CEP student interns Chanel De Los Santos Morales BC ‘24, Janelle Matias BC ‘24, Sakira Hermawan BC ‘26, and Rayhana Mouaouia BC ‘27 collaboratively developed and facilitated the Radical Love and Pedagogy workshop on February 20th, 2024. Read on to learn more about the event and explore their reflections on the process of creating and co-leading the workshop.

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We came to our idea of creating a Radical Love and Pedagogy workshop as a way to engage adrienne marie brown’s Pleasure Activism and to celebrate Valentine's Day in a way that honors multiple forms of love. We were interested in investigating pedagogy, its forms, and its connection to love and activism. For us, the term radical love is love that encompasses all forms, not just romantic. This form of love aims for the betterment of self and community in the pursuit of activism. Radical love is a practice that helps but does not center the self. Rather, it prioritizes loving in community and changing the way we interpret what love is. Radical love can be a tool to deepen our activism in creating and maintaining community. In the workshop, we decorated journals with stickers while we explored queries about the self, labor, learning, communities of care, and the classroom, drawing from a praxis of love and care. We also offered pizza and soft drinks. Here are our thoughts and reflections on radical love and our event.

During our Radical Love and Pedagogy workshop, a group of undergraduate students and I simmered in the work of attempting to define radical love. My fellow facilitators and I were armed with ideas from a book we read together called Pleasure Activism by adrienne marie brown, which helped guide our discussion to understand love as something greater than romantic or familial ways of loving. We reckoned with the different ways love shows up: a stranger giving flowers on Valentine’s Day, talking to your mother, taking time for yourself, mutual aid, and activism. We quickly realized that love was everywhere, possibly everything, so what was it, and how do we explain it? How do we differentiate love from other endearing emotions like care, respect, and kindness? How do we know when someone offers us love? I found myself unable to articulate the answers to these questions, not because I didn’t know, for instance, whether my mother loved me, but because I knew she did, even if I couldn’t intellectualize or explain her love. I just knew. 

After the discussion, I frequented the thought of love and what it meant. Each time I did, love became more indescribable. It wasn’t just an emotion or verb, but every part of speech. Embracing a radical approach to the way we love expands love into everything we think about, not just as some cliche feeling, but as a way of living and engaging with the world. Practicing radical love is knowing love has no limit and also reckoning with its incomprehensibility.  Maybe I don’t have to intellectualize or think too hard about the meaning of love. And that compartmentalizing what love can be through investigative understanding might just be limiting the real ways I can understand love. In Pleasure Activism, brown writes “we learn to love by loving.” I think love is something I don’t need to understand as long as I know it. 

—Sakira Hermawan BC ‘26

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I find myself moved by the community in many ways. One instance of course was the Radical Love and Pedagogy workshop, which moved me just by the sheer amount of vulnerability we were able to achieve. In academia there are many factors that can lead to loneliness and the competitive culture often found in these institutions can really hinder community. I think events like the radical love workshop bring spaces and opportunities on campus to connect with one another in an academic setting in a way that doesn't create the same pressure and isolation as other conventional spaces, which then allows the community to really shine and connect. At the workshop the discussions were guided but open to share anything that deeply moved you. Often personal anecdotes were shared and the ways in which we view the way we love radically transformed and expanded. Education at the session really felt collaborative and the way in which we learned about one another and developed our ideas showed me what it feels to learn with an emphasis on radical love.

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Radical love is an ever growing concept so there will never be a single definition but the session moved me to think of the concept with a focus on the essential need of loving community in order to love radically. I think I'm always moved by crowdsourcing funds. Social media is a nuanced form of communication with various downsides, but also definite upsides. One of these upsides is the ability to rally the community to directly help the members in the community with their needs. This comes in all forms like rent assistance, food, accidents, medical bills, gender affirmation necessities and more. I think knowing that there will be people to help pick you up when you need it is so essential. This is especially moving in a society like ours which places such an emphasis on individuality, on being your own boss and helping your own self, and to not worry about others so long as you’re doing well. Capitalism along with other systems of oppression, whether patriarchal or racial, thrive in the separation and limitations of community. These systems perpetuate an illusion of the self and prioritize a single identity above a collective, more inclusive one. I think this is why an emphasis on community is so important because it teaches us the importance of feeding and nurturing solidarity over individuality. Resistance and change can be fostered and developed by building collective power, which is unique to the experience of being in community with others. I'm often moved by the ways the community comes together to embody and perpetuate radical love, standing in solidarity with one another and overall improving our lives and the lives of those around us.

—Chanel De Los Santos Morales BC ‘24

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Radical love deeply informs my activism because our society isn't structured to prioritize love in our lives; instead, oppression often makes us feel unworthy of it and that love becomes transactional under these terms. Through activism, I've learned that loving oneself and one's community in defiance of such opposition is a revolutionary act. Radical love is necessary for activism because, within our racial capitalist structure, love is radical. It's a concept grounded in consideration and persists despite past heartaches and disappointments. Radical love transcends nearly everything; it's a gradual process requiring continuous effort because love is indeed work. To be in community with others, one must practice forgiveness and self-improvement to achieve the personal growth that allows us to love others genuinely. Radical love is more than words expressed, it requires actions to follow it. Love is a fundamental human need; everyone desires and deserves it. We were made to need each other, so we cannot ask people to provide the love they need entirely for themselves because it goes against our humanity. We must invest more time and energy into understanding, teaching, and embodying how to radically love as a society. Every individual should have the opportunity to experience and give love in public spaces and receive it with joy and complete happiness without worrying about someone stopping and interrupting that flow of love. We can all catalyze radical love and community building in our own ways and capacities if we trust that people are willing and ready to embrace us.

—Janelle Matias BC ‘24

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When brainstorming for the event with the rest of the student interns, I remember writing on the corner of the board “labor exploitation.” I immediately thought of my parents. I recently turned 21 and I have never seen my parents rest one day in their lives. I remember bringing it up with them while we were quarantined together in 2020, and their answer was always the same: how can you be tired doing something you love? So poetic, so beautiful. But I see my parents’ health deteriorate by the day. I see my mom trying to hide how hard it has become for her to get up every morning. And so I quickly understood that passion does not shield you from being exploited, in fact, it is almost always used – especially as a person of color – to justify your exploitation. Whether it is settling for a lower wage or feeling pressured to take that piece of work home, you will be gaslit (or gaslight yourself) into thinking that this is a part of the experience of doing what you love. We romanticized exploitative labor so much to the point where we allowed it to permeate what we love and what we are passionate about.

During the Radical Love and Pedagogy workshop, we discussed how it is more challenging to set boundaries when engaging in a project we are emotionally invested in, including relationships. One of the attendees brought up the emotional and physical expectations that come with being a sibling or a partner – especially as a woman. The discussion enabled me to voice the nuanced ways in which labor exploitation is both racialized and gendered, all under the guise of love. The safe space of this discussion was pivotal, allowing me to process and articulate my stance on the exploitation of passion. Being surrounded by fellow Barnard students, most of whom identified as women of color, allowed me to be vulnerable and voice grievances I would not have felt comfortable voicing elsewhere. In that moment of vulnerability and affirmation, I experienced another facet of love: to be heard and validated. The Radical Love and Pedagogy discussion reminded me of why I came to Barnard in the first place – to find a community of individuals who will support me as I grow, learn, and unlearn. And to me, that is the epitome of when radical love meets pedagogy.

—Rayhana Mouaouia BC ‘27