Black Love
This issue of WSQ explores Black love as a theoretical framework to understand resistance and liberation.
In the words of bell hooks, “We need to concentrate on the politicization of love, not just in the context of talking about victimization in intimate relationships, but in a critical discussion where love can be understood as a powerful force that challenges and resists domination.”
Freedom for Black people looks different throughout the world, but is always rooted in love. WSQ: Black Love is interested in uncovering the radical potential of love as a pathway to freedom. Academics attend to the expressions of love histories, literatures, and visual art, both personal and public. They uncover the political outcomes within everyday acts of love. Black love offers multiple possibilities for Black people’s engagement with each other in full autonomy.
This issue seeks to imagine justice if love were centered at the heart of politics, and contends with how the policing of affect within Black diasporic communities and the larger public hinders our ability to see love as a collective and political tool.
Mary Frances Phillips is a proud native of Detroit, Michigan. She is an associate professor of Africana Studies at Lehman College, City University of New York. Her interdisciplinary research agenda focuses on race and gender in post-1945 social movements and the carceral state. Her research areas include the Modern Black Freedom Struggle, Black Feminism, and Black Power Studies. She is currently working on her book manuscript, Sister Love: Ericka Huggins, Spiritual Activism, and the Black Panther Party, which is under contract with New York University Press. This project is the first and only scholarly monograph on the life experiences of Black Panther veteran Ericka Huggins.
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