an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 5, January-February 2008, ISSN 1552-5112
The Lost Gospel:
Reflections on Nirenberg’s ‘The Politics of Love and Its Enemies’[1]
Richard
Grego, James Newell, Michael Flota and Nicholas Ruiz III
We turn up the earth to seek gold
instead of to plant wheat; the soldier seeks gold in return for his blood. The senate is closed to the poor, for gold is
the merit that qualifies for office; gold it is that gives the juror weight,
and degree to the knight. Let them keep
it all. Let the Campus and the Forum be
in their hire and let them decide war and peace; but in their fierce greed, let
them not purchase our loves also.
Ovid
For nails would not have held God-and-Man fast to the Cross, had love not held Him there.Saint Catherine of Siena RG: Nirenberg claims that “those who
prescribe love and its politics are unaware of its long history of
disappointment.”[2] He
examines how the politics of love in Old Testament scripture, the Christian
Gospels, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine and to some extent, Hegel and Marx,
tend to “generate specific anxieties and figures of exclusion, figures that
shape the ways in which political love itself can be imagined.” This places
love in the paradoxical political position of attempting to overcome “those
very exclusions that the history of its use has generated”, and thus “any
politics that acts in love’s name will have the potential to produce its
enemies”. Basing a politics on love, in other words, has historically tended to
engender the very problems that it seeks to redress—culminating, among other
things, in the alienation, exclusion, and dehumanization of the “foreigner”,
“woman,” and “Jew” in western culture.
Nirenberg illustrates
this process at work in Judaism’s “tension between love of man’s relation to
God and love as the mortar that binds man to man,” manifesting itself in an
aversion to idolatry as symbolized by the “foreign and female.“ He describes
how “Plato’s undeniable tendencies toward dualism” and Aristotle’s “bipartite”
distinction between base material necessity on one hand and “a life that is
human and political” on the other, lead to the alienation of such figures as
“foreign women, aliens, or inhuman men”. He also examines how
Although
he does not mention it explicitly, there is an important thematic continuity in
these exemplars of the western political tradition. Their philosophies share an
assumed metaphysical dualism—between God and man, the ideal and the material,
the abstract and the immanent—from which a dualistic politics—dividing self and
other, man and woman, the elect and the forsaken—ineluctably emerges. Since the
human condition is configured primordially by this insuperable divide, any
conception of love applied to human relations or communities will reflect
it.
However,
this intellectual legacy, though a very long and prominent one, is certainly
not the only attempt in history to conceive a love-based politics. Nirenberg
appears to overlook rich non-western, (and even western), traditions that have
arguably been more successful in conceiving a love-based politics—for example,
monastic traditions without the kind of internal contradictions through which
love necessarily generates its own enemies.
These traditions begin with a non-dualistic conception of the human
condition, and are therefore amenable to a concept of love and of politics that
can attain the kind of universal inclusiveness, holism, and fraternity which
has eluded those that Nirenberg describes. Gandhi’s politics of universal love
via “satyagraha” and “ahimsa” –based, in turn, upon Vedanta’s conception of
Brahman as the all-encompassing ground of existence—comes to mind in this
connection. The Upanishads clearly
identify Brahman with the supreme Self (Atman) that encompasses all selves.
Verily,
for him who sees this, who thinks this, who understands this, vital breath
arises from the Self (Atman), hope, from the Self, memory, from the Self,
appearance and disappearance, from the Self….indeed, this whole world from the
Self.[4]
This
insight becomes the basis for an ontology of interdependence in the Bhagavad Gita, which extends to all
castes and genders: “Be certain that none can perish…woman or man sprung of the
Viashya caste—or the lowly Shudra—all set foot upon the highest path.”[5] Since all
selves are Brahman, all deserve reverence and love. Gandhi’s concept of Truth
and politics of “satyagraha” and “ahimsa” arise from this monistic worldview:
I believe in
the absolute oneness of God and therefore of humanity. What though we have many bodies? We have but
one soul. The rays of the sun are many through refraction. But they have the
same source. I cannot therefore detach myself from the wickedest soul nor may I
be denied identity with the most virtuous.[6]
Love without
exclusion is thus intrinsic to the human condition—as is a political community
based upon universal love. The task of politics is to simply allow this
condition to flourish. “It is the law of love that rules mankind. …And yet the
tragedy of it is that so-called civilized men and nations conduct themselves as
if the basis of society was violence.”[7]
Similarly,
Mahayana Buddhism’s all-pervasive groundless-ground of existence via ‘dependant
origination’ finds expression in Nagarjuna’s unification of nirvana and
samsara, and finally in Vietnamese philosopher/activist Thich Nhat Hahn’s
politics of “inter-being”—which promotes an ethics and politics of universal
love via “non-attachment”. Drawing upon such sources as Nagarguna’s “Madyamika
Karika” and the Prajnaparamitra literature, as well as the metaphysical implications
of quantum physics, Thich Nhat Hanh employs the notion of “emptiness”, or
reality’s radical contingency, to refute both the Aristotelian categories of
predication (“…the [classical western] principle of identity is that ‘A is A’…the
first principle of the Prajnaparamitra is that ’A is not-A’”) and classical
western dualism (“No one today can continue to think, as Descartes did, that
mind and object are two distinct realities”). Having deconstructed those
aspects of the western paradigm, he introduces an alternate worldview based
upon the recognition of “inter-being,” or the fundamental realization that all
aspects of reality are utterly interdependent. From this realization, a psychology
and ethics of compassion (“cultivating the mind of love“) and a politics of
love, emerge inevitably:
…everything
is a construction of our minds. When we are caught by notions, we cannot see
the true nature of things, and construct a world full of suffering. We build prisons,
build Hell, build racial discrimination. We pollute the environment because we
lack inter-being….If we see into the true nature of interbeing our ignorance is
transformed into insight....Everything penetrates everything else. To harm one
person is to harm ourselves and all people at the same time. To bring relief to
one person is to bring relief to everyone.[8]
Here then
are two starting-points for a politics of love which seem to avoid generating
the sort of “specific anxieties and figures of exclusion”[9] that
would undermine the political integrity of love itself. Nirenberg overlooks
important non-western alternatives to the politics of love (as well as possible
pre-Socratic, postmodern, and mystical Judeo-Christian alternatives in the west[10]) if he
believes that the thinkers he describes are sufficient to discredit love’s
redemptive political potentials entirely. In fact, the prominent stature of
those thinkers in the western history of ideas may reveal more about the
western tradition’s limitations than about the potentials of love, which the
western tradition has perhaps failed to do justice to.
JN: In “The Politics of Love and Its Enemies,” David
Nirenberg claims that “far from being an antidote to instrumental reason or to
relations of possession and exchange, the fantasy that love can free
interaction from interest is itself one of the more dangerous offspring of the
marriage of
I ask, in economic transactions, do I really care if
corporate conglomerates love me? Big box love doesn’t sound like anything I’m
interested in pursuing. I don’t love them, and they certainly don’t love me.
And I know that the dissent toward Wal-Mart is now somewhat cliché. But “It’s
My Wal-Mart” is propaganda; there is only one thing that Wal-Mart executives
are thinking about, and it certainly isn’t me. It is their bottom line. Is this
out of love? Yes. The love of money and power.
But certainly not a love for me. These corporations are happy to comply
with the notion that love in economics is dangerous. They profit when people
choose a deal over all other factors. So, is love the sociopolitical problem or
is it the loss of human qualities within exchange?
And ironically, big box retail seems to be pursuing
the same love inherent in the religious factions discussed by Nirenberg. It is
one-way love. And it is manifesting itself now in
What happens when the love of “a good deal” takes the
place of “love thy neighbor?” Something truly positive is lost in the
transaction. What kind of love is big-box retail creating? It seems to be a
love that is completely removed from all human elements. It is love for money –
the symbol. Not love for the person – the signified. Nirenberg, while
discussing Aristotle, writes, “Such men [lovers of money] forget the
conventional role of money as a measure of need. They confuse the signifier for
the signified and live only to accumulate the symbol itself.”[12] Once again we
can consider this dangerous behavior as a key characteristic of modern
exchange—big-box retail also hides its face, so people don’t care because it
doesn’t represent faces. The symbol reigns supreme in this example as well and
forces the consumer to detach from the reality of the transaction. Everything
loses human identity; thus, love has nothing to do with it. So is love the
problem or is it a misrepresentation of love? I ask, could adding a human
element back to this socioeconomic equation make the situation any worse? It seems
the current system of loving the symbol while detaching from any human
qualities has wreaked havoc on the middle class and any idea of distribution of
wealth.
A bit earlier, Nirenberg brings in a conversation
from Lysis, which addresses the
following question: “What is the purest case of love: mutual love, with its
reciprocal exchanges and benefits, or the gratuitous love of a lover whose love
is not returned by the beloved?”[13] This distinction between asymmetrical and
symmetrical love can provide some insight into this discussion of love and politico-economic
exchange. Applied to the big-box retail design, people are, in their own way,
worshiping this system. It is similar in concept to asymmetrical love. It is
like a cult or a God figure. According to Frontline’s “Is Wal-Mart Good for
Nirenberg also raises the issue of exchange creating
hostility; love creates enemies. And I’m not denying this danger. He again uses
Plato as a jumping off point by saying, “Plato also seems to think that
monetary exchange makes such a community of friends impossible because
monetization tends to turn exchanges of goods into relations of hostility.”[15] I see this as the driving force behind the
development of faceless corporations like Wal-Mart, which are all about profit,
yet, ironically, people continue to profess their love for them via their
spending habits. Nirenberg follows with “hence the need to banish these
corrupting forms of exchange into the hands of ‘non-friends’ and noncitizens if
the friendliness of the community is to be maintained.”[16] Does it follow that big-box retail is the savior of
civilized society because it succeeds in removing the human connection within exchange?
Again using the Greeks as a point of reference,
Nirenberg quotes, “For how is a cobbler to have dealings with a farmer unless
one equates the work of the two by proportion.”[17] Nirenberg is using this to show the dangers of love
in economic exchange; however, if we consider this comment in light of the
exponential sociopolitical dealings of a mega-corporation like Wal-Mart, I ask,
how is a U.S. consumer to have dealings with a laborer in a Chinese factory
when both the consumer and the laborer are unaware of each other’s existence—much
less each other’s role in the transaction? The consumer no longer cares if the
farmer is mistreated – the mega-retailer is just a faceless corporation, which
makes it impossible for the “cobbler to have dealings with a farmer.” Such a
relation is gone. Wal-Mart has systematically removed any connection the farmer
would have with the cobbler. The connection or “love” that Nirenberg is
discussing no longer exists in a large portion of present economic situations
because there is such a firm detachment from anything human. It is all numbers
and price comparison. The consumer is now programmed to search for the best
deal with no consideration of other factors. Out of sight, out of mind. The
meat in the refrigerated case might as well have fallen from the sky. Removing
love from transaction seems to produce dire consequences.
In his closing paragraph, Nirenberg asks, “Why should
we worry about the abiding importance of love in our attempts to imagine more
perfect forms of community and communication?”[18] Because it makes us human. It creates communities. The
MF: There is much to admire in David Nirenberg’s article The Politics of Love and Its Enemies, yet
it also suffers from several empirical and theoretical weaknesses. Here I will focus on the weaknesses. Nirenberg rightly points out that the
concepts of love and exchange have not always been defined as separate
activities. He alludes to ancient societies
in which the two are conflated into the same terms and the same meanings. This is
an important point whose broader significance is never developed in the
piece. Karl Polanyi (1944) argued that
economic activity is always “embedded” in the society and culture surrounding
it. His point is that you can never
simply juxtapose economics with other aspects of a society. To do so gives economic action a power it
does not and cannot possess. Instead our
conceptions of exchange and our conceptions of love will be inextricably tied
to one another and ever influencing our experience with either concept.
This means two things: the relationship between love
and economic activity may not always involve exchange, and even if it does, the
content of that relationship will vary across time and culture. Nirenberg instead imagines a love that stands
outside of exchange, as if economic activity was motivated by forces beyond the
numerous motivations that have been attributed to what he calls love. This rendering of love and exchange can
easily be undermined by an examination of the actual reasons social actors
enter into economic activity: much of it involves some form of familial, sexual
or emotional connection to other actors (Scitovsky, 1976:120-121).
There is a deeper history here that Nirenberg never
fully explores: the shift of societies from the pursuit of glory to the pursuit
of profit. Hirschman (1977) argues that
the early proponents of capitalism argued for a replacement of the passions
with individual self interest. The logic
was that if people were less concerned with honor, glory and the rest of it
they would be less inclined to engage in all manner of nasty activities. The history of the world since then has
proved otherwise, but this argument is quite compatible with much of what
Nirenberg says here. In fact, Nirenberg
is reviving an old debate. Adam Smith is
the culprit Hirschman identifies as having repressed much of the debate over
interests versus passions (one of which is certainly Nirenberg’s love). Prior to Smith, the idea was that the
pursuit of individual interest would create a more stable political order than
that based on pursuit of the passions.
After Smith, the focus shifted exclusively to the procurement of
economic efficiency and gain. Now,
Nirenberg is asking us to consider the obverse: the replacement of the
interests with the passions, or love. Nirenberg
finds such a notion lacking.
The most damaging pieces of evidence against
Nirenberg’s thesis are empirical.
Even the primary strength of the piece can be called
into question when one realizes that the “love and its enemies” as a process is
what social psychologists refer to as the in-group/out-group effect. But the in-group/out-group effect is not a
condition that warrants eternal pessimism.
The “other” can just as easily be a condition
and the in-group can be all of humanity—at least in theory. In practice, we do know that groups in a
given situation can all coalesce around the achievement of a certain objective
or amelioration of a certain problematic (Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood and Sherrif,
1961; Blake and Mouton, 1962). In that
case, the problem or objective becomes “the other” around which the groups
coalesce to resolve. Under the right
conditions the achievement of an egalitarian politics might be that
objective. The classic case of creating
such conditions is where all groups achieve small consistent victories in their
work together and that their work requires them to rely more or less equally on
one another (Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood and Sherrif, 1961; Blake and Mouton,
1962). Not an easy task to bring about
in a national politics, but hardly impossible.
The formation of the
Nirenberg also never defines the central concept of
his piece. Instead he seems more
interested in defining what love is not. Thus, it is impossible to know exactly where
Nirenberg draws the line between various conceptions of love, but one would
assume that empathetic love is among those on his list. Yet, empathy has now been identified as the
root of human rationality and action in a land mark study by neurologist
Antonio Damasio (1994). With such a deep
role for empathy in the human psyche, it seems at least, unadvisable to simply
write it off as a crucial element for the good society. But love cannot be the necessary and
sufficient cause of an egalitarian polity.
There must also be an economic system associated with love in order for
the political regime to survive. We
simply do not know what these elements of the final product would look like
because Nirenberg never tells us.
Clearly these facets of the solution are beyond the scope of his
article; but then again, without them, no intelligent conclusion can be made on
whether love can or cannot be a solution to egalitarian politics. On this basis, Nirenberg’s argument runs into
serious trouble.
The global capitalist economy since at least the
early 1980s has been going through a period of market fundamentalist
resurgence, or in Polanyi’s terms a renewed effort to dis-embed the economy
from society and rely upon the self regulating market. The call for love can easily be seen as part
of the “double movement” Polanyi described to re-embed the economy into
society. The calls for love should not
be seen as an effort to replace exchange with love, but to more firmly re-embed
the principles of love into exchange, in fact to subordinate exchange to
them. Doing so would bring the economy
back into human balance at a time when such balance is critically needed. The growing rise of global inequality,
population and the steady decline of the planet’s ecosystem make just such a
move an urgent requirement of continued human survival.
NRIII: One
supposes in life that some things are possible.
Love is one of these things, no?
We presume such a thing is possible? But what if love were impossible? Not in the sense of David Nirenberg’s thesis,
but in the sense of a real impossibility. That is to say, what would it mean, if love
was unreal? Surely such a hypothesis
would relate to the death of god. In the
consumer Christian (we were never Christ-like; have a look at the Gnostic
gospels) west, can we dissociate god from love?
Perhaps the two are rotting, like corpses in the killing fields of
ideas. It would also follow, perhaps,
that if we can agree that the nature of god is unsuitable for politics, then so
too, might the nature of love be unsuitable for such a thing as politics
requires.[19]
So two things: god and love. Every major religion of the world syncopates
these two concepts, paradoxically, via the utilization of conceptual infinity,
and one concept’s weakness becomes the other concept’s strength: the horizon of
god’s love is endless, and the horizon of one’s love for god, should be too…Yes,
that it is it: love is the purview of sacrifice. We must bleed for the love of god. This is the claim of the disciple; the saint
and the poet. But there are no saints
any longer, and poetry is endangered, if not extinct. And the sacred, by definition, is always
exterminated as a functional violence of the holy service. The Christians
sacrifice Christ, only to acknowledge him two thousand years later as a gold
trinket on a chain. Should some supposed
prophet have the loving good fortune of being born and executed today, some
have toyed with the idea of honoring this postmodern savior with a golden
electric chair dangling on a chain around the necks of the future chosen.
The children of Abraham are no different. A covenant excludes by default, Nirenberg is
right to point out. A rendering of god
and love in
Our relationship with love, god and the infinity of price
and spectacle, is recently articulated in Damien Hirst’s art:
Damien Hirst, For the Love of God,
(2007)
Platinum, 8,601 diamonds and human teeth
6 3/4 x 5 x 7 1/2 in. (17.1 x 12.7 x 19.1 cm)
$100 million. A
record: the highest price ever paid for the work of a living artist. One marvels that we can any longer, truly
render Aquinas’ corporeal metaphors for spiritual things. As for love, that euphoria
of the genetic Code and capitalizations as currencies of that Code…a molecular symphony
of melancholy and bliss. And God? Neurotransmissions; a battery of concepts,
like 8,601 diamonds in the rough. All of
which pale in comparison to what is wished for in the impossibility of political
love as the gift of some Other. All we have are eternal returns to self
interest wrought by each other. And all such
returns serve to eternally rekindle the mordant fire of the sacrificial flame, as
societies flicker here and there, among the dark wars they render unto themselves. In other words, we can expect all returns to
reveal the prospect of nothing, more or less, than the oldest violence, that
wrought by increasing quantities of peoples and the scarcity of resources. There is however, always the wager of belief
to allay our concerns. And it is in this
sense that meaning is epidemic. It is
meaninglessness that we must get to know as a people, if we are ever to find
ourselves, no?
Such uncertainties lay in the choice, and why we
speak of ‘falling’ in (and out) of love.
Politics, on the other hand, need not be ‘fallen’ into—and functions
instead, on the quantitative, necessary and sufficient premise of some number
greater than One. There can never be a politics of oneself. Perhaps that is the ruse of plastic surgery
and other biotechnical editing experiments…
After the Apocalypse, you see…that is what we are
faced with—the apocalypse being now.
After love, you see…that too, is what we are faced with—that time is
now. And perhaps it is not that we know not love, and through ignorance render
it impotent, but instead that by knowing it, by having identified such an
object, we have in turn destroyed the idol.
Like the god of our sun, that star of nuclear fusion. Discovery changes everything, no?
For politicians then, what is at stake in Nirenberg’s
claim? Nothing really, and that is why
aristocracy reifies itself under every name it is given (democracy, etc.) And for lovers? Well, lovers don’t care about
truth or the real, do they? It is the
suspension of the real, which all lovers seek, and they deserve the full fire
of our admiration for it.
an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 5, January-February 2008,
ISSN 1552-5112
Notes