“I Feel Love”: A Musical-Psychoanalytic Meditation

Abstract

This article approaches the themes of love and eroticism by combining philosophical, psychoanalytic, and musical sources. Beginning with Ficino’s statement that we all love badly and “continovamente”, we ask whether erotic experience is capable of generating truly new encounters. The repetition of the same failures, stumbles and disappointments seems to support the idea that love is inseparable from the death drive. Yet, the musical and visual material here analyzed suggests that, while some love encounters are driven by what Jacques Lacan called a “phallic jouissance” (saturated with identity and repetition), there are also experiences that embody what Lacan called the “Other jouissance” (opened to contingency and to formlessness). The songs and audiovisual material by Madonna, Beyoncé and Jay-Z here discussed suggest the former perspective, characterized by a fixity of identities, types and libidinal investment, while Donna Summer’s, Anthony and the Johnsons’, Shara Worden’s and Liniker’s performances embody the creative counterpart of death drives and the repetition compulsion, thus disclosing a different way to “feel love”.

Keywords:

• Death Drive Keyword: Death Drive
• Eroticism Keyword: Eroticism
• love Keyword: love
• Other jouissance Keyword: Other jouissance
• Phallic Jouissance Keyword: Phallic Jouissance

How to Cite:

Rights: In Copyright