DescriptionIn this dissertation I analyze the ways in which the narratives of António Lobo Antunes, Pepetela and Fernando Vallejo reveal the complicity between love and power. From their different socio-historical contexts, these writers disclose the contradictions besieging what Western culture has deemed to be the most positive of feelings. Regarded as an always-reciprocal and harmonious state where all contradictions between opposites are resolved in favor of a greater unity, love’s sphere of influence oftentimes extends beyond the intimate relationship between lover and beloved. Indeed, love’s ability to do away with discord has been repeatedly invoked in the political arena as a discursive means of resolving deeply entrenched social differences. Despite its discursive appeal, such an unequivocal approach to affect is not without its dangers, proving to be misleading when it comes to gauging the complex range of love’s political uses. As the narratives of António Lobo Antunes, Pepetela and Fernando Vallejo stress, depending on the specificity of context, the same love narratives can be used to support different, and sometimes diverging, political discourses. While António Lobo Antunes exposes how love was used both to justify and veil the violence the Portuguese State inflicted on colonial subjects from the second half of the twentieth century, Pepetela uses this same rhetoric as a way to cement the burgeoning Angolan nation and to counter Capitalism’s perverse logic of exchange. In conflict-ridden Colombia of the twentieth century, Fernando Vallejo’s vitriolic post-national discourse offers a stark contrast to the national romances of the nineteenth century. Rather than being an allegorical device that brings together all parties, for Vallejo the aggressiveness contained within love serves as a means of disrupting the Colombian elite’s failed national project. By thinking through love’s contradictions, these three writers debunk traditional love narratives. In so doing, they direct our attention to the concrete possibilities and pitfalls that love introduces into the political realm.