The Scene of Love

Psychoanalytically speaking, it is possible to claim that one is always within a scene of love. This means that the way we make sense of the world and the way we relate to it, that is, our libidinal disposition, what we desire, and we could even say “how we desire,” cannot be thought of as pertaining to different and independent registers. On the contrary, meaning and desire always inform each other. By offering a close reading of Freud and Lacan’s conceptualization of transference and by focusing on the affective force of the “scene,” in this essay, I argue that the kernel of psychoanalysis – the scene of love – involves an aesthetic experience insofar it destabilizes the temporal and spatial/topographical dimensions and registers of meaning and desire (or nodal points and libidinal landscapes) and the way they inform the way we love. Furthermore, I ponder whether such an aesthetic conceptualization of transference allows us to rethink the psychoanalytic “act” in ways in which it moves away from the singularity of the event toward the multiplicity and heterogeneity of always converting bodies.