Eros in Liminality: Structural Cleavages, Civilizational Ordering, and the Resistance to Pragmatic Substitution
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: > This study advances a philosophical and psychoanalytic reformulation of Eros not as mere interpersonal affect, but as an ontological ordering principle (principium ordinis) emergent at moments of profound civilizational and structural cleavages. Interrogating the dialectic between societal entropy and the erotic drive through Plato's Symposium, we investigate how absolute erotic fixation operates as a non-negotiable imperative in the face of insurmountable socio-historical boundaries. Through a comparative examination of four canonical archetypes of enduring passion—Qays ibn al-Mulawwah (Majnun), Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, Adèle Hugo, and Arabic poems on determinism—we demonstrate that the erotic commitment in its heightened form is temporally invariant and actively resists pragmatic substitution. Where conventional libidinal economies seek resolution through utilitarian replacement or psychological compromise, these subjects exhibit an ontological seizure wherein the machinery of pragmatic substitution is structurally demolished. Ultimately, the paper argues that this immutable erotic drive constitutes an existential counter-weight to civilizational rupture, preserving subjective continuity and transcendent order amid catastrophic fragmentation.
Author: Pishva, Seyed ehsan
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7221511403
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