A Lacanian supplementation to love in L’Immanence des vérités

Abstract

Abstract In L’Immanence des vérités, Alain Badiou rewrites the Platonic allegory of the cave. As the book’s structure reveals, Badiou’s central claim is that truths are absolute, for they are constituted by the dialectic between finitude and infinity, the consequence of which lies in the creation of the œuvre. Although love is often affected by individual difference, family, money, and social norms, philosophy calls for a rupture with these instances of finitude, awakening us to the truth that love is open to the possibility of infinity embodied by contingent encounter, amorous declaration, and the faithful construction of the Two. Badiou calls for subjectivization of this possibility in the form of the amorous œuvre, through and beyond the Lacanian impasse of the sexual non-relationship. This article supplements Badiouian love with Lacanian psychoanalysis by developing five points. First, the binary framework “Lacanian finitude vs Badiouian infinity” can be misleading. Second, Badiou himself regards the unconscious and the analytic discourse as inscribed by the dialectic between finitude and infinity. Third, Lacan allows us to recognize that the œuvre and the waste are not opposed, but rather supplementary to each other. Fourth, for both Lacan and Badiou, love constitutes the interlacing of the non-relationship and the Two. Fifth, the Badiouian amorous absolute must deal with the real of the absolute as the fusional One and thus, can be supplemented by the Lacanian problematic of the sexual relationship in its fantasmatic form of the One. Based on these points, this article elaborates such concepts as the amorous labor, the dialectic between œuvre and waste, and the artisan of love.