Universal love structurally requires a designated object of hate

Evidence

As the Muselmann in the camps, so the Muslim in Europe: the figure of the unwanted, the avoided, Europe’s untouchables. Just as love of the universal is possible only by abstraction from a defining specificity, so Slavoj yizek has reminded us with characteristic irony that universal love always necessitates that there is one – the enemy – that is, that has to be, hated. If we can only know our loves by contrast with our hates, the possibility of universal love – of the love of life itself – requires an object of hate sufficient to the cause. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 871

Categorization

• XREF: Zizek’s paradox of universal love requiring a hated exception echoes themes in ‘A Very Minor Prophet’ about the collective’s need for exclusion. — connects to: The ideal of loving unity with the Other is structurally unrealizable and breeds conflict — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 941