Black Feminist Politics of Love: Theoretical, Methodological, and Political implications

Love has long played an important role in the history of feminist thinking, and particularly of Black Feminist Thought. Ferguson and Jónasdóttir (2014) have recently charted the growing academic field of “love studies” that, since the 1990s, is increasingly being taken as a serious area of study on its own terms, rather than just in relation to connected concepts such as care or sexual desire. Within this novel field of study, love is being considered as an important ethical, social, and political force. Nevertheless, both the theoretical and political implications of love studies and the key contribution of Black Feminist theories to them have been considerably and consistently overlooked by mainstream academic scholarship. Drawing on the work of some of the most relevant theorists of love studies and Black Feminist politics of love, this contribution has four main goals: 1) relocating the roots of love studies in the longstanding and still largely ignored contribution of Black Feminist politics of love; 2) bridging and integrating different conceptions and implications of love as theory and method; 3) shedding light on the limitations of identity-politics and intersectionality; 4) advancing and queering current debates on the theoretical, methodological, and political implications of Black Feminist politics of love. Rediscovering the key role of Black Feminist politics of love and reinterpreting it in light of more recent developments on these matters provides fresh theoretical and methodological insights; but it also sets a new political agenda for positive transformation.