NEMOGUĆA BLISKOST
IMPOSSIBLE INTIMACY

Summary/Abstract: This article focuses on the ways in which concepts of sexuality, love, and friendship are treated in poststructuralist theory. Love and friendship are emotional states which stand against authority, order and social norms. They form a “problematic” alliance which undermines the existing order and disrupts sovereignty. Intimacy connects people into an affective community, which is not easily controlled. Poststructuralist theorists understand the concepts of love and friendship as states of danger, because they create a unity that provokes hatred of other, unloved, unities. Because of that, love and friendship are dangerous, subversive, and problematic, and authority strives to survey them. Love and friendship do not represent only a threat to authority and control – they also have a tendency towards assimilation, because they strive to negate individuality and create unity. At the same time, they are economical, since they are manifested through the desire to possess someone, as well as through the demand for reciprocity and returning. Because of that, poststructuralists raise the question of whether love and friendship can exist beyond feelings, intimacy, and assimilation, and whether they can exist in a way that singularity and otherness of the other are respected.

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