All this is to say that I wonder whether it would be productive to read Floris and Blauncheflour's perfect, mutual, and fulfilling desire as an example of what Zizek called the "gentrified neighbor." Here is intimacy and me-in-you, you-in-me that is in no way traumatic or "Real" in psychoanalytic terms, in no way frightening or disrupting of fantasy, but rather fantasy's fullest expression? This reading would dovetail with Patty's reading that this romance presents a fantasy of mutual affection's power "to overcome the limitations that parental law, region, creed, or custom place upon us," thus encoding "Europe's fantasy that its love of the Arabic world is returned in complimentary degrees, as satisfyingly mutual" (24, 25). It is, in other words, the fantasy that when we confront the other, we are not frightened by what we see there, either in them or in ourselves. Zizek and Reinhard would say that such encounters, and our longing for them, miss neighbor-love, in fact, miss the neighbor by focusing on its gentrification into something that we can "safely" approach--that is, without really confronting the disturbing realities about our unknowable selves.
So to my final (troubling) question: Would this neighbor-love-inspired reading of Floris and Blauncheflour's passion challenge or complicate, in part at least, Patty's final claim that such fantasies have "progressive" or "ethical" aims? I am inclined to think so, although I found Patty's article very compelling, and her final point here is on a slightly different tack.
(Patty, please feel free to publicly correct me if I am misreading you!)
I like the term "gentrification"! Can we push a little bit more on the word "passion"?
ReplyDeleteI've been watching the words used to describe romantic/sexual love in our last few imaginative readings, thinking about how the romantic lover maps out onto this whole concept of the neighbor we've been batting around. And - the sultan in the Man of Lawe's Tale "loves" Constance before ever seeing her. So, more surprisingly, does the Northumbrian knight who lusts after her, and attempts to harm her.
Passion is suffering; we've been pointing out that suffering is necessary to compassion, and the language leads me to say that suffering is somehow even more fundamental to romantic love. Romantic/sexual love can be mutual, or can be threateningly lustful, but either way, can we say that it's pleasant, or safe?
In her article, Patty remarks on the curious way that the religious difference between Floris and Blancheflour doesn't demand a conversion to take place; the two are different, and the text is surprisingly okay with that. I agree completely that this is a gentrifying move - I just don't think it's the only one. The romance of Floris and Blancheflour also sidesteps the tensions of women's construction as fundamentally other by allowing them a perfect union untroubled by sexual dimorphism.
Insofar as Floris is the gentrified neighbor, I want to say that he's also the gentrified lover - perfect and safe in a way that avoids/elides the possibilities for pain, violence, and oppression present in sexual passion.
This is a great discussion--and really fun for me to see this little reading of mine both in action and acted-upon.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, Emily: I think you're exactly right that Zizek and Reinhard would disagree with my use of "ethical" at the end of my essay. You've articulated the issue elegantly, and I think that Zizek's notion of the "gentrified" neighbor is a very useful way to think about "Floris and Blauncheflour." One might just say, perhaps, that the "gentrification of the neighbor here is compensatory: that is, a romance like "Floris and Blauncheflour" works to "gentrify" the Islamic neighbor by way of the fantasy of mutual love in these two children. So that "mutual" pleasures of Floris & Blauncheflour for each other (and, if we make the allegorical extension--Islamic Europe and Christian Europe) puts the drama, tension, potential disruption, even violence of such engagement off the table. This is quite literally a school-boy/ school-girl crush, one that serves to discipline (and constrain) any threatening "jouissance" in the encounter that might beckon, fascinate, or motivate in less, heh heh, "controlled" ways.
So, too, Carina's point that the romance "sidesteps the tensions of women's" position as "other" by way of the mirroring fantasy of "sexual dimorphism." In some ways my article engages a particular moment in feminist criticism--trying--perhaps not entirely successfully--to open up a reconsideration of charming pleasure in the wake of the critique that feminist analysis operates by way of a kind of "kill-joy" politics--disciplining our pleasures in various texts by calling them out as "sexist," or "racist."
But I think you're both right that Zizek and Reinhard would want to preserve the "ethical" space of neighbor-love for the radical disruption/agon of the neighbor's jouissance. I'm coming around to thinking that my own view is that it might be worth preserving the ethical potential of both 'plaisir' and 'jouissance,' (not that I yet know precisely what I mean by that!) But it seems crucial to remember that 'plaisir' tracks pleasures of a certain homeostasis--a certain easy, untroubled, unthreatening kind; jouissance, in contrast, explodes homeostasis--this sits well with the insightful point Carina makes at the end of her post: if Floris were a Blauncheflour's (non-gentrified) neighbor/lover, there'd be a lot more dramatic passion--but also maybe more pain, violence, and oppression.
I'm was struck reading this time, by the fact that F & B are called "children" up to the bitter end. I was also struck by how comic the final scenes in the seralgio were. . . more to say on that score I'm sure. (My new favorite quote? "nebbe to nebbe and mouth to mouth." What a great line!)
Thanks to both E & C for such evocative posts!