ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by offering two different versions of love because they raise the question of how we deal with the disjuncture between the efforts to forge collective political agency and everyday lives that are propelled by other kinds of attachments and identifications. This chapter discusses in order to explore more fully the relations among sexual identity, desire, and need and to bring this inquiry around to the question of love. Many of these discussions cast the stakes for political agency in terms of citizenship, and much of this work is offered as a way to bring sexual identity more fully into the public sphere. Historical materialism begins with the premise that meeting human needs is the baseline of history. Needs are corporeal — because they involve keeping the body alive — but they are not "natural", because meeting these corporeal needs always takes place through social relationships.
