Where is the love?

Abstract

The central concern of this paper is guided by two brief citations, one from Jacques Derrida and the other from Walter Benjamin. In ways that are both direct and indirect, these philosophers reference architecture, love and ruin. The paper’s aim is to suggest that architectures of love, whatever they may be, are obliged to address our encounters with violence, justice and politics, especially in relation to crises we could gather under the notions of precarity and ruin, what Derrida at one time called the bio-deconstruction of lifedeath, and Benjamin the politics of nihilism. The paper’s introductory paragraphs aim at offering an orientation for asking something fundamental in the approaches taken by Derrida and Benjamin.