towards a transformational political concept of love in critical education
TRANSCRIPT
Towards a Transformational Political Concept of Lovein Critical Education
Maija Lanas • Michalinos Zembylas
Published online: 24 April 2014� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
Abstract This paper makes a case for love as a powerful force for ‘transforming power’
in our educational institutions and everyday lives, and proposes that ‘revolutionary love’
serves as a moral and strategic compass for concrete individual and collective actions in
critical education. The paper begins by reviewing current conceptualizations of love in
critical education and identifies the potential for further theorization of the concept of love.
It continues by theorizing love as a transformational political concept, focusing on six
different perspectives about love; love as an emotion, love as choice, and love as response,
love as relational, love as political, and love as praxis. The paper concludes by discussing
what ‘‘transforming power’’ with a ‘‘loving revolution’’ could mean for educators who
engage with critical education.
Keywords Love � Education � Transformation � Critical education � Emotion �Power
One of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as
opposites—polar opposites—so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial
of love. … What is needed is the realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love
without power is sentimental and anaemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice,
and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. (Martin Luther King 1990,
p. 247).
All the great movements for social justice in our society have strongly emphasized a love ethic. (Hooks 2000,
p. xvii).
M. Lanas (&)University of Oulu, Oulu, Finlande-mail: [email protected]
M. ZembylasOpen University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus
123
Stud Philos Educ (2015) 34:31–44DOI 10.1007/s11217-014-9424-5
Introduction
The politics of emotions has become the subject of increasing exploration in recent years
(Goodwin et al. 2001; Clarke et al. 2006; Staiger et al. 2012). The term ‘affective politics’
(Ahmed 2004) has been used to describe how emotions constitute important political
forces and work to produce particular alignments with some individuals and against others.
In particular, within the field of emotions of protest and social movements (Aminzade and
McAdam 2002; Brown and Pickerill 2009; Flam and King 2005), it is argued that
‘‘emotional responses can move individuals to protest and to contend and, once in motion,
social movements can create, organize, direct and channel collective emotion in particular
directions, at particular targets’’ (Eyerman 2005, p. 42). Anger, for example, has been
defined as an essential political emotion (Lyman 1981), because it motivates individuals to
raise their voices against injustice and thus it can be used to inspire transformation and
social change (Holmes 2004; Lorde 1984; Lyman 2004).
In the past, there have been claims that anger is central to the pursuit of social justice
and transformation in education (Hattam and Zembylas 2010; Zembylas 2007b). While
these claims are valid, at the same time they fail to emphasize that if anger is not translated
into more creative and productive forces, ‘‘we will eventually fall into the same trap as all
past revolutions … and merely replace one tyranny with another’’ (Chabot 2008, p. 824).
The two epigraphs of this paper highlight love as a compelling political force that has
transformative potential in struggles against social injustice and towards social change.
Martin Luther King’s speech conceptualizes power with love as vital to social struggles,
while bell hooks observes that love is an essential component of movements for social
justice. These ideas are captured in Munoz and Duggan’s (2009) term ‘‘feeling revolu-
tionary’’, that is, a
feeling that our current situation is not enough, that something is indeed missing and
we cannot live without it. Feeling revolutionary opens up the space to imagine a
collective escape, an exodus, a ‘going-off script’ together… Practicing educated
hope is the enactment of a critique function. It is not about announcing the ways
things ought to be, but, instead, imagining what things could be. (p. 278).
With some exceptions—in the social sciences and humanities (e.g. Berlant 2011;
Berlant and Hardt 2011; Chabot 2008; Dominguez 2000; Hooks 2000; Nussbaum 2013)
and in critical pedagogy (e.g. Freire 1997; Daniels 2012; Darder 2002, 2003; Keith 2010;
Liston 2000; Liston and Garrison 2004)—love has been either reduced to personal relations
or altogether overlooked (Liston and Garrison 2004; Warren and Ronis 2011). The lack of
theorizing love as a political emotion may have to do with how love is considered to be a
feminized and ‘soft’ topic, associated with private spaces and feelings (Hardt and Negri
2004; Morrison et al. 2012). Our intention to theorize love as a transformative and revo-
lutionary force is not based on a wishful or romanticized approach to social conflicts or
injustices but rather on the social reality that the means we use are part and parcel of what
is being produced: when we build on anger, we get anger; when we build on love, love is
what we get: ‘‘While we can never be certain about the whole truth or ultimate ends, we
can make sure that the actual means we use to contribute to social justice are as moral, non-
violent, and loving as possible’’ (Chabot 2008, 817).
With this paper, we join those critical theorists and critical pedagogues who see love as
a powerful transformative force and that, contrary to popular discourses, ‘‘love and rev-
olution are not opposing forces but two sides of the same coin’’ (Chabot 2008, 814). Love
has the capacity to be a magnet that ‘‘could cluster around it a genuinely realistic and
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visionary set of transformations’’ (Berlant 2011, p. 684). Taking our lead from Chabot, our
grounding assumption is that: ‘‘if we wish to contribute to a loving revolution, we need to
focus on the long-term process of transforming power in our institutions and everyday
lives, not primarily on taking power and overthrowing the current government in the short
run’’ (Chabot 2008, 824, authors’ emphasis). Thereby, in this paper, we propose that
‘revolutionary love’ serves as a moral and strategic compass for concrete individual and
collective actions towards transformation (Chabot 2008, 818)—in our case, the focus of
our interest is critical education. We want, therefore, to make a contribution to theorizing
love as a transformational political concept in critical education—a concept that can
become a critical lens for disrupting the reigning social order, ‘‘not in a violent or harmful
fashion, but with creative and caring energies’’ (Liston and Garrison 2004, p. 4).
The paper is divided into four parts. The first part reviews briefly current conceptual-
izations of love in critical education and identifies the potential for further theorization of
the concept of love. The next two parts of the paper define love and theorize our under-
standing of love as a transformational political concept, focusing on six different per-
spectives about love. In particular, the second part focuses on love as an emotion, love as
choice, and love as response, while the third part theorizes love as relational, love as
political, and love as praxis. The last part of the paper discusses what ‘‘transforming
power’’ with a ‘‘loving revolution’’ could mean for educators who engage with critical
education. The conceptualization of love as a transformational concept serves two
important purposes in scholarly conversations of critical education: first, it enables us to re-
think the connections between love, education and transformation. Second, it challenges
the boundaries between private and public, between personal and social, and draws con-
nections between the emotional and the political in non-binary ways. These two aspects of
conceptualizing love as a transformational concept can help delineate the purpose and
direction of educational processes and pedagogical practices in ways that defy tendencies
toward the educational measurement culture.
Love and Critical Education
In this paper we focus on discussing love in the context of formal education—in which
discussions of love have been notably absent or they have failed to recognize the trans-
formative power of love as a social and political project. Thus, we speak of love as a
‘revolutionary feeling’ or what Chabot (2008) calls ‘revolutionary love’, aiming to make a
contribution along two distinct directions. First, we join the project of critical education,
wishing to contribute to the need for an ongoing renewal of this intellectual project and its
manifestation in critical pedagogies or social justice pedagogies. Second, bringing love
into market-driven education in the age of measurement and competition can make a
valuable intervention to the question of purpose in education (Biesta 2009) by adding a
revolutionary dimension that is often underestimated or dismissed in discussions of what
constitutes good education.
Biesta (2009) makes a helpful distinction between three functions of education: qual-
ification, socialization and subjectification. Qualification refers to providing individuals
with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to ‘do something’ (e.g. be prepared to do a
particular job or profession). Socialization has to do with the ways in which individuals
become members of particular social, cultural and political ‘orders’. Finally, subjectifi-
cation is understood as the opposite of socialization, as Biesta explains, in that it refers to
the ways in which individuals remain independent from such orders. Biesta argues that any
Towards a Transformational Political Concept 33
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discussion about what constitutes good education should acknowledge these different
functions of education and the different potential purposes of education.
The point of departure for this paper is that the potential purposes of ‘critical education’
can be substantially enriched, if more attention is paid to love, particularly its socialization
and subjectification functions. Advocates of critical education assert that the purposes of
education should be directed toward social transformation that embraces social justice,
equality and solidarity. Critical educators draw from many theoretical streams (Darder
et al. 2003) but they have been influenced greatly by the work of Freire (e.g. 1970, 1994,
1997, 1998, 2001, 2004). Throughout his writings, Freire asserted repeatedly the impor-
tance of the ethics of love in rethinking our pedagogical practices to expose and undo
taken-for-granted assumptions that perpetuate domination and social injustice. His theory
of education incorporated an implicit theory of love which emphasized that education was
an act of love, that educators must risk acts of love, and that love was necessary for
establishing a better world (Schoder 2011).
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire wrote about the primacy of love in his educational
vision: ‘‘From these pages I hope at least the following will endure: my trust in the people,
and my faith in men and in the creation of a world in which it will be easier to love’’ (1970,
p. 24). According to Freire, education becomes critical when the teacher ‘‘stops making
pious, sentimental and individualistic gestures and risks an act of love. True solidarity is
found only in the plenitude of this act of love’’ (ibid., p. 35). In Teachers as Cultural
Workers, he wrote: ‘‘It is impossible to teach without the courage to try a thousand times
before giving up. In short, it is impossible to teach without a forged, invented, and well-
thought-out capacity to love’’ (1998, p. 3), but ‘‘Loving is not enough; one must know how
to love’’ (ibid., p. 126). In Pedagogy of Hope (1994), he asserted that ‘‘it is indeed
necessary… that this love be an ‘armed love’ the fighting love of those convinced of the
right and the duty to fight, to denounce, and to announce’’ (p. 151).
Love, for Freire, is an act of bravery, courage, faith, hope, humility, patience, respect,
trust and commitment, and a necessary precondition for dialogue and freedom (Schoder
2011); he used these terms, explains Schoder, throughout his works in conjunction with
love and educational practices. Altogether, Freire’s concept of love has a ‘radical’ meaning
in the sense that it avoids sentimentalisms and psychologisms (Roberts 2008), conceiving
love as an act of freedom that prepares the ground for other actions leading to liberation
and social justice. As McLaren writes: ‘‘Love, for Freire, always stipulates a political
project, since the love for humankind that remains disconnected from liberating politics
does a profound disservice to its object’’ (2000, p. 171).
Yet, as Schoder (2011) argues, Freire did not offer a definition of love, nor did he
expound on what it means to ‘‘know how to love’’ or ‘‘teach with love’’, and thus there is
much space for developing a transformational political concept of love in critical educa-
tion. A number of scholars (e.g. Daniels 2012; Darder 2002, 2003; Liston and Garrison
2004; Keith 2010; Liston 2000, 2008) have attempted in recent years to expand the concept
of love as central to the transformative experience of education, arguing that love can
strongly support our critical intent to act against unjust social and educational structures.
For example, Darder (2002, 2003) takes on the issue of ‘pedagogy of love’, building on
Freire’s writings to emphasize the transformative power of love in critical pedagogy. In
particular, Darder expands on Freire’s notion of ‘armed love’ writing that it is ‘‘a love that
could be lively, forceful, and inspiring, while at the same time, critical, challenging and
insistent’’ (2002, p. 497). Daniels (2012) builds on the concept of love by including ‘‘a
strong and deep commitment to protecting, caring for, and empowering students in the face
of social barriers and oppressions that surface in their everyday lives, as well as a political
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passion to inspire and support marginalized youth’’ (p. 10). Daniels also uses the term
‘armed love’ referring to ‘‘a strongly critical, political and activist stance that involves a
deep social awareness of injustice, and the core commitment to changing the lives of
historically marginalized students through transformative education’’ (ibid.).
Furthermore, Liston (2000, p. 82) speaks about what he calls ‘‘transformative, enlarged
love’’ and which he separates from ‘‘scorned, romantic love’’. An enlarged, transformative
love is one way to come to terms with despair, says Liston, the despair that the promises of
education to transform the world and ourselves ‘‘have become tired and devalued prom-
issory notes’’ (p. 81). An enlarged love, then, might be a way ‘‘to live with and perhaps
transform the night in our days; to inform the quiet heroism that teaching must become’’ (p.
83). Liston, like Freire, also talks about the risks of enlarged love, especially ‘‘in settings
that disparage and scorn these loves’’ (p. 93). He also points out that love is an exercise of
justice and it makes us pay attention to the concerns of others (see also Liston and Garrison
2004). ‘Attentive love’, as he calls it (Liston 2000), plays an important role in critical
pedagogy’s attempts ‘‘to enable students and teacher to understand and transform unjust
force in our world’’ (p. 388). Attentive love has three elements, according to Liston: it
helps students and teachers discern the good within and beyond; it reduces the noise of the
self; and it discerns students clearly and justly. Finally, Keith (2010) also makes an attempt
to get beyond ‘‘sentimental and anaemic love’’ (Martin Luther King’s expression) from a
pedagogy of cordial relations to a pedagogy of difference in anti-oppressive education;
Keith’s study highlights how teacher’s awareness of hidden emotions are translated into a
pedagogy which involves Self-Other transformation.
All in all, previous literature in critical education identifies the relationship between
love and critical pedagogy and makes an attempt to describe what ‘armed love’ or
‘transformative, enlarged love’ means for transformative education. However, a deeper
theorization of the meaning of ‘revolutionary love’ has not been particularly undertaken in
much of this literature. Generally, emotion and affect have not been underscored or sub-
stantially pursued in critical pedagogy (Jansen 2009; Liston 2000; Seibel Trainor 2002;
Zembylas 2013). This paper contributes to filling that gap, suggesting that theorizing
revolutionary love expands the purposes and functions of critical education.
Defining Love
First, we want to start by defining—or at least, sketching our understanding of—what love
is in order to distinguish it from what it is not. Hooks (2000, 11) states that many are
‘‘comfortable with the notion that love can mean anything to anybody precisely because
when we define it with precision and clarity it brings us face to face with our lacks’’.
According to Hooks (2000, p. 11) far too many people in our culture do not know what
love is and cling to a notion of love that either makes abuse acceptable or at least makes it
seem that whatever has happened (or is happening) was not that bad. Importantly, Hooks
(2000, 40) argues that in contrast to a commonly accepted assumption in patriarchal
culture, love cannot be present in a situation where one group or individual dominates
another. Abuse and love cannot coexist, she says, since abuse and neglect negate love, and
without justice there can be no love (Hooks 2000, 6, 22, 30).
While, for the concept to be useful we must define it in some way, static definitions tend
to lead to classifications which may exclude more possibilities that they bring. In this paper
we do not offer static definitions for love, but we offer an approach to love in which love is
seen as relational, political and transformative. Instead of classifying particular social ties
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as either loving or not loving, we find it more useful to specify what makes them more or
less loving (Chabot 2008, 810). In order to do so, we look at love from six interrelated
perspectives. These perspectives are not meant to represent different ‘parts’ of love, nor are
they meant to provide a complete account of love. Rather, the different perspectives offer
six different ways of looking at love and suggest tools for thinking about love that can be
valuable when we re-consider love in the context of critical education; namely, for thinking
about questions such as, how love comes into being, what is its relation to our Selves and to
our Others, what are its limits and transformative possibilities, and eventually what love
does. Eventually, these different perspectives of love create openings to specify the
potential socialization and subjectification functions of critical education. The six per-
spectives are: love as an emotion, love as choice, love as response, love as relational, love
as political, and love as praxis. The first three perspectives are analyzed in this section—
they construct our foundational understanding of how love comes into being and set some
of its limits—while the latter three are discussed in the next section—they constitute our
understanding of love as revolutionary, and as a transformational political concept.
Love as an Emotion
First, love is commonly seen as an emotion. Love, like any emotion, is not just ‘‘there’’, but
it is embodied and performative (Ahmed 2004; Thien 2005, Zembylas 2007b). In other
words, love, like any emotion does not simply ‘exist’; it is brought into existence by
‘doing’ it, by performing it. Although love is an emotion, it is not necessarily a feeling
(Berlant 2011), and affection is not necessary for an active love (Hinsdale 2012, p. 43). As
an emotion, love is not ‘pure’: it is not clean of other emotions nor is it purely ethical.
For example, love entails a certain level of non-sovereignty which can be felt as a
danger since non-sovereignty makes us vulnerable, exposed (Butler 2011). Engaging with
love entails a risk: if I invest my Self, if I respond in loving ways to the other, do loving
acts, and if the other does not respond in a loving way, I hurt. Anderson (2002) states that
‘‘we risk ourselves for those we love’’. To rephrase: when we engage with love, we risk our
Selves: the relational Self we receive at a particular relationship may be one that we do not
want. It may hurt. Depending on the specific socio-political-historical-cultural-spatial
contexts, this risk always concerns some individuals or groups more than others.
Love is not a safe-haven, the choosing of which would protect us from the evil we do
not want to face. It does not alleviate suffering. It must not be associated with denying or
repressing other emotional responses to alienation like fear, shame, anger, hatred, or
despair. Rather than viewing love as a way to avoid or overcome despair, it is a way to
respond to it (Chabot 2008, p. 816). When we choose to love we choose to move against
fear, against alienation and separation (Hooks 2000, p. 93).
Love as Choice
Building on the idea of risk, it can also be argued that love is not something which is
handed to us from the outside nor is it something that exists inherently inside us. It is a
choice we make. Love is an attitude that we willingly cultivate toward others (Oliver
2001). We do not have to love. We choose to love (Hooks 2000, 4–5). We can choose to
love or we can choose not to love, but unless we choose to love, love does not exist. And
even when we choose to love, it is a decision that must be constantly reaffirmed (Oliver
2001, 220- 221). Love is not something we choose once and for all but something that
requires a re-choosing every time we direct a response to the surroundings. It is a
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relationship that is not static and given, but it is constituted moment to moment by the
responses we give.
Love as Response
Seeing love as a response to Others links to the relational perspective of Self. We ‘come
into being’ as subjects each moment as we respond to the world. This means that our selves
are profoundly connected to rather than separated from one another. Our ‘‘own subjectivity
depends on how we respond to others’’ (Hinsdale 2012, 38). Whether we respond or not is
not a choice, it is not voluntary, but it is engrained in existence itself. When responding we
may use words, we may stay silent or turn away, but whatever we do, it constitutes a
response to the given situation (Holquist 1990, 48). This responding or ‘coming into being’
is not passive, nor entirely under our control—it is limited by the context in which we
respond and the utterances to which we respond. Nevertheless, we carry the responsibility
of our responses. We do not choose whether we respond or not but we do have a choice in
how we respond (Lanas 2011). In choosing how to respond, we are choosing who we are in
any moment (Hinsdale 2012, 42).
Furthermore, and in this paper perhaps even more significantly, as we respond to others
in various contexts, we also limit and open up possible subjectivities and possible selves
for those others. In other words, the possible selves of others are limited and opened up by
the responses we choose to give. We have an ethical responsibility to respond in a way that
opens up rather than closes off the possibilities of response by others (Oliver 2001, 18).
Acknowledging this ethical responsibility constitutes a loving response. When seen as a
chosen response in this way, love is not understood as an emotion reserved to those close to
us or as an abstract and ahistorical metaphor pursuing a false connection, but ‘‘the ethical
agency that motivates a move toward others, across differences (Hinsdale 2012, 39, Oliver
2001).
Love as Relational, Political and Praxis
Love as Relational
Various authors emphasize that love is essentially relational. Lauren Berlant (2011, 684)
speaks of love as a ‘‘rhythm of convergence we call love’’, and Morrison, Johnston and
Longhurst (2012, 10) speak of it as ‘‘circulating energy’’. Feminist thinkers in particular
(e.g. Jackson, 1993; Irigaray and Martin 1996, Sedwick 1999) discuss how love is a
product of social and gendered relations and thus they theorize love as a set of discursive
practices, relational exchanges and social rules that shape subjectivities and relationships.
What these authors share is a perspective according to which love should not be seen as a
subjective experience or a personal ambition, but as ‘loving dialogue and relationships with
other people, other communities, other parts of the world, and other living creatures’
(Chabot 2008, 820).
Love as relational means that it transcends the Self. Chabot (2008, 809) distinguishes
five types of human relationships only one of which entails love: (1) self against others
(competition), (2) self without others (isolation), (3) self for others (charity), (4) self with
others (coordination) and finally, (5) self with self (love). Love, as a self–self relationship
entails a choice to connect—to find a Self in the other (Hooks 2000, 93). At least three
facets seem necessary for loving connections, according to Liston (2000): a diminished
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sense of self, an attentive gaze toward the situation and the other, and a presumption that
‘‘good’’ exists and is the object of love. In this way, love is always about violating your
own attachment to your intentionality, without being anti-intentional (Berlant in Davis and
Sarlin 2008). Love as a concept for the possibility of the social is that love always means
non-sovereignty (ibid.). The transformational power of love arises precisely from the fact
that it breaks the I (Nancy 2003).
Love as a relation means also that it is not something that can be treated as given,
essential and buried deep within us, but ‘manifests differently in different spaces and
places’ (Morrison et al. 2012, 8). It is something potentially transformational that takes
place between individuals and socio-material surroundings, within specific socio-political-
historical-cultural-spatial contexts. It can only exist within these specific material and
discursive spaces (Morrison et al. 2012, 8).
Love as Political
Love, like any emotion, is political. It is an embodied practice which reflects societal
power relations. Emotions are, to some extent, products of previous experiences, influ-
enced by social, historical, and cultural contexts (Zembylas 2007a). Like habitus (Bourdieu
1984), emotions are embodied history internalized as second nature (Zembylas 2007a).
Emotions are not only shared by groups of individuals, but also significant in the formation
and maintenance of political and social identities, and in collective behavior. Love, then, is
crucial to how individuals become aligned with collectives through their identifications
(Ahmed 2004). Love, argues Ahmed, moves us ‘towards’ something and sticks people
together; in the same manner, if love is seen as an attachment for one’s own kind, it may
lead to hatred for others. Thereby it is crucial to acknowledge love as political while still
striving towards a conceptualization that is not immediately associated with attachment
and to a forming of an ‘us’.
As Ahmed continues: ‘‘A politics of love is necessary in the sense that how one loves
matters; it has effects on the texture of everyday life and one the intimate ‘withness’ of
social relations’’ (2004, p. 140). Love is always connected to power. It gets transferred onto
some groups and denied from others. Who can be loved, by whom and in which ways is a
political question to the core. Some forms of love are seen as natural and obvious whereas
other forms are seen as unnatural or punishable. While love is a choice that we make, our
possibilities at how we make this choice are influenced by our social and political sur-
roundings, which may either respond to us in loving way or not. In different surroundings
the selection of loving responses from which to choose the most fitting one is wider for
some than it is for others. Similarly, the loving utterances directed our way are more
plentiful for some than for others in different surroundings. Love is a choice but the
conditions for making this choice are not fair.
A politics of love entails the possibility of love as a site for collective becoming (Berlant
and Hardt, 2011). Hardt says that ‘‘love designates a transformative, collective power of
politics’’ (p. 8), while Berlant emphasizes that she often talks ‘‘about love as one of the few
places where people actually admit they want to become different’’ (ibid.). In their writ-
ings, both thinkers theorize love as a transformational political concept. Hardt argues
explicitly that, ‘‘We need a more generous and more unrestrained conception of love… as a
political concept… as the basis for our political projects in common and the construction of
a new society’’ (Hardt and Negri 2004, pp. 351, 352). Also, Berlant (2011) writes that ‘‘a
properly transformational political concept’’ (p. 690) of love, as she calls it, would entail an
investment in creating better relationalities for social change and the courage and creativity
38 M. Lanas, M. Zembylas
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about how to make resources for living available to those who need them; also, ‘‘a properly
transformational political concept would open spaces for really dealing with the discomfort
of radical contingency that a genuine attachment—like any attachment—would demand’’
(ibid.).
Love as Praxis
Finally, love is as love does. It is both an intention and an action (Hooks 2000, pp. 4–5;
Nash 2013; Oliver 2001). Earlier, we have argued that love is a relationship that is con-
stituted by responses, and that these responses are voluntary acts in the relationship that we
choose over and over again. Bell hooks advocates this approach to love: ‘‘to begin by
always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling is one way in which anyone using
the word in this manner automatically assumes accountability and responsibility’’ (Hooks
2000, 13).
Chabot (2008, p. 813) names some of the acts that characterize love: voluntary acts of
care, responsibility, respect, knowledge. Care refers to the emotional and practical concern
towards the other (ibid). Responsibility, in turn, implies the ability and willingness to
respond to the others’ needs (ibid.). Whether we want it or not, we have responsibility for
the relationship and for the effect of our responses on the possible selves of the other.
Respect means reaching out and relating to other people (ibid.). Respecting the other
requires not closing off selves that they want. Thereby, respect does not exist for example
in a relationship in which one is oppressed. Finally, in order to do loving acts in any
specific surroundings we must have knowledge of ourselves, of the other and also of the
socio-political-historical-cultural-spatial contexts and the particular sensitivities they
require.
At the same time, love cannot be contained to specific acts. For example, care is a
dimension of love, but simply giving care does not mean that we are loving (Hooks 2000,
p. 22). Love is a relation and a response, which means that what constitute ‘loving acts’
depends on the other and the context. It requires effort. This is not meant as a normative
statement arguing for the value of effort in for love—no, it is a statement saying that there
is no love without effort. There may be relationships in which it is easier to do loving acts,
but in any relationship it takes effort to be in tune with the responses of the other and of
oneself:
Revolutionary love requires consistent effort by everyone involved, and it does not
become meaningful until we leave our comfort zone and exert ourselves for other
people. Through such effort, we develop an orientation toward fellow human beings
and our social worlds that is based on giving rather than just receiving. (Chabot 2008,
p. 812)
Thereby, loving acts are characterized by the will to give. Giving is a productive act that
enhances the joy, insight, and ability of the giver as well as the receiver (Chabot 2008,
p. 812). Contrary to common misconceptions, giving does not refer to self-deprivation,
sacrifice, or ‘giving up’ something (Fromm 1956, pp. 18–9). Instead, by giving something
of ourselves—our understanding, knowledge, possession, experiences, humor, sadness, and
so forth—without focusing on what we receive in return, we enrich the other person. And
by increasing the other person’s sense of vitality, we allow her or him to become a giver as
well, thereby expanding the power of both (Chabot 2008, p. 812).
All in all, then, love is praxis, because it transforms and transports, which makes studies
of love as relational and political so deserving of more attention in critical education. As
Towards a Transformational Political Concept 39
123
Jean-Luc Nancy writes in a poetic and rather metaphorical manner about love as ontology
(see also Irigaray and Martin 1996):
As soon as there is love, the slightest act of love, the slightest spark, there is this
ontological fissure that cuts across and that disconnects the elements of the subject-
proper—the fibers of its heart. One hour of love is enough, one kiss alone, provided
that it is out of love—and can there in truth be any other kind? (2003, p. 261)
The empowering implications of the transformative power of love for critical education, as
discussed in the six perspectives so far, are at the center of our discussion in the remaining
paper.
Implications for Critical Education
Formal education has a crucial role in whether individuals and societies engage with love
or not. In the beginning of the paper we asked what ‘‘transforming power’’ with a ‘‘loving
revolution’’ could mean for educators who engage with critical education. We offer three
answers; these answers have important implications in how we can rethink transformative
love in relation to the socialization and subjectification functions of critical education.
Firstly, transformative love means understanding why and how love thrives more in
some social contexts than in others. This is a question deeply connected to how we see the
function of education. For example, the apparent lack of the concept of love in national and
international educational policies is a value statement, rooted in education based on the
demands of the market economy characterized by concepts such as measurement, com-
petition, accountability and efficacy (e.g. see Ball 2003; Biesta 2009; McLaren 2000). The
elevation of these concepts into high values is linked to specific power interests while other
values, such as pursuit for equality and social justice, become marginalized. Explicitly
discussing love in education means asking difficult questions about the values promoted by
formal education and, ultimately, the role of formal education. It brings us to fundamental
questions such as, should formal education focus on responding to the current trends in
societies, or should it root itself to values that are not directly derived from current trends?
Critical education suggests the latter: education should provide a compass. In this paper we
suggest that theorizing the concept of love as revolutionary and transformative can make
an important contribution towards this direction; in fact, the idea of transformative love
could be such a value.
Furthermore, it is important to explore how emotions such as anger are implicated in not
only the governmentality processes that constitute education, but also in the everyday
practices, discourses and grassroot -level encounters. The power of emotion in schools
does not only come from the exercise of ‘power-over’ in face-to-face relations (see Heaney
2011). Rather, the emotional force of school practices is formed by the capacity for
‘power-to’, that is, the capability of technologies of power to foster certain emotional
cultures as well as dispositions to act. Our discussion of revolutionary love in this paper
urges critical educators to think that if we wish to contribute to transformation, we need to
reconsider the long-term process of transforming power in our institutions and everyday
lives (Chabot 2008).
Secondly, ‘‘transforming power’’ with a ‘‘loving revolution’’ means moving away from
the cycle of indignation upheld by dominant anger discourses. Any successful transfor-
mation towards a loving society is not one held up by anger but by love. Hattam and
Zembylas (2010) have argued that dominant anger discourses perpetuate the cycle of
40 M. Lanas, M. Zembylas
123
indignation. In their paper, Hattam and Zembylas (2010, pp. 28–29) question the role of
anger as integral to the dominant model of political activity, often characterized in terms of
the sequence: suffering-anger-revolt. The authors make three main points about anger and
societal transformation. Firstly, they state that angry claims and denials among conflicting
communities are historically constituted, not just inherently ‘there’. Second, they argue that
communities of conflict are often stuck in anger through a fusion of reification with re-
iteration and that this re-iteration of angry claims and denials between communities in
conflict gradually reifies anger as something natural to the prevailing affective economy of
conflict. Third, they argue that to perceive anger as naturalized is to assume that there is no
way out of it. In this way, the cycle of indignation may be perpetuated also through
education. Our intervention in this paper builds on these points but emphasizes in particular
that critical education cannot go too far, if it remains stuck in anger, even if angry feelings
are aligned with noble purposes (i.e. social justice). Rather, ‘good’ critical education has to
move beyond anger and explore the potential of revolutionary feelings of love in educa-
tional practices and students’ learning experiences. Such perspectives re-define and enrich
the purposes of critical education in both strategic and meaningful ways.
Thirdly, ‘‘transforming power’’ with a ‘‘loving revolution’’ offers the potential to
develop practices of love in formal education. Formal education as a fundamental edu-
cational institution has great (albeit under theorized and understudied) power in educating
loving members of a society. Hooks (2000) makes a strong argument that currently our
society has no love. Many children have never felt love and do not know how to exert it
towards others. This concern is shared by many theorists. Sharon Todd (2003) asks how we
go about intentionally loving another. The various perspectives discussed in this paper
suggest that the answer to Todd’s question is as simple as it is complex: we intentionally
love one another simply by developing the intention to love. Although it is common to
falsely assume that we will know how to love instinctively (Hooks 2000, xxviii), we do
not. We need to teach ourselves:
To use a limited metaphor, if you think about love as muscles, they require a kind of
training and increase with use. Love as a social muscle has to involve a kind of
askesis, a kind of training in order to increase its power, but this has to be done in
cooperation with many. (Hardt in Davis and Sarlin 2008)
In order to expand our capacity for love we must change our practical ways of life
(Chabot 2008, pp. 813). In terms of the socialization and subjectification functions of
education, this idea implies four important practices. Firstly, we need to develop discipline
in our reflections and actions concerning loving relationships. According to Chabot (2008),
in contemporary capitalist societies we are only disciplined at work and spend our free time
with activities that require barely any self-discipline. Secondly, we need to develop our
capacity for concentration by slowing down and giving time and space to build meaningful
ties. Thirdly, we need to develop patience, which implies rejecting our current obsession
with immediate results and personal gratification. Finally, we need to make it our primary
concern to develop loving ties.
What each of these four could mean in practice depends on the specific context. For
example, developing discipline in our reflections and actions could mean teaching about
the nuances of transformational love in schools: what kinds of personal relationships are
loving? What should we expect from ourselves in relation to other, and what should we
expect from others, when it comes to transformational love? In critical education in
conflicted societies, for instance, disciplined emphasis could be placed on learning to
forgive (the self and others) (see Zembylas 2012). Developing our capacity for
Towards a Transformational Political Concept 41
123
concentration, in turn, may require a fundamental shift from instrumentalist efficiency -
oriented and progress-oriented educational goals towards seeing education as means of
asking what progress means in different contexts and how it relates to the values by which
we wish to lead our lives (Lanas et al. 2013, 295). Developing patience may similarly
imply changes in educational systems which are increasingly focused on measurable
learning and results. Bringing love into education requires developing educational systems
so that they are capable of navigating also difficult emotions such as hatred, anger, fear and
despair (Chabot 2008). Finally, developing concern to develop loving ties could mean, for
example, analyzing the presentation of love in our education system with the same passion
as learning results are analysed. Which of our practices contribute to a loving and caring
education and society, which do not? Such analysis could reveal, for example, that stan-
dard-oriented education may lead to pushing some individuals and groups to drop out of
schools (so that they will not stain the school’s results) and, as such contribute to further
social exclusion instead of love and care.
Conclusion
Our paper has attempted to sketch a transformational political concept of love for edu-
cation. For this purpose we have proposed extending Chabot’s (2008) concept of revolu-
tionary love as a key component of critical education. Revolutionary love strengthens the
pursuit of transformation through critical education because the concept of love acts ‘‘as a
doing, a call for a labor of the self, an appeal for transcending the self, a strategy for
remaking the public sphere, a plea to unleash the radical imagination’’ (Nash 2013, p. 19).
The idea of revolutionary love can help educators to delineate further the socialization and
subjectification functions of critical education in ways that transform the purposes of
education in an age of measurement (see Biesta 2009).
Importantly, revolutionary love does not deny or repress other emotional responses such
as fear, shame, hatred, despair and anger (Chabot 2008), but rather encourages critical
educators ‘‘to confront oppressive circumstances and painful experience directly, as long as
we translate potentially destructive emotions into constructive dispositions and behavior’’
(ibid., p. 816). While we recognize that dichotomies such as emotions love/anger may be
artificial (Bell and Binnie 2000, p. 38), it makes a difference in the name of which we
speak. Needless to say, to turn anger into revolutionary love is not an easy task, but a
patient, knowledgeable and disciplined effort that intentionally prioritizes revolutionary
love as a way of responding, rather than avoiding or overcoming, emotions of fear, shame,
hatred, despair and anger. Choosing to speak about love makes love especially significant
for transformation; this choice suspends the attachment to present emotional cultures and
practices, recognizing that changing the grammar of our politics will not save the day, but
it will create a different social imaginary. On the other hand, the claim to be acting in or
through love is not unproblematic and can advance ideologies and practices that may fall
into the trap of sentimental or scorned love. It is for this purpose that Ahmed (2004) asks:
‘‘[…] who has the right to declare themselves as acting out of love? What does it mean to
stand for love by standing alongside some others and against other others?’’ (p. 122). We
suggest grounding ourselves to a revolutionary idea of love instead of an idea of anger and
simple opposition. If we are to further develop the concept of revolutionary love in critical
education, the issue of how love transforms teachers’ and students’ lives and how to
distinguish it from other forms of love that do not do the same deserves much more
attention in our educational theorizing.
42 M. Lanas, M. Zembylas
123
Acknowledgments This article was partly funded by the Academy of Finland (264370).
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