On the one hand we have a political notion of love as “love of the same,” which functions as a kind of racism, a kind of nationalism, etc., and it does involve love it seems to me. It’s important to think of it that way. But, it’s horrible. It’s “love gone bad,” let’s say. Whereas, we can think of using that as a caution or a warning: a political notion of love that is not only open to difference—like not only a kind of tolerance, but a love that loves the stranger, a love that functions through the play of differences, rather than the insistence on the same. There’s a second criterion one might add to that. As you can tell … this is something I’m still in the process of figuring out, so one gets partial formulation of this. It seems to me there’s also a horrible form of “love gone bad,” in which love is thought of as a merging into one. We get this in Hollywood romances and in romantic poetry, which is when two become one in love. It seems to me to be a horrible idea—both at the level of personal relationships, but also politically. I think rather love has to be thought of as a proliferation of differences, not the destruction of differences. Not merging into unity, but a constructing of constellations among differences, among social differences.

Michael Hardt | interviewed by Leonard Schwartz (Interval(le)s 2.2-3.1, 2008/2009)

(Source: cipa.ulg.ac.be)