'O, be some other name' - the impossible name of love
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Keywords: Love, deconstruction, Romeo and Juliet,
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract
Authors:
Paul Harrison, Durham University
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Abstract
What do we love when love? This is the question posed by Juliet. Romeo and Juliet, scene 2 Act 2, the balcony scene; Juliet conducts an analysis of love, of what love loves, and what love demands. Neither Romeo nor Juliet can escape their fate. It is written in the stars. Inexorably, the play unfolds its cruelty towards Friday morn, when civil peace will be restored via the sublimation of their death and the elevation of their names. How does, if it does, love resist? This paper will attempt to follow Juliet in her analysis. To follow her into the night of love. To follow her, as far as I can, across the intersection of the trauma of love and the trauma of ancient violence, as each engenders the other. Such that their, and perhaps our, only chance, if it is one, is separation, delay, deferment, of avoiding a rendezvous with their names (see Derrida 2008 p.141). Juliet knows this, she understands the law of disidentification, the resistances of love, and that the name of the loved will never arrive on time or at the right destination.
'O, be some other name' - the impossible name of love
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Paper Abstract
