A Short History of Love by Alex Dunedin

Come along to Gullivers (109 Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LW) at 7pm on Thursday 11th June for some company, some small bites of food and a talk by Alex Dunedin on ‘A Short History of Love’. Everyone is invited to bring along an item of food to put on the table, eat what they like and help take away what is left at the end. Title of talk: A History of Love Bullet points of what you would like to talk about: A word universally evoked Some historical associations of the word love Aristotle’s different appreciation of love Niklas Luhmann’s Love as Passion The Troubadours and Trobairitz of Medieval Europe The controversy of ‘love by choice’ An Enlightenment perspective on love The love bell hooks asks us to think about A few paragraphs on your subject: Love is a word which has passed nearly every person’s lips, and when it has been uttered it is often associated with the most precious and valuable of things in life. As an idea it has shaped worlds, sometimes bringing them together but also rendering them separate. Love however is notoriously hard to pin down; something which has been described differently by many people over time as imminent and many faced, beautiful and terrible, as peace bringing and heart breaking. In this talk I am going to share with people part of a study I have been doing to help me think about the nature of love and how we might recognise its characteristics. I will be digging up histories from Ancient Greece and talking a bit about the context of the time and sharing some thoughts on how these notions of love relate to behaviour and the connections people maintain between themselves. Then I will be dipping into how sociologist Niklas Luhmann applied his systems thinking to analysing the idea of love in his researches of 17th and 18th century writings. From there I will be taking a tour of the ideas of love prominent in medieval Europe made famous by the Troubadours and Trobairitz composers of the time. I will bring to the surface and discuss the notion of ‘love by choice’ as a hugely controversial movement. After that I return to a explore a particular view of love shaped by the Enlightenment thinker Charles Louis de Secondat, also known as Montesquieu. This centers around thinking of love as a verb before I pick up on the thinking of bell hooks, a philosopher who didn’t capitalise her name to “emphasise the importance of the substance of her writing as opposed to who she is”. At the end of this journey of love through ideas and the ages I will open up a conversation with the room about ideas of love they know about. A few paragraphs about you: I am someone who has learned through relationships all my life. Love and understandings of it have been critical in my development and history. Growing up as a male in Britain feelings and emotions have culturally been relegated to backwaters scarcely discussed yet powerfully evident in everyone’s lives. Having been educated by lovers and learned through friendships I was inspired to look beyond the anaemia of popular culture for expressions of love which were more representative to me. As a researcher and I found this route not as an attempt to ‘intellectualise’ love or other emotions, but as a play filled encounter with what it is to be alive and to feel. As a thinker I have come to believe that emotional literacy is a vital part of knowledge and intelligence which is overlooked by instrumentalising educational paradigms. I am unsure if someone can perceive the universe and experience with accuity without a literacy of an emotional lexicon or knowing love. It fascinates me and drives me, so I thought I would do a talk sharing and exploring some of this. For more information and learning resources please visit: https://raggeduniversity.co.uk/2026/05/22/11th-june-2026-a-short-history-of-love-by-alex-dunedin/

Venue

Gullivers

Manchester

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