Anidjar recounts Bloom reading Othello-Desdemona love as a figure of failed statesmanship

Evidence

Arguing for the political meaning of the “character of therelationship between Desdemona and Othello,” Allan Bloom pursues Brabantio’s questioning and relates this strange unity, “the strange love that united Othello and Desdemona,” to Othello’s failed statesmanship (38). Bloom concludes by rhetorically performing the analogical gesture that transfers love to politics, and, more precisely, love to bad politics: “What was supposed to be love now turns into a tyranny” (56). — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 528

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: De Man and Bloom’s anti-materialist criticism emerged during liberal-imperial transition from Korea to Vietnam — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 228