#but given my appreciation of Badiou

[sterwood]

totalityandopacity replied to your post: frost & bonfire!!!

i had no idea u were a math minor but it explains so much about ur Badiou love lmfao

Yeah, it was partially because I had a math major roommate that made a lot of the math stuff seem cool. I had taken trig/pre-calc four different times (due to shenanigans), so I felt I was pretty done with math. But on his influence, I took a calculus class finally and realized that I actually really like math.

Now I’m at a really awkward place, where the next step in math would be one where I’d really benefit from some kind of instruction (Analysis and Abstract Algebra), but I’m not in a program anymore.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[solidarityinloneliness]

Love is Real Talk

This week, we focused on the topic of “Love and Conversation” by watching Before Sunrise (1995), and Before Sunset (2004). Both directed by Richard Linklater, the films showcase the walk-and-talk style that has been popularized in other romantic films, such as Southside with You (the supposed Obama first date story), and Medicine for Melancholy (Barry Jenkins’ directorial debut). We also read Carla Kaplan’s “The Erotics of Talk: ‘That Oldest Human Longing’ in Their Eyes Were Watching God,” as well as Gregory Vlastos’s “The Individual as an Object of Love in Plato.” The reading by Kaplan argues that Zora Neale Hurston’s novel demonstrates the “intimacy and eros necessary for a successful discursive ‘self-revelation’.” Her argument is based on the fact that Their Eyes Were Watching God dramatizes the lack of listeners of the story being told, like other works of feminist and African American fiction. On the other hand, Vlastos presents the opposite problem: his argument is that while Plato’s Symposium - specifically Aristotle’s Ladder of Love speech - has been studied and re-interpreted as a universal message on love, it must be taken into account that Plato himself did not believe in universality of his ideas on love. In other words, Vlastos argues that Plato’s Ladder of Love philosophy has been over-universalized, while Kaplan argues that stories of black female characters like Janie has been under-appreciated.

The film and the two readings all discuss the importance of Real Talk. I define Real Talk as “reciprocal self-revelatory conversation.” I believe that though we are divided in society, people from different backgrounds and different walks of life can come to understand each other through Real Talk. The issues that Kaplan and Vlastos point out would not be issues if black women have been given more platforms to be heard, and if Western thinkers like Plato had not been overly generalized. 

So how does one have Real Talk? In class, Dr. Ward had our class all participate in “The 35 Questions that Lead To Love.” Likewise, Jesse and Celine spend their very limited time in Vienna together having Real Talk. Both my students and I, and the couple in the Before films participated in conversations that were both reciprocal and self-revelatory. In class, we answered questions like “What do you like about your classmate already?” Similarly, Jesse and Celine answer questions like “Isn’t everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?” I found two common things about the 35 Questions exercise and the Before movies: In order for Real Talk to happen, conversations must: 1) take place in an intimate setting (conducive for a one-on-one, eye-contact conversation); and 2) involve answering questions that reveal each other’s philosophy of love. Sure, my classmates and I were answering these questions as part of the class; and sure, Jesse and Celine’s story is fictional. But what can’t be taken away is the fact that in both cases, people involved and the circumstances are simulations of Real Talk.

This got me thinking: If Real Talk is possible through an intimate setting and philosophical questions, why are people not having them more? Maybe, the reason many people date only to find out they are wrong for each other, is because they never found out whether they are capable of Real Talk with one another. I think it’s because while Real Talk can happen between any two people, the circumstances that are necessary for Real Talk aren’t accessible to them. Caplan states that the kiss metaphor (why don’t they come kiss and be kissed?) in Their Eyes Were Watching God “not only makes talk and sex coterminous but at the same time encodes the practices of discursive reciprocity that define what we might call the ethos of this novel’s erotics of talk” (119-120). In other words, talking is erotic, and requires reciprocity. Although Caplan is discussing a novel’s use of dialogue as a motif, I think this analysis of talk is relevant to the point I am making about Real Talk: In order for people to have Real Talk, they must be willing to be vulnerable (so they can be erotic/intimate), and be willing to see their talking partner as equal to them.

In a perfect world, these two conditions would be possible between any two people. However, we live in an unequal society, and people don’t see themselves as equal to others, and they certainly don’t like being vulnerable with others. This is why people meet their partners through referrals, or by pre-screening them (on social media, dating apps and websites, etc). However, maybe people’s doubts about others’ abilities to reciprocate intimacy, vulnerability and intellect (sufficient enough for the conversation to be had) are the only things keeping them from being able to fall in love.

In a way, we live in an era that may be the very opposite of the “Love as a Conversation”  ethos. Alain Badiou calls online dating culture “safety first love.” It’s a move inward, away from the world and closer to oneself. As a beneficiary of the online dating culture (I met my partner David through Tinder), I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. However, I am cognizant of the fact that my friends - who all met their partners through Tinder, and thus found people who have similar interests and similar understandings of the world - and I are prone to creating a dichotomy between us vs. the world. We don’t get why people go to clubs. We don’t get why people like that new Drake song. I would imagine that if we had been forced to meet our partners through analog means, we probably would be forced to consider the other perspective. And isn’t that what love should be about? Seeing the world from a different perspective, “the perspective of difference?”

While I don’t believe that talking is the only method to communicate love, it is the predominant form of communicating, and that fact must be addressed. In Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, Jesse and Celine can manage to fall in love through their conversations, despite being strangers to the city of Vienna and to each other. While a fictional story, the Before films demonstrate a truthful depiction that, anyone can fall in love with anyone as long as they are crazy enough to make Real Talk possible. I wonder what dating would look like if everyone prioritized Real Talk.