Against Fusion Love and Recognition in Melanie Klein, Amy Allen and Kleist’s Penthesilea
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21716113 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Federica Gregoratto (0000-0003-3174-219X, University of Lucerne, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 192-207 |
| Publication date | 2025-04-03 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Critical Horizons (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1440-9917 • E-ISSN: 1568-5160 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14409917.2025.2552647 |
| OpenAlex | W7162434063 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 9 |
In this paper, I discuss Amy Allen’s contribution to a social philosophy or critical theory of love. On the wake of Allen’s interpretation of Melanie Klein’s psychoanalytical theory, I distinguish two faces of love, aggressive love and caring, or, in Kleinian terms, depressive love. I moreover elaborate the implications of these ideas of love for a (critical) theory of recognition, focussing on the state of fusion or symbiotic union between ego and other, which Axel Honneth has called, puzzlingly, the “zero-point” of recognition. The article proceeds in two steps. The first one reconstructs Allen’s concerns with Honneth’s recognition theory, with the idea of love encompassed by his theory, and with the image of fusion at play there (1). The second section attempts to read Heinrich von Kleist’s drama Penthesilea to further illustrate Allen’s and Klein’s insights. I argue that Kleist’s Penthesilea sketches a fruitful model to cast erotic relationships as relationships of recognition. Kleist’s figuration of recognition is ambiguous: it stages the dynamic of violent love, that collapses into an annihilating fusional state, but also the possibility of caring, “depressive” love, and of recognition of the other as a free subject (2)
Fusion · Metatheory · Diverse academic research themes · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre
| Highly cited | No |
|---|