Love in the Time of Capital

This essay begins with Alain Badiou’s book, In Praise of Love, and ends with Jean-Luc Godard’s film of the same title. Between these narrative poles and drawing on a web of associated theoretical and artistic registers, it seeks to advance two mutually related theses. The first is that, since the beginnings of the twentieth century, cinema has grappled with its potential to exemplify an aesthetic program for love. The second thesis is that love is materially incompatible with capitalism, the mode of production from and through which cinema has evolved. These two theses are explored concurrently as they advance through the twentieth- and into the twenty-first century, evolving a visual language of what Badiou calls “minimal communism.”