Contents
How does the modern world change our attitude to love? What is the most difficult thing for us: to belong, to possess, to build together, to endure boredom, to be faithful, to resist consumerism? A literary critic, a sociologist, a philosopher and a scandalous novelist reflect on this.
Abandon the couple’s dictatorship
Marcela Yacoub is a lawyer by training and the author of several books, in one of which she tells in a fictional form about her real-life affair with Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the chairman of the IMF, who resigned as a result of accusations of sexual harassment against hotel staff. In the book, she challenges prevailing notions of morality, beginning with the assertion that “the authorities and norms that govern us are contingent, relative, and transient.” In columns regularly published in the newspaper Libération, she often reflects on love, which, in her words, “requires no less courage than the most dangerous spy assignment.” Welcoming the “anarchic power of love”, Marcela Yacoub criticizes the two parasites that “exhaust” and “monopolize” her – the couple and affection. In the first, she sees a “fascist experience” and points to the partners’ “desire to change those they love,” wittily noting also that “the demands that one member of the couple makes on the behavior of the other in order for him to earn his love sometimes resemble uniform training “.
A curious paradox: “in freely chosen love relationships, it is necessary to obey more than ever … In love, we possess each other, we turn each other into slaves. And the more we idealize, adore, elevate to the position of an idol the object of our passion, the more we tend to look at him as a pet and allow ourselves to treat him accordingly. In order for love – and above all the lovers themselves – to survive, we must abandon the ideology of the couple.
Marcela Iacub is the author of Jouir, Obéir et autres activités vitals, Stock, 2013.
Design a house for two
Philosopher and specialist in mathematical logic, Alain Badiou advocates the “construction” of love, “a life that is no longer created from the point of view of one, but from the point of view of two.” The merger, in his opinion, is a romantic myth that kindles love “at the exceptional moment of meeting”, while it is a “stubborn adventure”. This is a risky and unprecedented experience in which our minds and personalities must agree with each other and take a stand on specific issues: children, vacations, family ties, and so on. Once upon a time, a church or state marked love with the seal of eternity through marriage. And “every part of the question of the division of tasks was regulated by society. Today the roles are changing. And this causes additional problems. However, they can encourage creativity, these problems. And to help establish “love without tradition, naked love.” In order to continue, love, the “moving model,” must agree to “the diligent and painstaking work that is required to grow to the truth. There is not only the miracle of love – there is also her work.
Alain Badiou is the author, together with Nicolas Truong, of the book Éloge de l’amour, Flammarion, 2011.
Read more:
- How to keep romance in a relationship?
Resist consumerism
Sociologist Eva Illuz is interested in how love is related to capitalism, “how widely the market uses the couple not only as an advertising image, but also as a practical consumer.” After all, finding a partner means going somewhere in the evening, dancing, having dinner, maintaining a romantic relationship, going on vacation or weekends, going to the cinema, and so on. Media and culture also play a role in intertwining consumption with feelings – they shape our emotions through cinema and literature. In one of his new essays, the sociologist addresses the phenomenon of the success of “Fifty Shades of Grey”1, which, in her opinion, is based on the idea of prescription (a combination of known ingredients and a sequence of operations leads to a given result), which is applied in this case to the senses.
Influenced by the methods of personal development, in an endless search for what could calm us down in this “period of great emotional uncertainty”, which could improve us and make us the best of the best, we can no longer endure suffering and are looking for a way to “secure” our feelings, which obviously keeps us from ups and downs.
Eva Illuz calls to stop being afraid of suffering and emotional dependence. It is women, in her opinion, who could initiate such a change in attitude. She advises them to “offer a man their own definition of a relationship, to disobey the masculine dictates of serial sexuality, to redefine sentimental ties based on a woman’s point of view.” But there is no complete certainty that “this approach, however much you rework it, will include the sacred norms of autonomy and immediate pleasure.”
Eva Illouz is the author of Hard Romance, Cinquante Nuances de Gray et nous (Seuil, 2014).
Read more:
- “Fifty Shades of Grey”: what did we find in them?
Root love in time
Writer and literary critic Claude Habib is an opponent of the passionate and brief relationships that are so often sung. She finds more merit in deep and peaceful love. As history has taken cruising speed, habit can, of course, dim the eye of the other, but it also allows one to see what will elude a lover or girlfriend for one night: that nugget of beauty that appears unexpectedly and is revealed only to an old companion, while the passion of one night does not notice the details. Romantic contempt for permanence seems foolish to me, because our intellectual abilities are revealed, as the philosopher Hume emphasizes, when we calm down.
A spontaneous supporter of marriage, the writer is convinced that love is nourished by everyday harmony in a couple and is preserved if two commandments are honored: “no scenes, no betrayals.” These rules are easier to follow, Claude Habib admits, when a couple has no children. Calm love makes us “more discerning of the other,” while the pangs of passion set off the neurotic cycle of narcissism and exaggerate the self.
A lot has been written about maddening passion, but it has nothing to do with the love that is created in a couple: “mortal passions and life-giving love should be categorically separated. This last one is a source of joy, it helps to breathe and creates trust.”
Claude Habib is the author of “Goût de la vie commune”, Flammarion, 2014.