Love as redemptive violence

Chris Rock on love:

If you haven't contemplated murder, you ain't been in love. If you haven't seriously thought about killing a motherfucker, you ain't been in love.

...If you haven't practiced your alibi in front of the mirror, you ain't been in love. And the only thing that's stopped you from killing this motherfucker was a episode of CSI: "Oh man, they thorough. I better make up. They might catch my ass.

Slavoj Žižek on love:

The underlying paradox is that what makes love angelic, what elevates it over mere unstable and pathetic sentimentality, is its cruelty itself, its link with violence – it is this link which raises it ‘over and beyond the natural limitations of man’ and thus transforms it into an unconditional drive (Violence, p 204).

Both Rock and Žižek portray love as authentic and meaningful only if it is linked to violence.

But Žižek takes things quite a bit further with his claim that violence raises love into a kind of transcendent cultural space.

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The idea that violence is necessary to elevate love 'over and beyond the natural limitations of man' is pretty jarring and counter-intuitive.

But on some level, the logic is sound and powerful.

I find Žižek's framework surprisingly useful for understanding how love can facilitate the violent destruction of an old self or an old way of thinking which is no longer useful - possibly even detrimental.