). I will discuss this more in depth in the third section of this chapter. The link between passionate love and has been described in depth by (1856-1939). In , romantic love is strongly associated with a desire to enter the Imaginary, a state Freud has coined as the most early childhood, in which there does not yet exist boundaries between the “I” and the world (Literary Theory, 160). This stage, obviously, comes before the constitution of the subject (as separated from the world) which happens also through language (ibid.). Zeki’s analysis draws from this desire to enter this imaginary state: passionate love makes the lovers want to destroy themselves as subjectivities. In passionate love, Zeki argues, the “I” wants to annihilate itself:

Unity implies an obliteration of the self and its merging with the other. It implies, in short, an annihilation: annihilation in the beloved, annihilation in God, who is also the Beloved. But annihilation, in the sense of the merging of two individual entities into one, is not achievable on earth except through death. (153)

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Since this longing and desire are part of inherited brain concepts, they are immutable. Zeki underpins this analysis with neurologic data about the kind of hormones the brain release when a person is in love (148-149). Jealousy and striving for unity-in-love, then, are not only expressions of a desire which can only be frustrated, but also an active estranging emotion. I will come back to this estrangement in the third section. Jealousy “of the world” (which impedes this all-encompassing unity, in this respect, becomes a source of both estrangement and dissatisfaction. It is, for both Barthes and Zeki, inevitable because being in love means desiring a kind of relationship that cannot be realized in this world. To speak with Barthes; romantic love comes with transgressive demands, of which jealousy reminds us. In Barthes’ figure of Jealousy, the all-encompassing emotion of love is also related to an impossible claim towards the other. The fear that the beloved might prefer someone else becomes a terrifying thought, to such extent that the lover feels he is being transformed into a kind of “monster”. Wanting to be “the only one” is transformed here into “wanting to be one”. In the figure “Folie” (Mad), Barthes writes:

…c’est de devenir un sujet, de ne pouvoir m’empêcher de l’être, qui me rend fou. Je ne suis pas un autre : c’est ce que je constate avec effroi. (142)

…it is becoming a subject, being unable to keep myself from doing so, which drives me mad. I am not someone else: that is what I realize with horror. (121)

Just like in Zeki’s analysis, the madness and frustration are produced by the inability to become one with the beloved. Jealousy produces loneliness, but in a more fundamental form than “Absence”. “Absence” constitutes the subject; jealousy creates a feeling wanting to destroy this subject. Yet, where Zeki uses literary sources as mere examples to underpin his hypothesis, Barthes actively questions the cultural model of jealousy. Zeki’s use and interpretation of literature is wholly different than Barthes. For Barthes, jealousy might be a necessary by-product of love, but stating that it is simply the result of chemical processes in our brain would be too simple. Barthes’ analysis of how the “I” relates to the other and how this relationship is shaped by cultural notions and expectations of love give jealousy as emotion a different dimension. This can be also be seen by how Zeki and Barthes use literary texts and other cultural objects. Zeki’s illustrative use of literary sources (as mere “examples” of frustration and disappointment as consequences of love) makes questions arise. Are literary texts, musical works and poetry merely results of what we “really” think? Barthes’ use of literary texts suggests otherwise; our brain does not simply mirror ideas into “art”, but how a discourse is upheld, neglected or affirmed also forms ideas about these phenomena in turn. The project of the Fragments lies precisely in this

35 idea: the fact that the lover’s discourse needs an affirmation and be established. The claim of the book is that the lover’s discourse is a discourse of extreme solitude. Barthes’ project relies on the aim to at least temporarily upheld this solitude, by uniting lovers and readers. By showing how our ideas about love and, in this chapter, jealousy, are shaped and intertwined with all kinds of cultural narratives, Barthes challenges the idea that these emotions can be explained by one all- encompassing stories. He also attributes a sense of power or “agency” to cultural ideas, who are not simply “brain products”. Quite the opposite: cultural models and narratives actively shape and influence our ideas. Maybe texts are being made up within human brains; but, as Barthes would argue, our brains are also shaped by texts. What we “think” and “feel” is by no means the result of isolated chemical processes. As Barthes writes in the introduction of the Fragments, a cultural figure is true when it can be recognized (5). Culture travels through thought, but also through texts, books, plays and music. For both Zeki and Barthes, jealousy seems to be an inevitable by-product of love. For Barthes, jealousy is a manifestation of the impossible demand of the other to become fully mine. For Zeki, jealousy is the direct affect of a brain concept which want to fully “grasp” the other. How jealousy relates and shapes to this relation between the “I” and the beloved is what I will analyze in the next section. Yet, their different uses of literary texts and objects result in a different concept of jealousy altogether. Whereas Zeki relies on “hard” science which is only more proved through literature, Barthes’ analysis precisely reverses this logic. By reviewing literary texts and statements about jealousy, Barthes questions the legitimacy of jealousy. It might, as the figure shows, an inevitable, structural or psychological emotion produced within romantic relationships. Barthes focus on how jealousy is invoked by the image and how jealousy is about desiring someone else position makes this all the more clear (Fragments, 171). Jealousy makes the lover realize he occupies a certain position, making the I transit to “he” (ibid.).

Desire and the Annihilation of the Self In the first section I ended with a quote from Zeki which stated that romantic relationship create a desire to annihilate the self. Lovers want to become one. Not being able to become one frustrates the concept of unity-in-love. Zeki underpins his claim by citing from “world literature” (from Shakespeare’s sonnets to Rumi’s poetry) to show that the desire to become one has been extensively written about. “Brain products” serve as evidences for a theory about love. Barthes’ figure is underpinned with the example of Werther and a quote from Freud: “Quand j’aime, je suis très exclusif”.17 This exclusiveness is taken as paragon of normality (ibid.). Being in love,

17 “When I love, I am very exclusive” (145).

36 thus, is not only inevitable, but also conform. It means wanting a kind of exclusiveness, which is translated in a desire for perfection. Note that for Zeki, perfection means a specific system or concept, formed as such in our brain (132). As I noted in the previous section, this is also related to Zeki’s illustrative use of literary texts, which serve only as proofs of a certain biological, innate desire of unity. Barthes has on the contrary attention for the interplay between desire and its cultural formation and display. The frustration of this desire for unity often results in death. Zeki explains this death as a logical consequence of the desire for annihilation that comes forth out of the desire to become one. Annihilation is a corollary of unity-in-love (157). In line with Barthes’ analysis of jealousy, the desire to grasp the other fully is this an inevitable aspect or part of love. For Barthes, this aim to become one and the jealousy that results from not being able to is doubly frustrating since it might hurt the lover and at the same time almost literally catches the lover in a “bourgeois” emotion. Jealousy, in this respect, is a kind of inevitable trap, almost at work as a self-fulfilling prophecy: I am afraid you prefer someone else so I am going to behave odiously, Barthes’ analysis seems to claim (172). In both Barthes and Zeki’s analysis, the lover aims at a perfect situation which does not exist. Not being jealous would mean to be perfect: being jealous shows “my imperfection” and at the same time confirms the position of the “I” as a “normal” lover. The opposite of jealousy, or letting go of jealousy altogether is interpreted by Barthes as a claim of perfection. Zeki, on the other hand, relates the strive for unity-in-love (which I also interpret as a kind of jealousy, since it presupposes a merging between “me” and “the other”) which seems to be a universal trait of love. Important to note is that jealousy is the expression of a longing for perfection, but that the emotion itself threatens the relationship that the lover cherishes so much. Barthes and Zeki both discuss the desire to become one and form an exclusive couple represent a threat, to the relationship as well as for life itself. “Je souffre d’être exclu,” Barthes writes at the end of his figure.18 This being excluded needs to be taken very literally: being in love creates a different experience of the world, and of the self. The “I” is expulsed, becoming a kind of surplus in a world with which he has to share the beloved. “Jealousy” is the affect of love, produced by the estranging characteristics of love. Yet, Barthes critical use of literary sources give jealousy an extra dimension. Precisely because jealousy can be presented as a figure in the Fragments, makes us (readers) sensitive to jealousy as emotion. And this simultaneously affirms and acknowledges jealousy as “real” emotion and by-product of love, but also questions its necessity. Being aware and recognizing the figure means also a possible reflection on the ground on which is jealousy is established.

18 “I suffer from being excluded” (145).

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Now that I have explored the grounds on which jealousy is based according to Barthes and Zeki, I will turn to how jealousy is related to ideas of possession of the other in the third section.

What Is there to be Jealous of: Ideas of Possession Until now, I have analyzed jealousy as a symptomatic affect of an impossible yet inevitable ideal and desire that comes with being in love. This ideal can be characterized as the becoming of “one”, reflected in an unrealistic concept of romantic love. Full exclusivity would mean that the beloved does not have to be “shared”, in Barthes’ words, but this might very well mean there is not world left at all. Jealousy is a common, and, however cruel, inevitable experience. In this last section, I want to scrutinize this conception of jealousy as inevitable affect of love. If, as Barthes write, jealousy indeed means that “I am afraid the loved person prefers someone else”, this question can be countered by a different question: What does it mean to be uncertain in love? What is there to be jealous of? Barthes relates exclusivity and jealousy to the position the “I” occupies with respect to the lover. “I want to be alone” means “I want to be alone for you”. Barthes’ lover wants to eat all the cake, to stay in the same metaphor, instead of sharing his beloved (the very cake) with the world. Barthes’ lover is afraid to receive too little, since the unique passion he experiences for his lover entitles him to this. “Le discours amoureux étouffe l’autre”, it leaves no room for the other who has become someone to possess (198).19 Love makes the lover a “monster”, leaving no room for the beloved but fully wanting to integrate him and being integrated in turn, since jealousy is precisely about the fear that the other might think someone else is more important. The lover is transformed into an encompassing monster, using a type of discourse which can only suffocate the other.

A Barthian reading of Zeki however opens up new perspectives on the topic. If we interpret romantic love as estranging experience, as both Barthes and Zeki do, the question of how this estrangement happens and why it happens is important to ask. Barthes views the lover’s discourse as a totalizing type of discourse. However the lover is aware of his totalizing claim on the beloved, he is not able to change this. “Son amour n’est pas généreux”, writes Barthes (197).20 The lover is not only not willing to share his love, but unable to share it. It seems to be an inherent characteristic of love that the lover constantly fears that the beloved might leave him, or prefer someone else, and these anxieties are translated into a desire to control the beloved. As I

19 “The lover’s discourse stifles the other” (146). 20 “His love is not generous” (165).

38 mentioned in the introduction of this chapter, the potential critical reading of Zeki through Barthes is not only a different approach towards jealousy as chemical corollary of love; Barthes’ analysis precisely points out how notions of love are being enacted, shaped and, thus, “experienced”. Zeki’s biological determinism read through Barthes’ lens enables us to view jealousy not as a biological or even emotional necessity, but rather as an affect of both cultural expectations of love, as well as an expression of the fear that the beloved prefers someone else.

I argued that for both Zeki and Barthes, jealousy represents a corollary emotion of romantic love. Barthes emphasizes how the lover’s discourse is “stifling” the other, so desperately seeking to be close to the beloved that he might himself turn into an odious monster. Zeki writes that being in love comes with the inherent desire for unity-in-love. Both authors imply love is an estranging emotion; it gives rise to desires that cannot be realized “in this world”. Zeki goes even further by arguing that falling in love is “part of our biological make-up” (136). These double inescapable manifestations of love (falling in love and wanting to be unified with the beloved) result in and longing for “another world”, in which these desires might be realized. (Think again of the close link Zeki makes between romantic love and death.) The love story is an all-encompassing experience, leaving room for nothing else. Zeki writes:

Indeed, the theme of loneliness is implicit in the never-ending search for a state that can never be achieved [unity-in-love] because it is biologically impossible. Hence passionate love is both individualizing and isolating. […] Since wholeness and unity are not achievable on earth, lovers often look to another world, unknown to us. (Splendors and Miseries, 136)

In order to become one, two separate selves have to be annihilated. Since this is impossible – except if a love story indeed results in the death of the lover, but then still unity is not achieved – love is a source of permanent dissatisfaction and loneliness (ibid.) Barthes also highly emphasizes the inability of love to manifest itself in the blank and banal environment of “the real world”. The love story is the tribute the lover has to pay the world in order to be reconciled with it (11). Love itself, indeed, calls for more:

Ce que je veux, c’est un petit cosmos (avec son temps, sa logique), habité seulement par « nous deux » (titre d’un magazine sentimental). Tout ce qui vient de l’extérieur est une menace ; soit sous forme d’ennui (si je suis obligé de vivre dans un monde d’où l’autre est absent), soit sous forme de blessure (si ce monde me tient sur cet autre un discours indiscret). (166)

What I want is a little cosmos (with its own time, its own logic) inhabited only by “the two of us.” Everything from outside is a threat; either in the form of (if I must live in a world from which the

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other is absent), or in the form of injury (if that world supplies me with an indiscreet discourse concerning the other (139)

This estrangement is what I want to discuss next. Why is it that romantic love is incompatible with the world as it is? The longing for a different world is a feature of romantic love, inherent to the strong emotion that desires the beloved one so strongly. Jealousy can therefore be thought as an affect of this estrangement. But, as I will argue, jealousy can also be thought as an aspect of romantic love Zeki and Barthes do not make explicit in their analysis: the desire to possess the other. This also applies to Zeki’s book. That nalyzes the consequences of romantic love as scientific facts, regulated by oxytocin and serotonin. Lovers have impossible demands of their love story, which results often in unhappy endings. The experience of love, although, remains a desire for unity, which Zeki claims to be universal (148). The “illusion” to become one has one different outcome. Zeki claims that works of art can be interpreted as the outcome of frustrated brain comings. “Creativity is […] the brain’s way of making up for its shortcomings” (212). What is the consequence of this selfishness for jealousy as emotion? I invoke Barthes notion of the “I” as expulsed and reflection on his own odious behavior (197). The “I” is aware that his claim on the beloved cannot be realized, but cannot refrain from making this claim. But how inevitable is it to make this claim? And where does it come from? Is creativity a possible “way out”, or even therapeutic alternative for frustrated love stories, as Zeki aims to show?

In the first chapter, I analyzed the affect of absence as the staging of abandonment. The beloved’s absence is manipulated into abandonment; just like in the figure of jealousy, the presence of the beloved “in the world” (which is presented as a different world than the one created by the lovers) I interpret as a total claim of the beloved’s present. But a difference between “Absence” and “Jealousy” is that in the second scheme, abandonment is not a possible alternative. The estrangement that comes with romantic love, and the jealousy of the lover who has to be shared with the world, whereas the lover want the beloved “for himself” are underpinned by the idea that the other can be fully known and fully possessed (Fragments, 275). I want to challenge this claim by invoking two analyses of love as totalizing and claiming emotion: Shulamith Firestone and Eva Illouz. In The Dialectic of Sex: the Case for Feminist Revolution (1975), Firestone writes: “…[L]ove is the height of selfishness: the self attempts to enrich itself through the absorption of another being” (128). But, as Firestone continues, this selfishness needs to be understood in terms of a mutual exchange instead of an incorporation of the other (ibid.). But

40 many relationships are based upon the first misconception of love, which conceptualizes the other as someone who is “indebted” to me (Fragments, 275). In Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation (2012), sociologist Eva Illouz gives an account of modern romantic relationships. The book opens with a quote from Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1975):

Bliss in love is seldom the case: For every successful contemporary love experience, for every short period of enrichment, there are then destructive love experiences, post-love “downs of much longer duration – often resulting in the destruction of the individual. (2012:1, emphasis mine)

In this quote, the consequence of every lived love story of affair seems to be the annihilation or destruction of the loved one. Illouz’s choice for this quote is telling, since it shows not only her interest in love as destructive emotion, but characterize the destructive character of the encounter between lovers. Illouz argues that the “ecology and architecture of romantic choice” have profoundly changed in how we organize our loving relationships today (41). Illouz writes that this transformation can be viewed in the deregulation of the mode of evaluation of future partners, the tendency to view our partners simultaneously in psychological and sexual terms and, finally, the emergence of sexual fields (ibid.). How we choose, evaluate and judge our romantic partner has increasingly been a matter of competition and comparison. Love and romantic relationship also have become a more fundamental part of how people view themselves; it has become a large part of one’s identity, and, in turn, in how we estimate if we have failed or succeeded (243). Love has become “central to the social sense of self-worth”, Illouz writes. Romantic and sexual relationships take place within a sphere of “abundance”, meaning that people constantly compare their lovers to other possible lovers, which is reinforced by the normative freedom and commodification of sex (244). These developments go hand in hand with an increasing wish to “manage” one’s identity successfully, refraining people from taking risks, which, in turn, makes love a quite risky emotion. In line with Shulamith Firestone’s critical analysis of why love hurts, Illouz relates the need for more self-control to an inability to the openness a true love story seems to require (245). Love might cause pain, and this pain might hurt; but wanting to give up on pain seems at the same time giving up on love, the underlying principle seems to be. This means that engaging in romantic relationships is a risky affair, but that rationalizing this risk or reject it, means an emotional loss.21

21 In Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism (2007), Illouz relates this wish to control and dictate love as an expansion of capitalist logic, resulting in a vocabulary “…more and more dictated by the market” (91).

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If we go back to the Fragments, it appears indeed that Barthes’ description of jealousy and how the lover deals with it indeed seems to leave no room for an encounter of any sort:

Moi qui me croyais pour sujet (sujet assujetti: fragile, délicat, pitoyable), je me vois retourné en chose obtuse, qui va aveuglement, écrase tout son discours : moi qui aime, je suis indésirable. (198)

I who supposed myself to be pure subject (subjected subject: fragile, delicate, pitiable) find myself turned into an obtuse thin blindly moving onward, crushing everything beneath his discourse; I who love am undesirable. (166)

Note that the loving subject moves “blindly” (aveuglement); he thinks of himself as a pure subject, but has been deceiving himself (ibid.). The parallel with psychoanalytic theory is worth noting here, especially the work of (1901-1981). Lacan’s theory, drawing from Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic interpretation of the subject as “incomplete”, introduces the notion of the phallus. Sigmund Freud’s theory argues that the formation of a conscious subject, of an “I”, can only happen through the mirror phase. The infant sees itself “in the mirror” and realizes he is himself, a limited, demarcated subject (Theory and Criticism, 1281). This subjectivation of the “I” leaves it incomplete, longing for wholeness, since there is an boundary between the I and the world that cannot be crossed. The infant imagines himself as a “whole”, identifying himself with the reflected form in the mirror (ibid). Through a process mainly to be understood as an aesthetic recognition or fiction, we constitute imagined “complete” identities. Yet, since this is based on a reflection, this wholeness is not real (ibid.:1281-1282). This leads to feelings of isolation contribute to the making of a subject that is yearning for situations in which is it is interpelled as being complete (such as ) (Literary Theory, 86). This idealization and longing for wholeness are coined as “L’imaginaire” (the Imaginary) by Lacan. Romantic love is an example of such a situation in which the lover is hailed and striving for this wholeness (Les quatre concepts, 296). Barthes’ lover, just as Zeki’s subject, is constituted as loving subject but moves blindly, heavily burdened by the impossible desires love arises in him and expulsed from the world by it. Refusing to be jealous might not be a transgressive act: it might be a possible opening up. Illouz’ and Firestone’s analysis might highlight some of the complications of jealousy Barthes and Zeki seem to fail to identify. Jealousy can be characterized as an extremely controlling emotion, a sentiment that both Firestone and Illouz think that might threaten love. Jealousy conceptualizes the other as “mine”, or the “I” as possible merging identity with the beloved. Barthes’ concept of jealousy in relation to the theorists mentioned above gives room for a reading in which jealousy is

42 not a necessary or “biological” byproduct of love, as Zeki would say, but enables us to read jealous feelings also as the result of a cultural dialogue between the lover and the beloved. What happens between lovers, then, is more than just a “private affair”, in the sense that their actions and feelings are also related to cultural ideas about jealousy. Furthermore, by invoking Barthes’ concept of jealousy, I have aimed to highlight how much “personal” emotions which seem to rise from a relationship between two persons is in fact related to much more than that. Barthes’ analysis relates jealousy not only to a psychological result of love, but also to expectations of love. The combination of Zeki’s, Illouz’ and Firestone’s work show how jealousy can be embedded within several “frames”, such as neurobiology, capitalism and unequal power relations between men and women. By invoking Barthes’ concept of Jealousy, I hope to have highlighted how important it is to relate and analyze “Jealousy” from different perspectives. What is important to take from Barthes’ discussion of the concept is that jealousy invokes several cultural frames and has therefore several “affects”. It makes the lover suffer since he experiences his own aggressiveness, but also his banality and possibility to hurt the other. By reading these several authors with Barthes’ Fragments, I have highlighted not only these different possible interpretations of jealousy, but also to have shown how Barthes critical analysis and more specifically how he uses different cultural texts and object make such new readings and interpretations possible. A different reading of love opens up possibilities for its different affects. In the discussion of an emotion such as “Jealousy” this is especially important, since there are so many explanations that try to cover it with one single explanation. In the next chapter, I will come back to this when discussing Barthes’ figure of “Vouloir-Saisir”, which is also related to ideas of jealousy and possession. I will pay attention to possible alternatives for this model of jealousy by invoking Emma Goldman’s analysis of love and marriage.

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Chapter Three: Love as Vulnerability

In the first and second chapter, I analyzed love as isolating and individualizing emotion and as totalizing, controlling phenomenon. In chapter one, I discussed this “affect of absence”, introducing Kierkegaard and Levinas’ notions on the other and resignation. In chapter two, I discussed jealousy and its affect as both controlling and “stifling”. I ended with a section on love as estranging force because of its incompatibility with societal norms and life. An important remark to make here is that Barthes’ concept of romantic love rests upon a grasping and totalizing principle. As I showed in chapter one and two, Barthes’ “romantic love” is possessive, jealous, and anxious. “Romantic love” and its affects seem to be based upon a constant wanting to be reassured “I”. This notion of love has strong links with psychoanalytic and poststructuralist notions of subject formation. The “I” desires a situation of wholeness, with a micro-cosmos in which he and the beloved live in a perfect harmony and unity. Yet, the whole point of this desire that it can never be realized. In psychoanalytic theory, the idea of “wholeness” refers to an imagined state of unity of the infant with his mother, when the baby has not yet realized there is a difference between him and the world. In Barthes’ Fragments, the wholeness seems to rest upon a longing for being the “most cherished”. Yet, this longing for a “cosmos” in which only the lovers reside is acknowledged as impossible and even intolerable (166, 167). Contrary to the psychoanalytic interpretation, the lover understands that his demands are impossible to realize. This desire for unity which manifests itself so prominently in loving relationships is also taken up by Semir Zeki’s work, which I have discussed in chapter two. Jacques Lacan’s analysis of the subjectivation of the “I”, resulting in chronic feelings of incompleteness, forms a basis for this perpetual desire for something that cannot be realized. There is always something missing: the beloved always escapes. This is a logical an structural consequence of psychoanalytic identity theory; the “I” can only form itself by delimiting and demarcating itself from others. “Le sujet est divisé par l’effet du langage”, Lacan writes (Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse, 211). The subject becomes only a subject by acknowleding and entering the real: “la rencontre the reel” (Les quatre concepts, 65). After being constituted as a subject (within this scheme of the “real”) however, this same subject keeps on desiring an imaginary state. “Je ne suis pas un autre”, in Barthes words, means not only that the other escapes, but also that the I can constitute itself (142)22. Lacan’s conceptualization of the “objet petit a” resonates. Derrida’s “not yet” can be read through the infinite strive for a certain state or

22 “I am not someone else” (121).

44 situation, in which the relationship will never be. The object “petit a” functions, in this Lacanian scheme, as a part or aspect of desire for the Imaginary (Lacan, Les quatre concepts, 84-85). In the introduction, I mentioned how Barthes’ book can also be read as a discussion between Barthes and psychoanalysis and post-structuralism. In this chapter, I want to explore what kind of alternatives can be given for the beloved as “objet petit a” and love as constant “lack”. I take Barthes’ figure “Sobria ebrietas/Vouloir-Saisir”, which is the last figure of the book. I take it, therefore, as both an end and starting point for a new reading and analysis. I put this concept in dialogue with Emma Goldman’s essay Marriage and Love (1912) and Alain Badiou’s Éloge de l’amour (2009). These two authors problematize in particular the political aspects of love. I also use Friedrich Nietzsche’s conceptualization of the “other” and love, especially drawing from Morgenröte: Gedanke über die moralischen Vorurtheile (1881) (translated as Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality. Questions that I aim to analyze are what and how love functions within the political domain, if love has a political affect and how love politics can be seen as a characteristic of romantic relationships. I end with exploring the question what kind of alternatives a Barthian reading of Goldman and Badiou offer.

From Possession to the Annihilation of the Self Barthes introduces his concept of “Vouloir-saisir” as following:

Comprenant que les difficultés de la relation amoureuse viennent de ce qu’il veut sans s’approprier d’une manière ou d’une autre l’être aimé, le sujet prend la décision d’abandonner dorénavant tout « vouloir-saisir » à son égard. (Fragments, 275)

Realizing that the difficulties of the amorous relationship originate in his ceaseless desire to appropriate the loved being in one way or another, the subject decided to abandon henceforth all “will-to-possess” in his regard (232).

The lover realizes how the demands he has with regard to the beloved and the love story are at the same time the cause of many problems in this relationship. (Note that this decision is taken by the lover alone. The beloved is still mute (7, 198). The beloved has no say in the subject, he does not speak back. I have already shown how this can be related both to the “stifling” discourse of the “I” as described in the figure “Je suis odieux” (“I am odious”), in which Barthes reflects on the lover’s discourse as depriving the other of speech. In “Vouloir-Saisir”, however, another claim is made upon the beloved. Barthes writes: “…l’autre me doit ce dont j’ai besoin”

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(275).23 Realizing this claim is firmly rooted in a certain romantic and historic interpretation of love, it is worth pausing on the meaning of it a while. Whereas the beloved is deprived of speech, it is far from deprived from giving to the lover what he “wants”, or even needs. The beloved is “…mon bien et mon savoir.”24 Again, the emphasis is put on how the relationship with the beloved, as problematic, painful or difficult it might be, contributes to the constitution of a certain type of (loving) subject.25 Yet, the lover realizes this claim that the beloved “owes” him (the lover) what he needs, creates such insurmountable problems that he decides the lover gives up. Barthes characterizes this as so problematic that the only outcome of the love story is suicide, or “non-vouloir-saisir” (ibid.). “C’est ça où la mort”, Barthes give the example from Werther.26 As I will argue, N.V.S. is a kind of death; that of the loving subject. After this solemn statement, the “I” immediately questions its own motives: what if this non-will-to-possess is just a tactic, a way to make the beloved more attentive to me? What if it serves just as a strategy to appropriate the other in a more efficient, more secret manner? Or if it just a pose to make me feel good about myself? (276) Rightly so, the non-will-to-possess can in this respect be interpreted as the opposite of the jealousy the lover exposes. Afraid to hurt the beloved with his obsession to possess him, the non-will-to-possess leaves the beloved “be” (cf. 172-173). After having dismissed these pitfalls, Barthes continues:

Pour que la pensée du N.V.S puisse rompre avec le système de l’Imaginaire, il faut que je parvienne (par le détermination de quelle fatigue obscure ?) à me laisser tomber quelque part hors du langage, dans l’inerte, et, d’une certaine manière, tout simplement : m’asseoir. (276)

For the notion of N.W.P to be able to break with the system of the Image-repertoire, I must manage (by the determination of what obscure exhaustion?) to let myself drop somewhere outside of language, into the inert, and, in a sense, to sit down. (233)

The real, sincere N.V.S. serves not to try to appropriate the other more effectively, nor does it aim to create a “better image” of the lover. It consists of a rupture with the Imaginary: the strive for the imaginary being the very source of all problems. The lover must exile himself from language (that powerful meaning-maker). The rupture with the Imaginary means giving up the strive for this Imaginary, in such a total manner that it cannot come from the “I”. Also note the “exhaustion” Barthes evokes to characterize this event: love is incompatible with the world, and

23 “The other owes me what I need” (232). 24 “The other is my good and my knowledge” (229). 25 See also the argument I developed in chapter two, section one when I discuss jealousy as described in Barthes’ figure. The loving subject becomes jealous when it loses confidence in itself as loving subject (Fragments, 171). 26 “It is either that or death” (232).

46 yet the lover might only be able to let go of it because of a tremendous fatiigue. Barthes continues;

Et de nouveau l’Orient : ne pas vouloir saisir le non-vouloir-saisir ; laisser venir (de l’autre) ce qui vient, laisser passer (de l’autre) ce qui s’en va ; ne rien saisir, ne repousser rien : recevoir, ne pas conserver, produire sans s’approprier, etc. (277)

And again the Orient: not to try to possess the non-will-to-possess to let come (from the other) what comes, to let pass (from the other) what goes to possess nothing, to repel nothing, to receive, not to keep, to produce without appropriating, etc. (234)

An important characteristic of N.V.S., as this quote shows, is that it can and should not be staged or directed. No more scenes in this figure, as compared to “Absence”. The “I” should not play a role or present a certain image. Even more interesting is that the N.V.S. itself cannot be grasped. It is the result from something that comes from the outside. And this, in Barthes’ Fragments, is a rare characteristic of the lover’s discourse. This passage leaves room for something coming from the other. But in a different setting than the original “Imaginary” the lover had created for himself, since the N.V.S. is precisely about not possessing the other, and, conversely, ending the relationship: “Je me retiens de vous aimer”, Barthes concludes. Again, “Imaginary” in psychoanalytic theory refers to the longing for wholeness, a “return” to an imagined state of unity in which the infant and mother are one (Lacan, Les quatre concepts). Yet, Barthes uses the term differently. Barthes’ “Imaginary” refers to an over-signifying environment, a world in which everything has meaning (“tout signifie” (76). In this (imaginary) harmonious cosmos, the lover affirms everything. “Je dis oui à tout” (“I say yes to everything”) (31/24). The “death” of the relationship and the loving subject coincide with an end of the relationship as “stage” or “play”. Barthes argues several times that N.V.S. is about not possessing the other, but it is also about not upholding in image. N.V.S. cannot be used as a strategy to re- conquer the beloved, nor to the creation of a positive image of the lover. N.V.S. is about “leaving” the stage and the “system” of romantic love (276).

Love as Specific “Scene” Before I move to romantic love and its manifestation within the political domain I want to stress this notion of romantic love as scene or play. I do so to make clear how the notion of love is intertwined with ideas of authenticity, which will, as I will come back to later, be an important concept for critique for both Goldman and Badiou.

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Love as play has been extensively theorized by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Barthes’ last quote is from Nietzsche: “…l’âme anéantie est enivrée, âme libre et ivre!” (277). The quote seems to refer to Nietzsche’s amor fati and pathos of distance, as the N.V.S. should result in the letting go of what once was such a strong passion. Barthes relates this also to the Zen-tradition, as the quote above shows. Non-possessing the other, but doing so by peacefully letting him go seems to be the key gesture to make (276). The lover must refrain from his desire to possess the beloved, and, by doing so, from loving him (277).This N.V.S. is a result of the difficulties of the loving relationship; again, of the inability to realize or live a love story “in the world”. Since in this thesis I am interested in how we can read theorists through Barthes’ critical approach, Nietzsche’s characterization of love also relies upon a fine-grained analysis of all the ways in which love clouds our judgement. Love is one of the powerful emotions which aims to blur our judgment; wishing to see as many good traits of the beloved as possible, love incites us to create a more positive image of the beloved than is true (Morgenröte, §118; 352). But Nietzsche’s analysis opens up the possibility to analyze this “lying” or “clouding” aspect of love as space for experimentation. This development is twofold; not only do we want to upheld a positive image of love ourselves, it also serves to deny the distance between the lover and beloved. Love creates a false kind similarity that is not really there in order to keep up appearances; for the sake of intimacy, every feeling of estrangements needs to be avoided (Morgenröte §532). Barthes’ figure of N.V.S. however explicitly dismisses this capacity of staging a scene. The lover does the opposite; he leaves the stage. I therefore interpret this moment not only as a refusal of death, but also as a “” (Umwerthung aller Werthe). Since the lover has created his own system of value in which his love for the beloved prevails in spite of everything, a fundamental change has to be carried out in order to let go of this love. In the introduction, Barthes portrays the love story as tribute that has to be paid to the world in order to be reconciled with it (Fragments, 8-9). Love creates not only difficulties between the lover and the beloved: it also imposes a distance between the lover and the world. Love and “normal” life, or maybe just “life”, seem to be – at least to a certain extent – incompatible. In the section above, I analyzed N.V.S. as a dismissal of love as stage. The lover does not want to be part of a “scene”. The N.V.S. cannot be a tactic to conquer the lover; it precisely consists of not expressing the desire to possess the other. This, for Barthes, consists of letting go of love altogether. Giving up on love means giving up on love-as-scene and love-as-conquering. Love, according to Nietzsche, is always intertwined with a kind of “staging”. There is no “pure” or “originary” state of love. Love is an affect that can be characterized as an “ inventory

48 of shimmers”, to paraphrase Gregg and Seighworth’s portrayal of affect (The Affect Theory Reader, 11). Putting N.V.S. in dialogue with different theorists could therefore highlight other possibilities and affects of romantic love than the drive for totalizing and conquering the other. Precisely because of affect itself is a term about something that arises because of an “in- betweenness”, it offers possibilities for intertextual analysis and dialogue (The Affect Theory Reader, 11). In the next section, I discuss Emma Goldman’s essay “Marriage and Love” (1912) and discuss the political dimension of romantic love. I will also draw from Alain Badiou’s Éloge de l’Amour (2009). Drawing from Nietzsche’s analysis of love as space for experimentation and free interpretation, I will pay attention to possible different manifestations, and therefore affects, of romantic love.

Love Politics Barthes’ figure of N.V.S. can be read as a dismissal of the romantic relationship. The lover gives up on his beloved and the romantic relationship altogether. In this section, I introduce two other texts that deal with the difficulties of realizing and cultivating romantic relationships. Eva Illouz and Shulamith Firestone discuss the organization of romantic relationships in our society; but, so it seems, the emotion and manifestation of “romantic love” seems to remain untouched by this. In this section, I analyze the affect of romantic love from a political perspective. I invoke Emma Goldman and Alain Badiou’s analysis on romantic love to do so. Then, I argue why reading these texts along with Barthes’ figure of N.V.S. gives new insights with regard to the conceptualization of romantic love as affect. Emma Goldman’s essay is specifically part of a political program. Emma Goldman (1869- 1940) was an important feminist and anarchist militant in the in the early twentieth century. Her works concern love, labor, anarchism and a wide range of other topics. Goldman explicitly positions herself an activist fighting for the right of women, wagers, and children. She portrays herself as a socialist and her work is clearly inspired by the analysis of (1843- 1881). She is strongly advocating against capitalism, based upon a humanist conception of man. In “Marriage and Love”, a short essay Goldman wrote in 1912, she analyzes the relationship between love and marriage. The common opinion is that love and marriage are synonymous, Goldman writes, but nothing could be less true. “Marriage and love have nothing in common […] they are antagonistic to each other”. Goldman continues by stating that marriage happen for the sake of public opinion, and that love could never result from marriage (37). This is an important remark: love’s “spontaneity”, its “intensity” and “beauty” are incompatible with

49 the convention marriage is. The example Goldman gives is interesting: Henrik Ibsen’s Nora, protagonist from A Doll’s House, leaves her husband. According to Goldman, Nora does so

…not – as the stupid would have it – because she is tired of her responsibilities or feels the need of woman’s rights, but because she has come to know that for eight years she had lived with a stranger and borne him children. Can there be anything more humiliating, more degrading than a lifelong proximity between two strangers? (39 – emphasis mine)

For Goldman, marriage represents nothing more than a shallow shell, incompatible with the nature of love. In Ibsen’s play, Torvald (Nora’s husband) asks her if he could ever be more than a stranger to her. She answers that could only happen “by a miracle of miracles – Where we could make a real marriage of our lives together”, thus adding a nuance that Goldman leaves out (Four Major Plays, 86). I want to pause on this notion of marriage as a household in which two strangers live together, and how marriage cannot grasp love. Goldman writes how women are prepared for marriage as her ultimate goal (40). She is held completely ignorant from sex, which results in a shock when discovering it. She will find herself “shocked, repelled, outraged beyond measure by the most natural and healthy instinct, sex”. This ignorance about sex is, according to Goldman, one of the reasons that so many marriages end in distress (ibid.). But there is more at stake; women’s ignorance with regard to sexual matters means having to:

…deny nature’s demand, […] subdue her [woman’s] most intense craving, undermine her health and break her spirit must stun her spirit, abstain from the depth and glory of sex experience until a “good” man comes along and take her unto himself as a wife? That is precisely what marriage means. This is one, though not the least important, factor of marriage, which differentiates it from love. (40-41)

Nature’s “demand”, in this quote, refers to a woman’s sexual needs. Denying those means undermining her health, “breaking her spirit”. Denying and ignoring one’s sexuality comes down to going against nature. The other point of Goldman’s argument consists in the problematic fact that women need to be takes as wife by men. So they do not only have to ignore the depth and glory of sex, but have to wait for “good” to come along. Furthermore, Goldman writes, our age is too practical for the “luxury of romance”, which, if young people allow themselves to take this risk, are punished and drilled to become sensible (41). In Barthes’ figure, the will to possess of the lover is perceived as problematic. Yet, according to Goldman it is not so much the emotion love is can cause so much harm (and Goldman certainly interprets love as a powerful emotion). The problem that arises is how state

50 organization make love impossible. Goldman’s analysis is highly concerned with a possible authentic experience and manifestation of love. Marriage is a means of control installed by the State and Church, to discipline “their” men and women. It is a means of controlling men and women financially, economically and sexually. Michel Foucault’s analysis of sexual discourse in the Victorian era precisely tackles this problem; an intensification of discourses on and about sexuality served as a means of control for sexuality (Foucault 1973). The rise of women wagers (Goldman’s essay was written at the beginning of the twentieth century) enables a change in this organization, were it not that women consider their position as wagers only temporary, waiting for “the highest bidder”. Note that Goldman sees a direct parallel between selling yourself “to capitalism” as well as “to a man”, since marriage is a tool installed by state institutions. The argument that the classical households serves to protect children is a hypocrisy, according to Goldman, since growing up in an atmosphere of “hate and despise” could not contribute to an inspiring environment to grow up. The idea marriage protects women or children is “an outrage and insult on life” (43). This false idea of protection is wherein the curse of marriage lies (ibid.). Women’s “fulfilment” through legitimate motherhood makes this all the more clear, Goldman writes; women have to “buy” the right to motherhood by “selling themselves” (44). Women are doubly subjected; first, to capitalism and second to men, in order to beget a legal “respectful” status, under the false ideas of protection. Whereas these ideas need to be read against their historical background and Goldman’s position as anarchist and activist form women’s and laborer’s rights, the essay contains interesting elements by how romantic love has been defined. At first sight, Goldman’s analysis seems inherently political, whereas Barthes, Lacan and Nietzsche lean more on the psychological limits of love, and the emotional disruptions love causes. Yet, as far they might seem to be situated from each other, there are parallels between these theorists. They all subscribe to love as extremely powerful, life-changing emotion. And, more importantly, they all see incompatibilities between the structure or organization of the world and love. Goldman’s analysis is clearly underpinned with an idea of how authentic love could prevail. Marriage being that “poor little State and Church-begotten-weed” serves only to subjugate women, both to the state and its financial institutions as well as to men. A woman’s husband, in this respect, is her gatekeeper who watches over her respect, gives her legitimate children and guards her sexuality (which should remain inexistent and not deployed unless with him). Marriage is a tool to make this organization of women and society function. What is love, then, and what is its nature like, so fiercely rejecting formalization? According to Goldman, love is a passionate emotion, which can and should not be grasped in an

51 arrangement. “That marriage is a failure none but the very stupid will deny.” This failure comes, precisely as I showed before, because of the organizational aspects of marriage. Marriage as institutional tool is used to govern and “manage”, whereas love cannot be managed in such a manner because of its nature. Goldman writes;

Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love the freest, most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with marriage? (44)

Love is a force; a defier of law, whereas marriage precisely results in limiting and binding this force. The content (force) of love cannot be matched by the form of marriage. It is precisely the form of marriage as official commitment which are at odds with each other. I am interested in the strong divide Goldman makes between love as a matter of content and marriage as a matter of form. Just as Barthes in N.V.S. writes, Goldman dismisses the notion of convention completely. Marriage being the outcome of a certain tradition makes it impossible to make both exist together; if, as Goldman argues, marriage and love co-exist, this is “regardless” of marriage and certainly not because of it (37). The form of marriage is at odds, then, with love’s authenticity. Emma Goldman’s analysis focuses on how marriage as form is incompatible with love as a matter of content. “Form” here means tradition, pose, play, scene, whereas the “content” of romantic love is portrayed as “force, spontaneity, ecstasy”. Love is bestowed with capacities which cannot match the imposed forms of marriage, is Goldman’s argument. In the section to come, I will discuss the consequences of this kind of interpretation of love.

Love as Indomitable Force: Notions of Authenticity Barthes’ concept of N.V.S. as reading tool for Emma Goldman’s essay shows that romantic love is too strong to be put in a certain form. Barthes describes how the romantic relationship is doomed to fail because of the impossible demands love creates from both sides; love is such a strong emotion that it makes the lover “odious”. It comes with claims that cannot be fulfilled, leaving the lover with an ever-increasing feeling of loneliness. Emma Goldman’s analysis focus on marriage as institution which actively tries to suffocate love, limiting its manifestation to what the state and church think as acceptable. For Goldman, the institutional character of marriage is incompatible with love per se. Barthes’ “intolerable” analysis of the love story is an impossibility to match the world and the relationship with the beloved in this world. Reality is senseless, “gris, mat” (“dull, ungrateful”) as opposed to the enchanted romantic relationship, where everything is impregnated with meaning.

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These analysis contain two important elements; they argue that love is such a strong emotion that it cannot be forced in a specific form. Even so, as Goldman argues, pushing love in a specific form is a risky enterprise. Secondly, they question the manifestation and organization of relationship. The “realness” or “authenticity” of love cannot be formalized or commodified. This means these texts work with implicit notions of authenticity. This can also be derived from Barthes’ numerous references to “scenes”. The ultimate scene, when the love story is finished (the tribute is being paid) means the end of the relationship. N.V.S. means the lover gives up and leaves the stage. In this section, I want to put this authentic “force” as affect of romantic love in dialogue with Alain Badiou’s analysis of love in Éloge de l’Amour, a booklet edited in 2009 with Nicholas Truong.

“Qui ne commence pas par l’amour ne saura jamais ce que c’est la philosophie”, Badiou writes in the preface of Éloge de l’Amour (In Praise of Love, edited in 2009). The book addresses love in specific situations (endagered love, love and philosophers, love and art). Badiou writes love is a process of truth, meaning that love is a peculiar kind of experience, constituting its own truth (Éloge, 47).

Tout amour qui accepte l’épreuve, qui accepte la durée qui accepte justement cette expérience du monde du point de vue de la différence produit à sa manière une vérité nouvelle sur la différence. C’est pourquoi tout amour véritable intéresse l’humanité entière, si humble qu’il puisse être en apparence, si caché. (Éloge, 47)

Every love story that accepts the challenge, by accepting its duration and precisely this experience of the world from the perspective of difference produces in its own way a new perspective on difference. That is why every true love story interests humanity as a whole, so humble or hidden its appearance might be.

Badiou’s analysis opens un an interesting possibility with regard to the constitution of the loving subject and its relationship to the world. Think also of Barthes’ subject, which constitutes its identity as a lover by absence and in relation to the beloved (Fragments, 24, 271). This interpretation leads, in Barthes’ Fragments, to isolation and frustration. The lover wants to create a world in which only the beloved and he remain; his love is jealous, non-negotiable. Badiou’s conception of love precisely relates it to the world. Indeed, Badiou focuses precisely on the “worldliness” of love. Love happens within the world, and not outside of it: the consequences of how we live in the world are what Badiou wants to address. he explicitly dismisses “metaphyisical” intepretations of love, which present it as an emotion at odds with the world.

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Does this mean that Badiou has a more “banal” interpretation of love than Barthes and Goldman? Certainly not. How love manifests itself in the world, and more precisely how it affects the temporality of the world, are interesting traits of love in this respect. Badiou writes about the “duration” of love; which, in this context, should not be interpreted bluntly as the passage of time. But, Badiou writes, isn’t it striking that in the most love stories we know, the story ends after the magical encounter? We read nor learn anything about love’s temporality (84- 85). Whereas love precisely changes this temporality:

Il faut entendre que l’amour une façon différente de durer dans la vie. Que l’existence de chaun, dans l’épreuve de l’amour, se confronte à une temporalité neuve. Certes, pour parler comme le poète, l’amour est aussi « le dur désir de durer ». Mais, plus encore, il est le désir d’une durée inconnue. (Éloge, 42)

It must be understood that love creates a different way of duration in life. One’s existence, in the experience of love, is confronted with a new temporality. Certainly, to speak as the poet, love is also “the burning desire to last”. But it is even more about a desire for an unknown period of time.

Badiou writes that love makes one live life differently, not beceause of some mystic force or impossible demands it imposes on us. Love, according to Badiou, actively changes one’s experience of time and life, thereby creating a whole new experience of being. (This being, of course, takes place within this world, and not somewhere else.) There is no need for a micro- cosmos or alternate world, Badiou would say: love is already this new world. Romantic love is not something that can or need to be pushed in a different form, it is itself a different form. The incompatibility of those two temporalities (that of love and the world outside of that loving relationship) does not have to result in the destruction of one of those two worlds of being. The real challenge, for Badiou, resides in a different mode of being, within a world that is not necessarily changed simultaneously. Love as dual or duplicating emotion is a fundamental aspect of romantic love; by creating and engaging in a new way of experiencing the world together, means at the same time a disruption with “the world as you know it”, but also its organizing principles such as the state, tradition, and so forth. Fidelity (to love), furthermore, represents vanquishing this by virtue of love in the long run. “La fidélité […] représente la longue victoire” (52) (“Fidelity […] represents the long victory ”). This experience is also direclty linked to the universal characteristics of love:

Ce qu’il y d’universel, c’est que tout amour propose une nouvelle expérience de vérité sur ce que c’est d’être deux et non pas un. (48)

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The universal characteristic of love is that every love story is about a new experience of reality with regard to what it means to be two and not one.

In this chapter, I have analyzed Barthes’ figure of Non Vouloir Saisir (N.V.S.). Whereas this N.V.S. seems at first sight a quite fatalistic movement, it might also offer possibilities to rethink romantic relationships free from the possessive and neurotic “I” Barthes’ lover is. I introduced Emma Goldman’s essay to analyze this possessive lover as a result of institutional processes such as marriage, which Goldman argue to be incompatible with love per se. Badiou offers the possibility to conceptualize the affect of romantic love as challenge in and about time and duration. Read with Barthes’ figure of N.V.S., this opens up a possibility to read romantic love as challenging a specific temporality, instead of wanting to possess the other. Barthes concept of N.V.S. relate to Badiou’s analysis of love as celebrating “Two” becomes then a triumph over “One”, instead of a failure. Love has many forms – it can also have its own temporality.

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The Future of Love: A Tentative Conclusion In 2015, De Balie, a cultural debate center in Amsterdam, organized a lectures series titled “The Future of Love”. These four events centered about how romantic love and relationships would be shaped in the future. The website of De Balie introduced the series as following:

We worden twee keer zo oud als een eeuw geleden. Onze ideeën over werk, scholing, opvoeding en vrijheid zijn onherkenbaar veranderd. Tegelijkertijd zijn onze liefdesidealen vrijwel hetzelfde gebleven.

We become twice as old as a hundred years ago. Our ideas about work, schooling, education and freedom have undergone significant changes. Yet, our ideals with regard to romantic love have stayed the same.27

During the series, a variety of topics we addressed. In our rapidly changing societies, wherein the church and the state seem to have less and less influence on how we organize our lives, the underlying thought seemed to be, and in which technological devices play an ever-increasing role, what will the role and place of love be? The lectures series questioned the idea of love as unique emotion, tying together two human beings. Is love and exclusively “human” experience? And what different forms and manifestations do suit it best? “We” and “our societies” have changed, the organizers seem to argue, whereas our romantic ideals have not. Also, this quote highlights a fear for new challenges and difficulties with regard to how we can “organize” our love life. The separate events were all centered about how the “old” romantic ideal, which seemed to be passionate marriage and living happily ever after with one person to share all this happiness with, was said to be incompatible with our societies. We are living too long to promise ever-lasting love. We become too old to pledge to be forever faithful. We are still carrying around an old- fashioned idea, as if we did not yet realize we do not have to stay in the same relationship with the same person for the rest of our lives. “Pioneers are claiming their space”, the description continues, citing examples of polyamorists, tantrists, bachelorettes, anti-sexual-relationships. Part of the program was a debate about monogamy. One of the invited speakers, a biologist, explained that being monogamous “is just not part of our human make-up”. She had conducted thorough research among bonobo-apes and chimps. Since these species share around 98% of their DNA with us, she concluded, monogamy could not be something else but al cultural constraint, imposed by petty bourgeois ideals, the church and the state. Other discussions that took place during these evenings were how long relationships were intended to last. Since we tend to live much and much longer than our human counterparts two years ago, the line of thought was, is it realistic to want to spend your whole life with the same person? And if, in a

27 See http://www.debalie.nl/uitgelicht/the-future-of-love (accessed June 13, 2016).

57 not-so-far-away future, we will not even die from natural causes anymore, how will this influence or love life? Next to the debate about if monogamy can be a “real” or “original” desire, of if it is purely the result of state politics, promoting the ideal of bourgeois marriage, the persisting – yet decreasing – amount of marriages made participants of these evenings wonder. Didn’t we get rid of marriage in the sixties and seventies? How come that people nowadays still marry, especially young people? Emma Goldman dismissed marriage as capitalist bourgeois institution more than a hundred years ago. How come people still believe in it? Are we so blind? Do we want to keep our chains? During an evening of the lectures series, an essayist present a short text titled “Roboromantics”, questioning possible love between peoples and machines. The cryptic essay presented that night ends with a rhetorical question:

Some will say: “True love, which is something so special, it is impossible to explain.” I agree. And if true love cannot be described in whatever way, who says that my robot does not cherish it for me? (Hoorn 2015)

Here, the author uses the complexity to define love as a possible opening up of the concept. If, the author argues, we cannot know what love is, there is no reason to define it as exclusively human emotion, or as unique bond between two people. This interesting line of thought indeed opens up the possibility to discuss love and its manifestations. Yet, its mythical characterization (“…love cannot be described in whatever way”) is, I would say, also embedded within a particular cultural frame about love. These explanations and discussion have in common that they focus on a particular element (biology, devices, institutions) which they let prevail over all other aspects of love. For example, the debates, “passionate love” was associated with marriage, which is thought to be the outcome of result of a romantic relationship. The institutional “form” and “recognition” of love has become most important. Yet, as Barthes would argue, romantic love has many more aspects. Equating love to marriage is also an example of a cultural “model”, Barthes could argue, trying to ty romantic love down to one single explanation. The essay on “Roboromantics” explored the idea of love between humans and devices. The biologist claimed our love lives should be organized as our genes are. Love as exclusively human, bourgeois, eternal, monogamous: these issues were discussed biologists, therapists, sociologists and journalists. Whether the question if “the state” and “the church” indeed have no influence on what “we”, enlightened civilians, tend to want and tend to do remains debatable, I think these lectures series are a good event to discuss in the conclusion of

58 this thesis, in light of the previous chapters. The critical reader might have opposed immediately: Do you really think our ideas with regard to romantic love did not change? Social theorists Denis de Rougemont and have written detailed accounts of how passionate love, and more particularly, passionate love within marriage, are the result of historically situated ideas, institutions, cultures. “Passionate love”, for example, was something to be thought exclusively livable outside of marriage, which existed to reinforce ties between families, land, kingdoms. Our ideas about love are historical and social. The idea that marriage or monogamy are solely examples of institutions like the state and the church, and the question whether open or polyamorous relations, based upon how chimps and bonobo’s handle their intimate lives can in this respect be an argument just as conservative as advocating in favor of marriage. Doing what our “biological DNA” dictates us to do, does not seem an emancipatory strategy to me, since it is underpinned by the same ideas about the originality of desire. Claiming that we are more true to ourselves if we decide to organize our lives because of our biological make-up, we just use the same deterministic grand narrative as Zeki does. Funnily enough, by organizing the debates, De Balie simultaneously contributes to “spreading” grand narratives, but because of the many different approaches that were debated, it also highlights the fact that there are so many stories about love around. I take these lectures series to be a compilation of different aspects and approaches to love, which need to be analyzed. Just as I did in this thesis, “bringing together” different cultural texts, objects and explanations offer possibilities for the critical analyst to scrutinize the stories we tell ourselves. How to proceed, then? How to analyze romantic love, its affect and our love culture without shifting simply between grand theories? I do not wish to settle the dispute between nature and nurture – or between De Balie and Luhmann, for that matter – in this conclusion. I do think that this lectures series is an interesting starting point to make some concluding remarks about the explorations I made in this thesis, and that it gives an interesting insight in how love is thought about today, since they show how love is surrounded by a variety of most often conflictual theories. Furthermore, many of these explanations tend to be all-encompassing, not only in search of an explanation of why we would organize our relations in a certain manner, but simultaneously highlighting who we are, why we love who we love and what we want. These debates show how “grand narratives” about love are very alive. How we can or should organize our relationships, but also who, how and how many you “can” love are ideas being “explained” by experts, referring to for example our biological make-up and institutional organizations. These debates organized in De Balie would offer a goldmine for a Barthian analysis: how, when and why is referred to which aspects of love? They show how there is much discussion about

59 romantic love, which takes place during public evenings. How come we want to “understand” or “dissect” love so badly? And what cultural concepts are being involved? Barthes’ haphazardly organized figures as laid out in his fragments show how complex romantic love “is”, and that its meaning travels through time, cultural models and texts. With his Fragments, Barthes underscores the variety of cultural images at hand to approach such a rich and complicated concept. What I have wanted to show with and through Roland Barthes’ Fragments d’un discours amoureux are the multiple variations, interpretations and affects romantic love can have. I used the concept affect as coined by Barthes himself and cultural theorists Melissa Gregg and Gregory Seighworth. By shifting (“stretching”) from one concept to another, from one manifestation to another, we can critically engage with it, yet prevent ourselves from being swallowed. In the three previous chapters, I have tempted to lay out how “love” is the issue of many debates, fights and disagreements. Love has been conceptualized as mystical, religious and ungraspable, as the result of neurotransmitters and endorphins, as the reinforcement of state institutions. With the help of Roland Barthes, I argued, we can analyze “romantic love” as a concept with multiple affects and effects – in and on religion, science and politics. Through analyzing romantic love in relation with three cultural objects, I have aimed to show how love and its affects can be viewed as a variety of sub-concepts, sub-meanings maybe, that it can create.

In the first chapter, I related Barthes’ concept of romantic love to Kierkegaard and Levinas. How love is related to themes such as trust and faith is often linked to transcendent ideas: how we try to grasp something that we cannot grasp, or how we aim to possess or understand things we cannot understand. Reading Kierkegaard and Levinas, tied together by Derrida’s analysis as set out in Donner la Mort, through Barthes, makes it possible to read absence and deprivation (of an explanation or the other) differently. Barthes’ concept of Absence shows how a lack of the other might turn in a reaching out towards the other. In the second chapter, I analyzed Barthes in relation with Semir Zeki. Zeki’s book gives a biological and neuroscientific account of love, using numerous literary and cultural texts to “prove” this point. Zeki’s deterministic account of love, in which the strive for unity is merely a product of our brain we cannot help to desire, is a good example of a contemporary “grand narrative” of love. Put into dialogue with Barthes’ concept of jealousy, I argue, we can take this analysis further and see how ideas of jealousy are the result of an ever-changing cultural array of concepts. Zeki’s book can, in this respect, itself be seen as a cultural example of “affect” of the search for these all-encompassing narratives.

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In the third chapter, I invoked Emma Goldman’s essay on marriage and Alain Badiou’s essay on love. Goldman dismisses marriages as a purely administrative way of organizing society. Love, as authentic emotion, cannot be restricted to a specific form. Badiou criticizes the lack of attention for love as durable emotion, invoking the notion of “Two” and duality as a result of true love. Every love story becomes in this analysis a challenge in itself with uniformity. Read through Barthes’ figure of Non Vouloir Saisir (N.V.S.) this creates a space to think relationships differently than only as a desire to possess the other. Badiou’s critique shows that if the challenge of love is seen as a matter of temporality rather than as, for example, a matter of knowing the other best or loving him most, love contains in itself strong affects to both overcome this scheme of possession, as well as to break with totalizing theories, since love is in itself a break with “oneness”.

Through these essays, the project I have tried to carry out was twofold. I aimed to analyze and portray Barthes’ figures in relation with other concepts, seeking for a productive conceptual “conflict” between the figure of “Absence”, “Jealousy” and “Non Vouloir Saisir”. By juxtaposing these figures with respectively Kierkegaard and Levinas, Zeki and Illouz and, finally, Goldman and Badiou, I hoped to highlight the various possible meanings of romantic love. As Barthes’ conceptual adventure shows, is that “romantic love” is not “one” feeling or emotion. It has many faces and comes in many forms. Barthes powerful analysis highlights this, offering is “food for thought” for countless new analysis on and about love and its consequences. How can absence be read as affective consequence of love? Is jealousy an inevitable aspect of romance? And what happens when one of the lovers decides to end the relationship, by setting a term to his desire?, were questions I have wanted to explore. Yet, by working with these figures and putting them into dialogue with these very differing theorists, whose disciplines vary from sociology, neuroscience, theological philosophy and political science, I have also analyzed Barthes’ methodology. By analyzing several affects of love and simultaneously exploring its cultural manifestation in various discipline, I have conducted a research in the same vein as Barthes lays out in the Fragments d’un discours amoureux. Like Barthes, I have wanted to pay attention to the various forms, critiques and ideas about love. As I wrote in the introduction, this project is therefore an attempt to explore the creative potential of analyzing romantic love and its affects. Instead of opposing the theories I explored with a theory of my own, I invoked Barthes’ help and method to “open up” these narratives, using romantic love as a methodological tool to precisely question the grand narratives I analyzed. I hope to have succeeded and made clear that reading and doing literary criticism can

61 indeed be this fascinating, sometimes frivolous and difficult to grasp enterprise that Barthes makes of it. The possibility of a counter-narrative or counter-concept would not only prevent us from explaining love (and, for that matter, other emotions) by invoking one simple story. Yet, maybe more important is the attempt to create critical tools, enabling us to “read” contemporary cultural stories about love. Barthes’ book, and this thesis, can be placed within an approach aiming to disentangle and analyze these modern stories about love. French writer Laurent Binet recently published a book about Barthes and other French theorists. In this novel, a French teacher, overthinks his relationship with France’s famous semiologists:

Lorsque, stagiaire, j’ai commencé à enseigner le français, je n’avais toujours pas compris l’intérêt d’une explication de texte. A cette période, l’histoire m’intéressait plus que la littérature, et j’étais devenu prof de français un peu par hasard. C’est Barthes qui m’a fait comprendre qu’on pouvait tirer d’un texte plus que ce qu’il semblait dire. C’est Barthes qui m’a fait comprendre que le commentaire pouvait être une aventure. Barthes disait qu’il avait une maladie « je vois le langage. » (La septième fonction du langage, 13)

When I started to teach French, I was still an intern, and I had not yet understood the point of interpreting texts. At the time, I was more interested in history than in literature, and I had become a French teacher by coincidence. It was Barthes who made me realize that you could find more in the text than it seemed to say. It was Barthes who made me understand that the commentary could be an adventure. Barthes used to say that he suffered from an illness: “I can see language.” (La septième fonction du langage, 13)

In line with him, I hope to have showed how Barthes gives the whole enterprise of explaining texts a whole different meaning in itself. Analyzing and scrutinizing texts can indeed be a real “adventure”. Looking for possible meanings and uses of concepts is, in the same vein of thought, a lot more than looking for the most inclusive or best fitting analysis. Maybe, what Barthes aimed to show is that doing a textual analysis is not looking for the best answers to give but the best questions to ask.

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