ABSTRACT
The first of these two epigraphs appears in bold script over an image of Che Guevara printed against a background of women, men, and children-in-motion on a poster made by Syracuse Cultural Workers. The poster hangs above my desk in the English Department at the State University of New York at Albany. Looking at it when I walk in the door or during a pause in conversation with a student always braces me because its message is such a contradiction to the academic environment my office is nestled in. Che’s confession bristles against the grain of acceptable academic discourse I know so well in which words like “revolution” and “love” are never paired and where to talk of revolution is considered as old-fashioned, romantic, and even embarrassing as it is to claim that love is your motive for anything. His words inspire me for the possibility they hold out against these and other historical attainments. They remind me that the fight for social justice inside and outside the university is not just fired by rage and indignation but is also generated from this most complex of human capacities we call “love.” Certainly, I can question what “love” meant as Che lived it, how it was compromised and hedged in by the movements he provoked, and how it may be dismissed, trivialized, or commodified by those who embrace his image or carry on his legacy. But at another level, taking the risk of admitting love’s importance as he does urges me to take the leap of seeming ridiculous, too, by pursuing my conviction that indeed we do have to talk about love when we grapple with how to understand what motivates social movement. His words also remind me that for many people in the world outside of U.S. academia, some of them motivated by Che’s life and commitments, revolution is still a word that rumbles with hope and promise.
