[spectre] love on -empyre-

[Nicholas Ruiz III]

October 2008, 'love' on -empyre-


'love'


"Oh my friends, there is no friend..." 

Jacques Derrida, quoting Montaigne, quoting
Aristotle...in his treatise on friendship.

"There are no equals, only rivals..." 

Constantine in the BBC docudrama, 'Ancient Rome: The
Rise and Fall of an Empire'...as he cultivated an
empire of Christian love.

"For nails would not have held God-and-Man fast to the
Cross, had love not held Him there..."

Saint Catherine of Siena
 

One supposes in life that some things are possible.
Love is one of these things, no? We presume such a
thing is possible? But what if love were impossible?

Our relationship with love, god (and the infinity of
price and spectacle), is recently articulated in
Damien Hirst’s 'For the Love of God' (2007), Platinum
skull, 8,601 diamonds and human teeth,(17.1 x 12.7 x
19.1 cm).

$100 million. A record: the highest price ever paid
for the work of a living artist. One marvels that we
can any longer, truly render Aquinas’ corporeal
metaphors for spiritual things. As for love: some
euphoria of the genetic Code and capitalizations as
currencies of that Code? A molecular symphony of
melancholy and bliss? As for God: Neurotransmissions?
A battery of concepts, like 8,601 diamonds in the
rough? All of which pale in comparison, perhaps, to
what is wished for in the impossibility of love as the
gift of some Other?

So two things: god and love. Every major religion of
the world syncopates these two concepts,
paradoxically, via the utilization of conceptual
infinity, and one concept’s weakness becomes the other
concept’s strength: the horizon of god’s love is
endless, and the horizon of one’s love for god, should
be too.

Yes, that is it: love is the purview of sacrifice. We
must bleed for love. This is the claim of the
disciple; the saint, and poet. But there are no saints
any longer, and poetry is endangered, if not extinct.
And the sacred, by definition, is always exterminated
as a functional violence of the holy service. 

Is there no love, and instead, only relations of
sacrifice?

Join us in this thematic discussion and we shall
see...

http://www.subtle.net/empyre/ 



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Co-moderated by Nicholas Ruiz III (US)...Daytona State
College...America in Absentia (Intertheory,
2008)...Editor, Kritikos.

with special guests

Owen Ware (CA)...University of Toronto..."Love Speech"
Critical Inquiry, v.34, no.3, (Spring 2008).

Edgar Landgraf (US)...Bowling Green State
University...Improvisation, Art and the Art of Living
(forthcoming), "Romantic Love and the Enlightenment"
German Quarterly, 77/1 (Winter 2004).


Dr. Nicholas Ruiz III
Associate Professor of Humanities
School of Humanities and Communication
Daytona State College
Building 230, Room 101A
Daytona Beach, FL 32120-2811
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Editor, Kritikos
http://intertheory.org
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Center for Interdisciplinary Writing and Research
http://daytonastate.edu/ciwr
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