Is love the answer to our political ills? An air of pessimism increasingly surrounds politics in America and elsewhere. The rise of ethnonationalisms and seemingly unbridgeable sectarianism; the loss of confidence in public institutions’ ability to counterbalance personal or group interest; the loss of faith in social progress and the seeming rollback of rights and opportunities; all of these characterize our current moment in ways that have created a hunger for alternative political approaches. In the face of these challenges, several thinkers and politicians have turned to the idea that love is the key to solving contemporary conflicts. Seeming to promise a less aggressive, more connection-based, more creative and more open-ended affective basis from which to engage with other people and with the problems that we share, a “politics of love” can be deeply appealing to those hoping for a different attitude through which to approach the problems of politics. That said, this talk calls such approaches into question. Drawing on thinkers like Sara Ahmed, James Baldwin, and Hannah Arendt, it points to how, while love can surely be the basis for openness, connection and care, it can also give rise to harmful idealizations, inequality and violence. It argues for the importance of taking a more ambivalent approach to conceptualizing love and, consequently, to love's role in political life.
Eyo Ewara is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. His research areas include 20th Century Continental Philosophy, Critical Philosophies of Race, and LGBTQ and Queer Theories. His current research projects explore the ethical and ontological assumptions behind forms of anti-racism; how conceptions of "history repeating itself" operate in accounts of race, racism, and anti-racism; and the role of opacity in ethical and political thought. His work involves the thought of Saidiya Hartman, Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon, Martin Heidegger, Judith Butler, and Lee Edelman among others.
