Carol Owens – To Work Perchance to Love
 
THE LETTER 33 (Spring 2005) pages 72-90
 
To speak about love, Lacan says, is in itself an enjoyment, a jouissense. So we must be enjoying ourselves today! And it is indeed at the level of the enjoyment that I want to focus our attention here on coupled-subjects who – for all that we may accept are – unrelated sexually, nonetheless persist in the direction of an enjoyment which they posit as commensurate with the couple-relationship. What I want to examine in particular are the ways in which the narration of couple-relationships may be said to abduce certain discourses, and in turn, the ways in which subjects take up a position in a discourse in order to provide themselves with a formula by which the sexual relationship may be written, and love, spoken.
 
But, love is impossible says Lacan, and the sexual relationship drops into the abyss of nonsense.