Loss, Violence, Love: the Transformation of the Embodied Subject in Affective Relationality

(1)

1

LOSS, VIOLENCE, LOVE:

the transformation of the embodied subject

in affective relationality

University of Amsterdam

Faculty of Humanities

rMA Cultural Analysis

2013-2014

Student name:

Lisanne de Berg

Student number:

5777410

Supervisor:

Prof. dr. Mireille Rosello

Second reader:

Dr. Jules Sturm

(2)

(3)

3 ABSTRACT

Assuming an individual being as an embodied and socially constructed subject, this research project will emphasize the limits and possibilities of the inevitable relationship that exists between individual and society. Therefore, several specific cases will be explored in which a possible relational change, transformation or metamorphosis of the embodied subject takes place. As these relational changes are evoked by events of an accidental or traumatic nature, each chapter (apart from the theoretical framework) will have one of these events as its main theme. In chronological order these events are: loss, violence and love. As will become clear in this thesis, these events are of interest for they foster the transformative condition of the embodied subject. Ultimately, through a thorough analysis of these several cases, this research project will open up questions on affective relationality and the transformative position of the individual as an embodied subject.

(4)

4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

"'Till the bitter end."

Thanks to Ymke, Georgia and Marleen

(5)

5

INTRODUCTION

"In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora" ("I intend to speak of forms changed into new entities"), is how the Roman poet Ovid begins his magnum opus Metamorphoses. A phrase that already underlines the work's unifying theme: the theme of transformation. Where the Greeks recited myths about metamorphosis in which gods and mankind were able to change into animals or the other way around, shamans have endlessly practiced the ability to reach other states of consciousness, while contemporary cultural theorists claim that humans have already evolved into machines.

Morphing, shifting, changing, transforming. All these different words point towards a similar process, a process that is deeply embedded within the work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. To him, transformation is inevitable for he interprets life as becoming, an idea largely introduced in his famous work A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980):

“Becoming" is a process of change, flight, or movement within an assemblage. Rather than conceive of the pieces of an assemblage as an organic whole, within which the specific elements are held in place by the organization of a unity, the process of "becoming" serves to account for relationships between the "discrete" elements of the assemblage. In

"becoming" one piece of the assemblage is drawn into the territory of another piece, changing its value as an element and bringing about a new unity. (1987:272)

Becoming provokes the idea that every existing element is always and endlessly changing and therefore open-ended and within flux. Such a thought seems to prohibit itself from being completely grasped. Taking this problematization into account, Deleuze’s idea on becoming highlights precisely two aspects that altogether form the main starting of this thesis. Simply put, the first aspect implies that everything is always changing (transformation) whilst the other indicates that this change is made possible due to the fact that everything is ultimately related (relationality).

(8)

8 The latter statement raises the question of what such a relation precisely entails.

Perhaps this question can be clarified by the following imagination. Let's consider ourselves to be a body that consists of numerous strings that attaches us towards the world. These strings are not pulled by one man, nor one State nor one particular force. Rather, they are pulled by each other while they simultaneously inhabit the ability to pull each other for they are all tied to one another. Imagine that these strings have the ability to “stabilize” or “position” us, although they vary in strength and thickness. Regardless of this variation, let’s say that all these strings are equally necessary for the "position" of this body that is always changing. What will happen when these strings are challenged? What will happen when an unexpected event of influential nature interferes? Imagine a sudden absence of one of these strings (loss). Would this not make our body tumble? Imagine that these strings are under large pressure (violence). Would this not make our body numb? And last but not least, imagine a sudden vivid appearance of a string (love). Would this not make our body flinch and flutter?

I would like to argue that events of an accidental or traumatic nature are able to gain insight into the idea of relationality for they specifically challenge the relations that a subject finds itself within. Taking the coherent events of loss, violence and love as the main three pillars of this research, I will try to ultimately question what the transformation of the subject (that I will consider to be embodied as I will explain in the following theoretical chapter) can reveal about the workings of relationality (that I will argue to be affective).

The first chapter includes the theoretical framework of this thesis that pitches the main the idea of the transformation of the embodied subject within affective relationality. Therefore, a short analysis upon Deleuze's work on becoming will follow; a philosopher I admire for his theory avoids falling too quickly into hierarchical or ideological structural thinking, while it also prevents to marshal phenomena too easily into constructed categorizations or classifications. However, Deleuze's inherent complex and abstract matter has forced this research to also largely rely on other cultural theorists. Those include either theorists that are heavily influenced

(9)

9 by Deleuze such as Rosi Braidotti, particularly in her work Metamorphoses: Towards a

Materialist Theory of Becoming (2002), or theorists I use because their work is deeply involved with one or more of the three major pillars of this thesis. For the themes of loss and violence I draw heavily from Judith Butler's popular work Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (2004), while the theme of love is mostly inspired by theorists Lauren Berlant and Michael Hardt.

Each chapter after the theoretical framework will scrutinize one major pillar that is analyzed by a particular object. In the second chapter the theme of loss will be adduced in which the novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005) by Jonathan Safran Foer is analyzed. The novel unfolds the story of the eleven year-old boy Oskar Schell who lost his father during the traumatic event of 9/11. When Oskar finds an unfamiliar key in a tall blue vase of his father’s closet that includes a note with the symbolic name ‘Black’ written on it, Oskar starts a journey through the streets of his hometown New York. While Oskar thinks that the key will bring him back to his father, he ultimately discovers that the key does not belong to his own father but to someone else’s father instead. A father who, similar to Oskar’s father, died. In exposing Oskar’s story, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is able to “unlock” several other stories of various other people who all seem to have one thing in common: loss. Hence, absence seems that what is most present in Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel. Loss becomes the key in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close to illuminate the "black holes" in the character’s memories that were formed by events that were too extreme to experience and too incredible to comprehend. The effects of trauma are literally oozed out over the pages. The book eventually reveals that all these different traumatic stories are related to one another, it shows that the characters all share the same ties.

In the third chapter violence will form the major theme in which the film Dogtooth (2009) by the Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos will be analyzed. The film, that was awarded with the prize Un Certain Regard at the 2009 Cannes Festival, tells the absurdist story of a Greek nuclear family where the ideals of a terrifying father turn against itself. The Dogtooth family portrays the failure of a community in its smallest form. While the father tries to save his

(10)

10 children from the dangers and violence of the outside world, his protection becomes

jeopardized and turns violent in itself through the bodily acts of his children. Therefore,

Lanthimos’ story can be interpreted as an accusation of any ideology within society, suggesting - in line with Jean-Luc Nancy’s idea of the “inoperative community” (1986) - that ideologies can never form the basis of any community (and thus family) at all. In the tyrannized surroundings of the family no escape seems possible. As intended, the children’s dogteeth will never fall out and thus they will not be able to move outside the confined area. However, the eldest daughter is ultimately able to dispossess herself from the family structure. Through her interaction with an outsider, she requires the right “tools” that help her escape the house. The story shows that the daughters liberation from a very traumatic environment is realized by becoming physically violent towards herself. This moment illuminates the transformation of the embodied subject that raises questions upon the productivity of violence and gives insight into the workings of relationality.

The major theme in chapter 4 is love, in which the film Blue is the Warmest Color (2013) by the Frech director Abdellatif Kechiche is analyzed. Through an analysis of the transformation of the two main characters, I would like to scrutinize how affective relationality in its most common or “graspable” form can work. The film, an ultimate love tragedy, tells us the story of Adèle who falls in love with the blue-haired Emma. Kechiche sketches both the rise and fall of their relationship in which the visual narrative becomes very telling and symbolic: when Emma’s blue hair fades, the love dynamics between Adèle and Emma change as well. The bodily transformations are made explicit in the film’s numerous sex scenes, that – rather unfortunately – have become a major point of critique for some reviewers. Apart from these critics, the film was also praised for it would show love “as cataclysmic and destructive and sensual and unforgettable as the real thing must always be” (Bradshaw, 2013), an argument confirmed when it won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes festival in 2013. As I will argue, the film gives a very good insight of the transforming body that is always and forever embedded within its relations towards others.

(11)

(12)

12

1. Affective Encounters: Becoming, Relationality And The

Transforming Body

On Deleuze: becoming and the “problem” of subjectivity

According to Deleuze’s idea of becoming, life is immanent and open to relations (Biehl & Locke, 2010:317). Moving away from the Aristotelian teleological perspective that continued to dominate the academic field under the wings of Kant and Hegel, Deleuze’s theory of becoming has opened up new fields of thought within the humanities that to this day forms one of the main points of departure for many contemporary theorists and thinkers. Rosi Braidotti for instance argues that becoming “marks a qualitative leap in the transformation of subjectivity and of its constitutive affects. […] Limits are to be rethought in terms of an ethics of becoming, through a non-Hegelian notion of limits as tresholds, that is to say points of encounter and not of closure, living boundaries and not fixed walls.” (2002:15). In other words, becoming provides a way of theorization that rather continually opens up questions, scrutinizes the potential of things and examines their possible transformative nature instead of demarcating them and ostensibly putting them at rest. Becoming suggests a way of thinking that is able to adequately reflect the complexities of the process itself. (13).

This particular academic discourse, often referred to as new vitalism, is largely rooted in metaphysics, a field that has been neglected for a long time within the humanities. In leaving the traditional linguistic approach behind, the possibility is created for opening up interdisciplinary discussions between the humanities and other sciences1_{, a development that is much of interest}

for the field of cultural analysis for it is also interdisciplinary oriented. The main assumption in new vitalism is that life is a process of becoming rather than being, a becoming that is explained

1_{This is in line with what Brian Massumi has argued in his work Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect,} Sensation (2002) , whose words I therefore would like to mention: “The point is not just to make the

humanities differ, but also to make them different from sciences in the way they are unaccustomed to. […] part of the idea is to put the humanities in a position of having continually to renegotiate their relations with the sciences – and, in this process, to rearticulate what is unique to their own capacities”. (21)

(13)

13 as a “multiplicity” which is defined “not by the elements that compose it in extension, not by the

characteristics that compose it in comprehension, but by the lines and dimensions it encompasses in "intention".” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987:270). With this proposal Deleuze claimed the task of the invention of new concepts that to him always should involve at least two dimensions, namely percepts and affects2_{, that altogether form three inseparable forces}

amongst art and philosophy (Semetsky, 2005:213). Although the task of this research is not to invent new concepts, the theoretical framework is however build upon this thought as it is largely inspired by the contemporary revival within the humanities on affect3_theory.

Deleuze’s theory has challenged the traditional Kantian notion of the transcendental subject and the role of the individual. This challenge can be described as the “problem” of subjectivity. Where Kant questioned “How can the given be given to the subject?”, Deleuze reversed this by asking “How can the subject be constituted within the given?”(Smith, “Gilles Deleuze”). To ask such a question entails that within Deleuzian thought there is not something such as a static Cartesian subject but rather a production of subjectivity (Semetsky, 2005:218). To assume that there is a production of subjectivity, rejects the idea of an already existing subject with certain abilities and conditions. The subject is only manifested through its relation towards other things, or as Deleuze himself states: subjectivity is produced in a process of individuation which is always already collective (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987:9). This assumption is what makes the research of relationality specifically relevant. Lisa Blackman has mentioned that one of the main problems in contemporary philosophy has been to specify the relationship between “social unity or uniformity and individuation”(2008:28). Understanding that the social here should not be confused with the much more abstract Deleuzian notion of the multiplicity, Blackman’s suggestion on the specificity of these different but very related elements forms a

2_{Of these two notions Deleuze argued that on the one hand percepts are not perceptions but “packets of}

sensations and relations that live on independently of whoever experiences them”, while on the other hand affects are not feelings but “becomings that spill over beyond whoever lives through them (thereby becoming someone else).” (Deleuze, 1995:127). With this he clarifies that percepts and affects specifically do not belong or are property of the subject.

3_{The idea of affect, stemming from Spinoza, formed the basis for the “affective turn” within the}

humanities (Clough, 2007)

(14)

14 good starting point for further research. Therefore, in consideration of the aforementioned

“problem” of the subject, the main point of emphasis in this project will be the “position” of the subject.

The body, affect and the embodied subject

Inspired by Spinoza, the body is one of the intensities of the multiplicity that Deleuze describes. A body is a “collection of forces” (Spinoza, 1996:69) that is on the one hand substantive but simultaneously also in flux and transformative. This seemingly contradictory notion entails that the body as a collection of forces is indeed substantial but only temporarily: it is changing due to the dimensions and variations that are immanent towards it. Just as any other type of element, the body is not distinguished by form or function but solely by movement and rest (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987:309). Movement in this case is existing of relations of speed and slowness, instead of being a certain condition, ability or property of the body. Furthermore, the body is considered here not only as the physical human body but rather as any type of stable

manifestation or “composition of relations between parts” (Deleuze, 1990: 218–9). Thus, all sorts of bodies are included, crossing from human, non-human and whatever is in-between and beyond that4_.

How do the body and the production of subjectivity relate? The body has to be considered in alliance with the “multi-functional and complex structure of subjectivity (Braidotti, 2002:21). Because subjectivity is manifested through the notion of the body, Rosi Braidotti argues the individual to be an embodied subject, that she explains as a process of intersecting forces and spatio-temporal5_{variables (2002:21). In line with Braidotti, the}

individual in this research will be considered as an embodied subject, in which the intersecting

4

Being aware of this notion, I would like to add that it is not my main aim to also prove this notion (this is rather the main task of the post-human discourse), and it is therefore that the objects in the next three chapters do not include a diversity or range of “different” bodies.

5_{Originated in physics, this term suggests that space and time are combined into one single interwoven}

continuum.

(15)

15 forces are interpreted as affects while the spatio-temporal variables are regarded as the

conditions of the body.

Affect here has to be understood as “a field of intensities in which the subject, the

individual, finds itself manifest within and negotiates” (McManus, 2011). This entails once more that affect is not a property or a condition of the body but instead a collection of forces6_{that is}

indeed of influence on the body for it conditions the body as such. It marks the body’s belonging to the world (Seigworth & Gregg, 2010:2) and can possibly be best understood as a multi-dimensional field of potential. A potential in which bodies are able to act and things are able to happen. Moreover, both the body and affect are interpreted as fields of intensities: they cannot exists without each other but differ however in manifestation and concreteness. Because the body has the potential to be affected, it can relate to- and differentiate itself from other bodies. Hence, affect is central to the conceptualization of subjectivity for it roots the individual along with its merely bodily capacities within the multiplicity. In other words, affect is something that occurs “beyond, around, and alongside the formation of subjectivity” (Anderson, 2009:77). While it is very closely related to the body, it will never become an ability or property of that body.

Affective relationality and the transforming body

In line with Spinoza’s theory on the body and the individual, an individual as an embodied subject is considered to be always in “a mutual affective relationship with others” (McManus, 2011). What does this mean? Metaphorically, one can imagine all elements within the world to be involved in a continuous dance, in which the stage is the space/time in which these elements occur (the stage keeps shifting as the elements keep changing) and of which we can never really tell or predict (for we too belong to these elements) what type of elements may or may not encounter with one another. To grasp the dance in itself remains an impossible task, for it is not graspable, it cannot become concrete as it happens in the here-and-now, in which our

6_{The term ‘force’ can be misleading for it can easily be thought of as power, although it is much more}

often “within and across the subtlest of shuttling intensities” (Seigworth & Gregg, 2010)

(16)

16 consciousness or awareness is always a-posteriori. The dance is always happening, it is a

process of becoming in which the relations between elements, that are always open-ended, constantly shift.

This perspective is the main idea of radical relationality, a theory that claims that objects, subjects and concepts are composed of "nothing more or less than relations, reciprocal enfoldings gathered together in temporary and contingent unities." (Fraser et al., 2005:3). Relations are not pre-existent towards entities just as entities are not pre-existent towards relations. They exist because of each other in a mutual affective way. Several theorists have tried to explain relationality with visual metaphors such as "webs" (Laing, 1970), "fibers" (Deleuze, 1987) and "ties" (Butler, 2004) that are constituted through subjects described as "knots" (Laing, 1970) or "nodes" (Smith, 1992). It is clear that these metaphors all point towards the same sort of relational "network" in which the subject is not the central point of departure but rather an intensity where several forces meet. Earlier on was stated that affect is central for the potential of the body and thus for the manifestation of the embodied subject. Therefore, this research take relationality into account as particularly affective.

Here, I am indebted to Lauren Berlant who claims that: “a subject is something like the effect of the rise and fall of affective intensity and that what you are is a set of habits of

managing rise and fall of affective intensity. So what’s internal to you is also what’s in relation to others and to worlds.” (Davis & Sairlin, 2012:13). Berlant's usage of “rise” and “fall” suggests an increase and a decrease of intensity that points out that the embodied subject is never in a neutral or general position (Davis & Sairlin, 2012:42). Rather, in its potential to be affected, it finds itself in relation to others manifest in waves of intensities. This entails that the embodied subject is composed by relations that are internal to the body and external towards other bodies, in which the inside/outside distinction becomes blurred for they are continually of influence on each other.

When do affective intensities rise? When do affective intensities fall? Here, it is suggested that during events of an accidental nature, such as a traumatic event, the affective

(17)

17 intensities rise between several bodies which enable specifically a transformation within the

relational web. As these rising and falling intensities are able to evoke a transformation of the body of the subject, this main point of emphasis within this thesis will be referred to with the term of the transforming body. The transforming body refers to the mode of transformation of the subject that takes place due to the changes within the relationships in which the subject finds itself manifest within, for whenever a “"rupture” is identified, a new series of relations are established” (Fraser et al., 2005:4). With the transforming body both the shift in the (open-ended) “position” of the embodied subject is included as well as the inherent contrast of this embodied subject towards the degree of affective intensities that takes place. Although the mode of the subject will be addressed as “position” or “positionality” throughout this thesis, the opposite of what the term might provoke is intended, namely the non-static.

The relevance of transformation within Deleuzian thought has already been thoroughly explored by several cultural theorists such as Rosi Braidotti and her notion of the nomad, that largely resembles the similar idea of what is mentioned here as the transforming body:

In nomadic thought, a radically immanent intensive body is an assemblage of forces, or flows, intensities and passions that solidify in space, and consolidate in time, within the singular configuration commonly known as an “individual” self. This intensive en dynamic entity does not coincide with the enumeration of inner rationalist laws, nor is it merely the unfolding of genetic data and information. It is rather a portion of forces that is stable enough to sustain and undergo constant, though non-destructive, fluxes of

transformation. (2006:201)

Taking the existence of such concepts into account, they will not be involved within this research due to its limited format. However, theoretical notions that are extracted from these concepts are included. Considering the subject to embody the potential to be affected, it is clear that the encounter with an event of accidental nature will undoubtedly entail a shift in its non-static position. The events of loss, violence and love that are addressed in this thesis for they all reveal a “play of forces without which no transformation would be possible” (Semetsky,

2005:218). As this research shows, the events of loss, violence and love are able to provoke intensities that become so estranging towards the subject that it is left in a “mode of

(18)

18 transformation of the embodied subject can take place, in order to give insight into the workings

(19)

19

2. On Loss: Transforming The Traumatized Body in Jonathan Safran

Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“‘I feel too much. That’s what’s going on.’ ‘Do you think one can feel too much? Or just feel in the wrong ways?’ ‘My insides don’t match up with my outsides.’ ‘Do anyone’s insides and outsides match up?’ ‘I don’t know. I’m only me.’”

- Jonathan Safran Foer, EL&IC (2005)

“I miss you already Oskar. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing”, explains his grandmother towards the young boy Oskar Schell, the main character in Jonathan Safran Foer’s second novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005). While Oskar lost his father during the traumatic event of 9/11, the story emphasizes several other losses of different character’s, suggesting a shared feeling of collectivity or community. Similarly, Judith Butler suggests in her work Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (2004) that: “Despite our differences in location and history, my guess is that it is possible to appeal to a “we”, for all of us have some notion of what it is to have lost somebody. Loss had made a tenuous “we” of us all.” (20). Butler’s argument scrutinizes that loss is able to unravel the workings of relationality. Loss implies a common or shared feeling that belongs to every possible individual, forming one of our basic conditions to re-imagine the possibility of a global community. As loss involves an affective impact upon the body, loss as a traumatic event is able to affect the embodied subject in such a way that it inevitably will transform. By first exploring in more depth what trauma exactly is, in which the work of several trauma theorists will be included, this chapter will give more insight into the affective effects of such an “accidental” event. What can loss reveal about the transformation of the subject and how is this reflected in the novel of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close?

(20)

20

Losing the tie: the embodiment of trauma and loss

Many theorists in trauma studies have tried to give a proper definition of what trauma is. The most substantial argument is that it consists of a "not- known" (Caruth, 1996:40) or "not-yet" experience (Pollock, 2009:40). Because the event is not yet experienced, it does not have the ability to become a past event for it still has to be experienced in the present. In other words, it hasn’t entered the memory of the subject yet. If trauma has a synonym, it would surely equal rupture, impasse, schism, breach or just interruption. Similarly, Dominick LaCapra states in his work Writing History, Writing Trauma (2001) that trauma is “a disruptive experience that disarticulates the self and creates holes in existence; it has belated effects that are controlled only with difficulty and perhaps never fully mastered.” (41). This “disarticulation” of the self suggests that trauma consists of an affective force that is able to transform the subject. Additionally, Dominick LaCapra’s notion of the ability of trauma to create “holes in existence” scrutinizes the not-yet experience of the subject, which implies an absence within the memory of this subject. Thomas Elseasser strikingly explains this lack as the failure of trauma to represent itself properly. Trauma provokes what he calls a “crisis of referentiality”: trauma makes the failure of memory more significant while it also shows the failure of its own significant representation (2001:195).

Trauma’s disruptive nature ties in with the structure of the narrative in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. The narrative not only consists of various literary genres (prose, poetry) but also includes several images7_{. Near the end, the novel shows a sequence of images that}

altogether forms a flipbook. Once the reader flips the pages, a short movie becomes visible. This flipbook becomes the ultimate tool for the protagonist Oskar to deal with his trauma. The failure of trauma to be properly represented is furthermore resembled through the incorporation of several blank pages and white spaces, that symbolize the absence or “holes” of the traumatized

7_{Jonathan Safran Foer has defended the incorporation of images in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close}

during an interview in which he states that writing about 9/11 “requires a visual language” that would resemble the global perception on the traumatic event for it became one of the first most visually well-documented events in history (Codde, 2007:249)

(21)

21 memories of the several characters. An example of this is the following text, recited by Oskar’s

grandfather, on the traumatic experience of 9/11:

“The same pictures over and over. Planes going into buildings. Bodies falling.

People waving shirts out of high windows. Planes going into buildings.

Bodies falling.

Planes going into buildings. People covered in gray dust. Bodies falling.

Buildings falling.

Planes going into buildings. Planes going into buildings. Buildings falling.

People waving shirts out of high windows. Bodies falling.

Planes going into buildings.” (230)

What this fragments shows is a repetition of similar sentences that altogether create a figurative image, reflecting the collapse (“fall”) of the Twin Towers as well as the falling of bodies. It also serves as a reference of the iconic image of the falling man8_{, that is repeated throughout the}

novel through several images as well as the flipbook. Because these sentences are surrounded by white spaces, they symbolize absence and enigmatically suggest the violent act of the event.

In order for the traumatic event to become part of the subject’s memory and thus to become an experienced event, trauma needs to act out. This is what Dominick LaCapra implies with trauma’s “belated effects”: it is only through the repetition of the traumatic event that it

8_{With this I am referring to the image of “The Falling Man” (2011) by Richard Drew.}

(22)

22 can be experienced. Through repetition trauma is able to return to the subject in order to

become - a still very complicated and perhaps never fully ‘owned’ - property of the subject. This repetition is acquired in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close through language, as the example above shows, as well as the several incorporated images of which the flipbook forms the ultimate example. All in all, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close shows a disorientated

intermingling of texts and images that serve as a representation of the belated effects of the characters own trauma’s.

Because it is necessary for trauma to expose, it requires an action that belongs to the subject’s body. Therefore the question arises how trauma and the body are related. Jane Bennett argues in her work Emphatic Vision: Affect, Trauma and Contemporary Art (2005) that “by giving trauma extension in space or lived space, it invites an awareness of different modes of

inhabitation.” (12). Trauma seeks space in order to act out, it needs a spatial condition that a body can provide. In line with Jane Bennett’s argument, this body does not only refer to the physical, organic body. Because trauma invites different modes of inhabitation, again already assuming its inherent transformative condition, the ‘body’ of the narrative can provide a similar spatial condition for it forms an extension or even reflection of the body of the subject.

The title Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close already implies the bodily effects of trauma. First of all, the title serves as a referent of the traumatic event of 9/11, symbolizing the crash of the planes and the destruction of the buildings as well as the many lives it affected. Since Oskar’s father too became a victim, 9/11 was indeed extremely loud and incredibly close for him.

Linguistically, both adjectives ‘extremely’ and ‘incredibly’ can be read as ‘too’, suggesting that the event was too extreme to hear and too close to watch, directly appealing to the incapability of the senses of the body to fully experience the event.

If trauma needs space in order to be exposed which requires a physical action, another question arises: to what extent is trauma an affective force? Interestingly, Thomas Elsaesser argues that trauma “not only names the delay between an event and its (persistent, obsessive) return, but also a reversal of affect and meaning across this gap in time.” (2001:197). So, while

(23)

23 trauma comes across as an extremely affective force, it rather inhabits an opposite nature.

Considering the body to be affective, trauma consists of such an extreme force that it

paradoxically prohibits the body to be affective at all. To be more precise, trauma “freezes” the body into an “unaffective” condition. It temporarily slows down affect’s movement, and can only become undone through an active exposure of the body that provides affect to speed up again. How is this required? My guess is that the transformative body could serve as a solution.

The effects of trauma on the body and its need for space are largely reflected in Oskar’s anxiety for spaces and – in line with that – bodies. For instance, he is afraid of elevators, tall buildings and bridges but, as the fragment below shows, also quite disturbingly of “Arab people”. Because Oskar is still a child, it is perhaps an easy way of the author to reflect a very realistic fear that was shared by the Western masses. However, the fragment does add up towards my argument that trauma seeks space and that Oskar’s anxiety for it, furthermore reveals his incapability to accept his father’s loss:

Even after a year, I still had an extremely difficult time doing certain things, like takings showers, for some reason, and getting into elevators, obviously. There was a lot of stuff that made me panicky, like suspension bridges, germs, airplanes, fireworks, Arab people on the subway (even though I’m not racist), Arab people in restaurants and coffee shops and other public spaces, scaffolding, sewers and subway grates , bags without owners, shoes, people with mustaches, smoke, knots, tall buildings, turbans. A lot of the time I’d get the feeling like I was in the middle of a huge black ocean, or in deep space, but not in the fascinating way. It’s just that everything was incredibly far away from me. (36)

Oskar’s description of his affected body in this fragment, stating that he felt like being “in the middle of a huge black ocean, or in deep space” highlights the fact that through the loss of his father, Oskar feels as if he has become lost himself too. The unaffective condition of his body is resembled in his extreme difficulty of “doing certain things”. He feels disconnected: “everything was incredibly far away from me”. Judith Butler poetically exemplifies these effects of loss upon the body in the following quote:

“When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. On one level, I think I have lost “you” only to discover that “I” have gone missing as well. At another level, perhaps what I have lost “in” you, that for which I have no ready vocabulary, is a relationality that is composed neither exclusively of myself nor you, but is to be conceived as the tie by which those terms are differentiated and related.” (2004:22)

(24)

24 This statement shows that when a subject (“I”) deals with loss, it mourns not particularly or

only over the absence of another subject (“you”); it rather mourns over the fact that it has exactly lost the relation that existed between the two. Loss implicates the loss of the tie of the embodied subject, referring back to the first loss that the subject experiences during its birth when the umbilical cord with the mother is cut. Loss forces the subject into a “crisis mode” (Berlant: 2011, 93), which supports the critical spatial condition in which a transformation of the body can take place. The transformation will follow once the subject realizes its own loss. As I will argue in the next section, this acceptance appears through Oskar’s invention of the

flipbook.

Flip it and reverse it: transformation in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close begins with an internal monologue of Oskar. This monologue consists of several questions that already reveal his creative, imaginative and inventive nature: "I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad's voice, so I could fall asleep [...]” (1). Oskar’s desire to invent in order to bring back his father, puts forward his incapability to accept his father’s loss and thus the loss of his own tie. The appearance of the key with the name “Black” on it that Oskar finds in the vase of his father’s closet, becomes the main motive to invent a new plan. Oskar decides to go on a journey and find out who this mister or misses Black is, convinced that the key that belongs to this person will bring him back to his father. During his journey Oskar collects several objects such as photographs, newspapers, articles, maps and drawings, that are all collected in his book “Stuff That Happens To Me”. This scrapbook is largely reflected through the several images that are incorporated in the real novel of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. In this way, the disruptive narrative of the book creates the ability for the reader to have a closer look at- and better insight of Oskar’s inventions.

Strikingly, the scrapbook is situated in the space between Oskar’s bed and the wall. It embodies an empty space that reflects the absence of Oskar's father. The scrapbook here serves

(25)

25 as a temporal replacement of the father’s absence. Oskar needs the book in order to deal with his

trauma. The space that the scrapbook fills up is exactly the place where Oskar’s trauma is able to act out. Ultimately, when Oskar lies awake in bed, he once more grabs his scrapbook and flips through it. This is when he discovers the picture of the falling man, the man of which he is imagining that it perhaps could be his dad:

“I grabbed the flashlight from my backpack and aimed it at the book. I saw maps and drawings, pictures from magazines and newspapers and the Internet, pictures I’d taken with Grandpa’s camera. The whole world was in there. Finally, I found pictures of the falling body.

Was it Dad? Maybe.

Whoever it was, it was somebody. I ripped the pages out of the book.

I reversed the order, so the last one was first, and the first was last. When I flipped through them, it looked like the man was floating up in the sky.” (325)

Oskar’s flipbook is incorporated in the novel itself, that interestingly makes the reader able to physically experience Oskar’s actions. It literally affects the reader for the reader physically has to flip the pages: it makes experience possible through its physical movement (it has to be touched, in order to work). As the flip book is able to flip forward and backward like the tossing of a ball, it exemplifies the workings of a game that emphasizes one crucial element: potential. This is what makes the flipbook so powerful and such an important element of the novel, for it opens up different workings, meanings and effects.

The flipbook requires the space in which the event can finally reside, providing Oskar’s traumatic event to ultimately expose. Hence, the reversal of the falling man is crucial: it is able to turn back time and therefore return the traumatic experience towards Oskar’s body. This is the moment where Oskar’s acceptance of loss of the tie with his father is revealed, this is the moment of Oskar’s transformation. Interestingly, the incorporation of the flipbook is able to create a moment of catharsis that affects the reader as well. Therefore, the flipbook in Extremely

(26)

26 Loud & Incredibly Close becomes the embodiment of transformation on three different levels.

First, it represents transformation in itself for the man in the picture represents a

transformative body that can either fly or fall. Second, it represents the transformation of Oskar, who is, through his own invention of the flipbook, able to accept his father’s loss. And third, the flipbook is able to affect the reader and thus transform the senses of the reader itself once its flips the pages.

Oskar’s loss of his father reveals that the transformation of the embodied subject works only if it is capable to be affected. While a traumatic event seems to prohibit the body from this ability, Oskar’s transformation can take place through his “own” physical exposure. Because his journey through New York allows him to open up towards others whilst at the same time his action enables them to expose their traumatic stories to Oskar as well, it is clear that Oskar’s physical action or movement to become affected is never fully an ability of himself but rather required through his relation towards others. Thus, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close shows that transformation can only take place through relationality. Furthermore, the nostalgic reversal of Oskar’s flipbook does not unveil a way of out of trauma. This is I think, in line with many other trauma theorists, an impossible task. However, it does allow Oskar to deal with his trauma by accepting the loss of his father, which is similar to Adèle’s nostalgic moment in the sea that will be discussed in the third chapter. This moment of acceptance flags Oskar’s awareness or consciousness of his own change within his web of relations that ultimately pins down his own transformation. Thus, the nostalgic reversal of the flipbook provides a potential that triggers Oskar’s imagination, contributing towards his own transformation.

(27)

27

3. On Violence: Transforming the Wounded Body in Yorgos

Lanthimos’ Dogtooth

In Yorgos Lanthimos’ film Dogtooth (2009) a very terrifying and tyrannizing father tries to protect his three children from violence by excluding them from any form of contact with the outside world. These extreme measures affect the children in such a manner that it physically exposes them to become violent towards each other as well as towards themselves. Hence, the story exemplifies the failure that is inherent towards any type of exclusion for it always turns out to be, as Rosalyn Diprose states in her work “The Hand that Writes Community in Blood” (2003), "internally divisive and destructive" (39). A politics of exclusion affects:

[…]not just the bodies targeted but the bodies they are meant to protect; this is why […] we will turn on each other and justify our position through vilification and violence. A politics of exclusion presents a picture of community with which community cannot live. (47-48)

Nonetheless, the eldest daughter of the family is ultimately able to dispossess herself from the father's imposed physical confinement, a moment that strikingly illuminates the transformation of the embodied subject. However, this dispossession can only be realized by becoming violent towards her own body: the daughter's empowerment is required specifically through violence. While Dogtooth in this way shows that both power and violence are of benefit towards each other, the film furthermore raises questions upon Judith Butler’s idea to imagine a community without violence that she proposes in her work Precarious Life: the Powers of Mourning and Violence (2004):

But perhaps there is some other way to live such that one becomes neither affectively dead nor mimetically violent, a way out of the circle of violence altogether. This

possibility has to do with demanding a world in which bodily vulnerability is protected without therefore being eradicated and with insisting on the line that must be walked between the two. (42)

This very optimistic phrasing seems blind to the fact that “demanding” and “insisting” already suggest a form of power that can easily develop into a violent act, similar to the father’s

(28)

28 behavior in Dogtooth. If violence and power are not able to rule out one another, what happens

to power when people want to protect themselves from violence? One cannot demand nor insist, it seems. Furthermore, this phrasing point towards a specific form of action that is hard to think of outside of power. Namely, the act of protection. While Yorgos Lanthimos projects protection as yet another form of violence, the film also puts forward the lack of one specific form of protection that Butler specifically emphasizes: the protection needed by vulnerable bodies. And it is exactly this vulnerability from which the children in Dogtooth are not protected. As the film shows, vulnerability entails on the one hand a very dangerous condition, while it is on the other hand perhaps also inevitable for the transformation of the embodied subject. In this chapter is questioned what violence as an traumatic and affective event can possibly reveal about the transformative "positionality" of the subject within relationality. Because the daughters

liberation from the family structure can only be realized by becoming physically violent towards herself, first both the effects of power and violence will be analyzed in order to gain insight into the transformative process of the eldest daughter, discussed in the second section.

Inside versus outside: violent bodies in Dogtooth

As I have stated in the first chapter, the body both consists of internal and external forces that as a becoming (Deleuze, 1987) cannot repudiate one or the other. Thus, it is clear that an abolition of one of the two will affect the body in whatever form. Interpreting the isolated house of the family as a specific form of body, the imposed ideals of the father to exclude his children from the external forces of the outside world obviously disturbs the inner workings of the house. This outside-inside distinction manifests itself as a form of border politics that seems to be completely in hands of the sovereign father. His ideology within the family is simple: as the outside world is dangerous, the isolated house including a large garden and swimming pool (the inside) is the only safe place where the children and mother are allowed to live. Therefore, the house is surrounded by large fences that serve as very explicit borders. While the mother tyrannizes the children, she is still subjugated to the father’s power:

(29)

29 she is his victim as well as his accomplice. Hence it is only the father, as the ultimate tyrant, that

is excluded from the inside confinement.

The father’s extreme fear of the outside world, forming the basis of his oppression, will eventually lead to its own downfall. Perhaps, this “collapse” is inherent towards the affectivity of fear. As Sarah Ahmed argues in her work “Affective Economies” (2004), fear:

[…]both envelops the bodies that feel it, as well as constructs those bodies as enveloped, as contained by it, as if it comes from outside and moves inward. In the encounter, fear does not bring the bodies together: it is not a shared feeling, but works to differentiate between […] bodies. (128)

The father’s fear to lose his children to the dangers of the outside world (to basically lose his own ties) is what makes his protection so extremely violent and pursues the opposite effect. Fear tries to prohibit the fluidity or the potential of change that each embodied subject inhabits. Although fear is the property of one subject such as it is property of father, it fails however to become property of the bodies of others. As Sarah Ahmed argues, fear ultimately leads to the differentiation of bodies: while it tries to protect the body from being affective, it is particularly through its inherent relationality that it will never be able to. Dogtooth clearly shows that fear is ambiguous. On the one hand, it leads towards its own failure, while it simultaneously can serve as someone else’s potential.

The father’s ideals are particularly challenged through the maturation of his children. Due to the father’s awareness of the sexual drives of his older children and possibly afraid of any form of incestuous behavior, he makes an exception to his own rules that forms the crucial turning point within the plot. He decides to invite his employee Christina towards the house who is asked to fulfill his son’s “sexual drives” (reflecting the father’s patriarchal regime). Strikingly, Christina works as the safeguard of the father’s company. She therefore can operate as the perfect “intruder” of the isolated house: her position as an employee validates her loyalty towards the father’s rules as she fulfills the submissive role he demands. She, similarly to the father, forms the exception to the rules. This is why she becomes the perfect character to question and challenge the father’s ideology. Also, the modification within the outside-inside

(30)

30 distinction that is needed through the children’s physical maturation, already refers towards the

potential of change that is required by the transformation of the eldest daughter.

Importantly, the film stresses a very physical performance in which the textual narrative is less exposed, yet again reflecting the father’s oppression. The body is represented as a

potentiality (Koutsourakis, 2012:102). The children’s access towards language is limited only to the words that are necessary for communication inside the house. When forbidden language is picked up by one of the children, the parents are constrained to learn these new words,

translating them with familiar meanings. The logic in this “word conversion” is that the outside is always related back towards the inside (Fisher, 2011:27). For instance, the “sea” is explained as “the wooden arm of a leather chair”, in order to protect the children from the dangers of the outside world, prohibiting them to break with the father’s ideology. Thus, while linguistic meaning and verbal expression are repressed, the children are only able to have access towards expression through their own bodies. In the second chapter I stated that trauma needs to act out through the body in order to be dealt with. Similarly, Dogtooth exemplifies that the traumatic impact of the father upon the children, shortly summarized as “physical confinement and psychological control” (Fisher, 2011:22), acts out through their bodies as well.

The physical acts as a form of expression and communication are largely manifested between the three children themselves, whom – equally subjugated by their father’s control- seem to operate together as an unified entity. Strikingly, they often practice several first aid exercises in which they are trained to help each other out. These physical encounters tend to illuminate sexual manifestations but are never confirmed due to their ignorance of the meaning of sex. While the brother is aware of the act of sex through the regular visits of Christina, he considers it rather as something formal. Also, although the two sisters are (not yet) exposed to sexual acts, we often catch them touching- and licking each other’s bodies. Rosalyn Diprose stated that it is “by touching the other that the body is a body and it is through this touch that community takes place” (2003:45). This also applies to the children in Dogtooth. Their physical encounters serve as a recognition of on the one hand of their own bodies, of their own

(31)

31 positionality, while on the other they serve as a recognition of mutual sympathy. Together, the

form a community of their own. These encounters also reflect the trap of innocence in which the three children are caught: through the restriction of language as well as any other form of representation, they are not capable to add meaning towards any form of physicality. Basically, this is due to the children’s lack of references. Instead of adding meaning towards their physical acts, they are only capable of producing meaning (expression) through their bodies.

As the children form an inclusion within the family structure that is based upon oppression and exclusion, they eventually turn in line with the aforementioned quote by Rosalyn Diprose – instead of their parents – against each other. This is required by crossing the physical borders of their own bodies, in which the eldest (already pointing towards her future transformation) takes the lead. For instance, when the brother plays with a toy plane that belongs to her, she attacks him with a kitchen knife and cuts his arm. Or, when the three of them swim in the pool, the eldest pretends she is a shark (a reference that she learned from the video Jaws that Christina accidently brought towards the house) and once again attacks her brother. The harassment by the eldest daughter is projected mainly upon the brother for he manages to perfectly accomplish the submissive role that is demanded by the father. Hence, her

dissatisfaction with the father’s regime is manifested through the attack of her “own kind”. The eldest turns violent towards her own brother because she tries to gain access to her own position. It is even questionable to what extent she is aware of the harm she causes with her actions, for, as the next section will show, her only reflection upon her miserable position is required through precisely violence. While the father initially wants to protect his children from violent external forces, he is not able to prevent nor protect them from one thing: their own bodily vulnerability. And as the father’s oppression forces the three children into an unified body, this body is thus not protected from the destruction that is acted out through the body of the eldest daughter. A body that can only liberate herself from the father’s shackles by

(32)

32 children’s internal emotional expressions, the violent acts of the daughter ultimately become

utterly meaningful.

The great escape: the transformation of the eldest daughter

In different scenes, we capture glimpses of the various attempts of the eldest daughter to position herself differently within the family. Particularly in the unified entity with her brother and sister. Perhaps the most striking scene of her craving for difference is during the dance performance with her brother and sister to celebrate their parents wedding day (see fig.3).

Figure 3 “The Wedding Performance”

While her brother repeatedly plays the same musical riff on his guitar, the two girls start dancing, or rather, moving their bodies in “unusual” manners. The brother and younger sister clearly do not use the physical performance as a form of expression, however, the eldest does. As she clearly leads the dance, the youngest asks after a few minutes if she can stop.

Nevertheless, the eldest continues and starts to express herself more and more outrageously, exposing her deep frustration with the imposed limitations of her father.

The variety of her physical expressions illuminate the similar creativity that is

(33)

33 way out of the family structure by exposing her own physical limitations: she stretches long and

deep, jumps up and down, shakes, twists and turns her body through the room to ultimately end up falling on the floor. At this point, her mother picks her up and states “enough”, upon which she sits down at the table again and starts eating pie by herself, rejecting the look of the other family members. This scene exemplifies that the growing tensions between the external (oppression of father) and internal forces (her own feelings) of her body no longer match up. The rise of her physical intensities scrutinize that she has an internal desire to get out and break free. She desperately seeks but most of all needs change that can only be managed through a specific physical transformation.

As I have stated in the prior section, the unified entity of the three children is interfered through the appearance of Christina. Although she manages to cope with the father’s rules and regulations, Christina’s submissive role suddenly changes once she is left alone with the eldest daughter. Disturbingly, Christina forces her to play a game that she calls “licking the keyboard”, a game that actually implies oral sex. Unaware of the sexual abusive power play, the eldest daughter gives in. But, similar to the games she is forced to play with her other siblings, the eldest is only interested when she can receive something in return. And while the physical encounters have become a common language for the children, Christina’s “gift” can definitely not be something physical. Instead, the eldest desires new objects, “dangerous” objects that belong to the outside world.

Again, the power dynamics are changed: Christina is forced to hand the eldest daughter her sparkling headband. When Christina wants to repeat the game of “licking the keyboard” without giving another gift in return, the eldest daughter refuses. Once again, she repeats her dominant role, that serves as a repetition of the father’s behavior. This interestingly already entails that exposed physical acts cannot become undone. Therefore, in a sense, an action tends to be “traumatic”9_{for it will always inhabits belated effects. As the eldest daughter threatens}

9_{See the second chapter for my definition of trauma. To say that an action can be interpreted as traumatic}

I am pointing only towards the repetitive nature of the action, as is exemplified in the dominant role of the oppressed eldest daughter.

(34)

34 Christina to tell her father about the licking game, Christina once more gives in. Suddenly finding herself in a dominant position, the eldest daughter demands the two videotapes that Christina along that consist of the two classical films Rocky (1976) and Jaws (1975).

Next to the fact that both films symbolize physical violence and threat, they furthermore hint towards the future liberalization of the eldest daughter. While Jaws exposes the ultimate outside threat that reflects the father’s fear of the dangerous outside world, the fights in Rocky encourage the physical (vulnerable) exposure of the eldest daughter. The impact of these physical fights are highlighted in the scene where she pretends to be Rocky. Suggesting that the fights would appeal to the eldest particularly for the physicality of it, her character play reveals the importance of her own imagination. This imagination links back to the nostalgic reversal of Oskar's flipbook within Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, requiring the perfect space in which the awareness of the subject's own positionality can be triggered. In other words: the videotapes are able to animate the daughter's imagination, which makes her able to reflect as well as reconsider her own position within her imposed web of relations.

As repeatedly stated, it is only by becoming violent towards her own body that her physical limitations can be liberalized. “Once your dogtooth falls out, you are able to move outside the house”, is what the father had promised his children. And thus the eldest daughter decides, inspired by Christina’s videotapes, to knock both her canines out with a dumbbell that is left behind in the bathroom (see fig.4). Her physical mutilation becomes the ultimate potential for her own transformation, which scrutinizes the force of empowerment that is embedded within violence.

(35)

35

Figure 4 “A Violent Transformation”

While Dogtooth scrutinizes the ultimate coherence of power and violence through the transformation of the eldest daughter, the film finishes with an open end. Here, two options are suggested: either the daughter’s violent liberalization serves indeed as the ultimate escape from the house upon which she thereafter is able to live a free life, or her empowerment

pessimistically leads towards her own death. This very ambiguous notion already challenges the film's suggested idea of the productivity (empowerment) of violence. The question remains what violence indeed can reveal about the transformation of the embodied subject. Because the film departs from specifically the act of protection instead of violence, the transformation of the eldest daughter proves that both elements are similarly in a very extreme way affective upon the body. Although the father tries to protect his children from any possible violence, he is not able to protect them from their own bodies: a condition where perhaps the ultimate “production of subjectivity” is rooted. The body of the daughter inhabits precisely her freedom, that makes it necessary in order to "lose" or break out of her ties, to partially destroy her own body. She literally cuts the ties from her body and therefore has to wound herself: the blood serves as a very literal manifestation of her own loss. The daughter’s “liberation” of her body proves first of all that the transformation can only take place through its relations with other bodies. Second, the videotapes require a perfect space for her imagination in which she is able to re-think her position within these relations. And third, the film shows that such a transformation can only be

(36)

36 required through a vulnerable position of the body that is, as Dogtooth shows, extremely

dangerous and possible fatal. While taking the risks and problematic characteristics of

vulnerability here into account (asking for more thorough research), the next chapter will give more insight into the question why vulnerability is of such importance for the transforming body.

(37)

37

4. On Love: Transforming the Affectionate Body in Abdellatif

Kechiche's Blue Is The Warmest Color

“I encounter millions of bodies in my life; of these millions, I may desire some hundreds; but of these hundreds, I love only one.” – Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments (1977) “I didn’t fall in love, I rose up in it.” – Toni Morrison, Jazz (1992)

Maybe one of the most concrete examples of a transformative embodied subject is when it is in love. As Heather Davis and Paige Sarlin note on the attempts of theorists Lauren Berlant and Michael Hardt to make love a proper political concept, love is “transformative, a site for a collective becoming-different, that can help to inform alternate social imaginaries.” (Davis & Sarlin, 2012:8). With love as a political concept, Michael Hardt and Lauren Berlant try to re-think the possibilities of a new form of community. As I explained in the second chapter, a similar attempt is achieved by Judith Butler in Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (2004) in which she takes loss to be the essential pre-condition for community. While Judith Butler states that loss “has made a tenuous “we” of us all” (Butler, 2004:20), I would like to introduce another proposal. Why not change “loss” into “love”? For has love not made a tenuous “we” of us all either? Of course, we can argue that love and loss go hand in hand, for those who have loved, learned to have lost as well. Strikingly, Michael Hardt explains: “We lose ourselves in love and open up the possibility of a new world, but at the same time love

constitutes powerful bonds that last.” (Hardt, 2011:676). This quote shows that the

transformative nature of love is able to touch upon the relationality that exists between the embodied subject and the collective. Love is able to change the subject by cutting loose prior relations in order to make this subject constitute new (possibly stronger) relationships. In this chapter, I ask: what can love say about the transformation of the subject? what can love add

(38)

38 towards our ideas of relationality? and, ultimately, how does love engage in the quest of

re-imagining community?

Without using the concept of love in a particularly political context, I do would like to build forth upon Berlant’s and Hardt’s ideas for they rather well explain the two-folded, transformative character of love. In love we lose, in love we gain: “[…] love must transform us, that is, it must designate a becoming such that in love, in our encounters with others we constantly become different. Love is thus always a risk in which we abandon some of our attachments to this world in the hope of creating another, better one.” (Hardt, 2011: 678). Hence, love can give us insight into the transformative process of the embodied subject to lose certain relations, that make it possible to create new ones whilst changing the position of the embodied subject. In this chapter, I want to underline that love is able to make the relationship between different socially embedded bodies more explicit. It is as if the love illuminates these invisible ties, for it shows the affection between different bodies in its most unfolded form. Love confirms the desire of the physical and emotional encounter between always very different bodies that are aching for sameness. Love exposes those bodies that desperately seek for unification. Love illuminates two singulars whom in their plural form desire to become a singularity once again.

An infinite tenderness: on love and the vulnerable body

While assuming that love is able to illuminate the workings of relationality, I consider love in this chapter mainly as an affective force, or rather, as an effect of affect instead of a form of power. Lauren Berlant states that love “is a mess-making force, as its aim is to dissolve toxic sureties. There are no sureties on the other side of surety.” (Berlant, 2011: 685). In other words, love is able to break with the well-established “sureties” in which the embodied subject is placed. Love as a force needs to be relational, it only exists through the encounter of different subjects. Interpreting Berlant’s “sureties” as the relations in which the embodied subject manifests itself, I would like to argue that Berlant’s usage of this word can imply two things: on

(39)

39 the one hand, it confirms the vulnerable position of the embodied subject while it also hints

towards the vulnerable feelings of the subject. This is why I argue that love is precisely an affective force. Love is able to change and thus affect the precarious body for it allows this body to feel sensations that create the ability to expose emotions.

Love and the feelings and emotions it provokes in the body have to be interpreted differently. To be more precise, emotions and feelings are particularly properties of a body. Love is not. A body never has love, but rather feels in love. Cultural theorist Eric Shouse makes a clear distinction between these three different elements by stating that feelings are personal,

emotions are social, and affects are pre-personal (Shouse, 2005). He further explains this by stating that feelings are a sensation of the subject that are related towards previous experiences and therefore labelled. Feelings thus consist of internal bodily forces. Emotions are rather a projection or display of these feelings. Hence, emotions are social constructions for they exist of external bodily expressions. Affect (as potential) requires the body (as an ability to be affected) to feel something internally that can be expressed externally through emotions. And in order to be able to expose these internal workings, one has to become vulnerable.

Judith Butler claims that vulnerability is a necessary condition for our bodies in order to open ourselves up (expose ourselves) towards others to be able to create any form of

attachment or relationship:

[…] each of us is constituted politically in part by virtue of the social vulnerabilities of our bodies – as a site of desire and physical vulnerability, as a site of a publicity at once assertive and exposed. Loss and vulnerability seem to follow from our being socially constituted bodies, attached to others, at risk of losing those attachments, exposed to others, at risk of violence by virtue of that exposure. (Butler, 2004:20)

While Judith Butler underlines the risk of this exposure, it is indeed a problematic argument to hold on to when reflecting on those individuals or communities that are situated in a critical (read: violent) context such as the family in Yorgos Lanthimos film Dogtooth shows. While I am aware of this possible critique, I do want to stress through the exposure of themselves that the “feeling” of relationality can be required. In becoming vulnerable, we can prove that we are indeed collectively sharing these ties. A sharing that is perhaps best understood through

Loss, Violence, Love: the Transformation of the Embodied Subject in Affective Relationality