Love

'Passivity is anything but resignation. I'm speaking of an almost ontological passivity, one that changes your being in a practice that depends on an absolute elsewhere. It is striking that Campos lays out this passivity - creative as well as corrosive - under the emblems of femininity. Over time, I have come to notice that women attune themselves more profoundly to this uprooting abandonment, just as, inversely, they are drier and more obstinate when it comes to caution and conservatism. The feminine, when it ceases to be the domestic organisation of security and fear, goes furthest in the termination of all cowardice. For this reason, I would like to spare a thought for Ulrike Meinhof, a German revolutionary of the Red Army Faction, 'suicided' in her cell. And also for Nathalie Ménigon, a French revolutionary of the group Actione Directe, currently rotting away in our national prisons. Say what you will, these women had 'the passion of the illegal joined to the ferocious'.' - Alain Badiou, 'Seven Variations' from The Century, 2005.

'contemporary philosophy addresses itself at all times to women...I want to show that the signifying bond between "women" and "love" concerns humanity in its entirety, and even legitimates its concept.' - Alain Badiou, What is Love?, 1992.

'The new philosophy bases itself on the truth of love, on the truth of feeling. In love, in feeling in general, every human being confesses to the truth of the new philosophy...Where there is no love there is also no truth. And only he who loves something is also something - to be nothing and to love nothing is one and the same thing.' - Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, Ludwig Feuerbach, 1843. 

Comments

[Christoph]

Wonder what you think of this?

In love as elsewhere, it's true that the basic "semiotic entity" (Eco) is anything that can be used to lie. Even an orgasm. Communication is love, and love is communication. As Luhmann has said, "we are often unable to answer the question "Do you love me?" but we cannot answer it by silence either, which is why it is advisable not to pose the question in the first place."

[Nate]

Oh my stars and garters, a post from Infinite Thought! Does this mean the writing is done?

[infinite thought]

Nate, of course not. When is it ever? Couple of months, optimistic-like. I can't wait, even though the only waiting being done is for myself, aargh, etc.

[Nate]

Right, well I'll have to re-cork that prematurely opened champagne bottle then... Good luck w/ it all. Anyway, this is really just a glorified way to say nice to see a post from you here.

[chabert]

"Communication is love, and love is communication"

A charming small volume of essays under the direct of L'Ecole de la Cause Freudienne, containing Badiou's Scene of Two among others, contains L'amour, la poésie, an essay on the troubadours by Jacques Roubaud, from which (my clumsy trans):

There isn't, in the first language of love, provençal, a definition of "Amors" (which remains an enigma); neither are there definitions of the other key words "joi", "mezura", or "chan". But a Troubadour, Bernart Marti lo Pintor (the painter), gave a description of the art of the "trobar" which has a richness difficult to deploy in a few words here. Observe: "...aisi vauc entrebescant/los mots e-l so afinant/lengu'entrebescada/es en la baizada." (thus I interlace...words and make pure sounds...as the tongue interlaces...with the tongue in a kiss.)

The central term, a properly technical one, here is 'entrebescant': interlacing, intertwining. Related to the narrative strategy of interweaving, which governs the splendor of the immense Lancelot in prose, doubtless also to the fundamental principle of celtic art, 'entrebescar' is a fundamental deciphering key for the understanding of the formal art of the 'canso' and the manner in which it pushes toward mimesis of the amorous encounter, source of 'joi': interlacing, intertwining of the lovers' bodies. The term that underlines this homology is, of course, lengua, the tongue (language).

A very original conception (in relation to the antique notion, for example) of poetry has thus already appeared, at the end of the 9th century, in the troubadour songs, which has not ceased to produce, century after century, its effects: Poetry is the privileged place where the love of beings (Amors) and the love of language are articulated together. One mustn't think of love alone, poetry alone, nor of the song that unites them; but in one unique syntagme: l'amour la poésie (love poetry; love/poetry).

[Christoph]

Love it; 'entrebescant' is now in my dictionary

[amie]

o well on this subject the temptation to cite, or rather, recite till breath fails. shakespeare's sonnets and keats's letters to fanny, are within hands reach, so to speak, as i write.

le colonel chabert, that's an incredible quote/translation from roubaud, thank you. i'm dying to read the text -- entrebescant. interlacing, but perhaps also unlacing: in-between, entre-tien, love and language.

for the linguists out there -- is there an 'etymological' link between amare and amateur?

IT, why does badiou always set the scene of love in terms of the two, of the couple?

ok, so i can't resist a quote, from benjamin, that i (re)cite from memory: "there is no unhappy love."

[tera gold]

A very original conception

[Gallegos21Lakeisha]

Different people in the world take the home loans from various banks, because that's comfortable and fast.