Bersani in Love

“Bersani in Love” argues that Leo Bersani and Henry James bear a non-relational relation that exemplifies two overlooked focuses of Bersani’s scholarship: history and love. The article examinies how Bersani admires James’s depictions of betrayal and lying as destabilizations of epistemological certainty and how Bersani criticizes James for suturing that instability with a superior narratorial consciousness. Bersani’s love in betrayal of James throughout his career offers not only a practical example of Bersani’s own socio-sexual ethics but also a history of the novel in which James functions as the fulcrum where literary realism betrays itself and where literary desire must learn to love better.