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The Subversive Ontology of Love

Jobe Moakes

'Love without risk is an impossibility, like war without death. Caught between consumerism and casual sexual encounters devoid of passion, love today - without the key ingredient of chance -

is in mortal danger' Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love


The above quote, taken from Alain Badiou’s recent work ‘In Praise of Love’, makes the claim that love today is under threat. The source of this threat, Badiou argues, is liberal permissiveness which has degraded love to a phenomenon of instant gratification and self-centred 

non-commitment. 

 

At first glance it is easy to mistake Badiou’s position as a conservative defence of more traditional forms of love, however this is a mistake. In reality Badiou is echoing the argument made by Arthur Rimbaud in ‘A Season in Hell’:

‘Love...no such thing. Whatever it is that binds families and married couples together, that's not love. That's stupidity or selfishness or fear. Love doesn't exist. Self-interest exists, attachment based on personal gain exists, complacency exists. But not love. Love has to be reinvented, that’s certain.’


This reinvention of love, as envisaged by Badiou, casts love in a more subversive light whilst avoiding the pitfalls of conservative repression, liberal permissiveness and modern notions of ‘risk free love’. Badiou is not alone in his reading of love; there is a surprising narrative emerging that explores the subversive nature of love and its revolutionary potential.

The aim of this analysis is to examine the subversive ontology of love and to explore its connection with revolutionary politics. This will be accomplished via an examination of two different modes of love: agape and eros and the effect they have on subversive politics. Furthermore a closer evaluation of the threats and potential misuses facing love in its subversive context will be made.

 

Finally a conclusion will be provided in order to draw together the arguments made in the text and summarise the key themes of the analysis.

 

Agape: Motivation
 

Agape is the notion of brotherly love, or love for mankind, appropriated by the Christian tradition to refer to the paternal love of god for humanity. Furthermore in contemporary discourse agape has become synonymous with egalitarian political love, i.e. love for the collective. An important aspect of agape is that it is non-reciprocal; it is not necessary for the love to be mutual.

 

This gives rise to a strong sentiment of self-sacrifice and martyrdom, such as that present in the death of Christ or in the selfless acts of the revolutionary sacrificing all for their cause. It is notable that this latter aspect often makes an appearance in revolutionary propaganda as a quasi-religious figure moulded in the image of the messiah.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The link between agape and the revolutionary is not as tentative as it may first seem, nor is it the sole preserve of the realm of the ‘cult of personality’. The following passage by Che Guevara establishes this link:

 

From this position the process of falling in love, completely reinvents a person’s reality. At first this may seem like an overstatement, however it is important to consider the extent to which one visualises the future differently as part of a couple, than they viewed it prior to the relationship. Once in love, your own vision of the future collides with that of your partner to form a synthesis compromised of both your visions.
 

Furthermore experiencing life from the perspective of the ‘two scene’ also governs your conduct in day to day activities; the films you watch together, where you go out to eat, even the clothes you wear. 

 

If love is a universal process, and the ability to love and accept the reinvention of reality falling in love causes is inherent in each individual, then it seems reasonable to suggest

that if we are capable of this process then we also have the ability to adjust to new realities caused through other ‘events’, such as revolutions. To reiterate, if the individual can adapt to the reinvented reality of love, it is also possible they can adapt to a post-revolutionary reality.

Love in Danger

 

As highlighted previously, love, in its subversive context, today is underthreat, beset from both sides of the ideological spectrum. In both its modes, eros and agape, love is subject to multiple dangers. Here the form of these dangers will be examined. As discussed there is a great danger of misusing love for a political gain. Whilst right-wing, fascist elements, have often united around the politics of ‘hate of the other’, left-wing movements often converge around the concept of brotherly love and community.

 

This use of agape is not without its dangers, as highlighted previously, however the true danger lies in the abuse of eros namely through the mechanism of a ‘cult of personality’. This involves a process of state constructed images of the leader as a heroic, mythological figure, that you are compelled to love. Joseph Stalin is arguably the most famous example of this:

 

"O great Stalin, O leader of the peoples,

Thou who broughtest man to birth.

Thou who fructifies the earth,

Thou who restorest to centuries,

Thou who makest bloom the spring,

Thou who makest vibrate the musical chords...

Thou, splendour of my spring,

O thou,Sun reflected by millions of hearts."

---A. O.Avidenko

 

 

 

Another danger facing love today, originates from a surprising historical juncture, the crux of the ‘sexual revolution’; the counter culture movements of the 1960s, particularly the Paris student/worker protests of 1968. The events in France acted as a key milestone in the sexual 

revolution, particularly because, whilst sexual liberation movements in other countries had made concrete, but gradual, advances throughout the decade, France's sexual revolution was distilled into the heady months of 1968. These months marked a notable cultural turning point, however crucially not a political one. Of the calls for ‘Egalité! Liberté! Sexualité’ only the latter was granted.

 

 

 

 

Žižek provides a succinct analysis of this phenomenon in ‘First as Tragedy, Then as Farce’, explaining that the ‘spirit of 68’ was incorporated by the establishment to undermine the core of the revolt. The crucial demands for new rights, Egalité and Liberté, were not truly granted, 

however this was masked by the guise of a permissive society, the granting of Sexualité.
 

The legacy of 1968, the permissive society, is now emerging as one of the core threats to love in its subversive context. This threat manifests itself in two forms, firstly the prominence of non-commitment which replaces passion with pleasure and secondly the commodification of love, which reduces love to the pursuit of a ‘fair bargain’. The rise of non-commitment is dangerous to love, because is acts as a displacement, non-commitment replaces passion with the pursuit of pleasure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Approaching love from this position it is impossible to experience what Badiou terms the encounter as an ‘event’, it is merely degraded to a sexual encounter. It is therefore impossible for the relationship to ascend to the ‘two scene’ because the ‘event’ has been 

displaced. Thus the subversive nature of love, brought about by the experience of the ‘two scene’, is lacking. Another alarming trend, directly threatening the subversive aspect, is the 

commodification of love. Erich Fromm provides an accurate explanation of this in his acclaimed work ‘The Art of Loving’:

 

‘The world is one great object for our appetite, a big apple, a big bottle, a big breast; we are the sucklers, the eternally expectant ones, the hopeful ones—and the eternally disappointed ones. Our character is geared to exchange and to receive, to barter and to consume; everything, spiritual as well as material objects, becomes an object of exchange and of consumption. The situation as far as love is concerned corresponds, as it has to by necessity, to this social character of modern man. Automatons cannot love; they can exchange their "personality packages" and hope for a fair bargain.’ Badiou is critical of this notion of love as a calculated, risk free exchange.
 

For Badiou risk is a crucial element in love, something that cannot be transcended. The encounter is full of risks, particularly rejection or disappointment. Attempts to remove the risk from love, to treat love as a commodity to be bargained for, is a direct threat to the subversive nature of love as this is dependent on experiencing the ‘two scene’. In order to enter the ‘two scene’ one must first accept the risk of the encounter.

 

Conclusion
 

An interesting narrative is emerging that establishes the nexus between love and revolutionary politics. This narrative has often centred on the fight for increasing sexual freedoms, gay rights and finally the notion of agape as a political unifier. However a significant body of work has begun to arise linking the concept of eros with progressive emancipatory politics. It is important to note that, whilst fighting for increased sexual freedoms was once an important cause for radical political movements, this struggle has now been subverted by the establishment and is now utilised against the subversive aspects of love. This should not be read as a critique against increased sexual freedoms, but rather a warning not to replace the true subversive potential of an amorous encounter with disconnected non-commitment.

 

If love needs reinventing, as suggested by Badiou and Rimbaud, then what form will this reinvention take? And how will it come about? Whilst it may seem undesirable to politicise love, the subversive nature of love must be protected and eventually utilised in wider struggles. How this will be achieved is a question to which contemporary thinkers must now turn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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‘At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. Perhaps it is one of the great dramas of the leader that he or she must combine a passionate spirit with a cold intelligence and make painful decisions without flinching. Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize this love of the people, of the most sacred causes, and make it one and indivisible. They cannot descend, with small doses of daily affection, to the level where ordinary people put their love into practice.’ 

 

It is evident here that Guevara is speaking of two opposing modes of love, the first agape (political love) and the latter, eros (romantic love) ‘where the ordinary people put their love into practice’. Here Guevara posits agape as the motivator of the revolutionary whilst suggesting that eros is a mere distraction to the true revolutionary.

 

This is dangerous ground as it opens the space for utilitarian considerations of some obscure vision of the collective over the needs of the individuals who actually make up the collective: the revolutionary should shun the individual need for romance and instead focus on the greater love for the ‘people’. Following this logic raises many ethical difficulties and is perhaps a path to the totalitarianism all too familiar to many post-revolutionary regimes.

 

 

 

Slavoj Žižek provides an alternative perspective vis-à-vis Guevara’s position on love. Žižek holds that the amorous experience of eros should not remain as an absolute point of reference for one’s life, but should be considered a by-product, an undeserved grace. Žižek continues, suggesting if a conflict arises between love (eros) and duty, then duty should prevail. In this sense the greatest form of love is that of a revolutionary couple, both prepared to abandon their shared eros if the revolutionary cause requires it. There is however another perspective on the link between eros and revolution, through which eros is seen in more subversive light. This position is explored below.

 

Eros: Acceptance
 

Eros detonates romantic love or a passionate desire for the other. Here reciprocation is a more important, however not crucial, facet of love. In Alain Badiou’s aforementioned ‘In Praise of Love’ Badiou describes his vision of love, here Badiou is focussed on eros, and employs his philosophy to map out the process of falling in love. Firstly love involves a disjuncture or 

separation between two people, this separation is based upon the two individual’s different subjective perspectives.

 

This disjunction is then overcome by the initial encounter of the couple. Badiou holds this initial encounter to be so significant that he assigns it the status of an ‘event’, namely that which is outside the normal order of things. The result of this encounter, and the subsequent falling in love, is the construction of what Badiou calls the ‘two scene’. This is the experience of building a life not from the perspective of one, but from the perspective of two.

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