| Long abstract | Into what, precisely, do we plum-met when we fall into love? What, exactly, is produced when we makeit? When we are hungry for love, what stomach is nourished by that strange food? Colloquialisms are littered with a lan-guage that objectifies love, that turns it into a thing—not just something we can feel, but something we can touch, some-thing that hits us, changes us, throws us, consumes us, drives us. Popular parlance makes the love relation into something almost tangible, concrete, autonomous: love is some thing we fall into, love is a master key, love is a war, love is a bite of heaven, love is a virus. Such language begins to suggest that the “love object” is not, exactly, the person for whom you pine. Instead, it begins to look as though the “love object” is the relation, itself. Love takes on thing-like contours, becomes its own sort of creature. It does its own little cosmic dance. |
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