CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Odak, Petar |
|---|---|
| Title | Community and Affect: Political Potential of Love as Transcendence |
| Summary | There is a tendency within contemporary leftist discourse to understand romantic love as being endangered by the economic relations of late capitalism. This analysis often calls for the protection of romantic love that is then understood as having a transcendental dimension, much in line with the theological discourse. At the same time, leftist discourse excludes love – especially love understood as transcendence – from the conceptualization of community and politics. By analyzing Badiou’s ideas of love, politics and truth – in relation to some other leftist thinkers – I argue that there is a political stake in the leftist discourse that generates this gesture of eliminating both affective and transcendental dimension from the sphere of politics. This is done in order to preserve the ultimate truth of the communist future, the truth Marxist discourse projects from its very beginnings, and that would be contaminated by allowing for the affective dimension to play role in it. By engaging with the theory of Melanie Klein and the way Esteban Muñoz uses it – together with the philosophy of Ernest Bloch – in an attempt to generate a particular political philosophy, I am suggesting that both the understanding of the community and the imagining of political future would benefit from acknowledging the affective dimension and the epistemic transcendence, i.e. the acknowledgment that there is no certain truth about the future. |
| Supervisor | Timár, Eszter |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/odak_petar.pdf |
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