Desire/Love

by Lauren Berlant

“There is nothing more alienating than having your pleasures disputed by someone with a theory,” writes Lauren Berlant. Yet the ways in which we live sexuality and intimacy have been profoundly shaped by theories — especially psychoanalytic ones, which have helped to place sexuality and desire at the center of the modern story about what a person is and how her history should be read. At the same time, other modes of explanation have been offered by popular and mass culture. In these domains, sexual desire is not deemed the core story of life; it is mixed up with romance, a particular version of the story of love.

In this small theoretical novella-cum-dictionary entry, Lauren Berlant engages love and desire in separate entries. In the first entry, Desire mainly describes the feeling one person has for something else: it is organized by psychoanalytic accounts of attachment, and tells briefly the history of their importance in critical theory and practice. The second entry, on Love, begins with an excursion into fantasy, moving away from the parent-child structure so central to psychoanalysis and looking instead at the centrality of context, environment, and history. The entry on Love describes some workings of romance across personal life and commodity culture, the place where subjects start to think about fantasy on behalf of their actual lives.

Whether viewed psychoanalytically, institutionally, or ideologically, love is deemed always an outcome of fantasy. Without fantasy, there would be no love. Desire/Love takes us on a tour of all of the things that sentence might mean.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Theory, Love, Psychology, Feminism

127 pages, Paperback

First published December 5, 2012

About the author

Lauren Berlant was an English Professor at the University of Chicago, where they taught since 1984. Berlant received their Ph.D. from Cornell University. They wrote and taught on issues of intimacy and belonging in popular culture, in relation to the history and fantasy of citizenship.

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

tried to send my crush the wifi password for the café we were working at and accidentally sent him a quote from this fucking book that i hadn't realized was still copied to my clipboard

[Maxy.kai · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd definitely recommend this book as a short little primer but it's kind of one of those ones where it does too much and too little. It covers a lot of ground and is sort of half primer, half Berlant's particular interests and you kind of would want to have some familiarity with her writings and/or themes of her writings beforehand. The primer/ definition genre is obviously way too confining for Berlant, I wanted her to expand on nearly everything.

That being said there's some great little nuggets in here such as '-Desire has bad eyesight, as it were: remember, that the object [of desire] is not a thing, but a cluster of fantasmatic investments in a scene that represents itself as offering some traction, not a solution to the irreparable contradictions of desire.'

and

'the heteronormative love plot is at its most ideological when it produces subjects who believe that their love story expresses their true, nuanced, and unique feelings, their own personal identity' .

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

such a nice, short little intro. Berlant speaks truth elegantly and graciously.

[Lee Bullitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting analysis on love and desire when looked at through the lens of popular culture, gender and heteronormativity’s overreaching effect. So much about fantasy that I found intriguing. Memorable succinct points/thoughts such as “Without fantasy there would be no love.”

Wish the book was longer/dove deeper but for being so brief, leaves you with a good place to start a conversation or continue your own investigation.

[kelly]

"Even in its most conventional form, as “love,” desire produces paradox. It is a primary relay to individuated social identity, as in coupling, family, reproduction, and other sites of personal history; yet it is also the impulse that most destabilizes people, putting them into plots beyond their control as it joins diverse lives and makes situations."

[frolick inthe machine]

Highly highly recommend for anyone who wants to get into psychoanalysis but doesn’t know where to start. Berlant summarizes synthesizes and theorizes a huge array of thinkers & concepts within psychoanalysis so well it feels like she’s just talking to you. She makes u feel smart. Also good reading for anyone going thru the mystifying process of love.

[emily mao · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 the first half was a great summary of freudian and lacanian structuration of desire, and the second half has its moments, but overall this just feels fragmented.

[Layla Elqutami]

lots of this made me think, Yes! and some of it made me think, Ow!

[Jonas Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic introduction to a vast field of thinking about love and desire through a queer perspective. Berlant’s prose is light and effortlessly moves between complex ideas a uses imaginative readings of films and books to give them life. It’s a child of its time in its focus on the normative/non-normative distinction of 90s queer thinking and some of the readings of Lacan are remnants of that era as well, but this does not make this book less interesting for a contemporary reader. It’s an accessible introduction to Berlant as well as an epoch in queer and critical theory. And its rich footnotes leaves plenty of inspiration for the curious reader wanting to understand the sources of the Belle Époque of queer theory.

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very very dense book of theory, which is definitely not to be read when one has a bad cold and a sore head. However, it's going to prove useful once I've debunked my notes - I found that I hardly understood what I was reading but that's probably more a reflection on my limited knowledge of gender studies!

[Adz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed Berlant a lot. Finished the book a few months ago and forgot to write a review so can't say much but great into to psychoanalysis. Also got me thinking a lot about affect and the impulses underneath cultural phenomena like the idea of Love as represented in popular culture.

[Aphelion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of food for thought regarding the relationship between Lacanian fantasy and both love and desire as well as how this connects to lived experience. I'll have to consider some of the argument more; some of it ran counter to what I was thinking.

[Sanchita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucidly written, this book theorises the underlying motivations behind love and desire in a manner that is not alienating.

[hannah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Skims over so many points that could, maybe, be on to something. Berlant never finds a voice in this book. I don't really see the point of reading theory if it's not fully developed, this book seems to have a cop out "these things are too complicated to really pin down anyway" mentality, and lacks the bravery that I want from feminist theory. (which I'm not even sure this could be classified as)

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the second part of this book some years ago for a gender studies class, and recently decided to read the whole book to see whether it'd work as a source for my MA thesis. This is a good, fairly up-to-date overview of the most basic theories on love and desire, and an easy introduction to psychoanalysis. If you want a deep, all-embracing look at the book's themes, this is not the book for you, but as a short introduction it's very alright.

[Soph]

"It is often said therefore that the desiring subject is well served by the formalism of desire: although desire is anarchic and restless, the objects to which desire becomes attached stabilize the subject and enable her to assume a stable-enough identity. In this model a person is someone who is retroactively created: you know who you “are” only by interpreting where your desire has already taken you."

[غبار · Rating 3 out of 5]

a great primer to freud & lacan, and psychoanalysis, particularly the psychic operations of fetishism. love this: "Your object, then, does not express transparently who you 'are' but says something about what it takes for you to anchor yourself in space and time. Meanwhile the story of your life becomes the story of the detours your desire takes." and that bit about consenting to each other's fantasy/realism "as the condition of [our] encounter with [our] own lovability".

[Erik Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Where are the social infrastructures through which people can reimagine their relation to intimacy and the life building organized around it in ways that are as yet uninevitable or unimaginable?"

[Caroline Loftus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m pretty sure Berlant is wrong about what sublimation is, but overall a great intro to psychoanalytic theory, especially for introducing it to unenthusiastic audiences (college students)

[Syd · Rating 4 out of 5]

im not one for psychoanalysis but i am one for love

[WiiSportsAddict · Rating 3 out of 5]

Def want to revisit this later

[Miha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enticing introduction to theories of desire

[Catherine S. Ducayen · Rating 4 out of 5]

hey berlant... if you can hear me up in nondenominational heaven... less freud and more analysis of 2012 film ruby sparks please... also i love you

[andreea. · Rating 4 out of 5]

.

[Marta · Rating 4 out of 5]

El llibre més intel·legible de Berlant que he llegit. Es nota que el va escriure abans d’assentar-se al seu estil barroc i gairebé indesxifrable dels últims vint anys.

[Quinn Hughes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kinda cool idk. A bit basic, I thought it would be more of an argument but it’s kinda more of an explanation. Some of it was good tho

[Serena]

what does it say about love that the forms it takes are so conventional??? Lauren Berlant you are a genius

[Gabriel Avocado · Rating 3 out of 5]

its always difficult for me to talk about these (non marxist) theory-heavy books because on one hand i prize accessibility over message but on the other i dont really think i should hold the book accountable for not being the target audience. i am not familiar with psychology or critical at all and a lot of the explorations of foucault and freud and lacan fell utterly flat on me simply because ive never been exposed to those schools of thought before. and it perhaps isnt fair to penalize this book for that.

then again my reviews are personal, my views are personal, and i read this for fun, not for any sort of academic pursuit. i suppose its my own fault for diving straight into a book with no prior knowledge on the subject and expecting it to be a breeze but all that being said, i did get something out of the experience.

for what its worth, berlant got me thinking about a topic from an entirely different school of thought. i approach phenomena from a marxist framework while berlant explored love through two different schools of psychology and through critical theory. to be quite honest despite not getting much of a satisfying definition to desire or love, i truly enjoyed exploring those topics. it turns out that love is unsettling, and maybe i have some unhealthy expectations. idk. desire/love was a fairly difficult yet quick read that gave me some good moments of introspection so if thats your thing id go for it!

[Hemel · Rating 4 out of 5]

my front bottoms cover band actually changes the lyrics to say "i am deleuze-ional with love"

[Priscila · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a good introduction, by the time I finished I had jolted down a dozen other books/essays to read next! I like the way Berlant articulates her themes and creates a good flow; she's also very careful with terminology, both in accuracy and in allowing for lyrical escapades. She also made me want to revisit some readings. All in all, it was a great way to spend a weekend and will definitely help with my PhD research.