An Ethic of Love: Rethinking Participation and Collective Responsibility

by Ana Luisa de Moraes Azenha

Over a year ago, the growing sense of individualism and social alienation in Berlin, my city of choice, led me to seek community in a feminist Latin American collective. Every month, the collective hosts a debate session to discuss the work of female thinkers. These sessions offer the opportunity for Spanish-speaking people in Berlin to debate the ideas, learn more about them, their work – but especially about how each of us interprets and grounds these ideas based on our own experiences. 

Last week, we discussed Audre Lorde’s Uses of the erotic. For Lorde, the erotic is situated in several spectrums beyond the sexual. It is a source of joy and love, knowledge and power. “In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement (…).” Her reflections prompted us to critically examine the extent to which we are connected to the erotic across various dimensions of our lives. More importantly, they urged us to consider how this understanding could inform pathways toward positive change, both individually and collectively, as migrant women in Germany.

Safe spaces of dialogue, such as the collective’s reading circle, foreground active listening and care, and center embodied knowledge and personal, emotional responses. The conversations that take place in these spaces allow individuals to learn from each other and generate collective knowledge by weaving experience and critical reflection. They can forge emotional and political bonds by deepening trust and empathy, shaping political consciousness and fomenting the basis for personal and collective action. 

In a world shaped by extractivist logics, growing oppression and isolation, such spaces of exchange can function as sites of resistance and imagination of other worlds possible.  

This insight into the transformative power of dialogue and collective knowledge finds echoes in broader democratic practices. Deliberative forms of citizen engagement— particularly ongoing, institutionalized formats designed for specific contexts and goals— can potentially influence decision-making but also foster prosocial behavior and empathy generate epistemic value and prompt greater civic engagement.

A powerful example is the first consultation of the Brazil Civil Rights Framework for the Internet. Between 2009 and 2010, the Secretariat of Legislative Affairs of the Brazilian Ministry of Justice conducted an online consultation on a bill that would define the rights and duties of Internet users in Brazil. The consultation was the product of public pressure from Internet activists, researchers and users who opposed a legislative proposal that would criminalize common Internet practices.

The consultation unfolded in two phases. The first phase of the debate focused on the principles that would guide the law, while the second phase addressed the content of its draft. Participants were asked to justify their input with supporting arguments to ensure it would be considered and potentially incorporated. Members of the Secretariat undertook outreach efforts to engage as many relevant stakeholders on the topic as possible. Additionally, they published comments received through other channels on the consultation page. A year later, a bill based on this initiative was introduced in Congress and, after a lengthy political process, it was approved in 2014.

 

Beyond its legislative impact, the consultation yielded other meaningful outcomes. From an epistemic point of view, the debate led to peer learning, with participants gaining more knowledge on the topic, the lawmaking process, and on other points of view. One very engaged participant, inspired by the debate, even decided to pursue a law degree afterward. It also led to the epistemic uptake of some participant input, with five of the thirty-four articles present in the first bill proposal in the consultation having their wording changed or suppressed. Furthermore, the consultation page was used as a source of information for members of Congress while discussing the (fairly unknown) topic. Finally, it also mapped out the constellation of stakeholders and their varying views on Internet governance. This mapping helped unite groups in support of the bill’s approval over the course of nearly three years. This alliance, who claimed authorship of the project, acted not only as an important enabler in its approval in 2014, but ultimately led to the creation of the Rights in Network Coalition in 2016, a network of organizations in defense of digital rights in Brazil.

Such initiatives demonstrate that participation, when meaningful and well-designed, can do far more than influence specific policies: it can transform the very way people relate to democracy, to themselves and to each other.

The urgency of building collective responsibility is starkly illustrated by the story of Luiz Carlos Ruas, a street vendor in São Paulo. On Christmas Eve 2016, Ruas was killed after intervening to protect two trans women from an attack inside a subway station, while dozens of bystanders watched without acting. Psychoanalyst Christian Dunker later described Ruas’s intervention as a “transgression of our cowardly way of existing,” noting that those who break the silent pact of indifference often pay a high price. His story is a reminder that solidarity is not merely an ideal, but a necessity for survival, and that cultivating collective care is an urgent political task. Addressing today’s complex challenges requires more than individual action or elite-driven policy. They demand a shift toward collective knowledge and shared agency, supported by love-grounded practices. As Joan Tronto argues, care must be integrated into democratic processes as a central concern of political life. Reframing love as a democratic ethic—or democracy itself as an ethic of love—invites us to reconceive political participation not merely as a right or obligation, but as a profoundly relational and moral practice. Participatory, deliberative democracy, seen through this lens, becomes an ongoing act of tending to our shared commons with a collective ethic of care—one that sustains not only our institutions, but also our capacity for hope, solidarity, and transformative change.