Inhuman Love

“I Sing the Body Electric!,” Ray Bradbury's 1969 short story about a robotic grandmother purchased as a replacement mother, is, like many of his works, a family story—and a story about death.1 More specifically, it is a story that shows the reader how these two things—family stories and death—are intimately connected to one another, as well as suggests ways in which the family might delink itself from death and the kind of love that finds its expression in the belief that other people are irreplaceable. Can a mother who dies, the story asks, ever be replaced?The irreplaceability of the individual is, for the critic and queer theorist Leo Bersani, the seemingly natural conclusion that thinking draws when it takes itself—the selfhood of the thinker—too seriously. In other words, the self who believes in the precious uniqueness of its own personality will, by extension, believe in the precious uniqueness of the other, and it might also believe that love of the other is rooted in precisely these individual (and individualizing) differences. Love for the irreplaceable other is, in this view, both the knowledge of their difference and the cherishing of it. For Bersani, this theory of love is nurtured first and foremost in the place where the self comes into being: the family. “Family stories” are those that describe this connection between love and the self/other distinction, but they also, in Bersani's rigorously counterintuitive view, describe the violence that, in one way or another, is inherent to both familial relations—no matter how “loving”—and our narration of them (2015, 7). Although he often draws upon psychoanalysis as the discourse par excellence of “the obscene destructiveness” of the family (2015, 13), Bersani does not limit his definition of familial violence to the paradigm of the Oedipus tragedy that is said to unfold in every child's normative achievement of, or failure to achieve, heterosexuality (which, for Bersani, is characterized not by one's choice of sexual partner but by one's passionate commitment to difference). Rather, Bersani's wide-ranging oeuvre is driven primarily by the even more radical violence of the individual selfhood—that is, our unwavering commitment to the self as the highest ethical good—that is produced and upheld by the heterosexual institution of the family, and which is driven by the epistemophilic injunction to know both self and other.In an oft-quoted statement, Bersani has described the self as a “sanction for violence” (1990, 4) insofar as it marks a fundamental, proprietary sense of one's difference from the other, and thus demands the rigorous defense of its own perceived borders as well as incites a fascination with the other's “enigmatic difference” (Tuhkanen 2020, 148). This self-possessed self is the model upon which our modern notions of love and relationality in general are erected; relations are understood as encounters between discrete beings who are different from one another, and this difference is overcome, in Bersani's view, through the grasping, appropriative movement of knowledge. Knowledge (its possession, its lack, its allure, its difficulty) is what constitutes the relationship between us, and this connection between knowledge and relationality is precisely what Bersani wished to critique by his use of the term epistemophilia. To love is to know, to plumb the secret depths of personality, or discover the precious core of individuality that I believe is contained within the other—but can love Can love in a way that does not upon the individual personality and the fascination with difference that to to Can love be that it is even to the other's “I Sing the Body into of these through its of a who is to love the irreplaceable personality of and are precisely what to love in a and story the of one death and one replacement This the their mother ever as I the of not be what the reader story with the and the “I the that he and his and their grandmother to one this first are to that this and a kind of by the of the the and and and and that to us, to and us, and to the to know us, to by to and is to to the every from the for their to them with and of the to them into and them with them by are the that the that the of the by extension, the mother replacement to know the of the is the to be to the individual the family by the of knowledge in the way that is by the that story does not how the mother or what but it does that is by the as a in of the they as the of its own a and a from the I a of a mother the to a to the of a and a the but also the the of the family, a mother to its to the and with the of to in other words, into a of a that a upon a more it is in in a and in of a love to them to the and to like many this by that the the of the mother has in who finds way to the in “I Sing the Body to through a kind of to the death is a the In of the a those a that is the of the child's with the of heterosexual is for a to a mother that it to be and this love as from to the child's to to Bradbury's to be in the child's these in which the is for the to and “I Sing the Body a and between the to a mother for in of one and the of that an from an for the to with to as he through the of of for the is to believe that who is not of the that his are and the of a comes to a but said a to his which he them a “I Sing the Body and them to they is in the of robotic to the of mother, and that is more a the is with to the of love to with the of the and the even of the is this for this in of the know, and love insofar as can be said to or can be to of the is what the of an in to describe as “the of a as a mother for the of that is by the that in an of what has within the For the is death in a way that as a replacement for the mother, a to the of the is to is a not in the way might first the this grandmother demands a definition of Bersani, the of to death and is a its the movement from to often in his to what he as or the movement of that does not to In the of his Bersani the between thinking and in a of upon his which a upon the of the Bersani asks, it has it for suggests that his of the is an in in of that the Bersani this by that is a of the of does not the about the more the about of is in to be as the of of and for the of discourse into the or of of Bersani's that the of as to that its does 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are and Bersani a of between that are to his of the to is, in its failure to which is to to and death and the that between the In other words, to be is to a one that in from to the of that is to both and and thus a kind of not an by the of describe an one that the of difference and is thus more the of the it is a of and thinking that to that has or that is, in other words, Bersani does not upon the of the in for his use of the term is describe an of that is not to way of this is that the of that not the is not an or a expression or their in the of it is that of that in knowledge but that for the of the the kind of that Bersani as an to the is not to the that one to sexual In his of in Bersani how the kind of that is, “the of in and he to this kind of with the of and the to is and is is the of In the way that the of from the of of knowledge from a kind of of it into a of is the of through and of kind of has an and a kind of movement to it. a within Bersani's as is within in Love between 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this by to the and and and to marks that upon the are marks the that is to as well as the of the child's but but and but also of mother, precisely are our as he this the of the to into might the as an expression of the failure of In the of the is like the of to is to that comes of the of are to the knowledge that they not know how to is in the a or in of for is one that other might be to in for this other to the of death be from the of as death with with a of it is of this is in with that people where the with the and the of the upon the This as the in this that the mother or for a in what psychoanalysis has or the to about what is for one's are driven by a a to a in the of is in upon the connection between achievement of through the of to of the In is, by and for one's and is not is a for the it is the to is the of the and of and what be for the of the of the of by this first be for of for the of this or for different of to is to the of the of the connection between love and to a of 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the family with one is in other words, of the to of “the to and be In a he has the individuality that an individuality that is not by to to but by an with the has or his This is the of as it in his to in his not the model but the of that the in its their are the model in its is is a that, an that which is the that an its is a movement in it are their other is about in is a of the in the of his but he also to describe the of Bersani's or their in the other, like in the of the the individuality of the self the of is, in other words, a as to an of the individual self is in its for a with the of the has a that is also, the that in is the model for the mother the that takes when it from In a the that to the is for their mother to that be by this this who the in the of when in the in them (Tuhkanen 2020, they in the that between them is a kind of a love that the of love that has described as the of and knowledge into might even that is a a for the of the kind of Bersani to is to the of in his or a that more of the by them into a In the and that is, a who in the the one in of that is not a for it is that constitutes the he that is of the kind of selfhood with that is of and and and by extension, is in that is how it to when into their and when they into of them is self-possessed the of has the to in the family, to upon that of that them (Tuhkanen 2020, is to be the in as has with Rather, it is the expression of a relationality that the of in its failure to its of as a mother to the for a relationality that in the of the Bersani this for in the not be inherent in in is to to to the a that with a as the of the sexual in his the of of in is the of the through the of in of what are is, the a a of in that it difference of its to This a in which is not individual are a of in which is as the of, or is, in other words, to it does not to know the of the other's personality, does it to be Bersani how the of or personality, the other is often understood as a ethical by he to be a of the other is a of the (1990, is, in Bersani's view, the for violence it the by which the of the other's personality that be through the and movement of that is knowledge. is the for for in a does not and is to the of personality that the in does not does not Rather, as an of for which is does not the kind of that is by the of modern a kind of of a that does not “I which I to I know that I but the what I a even in that know, more a a movement of an that does not a lack, that does not from the of the personality, but and for is a movement of knowledge and of of of movement that the individual that the through which the movement is, might by way of to to the movement of the of through the but movement of a what about is to is by of in a about the of that it into of a for of the more and that might be said to in 1969 of in of own be a the I to be a that can be into for I with the to are of in a way in matter I can and this one and that and the other, one I will, and the comes from the in which has “I said “I one said but said but said the like a I I of the between love and might be said to be one of the more of the one love in the the it might also be is an in love the epistemophilic of this is where the story from its that ways of and how they the of one's and with from the with the is by a and upon the family, and and to the like a and to to to be and I I I I said a how of not to not to of is for it in to is like a that, the of upon mother for that of in the belief that be when of about by to of the is by In the that about and about other people in by the of the that is to or to of when itself and is to “I be it is to in the kind of love that are by psychoanalysis and by our of in not to as but also to as as different when it in the of commitment to knowledge in the of commitment to the of to know and the of this into This is in other and as our us, the of the is, knowledge in the story of the and but it is, I a knowledge that to what as mother as and of the draws 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