Love, Narratives, Politics: Encounters between Hannah Arendt and Rosa Luxemburg

Abstract

In this article I explore relationships between love and politics by looking into Rosa Luxemburg's letters to her lover and comrade Leo Jogiches. My discussion is framed within Hannah Arendt's conceptualization of love as a manifestation of existence through the Augustinian journey of memory and as an existential force binding together the three faculties of the mind in her philosophical analysis: thinking, willing and judging. What I argue is that letters are crucial in enacting plurality and communication, and that Luxemburg's letters to her lover and comrade intensify rather than obscure the force of the political in opening up radical futures.