Desire’s misrecognitions,or the promise of mutable attachments

Abstract

Desire orients us to how attachments are dis/re/organised in lived time. This commentary responds to Anderson's article on attachments and promises by speculating on a version of attachment that starts from Berlant's writing on desire, supplementing the geography of promises that Anderson situates at the heart of attachment. By generating scrambled surfaces and mixed temporalities, attachment through desire emerges as something organised less by form and more by sensation, less by optimism and more by fantasy, less by endurance and more by excess. Desire unfolds heartlessly, without a centre. It doesn’t just recognise; it misrecognises. Subject to desire, attachments don’t always add up. Instead, desire leaves a gap – a gap that is also its promise.