From: Carrol Cox <cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu>
Subject: M-TH: "Love" as grounds for political action. (Was Sexual liberation...)
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 19:58:13 -0600 (CST)


As I have just said in another post, I get who says what mixed up in
Charles's posts, but I think I have labelled the following correctly.
In any case I want to use the exchange to alter the focus of the thread.

===================================================
Charles:
Another non-socially constructed group characteristic is capability of
having babies. That is very much to be respected and loved. 

Do you doubt that hate of groups occur ? Do you have trouble conceiving of
the opposite of that ? 

Malgosia:
I have trouble conceiving of the opposite as "love".  Less dubious words 
would be decency, or justice, or willingness to engage, or readiness for
solidarity.
===================================================
I have always had trouble with "love" as a political term. I don't quite
know what it means to "love" some collective. I have much less trouble
with "hate": I hate those who embody (voluntaristically or otherwise) the
horrors I see about me. That may be a basis for Malgosia's terms
"decency," "justice," etc. Put another way, I can abstract from historical
actuality a target of hate, and by implication objects of solidarity, but
I cannot so abstract an object of anything I would be willing to call
love. In abstract form love reeks of Christianity and "Love of God"
etcetera. The parts of Paradise Lost that I have most difficulty with are
those in which the word love appears.

Now one can respond in some positive way to the potential one sees in
(say) Van Gogh's *The Potato Eaters* (or a copy of it, since I've never
seen the original), but it somehow would not do to translate that into
"Love of the Peasantry" or "Love of the Oppressed." I bridle at those
expressions.

Carrol



     --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---