Paper short abstract:

This paper demonstrates that negotiations of love were experienced as offering opportunities to resist normative masculinities through 'ukushela' and emotional reflexivity. Young black men’s investments in their relationships suggest that the liberatory potential of love in their lives.

Paper long abstract:

Love in the lives of young black men in South Africa has received considerably limited attention in literature. While there has been a steady increase in love scholarship in Africa, these studies have mostly focused on the love experiences of young women. In this context, studies on love are often motivated by the disproportionate vulnerabilities that experienced by young women, such as intimate partner violence. This characterisation of love in South African literature has, perhaps inadvertently, presented a limited understanding of young black men as violent and emotionally inept. This paper moves beyond these limited conceptualisations of young black men and explores love as a productive force in their lives. Drawing on empirical findings generated with 34 young men between the ages of 16 and 21, the paper shows how love and the young men’s emerging masculinities are conceptualised as mutually constitutive. As a result, negotiations of love were experienced as offering opportunities to resist normative masculinities demonstrated through 'ukushela' and emotional reflexivity. Young black men’s investments in their relationships suggest that the liberatory potential of love in their lives.