Abstract
The freedom to love is something most of us take for granted. The reality is
that partnerships across racial, cultural or religious lines have historically
been problematized around the world. Laws prohibiting mixed unions were
present in countless nations until very recently. This preoccupation with
intermarriage is why it has been a leitmotiv in literature over the centuries
and later on in cinema, from Shakespeare’s Othello and Romeo and Juliet, to
Stanley Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. This chapter will provide
a historical and anthropological analysis of state control over partnership
formation, offering a number of cases around the world where nations have
implemented anti-mixing laws. In these contexts, miscegenation (the mixing
of people through marriage who were considered to be of different racial
groups) was abhorred and treated as a deviance, as devoid of love, and, above
all, as a threat to national integrity and the status quo. This exploration can
help us to better understand the social, cultural, and political contexts in
which restrictive views of coupling, family, and love have emerged, and to
critically reflect on continued prejudices towards mixed unions that still exist
in current times.
Keywords: Love - Hybridity - Miscegenation - Intermarriage - Discrimination - Social
exclusion.
Original language | American English |
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Title of host publication | International Handbook of Love: Transcultural and Transdisciplinary Perspectives |
Publication status | Published - Mar 2021 |