Valentine’s Day, draped in red roses and commercial affection, is more than a benign celebration of love. It is a performative spectacle of coloniality, capitalism, and the hegemonic imposition of Western romantic ideals. Beneath its veneer of sentimentality lies a historical entanglement with imperial conquest, epistemic violence, and the erasure of indigenous expressions of intimacy. The ritual of gift-giving, the market-driven orchestration of desire, and the standardization of romantic affection are not neutral acts—they are instruments of cultural domination perpetuated through centuries of colonial expansion. What appears as an innocent celebration of love is, in reality, a deeply entrenched system of social control that commodifies emotions and disciplines desire. This necessitates a critical excavation of the historical forces shaping Valentine’s Day, not merely as a day of devotion but as a mechanism of colonial inscription that dictates the parameters of love itself. Marketization and Commodification of Love Valentine’s Day’s roots refer to the Roman festival of Lupercalia, a fertility ritual marked by blood and superstition, later sanitized and Christianized in honour of St. Valentine, a martyr whose historical existence remains nebulous. With the spread of European imperialism, the day evolved into an instrument of Western cultural expansion, shaping notions of affection through a colonial prism. It was through colonial commerce, religious imposition, and cultural subjugation that Valentine’s Day became a global phenomenon, seamlessly weaving into the capitalist order. The commodification of love, exemplified by the Valentine’s Day industry, is a direct extension of capitalist coloniality, where the very act of expressing love is intertwined with global exploitation. In All About Love, bell hooks critiques how consumerism warps love, reducing it from a profound human connection to a mere transaction. Behind the global supply chain that sustains this industry is the exploitation of labour in the Global South, where materials for gifts—like African gold, Latin American cocoa, and Asian textiles—are extracted under conditions that echo colonial extraction. This system reflects the historical roots of colonialism, where the wealth of the Global South was built on the backs of enslaved peoples and oppressed workers. As Achille Mbembe argues in On the Postcolony, this ongoing cycle of economic subjugation is the essence of neocolonial entrapment, where even symbols of love are inextricably linked to the continued exploitation of formerly colonized peoples. The fact that we have come to view gifts like gold, chocolates, and flowers—products tied to global exploitation—as the best expressions of love speaks volumes about the colonial mindset that persists in modern consumer culture. By elevating these commodities as symbols of affection, we reinforce the idea that love must be materialized through possession and consumption, echoing a colonial logic where value is extracted from the Global South to satisfy the desires of the Global North. This reduces love to a transactional act and highlights how colonial structures continue to shape our emotional expressions, distorting the very essence of love into a commodity that supports inequality rather than fostering genuine connection. It shows that, in the capitalist system, love itself has been redefined by the same forces that perpetuate global injustice. The coloniality of desire Aníbal Quijano and Walter Mignolo’s framework of coloniality reveals how colonialism did not merely dominate lands but fundamentally altered epistemologies, social structures, and even the realm of human emotion. Love and desire, like knowledge and identity, were reconfigured under Eurocentric authority. Frantz Fanon’s psychoanalytic critique in Black Skin, White Masks exposes how colonial subjugation reshaped the intimate sphere, embedding racialized and hierarchical structures within human relationships. Love became a site of colonial inscription, where Western norms dictated legitimacy and worth. The Western notion of romantic love—as private, possessive, and consumable—contrasts starkly with African traditions that historically framed love as communal, intergenerational, and bound by duty beyond mere romantic affection. The individualistic love Valentine’s Day celebrates stands in direct opposition to relational African ontologies where affection is inseparable from broader kinship networks and social responsibility. The colonial imposition of Western love structures did not merely erase indigenous forms of intimacy but also contributed to the epidermalization of affection, where love itself became racialized, stratified, and complicit in the project of othering. Decolonizing love and desire To decolonize Valentine’s Day is to reclaim love from the grip of colonial-capitalist structures. It demands a radical reimagining of desire, not dictated by market forces but rooted in relationality, community, and justice. Love must be freed from its Western constraints and allowed to flourish in its organic, decommodified form that resists possession, embraces plurality, and centres human dignity over consumption. Achille Mbembe’s vision of postcolonial liberation, Bell Hooks’ call for radical love, and Fanon’s decolonial psychoanalysis converge on a singular truth: true liberation is not merely economic or political but deeply intimate and affectionate. To love outside the bounds of coloniality is to resist, redefine, and reclaim. In conclusion, Valentine’s Day is neither innocent nor apolitical. It is a vessel of coloniality, a globalized ritual that inscribes Western ideals of love onto the rest of the world. Yet, love—real, uncommodified, and decolonial—exists beyond this spectacle. Our task is not to reject love but to unshackle it from its colonial chains, to deconstruct the structures that shape desire, and to cultivate forms of affection that honour our histories, our communities, and our sovereignty. The decolonization of desire is the reclamation of love itself. Anything less is a betrayal of our struggle.
