The Politics of Love, Friendship, and Race

Catalog description

Does love have a place in politics? Aristotle famously claimed that friends "have no need for justice." If that is true, can love and friendship help to solve seemingly intractable political problems? Or does it mean that love is ill-suited to the political problems that call for justice? These questions have particular urgency when we ask them in the context of racial politics, where love and friendship are more fraught. This course explores the ways that African American thinkers—with a particular emphasis on James Baldwin—have conceptualized love and its role in politics, as well as some of the Christian and pagan traditions on which they draw. In exploring their work, we will ask what love and friendship are precisely, what role do they play in racial politics (if any), and what role should they play? Does love make politics better, and conversely, can politics make love better? Along with the works of Baldwin, we will read texts by: June Jordan, Plato, Aristotle, St. Paul, St. Augustine, Norman O. Brown, Martin Luther King, Hannah Arendt, Nikki Giovanni, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, bell hooks, and Gwendolyn Brooks.