Devetna Love Judith Butler Doubting Love ‘ey and Linda iplocked from thet ean aford Tey Richardson” series by James Harmon, Photo Glee Harmon On occasion when I am getting to know someone—nhen semeone sees to know me or indeed, find in me the oceasion ‘or love am asked what my idea of love is, and 1 abvays ‘under. There are clearly hase wha have their ideas of love, vvho enter inte thei conversations, their letters, their intial encounters with an idea of Tove in mind, This s adele fa 8 ‘way. And Lam somevshat embarrassed by the fect that I have to snawer, and that I easnot, in the moment of potential seduction, offer an entrancing view of love to offer the one with whom I speak, There are those~and 1 imagixe Jean-Luc Naney, the French philosopher who authored an essay called ‘Shattered Love," to be among theim—vho might argue that the idea of love isan assault agsinst ideation ite. One knows Jove somehow only when all one's ideas are destroyed, and this ‘decoming unbinged from what one knows is the paradigmatic sign of Iove, Again, in the face of such views, T am ful of ‘admiration and I think that the people who believe that love shatters the dea of love are the ones who truly know what ove js who have love, who hare done it, undergone it, had it done.Devetna Love ‘naan; they are sure oflove, They have their certainty. Tam known to be a skepti 1 am knotsn at al, and so i's ith some trepidation that I rte here about my own doubt 1 4am, if anything, a secular Kierkegaardian when it comes to love. But Freud is also my guide. He is the one who wites, “A sap who doubts his own love may, or rather, must doubt every lesser thing” (SE, X, 241). And this the ine T return to ‘nmi fe «ne that cannot be read once, at least not by me. Freud is making a statement, but hes, implicitly, delivering as ‘wella warning and an admonition, The one wh doubts his ow Jove wil find himself doubting every lesser thing, but Is every lesser thing the same as every other thing? Is there something ‘hat one cannot daube sone has doubted one's on love? Or f fone has doubted one’s ovn love, then i that the same as oubting oneself, the sense of self that we derive from its cecsentaldspossession in lve? If one is doubting every lesser thing because one has doubted one's love, then that means one dhs lost an anchor of certinty, a frm episternlagisal ground. “The sentence contains a certain hesitation that calls to be read: ‘that man "may, or rather, must doubt ever lesser thing.” $0 it seems at fist to Freud that doubting one's own love, but then be stops, corrects himself, and leaves his sel correction there on the page for us to read, aif reading th side fom “may” to “must” compounds its effet, dramatizes the forecosure of possibilty that follows from such @ procedure, Freud's is an ‘understated correction, but it nevertheless entries a tone of severity. There is no way around it: 1f you doubt your own Jove, you wil be compelled to doubt every lesser thing, and if there is po greater thing than Tove, you willbe compelled to doubt every other thing, which means that nothing, relly nothing, il be undoubted by you Bu there is stil so much to understand, and T am slow here, and 1 ask too many questions, too many for my own good, surely too many forthe good of ove, Freud tells us that itis & ‘man" who find himself in this predicament, doubting ove doubting lesser things 1s this a problem of manhood? Ist men ‘who doubt when certainty is at hand? Is it part of manhoodDevetna Love self to cal into question the affective bass of one's very self ‘what one fel, what one knows on the bass of whst one feels? 1s this business of doubting love one that men engage in, and do women wh doubt become “men” of a certain kind? Are we suddenly clovated to Cartesian status, those who find that feeling n genera induces a radeal uncertainty about what we do and can do and know? And novr watch as I ease it only to ‘move on to another question, ane that pertsins to something pethaps more fundamental But perhaps the most important question I ask of this prodigious sentence from Freud has to do with what fe might mean, after all, to doubt one's own love, If one doubts one's wm love, then does that mean that one des not imow 29 ‘whom it belongs, orto whom it ought to belong? Does it mean that one dees aot know whether one loves when one thinks that one does or says that one does? Or does it mean that one oes not know whether ope is ise in the moment of love, whether love is something that might be relied upon to shaw cone the way. If we came away from Freud's claim with the conclusion that one should never doubt one’s own love, that ‘matters wil become perilous if one does, then T think we are raking a mistake, For surely the founder of psychoanalysis cannot be telling us that our love is ahvays we, that i aways furnishes the grounds by which we might have cortain ‘knowledge of our worl, We are usually fooled by Tove, find ourselves tepecting older scenes in what appears as novel and ‘unprecedented, find ourselves retumed to older patterne of self afte ecstatic outbursts af lave or one comes to thine about one’s ecstasy in new ways, wondering whether this is ecstasy, whether tis is love, doubtieg, doubting ‘And though it seems clear that one who enters analysis also enters into a scene of love, that love, that transference, is but the schema of one's lve reflected back in ways ope wished one never sa. For this understanding to occur, one immobilizes the body in order to speak, and one never exchanges a touch vith the one before whom one speaks, before wham one ‘performs one's silence. So it sa kind of love, but it sone that restraine itself radially, and which bospeaks that restraint,