The Politics of Love: Taking the Project Forward
I presented this talk at The Politics of Love: A Conference, at All Souls College, The University of Oxford, on 15 December 2018.
Tēnā anō tātou katoa.
We want to begin by thanking all of you who have shared your thoughts so far today.
We now move into the stage of the conference that we have labelled ‘Taking the Project Forward’. Soon, we will be breaking into groups, to further discuss the Politics of Love. We know you will all have plenty to share, and we’re looking forward to finding out where these conversations lead! Shortly, Max will be offering some reflections on the presentations we have heard today, and suggesting questions to guide our discussions. Before that, though, I would like to share some of the thinking that we have done on the Politics of Love. We chose to share our views toward the end of the day because we wanted to give space to other thinkers, and because our thinking on the topic is developing...
I should say that, although there is a lot of overlap in our thinking, Max and I do not agree on everything. If Max were to present our thoughts on the Politics of Love, he would likely emphasise different things. What follows is, then, my understanding of the Politics of Love, which is developing in relationship with Max’s. We believe that disagreement can be constructive, and that the Politics of Love can accommodate diverse perspectives.
Max and I first sketched the Politics of Love in 2015, in an article which we published on Max’s website, The Aotearoa Project. In that piece, we argued that politics can and should be more loving. It was, essentially, an expression of our belief that love can be both deeply critical and genuinely constructive. Since then, we have both spoken and written about the Politics of Love in a number of contexts and for a variety of publications.
The Politics of Love, as we understand it, is a values-based politics. It affirms the importance of people, and it extends beyond us to non-human animals and the natural environment. It holds that all people are important, and as such, it incorporates a commitment to radical equality. It is inclusive of non-human animals, because a politics that didn’t take non-human animals, and their suffering, into account couldn’t be considered ‘loving’; and it encompasses a concern for the natural environment, because it recognises not only that it is important to our well-being, but that it is worthy of love in itself.
What is love? We think of love as an orientation or ‘attitude’. It is a way of relating: to ourselves, to each other, and to the wider world. The Politics of Love elaborates this ‘attitude’: it celebrates loving values, such as care, concern, and commitment, which can guide action and inform policy. These values are derived from, and held in balance by, love. How does love accomplish this? I imagine values as stars. All of these stars are always present, even if they aren’t always visible. (It is worth remembering the Māori whakataukī: He tini ngā whetū e ngaro i te kapua iti. ‘Many stars can be concealed by a small cloud.’) And some, it is true, shine more brightly than others – kindness, responsibility, and trust, for example, outshine anger and indignation, but all have their place in the night sky. When, with open hearts, we look upwards for guidance, we are able to see what it is to love on any given night. The lover, then, is a stargazer, a constellation-maker; and what she sees is how to love…
Although love is generally thought of in emotional terms, we also view it as both critical and intellectual. While the Politics of Love recognises the importance of emotions - both the understanding that they bring, and that they form an integral part of who we are - it understands that feeling alone will not dismantle oppressive systems, like patriarchy, or enable us to decolonise our thinking. I believe that we must reject definitions of love that devalue intellectual engagement, including those that construe love only in emotional terms. We should affirm the value of intellectual commitment.
The idea that politics might be loving is not new. It has precedents in the everyday acts of love we show to one another, as well as in feminist, civil rights, and LGBTQI movement. Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, famously invoked love in his anti-racist activism. In his sermon, ‘Loving Your Enemies’, which is collected in the book Strength to Love, he says, ‘There will be no permanent solution to the race problem until oppressed men develop the capacity to love their enemies.’ As African-American theorist bell hooks writes in her book All About Love, ‘All the great social movements for freedom and justice in our society have promoted a love ethic.’ When Max and I think about historical examples of loving politics, we remember the passive resistance at Parihaka in Aotearoa New Zealand. The prophet Te Whiti o Rongomai - with his whanaunga Tohu Kākahi - led the people in passive resistance against the unjust confiscation of their land. Te Whiti instructed them to plough land that had been taken from them, erect fences, and remove surveyor’s pegs… In urging the people of Parihaka to resist injustice but insisting that they do so peacefully, Te Whiti demonstrated the basis upon which our peoples might live together in the future.
The Politics of Love is an actively inclusive framework. I imagine it as a round space, with love at its centre, and within which mutuality guides exchange. We affirm bell hooks’ claim, which she makes in Feminism is for Everybody, that ‘there can be no love when there is domination’ - and so, we understand the Politics of Love as anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-speciesist, and opposed to all forms of domination. Indeed, I think of this intersectional commitment as constituting the outer limits of this space. We should work to nurture respectful exchange between diverse voices within this space. Importantly, the Politics of Love must involve spokespeople for non-human animals and the natural environment - for those who are, and that which is, incapable of full self-representation. This ‘space’ extends both inwards and outwards; it is an ethic that we can embody, as individuals and as communities; and it is through relationship that this space is realised. We see an affinity with what angel Kyodo williams has termed ‘radical dharma’. She writes:
'Each community possesses, as Gandhi offered, a piece of the truth, of Dharma. When we seek the embodiment of these truths, giving ourselves permission to be more honest, more healed, more whole, more complete - when we become radical - neither the path of solely inward-looking liberation nor the pursuit of an externalised social liberation prevails; rather a third space, as-yet-unknown, emerges. It is a radical dharma. And it is ours.'
Within this space, people come together to deliberate - and it is from this space that we act. As important as the ideas that inform this politics, and the actions that it leads to, is how we talk to each other about politics. We need to eschew the pettiness - the bickering, the name-calling - that has come to characterise modern politics. Instead, values such as humility, listening, and understanding should guide political exchange. We believe that it is through loving exchange that we will develop genuine and lasting solutions to our problems. In this way, then, the Politics of Love incorporates dialogue, theory, and action. (This is not to say that agonism and conflict have no place in politics - simply that these must be underpinned by love. Very often, confrontation is needed to develop loving communities.) We tend to have rigid ideas about what political action involves, but the Politics of Love manifests in a diverse variety of actions, all of which are guided by love. Persuasion, example-setting, voluntary work, employment, protesting, campaigning, voting, and public service – as well as many other types of action – can all be utilised in expressig loving politics.
Importantly, the Politics of Love is engaged in creating solutions. In our writing, Max and I have attempted to illustrate what loving politics might look like in practice. I want to share some examples here - not because I believe that Max and I have all the answers (we don’t), but because I think that if we are going to claim that love can inform politics, and if we want this claim to be taken seriously, we need to be able to say how it might do so…
In our original article for The Aotearoa Project, Max and I suggested that the Politics of Love could lead to a renewed focus on rehabilitation in prisons, as an expression of the principle that warmth should be shown to all individuals, even those who have made mistakes, and of our understanding that individuals are never wholly responsible for their situations.
As another example: in the chapter on love and work in his book, The New Zealand Project, Max proposed a universal basic income, a benefit paid to every member of a community regardless of their status of employment. Contrasting this with an insecure work benefit, the main aim of which is to get people into employment, he writes:
'A universal basic income best gives effect to a politics of love. It expresses confidence in people’s ability to determine their own life courses, rather than demeaning or belittling them.'
This, he argues, is equivalent to showing love to people. He says that a universal basic income could also enable people to leave abusive relationships by creating financial independence, allowing them to ‘realise love more fully’ in their own lives.
And in a chapter for The Interregnum, Max argues that love might start to address ‘the epidemic of loneliness that is faced by young people, the elderly, those with mental health difficulties, some of those who are unemployed, many of those who are incarcerated, and perhaps all those who are excluded from society.’ He writes:
'The mere expression of a politics of love could hearten those who feel lonely; it could send a message to them that they are not alone and not ignored. Policies flowing from the politics of love - which could include renewed support for prisoner rehabilitation and refugee resettlement programmes, increased investment in sport and general community organisations, and the strengthening of services such as Lifeline and the Samaritans - might address loneliness even more directly. Put simply: love, and a politics of love, could be the answer - or part of the answer - to loneliness.'
In my writing, I have argued that the Māori concept of aroha, which is usually translated as ‘love’, can help us to reconceptualise, and address, racism. In my article, ‘The thin line between dickishness and casual racism’ - I didn’t give it that title! - I wrote:
'Aroha helps us to see that racism isn’t someone else’s problem: it’s our problem. When we love each other – when we care about other people – we’re hurt by what hurts them, and we celebrate what benefits them, even if we don’t know them personally. Aroha is the answer not because love will give us an easy fix, but because it repositions us relative to our concerns. It encourages us to see racism as our problem, and urges us to resist it. Aroha requires us to take this one step further, though: it asks that we give each other opportunities to learn, to grow, and to move beyond our mistakes.'
And Mexican philosopher Carla Suárez Félix and I recently argued that the Politics of Love, with its intersectional commitment to anti-speciesism, leads us toward veganism - while heeding the caution of ecofeminists, such as Lori Gruen, who writes:
'Though most of us can readily eschew animal parts in our own diets, ecofeminists are mindful of the violence perpetuated in many gendered, racialized, and colonial contexts as well as the realities of a changing climate and thus forgo top-down, absolute universalizing judgments that everyone, everywhere should see “veganism as a moral baseline.” Instead, most ecofeminists argue for “contextual moral veganism” that recognizes both the moral centrality of a vegan diet and contextual exigencies that impede one’s ability to live without directly killing or using others.'
…as well as the wisdom of Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh, who reminds us that when we make mistakes, it is usually because we are unskillful, and not because we want to do harm.
‘Love’ is becoming increasingly popular. In Aotearoa New Zealand’s most recent general election, the Green Party campaigned on love, with co-leader James Shaw declaring, ‘I’m proud to lead a party that stands for the politics of love and inclusion, not hate and fear.’ When it formed a coalition with the Labour Party, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that her government would be ‘empathetic’. In Australia, MP Andrew Leigh has spoken extensively on the Politics of Love. And in the United States, a #LoveArmy, led by Van Jones, was formed following the election of Donald Trump; the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King led to a renewed discussion of his ideas of civic love; and last year, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was recently elected to congress, tweeted, 'I practice a politics of love for all people'. Here in the United Kingdom, Bishop Michael Curry explored the concept in his widely-reported-on royal wedding sermon on the power of love.
However, the idea that love should inform politics has also been criticised. For example, it has been said that love is too weak a concept for the hard world of politics. Another criticism is that the word ‘love’ is too vague - too waffly, too airy-fairy - to give us any real guidance, and that it can be used to mean anything we want it to. There are many more. (Including my favourite, made in response to an article I wrote for The Guardian: someone commented that I’d been watching too much Star Trek! ...which - yes, okay, I admit it - is probably true.) We take (most of) these criticisms seriously, and we believe that those of us who want to see the Politics of Love succeed must engage with them. In light of these criticisms, we believe that, at this point in time, the Politics of Love needs three things:
First, we think the Politics of Love needs to delimit itself. The competing definitions of love (and, to an extent, differing views about what it means for politics) threaten to undermine its power to motivate positive change. It is vitally important that the Politics of Love promotes honest discussion and debate - but this doesn’t mean that ‘anything goes’. ‘Love’ does not, and cannot, mean everything that the word is taken to mean – at least not for politics. We must strive for greater clarity around what ‘love’ is, and what it means for politics.
Second, the Politics of Love needs to nurture unity. It must invite all of those who are working for a better world into its space; and we should strive, collectively, to ensure their continued inclusion within it. It is vitally important that we think through how unity can be maintained – because it is on this that the strength of the Politics of Love depends. One way that we might do this is by centralising love, and ensuring that we continue to refer back to it when thinking and talking about politics. The word ‘love’ has power - most of us recognise its weight - and, importantly, it can give us guidance. If we continue to return to the word ‘love’, we will ensure that the Politics of Love sustains its unifying potential. There is strength in unity: if we are going to realise a loving world, it will be by working together.
Third, the Politics of Love needs a strong intellectual foundation. The idea that ‘love’ is too soft for politics is one that we must confront: we must show that it is not. Although the Politics of Love must remain accessible to all, and although it will be engaged with, primarily, outside of the academy, some of this intellectual ‘grunt work’ will, necessarily, be done within universities. It is partly for this reason that we have organised this conference. Indeed, this academic work has already begun: much of the work that has been, and is being, done on the ethics of care and ‘affect’, to give only two examples, could positively inform the Politics of Love. (It does seem to me, however, that most of those working in these, and related, areas are engaging all-too-tentatively with the notion of love. I suspect that they may be avoiding the word ‘love’ - consciously or otherwise - for fear of being ridiculed. I worry, too, that by avoiding the term, they are often diverging from that which love suggests.) But if love is to realise its potential, we must embrace the word itself. Our hope is that those in academia who are working within these spaces will unite around the Politics of Love. If they do, we have a much greater hope of achieving the world we are all trying to create…
Before I hand over to Max, I would like to share one more thought. Many people are reluctant to speak up for strong ideals such as love because they recognise that they themselves are imperfect. This is something that Max and I have discussed at length in our personal conversations. Who are we to talk about love? We can both recall times when we have said and done things that are unloving. Neither of us comes close to embodying ‘perfect love’. While we believe that this understanding should move us toward humility, we do not think that it should prevent anyone from trying to make the world a better place. (If all of us drew that conclusion, who would be left to do the work of love?) It takes courage, I think, to speak up for an ideal; but it is a powerful act. When we affirm love, we teach each other that it is okay to work in love. It is vitally important that we do this, because love needs all of us thinking, feeling, and acting… To love is - at least in part - to continuously strive to transcend one’s imperfections, and to actively allow other people to do the same.
He aroha whakatō, he aroha puta mai. If love is sown, then love will grow.
Tēnā anō tātou katoa.
We want to begin by thanking all of you who have shared your thoughts so far today.
We now move into the stage of the conference that we have labelled ‘Taking the Project Forward’. Soon, we will be breaking into groups, to further discuss the Politics of Love. We know you will all have plenty to share, and we’re looking forward to finding out where these conversations lead! Shortly, Max will be offering some reflections on the presentations we have heard today, and suggesting questions to guide our discussions. Before that, though, I would like to share some of the thinking that we have done on the Politics of Love. We chose to share our views toward the end of the day because we wanted to give space to other thinkers, and because our thinking on the topic is developing...
I should say that, although there is a lot of overlap in our thinking, Max and I do not agree on everything. If Max were to present our thoughts on the Politics of Love, he would likely emphasise different things. What follows is, then, my understanding of the Politics of Love, which is developing in relationship with Max’s. We believe that disagreement can be constructive, and that the Politics of Love can accommodate diverse perspectives.
Max and I first sketched the Politics of Love in 2015, in an article which we published on Max’s website, The Aotearoa Project. In that piece, we argued that politics can and should be more loving. It was, essentially, an expression of our belief that love can be both deeply critical and genuinely constructive. Since then, we have both spoken and written about the Politics of Love in a number of contexts and for a variety of publications.
The Politics of Love, as we understand it, is a values-based politics. It affirms the importance of people, and it extends beyond us to non-human animals and the natural environment. It holds that all people are important, and as such, it incorporates a commitment to radical equality. It is inclusive of non-human animals, because a politics that didn’t take non-human animals, and their suffering, into account couldn’t be considered ‘loving’; and it encompasses a concern for the natural environment, because it recognises not only that it is important to our well-being, but that it is worthy of love in itself.
What is love? We think of love as an orientation or ‘attitude’. It is a way of relating: to ourselves, to each other, and to the wider world. The Politics of Love elaborates this ‘attitude’: it celebrates loving values, such as care, concern, and commitment, which can guide action and inform policy. These values are derived from, and held in balance by, love. How does love accomplish this? I imagine values as stars. All of these stars are always present, even if they aren’t always visible. (It is worth remembering the Māori whakataukī: He tini ngā whetū e ngaro i te kapua iti. ‘Many stars can be concealed by a small cloud.’) And some, it is true, shine more brightly than others – kindness, responsibility, and trust, for example, outshine anger and indignation, but all have their place in the night sky. When, with open hearts, we look upwards for guidance, we are able to see what it is to love on any given night. The lover, then, is a stargazer, a constellation-maker; and what she sees is how to love…
Although love is generally thought of in emotional terms, we also view it as both critical and intellectual. While the Politics of Love recognises the importance of emotions - both the understanding that they bring, and that they form an integral part of who we are - it understands that feeling alone will not dismantle oppressive systems, like patriarchy, or enable us to decolonise our thinking. I believe that we must reject definitions of love that devalue intellectual engagement, including those that construe love only in emotional terms. We should affirm the value of intellectual commitment.
The idea that politics might be loving is not new. It has precedents in the everyday acts of love we show to one another, as well as in feminist, civil rights, and LGBTQI movement. Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, famously invoked love in his anti-racist activism. In his sermon, ‘Loving Your Enemies’, which is collected in the book Strength to Love, he says, ‘There will be no permanent solution to the race problem until oppressed men develop the capacity to love their enemies.’ As African-American theorist bell hooks writes in her book All About Love, ‘All the great social movements for freedom and justice in our society have promoted a love ethic.’ When Max and I think about historical examples of loving politics, we remember the passive resistance at Parihaka in Aotearoa New Zealand. The prophet Te Whiti o Rongomai - with his whanaunga Tohu Kākahi - led the people in passive resistance against the unjust confiscation of their land. Te Whiti instructed them to plough land that had been taken from them, erect fences, and remove surveyor’s pegs… In urging the people of Parihaka to resist injustice but insisting that they do so peacefully, Te Whiti demonstrated the basis upon which our peoples might live together in the future.
The Politics of Love is an actively inclusive framework. I imagine it as a round space, with love at its centre, and within which mutuality guides exchange. We affirm bell hooks’ claim, which she makes in Feminism is for Everybody, that ‘there can be no love when there is domination’ - and so, we understand the Politics of Love as anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-speciesist, and opposed to all forms of domination. Indeed, I think of this intersectional commitment as constituting the outer limits of this space. We should work to nurture respectful exchange between diverse voices within this space. Importantly, the Politics of Love must involve spokespeople for non-human animals and the natural environment - for those who are, and that which is, incapable of full self-representation. This ‘space’ extends both inwards and outwards; it is an ethic that we can embody, as individuals and as communities; and it is through relationship that this space is realised. We see an affinity with what angel Kyodo williams has termed ‘radical dharma’. She writes:
'Each community possesses, as Gandhi offered, a piece of the truth, of Dharma. When we seek the embodiment of these truths, giving ourselves permission to be more honest, more healed, more whole, more complete - when we become radical - neither the path of solely inward-looking liberation nor the pursuit of an externalised social liberation prevails; rather a third space, as-yet-unknown, emerges. It is a radical dharma. And it is ours.'
Within this space, people come together to deliberate - and it is from this space that we act. As important as the ideas that inform this politics, and the actions that it leads to, is how we talk to each other about politics. We need to eschew the pettiness - the bickering, the name-calling - that has come to characterise modern politics. Instead, values such as humility, listening, and understanding should guide political exchange. We believe that it is through loving exchange that we will develop genuine and lasting solutions to our problems. In this way, then, the Politics of Love incorporates dialogue, theory, and action. (This is not to say that agonism and conflict have no place in politics - simply that these must be underpinned by love. Very often, confrontation is needed to develop loving communities.) We tend to have rigid ideas about what political action involves, but the Politics of Love manifests in a diverse variety of actions, all of which are guided by love. Persuasion, example-setting, voluntary work, employment, protesting, campaigning, voting, and public service – as well as many other types of action – can all be utilised in expressig loving politics.
Importantly, the Politics of Love is engaged in creating solutions. In our writing, Max and I have attempted to illustrate what loving politics might look like in practice. I want to share some examples here - not because I believe that Max and I have all the answers (we don’t), but because I think that if we are going to claim that love can inform politics, and if we want this claim to be taken seriously, we need to be able to say how it might do so…
In our original article for The Aotearoa Project, Max and I suggested that the Politics of Love could lead to a renewed focus on rehabilitation in prisons, as an expression of the principle that warmth should be shown to all individuals, even those who have made mistakes, and of our understanding that individuals are never wholly responsible for their situations.
As another example: in the chapter on love and work in his book, The New Zealand Project, Max proposed a universal basic income, a benefit paid to every member of a community regardless of their status of employment. Contrasting this with an insecure work benefit, the main aim of which is to get people into employment, he writes:
'A universal basic income best gives effect to a politics of love. It expresses confidence in people’s ability to determine their own life courses, rather than demeaning or belittling them.'
This, he argues, is equivalent to showing love to people. He says that a universal basic income could also enable people to leave abusive relationships by creating financial independence, allowing them to ‘realise love more fully’ in their own lives.
And in a chapter for The Interregnum, Max argues that love might start to address ‘the epidemic of loneliness that is faced by young people, the elderly, those with mental health difficulties, some of those who are unemployed, many of those who are incarcerated, and perhaps all those who are excluded from society.’ He writes:
'The mere expression of a politics of love could hearten those who feel lonely; it could send a message to them that they are not alone and not ignored. Policies flowing from the politics of love - which could include renewed support for prisoner rehabilitation and refugee resettlement programmes, increased investment in sport and general community organisations, and the strengthening of services such as Lifeline and the Samaritans - might address loneliness even more directly. Put simply: love, and a politics of love, could be the answer - or part of the answer - to loneliness.'
In my writing, I have argued that the Māori concept of aroha, which is usually translated as ‘love’, can help us to reconceptualise, and address, racism. In my article, ‘The thin line between dickishness and casual racism’ - I didn’t give it that title! - I wrote:
'Aroha helps us to see that racism isn’t someone else’s problem: it’s our problem. When we love each other – when we care about other people – we’re hurt by what hurts them, and we celebrate what benefits them, even if we don’t know them personally. Aroha is the answer not because love will give us an easy fix, but because it repositions us relative to our concerns. It encourages us to see racism as our problem, and urges us to resist it. Aroha requires us to take this one step further, though: it asks that we give each other opportunities to learn, to grow, and to move beyond our mistakes.'
And Mexican philosopher Carla Suárez Félix and I recently argued that the Politics of Love, with its intersectional commitment to anti-speciesism, leads us toward veganism - while heeding the caution of ecofeminists, such as Lori Gruen, who writes:
'Though most of us can readily eschew animal parts in our own diets, ecofeminists are mindful of the violence perpetuated in many gendered, racialized, and colonial contexts as well as the realities of a changing climate and thus forgo top-down, absolute universalizing judgments that everyone, everywhere should see “veganism as a moral baseline.” Instead, most ecofeminists argue for “contextual moral veganism” that recognizes both the moral centrality of a vegan diet and contextual exigencies that impede one’s ability to live without directly killing or using others.'
…as well as the wisdom of Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh, who reminds us that when we make mistakes, it is usually because we are unskillful, and not because we want to do harm.
‘Love’ is becoming increasingly popular. In Aotearoa New Zealand’s most recent general election, the Green Party campaigned on love, with co-leader James Shaw declaring, ‘I’m proud to lead a party that stands for the politics of love and inclusion, not hate and fear.’ When it formed a coalition with the Labour Party, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that her government would be ‘empathetic’. In Australia, MP Andrew Leigh has spoken extensively on the Politics of Love. And in the United States, a #LoveArmy, led by Van Jones, was formed following the election of Donald Trump; the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King led to a renewed discussion of his ideas of civic love; and last year, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was recently elected to congress, tweeted, 'I practice a politics of love for all people'. Here in the United Kingdom, Bishop Michael Curry explored the concept in his widely-reported-on royal wedding sermon on the power of love.
However, the idea that love should inform politics has also been criticised. For example, it has been said that love is too weak a concept for the hard world of politics. Another criticism is that the word ‘love’ is too vague - too waffly, too airy-fairy - to give us any real guidance, and that it can be used to mean anything we want it to. There are many more. (Including my favourite, made in response to an article I wrote for The Guardian: someone commented that I’d been watching too much Star Trek! ...which - yes, okay, I admit it - is probably true.) We take (most of) these criticisms seriously, and we believe that those of us who want to see the Politics of Love succeed must engage with them. In light of these criticisms, we believe that, at this point in time, the Politics of Love needs three things:
First, we think the Politics of Love needs to delimit itself. The competing definitions of love (and, to an extent, differing views about what it means for politics) threaten to undermine its power to motivate positive change. It is vitally important that the Politics of Love promotes honest discussion and debate - but this doesn’t mean that ‘anything goes’. ‘Love’ does not, and cannot, mean everything that the word is taken to mean – at least not for politics. We must strive for greater clarity around what ‘love’ is, and what it means for politics.
Second, the Politics of Love needs to nurture unity. It must invite all of those who are working for a better world into its space; and we should strive, collectively, to ensure their continued inclusion within it. It is vitally important that we think through how unity can be maintained – because it is on this that the strength of the Politics of Love depends. One way that we might do this is by centralising love, and ensuring that we continue to refer back to it when thinking and talking about politics. The word ‘love’ has power - most of us recognise its weight - and, importantly, it can give us guidance. If we continue to return to the word ‘love’, we will ensure that the Politics of Love sustains its unifying potential. There is strength in unity: if we are going to realise a loving world, it will be by working together.
Third, the Politics of Love needs a strong intellectual foundation. The idea that ‘love’ is too soft for politics is one that we must confront: we must show that it is not. Although the Politics of Love must remain accessible to all, and although it will be engaged with, primarily, outside of the academy, some of this intellectual ‘grunt work’ will, necessarily, be done within universities. It is partly for this reason that we have organised this conference. Indeed, this academic work has already begun: much of the work that has been, and is being, done on the ethics of care and ‘affect’, to give only two examples, could positively inform the Politics of Love. (It does seem to me, however, that most of those working in these, and related, areas are engaging all-too-tentatively with the notion of love. I suspect that they may be avoiding the word ‘love’ - consciously or otherwise - for fear of being ridiculed. I worry, too, that by avoiding the term, they are often diverging from that which love suggests.) But if love is to realise its potential, we must embrace the word itself. Our hope is that those in academia who are working within these spaces will unite around the Politics of Love. If they do, we have a much greater hope of achieving the world we are all trying to create…
Before I hand over to Max, I would like to share one more thought. Many people are reluctant to speak up for strong ideals such as love because they recognise that they themselves are imperfect. This is something that Max and I have discussed at length in our personal conversations. Who are we to talk about love? We can both recall times when we have said and done things that are unloving. Neither of us comes close to embodying ‘perfect love’. While we believe that this understanding should move us toward humility, we do not think that it should prevent anyone from trying to make the world a better place. (If all of us drew that conclusion, who would be left to do the work of love?) It takes courage, I think, to speak up for an ideal; but it is a powerful act. When we affirm love, we teach each other that it is okay to work in love. It is vitally important that we do this, because love needs all of us thinking, feeling, and acting… To love is - at least in part - to continuously strive to transcend one’s imperfections, and to actively allow other people to do the same.
He aroha whakatō, he aroha puta mai. If love is sown, then love will grow.