Love as Emotion and Social Practice: A Feminist Perspective
Love as Emotion and Social Practice: A Feminist Perspective

Summary/Abstract: I argue that love is both an emotion and a social practice. First, I observe that erotic or romantic love is often thought to be a passive, overwhelming, physically intense, a-rational, andindividual experience. In opposition to these assumptions, I sketch a view of emotions that revealstheir rational, willful, and social nature. Seen in this way, the emotion of love is something that can be re-invented through attention to social norms and institutions. Next, I advance the idea that emotions can be social practices. How we think about love, the norms for love, and our ideas aboutlove, including popular ideas about love as an emotion, constitute the social practice of love.Looking at the contemporary American context, I argue that the social practice of love provides a bolster for patriarchy. Because romantic love is closely linked to marriage, it participates in limiting women’s choices about family, career, and civic and political engagement. Thepreeminent place of romantic love in women’s lives diverts women’s attention from other formsof love, including female friendship and love of meaningful work. Discourses of love, which emphasize love as an overwhelming emotion beyond our control, function to foreclose feminist scrutiny of patriarchal practices. Without rejecting the positive nature of erotic love, I recommend a feminist reinvention of the practice of love. My argument draws upon varied resources from philosophy and cultural studies.

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