Desire/Love

?There is nothing more alienating than having your pleasures disputed by someone with a theory,? writes Lauren Berlant. Yet the ways in which we live sexuality and intimacy have been profoundly shaped by theories ? especially psychoanalytic ones, which have helped to place sexuality and desire at the center of the modern story about what a person is and how her history should be read. At the same time, other modes of explanation have been offered by popular and mass culture. In these domains, sexual desire is not deemed the core story of life; it is mixed up with romance, a particular version…