Faculty Member, Gender Studies
Thesis Title: Amorous (Ex/In)cursions: Love in Badiou, Weil, Fromm, and Barthes
|
Asha Varadharajan
Molly Wallace |
About
Slavoj Zizek makes the characteristically bold observation that contemporary critical theory operates with liberal-democratic capitalism as its ultimate horizon of thought. Critique, therefore, has been reduced to looking for ways to make the existing order more ethical and responsible rather than functioning as an alternative vision of the present and imagination of the future. This lack of a positive/propositional element in radical thought has cultivated a culture of cynicism: “big causes” like emancipation and revolution have been abandoned in favor of supposedly workable but more modest practices of critique. My project accepts Zizek’s gauntlet by examining the potential of love as the only remaining legitimate challenge to capitalism’s apparent universality. Contrary to the prevailing culture of critique I outlined, I develop a radical and affirmative politics of love.
