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Renata Salecl, (Per)versions of

Love and Hate

Article in Anthropological Theory

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Book Review: (Per)Versions of Love and Hate

Aleksandar Boskovic
Anthropological Theory 2001 1: 137
DOI: 10.1177/146349960100100122

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07 Book Reviews (JB/D) 15/2/01 3:43 pm Page 137

BOOK REVIEWS

is acquired through relatives – in particular Overseas Chinese relatives. They also empha-
size the importance of the concrete political context – such as the income sources of
village governments (Guo) and the tolerance of income inequalities (Kung) – in deter-
mining the evolution of property rights. The second part, ‘Rural Shareholding Reforms
and their Impact’, documents how the formal introduction of a new ‘ownership label’
– that of the ‘shareholding cooperative’ – has triggered the development of more private
property forms via negotiations ‘on the ground’. Here, ‘fuzzy’ property rights might have
actually helped to avoid antagonizing certain groups at the onset of reforms (Vermeer).
More generally, the articles in this part (by Vermeer, Lin and Chen, and Whiting) con-
clude that the state’s ownership categories are used as ‘official hats’ helping to organize
funds or divert political attention but hardly reflecting actual property relations in rural
enterprises. The third part, ‘The Transformation of Public Property in the Urban
Economy’, confirms the findings from the countryside. Public ownership is ‘hollowed out’
as public assets are transferred to private firms (Lin and Zhang, and Francis) and de facto
private property developed just because a certain legal ‘vagueness’ made bargaining pro-
cesses possible (Francis). Moreover, personal networks and obligations in the urban
economy lubricate economic transactions in the absence of functioning legal institutions
(Wank).
The book forcefully demonstrates how the evolution and reality of property rights are
shaped both by the concrete political economy as well as by local systems of orientation
and affiliation. It emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between property ‘form’
or label and property ‘content’ – the actual praxis of property relations. Perhaps most
importantly the book casts doubt on the ‘empirical sense’ of a radical opposition between
public and private property. This supports the growing critique in recent years of similar
dichotomies or oppositions in anthropology (such as the opposition gift/commodity)
which have generally been associated with either individual profit-oriented thinking or
with thinking in terms of ‘society’. Taken to its theoretical conclusion, this skepticism
might even question the validity of anthropological approaches which construct an
entirely different ethnographic ‘other’ on the basis of these dichotomies whose actions
putatively cannot be understood in ‘our terms’.
Susanne Brandtstädter
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
Halle, Germany
[email: brandtst@eth.mpg.de]

(Per)Versions of Love and Hate, Renata Salecl. London: Verso, 1998. pp. viii + 184. ISBN:
(hbk) 1 85984 839 7. Price: £16.00.

(Per)versions of Love and Hate is a readable and very provocative book that seeks to give
answers to the questions of why and how we love. In the seven chapters that form the
body of the book, Renata Salecl starts from a specific, Lacanian psychoanalytic perspec-
tive and interprets various specific situations in order to reach more generalized con-
clusions. Salecl writes about relationships, about how we relate to others as well as to
ourselves.

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ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 1(1)

The author challenges the stereotypes that go with any love affair and, in the course
of so doing, presents intriguing readings of various works of art – from novels (for
example The Age of Innocence and The Remains of the Day), through films (Rhapsody, The
Seventh Veil, The Red Shoes) to performance art (that of Oleg Kulik as well as various
examples of body art). There are different types of love – love as passion, love that is
obsessive, neurotic, challenged, even love for one’s own country. In all the cases, para-
doxically, ‘true love’ is experienced only as a lack, as something that is missing and must
be attained (but if one does attain it, the love disappears), as an ideal. This general line
of argumentation has been presented previously by Niklas Luhmann through studies of
17th and 18th century Western European novels in his 1982 book Love as Passion
(English editions 1986 and 1998). Salecl, however, is unique in insisting not on the code
(and codification of behaviour, as the German sociologist did), but on the symbolism of
actions and meanings. Whereas for Luhmann the social structure remained of prime
importance and determined the behaviour of individuals (as it did, in a different way,
for another prominent sociologist – Anthony Giddens – who recently wrote about love
in his 1992 book The Transformations of Intimacy), for Salecl it is the particular, the indi-
vidual, that paves the way for specific forms of codification (not that she uses the
word).
The powers of the unconscious are revealed at work in the most intimate and most
intriguing moments, although, after reading the book, some questions remain unan-
swered. For example, what is it that makes women and not men choose death over com-
promise, as exemplified in the film The Red Shoes? Salecl promises the answer to this
enigma in Chapter 3, ‘The Silence of Feminine Jouissance’, but never actually delivers. It
is not difficult to raise other questions (such as ‘why is Odysseus’ encounter with the
Sirens a problem and for whom is it a problem?’) or to object to some of her more
provocative assertions (such as that female genital mutilation is a form of body art) but
these are quibbles in light of the book’s overall project.
The dialogue between psychoanalysis and anthropology dates back at least as far as
the works of W.H.R. Rivers and C.G. Seligman (both of whom had degrees in medi-
cine) in the early decades of the 20th century. However, that dialogue has always been
tense (as evident in Malinowski’s criticisms as well as in the deep distrust Durkheim pro-
fessed towards psychoanalysis) and most anthropologists have been reluctant to use psy-
choanalysts’ theories. However, the influence on psychoanalysis of some anthropologists
is beyond doubt as we can see in the example of Lévi-Strauss’s impact on Lacan in the
earlier stages of the radical analyst’s career. In this context, Salecl’s book can be seen as
a further invitation to open dialogue and to discuss both pertinent issues (such as, for
instance, multiculturalism, which she seems to see negatively) and concepts which, while
important for both disciplines, have been constructed respectively in radically different
ways (such as ‘the Other’). It is hard to say whether or not this book will provoke some
anthropologists to modify their views of psychoanalysis, but it is an invitation to rethink,
which is definitely worth listening to.
Aleksandar Boskovic
Department of Social Anthropology
University of the Witwatersand
Wits, South Africa
[email: s_boskovic@yahoo.com]

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