Phantom Love: Affective Politics of Love in Toni Morrison's Love

Toni Morrison's novel Love invites us to consider structuring systems in how Black women embody and practice love for each other. What is the affective quality of healing love between Black women? What happens when the social and psychic structuring of this love are implicated in patriarchal, racializing, and classed systems of relating? The paper engages two primary concerns: (1) how the erasure and distortion of Black women's love is made possible when love's backdrop consists of anti-Black, capitalist, and racist systems and histories, and (2) why Black women's reclamation of love for each other is necessary to a project of healing and community building.