Love as Method: Tracing the Contours of Love in Black and African Feminist Imaginations of Liberation

Abstract

What imaginations of the self are evident in Black and African feminist visions of Black liberation? How is love framed as a centring politics of Black liberation across social and political struggles? These two questions address two features of Black and African feminist social justice politics: first, a re-imagining of the self via routes of the communal self and love of oneself; and, second, a centring of love as fundamental to any project of Black liberation. Exploring these two trajectories, the article engages gendered love in terms of its material and affective registers within feminist struggles for justice and healing. To do this, select readings of African and Black feminist theorising, reflections, and activist works are explored including Pumla Gqola, Sharlene Khan, June Jordan, bell hooks amongst others. The intellectual diversity of these feminist contributions connects with reference to a feminist project that is rooted in (re)imaginings of love and self that are simultaneously personal yet also political. In the end, the project of Black liberation must address itself to the place of love in healing. The article explores what some of these features of love liberation could entail.