Origins Of Love Research Articles

Surrogacy and dystopian positionality: narrative reproduction between speculative fiction and chick lit

Abstract When it comes to Anglophone surrogate fictions, it seems that one reader’s dystopia is another writer’s chick lit: whereas widely received fictional narratives about surrogacy which are set in a future North America, such as The Handmaid’s Tale and The Farm, are mostly read as dystopian or speculative fiction, the small corpus of novels which negotiate commercial surrogacy in India (Origins of Love, The House of Hidden Mothers and A House for Happy Mothers) all contain chick-lit elements. As this constellation of genres might create the impression that exploitative forms of surrogacy do not exist yet, this article brings together postcolonial and ethnographic scholarship on surrogacy with research from gender and queer studies in order to explore the wider socio-political implications of these generic complexities. Arguing that more work is needed to conceptualise dystopian positionality, the article first shows that speculative and dystopian texts about surrogacy often invite Western-centric interpretations in which the dystopian element is mostly configured in temporal terms while aspects of space and positionality tend to be neglected or universalised. Further unfolding the generic complexities of surrogate fictions, the article then explores the extent to which the chick-lit mode in the texts on Indian surrogacy consolidates biocapitalist consumer market ideologies. In a last step, the article discusses the interconnections between generic conventions and hetero- and bionormative teleologies, and it reflects on the problems which might arise when attempts to deconstruct heteronormative assumptions about reproduction do not simultaneously also question the – often stratifying – implications of bionormativity.

The Womb of a Lesser Woman: Indian Anglophone Fiction and the Politics of Biotechnological Othering

Our paper investigates the fictional representations of ‘biotechnological othering’ and biological precarity as experienced by underprivileged Indian women with particular emphasis on the commodification of their wombs. Foregrounding the exploitation of their reproductive rights via surrogacy at the hands of the glocal capitalist elite, we rout our argument through the representational practices of The House of Hidden Mothers by Meera Syal and Origins of Love by Kishwar Desai to explore the disavowal of the reproductive rights of socio-economically vulnerable Indian women and the re-perpetuation of capitalist modes of inferiorization that target them. Contesting the egalitarian tilt of posthuman discourses, our main contention is that the biotechnological commodification of the wombs of indigent women does not merely confine them within structural inequalities, it also ensures that they remain confined within a biological precarity. Taking theoretical support from pertinent voices in the field including Deepika Bahri, Laura Harrison, Anureet Lotay, Katerina Kolarova and Eva-Sabine Zehelein, we unpick the multi-dimensional ramifications of biotechnological othering depicted in these novels to foreground the threat of biological precarity embedded within transnational surrogacy and the continuation of the dehumanization of Women of Colour in today’s world.

A critique of baby making supermarts: Surrogacy clinics in Kishwar Desai’s Origins of Love (2012)

This paper explores the exploitation of commercial surrogates at the hands of the various stakeholders and agents of the fertility industry in Kishwar Desai’s novel Origins of Love (2012). It begins with a brief description of the advances in the field of infertility treatment and the tailored options of the Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) for conceiving a child. It then traces the practice of surrogacy in mythology and explores how it is different from present day surrogacy. It further points out why ARTs is preferred over adoption by prospective parents and how this preference has led to the emergence of fertility clinics as the new baby supermarts, from where the parents can ‘buy’ egg, sperm and customised babies. The paper also throws light on how this trend of baby shopping makes fertility clinics operate akin to any other commercial industry and how in the novel Desai has depicted the inherent flaws of this phenomenon of baby shopping. It critically examines the rapid expansion of Reproductive Tourism due to transnational commercial gestational surrogacy and the huge popularity of India as a surrogacy hub, as depicted in Desai’s novel. The paper illustrates how surrogacy not only involves exploitation of women’s reproductive capacity but also encompasses physical, emotional, psychological and economic exploitation. The paper ends with a scrutiny of the blatant violation of medical ethics in the field of ARTs and the potentially dangerous long-term implications that these technological advancements can have on women’s health and the society at large.

RANCANG BANGUN SISTEM INFORMASI PRESENSI PEGAWAI DENGAN MEMANFAATKAN METODE PENGEMBANGAN PROTOTYPE

The diligence of employees is an important factor for agencies and businesses to achieve their goals, it is related to discipline and affects the work performance of each employee. Therefore, it is necessary to collect special data for attendance records so that work activities can be recorded accurately and in real time. There are many ways to implement a good attendance and attendance information system, one of which is using computer technology applied to web-based attendance and attendance applications. As a case study and research site, at CU. The source of love City Balai Berkuak was originally used in the process of presence with the help of fingerprints, because during a pandemic like this it is still not effective, because it is possible to spread the covid19 virus. In addition, the risk of errors and loss of attendance data is quite large. Based on the above issues, an employee attendance information system has been built at UC. The origin of love but the Berkuak room. Research methods used to collect data include: observation, interview and library research methods. Software development using the prototyping method. With the results web-based employee attendance system, it can simplify the attendance process, data search and time summary calculation, as well as minimize loss and error when recording employee data presence of CU. The origin of love but the Berkuak room.

Strains of Attachment: John Bowlby's Theory and William Faulkner's Pylon

AbstractEmploying Bowlby's attachment theory, this article traces the prescience of Faulkner's Pylon. In March 1935, Faulkner's novel—a tale of a barnstorming pilot, his wife, and their parentally deprived son—appears in print. That same year, Bowlby reads Ian Suttie's The Origins of Love and Hate, whose approach to psychological maturation offers a Darwinian alternative to Freud's doctrine of drives. Bowlby develops this alternative perspective into attachment theory. Like Bowlby, Faulkner at once distances himself from Freudianism and appreciates Darwinism, with Bowlbian concepts aiding the exploration of Faulkner's psychosocial insights in Pylon and the novel reciprocating in illuminating those concepts.

Love, maternal love, romantic love, depressive love: a psychoanalytic perspective

This article presents a history of ideas about the origins of love as a universal human experience, beginning with Freud's formulations and expanding concepts in the light of findings about the role of attachment and love in the earliest relationship between mother and baby. Conceptualisations based on the work of Klein, Winnicott, and Bion are linked to recent findings from neuroscience to arrive at a more complex conceptualisation of the origins and role of love for mothers, fathers, children and adults.

Kishwar Desai’s Simran Singh series: Crime, detection, and gender

Kishwar Desai’s Simran Singh crime novels ( Witness the Night, Origins of Love, and The Sea of Innocence) present readers with a feminist heroine working towards a more equitable India. Desai’s heroine challenges many generic conventions of detection, while her interactions with British characters and symbols complicate understandings of the relationship between detective fiction and postcolonialism. Simran’s role as a social worker and her critique of official policies and processes render her at odds with conventional and official detectives in and out of her narrative. At the same time, she is presented to readers as empowered and grounded in a world which is written to have many similarities with our own; Desai makes use of real cases in her narratives to motivate Simran’s actions against injustice. This article analyzes the relationship between Desai, her protagonist Simran, and notions of postcoloniality and empire through an examination of the roles of intersections of nation, power, and justice in crime fiction. Deconstructing these relationships helps further understandings of the role of genre fiction in global literary marketplaces, and emphasizes the significance of the popular in the postcolonial, particularly in regard to gender equity and contemporary feminist movements.

Redefining Motherhood: Problems of Surrogacy in Kishwar Desai’s Origins of Love

There is a great deal concerning the body of woman. The flesh trade is now a legalized business. Organ transplantation fetches lot of money to the middleman. Kishwar Desai presents the story of multi-million business of surrogacy and artificial pregnancy going on in the modern world in her novel Origins of Love. Surrogacy is the recent trend found among the economically backward women in India. Fertility clinics are mushrooming in India. The desire of the couples for a child is exploited to its maximum by the doctors. The need for money to solve some crucial problems in life drives some young women to lend their womb for upbringing the child of some other couple. The money minded doctors and the agents, who supply the surrogate mother and the commissioning parents, make the money-deal to their maximum advantage. There are many issues related to the so called womb trade. Is it not violence against motherhood and womb? Is it not a denial of a child’s maternal care? Who will be the mother to the child? How will a woman simply forget the fruit of her womb? The psychological emptiness the mother feels is so severe that it may create mental imbalance. When the healthy embryo is selected what will be the fate of the rejected embryos? Is it not an abortion outside the womb? This paper presents the problems related to surrogacy in the light of the novel Origins of Love.

‘These were made-to-order babies’: Reterritorialised Kinship, Neoliberal Eugenics and Artificial Reproductive Technology in Kishwar Desai’s Origins of Love

This essay examines Kishwar Desai’s Origins of Love (2012) in order to foreground how the novel is complexly reflective of the biomedical technologies strategically deployed by medical practitioners and prospective...

„Kształtem jest miłości”. O idei piękna w twórczości Norwida

The article is an attempt at a synthetic examination of the concept of beauty in Norwid’s work. The paper highlights the most important aspects of this complex problem. The author of Promethidion conceives of art and beauty as if they were transcendental categories in their classical sense, manifested by the principles of perfection and their ontological inevitability, as well as by ethical autonomy. The originality of the poet’s aesthetic concepts is, to a large extent, determined by his anthropological insight, the object of his focus being such important issues as work, national art, folklore, and style. The concept of love—although strongly rooted in the Gospel and in the patristic thought—also finds its justification here. According to Norwid, the ultimate point of reference and the origin of love is God, whereas the human being is its subject. The article emphasizes the scheme Norwid used to construct his aesthetic ideas based on a specific vision of man as a being immersed in mortality, in history, as well as in the present moment, and, simultaneously, related to the ‘harmony of creation.’ Any incarnation of a creative concept requires effort and work, including physical work, at the same time paradoxically—in this physical aspect— going beyond the horizon of the earthly life. The relation of the creator to the created, by analogy to God’s creative attitude, manifests its fullness in love and through love. Translated by Rafal Augustyn

Divine love: Islamic literature and the path to God

In this book William C. Chittick provides a first-time look at historic Persian literature and the topic of love, which is at the heart of Islamic spiritual thought. It contains extensive Arabic and Persian material, from the Qur'an up through the twelfth century, and draws on more than a thousand pages of new translations. The book culminates in a new way of understanding the Tawhid, the Unity of the Real, and leads readers through the origins of love, the life of love, and the goal of love.

Love for the divine or divine love

There is no doubt that likes and dislikes develop under the influence of love and hatred. As a person loves, he has a feeling of pleasure and happiness and when he hates, he feels pain, suffocation and anguish. May be, because of this, some great thinkers and Philosophers thought that the aim of good morality was happiness, means a happy life and achievements of this was possible only in love and affectionate life. The highest point of this life was life of love. The secret of attachment of value to this term "Love" should be searched in this fact. But what is more important than the origin of love is the position of beloved. The degree of happy8ness of a person is related to the degree of his love. The status of his love should be assessed by the glory and rank of his beloved. The durability and longevity of the love is connected with the rise and fall of glory of the beloved. The main question is with whose glory and greatness one should put his soul and head at stake so that eternal and durable love is achieved resulting into eternal pleasure and happiness.

The Arabic Origins of "Love and Sexual Terms" in English and European Languages: A Lexical Root Theory Approach

This paper investigates the Arabic cognates or origins of love and sexual words in English, German, French, Latin, and Greek from a lexical root theory perspective. The data consists of 239 terms like love, hope, abhor, hate, cupid, woo, whore, slut, fuck, erotic, intercourse, sex, copulate, impregnate, fornicate, marry, wed, seduce, beautiful, and so on. The results demonstrate that all such words have true Arabic cognates, having the same or similar forms and meanings. Their different forms, however, are all shown to be the result of natural and plausible causes and courses of linguistic change in such languages. For example, English, French, Greek and Latin erotic (Eros) comes from Arabic 'arr 'intercourse, making love'; English, French, and Latin abhor obtains from Arabic kariha/'akrah, kurh (n) 'hate' via /k & h/-merger; English and German love/lieben derives from Arabic labba ('alabba) 'to love, live/stay', turning /b/ into /v/; English hope (hobby) and German hoffen is from Arabic 2ubb 'love, hope', turning /2/ into /h/ and /b/ into /f/ in the latter. Consequently, the results indicate, contrary to Comparative Method claims, that Arabic, English and all (Indo-)European languages belong to the same language, let alone the same family. They, therefore, prove the adequacy of the lexical root theory according to which Arabic, English, German, French, Latin, and Greek are dialects of the same language with the first being the origin because of its phonetic complexity, huge lexical variety and multiplicity with over 100 'sex' terms.

The Myth of Venus in Early Modern Culture

AbstractVenus represents all that is complex and contradictory in the early modern period's perception of love. Unsurpassed as she is, the goddess remains enigmatic, partly concealed behind a series of surrogates, by the veils that draw attention to the beauty they mask, or by the mystery of her own desire for successive objects. The fact that, as the origin of love, she intervenes only to lead more often to sorrow than to happiness indicates an anxiety about the sexual pleasure the period at once relishes and reprehends. Love conducted under the aegis of Venus commonly suffers from misalignment. But while the goddess so frequently withholds gratification, what she offers instead is pleasure at the level of the signifier, as she takes part in the stories, plays, and poems which enable the period to find ways of defining a passion that generates both civilization and its discontents. (C. B.)

Suttie’s Influence on Fairbairn’s Object Relations Theory

It is suggested here that Ian Suttie influenced W. R. D. Fairbairn directly through a 1939 reprint of his The Origins of Love and Hate, a heavily underlined copy of which was found by the author in Fairbairn's library in the University of Edinburgh Library Special Collections in October 2009. Underlined sections of the book are compared with significant aspects of Fairbairn's post-1940 theorizing, and the similarities are argued to be due to Fairbairn's adopting many of the underlying attitudes and ideas that Suttie developed. This leaves Fairbairn's structural theory, which he began to develop as a rational reconstruction of Freud's structural theory as early as 1927, dependent in part on such theory but independent of direct influence by Suttie. It is argued that Suttie's importance vis-à-vis British object relations thinking needs to be reassessed.

Reading Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’Amore: Pontus de Tyard, Louise Labé, and Olivier de Magny

Avec raison donq non seulement l'inferieur ayme et desire de se unir avec le superieur, mais encor le superieur ayme et desire de unir avec soy l'inferieur, a fin que chacun d'eux soit parfait en son degre sans default, et a celle fin que l'univers se unie et se lie successivement avec le lien d'amour qui unit le monde corporel avec le spirituel, et les inferieurs avec les superieurs, laquelle union est la fin principale de l'ouvrier souverain et Dieu tout puissant en la production de ce monde avec diversite ordonnee et pluralite unifiee. (1) Onde con ragione non solamente l'inferiore ama, e desidera unirsi col superiore, ma ancora il superiore ama, e desidera unir'seco l'inferiore, accio che ogn'uno di loro sia perfetto nel suo grado senza mancamento, e accio che l'universo s'unisca e si leghi successivamente, col legame de l'Amore che unisce il Mondo corporale col spirituale, e l'inferiori con li superiori, la qual Unione e principal'fine del sommo opifice, et Omnipotente Dio, ne la produttione del Mondo con diversita ordinata, e pluralita unificata. (2) ********** Leone Ebreo plays an important part in the making of the Lyon literary community. Like his contemporary Symphorien Champier, he participates in the tradition derived from the Ficinian commentary of the Banquet (1468-69). (3) At the same time, he changes medieval hierarchies by discussing Christian, Neoplatonic, and courtly love theories side by side. Printed for the first time in 1535, Ebreo's Dialoghi d'amore develop a conversation over several days between the protagonists Philo and Sophia. As Sophia steadfastly refuses her lover Philo's persuasive rhetoric together with his amorous advances, she is presented with a wealth of theories concerning love and the world. This work becomes one of the texts that create the Lyon community and foster the cult of Venus, which is celebrated on the Colline Fourvieres, the so-called Forum Veneris. (4) Due to Lyon's intellectual openness, syncretism, eclecticism, and religious tolerance are favored, as well as a rapidly growing Protestant community that is supported by Calvin. Lyon's print shops and book markets are well-known and liberal enough to be targeted by the Edict of Chateaubriant in 1551. (5) This is also the year in which two French translations of Ebreo's dialogues are published: Pontus de Tyard's version appears with the printer Jean de Tournes and Denys Sauvage has his text brought out by Roville & Payen. As Lyon is virtually bilingual at this moment, (6) Ebreo's text is important without doubt in its original as well as in its translations, although it is impossible to determine what influence Tyard's or Sauvage's translation respectively had on the poetic community. It will be helpful to briefly recapitulate the main topics of Ebreo's dialogues in order to gauge their importance for some Lyon writers. The first dialogue treats the nature of love (essenza), defining love and, or as, desire, describing those objects that are good and desirable. The second dialogue discusses the universality of love (communita). It cosmologically defines love as a world force and as a principle that fuses the cosmos into unity. The third dialogue deals with the origin of love (origine), determining love metaphysically as the basis and goal of the world. Here, love is the principle that governs the relationship between God and the world, because it strives to communicate God's highest wisdom to his most beautiful likeness, that is, the universe, which strives in its turn to come back to highest beauty; this dialogue also considers esthetics. A fourth dialogue on the effects (effetti) of love seems to have been planned by Ebreo. One important reason for the popularity of this work is without doubt that it presents various theories of love in the form of a manual. (7) I would like to show how the author might have contributed to the construction of a poetic or cultural community on the Colline Fourvieres by examining texts by Pontus de Tyard, Louise Labe, Olivier de Magny, and Claude de Taillemont. …

The Pursuit of Eros in Plato’s Symposium and Hedwig and the Angry Inch

John Cameron Mitchell’s film Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) traces the sexual and spiritual journey of a partially transgendered rock star searching for her “other half.” Her pursuit of erotic completion is depicted explicitly in “The Origin of Love,” a song based on a creation myth told only in Plato’s Symposium. This article demonstrates that the film owes a greater ideological debt to the Platonic dialogue than has been recognized and investigates how the narrative of Hedwig’s story visually dramatizes the Symposium’s many forms of eros. Both works delineate a sphere of all-male sexuality to explore the origin and satisfaction of erotic longing while employing a female persona to show that the highest form of love transcends physicality to culminate in the pursuit of knowledge. While Mitchell transports the premise of the Symposium to the cutting edge of cinema and music, he expands its ideological range to interrogate the definition of love and its intersection with gender identity.

The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100–1300 by Theodore Evergates (review)

REVIEWS 263 rather on philosophical considerations, which in some way betrays the real meaning of the work and its language. This edition lacks a critical apparatus that can confront textual differences between the manuscripts and the different printed editions. The new Laterza edition is proceeded by an introduction by Eugenio Canone which contextualizes the work with its author and its time. Dialoghi’s author was Leone Ebreo, whose real name was Yehudah Abravanel. The information about his life is extremely vague, and only a few documents remain. He was a Jew from Portugal, the son of the famous biblical commentator and statesman, Isaac Abravanel, and lived his life in a continuous exile. After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492), he moved with his father to Naples and afterwards to different cities of the Italian peninsula. The introduction notes that the Dialoghi has deep connections with Italian contemporary philosophical speculation; and the work is described in its three parts, “On Love and Desire,” “On the Community of Love,” and “On the Origins of Love.” The introduction fails to mention the most recent studies dedicated on the Dialoghi, in particular those which consider the important Jewish components. The text of the Dialoghi is integrated with footnotes that explain some concepts and some philosophical or biblical references. This is followed by two indexes, one dedicated to biblical passages, the other to names. In general this edition is valuable because it makes available to a general audience a text that was very difficult to reach. This edition, however, focuses on only some aspects of the complicated text that is the Dialoghi D’Amore. ROSSELLA PESCATORI, Italian, UCLA Theodore Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100– 1300 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2007) 432 pp. In the study of medieval Europe the twelfth century is regarded as a period of great transformation. Charles Homer Haskins was one of the first to propose this now commonly accepted assessment in The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. This focus on broader developments in the areas of learning, art and architecture, religious devotion, and royal administration during this era can cause us to overlook the local or regional transformations that were also occurring at this time. In his latest study on medieval France, Theodore Evergates, considers the transformation of the county of Champagne from remote backwater to a robust political entity. The efforts of counts Hugh and Thibaut II during their respective tenures— particularly in cultivating the famed fairs of the region—laid the groundwork for the evolution of Champagne, but Count Henry I (r. 1152–1181) was truly the architect of the transformation of this county. During his nearly thirty years in power, the count turned a patchwork of disparate holdings into a cohesive principality, which quickly became one of the leading states in medieval France. The relationships he forged as a young man during the Second Crusade played a formative part in his subsequent rule over Champagne. One of these was with the king of France, Louis VII, whose policies Henry would repeatedly support during the following decades. Upon becoming count, Henry added a number of the young barons from region, whom he had bonded with on the crusade, to his inner circle. This core network of companions would aid him in the transforma- REVIEWS 264 tion of Champagne. Henry also made the castellany the new basis of administrative districts in Champagne. This change enabled him to bring the barons and knights of the region under a much tighter control. Nonetheless, the count typically still utilized the traditional approach of collegial governance, which reduced resistance to these structural changes he was implementing. Knowing Evergates’s previous work on aristocratic women in France, it is not surprising that the role of female elites in Champagne is closely examined. The author is very revisionist in his assessments, making a compelling case for a greater appreciation of the power and influence these aristocratic women possessed in a number of spheres. Particularly notable were the roles that several countesses played in the evolution of the region. Marie of Champagne, Henry’s wife, was the de facto ruler here for almost twenty years following the death of her...

Why Does Love Tear Us Apart?

Why Does Love Tear Us Apart?

The origins of love, hate and retaliation in Euripides’ tragedy Medea: a psychodynamic approach

The origins of love, hate and retaliation in Euripides’ tragedy Medea: a psychodynamic approach