英文摘要 |
What is love? Tradition tells us love is blindness, love is selflessness, love is madness. In contemporary theory, love is not just a person's emotion of strong affection or psychic energy, but a complicated "desire economy" circulating between borders of interpersonal relationships in our societies. In ancient Greek, the word "love" had four meanings: Eros (a passionate, usually sexual desire), Philia (a love among family and friends), Caritas (a love of fellow man, charity), and Agape (a divine, unconditional or pure love). I use the subjunctive "if," to indicate the sort of interruption and uncertainty that can unfold the multiplicity, tension as well as conflicts within the intrinsic desire structure of love. That is: does love suggest a selfless devotion or blind sacrifice? Does love indicate a love of others in the world or of the others imagined by the self? Is love an endless supplement to the mental lack, unceasing responses to the overflow of metaphysical desire, or the eternal split between oneness and separation with the Other? This article, first distinguishes two economies of desire: 1) "if/love" as "a general economy of desire," and 2) "when-love" as "a limited economy of desire." Second, within a if/love general economy of desire, it examines three kinds of limited desire economy of love (and their limits): a Žižekian lack-oriented economy of love, Levinasian overflow economy of love, and Deleuzian schizo economy of love. Finally, it draws salient conclusions for theoretical and literary presentations of interpersonal relations and feelings. |