How to Love in Easy Steps: Heteronormativity, Queer Love, and Foucault's Counter-Conduct

• Main Authors: Carpiso, Hannah Jane S., Albano, Ninotchka Mumtaj B.
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/budhi/vol26/iss1/4; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/budhi/article/1528/viewcontent/Budhi_2026.1_204_20Article_20__20Carpiso_2C_20et_20al..pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Love is one of the most pervasive human experiences, yet its definition remains elusive to this day. Attempts to describe love have led to the institutionalization and privileging of heterosexual identities, relationships, and ways of loving. Michael Warner refers to this phenomenon as “heteronormativity,” which rigidifies subjectivities and relationalities into fixed, heterosexist structures. However, queer love unfolds in ways different from this relational structure. It invents and re-invents love, relationalities, and subjectivities by moving beyond the dichotomies of heteronormativity. The inventive characteristic of queer love is found in what is known as the “gay mode of life,” an instance of Michel Foucault’s “counter-conduct.” Arnold Davidson calls this the “gay counter-conduct" that is said to create new relationships, cultures, choices, and modes of being that have been unknown in a heteronormative culture. Gay counter-conduct resists limitations on being and behaving; it is a homosexual strife that is also a struggle against a certain kind of conduct. David Halperin connects gay counter-conduct to queer love by describing it as a kind of love that allows unusual, inexplicable, and subversive ways of loving. This paper aims to answer the question, “Does queer love function as a counter-conduct against heteronormativity?”