Obsessive Love

[pit@uropax.contrib.de (Pit Schultz)]

Obsessive Love

An Introduction by Hakim Bey



"Rough Dialectics" allows us to indulge an impure taste for history
- a dredging operation - bricolage of "suppressed & realized"
bricabrac - foolish unsavory outdated pratises such as "obsessive
love". Romance is "Roman" only in a terminal sense, in
 that it was brought back to "Rum" (the Islamic name for Europe &
Byzantium) by Crusaders & troubadors. Crazed hopeless passion
(_'ishq_) appears first in texts from the Orient such as Ibn Hazm's
_Ring of the Dove_ (actually a slang term for the neck
 of a circumcized cock) & in the early _Layla & Majnun_ material
from Arabistan. The language of this literature was appropriated by
the sufis ('Attar, Ibn 'Arabi, Rumi, Hafez, etc.) thus further
::eroticizing an already eroticized culture and religion But if
desire pervades the structure & style of Islam, nevertheless it
remains a repressed desire. "He who loves but remains chaste & dies
of longing, achieves the status of a martyr in the Jihad", i.e.
paradise - or so claims a popular but perhaps s purious Tradition
of the Prophet himself. The crackling tension of this paradox
galvanized a new category of emotion into life: "romantic love"
based on unsatisfied desire, on "separation" rather than "union"
... that is, on _longing_. The Hellenistic period (as evoked for
instance by Cavafy) supplied the genres for this convention - the
"romance" itself as well as the idyll & the erotic lyric - but
Isalm set new fire to the old forms with its system of p assional
sublimation. The Greco-Islamic ferment adds a pederastic element to
the new style; moreover, the ideal woman of romance is neither wife
nor concubine but someone in the "forbidden" category, certainly
someone outside the category of mere rep duction. Romance appears
therefore as a kind of _gnosis_ in which spirit and flesh occupy
antithetical positions; also perhaps as a kind of advanced
libertinage in which strong emotion is seen as more satisfactory
than satisfaction itself. Viewed as "spiritual alchemy" the goal of
the project would appear to involve the inculcation of
_non-ordinary consciousness_. This development reached extreme but
still "lawful" degrees whith such sufis as Ahmad Ghazzali,
:Awhadoddi Kermani, and Adbol-Rahman J ami, who "witnessed" the
presence of the Divine Beloved in certain boys & yet remained
(reputedly) chaste. The Troubadors said the same of their
lady-lovers; Dante's _Vita Nuova_ represents the extreme example.
Christians and Moslems alike walked a v ery treacherous precipice
with this doctrine of sublime chastity, but the spiritual effects
could sometimes prove tremendous, as with  Fakhroddin 'Iraqi, or
indeed Rumi and Dante themselves. But wasn't it possible to view
the question of desire from a "tantrik" perspective, & admit that
"union" is also a form of supreme enlightenment? Such a position
was taken by Ibn Arabi, but he insisted on legal marriage or
concubinage. And since all homosexuality is forbidden in Islamic
Law, a boy loving suf i had no such "safe" category for sensual
realization. The jurist Ibn Taimiyya one demanded of such a dervish
whether he had done more than simply kiss his beloved. "And what if
I did?" replied the rogue. The answer would be "guilty of heresy!"
of co urse, not to mention even lower forms of crime. A similar
answer would be given to any Troubador with "tantrik" (alduterous)
tendencies. - and perhaps this answer drove some of them into the
organzed heresy of Catharism.
    Romantic love in the West received energies from neoplatonism,
just as in the Isalmic world; & romance provided an acceptable
(still orthodix) means of compromise between Christian morality &
:the rediscovered erotocosm of Antiquity. Even so the b ancing-act
was precarious: Pico della Mirandola & the pagan Botticelli ended
up in the arms of Savonarola. A secretive minority of Renaissance
nobles, churchman & artists opted out altogether in favor of a
clandestine paganism; the _Hypnerotomachia_ of Poliphilo, or the
Garden of Monsters at Bomarzo, bear witness to the existence of
this "tantrik" sect. But for most platonizers, the idea of a love
based on longing alone served othodox & allegorical ends, in which
the material beloved can only be a distant shadow of the Real
(as exemplified by such as St. Teresa & St. John of the Cross),
& can only be loved according to a "chivalrous", chaste & penetential
code. The whole point of Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_ is that Lancelot
fails to achieve t he chivalric ideal by loving Guenivere in the
flesh rather than only in the spirit.
   The emergence of capitalism exercises a strange effect on
romance. I can only express it with an absurd fantasy - it's as if
the Beloved becomes the perfect commodity, always desired, aloways
paid for, but never really enjoyed. The self-denial of Romance
hormonized neatly with the self-denial of Capitalism. Capital
demands scarcity, both of production & of erotic pleasure, rather
than limit its requirements simply to morality or chastity.
Religion forbids sexuality, thas investing denial with
 glamor; capital withdraws sexuality, infusing it with despair.
:"Romance" now leads to Wertherian suicide, Byron's disgust, the
chastity of the dandies. In this sense, romance will become the
perfect two-dimensional obsession of the popular song & the
 advertisement, serving as the "utopian trace" within the infinite
reproduction of the commodity.
   In response to this situation, modern times have offered two
judgements of romance, apparently opposed, which relate to our
present hermeneutic. One, Surrealist _amour fou_, clearly belongs
to the romantic tradition, but proposes a radical solutio n to the
paradox of desire by combining the idea of sublimation with the
tantrik perspective. In opposing the scarcity (or "emotional
plague" as Reich called it) of Capitalism, Surrealism proposed a
transgressive excess of the most obsessive desire & the most
sensual realisation. What the romance of Nezami or Malory
had seperated ("longing" and "union") the Surrealists proposed to
recombine. The effect was meant to be explosive, literally
revolutionary.
   The second point of view relevant here was also revolutionary,
but "classical" rather than "romantic". The anarchist-individualist
John Henry Mackay despaired of romantic love, which he could only
see as tainted with social forms of ownership & al nation. The
romantic lover longs to "possess" or to be possessed by the
beloved. If marriage is simply legal prostitution (the usual
:anarchist analysis), Mackay found that "love" itself had become a
commodity-form. Romantic love is a sickness of the ego & its
relation to "property"; in opposition Mackay proposed erotic
friendship, free of property relations, based on generosity rather
than longing and withdrawal (i.e. scarcity): - a love between equal
self-rulers.
   Although Mackay & the Surrealists seem opposed, there does exist
a point at which they meet: the sovereignty of love. Moreover, both
reject the platonic heritage of "hopeless longing", which is now
seen as merely self-destructive - perhaps a measure of the debt
owed by both the anarchists & the Surrealists to Nietzsche. Mackay
demands an Appolonian eros, the Surrealist of course opt for
Dionysus, obsessive, dangerous. But both are in revolt against
"romance".
   Nowadays both solutions to the problem seem still "open", still
"possible". The atmosphere may feel yet more polluted with degraded
images of desire than in the days of Mackay and Breton, but there
appear to have been no _qualitative_ changes in t he relations
between love & TooLate Capitalism since then. I admit to a
philosphical preference for Mackay's position because I have been
unable to sublimate desire in a context of "hopeless obsession"
without falling into misery; whereas Happiness ( Mackay's goal)
seems to arise from a "giving-up" of all false chivalry &
:self-denying dandyism in favor of more "pagan" & convivial modes of
love. Still, it must be admitted that both "separation" and "union"
are _non-ordinary states of consciousness _ Intense obsessive
longing constitutes a distinct "mystical state", which only needs a
trace of religion to crystalize as full-blown neo-platonic ecstasy.
But we romantics should recall that happiness also possesses an
element completely unrelated t o any tepid bourgeois coziness or
vapid cowardize. Happiness expresses a gestalt & even an
insurrectionary aspect which gives it - paradoxically - its own
romantic aura. Perhaps we can imagine a synthesis of Mackay &
Breton - surely an "umbrella & a s ewing machine on an operating
table!" - & construct a utopia based on generosity as well as
obsession. (One again the temptation arises to attempt a conflation
of Nietzsche with Charles Fourier & his "passional attraction").
But in fact I _have_ drea med this (I remember it suddenly, as if
it were literally a dream) - & it has taken on a tantalizing
reality, & filtered into my life - in certain Temporary Autonomous
Zones - an "impossible" time & space ... and on this brief hint,
all my theory is based.


[taken from The Moorish Science Monitor, Vol. 7 # 4 summer 95]