On Aesthetics of Expansive Love and the Histories of the Heart
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Love has long been a concept dominated, in identity, by romance and sexuality though in our day to day lives and upbringings Love has so many more faces. Love exists in our relationships with Friends, Family, in our positions in Community, and even in small interactions with strangers we can find Love. This Love is more reflective of a social structure that’s a little different from the one here in the West. Is there anything wrong with Love being closely tied to Romance? I wouldn’t say that. But there are societal implications with Love being dominated by that identity.
How we love each other interpersonally is closely linked to how we structure our societies because it determines how we structure our families, and the roles we play in each other’s lives.
The framework of romantic love being the dominant expression of love, especially, in our internationalist, hyper connected society, is that it doesn’t reflect the structure many people outside the Western world are historically accustomed to, even though more and more of the world is becoming exposed to Western hegemony. It encourages a specifically western view on intimacy based in ownership wrapped in faux egalitarian decor. It ignores intimacy and the erotic as an energy to be nurtured, in lieu of the state being what should be serviced to keep a family connected. It requires isolation from kin to deepen it’s strength, while also leaning into patriarchy as dogma to determine who has agency and hierarchy in relationships.
These precepts conflict dramatically with many indigenous ways of being.
Ie. The Dagara people and the concept of the Big Family as explained by Sobonfu Some in The Spirit of Intimacy. Where not only are Children encouraged to see extended family, like cousins and uncles, as siblings and parents but also, married couples seeing their union as a union of villages, and they are encouraged to get closer to each other’s families and build from within rather than move away and build afar.
Something as intimate as romance affects larger society in both the Western and Dagara ways of being intimate with one another. One detaches us from our family, and extended family to deepen a connection with a partner, the other deepens our connections with the family and community itself as well as our partner by keeping the relationship in the village and open to support (and criticism) by the village.
With our Western sense of love being dominated by romance itself, it has also been dominated by the aesthetics of romance. The Heart is almost hegemonic in it’s stake in Love as an identity and it is synonymous with romantic love. Valentine’s Day is one of the most popular holidays of the year and it celebrates almost strictly this love. It alienates platonic and familial love, and camaraderie.
The red heart has dominated the identity of love for centuries but it has only reflected Western expressions of love as an identity.
I explored the history of the heart as a symbol of love, and love a generator of capital to discuss a few things:
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Does the objectification of love as a concept lead us to commodifying romance itself in our relationships and in society?
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In what ways can expansive love reorganize larger social structures, if they are reflective of how the family is structured?
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When indigenous expressions of love are centered, what symbol(s) resonate as accurate depictions of that expanded interconnectivity and power?
Reference Text: ‘Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry’ edited by Camille T. Dungy