Date of Award

Spring 6-5-2025

Document Type

Thesis (Undergraduate)

Department

Comparative Literature

First Advisor

Klaus Mladek

Second Advisor

James A. Godley

Abstract

This thesis concerns itself with a single question: “What is love?” Specifically, it constitutes an account of love as a failed failure. The first chapter proposes a conceptualization of love as a subject-to-subject relation, through sustained engagement with the work of Alain Badiou. Specifically, the nature of the love relation as an intersubjective construction is articulated through a critique and reworking of Badiou’s conceptualization of love as an evental phenomenon. The second chapter explores the failed failure of love in relation to language, wherein the lovers’ discourse is understood to be linguistic play, operating according to the principles of Bataillean general economy, as a circuit of excess production and unproductive expenditure. The third chapter concerns itself with the failed failure of love in relation to the Lacanian death drive, interrogating the role of enjoyment and jouissance in the psychical economy of the amorous subject. The final gesture of this thesis is an account of love’s immense political potential in its singular ability to annul the Law and bring about a new ethics.

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