Edited by
Alejandro Cervantes-Carson & Beatriz Oria
Intimate Explorations: Reading Across Disciplines
Probing the Boundaries
Series Editors Dr Robert Fisher Dr Nancy Billias
Advisory Board Dr Alejandro Cervantes-Carson Dr Peter Mario Kreuter Professor Margaret Chatterjee Martin McGoldrick Dr Wayne Cristaudo Revd Stephen Morris Mira Crouch Professor John Parry Dr Phil Fitzsimmons Paul Reynolds Professor Asa Kasher Professor Peter Twohig Owen Kelly Professor S Ram Vemuri Revd Dr Kenneth Wilson, O.B.E
A Probing the Boundaries research and publications project. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/ The Persons Hub ‘Persons, Intimacy and Love’
Intimate Explorations: Reading Across Disciplines Edited by
Alejandro Cervantes-Carson & Beatriz Oria
Inter-Disciplinary Press Oxford, United Kingdom
© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2009 http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/
The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multidisciplinary publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Inter-Disciplinary Press. Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland, Oxfordshire. OX29 8HR, United Kingdom. +44 (0)1993 882087
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-904710-47-9 First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2009. First Edition.
Table of Contents Introduction: Under the Umbrella of Persons Alejandro Cervantes-Carson SECTION I
ix
Re-Conceptualising Intimacy
Making Sense of Intimacy: A Contest Between Love and Friendship Pauline Johnson
3
Challenging the Idea of Intimacy as Intimate Relationships: Reflections on Intimacy as an Analytical Concept Jessica Mjöberg
11
Forsaking All Others: The Norm of Monogamy Bryan R. Weaver and Fiona Woollard
23
“Love is as Strong as Death”: The Triadic Love of Franz Rosenzweig, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Gritli Huessy Wayne Cristaudo
33
Care of Self as Demarcation: Everyday Life Practices of Self Care as the Intermediation of Work and Life SabineFlick
45
SECTION II
Contextualised Intimacies
Love, Sex and In Between: Being a Woman and Middle-Class in Singapore Goh Shuzhen
59
Masculine Identities and Affective Equality: Exploring Love and Care in Men's Lives Niall Hanlon
71
An Ethnographic Deconstruction of Sex and Relationships Education in Scotland Paul Gilfillan
83
Intimacy Intervened: Happenstance and Social Norms as Determinants of Intimate Relationships among Mexican Low-Income Women Roberto Castro Pérez
95
Intimate Social Values and Economic Transformation: An Interpretation of Qualitative Interviews from Russia, China and Eastern Germany Christopher Swader
107
Which Interests are at the Heart of Sex and Relationships Education in Scotland? Lorna Savage and Rebecca Mancy
121
But is it Haram (Religiously Forbidden)? A Comparison of the Love Laws for Arabs and Americans Don Love
135
SECTION III
Representations of Intimacy
Disarticulations: Love, Language and Knowledge in Contemporary Retellings of the Bluebeard Tale Lucy Butler
147
No More Happily Ever After? The Representation of Intimate Culture in Contemporary Romantic Comedy Beatriz Oria
157
Of Multiple Collisions and Interethnic Conflicts Making Sense of Personal and Interpersonal Relationships in Crash Olga Seco
165
Intimacy and Absence across the Globe: The Literary Relationship between Georgiana Molloy and Captain James Mangles Jesssica White
175
Love beyond Ethnicity: The Problematic Representation of Intercultural Relationships in British and Indian Cinema Elena Oliete
185
Bye, Bye to Romance?: Representations of Victorian Love in David Lean’s Hobson’s Choice Esther Pérez Villalba
197
SECTION IV
Challenging Intimacies
Exploring Strangeness in the Plurality of Teacher-Student Relationship Momoyo Mitsuno
209
I'll Look After You if You Look After Me: Friendship, Family and Intimacy in a Hostel for Homeless People Rebecca Brown
221
Animals: Friendship and Love Chad Wolf
235
Tell It Like It Is: The Importance of Acknowledging Love as a Component of Abnormal Sexuality David White
243
Negotiating Intimacies in an Eroticised Environment: Xiaojies in the Nightclubs, Karaoke Houses and Massage Parlours of South China Yu Ding
255
Disturbing Intimacies: The Micro-Politics Of Interviewing the Embodiment of Political Evil Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
269
Notes on Contributors
279
Under the Umbrella of Persons Alejandro Cervantes-Carson I first came to an ID.Net conference as a delegate in November of 2004. But, my full involvement with the Net started in the summer of 2006. As a newly appointed Director of Research, one of my first tasks was to initiate an evaluation of all the conferences the Net was hosting and had developed in its almost decade of existence. My goal was to provide clusters and groups that could offer a thematic and conceptual organisation to the number of conferences that ID.Net offered year in year out; this is how the notion of umbrella research projects started and ‘Persons’ emerged from these first evaluation and organisational efforts. A most fortunate and productive convergence of research interests imported from philosophy and sociology gave conceptual birth to the umbrella research project on Persons. The initiative had the central purpose of creating a home for conferences that addressed issues linked with personhood, meaning and subjectivity. While ‘Persons, Intimacy and Love’ was the first one launched under this rubric, we quickly realised that there were numerous conferences that could find a very comfortable thematic home within the boundaries of this project. The project is named ‘Persons’ in a purposeful move away from ‘Individuals’ or ‘Subjects’. We felt that ‘Persons’ would evoke and invite the most creative and productive tradition in moral philosophy, but at the same time strip the terrain of reflection away from the cold methodological drive or politically charged concepts of subjects and individuals. ‘Persons’ tries to call for a different tradition of thought and provoke a non-traditional way of conceiving of people, both in the singular and in the plural. While in line with the most creative and critical thought in moral philosophy we do not, however intend to morally charge the concept, the debates or the research direction. The projects are not about the morality of people, nor are they about how to trace moral behaviours or suggest moral paths for our existence. Persons emerges as a reflexive gesture to create an ethical framework within which to investigate the complex, contradictory and elusive issues of intimacy, love, sex and sexuality, friendship, madness and the erotic. The first Global Conference on Persons, Intimacy and Love took place in March of 2007, bringing numerous scholars from around the world to the legendary city of Salzburg in Austria. The launch of a new project does not come, unfortunately, with the certainty of success. It is the level of prospective delegate responsiveness that ultimately determines the future of a conference project and whether it will run annually, bi-annually or in a cycle of three years. The response to the launch of PIL was so unequivocal that we knew from the very beginning that it had touched many nerves and that we
x
Introduction
______________________________________________________________ had responded correctly to an international need for conversations and research on these topics. The conferences that we organise and develop at ID.Net are small in scale and intensely interactive. They are based on a dialogical model of academic conversations and exchanges throughout the entire period of each conference. All delegates are presenters and constitute a critical and engaged audience for each presentation, such that by the end of the conference we are rewarded with a rich and many-textured tapestry of work rather than a series of stand-alone talks. Many delegates have session chair duties and end up serving as Steering Group members and editors of our publications. This model works extremely well with a full and respectful engagement from all delegates. It is a model that takes respectful dialogue very seriously, in that we believe that is it generative of learning from each other and from the collective space of creativity that is formed and nurtured within and between conference meetings. The e-Book that we present to you is the result of the first organised meeting of Persons, Intimacy and Love. It represents a snapshot of the papers delivered at the conference, and we are sure it will rekindle many of the conversations and linkages that took place at the conference and thereafter. We have organised the book in four sections. The initial group of five chapters appears under the rubric of ‘Re-Conceptualising Intimacy’, because all of them engage the task of re-thinking the terms, notions and ideas we normally associate with the concept of intimacy and love. Coming from different disciplines and schools of thought, this first quintet offers exciting and diverse assessments of the field and raises critical and poignant questions, which Beatriz and I read as open avenues for unsettling what we tend to take for granted. Johnson opens the volume with a critical evaluation of the research boom that the concept of intimacy has created in the sociology of the past two decades. Mjöberg follows her, suggesting a rethinking of the assumptions that underpin the notion of intimate relations as the ideal realm for intimacy. Weaver and Woollard turn our attention to a territory that has remained largely under-conceptualised. In a systematic analytical development, they invite us to re-consider our notions about the link between intimacy and monogamy. Yet, this critical assessment gains a much needed empirical representation with Cristaudo’s piece. The bones, muscle and flesh of the problematic assumption and link made between loyalty, love and monogamy is dissected vividly by Cristaudo in the amazing case of a triadic love with philosophical consequences which he presents. The section is closed by Flick’s reflections and empirical findings on the fluid, complex and troubling boundaries between work and intimate life. Context becomes the central idea behind the second group of chapters. Driven by empirical results from a diversity of research projects, this second section provides an intricate and colourful mosaic of how people
Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
xi
______________________________________________________________ the world over struggle to make sense of meaningful relations. Some are quick to label even the most casual encounters as friendship, love and intimacy while others move with care and scepticism or even suspicion to avoid recognising encounters with significant others as caring, close and warm. It is remarkable to witness both the enormous variation and at the same time the enormous similarities between social and cultural contexts. While seeking to interlace sex and love, people continue to experience the link ambiguously and in contradictory ways: as something desirable, but very problematic; as a source of intimacy, yet extremely demanding; as fulfilment, but with draining consequences; as transcendent, yet restrictive; as generating the divine and simultaneously alienating. Whether middle-class women in Singapore (Shuzhen) that struggle against double-standards that keep sexual freedom only for men, or low-income Mexicans (Castro) for whom intimacy is often inextricably paired with violence, or working class teenagers in Scotland (Gilfillan) making sense of sexuality, social class creates a specific context of meaning and experience. A different context is deployed when sex is raised to the demands of formal education, as in the case of Scotland (Savage and Mancy) or when it is packaged with the normative to create cultural standards of love, as the comparative study between the US and Middle East countries suggests (Love). Two different paces of contextual change become apparent when comparing the case study of the response of Irish men to love and care labour as strong indicators of transformations in gender identity and relations (Hanlon) with those transformations in intimate social values reported by the study of Russia, China and East Germany (Swader). In the third section we turn our attention to issues of representation of intimacy. Five of our six chapters in this section have chosen the medium of film (and one correspondence) to explore the fluidity, tensions and even contradictions of multiple sets of cultural representations of love, passion, intimacy and sexual desire and their fine interlacing with different structures of identity like gender, ethnicity, race and nationality. Gender has a critical and conceptual place in Butler’s analysis of contemporary retellings of the Bluebeard tale by female writers and filmmakers. Yet, the target of her critique is modern identity or how conceptions of love and self fulfilment are closely linked to multiple fractures and contradictions of the constitution of identity in modernity. Intimacy and sexual desire are thrown into profound conflict with ethnic and racial boundaries in both Seco´s and Oliete’s analyses of films from the US, India and the UK. While the pleasures of sexual desire and the meaningful bonds of intimacy are portrayed as vital forces of unity capable of overcoming difference and discord, in the end race and ethnicity become impenetrable forces of separation and estrangement; their identity fictions cannot be erased or dissipated, their boundaries cannot be crossed permanently, and passion, love and desire can, at best, be only
xii
Introduction
______________________________________________________________ temporary healers or challenges. The pessimism of those resolutions emerges as a paradigm of despair and angst in Oria’s analysis of the crisis of intimacy or the crisis of meaning in intimate relations in the US. Oria juxtaposes comedy and sociology to provide an unusual cross-disciplinary dialogue and framework for exploring the depths of how intimate relations can be devoid of meaning for heterosexual couples, for men and women alike. Gender relations and identity transformations move from an important, yet tangential issue in Oria’s chapter to centre stage in both J. White and Pérez-Villalba’s analytical assessments. An extraordinary correspondence that bridged Australia and England and intimately connected a Scottish woman and an English man, who never met, is the reconstructed case study used by J. White to challenge notions about space and distance and the possibilities for intimacy, love and desire. The subtle and critical use of gender by J. White becomes a key argumentation concept for Pérez-Villalba. A much acclaimed film from the fifties is the medium for the analysis of Victorian representations of love and affection and their interplay with notions of class and personal empowerment. Our last six chapters are grouped under the heading of ‘Challenging Intimacies’. Arguably, all of the pieces included in this book challenge widely and uncritically held notions of intimacy, yet the chapters in the fourth section are testing in an additional sense: the subject and case studies chosen illustrate particular experiences of intimacy which are strange, unorthodox or arousing of disapprobation themselves. We open the section with Mitsuno’s exploration of the notion of strangeness deployed by teacherstudent love and sexual bonds. Her chapter develops a close reading of teacher blogs and cases of sexual harassment in contemporary Japan and finds the emergence of ‘strange’ forms of intimacy while the pedagogical link between teachers and students is destroyed and rendered useless. In Brown’s case study of a homeless shelter in a Scottish city, strangers become friends and family. These newly imagined, conceived and lived bonds develop, in turn, new structures of intimacy and love. Friendship and love are taken across boundaries of species in Wolf’s chapter. Can we only find friendship and love among human beings? Are the lives of other species devoid of these bonds and sentiments? David White’s chapter takes the question of love into even more complex and potentially disturbing terrain: he argues that paedophilia and zoophilia under labels of abnormality and mental illness invites a dismissal of ‘humanity’ in the phenomena and their complex dynamics remain obscure to our understanding; acknowledging the presence of love is suggested as a necessary and first step. The challenge to the possibility of intimacy in Ding’s case study is the overwhelming presence of erotic bonds in the sexualised contexts of nightclubs, Karaoke houses and massage parlours of urban places in South China. In these contexts, intimacy remains elusive and requires negotiation and emotional work; these are
Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
xiii
______________________________________________________________ environments where sexuality and the erotic become complicated barriers rather than conduits for intimate relationships. Our section and book closes with a piece I wrote on the micro-politics of power and the unforeseen development of intimacy, albeit untenable and ethereal. The presence of ‘signs of intimacy’ during the process of interviewing the ‘political embodiment of evil’ inevitably creates profound disturbances to our preconceived notions of what entails both intimacy and evil. While we have chosen these four sections to structure and organise the book, there are multiple and a multitude of thematic threads that cut across sections. Many chapters are linked to each other because of their conceptual explorations and concerns, others share perspectives and critical evaluations and yet others raise similar questions and propose similar venues to address issues. All of these links reflect the actual and potential clusters of dialogues and conversations among authors. Finally, we hope that the reader finds this collection engaging and useful for reflecting on the state of contemporary experiences of intimacy and our love bonds. Beatriz and I have enjoyed the editing process and our desire is that this sensation also extends to its reading. Editor´s Note Special thanks to Luisa Orza and Fiona Sprott for taking the time to read this introduction and making such insightful editorial comments. All credit for improvements should be given to them; responsibility for the mistakes are, of course, all mine. Alejandro Cervantes-Carson Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
SECTION I
Re-Conceptualising Intimacy
Making Sense of Intimacy: A Contest Between Love and Friendship Pauline Johnson Abstract A flourishing literature in the sociology of intimacy seems to offer a palette of diverse meanings. However, the particular contributions to the field are not typically interested in representing a textured and complex intimate life. Indeed, the search for a single template has become dominant. Usually we are offered some version of the notion that either the norms of love or friendship provide the paradigm. My paper critically evaluates the search for a ‘one size fits all’ image of intimacy. It seems to me that this undertaking foreshortens insight into the subjective and cultural ambiguities of contemporary intimate life. Neither the norms of friendship nor those of love can cater for the range of investments that we place on intimate life and it is not desirable that we try and reduce its complexity in this way. Key Words: Beck, Beck-Gernsheim, friendship, Giddens, intimacy, love, normativity. ***** 1.
Introduction Over the last decade or so a significant semantic shift has occurred within the sociology of intimate life. ‘Intimacy’ has come to replace what would have previously been termed ‘primary relationships’ or ‘family studies.’ Taken as a whole, this new field in the sociological literature seems to offer a lively account of a contemporary personal life that is teeming with options and is strung between the pursuit of diverse, sometimes competing, at times complementary, goals. However, taken singly, the major theories typically assume that their task is to pin the meaning of personal life today down to one distinctive ‘ideal typical’ aspiration. My paper will draw up the terms of a response to the question ‘what is intimacy’ that owes more to the normatively composite picture that emerges from recent sociology of intimacy as a field of research than to any particular contributions to it. It is interesting to speculate on why the topic of intimacy has become a newly fashionable theme in sociology. It seems that the shift from a preoccupation with family studies to an interest in intimate life indicates a turn from questions of social function to a focus on the quality of personal life. However, this observation does not really help us with an answer to the question: ‘why intimacy.’ It could be that the recent interest in the special
4
Making Sense of Intimacy
______________________________________________________________ value of personal life is in part responding to a defensive retreat from a neoliberal attempt to reduce all our interactions to terms that are compatible with the logics and consistent with the imperatives of the market place. Intimate life might well be the last bastion of certain kinds of ethics, meanings and particular descriptions of subjectivity. As I see it, then, a contemporary surge of interest amongst sociologists in the topic of intimacy is prompted by an interest in saving the claims of private life as source of special values and meanings. This observation leads us to ask how the defensive motivations that are nursed by a new sociology of intimacy might have shaped the character of its typical approaches to the question: what is intimacy. I suggest that the defensiveness of the interest in rescuing the special character of the ideals upheld by intimacy has produced a nervous search for a model or template that can be used to capture and secure the meaning and value of intimate life. In particular there is a struggle going on in the contemporary sociological literature between those who propose the expectations and norms of friendship as the normative home of contemporary intimacy and those who put the norms of romantic love forward. This might help to explain the structural tension within the genre of recent sociology of intimacy. On the one hand, the field as a whole treats us to a wide range of images of the value and the subjective and cultural meaning of intimate life. However, the individual theories themselves want to save the distinctive character of intimate life by fixing its meaning. In the bulk of the paper I want to describe aspects of what seems to be a normative freezing in the sociology of intimacy and also to develop something of a critical response. I propose two related criticisms. Firstly, the attempt to reduce the meaning of intimacy to the norms of friendship or love, the search for a ‘one size fits all’ model, distorts the complexity of contemporary intimacy as it is lived. Also I think that an attempt to squeeze the meaning of intimate life into categorical definitions is undesirable; it seems to me to cut across the rich palette of sometimes complementary, at times competing meanings of intimate life. At the end of the paper I will gesture towards a rather different approach to the question ‘what is intimacy’ that is governed by another type of interest in its value. 2.
Intimacy through the Lens of Friendship Today there is a significant group of sociologists who propose that the norms of friendships offer a model for the whole of contemporary intimate life. Giddens, Pahl and Kristjansson argue that friendships are governed by a particular set of norms and expectations that makes relations between friends the appropriate model for intimate life in an age that celebrates individual autonomy and egalitarianism.1 Friendships, they argue, are essentially voluntary, chosen relationships. Friends select each other and develop ties of reciprocity and mutuality usually around the pursuit of shared
Pauline Johnson
5
______________________________________________________________ projects. We all know that power and authority intervene in friendships as they are lived, but here we are talking normatively about the idea of what friendship should be. There is a weak and a strong version of the claim that the norms of friendship have become the meaning of contemporary intimacy. The weak proposition is that, with the development of egalitarianism in civil society, there has been a general shift towards expectations of reciprocity and mutuality in intimate relations and thus friendship has become increasingly important as a norm across the spectrum of our intimate relationships. Whereas egalitarianism is not essential to the meaning of romantic passion, which can be unrequited and even compatible with various sorts of power and authority, expectations of reciprocity are essential to the meaning of friendship. Hence, an egalitarian culture has appropriated the ideals of friendship as an increasingly explicit commitment in all our intimate interactions. I think the weak claim is probably right and that the norms of friendship have become a more overt and important within the normative mix of contemporary intimacy. Not only do lovers today accept the relevance of the ideals of friendship, so too parents and children are now more likely to think of themselves as friends. I am much less persuaded though by the stronger claim that not only have the norms of friendship become an increasingly explicit mode in all sorts of intimate relations, but that the norms of friendship have to be accepted now as the ideal through which contemporary intimacy understands and judges itself. Mary Evans is in this latter camp.2 She thinks that love ought to be retrieved from the irrational sphere to which it has been assigned and be made to obey only the dictates of good judgement. It seems that good judgement is to be measured by the give and take reciprocity that is the normative core of friendship. Anthony Giddens too insists that erotic/romantic attachments can become fully rationalised in accordance with the explicit understanding that “the imperative of free and open communication is the sine qua non” of the intimate interaction.3 This line of thinking seems exaggerated. Evans and Giddens take up the plausible proposition that the norms of friendship are growingly important to the complexion of intimate life and blow this into the claim that friendship is the organising ethos of intimate life today. It is one thing to say that there has been a tendency to make egalitarian reciprocity and negotiation an explicit standard in all aspects of intimate life and quite another to say that intimate life can be reduced to the norms of friendship with its ethics of voluntariness and its expectation of egalitarian symmetry. Aristotle’s account of the meaning of friendship for 4th century Greece is still widely cited in contemporary sociological literature.4 However, this was a very different experience of friendship. The ancient Greeks thought that friendship was compatible with eroticism and with the idea of
6
Making Sense of Intimacy
______________________________________________________________ mentoring and patronage. Things have changed and friendship has been subjected to processes of cultural differentiation. Niklas Luhmann points out that in the 18th century friendship and love became culturally separated around precisely the question of erotic desire.5 Clearly friendship for the Greeks was a non-contradictory whole that could embrace many orientations towards others that have become separated out in the course of modern cultural development. For us there is no going back. Indeed, if we think about the reason why certain sociologists want to use the norms of friendship to cover the expectations of intimate life in general it is because they embrace the process of differentiation and cultural refinement that has occurred. Essentially they want friendship to be the normative home for intimacy because it has jettisoned certain contents from its meaning, specifically, the compelling dogmatism of love and the principle of patronage. Nonetheless they still want to use friendship in the way that Aristotle did to cover everything that is valuable about our intimate lives. This is a sleight of hand. The contents that friendship has rejected have not disappeared from the cultural landscape; they have just taken different pathways and have become the stuff of alternative constructions of contemporary intimacy. My first point against the claim that friendship can be the norm for contemporary intimacy is that it does not take account of the complexity of our intimate lives. Passionate, unreasonable love and the claims of eroticism are not to be denied; we also recognize that certain kinds of authority have a place in some of our intimate interactions. These are constructions of intimacy as it is lived that are outside the expectations of friendship. The second point I want to make is, not only is it inaccurate, but it is also undesirable to attempt to use friendship as the template for contemporary intimacy. The give and take symmetry of the friendship relation is not the only terms in which we can consider the ethical power of a complex and many-sided intimate life. A number of sociologists of contemporary intimacy have pointed out that actually the unreasonable, passionate character of romantic love can support a distinctive type of ethics. Niklas Luhmann stresses that love insists that its passionate impulse transcends all pragmatism and relations based on calculations of advantage. He supposes that the unreasonable, unaccountable character of love offers itself as the grounds for an ethics of everyday heroism and sacrifice. Passionate love protests that it can ‘find a way’ through the Gordian knot of seemingly insuperable problems thrown up in the course of life. Emanuel Levinas agrees that love has its own passionate ethics.6 Love offers itself as the grounds for an unmediated sympathy with the frail and vulnerable other. The point is then that if we try and suggest that the norms of friendship alone can and should provide the ethics of intimacy we risk sacrificing the unique and specific ethical power of love.
Pauline Johnson
7
______________________________________________________________ Let us now briefly consider the alternative claim then that love, rather than friendship, can provide the template for contemporary intimacy. 3.
Intimacy through the Lens of Love According to some, romantic love is the form of intimate life that best provides the model for contemporary intimacy. Beck and BeckGernsheim, for example, insist that romantic love is well adapted to be the paradigm for contemporary intimacy because it is an ideal that fits in with the dominant ideology of the times.7 Today we are surrounded by an institutionally embedded affirmation of the idea of individual selfresponsibility and reward for private achievement. This principle of privatism is echoed by the culture of romantic love that insists on creating a world of its own but, interpreted through the norms of romantic love the principle of individualism is also infused with an ethical sense. In contemporary everyday life, individualism is encountered through pragmatic and alienating interactions. By contrast, in romantic love we find the norms of privatism and exclusivity turned into devotion to another. Romantic passion creates a world of sympathetic idealisation that is able to motivate us to exceptional acts of devoted care. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim go so far as to claim that romantic love has become our ‘secular religion.’ This emphasizes both the importance of romantic love for us as well as its inherently dogmatic, unreasonable, fundamentalist character. The idea that romantic love should be the model of intimate life does make room for a range of calls made on contemporary intimacy. The construction of love as a sympathetic devotion to the other in his/her vulnerable frailty and the idea that love can be its own justification for an everyday heroism can of course describe the intimacy between parent and child just as much as the romantic/erotic attachment. However, just as I argued that the norms of friendship cannot be stretched to include all our intimate needs, so too it seems that love fails to cope. For one thing, the dogmatism that is attached to the idea of love as its own self-justification can, we know, lend itself to the vindication of abuse. Indeed it appears that the confidence that Beck and Beck-Gernsheim have in the ethical contents of romantic love seems to be based on the implicit acknowledgement that love does not rule undisputed as the sole standard in contemporary intimacy. Actually, it is because contemporary intimacy has evolved as a complex set of sometimes competing normativities that intimate life can offer internal checks. A lived and internally divided contemporary intimacy can appeal to the egalitarian norms of friendship to critique a disrespectful or abusive dynamics that can be sheltered by the passionate code of love. This brings me to my final point. I want to claim that there are real cultural losses in a contemporary attempt to find the normative pulse of intimacy today. The either/or approach of recent sociology obscures what
8
Making Sense of Intimacy
______________________________________________________________ seems to me to be a more vital and richly ambiguous construction of what intimacy means. Certainly, in recent discussions on the character of intimate life, there are those who suggest that we need to reconcile ourselves to the fact that intimate life is home to a range of meanings and values.8 However, I’m looking for something stronger that finds that the distinctive value of intimacy lies in the fact that it is a field of tensions. Some of the most significant cultural reflections on intimacy as a modern sphere of interactions provide us with some clues. Hegel and Arendt both stress that intimate life fosters a self-consciousness of who we are and might become as particular individuals.9 According to them, in the intimate sphere modern individuals form and renew their sense of subjective depth and seek recognition as distinctive personalities. If, like Hegel and Arendt, we are interested in intimacy for its creative role in laying down the grounds of a modern subjectivity then it seems likely that we will want to explore, rather than seek to close down, the immense ethical variety and normative ambiguity of contemporary intimate life. In my view, a dynamic portrait of an intimate domain that is constantly attempting to negotiate a set of claims, longings and hopes that sometimes conflict and sometimes support each other gives us a more compelling version of why intimate life is so worth the effort to save it.
Notes 1 A Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1992; R Pahl, On Friendship, Polity, Cambridge, 2000; K Kristjannsson, ‘Parents and Children as Friends’. Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 37(2), 2006, pp. 250-265. 2 M Evans, Love: An Unromantic Discussion, Polity, U.K., 2003. 3 A Giddens, op. cit., p. 100. 4 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Books V111-1X, Oxford University Press, London, 1925. 5 N Luhmann, Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy, Polity, U.K., 1986. 6 E Levinas, ‘Philosophy, Justice and Love’, in On thinking of the Other Entre Nous, M B Smith and B Harsav (eds), The Athelone Press, London, 1998, pp. 103-121. 7 U Beck and E Beck-Gernsheim, The Normal Chaos of Love, Polity, U.K., 2002. 8 S Coontz, Marriage, a History, from Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage, Viking, New York, 2005; and L Jamieson, Intimacy: Personal relationships in Modern Society, Polity, U.K., 1998.
Pauline Johnson
9
______________________________________________________________ 9
G W F Hegel, Elements of a Philosophy of Right, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, 1991; H Arendt, The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1958.
Bibliography Arendt, H., The Human Condition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1958. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Books V111-1X. Oxford University Press, London, 1925. Beck, U. and E. Beck-Gernsheim, The Normal Chaos of Love. Polity, U.K., 2002. Coontz, S., Marriage, a History, from Obedience to Intimacy or How love Conquered Marriage. Viking, New York, 2005. Evans, M., Love: An Unromantic Discussion. Polity, U.K., 2003. Giddens, A., The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1992. Hegel, G.W.F., Elements of a Philosophy of Right. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, 1991. Jamieson, L., Intimacy: Personal relationships in Modern Society. Polity, U.K., 1998. Kristjannsson, K., ‘Parents and Children as Friends’. Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 37(2), 2006, pp. 250-265. Levinas, E., ‘Philosophy, Justice and Love’, in On thinking of the Other Entre Nous. B. Smith and B. Harshav (eds), The Athelone Press, London, 1998, pp. 103-121. Luhmann, N., Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy. Polity, U.K., 1986. Pahl, R., On Friendship. Polity, Cambridge, 2000.
Challenging the Idea of Intimacy as Intimate Relationships: Reflections on Intimacy as an Analytical Concept Jessica Mjöberg Abstract Our understanding of intimacy - lay as well as scientific - is often associated with the notion of ‘the intimate relationship’ understood as the close or primary relationship found within families and between friends and lovers. In this way intimacy is perceived as an empirical phenomenon within a certain empirical field. The social scientific interest in intimacy has indeed increased most recently, but thorough analyses of what we actually mean by intimacy are still missing. This clearly bears consequences for how we can understand and where we look for intimacy. As many empirical branches of the social sciences, the phenomenon to investigate - in this case intimacy - is taken for granted as existing empirically without a following phenomenological understanding of its specific qualities as a phenomenon as such. In this paper, I discuss some differences in understanding and usage of intimacy as an analytical versus an empirical concept. My analysis could be seen as an attempt to re-think the idea of intimacy as a certain quality of interpersonal relationships. As a quality, intimacy could then be found in broader spectra of social relations beyond those we acknowledge as intimate relationships. With a social psychological perspective, I suggest some meanings of intimacy as a quality that dwells on the line between the subjective and the intersubjective, between self and other, the most personal and interconnected, between closeness and distance. Key Words: Analytical concepts, Phenomenology, Social Psychology.
empirical
concepts,
intimacy,
***** 1.
Intimacy as a Social Concept The fact that the social scientific interest in intimacy has increased and turned intimacy into a special field of research does not mean that what is being explored in this field is exactly settled. Now, this is not unique for intimacy. Rather it is true for many concepts concerning the social. The same can for instance be said about the family: everybody knows what is referred to when talking about the family and still there are great variations of family forms. It is also true for society, which we sociologists often refer to but still cannot agree on exactly what it is. In this sense intimacy is a characteristic field of social research, as well as a characteristic social concept.
12
Challenging the Idea of Intimacy as Intimate Relationships
______________________________________________________________ The general problem of social concepts has been a big concern for many social researchers. Herbert Blumer for instance argued that social concepts need to be vague, or rather sensitising, meaning that they cannot state exactly what to see, but rather merely indicate in what direction to look.1 Although agreeing with Blumer that the social (empirical) world is too complex, ambivalent and contingent to fit into definitive concepts, the problems in the case of intimacy is not solved by viewing it as a sensitising concept. The problem that I want to address is one concerning the different levels of abstraction that are possible to use with the same concept, which may be characteristic not only in the case of intimacy, but for most social concepts. Besides the problem of social concepts being vague in definition they are sometimes considered as problematic in other ways. While not only referring to everyday life experiences they are also used in everyday life. But social concepts actually need to go in two directions. On the one hand everyday concepts and phenomena become objects of scientific investigations. On the other hand scientific concepts are constructed later to be used in everyday life. This is one of the possibilities that social scientists have to validate their research. If the concepts that we construct are used, this indicates validity. This is also a possible way to modify our concepts.2 However, conducting social science – is often argued – to be about making the familiar alien, and the alien familiar.3 Being a social scientist would then imply looking at everyday events with the naive eyes of an outsider, as well as looking at events from which we are excluded, from the perspective of an insider. Hypothetically accepting this view, valid social concepts are constructed when we succeed in making explicit a phenomenon in a way that provides people with a wider understanding. Accordingly it is when failing at this task that the vagueness of the concepts becomes more than vague, and rather become non scientific. This sometimes occurs when transferring a concept from everyday vocabulary into the scientific vocabulary. I will argue that this is the case with intimacy, and this is the problem to be discussed in this paper. The intention in this paper is to suggest a way of understanding the ambiguity of intimacy as a social concept. I will start by sketching the growth of intimacy as a social scientific field. Following this I will suggest a solution to the problem of social concepts by dividing the concept into two levels of abstraction. On the one hand as an empirical concept, on the other hand as an analytical concept. Using this distinction, the idea of intimacy as an analytical concept is further discussed by means of a phenomenological analysis of intimacy.
Jessica Mjöberg 13 ______________________________________________________________ 2.
The Development of a Social Scientific Field of Intimacy To grasp the scope of intimacy as a field of social research we need to briefly sketch its development. The history that preceded the entrance of intimacy into the field of research was that of changing family forms. Following the era of modernity and the search for clear-cut categories and institutionalised relations a time of diversity came. The family no longer seemed to be the core site for primary relationships, but was rather sharing the role of caring and loving with friends and lovers. The field of primary relations or close relations then changed its focus into being the field of intimacy.4 Intimacy in this way becomes equivalent to intimate relationships. With this connotation intimacy is caught in the private sphere. Even if several branches of intimacy research have come about, they more or less put intimacy in the private sphere of close relationships.5 I suggest that this research can be divided into three main branches. The first one consists in social theories of intimate relationships in the late modern era.6 The second branch consists in empirical analyses testing the transformation of intimacy as suggested in the social theories.7 The third branch consists in a critique of the two former from the standpoint of a queer analysis of intimacy.8 Jointly for these three branches intimacy is mainly understood as a clustered definition of institutionalized relationships, previously known as close relationships. These relationships include family, friends and lovers.9 In this way neither the differences between friendship, love, sex and kinship, nor their common features that constitutes intimacy are thoroughly investigated. The qualities of the relationships included are not taken into account. Rather, the meaning of intimacy is taken for granted as being close or familial relationships, and in that sense the meaning of intimacy is not in the centre of the research on intimacy. Intimacy is not something to be found in these relationships, but rather is that specific relationship. A common sense notion of intimacy has been transferred into the vocabulary of social science without being adequately problematised as a scientific concept. When intimacy became a field of research the question to be asked could have been: what is this phenomenon of intimacy that is under investigation? The familiar field of intimate relationships could have been seen from an alien (or naive) perspective, as if we did not know the first thing about it. Failing to do this, the concept of intimacy becomes too vague. I would argue that intimacy, in this sense, comes to designate an empirical phenomenon, showing us the types of socially institutionalised relationships that we know as intimate. But being introduced as a concept in social science, it also automatically claims to be a concept that we should be able to use in explanations. Now, this distinction is central in the discussion held here. There is a difference in letting our concepts stand for a factual empirical phenomenon or an abstract quality used for explanation. Not that any of them
14
Challenging the Idea of Intimacy as Intimate Relationships
______________________________________________________________ would be better or worse. However, being used in both senses, the meaning of intimacy has vagueness as to what it refers to. Additionally, the scope and meanings of intimacy as an empirical and as an analytical concept are not fully compatible. How we are able to understand intimacy and where we can look for it is thus related to the status of the concept. With the distinction between different levels or status of the concept of intimacy, my question is whether it is possible to overcome the vagueness of intimacy (and other social concepts alike), by differentiating between an empirical and an analytical level of usage in research. In the first case the question asked about intimacy would be formulated “Here we have an intimate relationship (intimacy), how can we understand that?” In the second case the question would be “Can we understand this as intimacy?” 3.
Empirical and Analytical Use of the Concept of Intimacy If we clarify the differences in these levels of the concept we will also be able to move between them. This would be the validation and modifying practice of social concepts suggested by Cohen.10 In the status of an empirical concept it is possible to agree with the definition of intimacy as intimate relationships. In this case it is merely a name for these types of close relationships. In the status of an analytical concept however, intimacy needs to be further defined. Doing this we need to extract from the empirical field of intimacy, what intimacy is when specific empirical situations are not taken into account (that is, with a phenomenological reduction). In this way we condense the meaning of intimacy into an analytical concept. This we can use to turn back to the empirical field of social relations, which is then more extensive than that of ‘intimate relationships,’ and seek for intimacy in social relations in general. In this way we are able to move between the empirical and analytical levels. But this - I suspect - might also be the place where we find the reason for the lack of distinctiveness in the conceptualisation of intimacy as well as in other social concepts. The safety of the empirical domain, of what we are able to see as substance, or matter, is holding us back from an understanding of the social as phenomenon; as something necessarily consisting of both matter and meaning. If the empirical is what can be seen, while the analytical needs to contain the observable as well as the meaning of the observable holding on to an empirical conceptualisation would be hazardous. Speaking with Hans Skjervheim, this would mean that ”If everything is a fact, then there is nothing left to do, since everything is already done.”11 To overcome this I propose a phenomenological analysis of intimacy.12 An attempt of such an analysis of intimacy now follows, using some images of intimacy.
Jessica Mjöberg 15 ______________________________________________________________ 4.
A Phenomenological Sketch of Intimacy In order to find intimacy, we first of all need to frame it. The framing given here is based upon a social psychological (e.g. interactionist) perspective. The life of human beings is characterised by sociality; a tendency to connect to other people. Every singular subject that a human being constitutes finds herself always in - real or imaginary - contact with other singular subjects.13 From the view of social psychology, the subject becomes aware of herself only by perceiving herself as an object to other subjects. This is known as intersubjectivity and constitutes the joint social world that we live in. It is in this sphere of the joint world that intimacy takes place. Wherever we find intimacy it is intersubjective; it reaches out from the subject to something or someone else, and back to the subject again. But of all the inter-human encounters that we take part in, not all are characterised as intimate. Intimacy seems to be a relational aspect that only occurs under certain conditions, which we will now have a further look at. A. Intimacy as Oceanic Starting off in the beginning of life, we will look at the image of the relationship between a newborn child and its mother, which is often described as intimate. The child who, during this period of life, has not yet perceived itself as a singular subject, does not sense any border between itself and its mother (the world); all is one. This state of being is referred to as an oceanic feeling. “It is a feeling which he would call a sensation of eternity, a feeling of something limitless, unbounded, something oceanic.”14 Looking at this image in search of the intimate quality some features can be perceived. First, what constitutes intimacy as an oceanic feeling, is a relation where the child can not perceive itself as ‘I’, but only as ‘we.’ All is one in the sense that the border between self and other is not felt. One could interpret this as if the human child were born into intimacy. In that sense intimacy can constitute a prime feeling to strive back to. This interpretation is strengthened by theories of the self. When the child through the use of language becomes aware of itself, the oceanic feeling will come to an end. In striving to keep the intimate relation children then use transitional objects, which will make them feel intimate even when not being close to their caregiver.15 What this element of intimacy further suggests is that intimacy is a state that will eventually be broken down by the consciousness of self and others as distinctive subjects. Intimacy will be turned into singularity. But the feeling of intimacy as oceanic, is experiencing being part of something eternal, or never ending (even if it is temporarily). The eternal could in the case of the child be understood as the limits of the self. Second, using this idea of intimacy as oceanic, intimacy is perceived as an organic relation, which as Cooley has argued, means being part of a greater whole where both
16
Challenging the Idea of Intimacy as Intimate Relationships
______________________________________________________________ parts and the totality are defined by their relation.16 Feeling in unison and unbounded can be understood as a state where the borderline between the subject and the world lies further away than the subjects own body. Intimacy could in this sense be understood as ‘we-ness,’ a state where the singular subject is not perceivable. Taking these two features of intimacy to another image of intimacy we turn to the case of passionate love. Roy Lichtenstein, for instance, articulates this in his painting We rose up slowly; “We rose up slowly... as if we didn’t belong to the outside world any longer... like swimmers in a shadowy dream... who didn’t need to breathe.”17 In this case, two adults, who since a long time have perceived themselves as singular selves, turn back into a unity with someone else. This unity makes a contrast to the rest of the individual’s life as a singular subject in relation to other singular subjects. In the situation of two people becoming one, the borders of their selves are moved, pushed, to the borders of their joint unit. What is perceived as the outer world lies outside their relation rather than outside their both singular selves. B. Intimacy and Mutuality These two images of intimacy initially have shown us intimacy in the meaning of not being separate, but as being part of flow and unison. What could be interesting to reflect upon regarding them is the question of mutuality. Could, for example, the shimmer of the world in the romantic passion occur in a one-way love? Would we be able to feel intimate if our love was unanswered, or is intimacy bound to mutuality? If we try to separate the feeling of unity and boundlessness to one of the subjects in intimate union we will find directedness to someone else. But this intentionality in itself does not need to be intimate. Love, for instance, can be understood as one-sided (as can adoration). This might be one of the key-spots of distinguishing intimacy from other social feelings, as well as from institutionalised relationships. Taking a step back to the example of love, it does not need to be answered to, in order to exist. A person’s love for someone else can be unanswered, non-reciprocal and still we can call it love. We can be miserable in love. Even if love is a social feeling, directed to someone else, it is not dependent upon the response from the other. But in this case, it is difficult to find intimacy. The feeling of intimacy seems to be connected to mutuality, where both persons involved are oriented towards each other, constituting a unit. The mutuality of the romantic couple consists of a situation of two people who are both autonomous subjects who together form a state of intimacy in their orientation towards each other. But the mutuality in the case of a mother and her new born child is not mutual in the same sense. From the perspective of the child the intimate relation is there a priori, knowing
Jessica Mjöberg 17 ______________________________________________________________ nothing else. But we still need to reflect upon how to understand this intimacy from the perspective of the mother. Is the relation intimate for her as well, the mother being an adult aware of herself as a specific autonomous individual? In the case of the mother and her child their connection to each other is not identical. While the child has not yet “learned” to separate itself from others, the mother has. What mutuality would mean in this case is then, not responding to each other in identical ways, rather we could understand the mother’s total orientation towards the child and the child’s total orientation towards her as intimacy from her perspective. They are equally directed to their interpersonal unit, therefore possibly constituting intimacy. C. Intimacy and the Continuous Present Assuming that the oceanic feeling and the total orientation towards each other are in some sense true for constituting intimacy, the temporal aspect of intimacy needs to be addressed. The feeling of being in an eternal state, as well as the total orientation to someone indicates a concentration on presence as well as being in the present. This temporal aspect of the relation gives us reason to ask for how long a time we can be totally directed towards each other. For how long is it possible to dwell in the present? One possible way of perceiving intimacy is that as long as we are totally oriented towards each other, we are in a continuous present. As time goes by, the temporal present is continuously new. To dwell in the present means not to be thinking of the past or of the future. As soon as we start to think about something else, what is to come or what has been, we loose the directedness to the present and also to the intimate character of the relationship. Accordingly, intimacy is difficult to maintain for a long periods of time; if not being able to dwell in the continuous present, totally imbued and focused on the relationship. If this reflection on the temporal aspect is true in any sense, it makes it difficult to view institutionalised relationships as parenthood, love and long-term friendships as always being intimate. It rather reveals intimacy as a relational quality that can occur during times of total orientation towards each other. D. Intimacy and Exclusion One of the first aspects seen in this analysis of intimacy is the inclusion of others into the perceived existence as self. But, while the border of the perceived existence is pushed beyond the self to lie beyond the unit of several, the border still exists, necessarily excluding the ones not being in the unit. One of the ‘dark’ sides of intimacy (as presented in this analysis) is that the unity that is formed is excluding. Playing with the words used here, inclusion in one sense means exclusiveness and, in a different sense, exclusion. The intimate relationship would then be including, exclusive and excluding: what is experienced in intimacy is not open to everyone.
18
Challenging the Idea of Intimacy as Intimate Relationships
______________________________________________________________ 5.
Concluding Reflections - Intimacy as a Relational Quality The phenomenological analysis developed here is based upon two images of intimacy, and would surely need to be completed by other examples in order to bring about a fuller understanding of the features of intimacy. My sketch in that sense has no intention of being complete. Some features of intimacy have nevertheless been suggested. While the idea of the analysis was to find intimacy, not as an empirical, contingent relation, but rather as a phenomenon as it is shown to us while experiencing intimacy, I will give some further reflections on how the features sketched here could be understood. As an analytical concept I suggest that intimacy can be understood as a relational quality. A quality is an aspect of a relationship rather than something that constitutes the relationship as a whole. Using the word quality also implies something that can emerge and disappear. As quality intimacy could then occur in basically all social relations, even if we most often will find them within the empirical field of intimate relationships. What is shown when intimacy is seen as an analytical concept is that intimacy is not a quality that once and for all characterises a relationship in the sense that all marriages, all friendships or all parent-child relations will be intimate. It also suggests that intimacy is not a state that is present at all times in a relationship. It might be that the two images of intimacy used in this analysis do not show the features of exclusiveness perfectly well. But I find it an interesting idea to use for challenging the boundaries of intimacy. The challenge could be to ask for how big a unit we can get the feeling of being intimate. The possibilities of being intimate are in several ways connected to the pair or the dyad, as in Georg Simmel’s analyses, which inevitably excludes everyone else.18 But can that unit be extended and if so to what extent?19 However, this analysis will end here with the essential features of intimacy that we have found, in a feeling of oceanic unity, total orientation towards each other, being in the continuous present and in excluding others. But this proposal of intimacy as an analytical concept brings about further questions of the quality of intimacy. These mainly concern the character of the relational quality. At this stage of analysis I find two possible ways of characterising intimacy as a relational quality. The first one is in a position of a dialectical concept, placed on a tension between different aspects, between ‘I’ and the ‘other’, between distance and closeness, etc. The other position is kind of the opposite of a dialectical concept, where intimacy could be understood as a vacuum, as a space or relation that occurs when nothing else is taking over, a state of tensionlessness. If not an opposite, this could, using the dialectical terminology, also be understood as the state of synthesis occurring when thesis and antithesis meet in transcending their tension, and before the synthesis becomes a thesis in another dialectical
Jessica Mjöberg 19 ______________________________________________________________ tension. In either way, intimacy seems to be placed on an interesting border, either as being the border or as being the borderless.
Notes 1
H Blumer, ‘What is Wrong with Social Theory?’ American Sociological Review, vol. 19-1, February 1954, pp. 3-10. 2 P S Cohen, ‘The Nature of Sociological Theory’, in Modern Social Theory, P S Cohen (ed.), Heinemann, London, 1968, pp.1-16. 3 This view is most common within the field of anthropology. See for instance J Solheim, Den öppna kroppen. Om könssymbolik i modern kultur, Daidalos, Göteborg, 2001. 4 L Jamieson, Intimacy. Personal Relationships in Modern Societies, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1998, p. 1. 5 An inventory of intimacy research was conducted in my unpublished paper J Mjöberg, ‘Distant Closeness - Intimacy in an Individualised Society’, paper given at The 23d Nordic Congress of Sociology, Åbo, August 2006. 6 The most central ideas in this genre are to be found in the works of Zygmunt Bauman, Antony Giddens and Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth BeckGernsheim. Especially their works on love. See Z Bauman, Liquid Love. On the Frailty of Human Bonds, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2003, U Beck and E Beck-Gernsheim, The Normal Chaos of Love, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995, A Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy. Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992. 7 See for example E Beck-Gernsheim, Reinventing the Family. In Search of New Lifestyles, Polity Press, Malden, 2002, N Gross and S Simmons, ‘Intimacy as a Double-Edge Phenomenon? An Empirical Test of Giddens’, Social Forces, vol. 81-2, 2002, pp. 531-555, L Jamieson, ‘Intimacy Transformed? A Critical Look at the ´Pure Relationship`’, Sociology, vol. 333, 1999, pp. 477-494. 8 See for example L Jamieson, ‘Intimacy, negotiated non-monogamy and the limits of the couple’, in The State of Affairs: Explorations in Infidelity and Commitment, J Duncombe et al. (eds), Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, New Jersey, 2004, pp. 35-57, S Roseneil and S Budgeon, ‘Cultures of Intimacy and Care Beyond ´the family´: Personal life and Social Change in the Early 21st Century’. Current Sociology, vol. 52-2, 2004, pp. 135-159, S Roseneil, ‘On Not Living with a Partner: Unpicking Coupledom and Cohabitation’. Sociological Research Online, vol. 11-3, 30 September 2006. 9 L Jamieson, Intimacy. Personal Relationships in Modern Societies, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1998, p. 1-14. 10 Cohen, op.cit, p. 10. 11 My translation. In Swedish: “Om allt är fakta återstår inget mer att göra, för då är allt gjort”. H Skjervheim, Deltagare och åskådare. Sex bidrag till
20
Challenging the Idea of Intimacy as Intimate Relationships
______________________________________________________________ debatten om människans frihet i det moderna samhället, Prisma, Stockholm, 1971, p. 31. 12 For a brilliant introduction to phenomenological analyses, see J-P Sartre, Sketch for a theory of the emotions, Routledge, London, 1996. 13 Gordon Allport uses this formulation when defining the subject of social psychological analyses. G Allport, ‘The Historical Background of Modern Social Psychology’, in Handbook of Social Psychology, G Lindzey (ed.), vol. 1, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company Cambridge, 1954, pp.3-56. 14 S Freud, Civilisation and its Discontents, The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, London, 1973, p. 8. 15 D Winnicott, Lek och verklighet [Playing and reality], Natur och Kultur, Stockholm, 1971, p. 22ff. 16 C H Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 1902, p. 35. 17 R Lichtenstein, ‘We rose up slowly’, in Frankfurt, Museum für Moderne Kunst, 1964. 18 G Simmel, ‘The Number of Members as Determining the Sociological Form of the Group. 1 ‘. The American Journal of Sociology, vol. 8-1, July 1902, pp. 1-46. 19 This question is being examined in my forthcoming thesis. In the form of a conference presentation the text that was presented in English with the title “the group mind reconsidered – bringing intimacy into groups”, can be found in Swedish in the proceedings from the conference, J Mjöberg, ‘Intimitet som gruppfenomen? - En relationell tolkning av gruppsjälen’, in Interaction on the Edge, the fifth GRASP conference, J Näslund and S Järn (eds), Linköping University, 2006, pp. 143-156.
Bibliography Allport, G., ‘The Historical Background of Modern Social Psychology’, in Handbook of Social Psychology. G. Lindzey (ed), vol. 1, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company Cambridge, 1954, pp. 3-56. Bauman, Z., Liquid Love. On the Frailty of Human Bonds. Polity Press, Cambridge, 2003. Beck-Gernsheim, E., Reinventing the Family. In Search of New Lifestyles. Polity Press, Malden, 2002. Beck, U. and E. Beck-Gernsheim, The Normal Chaos of Love. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995.
Jessica Mjöberg 21 ______________________________________________________________ Blumer, H., ‘What is Wrong with Social Theory?’ American Sociological Review, vol. 19-1, February, 1954, pp. 3-10. Cohen, P. S., ‘The Nature of Sociological Theory’, in Modern Social Theory. P. S. Cohen (ed.), Heinemann, London, 1968, pp. 1-16. Cooley, C. H., Human Nature and the Social Order. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 1902. Freud, S., Civilisation and its Discontents. The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, London, 1973. Giddens, A., The Transformation of Intimacy. Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992. Gross, N. and S. Simmons, ‘Intimacy as a Double-Edge Phenomenon? An Empirical Test of Giddens’. Social Forces, vol. 81-2, 2002, pp. 531-555. Jamieson, L., Intimacy. Personal Relationships in Modern Societies. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1998. –––, ‘Intimacy Transformed? A Critical Look at the ´Pure Relationship`’. Sociology, vol. 33-3, 1999, pp. 477-494. –––, ‘Intimacy, negotiated non-monogamy and the limits of the couple’, in The State of Affairs: Explorations in Infidelity and Commitment. J. Duncombe, et al. (eds), Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, New Jersey, 2004, pp. 35-57. Lichtenstein, R., ‘We rose up slowly’, in Frankfurt Museum für Moderne Kunst, 1964. Mjöberg, J., ‘Distant Closeness - Intimacy in an Individualised Society’, paper given at The 23d Nordic Congress of Sociology, Åbo, August 2006. –––, ‘Intimitet som gruppfenomen? - En relationell tolkning av gruppsjälen’, in Interaction on the Edge, the fifth GRASP conference. J. Näslund and S. Järn (eds), Linköping University, 2006, 143-156. Roseneil, S. and S. Budgeon, ‘Cultures of Intimacy and Care Beyond ´the family´: Personal life and Social Change in the Early 21st Century’. Current Sociology, vol. 52-2, 2004, pp. 135-159.
22
Challenging the Idea of Intimacy as Intimate Relationships
______________________________________________________________ Roseneil, S., ‘On Not Living with a Partner: Unpicking Coupledom and Cohabitation’. Sociological Research Online, vol. 11-3, 30 September, 2006, pp. Sartre, J.-P., Sketch for a theory of the emotions. Routledge, London, 1996. Simmel, G., ‘The Number of Members as Determining the Sociological Form of the Group. 1 ‘. The American Journal of Sociology, vol. 8-1, July, 1902, pp. 1-46. Skjervheim, H., Deltagare och åskådare. Sex bidrag till debatten om människans frihet i det moderna samhället. Prisma, Stockholm, 1971. Solheim, J., Den öppna kroppen. Om könssymbolik i modern kultur. Daidalos, Göteborg, 2001. Winnicott, D., Lek och verklighet [Playing and reality]. Natur och Kultur, Stockholm, 1971.
Forsaking All Others: The Norm of Monogamy1 Bryan R. Weaver and Fiona Woollard Abstract We consider whether it is reasonable for partners to hold each other to a norm of monogamy. A norm of monogamy requires an agent to forgo opportunities for two things of value - sex and erotic love - in exchange for his partner doing the same. But why is this mutual-restriction desirable? A norm of monogamy involves two links. Sex is linked to erotic love: sex is only permitted within relationships with this kind of emotional intimacy. Erotic love is linked to exclusivity: partners are only permitted one relationship with this kind of intimacy. We consider both links. Our discussion of the first link focuses on the intimate nature of sex. The intimacy involved in sex can lead partners to connect sex with the emotional intimacy in a relationship, thereby imbuing it with unique significance. If sexual activity in general is imbued with this significance, then sex without emotional intimacy is seen as a parody of sex within the relationship and so sex is restricted to relationships of emotional intimacy. This is one of several reasonable ways to respond to the value of sex. Our discussion of the second link focuses on the value of deep, long-term partnerships. These partnerships require substantial investment. Other relationships of erotic love can deflect important resources, so it is reasonable to restrict such relationships. This argument does not justify the restriction of non-erotic relationships and projects as these form distinct aspects of a well-rounded life. Our conclusion is conciliatory. If the series of conditions of a relationship we consider obtain, then monogamy is appropriate. If they do not, then non-monogamy is appropriate. Key Words: Intimacy, monogamy, sex. ***** 1.
Sex, Value and Monogamy The sexual revolution is over four decades old. Yet it failed to settle our understanding of the relationship between sex, value and monogamy. There remains the vague conviction that it is valuable for two partners to have sex only with each other. Given the significance of monogamy for most people’s lives, it is clear that the issue of monogamy is among the set of important questions concerning how we should live.2 We assume healthy communication between partners.3 We do not defend engaging in sex outside the relationship in a way that harms one’s partner.4 We also want to put to rest any speculation that by questioning
24
Forsaking All Others: The Norm of Monogamy
______________________________________________________________ monogamy we are over intellectualising an aspect of human experience. The pervasive effects of monogamy for individuals, partners, and society at large alone necessitate that some sense be given to it.5 However that is not our central motivation. Our central motivation is the ostensible disvalue generated by accepting monogamy as a norm. But before discussing that, we will explain what we take monogamy to be. 2.
What is Monogamy? We take monogamy to be a norm. It requires two partners to refrain from some range of sexual activity outside their relationship. Precisely what is included in the forbidden range may vary. Strong interpretations of the norm go so far as to forbid physical contact, emotional contact, or both. There is an array of weaker interpretations. We will assume a moderate interpretation that allows for innocent physical and emotional contact but rules out paradigm examples of sexual activity. The norm of monogamy is in two important senses voluntary. First, it only applies to partners who have voluntarily entered into a sexual relationship that exhibits erotic love. Second, we assume that two people entering into a relationship are free to choose the terms of their relationship, thus partners can choose whether their relationship will be governed by a norm of monogamy.6 Given our assumption that monogamy is voluntary, if partners freely choose to enter into a relationship that is nonmonogamous, the norm of monogamy simply does not apply to them. There are several ways in which a relationship may not be monogamous. The usual form of a norm of monogamy involves two restrictions: one, those governed by the norm can only have sex in a relationship with a certain feature, and two, a person should only stand in a relationship with that feature to one person at a time. Historically, the favoured relationship was marriage: sex outside marriage was forbidden and one could only marry one person at a time. The norm of monogamy currently accepted is of the same form as the marital norm, but replaces marriage with erotic love. Thus the two restrictions become: one, whenever a norm of monogamy applies, sex is restricted to relationships of erotic love; and two, one should not be in love with more than one person. Monogamy transitively links sex with erotic love and erotic love with exclusivity. Relationships can be nonmonogamous by allowing either (or both) of these links to be broken. Nonmonogamous relationships may only allow partners to have sex with emotional intimates, loosening only the link between erotic love and exclusivity, or they may only allow partners to have sex with others who are not emotional intimates, loosening only the link between sex and erotic love. Alternatively, both links may be loosed so that both kinds of sex are allowed.
Bryan R. Weaver and Fiona Woollard 25 ______________________________________________________________ 3.
The Mystery of Monogamy We turn to the mystery of monogamy. Monogamous partners are required to give up something of value - sex with others outside the relationship. In exchange, one receives the promise that one’s partner will also forego something of value - again, sex with others. But why is this exchange valuable? What engenders the mystery is that it seems altogether disvaluable. Demystification requires an account of the value generated by partners’ acceptance of a norm of monogamy that surmounts its apparent disvalue. Monogamous partners give up two valuable things. One of these involves hedonic value: partners give up the pleasure they may have experienced by having sex with others. The first link in the monogamy chain, the link between sex and erotic love, results in losses of this kind. As sex without erotic love is forbidden, partners miss out on pleasurable, non-loving sexual encounters. However, monogamous partners lose more than simple pleasure. They also give up the possibility of additional relationships of erotic love. The second link in the monogamy chain, the link between erotic love and exclusivity, bars partners from having this specific form of emotional intimacy with anyone else. Yet these emotional connections with others are valuable apart from any pleasure they produce. The mystery deepens because the monogamous relationship is itself supposed to be based on erotic love; in valuing their own relationship, monogamous partners demonstrate how highly they value erotic love. Thus acceptance of a norm of monogamy is mysterious because choosing to be monogamous involves accepting a harsh restriction of one’s access to two things of value. All one seems to get in return is the assurance that one’s partner will be similarly restricted. Because partners care deeply for one another, we would expect them to promote - not mutually deny - each other’s access to things of value. Unless we can find some further value to acceptance of a norm of monogamy, we must conclude it is specious. 4.
Practical Rationales for Monogamy We shall begin our search by considering some possible practical rationales for this norm. A popular defence states that monogamy is the only appropriate context for childrearing. Children deprived of such an upbringing are allegedly disadvantaged. Therefore, it is concluded, sex should be restricted to monogamous relationships. We do not believe that the welfare of children provides a convincing justification for a norm of monogamy. For it to do so, two conditions must be satisfied. It must be shown first that the nuclear family provides the optimal context for childrearing; this is not yet clear. Second, it must be shown that monogamy strengthens the partners’ ability to act as parents in a family unit. Given that modern contraception enables partners to prevent unwanted
26
Forsaking All Others: The Norm of Monogamy
______________________________________________________________ pregnancies and the creation of rival family units, it is not clear that sex outside the relationship must threaten the children’s welfare. Even if these conditions are satisfied, the childrearing rationale will only apply to relationships in which offspring are likely. As John McMurtry notes, the childrearing period amounts to only a fraction of an adult’s sexual life; sexual relationships may occur when neither partner is either involved, or likely to become involved, with childrearing.7 The second practical rationale for monogamy is that it is necessary to safeguard the relationship. Allowing another relationship to grow to a high level of emotional intimacy threatens the original relationship. The intruding relationship may grow to an extent that the original relationship fades to only secondary importance or even becomes superfluous. The conflicted partner must then choose between either remaining in the original relationship out of duty or abandoning it. Given the central role that a long-term relationship can play in the lives of the partners, ending it is painful and disruptive. Nevertheless, remaining in a relationship solely out of duty is unsatisfactory. Insofar as they currently value their relationship, partners will want to maintain their desire to be in the relationship.8 If monogamy prevents partners from forming attachments that threaten the status of the original relationship then it is reasonable for partners to accept it as a norm. However doubt remains as to whether adopting a norm of monogamy can be an effective safeguard. People develop erotic affinities without sexual contact; the very fact that satisfaction of desire is stymied can build up overwhelming emotional and sexual pressure, leading to severer consequences than if it had been satisfied outright. Moreover, there is a fundamental problem with the very idea that relationships need safeguarding. The safeguarding rationale presupposes a competitive model of relationship formation and support. On this model the formation and support of a sexual relationship of erotic love is constitutively opposed to the formation and support of either a purely sexual relationship or another sexual relationship of erotic love. But why is this so? We find ourselves back at the mystery of monogamy. 5.
The Value from Restriction In defence of monogamy one might argue that some things are more valuable when restricted and that sex is one such thing. However, it is not clear why restricting sex should lead to an increase in value. We require some guarantee that what we are discussing - non-marriage monogamy - has not instinctively inherited from marriage the historical misconception of women as property. Even more, what is at issue is not simply that women not be viewed as property but that neither partner, regardless of gender, is so viewed. Possessiveness often leads to jealousy and insecurity; these are vices and one should avoid accepting a norm that encourages in oneself vice. Of
Bryan R. Weaver and Fiona Woollard 27 ______________________________________________________________ course rejection of monogamy will not guarantee that they will not surface. But if monogamy can encourage them, then rejection of the norm will lessen the likelihood of exhibiting them. In any case, not all or even most valuable things become more valuable when limited. It needs to be shown why sex is one of the things that does. Nonetheless, there may be one valuable consequence of restricting sex: validation resulting from the fact of being chosen. And being chosen means more if you are the only one. But this again presupposes the competitive model and sounds dangerously like winning. Moreover, even if we concede that such validation is valuable, it hardly seems enough to warrant so restrictive a norm. 6.
Sex and Emotional Intimacy Our next argument is based on the idea that sex is peculiarly suited to be imbued with a particular kind of significance. When partners imbue sex with this significance, they see it as more than simply pleasurable; it is assigned a special importance and meaning for their relationship. Partners need not assign sex this significance in their relationship; however, it is reasonable to do so. Once sex is imbued with this significance, it becomes fused with emotional intimacy. If a couple do imbue sex with this significance, one partner engaging in sexual activity that does not have this kind of significance is hurtful. Therefore, it is reasonable for partners to require of each other that they do not engage in sex without emotional intimacy. Sex is by its very nature an act of multifarious intimacy. We have been discussing the apparent correlation between sex and erotic love. We have allowed that sex and erotic love can come apart. However there are forms of emotional intimacy that are part and parcel of sex. Sex involves deep physical intimacy. It also involves the intimacy of allowing oneself to be seen in an unselfconscious state; overcome by sexual pleasure, we no longer maintain a barrier between how we are and how we present ourselves. As we noted earlier, the fact that sex is a pleasurable experience helps to generate the mystery of monogamy. However this feature of sex also seems to provide a reason for giving it this extra significance. The pleasure sexual companions share is an intense experience, and intense experiences tend to forge a bond between those that share them. More importantly, the intense experience of sex is a product of the companions’ interaction. The physical and unselfconscious intimacy combined with the intensity of shared sexual experience makes it intuitive to connect sex with emotional intimacy. But this connection is complex. Many have attempted to explain it by stating that sex is treated as an expression of erotic love. Some aspects of sex can be seen as expressions of erotic love. However, other aspects of sex are not best understood as such. Russell Vannoy raises two
28
Forsaking All Others: The Norm of Monogamy
______________________________________________________________ worries about understanding sex in this way. First, he notes that an emphasis on communicating emotion can lead to an inappreciation of the more sensual aspects of sex.9 When sex is simply seen as a vehicle there is a danger that the value of sex qua sex is missed. Second, some aspects of sex, if we decide to see them as communication, seem to convey something other than emotional intimacy.10 Yet many enjoy the rawer aspects of sex and see them as part of the very sexual experience that they see as significant. A satisfactory account of the significance of sex will neither misrepresent what partners actually do nor exclude some aspects of their doings. So some but not all aspects of sex are associated with emotional intimacy because they provide a vehicle for the expression of that intimacy. However sex is also connected to emotional intimacy in a deeper way. Sex may not simply be expressive of emotional intimacy; it may be constitutive of it. It is not that sex is sufficient for emotional intimacy; emotional intimacy is multifaceted, involving a web of affinities. Sharing the experience of sex can be part of this web. There are various ways of imbuing sex with significance in a relationship. Partners may see the sex they have together as significant, but not see sexual activity in general as significant. They may see acts that are sufficiently similar to what they typically do together as significant but not extend that significance to all sexual activity. The widest interpretation involves seeing all sexual activity as significant. The various ways of seeing sex as significant all seem to be reasonable responses to the value of sex in a relationship. If partners choose to imbue all sexual activity with significance, then sex without emotional intimacy becomes a betrayal. Sex without emotional intimacy is viewed as a parody of the sex within the relationship. In having this kind of sex, the partner rejects by his behaviour the link between sex and emotional intimacy. Thus, when sex in general imbued with significance, sex with a person with whom there is no emotional intimacy is seen as degrading sex in the relationship. Some can psychologically separate sex within a relationship from sex outside it. However, many cannot do this. John Hunter casts doubt on the general feasibility of this “double view” of sex when he states that the connection between sex and love is “magic” and “fragile”.11 What is more, partners may feel that they respond most appropriately to the value of sex within the relationship when they view it as so significant that this significance spreads over all sexual activity. We conclude that there can be a link, conditional on sex being imbued with significance, between sex and erotic love. If partners assign sex this significance, it is reasonable for each to require that the other refrain from sexual activity with others with whom they do not share this emotional intimacy.
Bryan R. Weaver and Fiona Woollard 29 ______________________________________________________________ 7.
Erotic Love and Exclusivity We now require a further argument to show why erotic love should be limited to one relationship. Given that relationships of erotic love are valuable, why should we restrict our partners to only one such relationship? We do not restrict other relationships in this way. How does the case of erotic love differ? As noted earlier, a long-term relationship plays a central role in the lives of its partners. The partners make both life-altering and day-to-day decisions with the needs of the partnership in mind. This kind of partnership is rewarding, but demanding. To be successful, it requires substantial investments of time, energy and emotion. For most, it will simply not be possible to sustain this kind of commitment to more than one person at a time. However, other relationships also require substantial investment. Friendship and parent-child relationships are cases in point. Yet the norm of monogamy does not identify those relationships as threats. External projects can also be quite time-consuming. But a healthy relationship should not exclude such outside interests. We respond first that those other relationships and projects either contribute new values to the agent’s life or are otherwise obligatory. It is unreasonable to ask one’s partner to ignore his other obligations or go unfulfilled in other aspects of his life in order to protect the relationship. Non-sexual external relationships and projects contribute an additional kind of value. They provide something that the relationship of erotic love cannot provide. They contribute to a well-rounded life in a way an additional sexual relationship of erotic love may not. It is therefore worth some diversion of resources to allow each partner to pursue these other values. For many, an additional relationship of erotic love will not add any distinct value. Second, the freedom to pursue other relationships and projects is not unlimited. One partner can reasonably object to the other spending too much time with other friends or on other projects. A successful partnership requires compromise. The needs of the partnership must be balanced against the individual needs and autonomy of the partners. There can be tension between these two competing factors. However they are also mutually dependant. A healthy relationship provides support for each partner to pursue his own independent projects. The value of the relationship itself also depends upon each partner being an independently-fulfilled, autonomous agent. So some decisions will be made which favour the individual needs of the partners; others which favour the partnership. Which aspect takes priority will depend upon the values at stake. When obligations or components of a well-rounded life not supplied by the relationship are in question, the individual’s independent needs may come first. However, many partners will feel that their need for erotic love and companionship can be
30
Forsaking All Others: The Norm of Monogamy
______________________________________________________________ sufficiently fulfilled by the partnership. If so, it makes sense to set this area aside for the needs of the relationship to take priority; it makes sense to be monogamous. This argument challenges the assumptions underlying the apparent mystery of monogamy. We asked why, given that the monogamists value relationships of erotic love, they want to restrict their partner’s access to such relationships. However, one such relationship may meet all a person’s needs in this respect. Thus, the monogamists may not actually lose anything of value.12 8.
Conclusion We have discussed a series of conditions such that if a relationship satisfies those conditions - whether by circumstance or by choice - then it makes sense for that relationship to be monogamous. If it does not, then it makes sense for it to be nonmonogamous. Of course, partners might find that only some of the conditions apply to their relationship. In that case, a limited norm of monogamy or another form of restricted openness is appropriate. Thus monogamy makes sense for some but not all. Given certain conditions, it can make sense to tether sex to relationships of erotic love. Given other conditions, it can make sense to allow only one such relationship. If all these conditions are met, monogamy makes sense. If not, it does not.
Notes 1
We both thank Philip Goff for vigorous discussion. Bryan R Weaver also thanks Alison Duncan Kerr and Kevin Scharp. 2 One might argue that simply desiring to be monogamous and entering into a relationship with someone who shares that desire is enough for acceptance of a norm of monogamy to generate value. Because it is a matter of contention whether desires can generate reasons, we do not pursue that here. 3 This qualification is significant in that it creates a disanalogy between our discussion of monogamy and T M Scanlon’s discussion of friendship. Cf. T M Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998, pp. 88-90. 4 Although it is conceptually possible that one partner not desire to engage in sex outside the relationship whilst allowing the other to do so, we caution that in practice such situations will constitute a dubious asymmetry. 5 Following Allan Gibbard, we maintain that to ‘make sense’ is to abide by norms. See A Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990, p. 90.
Bryan R. Weaver and Fiona Woollard 31 ______________________________________________________________ 6
Of course relationships are also governed by other norms not to do with monogamy. 7 J McMurtry, ‘Monogamy: A Critique’, Monist, 67(4), 1972, p. 592. 8 H G Frankfurt, ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person’, in The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 11-25, is the locus classicus for second-order desires. 9 R Vannoy, Sex Without Love: A Philosophical Exploration, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1980, p. 16. 10 R Vannoy, p. 11. 11 J F M Hunter, ‘Sex and Personal Intimacy’, in Moral Issues, J Narveson (ed), Oxford University Press, Toronto, 1983, p. 298. 12 This argument relies on claims about the value and requirements of the kind of relationships that involve sharing a life. It does not apply to shortterm relationships - even though these may involve erotic love. However, insofar as a short-term relationship is seen as a step on the road to a long-term partnership, partners may reasonably embrace monogamy.
Bibliography Frankfurt, H. G., ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person’, in The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 11-25. Frankfurt, H. G., The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988. Gibbard, A., Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990. Hunter, J. F. M., ‘Sex and Personal Intimacy’, in Moral Issues. J. Narveson (ed), Oxford University Press, Toronto, 1983, pp. 282-299. McMurty, J., ‘Monogamy: A Critique’. Monist, 67(4), 1972, pp. 587-599. Narveson, J. (ed), Moral Issues, Oxford University Press, Toronto, 1983. Scanlon, T. M., What We Owe to Each Other. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998. Vannoy, R., Sex Without Love: A Philosophical Exploration. Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1980.
“Love is as Strong as Death”: The Triadic Love of Franz Rosenzweig, Eugen RosenstockHuessy and Gritli Rosenstock-Huessy Wayne Cristaudo Abstract Franz Rosenzweig, the author of The Star of Redemption, was one of the most important figures in providing a sense of Jewish identity to German Jews between the World Wars. Indeed after contracting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis he became something of a Jewish saint. Hence Rosenzweig scholarship was rocked when, almost 20 years ago, it became public knowledge that between 1917 and 1924 Rosenzweig had written hundred of letters - many of them love letters - to a Christian woman, Gritli Huessy. Gritli was the wife of his friend Eugen Rosenstock, who himself was Rosenzweig’s correspondent in what has frequently been hailed as the greatest Jewish-Christian Dialogue of the 20th century. Rosenstock had not only always known about these letters, but he had known and accepted that his best friend and wife were lovers. Further, Gritli and Rosenzweig both confirmed that this relationship could not have taken place were it not valorised by Rosenstock. This paper will partly tell the story, but it will also reflect upon this love story as a narrative about love being stronger than death - a central theme in the writings of both Rosenzweig and Rosenstock. Key Words: Christian, Dante, death, immortality, Jewish, love, pagan, Rosenzweig, Rosenstock-Huessy. ***** In 1945 Nahum N. Glatzer, the “presenter” (as he called himself) of the first lengthy introduction to the life and thought of the Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig, received a letter from Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy.1 In that letter Rosenstock-Huessy informed Glatzer that he had a huge collection of letters written by Franz Rosenzweig to Rosenstock-Huessy’s wife, Margrit or Gritli. Not only had they had been written during the time of the composition of Der Stern der Erlösung (The Star of Redemption) and after, but he added “[a] whole commentary on the ‘Stern’ is found in them.”2 Like Glatzer, Rosenstock-Huessy was a German émigré living in the United States. And like Glatzer, Rosenstock-Huessy had been a close friend of Franz Rosenzweig. Indeed, he had played a pivotal role in Franz Rosenzweig’s life - in his attempt to have Rosenzweig follow him into the Christian faith, he opened Rosenzweig’s eyes to how faith across the times forms reality. In this
34
“Love is as Strong as Death”
______________________________________________________________ respect he had also convinced Rosenzweig that the current secular and postNietzschean consensus about God’s death had been greatly exaggerated. Nietzsche had toppled the rotting corpse of idealist metaphysics but not the living God of Christians and Jews. Like Rosenstock, Rosenzweig had been born into a liberal Jewish family, but whereas Rosenstock insisted that the triadic unity of God, man and world was best understood and hence God was best served by entering the Christian faith, Rosenzweig, on the verge of converting to Christianity, had the overwhelming conviction that he had to devote his life to the Jewish faith. In The Star of Redemption he would argue that Christians and Jews alone are servants of the God who is Creator, Revealer and Redeemer with each having a different task. The Jews have been chosen to live outside of history – hence they are stateless and speak the language of the particular state they may dwell in – while the Christians sweep all pagans into their messianic mission of conversion.3 While both were fighting for the Central Powers, Rosenzweig in Macedonia and Rosenstock on the Western front, they exchanged a passionate correspondence about their respective faiths. That correspondence of 1916 was first published in Germany after Hitler had come to power, in 1935, by which time Franz Rosenzweig had been dead six years from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; he had also become probably the most important intellectual leader for German Jewry. That role had largely derived from his establishment of the Jewish Lehrhaus in Frankfurt, his translation of the Bible, with Martin Buber, and his unflagging devotion to the promotion of the benefits of the Jewish life and tradition. Behind his fame lay, The Star of Redemption, a work which would make him the most important Jewish philosopher of the twentieth century (certainly, the two other contenders for that title, Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas saw him in that light.) The love story had been a secret for many years, first seeing the light of day in a public talk by Eckart Wilkens on October 10, 1978 at a Volkshochschule in Köln. The story’s significance first impacted on the scholarly community when Harold Stahmer presented a paper quoting from a number of the letters in the Franz Rosenzweig Conference in Kasell in 1986.4 And the correspondence, having been typed up by Ulriche von Moltke, only appeared in print in an edited (and unsatisfactory manner) in 2002, while a full online edition was placed, that same year, on the web by Michael Gormann-Thelen.5 Rosenzweig’s widow, was, rather tactlessly, forced to confront what, it appears, was a shameful and humiliating event for her Wilkens himself reported in the lecture that she had been horrified to learn of his intentions to talk about the love story.6 For while the love story between Franz Rosenzweig and Gritli Rosenstock-Huessy had begun before Edith had become his fiancée, the correspondence reveals that Gritli had been his great passion.
Wayne Cristaudo
35
______________________________________________________________ The publication of such private matters as these letters convey can easily be seen as, and indeed become, but the disgraceful intrusion into a sphere of life that concerned no one but the parties involved and hence should have remained veiled. Certainly, and very understandably, Edith Rosenzweig had not wanted this material to become public - so much so she had even burnt Gritli Huessy’s correspondence to her husband, whether in compliance with Rosenzweig’s wishes is not known.7 A number of references to her are humiliating, callous even, and although Rosenzweig may have been (and for many was and, for me still is, something of a saint), his letters reveal a complex, irritable, spoilt, and self-obsessive nature - which, is to say, he was not a saintly figurine, but a young man involved in a complicated situation, doing his best to deal with the forces of his faith and his loves. Although it is not stated so strongly in this letter, familiarity with Rosenstock-Huessy’s work reveals that he himself had been fundamentally changed by Rosenzweig, eventually accepting the special importance of the Jewish people and the need of Christians to acknowledge the eternal need of Jews to exist as Jews - indeed he had come to accept the role of the Jews as God’s elect, which was the core of the argument that Rosenzweig had made against Rosenstock in the course of their debate. This change in perspective on his part lends strong support to Rosenstock-Huessy’s comments that: Franz and Eugen did exchange with each other certain fundamentals of their life rhythm in mutuality, and - must it be added? - quite unintentionally, in total unconsciousness. Individual purposes or intentions were subordinated to a large extent to a process of re-creation or transformation brought about by a most unwanted, even abhorred, exposure to each other.8 Before reflecting upon the triadic love of Franz and Gritli and Eugen as an immortalising force I wish to briefly comment upon some of the key concepts in Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption. There are three fundamental triads in Rosenzweig’s system - two of which form the symbol of the star itself, which is the symbol of the eternal truth that is experienced by the Jewish people. The first is the triad of God, Man, World, in which each is a pole of historical orientation and collective appeal in self, group and world making. Rosenzweig demonstrates that any attempt to deny the existence of one pole, such as God, by atheists, or the independence of the world by idealists, or to collapse man completely into the world, as naturalists would have it, is to deface the only world that we know, a world in which each name of appeal has played its respective part. In this respect, Rosenzweig refuses to accept that the bare world of nature is the one true world; or, to say it another way, for Rosenzweig culture matters.
36
“Love is as Strong as Death”
______________________________________________________________ Rosenzweig’s elaboration of the triadic connection is premised upon a critique of philosophy, which he sees as having undergone a welcome revolution in the writings of Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, who make experience the touchstone of truth, and Schelling, his most important “classical” precursor, whose treatment of myth provides Rosenzweig with the example of “absolute empiricism” which he adopts.9 The triad of God, Man, World, for Rosenzweig, is contrasted with the mistaken attempt of classical and modern philosophy to try and think everything under one idea. This “idealist” move (which applies equally to naturalism) which purports to comprehend the “all” is the source, for Rosenzweig, of all the dogmatic “isms” which he thinks plagues modern thought and transforms them into totalising and sickening life-ways.10 The second triad is Creation, Revelation and Redemption - which is perhaps most swiftly understood if discussed simultaneously with the third triad. Unlike the first two triads, the third triad is not a triad that helps form the symbol of the star, but it is, for Rosenzweig, no less essential for understanding the world we live in. This is the triad of pagans, Christians and Jews. On the surface to break humanity into three core groups seems very superficial - and it is one of the most common criticisms that is launched against him by his own advocates who seem to be embarrassed by such archaisms. However, I believe the criticisms miss the point and show the superficial understanding of the system by the critic rather than the superficiality of Rosenzweig’s divisions - for the divisions are only meant to hold for the very specific configuration which Rosenzweig wants to illumine. The pagan in Rosenzweig’s system refers to any life world built upon the immediate energies and signs of creation. Thus any life-way which legitimates itself through an appeal to the gods and/or the world as it stands is pagan. From his vantage point Islam, neo-Platonism, Buddhism, Confucianism, no more nor less than animistic societies and atheistic ones are all united by the commonality of their underlying modalities of sources of ultimate appeal whether Allah, the One, nirvana, nature, the nothing, the pantheon; these are all sources which are invoked to make sense of the world and a society’s place within it and which may well seek to orientate beyond death. People build worlds around their sources of appeal - and while Rosenzweig is not denying the detailed diversity of every life-way, in comparison to one particular life-way - the life-way of the Jewish people he claims that there is a fundamental cleavage and that can be traced back to the original uniqueness of the Jewish source of appeal. To a certain extent, since the spread of Christianity, ways of being and seeing and making reality which originated in the Judaic experience have now become part of a more universal human experience. In this respect, for example, Rosenzweig emphasises that even atheistic philosophers such as Schopenhauer and
Wayne Cristaudo
37
______________________________________________________________ Nietzsche resort to Christian (and therefore to some extent also) Jewish appeals. The original uniqueness to which Rosenzweig refers when speaking of the Jewish people is that they were a people who were formed over time in response to the law of a God who was a lover who revealed the law of triadic redemption of His people, His world and Himself. Two things are important here: first, Rosenzweig does not deny that other persons ever had an experience of this loving God, nor that no other philosophers spoke of love’s divine importance - Empedocles, for example, spoke of love as a cosmic force - but the point is that until the Jews no other people was formed, albeit frequently in defiance and outright rebellion against their God and His law, over time by the commandment to love the neighbour. Afterwards, Christianity took core Jewish teachings into the world, albeit in a distorted manner with its most provocative claim that the Messiah had already arrived. But in making spirit and faith stronger than blood and inheritance, the Christians acted as a middle term between the Jewish and pagan peoples. To restate this, for Rosenzweig the uniqueness of the Jewish body of believers lay in the overwhelming importance of love as the revealed law of redemption - not power, not piety, not ascetic renunciation, not justice in itself, but love becomes the ray through which all other potencies of creation are inflected and thereby totally transformed, which is to say they are redeemed by love. The corollary of this is that love - not ethics, not politics, not philosophy, not ideology, not a change in the mode of social production redeems the weak and the evil. And indeed the redemption of the weak and the evil is a fundamental line of continuity between Jews and Christians. Although The Star makes the case that Jews need Christians to enable their own perpetuity and that this is part of God’s plan, he also insists that the Christian body of believers is forever overpowered by other energies, other prospects, other sources of appeal, and thus Christians continually relapse into the tumultuous world of paganism before regrouping again around their faith. Unlike Christians, however, Jews must ever confront the living God having no state, forced always to dwell in the land of others and speak the tongues of others they are what they are. (The Star was written before the existence of Israel, and while Rosenzweig became more conciliatory toward Zionists, his vision is premised upon the perpetuity of a Jewish Diaspora). In this respect, they are not like Christians, mere believers; they are the Other by birth. And again the truly remarkably prophetic aspect of The Star lay in its prescience that the great new persecution would have nothing to do with what Jews believed but with who they were said to be. Further, and my last point on the system, The Star also raises the matter of the Christian’s eternal hatred of the Jew, a hatred that has its roots in the Christians need to create a universal fellowship, and the Jews being the permanent and stubborn reminder of the impossibility of the task.
38
“Love is as Strong as Death”
______________________________________________________________ Even if one concedes the essential truth of Rosenzweig’s sketches of pagans, Christians and Jews, it is also true that if we take love in a more limited sense than can be found in the Jewish and Christian Bibles, but as a force of erotic attraction, then the idea that lovers are participating in an immortalising force is a pagan one, probably having roots in Orphic cults. Of course it receives its first fully blown philosophical exposition in Plato’s Phaedrus and Symposium. For Plato, the beloved’s beauty, which stirs the soul of the lover, is a spur to love of the beautiful itself; that is, nature in its simulation of perfection is a spur to transcendence. This idea finds itself reproduced in neo-Platonic influenced Arab love poetry and the songs of the troubadours, who, like Plato, see love as a transcendent force and the role of the beloved as the activation of the courageous deeds and service of the lover - deeds which would never be done were it not for the beloved’s radiance and promise. The greatest fusion of troubadour poetry with neo-Platonic thematics is Dante’s Divine Comedy, a work which manages to synthesise them with pagan and Christian mythology and thought. That is, in Dante, love in its highest pagan form is synthesised with the law of love that is common to Jews and Christians. Indeed, in Dante we see that this synthesis of the law of love with the (Platonic) romantic is what makes this complete. To be sure, in Dante, the transcendence is preserved by accepting the renunciative Christian and pagan ascetic (also Platonic) dimensions, but even allowing for this significant difference between Dante’s great cosmic love story and the terrestrial love story of Franz Rosenzweig and Gritli-Huessy we can see some broad parallels. In the first instance, Eugen plays a role somewhat analogous to Virgil. It was Eugen (in a letter of 1916 on the formative nature of speech) that brought Franz into what he would later call his New Thinking. It was Eugen who would open his eyes to the dead-end of faithlessness (which is really what Virgil does to Dante), by demonstrating to him the moribund future of idealism and modernism. He showed Rosenzweig that faith was a means for activating what philosophy did not touch, that it was a mode of the soul’s orientation. Philosophy provided reasons, but faith drew one to act in the knowledge of the limitations of the light of the world and the urgency of the moment.11 In this respect, Eugen Rosenstock was pivotal in helping form Franz Rosenzweig, in making Franz Rosenzweig who he became. That he was a Christian and Rosenzweig would become a major, possibly the major Jewish thinker of the twentieth century is indicative of the spirit’s refusal to be contained and subjected by the will of the subject. If Eugen plays the role of Virgil, it is, however, Gritli who is Beatrice. For as Rosenzweig’s letters to her state on a daily basis, while Eugen pushed him to seek the living God, Gritli showed him the meaning of love, and it was that meaning that sings through the pages on the section on Revelation and Redemption in the Star.
Wayne Cristaudo
39
______________________________________________________________ That Rosenzweig takes the cornerstone of the revealed law of love, that it is as strong as death, from the Song of Songs (8:6) is an acknowledgment of the potency of the sensuousness of love as a means of expressing and activating the love between God and the soul. Or to say it another way, Gritli’s love for Rosenzweig, and what is hinted at by taking his core principle from the Song of Songs is a sign of the redemptive love that he experiences through Gritli. One might say, without exaggeration, that the Star is a love-drunk vision of a God who pours out infinite love to a people who must be strong enough to drink it and then to share their loving strength. In this respect the Star is a very Jewish book, even though Rosenzweig quite rightly insisted it was not just a Jewish book - and it was not, for amongst other things it is written for Christians who he hopes will see and act to stop the forces of anti-Semitism swelling in Germany at that time. Yet - and this yet is all important - it is also a book that could not have been written without the pagan and the Christian. Rosenstock-Huessy knew this, much more than Rosenzweig’s Jewish admirers who were ignorant of the triadic love story - the fourth triad which ruptures the beautiful symmetry of this fabulous system. In his autobiographical work Ja and Nein, Rosenstock-Huessy had provided the formulation, which was the only one that he held truthfully, made sense of the European world - that the full life must be lived as Jew, as Christian and as pagan.12 While he saw Rosenzweig as articulating the dialogical view of life from the vantage point of the Jew, he knew that Rosenzweig’s own life had been the incarnation of those three forms of life, just as his had been from the vantage point of the Christian and just as Buber’s had been from the vantage point of the pagan.13 Rosenstock-Huessy knew that once the existential condition of The Star became public then the nature of the forces and faiths that formed Rosenzweig would have to be seen in a different and truer hue than the popular one of that of the paragon of Jewish life. It was not merely his love of God and His people that drove The Star’s composition and the uniqueness of its accentuations - all of which were the forces which elevated his own star among his people - but the love he had for and received from a Christian woman. Looked at from the more personal side, The Gritli Letters indicate that The Star is an attempt to woo Gritli towards Judaism. Yet he also wants to show Eugen that he has demonstrated the alliance between Jews and Christians, which has been embodied in their friendship. In keeping with the love he has for both, he does not want to damage the love that exists between Gritli and Eugen. On the contrary, throughout their correspondence he emphasises that the love between him and Gritli strengthens the love each has for Eugen. Yet again, he is also elevating the importance and power of Gritli’s love in the lives of the two men she loves. For Gritli’s love would not just be directed at her Christian husband, but it would fill her Jewish beloved
40
“Love is as Strong as Death”
______________________________________________________________ with the energy to be more than he would otherwise be, to be the author of the greatest modern philosophical elaboration of the nature and relationship between Jewish and Christian peoples. Seen in terms of this project, Gritli’s love transcends the Christian/ Jewish divide by assisting each man in the pursuit of his different faith. The love, then, that existed between Rosenzweig and a Christian woman was indeed divinely sanctioned because it too was integral in the world’s redemption and it was the living proof of the Jewish/ Christian alliance. That this love between Gritli and Franz was transgressive, that it was sensuous and because it was sensuous, in contravention of the decreed walls of the sanctimony of marriage, it also revealed that all three accepted the compulsions of the pagan. The truth of this love story, which lay concealed for so many years, finally burst out, and like all repressed truth, it came into the world, like a lacerating blade, damaging the ideal portraiture of Rosenzweig’s marriage with Edith. The story was also one more verification of the truth that “love is as strong as death.”
Notes 1
N Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought, New York, Schocken, 1953. 2 The letter dated December 31 1945 in the collections of letters kept in Four Wells, the home of Freya von Moltke, the companion of RosenstockHuessy’s late years in Vermont. 3 Of course this is written before the state of Israel, and it is the key reason why Rosenzweig was not a Zionist. 4 H Stahmer’s contribution, ‘Franz, Eugen, and Gritli: “Respondeo etsi mutabor”’ is now available in Wolf Dietrich Schmied-Kowarzik (ed.), Franz Rosenzweigs ‘neues Denken’: Band II: Erfahrenen Offenbarung in theologos, K Alber, Freiburg, 2006, pp. 1151-1168. Also see H Stahmer’s ‘Franz Rosenzweig’s Letters to Margrit Rosenstock-Huessy, 1917-1922’. Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, vol. 34, 1989, pp. 385-409. For other material on the “Gritli” letters see M Gormann-Thelen’s highly informative ‘Franz Rosenzweigs Briefe an Margrit (“Gritli”) Rosenstockk: Ein Zwischenbericht mit Drei Dokumenten’, in The Legacy of Franz Rosenzweig, L Anckaert, M Brasser, and N Samuelson (eds), Leuven University Press, Leuven, 2004. Thus far there has only been one book length analysis of the material and that is E Meier’s Letters of Love: Franz Rosenzweig’s Spiritual Biography and Oeuvre in Light of the Gritli Letters, P Lang, New York, 2006. Meier’s treatment tends to be quite one-sided, due to insufficient about the Rosenstock-Huessys.
Wayne Cristaudo
41
______________________________________________________________ 5
For the complete and unabridged version of all available letters typed up by Ulriche Von Moltke and edited by Michael Gormann-Thelen und Dr. Elfriede Büchsel see The Gritli Letters, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Fund and Argo Books, 18 May 2007, viewed on 27 February 2008
. The published version is F Rosenzweig, Die “Gritli” Briefe: Briefe an Margrit RosenstockHuessy, Foreword by R Rosenzweig, and I Rühle u. R Mayer (eds), Tübingen, Bilam, 2000. The final crisis between Rosenstocks and the Rosenzweigs is treated in a completely cursory and utterly misleading manner. 6 M Zank, ‘The Rosenzweig-Rosenstock Triangle, or, What Can We Learn from Letters to Gritli?: A Review Essay’. Modern Judaism, vol. 23, 2003, p. 93. 7 It seems that Rosenzweig wished to have the correspondence returned, whether to spare his wife embarrassment or out of a sense of shame that his reality and image were not in sync. 8 E Rosenstock-Huessy (ed), Judaism despite Christianity: The “Letters on Christianity and Judaism between Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Franz Rosenzweig, Schocken, New York, 1971, p. 172. 9 A Udoff and Galli (eds and trans), Franz Rosenzweig’s ‘The New Thinking’, Syracuse University Press, New York, 1999, p. 101. 10 For his comment on isms see F Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy: A View of World, Man and God, tr. Nahum Glatzer, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., 1999, p. 57. 11 I should add immediately that the examples of others such as his Uncle Adam and Hermann Cohen also should not be underestimated. 12 E Rosenstock-Huessy, Ja und Nein: Autobiographische Fragmente, Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg, 1968, pp. 71-72. 13 The remark about Buber is provocative. I explore it fully in my forthcoming book The Star and the Cross: Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s Post-Nietzschean Revivals of Judaism and Christianity, Cambridge, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, under contract.
Bibliography Glatzer, N. (ed), Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought. New York: Schocken, 1953. Gormann-Thelen, M., “Franz Rosenzweigs Briefe an Margrit (“Gritli”) Rosenstockk: Ein Zwischenbericht mit Drei Dokumenten”, in The Legacy of
42
“Love is as Strong as Death”
______________________________________________________________ Franz Rosenzweig. L. Anckaert, M. Brasser and N. Samuelson (eds), Leuven University Press, Leuven, 2004. Horwitz, R., ‘The Shaping of Rosenzweig’s Identity According to the Gritli Letters’, in Rosenzweig als Leser: Kontextuelle Kommentare zum ‘Stern der Erlösun’. M. Brasser (ed.), Max Niemeyer, Tübingen, 2004. Maybaum, I., Trialogue between Jew, Christian and Muslim. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1973. Meier, E., Letters of Love: Franz Rosenzweig’s Spiritual Biography and Oeuvre in Light of the Gritli Letters. Peter Lang, New York, 2006. Rosenstock-Huessy, E. (ed.), Judaism despite Christianity: The Letters on Christianity and Judaism between Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Franz Rosenzweig. Introduction by H. Stahemer with essays by A. Altmann and D. Emmet, New York: Schocken, 1971 [1969]. –––, Die Soziologie. 2 volumes. Kohlhammer. 1956-1958. –––, Die Sprache des Menschengeschlechts. 2 Volumes, Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg, 1963-1964. –––, I am an Impure Thinker. Argo, Norwich,Vermont, 1969. –––, Ja und Nein: Autobiographische Fragmente. Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg, 1968. –––, Out of Revolution. Argo, Norwich,Vermont, 1970. –––, Speech and Reality. Argo, Norwich,Vermont, 1970. Rosenzweig, F., Franz Rosenzweig’s ‘The New Thinking’. A. Udoff and B. Galli (eds and trans), Syracuse University Press, New York, 1999. –––, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy: A View of World, Man and God. N. Glatzer (trans) and H. Putman (intro), Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., 1999.
Wayne Cristaudo
43
______________________________________________________________ –––, Gritli Letters, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Fund and Argo Books, 18 May 2007, viewed on 27 February 2008, . –––, The Star of Redemption. B. Galli (trans), Wisconsin University Press, Madison, 2005. Stahmer, H., ‘Franz Rosenzweig’s Letters to Margrit Rosenstock-Huessy, 1917-1922’. Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, vol. 34, 1989, pp. 385-409. –––, ‘Franz, Eugen, and Gritli: “Respondeo etsi mutabor”’, in Franz Rosenzweigs “neues Denken”: Band II: Erfahrenen Offenbarung in theologos. W D Schmied-Kowarzik (ed), Freiburg, Karl Alber, 2006, pp. 1151-1168. Zank, M., ‘The Rosenzweig-Rosenstock Triangle, or, What Can We Learn from Letters to Gritli?: A Review Essay’. Modern Judaism, vol. 23, 2003, pp. 74-98.
Care of Self as Demarcation: Everyday Life Practices of Self-Care as The Intermediation of Work and Life Sabine Flick Abstract This work-in-progress text discusses questions of self-care as demarcation, assuming that new forms of labour regulations are challenging practices of self-direction. This is embedded in the discussion about the dissolution of the boundaries between “work” and “life” [German: Entgrenzung]. This “Entgrenzung,” which is a primal hypothesis of my work, changes the requirements of self-care and ideas of the inner-self or, in other words: subjectivity. Results of an empirical PhD study based on biographical interviews with highly self-directed employees (by means of flexible time) will be presented. The main focus lies on their practices of self-care related to the question of how to draw the line of demarcation between work and life and what ideas of a “good life” are possibly important for this. Following ideas of the recognition theory of Axel Honneth and Jessica Benjamin, I assume that self-care is related to the giving and receiving of care for/of others. The care of the self marks the crucial point of reproduction in such highly flexibilised workplaces. This perspective avoids the dichotomy of work and life, a question that gender research raised already decades ago with the public/private debate. Moreover, I am interested in how these more or less new working conditions influence the intimate relations of employees. One research result is that friendship significantly matters to these people, which implies that the classical individualisation theory misses the essential point since it only looks out for singles vs. couples. Another is that despite the changes in gender relations, gender specific particularities in the practice of self care are still relevant. Key Words: Entgrenzung, intersubjectivity, subjectivation of work, work/life.
recognition,
self-care,
***** Introduction: Why Should We Care about Care?1 Depression has become a mass phenomenon. The amount of work missed due to psychological suffering, “burn out” or even Tinnitus is increasing.2 Is it the exhaustion of being oneself that causes depression? 3 The paradox adaptation of the Self with its new choices and its increased autonomy (as many authors describe it) seems to tax subjects and their
1.
46
Care of Self as Demarcation
______________________________________________________________ subjectivity, overstraining them psychically. The subject, now at the centre of his or her own life and life planning, may and must, realise his or her own self totally. In this paper I discuss this re-focussing on the self in the context of changing working conditions, or what is called the “subjectivation” of work in the contemporary labour and industrial sociology. Subjectivity seems to be playing an important role again, but what does the “subjectivation of work” really mean? The aforementioned changing conditions of labour require that subjects move toward greater self-control, self-rationalisation and selfeconomisation. This subjectivation of work, as research in labour sociology shows us, becomes an obligation for the employees. It involves tearing down the boundaries between labour and leisure and, with this, the boundaries between “work life” and “private life,” and to integrate subjective attributes such as communicative and affective practices - into the work process. In contrast to the rationalisation paradigm of Taylor-Fordism, the management concepts of Post-Fordism take the whole person into account. From this perspective the transition to flexible working hours, with its shift in the relation between labour time and leisure time, actually leads to the dissolution of the boundaries between them.4 In particular, the boundaries between the inner and outer realm of the company, between working environment and life world, are dissolving. Diverse empirical research claims that the new prototype employee is the “labour entrepreneur,”5 who, above all, must exercise self-monitoring. Self-monitoring, as I argue here, is connected with the risk of self-overstraining, since external demands can be construed as internal ones. The results of research on the subjectification of work overwhelmingly demonstrate that employees working in these very subjectified industrial relations confuse or conflate governance and dependency relations. The idea of over-directed activity here is clearly being replaced with an integral [integer] feeling of self-determination. Baethge writes: “that a person that relates work to himself and not himself to work tends to a precarious misjudging of the real power structure.”6 It is a “reality-denying stabilisation of command.”7 Considering these developments, it has become dangerous to protect the subjectivity being integrated into the labour process from external operations [interventions?], to permit this subjectivation of work only to a certain degree. To be capable of self-care, to care about care, in other words, becomes extremely relevant in view of this increasing focus on the self. How this assumed denial of reality takes shape practically (if it is at all a denial), is an interesting question. Is the subjectivation of work really interpreted as such? If so, then the central question concerns which strategies allow people to consider external requirements as external? Which allow them to say, for
Sabine Flick
47
______________________________________________________________ example: “I am not overstrained, but I get overstrained?”8 And what practices result from that interpretation? How do people come to be capable of distinguishing external from internal requirements, of differentiating between self-determined and overdirected experiences? Or, as psychoanalyst Joachim Küchenhoff asks: Which conditions are necessary for us to succeed at the apparently self-evident task of being good to oneself?9 The concept of “care of self” could be of some help at this point. To take care of oneself, the “Souci de Soi,” could possible afford us a perspective to help achieve a certain distance from social requirements.10 Care of self here means: the ability to interact well, to be good to oneself, to protect oneself, to take care of oneself, to respect one’s own needs, to correctly evaluate stress, to not overstrain oneself, or to be sensitive to overstraining.11 In what follows, I provide an overview of this concept of self-care and demonstrate how it relates to the debate on subjectivation of work. The concepts of “recognition” and the “conduct of life” play important parts in this (I), providing the foundation for the empirical research of a dissertation project, which is presented in brief (II). Some preliminary results of this research will then be discussed (III), before drawing an initial conclusion: self care as demarcation (IV). 2.
Care of Self and the Changing Form of Labour As mentioned, self-care means the capability of being good to oneself, and it is a capability achieved through a life-long struggle.12 Care of self is certainly a very broad, even universal concept and pattern of action, which includes the relevant dimensions of health and daily life as well.13 It furthermore poses questions concerning subjectivity, society and the self. These, of course, are large sociological questions that cannot be fully addressed here, but as we trace the empirical question of self-care - as the “Souci de Soi” given changing labour relations - some dimensions of each of these questions will be touched upon. Michel Foucault’s idea of the “technologies of the self,” which he derives from antiquity, is closely related to the notion of self-care.14 Technologies of the self are, following Foucault, to be understood as “known and volitional” practices that transform and modify the self. Foucault’s concept of subjectivity means, first of all conducting oneself toward oneself [Sich-zu-sich-Verhalten], a conducting toward one’s own existence.15 In addition this means that the subject can in some way conduct him/her self
48
Care of Self as Demarcation
______________________________________________________________ toward his/her own subjectivation, submitting or resisting. This self-relation in antiquity is connected with the care of self, which today appears more as coercion toward self-monitoring as the results of research on the subjectivation of work show. Today, faced with the changing conditions of the labour sphere, the care of self is, according to this reading, less an effort toward perfection than simply an effort to cope with one’s life in a totally self-sufficient manner - a type of autarky. In Foucault’s later writings a different reading is offered, one in which self-care means: “gaining power over oneself and bringing it into play against the paternalism of a dominant power.”16 Foucault’s claim to analyse how techniques of governance are using the processes in which individuals affect themselves, and, conversely, how technologies of the self are integrated in structures of power and constraint, thus gains a new quality in the frame of my research. In Foucault’s reading, it is still unclear if self-care could be clearly separated as an emancipatory practice from the technologies of self. That is to say, it appears to be an ambivalent phenomenon. Appealing to recognition theory, however, should help clarify this ambiguity. To consider self-care as an autarkic or rather atomistic ability, misconstrues the dimension of recognition.17 The experience of caring relations, of being cared for, forms a necessary condition for the capacity for self-care according to the analytical and psychosocial theories of recognition developed by Axel Honneth and Jessica Benjamin. The concrete experience of the other is, in this sense, part of selfcare. The core thesis of Benjamin and Honneth’s recognition theory is that mutual recognition between subjects constitutes a fundamental condition of human existence. In doing so, it effectively balances “inner and outer reality,”18 and the necessary tension between assertiveness and mutual recognition.19 Thus, recognition is the foundation of human self-relation, and is grounded in the experience of subjects “mutually acknowledging each other in their concrete neediness and recognising each other as indigent beings.”20 Labour relations are embedded in specific gendered recognition relations. When bringing together feminist theories of care and the abovementioned theories of Benjamin and Honneth, one can witness a polarisation of the capability of assertiveness along gender relations. Care of self and care for others are socially suppressed, disowned, and where ever it begins to shimmer, socially devalued.21 The particular contribution that care theories can make to a concept of self care is thus an understanding of subjectivity that implies the mutual dependency of humans, which is responsive to gender relations and therefore to the gender specific practices of self care as well.
Sabine Flick
49
______________________________________________________________ To reflect external requirements as such constitutes a direct contribution to self care, for overstraining can be avoided, or at least moderated, and furthermore is less likely to illicit self-blame. This, to introduce another dimension of self-care, has a lot to do with a person’s concrete lifestyle [Lebensführung].22 Drawing from the work of Max Weber,23 lifestyle is, in the context of the conduct of everyday life,24 understood as the coherency and form of daily practices in all fields of life. More precisely: When and to what moment, where and with what content, in which social contexts and orientated on whichever social norms, with what sensible interpretation as well as with which means and resources and finally with what emotional condition a person is active in the course of her everyday life25 The idea that one’s conduct of life is one’s active achievement, which attempts to overcome the dichotomy of “work” and “life”, is an idea coming out of feminist research and critique. In addition, this approach is the intermediation of society and the individual - the missing link of sociology. The subject’s conduct of life, as argued here, influences its interaction with external and internal demands. It would be difficult to imagine, for example, that a person who has lived a very structured and routine life would suddenly depart from this pattern and uses his or her flexible labour time on the spur of the moment. This approach, which relies more on rational and intentional actions (comparable to Weber’s concept of lifestyle) than on subjective experience, should, however, be contextualised within another dimension: that of irrationality. As Freud and, with him, Adorno have argued, mental processes and inner experiences do not submit to rational rules or criteria, but follow rather more intricate paths.26 Daily life practices can thus not only exhibit attributes of rationality, but can appear as exceedingly irrational as well. With this insight, the sociological approach to the ‘conduct of everyday life’ is broadened psychosocially. 3.
Qualitative Research Once again, the focus here is on contemporary changes in the labour sphere, which was described as the subjectivation of work. The decisive component of this development is that previously separated fields and requirements have lost their clarity as their boundaries begin to blur. The interesting question arising from this in the context of self-care is how people in prototypical labour relations come to deal with the new requirements
50
Care of Self as Demarcation
______________________________________________________________ confronting them. How are these requirements interpreted and what practices result from them? The empirical basis of my Ph.D. research consists of 16 semistructured interviews that were operated in several investment banks in Frankfurt, Germany. The people interviewed are men and women who have dependent employment with flexible time models in which the calculation of labour time is abandoned (trust-based working hours, time sovereignty).27 This type of employment is coupled with increased job requirements taking the form of predetermined targeted objectives.28 The interviewees all have comparable qualifications and live alone or with a partner.29 In the context of the contemporary debate about increased self-monitoring in post-Fordist employment and its corollary concept of the subjectivation of work, employees without fixed labour time seem to exemplify these changing conditions. Due to the theoretical preconsiderations just explained, the evaluation includes four aspects: The first aspect involves the character of the subject’s social embeddedness (intimacy) and the impact of the changing working conditions on that and vice versa. The second aspect relates to the rational and irrational characteristics of the employee’s lifestyle. The third concerns the subject’s own interpretation of the requirements of their job and their experiences of overstraining due to external demands. The fourth and final aspect concerns the practices that result from these interpretations and experiences.30 In addition, the category of gender is introduced as one variable in the sample in order to account for presumed gender specific practices of self-care. This project is now in the period of appraisal and therefore some preliminary results can be outlined. 4.
Results Results from the interviews reveal that not every employee is dealing with the external demands of his or her self-monitoring and subjectivity in the same way. Subjectivity is not clearly integrated into the labour process as current labour- and industrial sociological theories on this topic would have us believe. Many of the interviewees consider external requirements as indeed external, with only a few internalising them and thus lacking the ability to demarcate. In the current stage of my research it would be premature to make any detailed statements about the way subjects specifically deal with external demands, so only the most striking and notable results are presented here. The most important result concerns the heterogeneity of the interpretations and practices of dealing with external requirements, and several different dimensions play a role. These include gender, lifestyle, embeddedness in social relations (intimacy) and structures of recognition, which all follow specific patterns of interpretation and practice.
Sabine Flick
51
______________________________________________________________ One research result is that relations of friendship matter significantly, which implies that the classical individualisation theory overlooks an essential variable, since it only incorporates a distinction between singles and couples.31 A tentative conclusion that follows from the perspective of gender is that male employees have more - or different - difficulties in demarcating themselves from their requirements by not recognising them as external. Female employees have difficulties too, especially due to feelings of guilt, but they succeed in considering the requirements as external. This seems to be an important finding that needs to be further pursued. Another notable result that needs also to be further pursued concerns the experience of a crisis, or some disruption of previous demands or arrangements. People from the sample who have previously experienced constraints on their own competences reflect overstraining more than others. By virtue of this crisis they had to ‘learn’ to be good to themselves or at least act in a way that avoids future overstraining. They have taken up yoga, sports, meditation, etc. They try to stick to contracted labour time and to work toward more realistic targeted objectives. The practices of self-care, or rather, the narrations about such practices, point to another interesting phenomenon, which I call selfirrationalisation. These include interpretations, episodes or practices that clearly depart from classical patterns of labour, and seem unintentional and almost irrational. I think a connection, albeit indefinite, can be claimed here between the phenomenon of self-irrationalisation and the practices of a ‘hardheaded demarcation,’32 but the contours and details of such a connection require further analysis. 5.
Conclusion Care of self is clearly a capability gaining relevance in the context of the changing forms and conditions of labour. We should care about care, to answer my initial question. The preliminary results of my research have revealed that self-care is the foundation of a competence: the competence to draw a limit - self-care as demarcation. I assume that self-care is a paradoxical concept as self-regulation is the interpellation of the subject and at the same time implies a self reflective and non-rational potential as I tried to show. An intersubjective concept of self-care as I introduced could be one way out of the dilemma of this paradox. The experiences of the subjects could be a source for the ability to demarcate and the view on what I called self-irrationalisation should be extended in sociological research on self-care.
52
Care of Self as Demarcation
______________________________________________________________
Notes 1 N Noddings, The Challenge to Care in Schools. An Alternative Approach to Education, Teachers College Press, New York, 1992. 2 Depression is the leading cause of disability as measured by YLDs and the 4th leading contributor to the global burden of disease (DALYs) in 2000. By the year 2020, depression is projected to reach 2nd place of the ranking of DALYs calcuated for all ages, both sexes. Today, depression is already the 2nd cause of DALYs in the age category 15-44 years for both sexes combined. Depression occurs in persons of all genders, ages, and backgrounds. Depression is common, affecting about 121 million people worldwide. YLDs = Years Lived with Disability. DALYs = Disability Adjusted Life Years. The sum of years of potential life lost due to premature mortality and the years of productive life lost due to disability. See IGES Institut für Gesundheitsund Sozialforschung GmbH (ed), Gesundheitsreport, IGES Verlag, Berlin, 2006. 3 A Ehrenberg, La Fatigue d'Etre Soi: Depression et Societe, Odile Jacob, Paris, 1998. 4 Hochschild shows us that this time bind makes the “work place our home” and the other way around. A R Hochschild, The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work, Metropolitan Books, New York, 1997. 5 H J Pongratz and G Voß, Arbeitskraftunternehmer. Erwerbsorientierungen in entgrenzten Arbeitsformen, edition sigma, Berlin, 2004. 6 M Baethge, ‘Arbeit, Vergesellschaftung, Identität - Zur zunehmenden normativen Subjektivierung der Arbeit’. Soziale Welt, vol. 42(1), 1991, p. 10. 7 L Eichler, ‘Seelenlose Unternehmer ihrer Selbst? Über die psychische Wirkung subjektivierter Arbeit’, in Ökonomie der Subjektivität - Subjektivität der Ökonomie, Arbeitsgruppe SubArO (ed), edition sigma, Berlin, 2005, p. 212. 8 M Moldaschl and G G Voß (eds), Subjektivierung von Arbeit, Hampp, München/Mering, 2003. 9 J Küchenhoff, ‘Die Fähigkeit zur Selbstfürsorge - die seelischen Voraussetzungen’ in Selbstzerstörung und Selbstfürsorge, J Küchenhoff (ed), Psychosozial, Gießen, 1999, p, 150. 10 C Eckart, ‘Fürsorgliche Konflikte. Erfahrungen des Sorgens und die Zumutungen der Selbstständigkeit’. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 2, 2004, pp. 24-40. 11 J Küchenhoff, p. 151. op. cit. 12 This idea is following psychoanalytical theory. There the psychosocial development of a person never comes to an end, in other words: subjects experience recognitive relations throughout their lives that reactualise their
Sabine Flick
53
______________________________________________________________ internalised object relations. It is a struggle for the fact that these actual and internalised relations are most of the time contentious and cling to conflicts of dependency and autonomy. 13 Care of self as a health dimension appears also in the Charter of the WHO: “Health is created and lived by people within the settings of their everyday life; where they learn, work, play and love. Health is created by caring for oneself and others, by being able to take decisions and have control over one's life circumstances, and by ensuring that the society one lives in creates conditions that allow the attainment of health by all its members.” 14 M Foucault, The History of Sexuality Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. R Hurley [1984], Random House, New York, 1985. M Foucault, The History of Sexuality Vol. 3: The Care of the Self, trans. R Hurley, Random House, New York, 1985. M Foucault: ‘Technologies of the Self’ in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, L Martin and H Gutman et al (eds), University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1988, pp. 16-49. 15 H Fink-Eitel, Michel Foucault zur Einführung, Junius, Hamburg, 2002. 16 Ibid. 17 Foucault was surely not working on “recognition” as a concept, in his later writings Foucault admitted to have saved a lot of work by reading critical theory of the Frankfurt school earlier. Especially the focus on social relations would have avoided this atomistic conception of the subject. See also A Honneth and M Saar, Michel Foucault. Zwischenbilanz einer Rezeption, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 2003 18 D W Winnicott, Playing and Reality, Routledge, Oxford, 1980. 19 J Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination, Pantheon Books, New York, 1988. 20 A Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995, p. 152. 21 Ibid. 22 T Abel and WC Cockerham, ‘Lifestyle or Lebensführung? Critical remarks on the mistranslation of Weber’s “Class, Status, Party”’. The Sociological Quarterly, 34, 1993, pp. 551-556. 23 M Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1978. 24 A Diezinger, ‘Alltägliche Lebensführung: Die Eigenlogik alltäglichen Handelns’, in Handbuch Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, R Becker and B Kortendiek (eds), VS Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2004, pp. 204-208. 25 Ibid. 26 T W Adorno, Zum Verhältnis von Soziologie und Psychologie. Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 8, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M., 1997.
54
Care of Self as Demarcation
______________________________________________________________ 27
[Vetrauensarbeitszeit, Zeitsouveränität] There is no adequate English term yet, the idea is, there is no time recording. 28 In that sense they fulfil the criteria of the “labour entrepreneur” (see above). 29 Banks introduced trust time for their employees area-wide. In addition these have to work with target agreements and against high-pressure deadlines. 30 The whole method is relating to “Grounded Theory”. This approach seeks to survey individual practices and the plenitude of possible procedures. See also B G Glaser and A L Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Strategies for Qualitative Research, Aldine de Gruyter, Chicago, New York, 1967. 31 One of the guideline questions simply was: “Who matters to you?” 32 K Jürgens, Arbeits- und Lebenskraft. Reproduktion als eigensinnige Grenzziehung, VS Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2006.
Bibliography Abel, T., and W.C. Cockerham, ‘Lifestyle or Lebensführung? Critical remarks on the mistranslation of Weber’s “Class, Status, Party”’. The Sociological Quarterl, vol. 34, 1993, pp. 551-556. Adorno, T.W., Zum Verhältnis von Soziologie und Psychologie. Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 8. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M., 1997. Baethge, M., ‘Arbeit, Vergesellschaftung, Identität - Zur zunehmenden normativen Subjektivierung der Arbeit’. Soziale Welt, vol. 42, 1991, pp. 619. Benjamin, J., The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination. Pantheon Books, New York, 1988. Diezinger, A., ‘Alltägliche Lebensführung: Die Eigenlogik alltäglichen Handelns’. In Handbuch Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, R. Becker and B. Kortendiek (eds), VS Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2004, pp. 204-208. Ehrenberg, A., La Fatigue d'Etre Soi: Depression et Societe. Odile Jacob, Paris, 1998.
Sabine Flick
55
______________________________________________________________ Eckart, C., ‘Fürsorgliche Konflikte. Erfahrungen des Sorgens und die Zumutungen der Selbstständigkeit’. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, vol. 2, 2004, pp. 24-40. Eichler, L., ‘Seelenlose Unternehmer ihrer Selbst? Über die psychische Wirkung subjektivierter Arbeit’, in Ökonomie der Subjektivität - Subjektivität der Ökonomie. Arbeitsgruppe SubArO (ed), edition sigma, Berlin, 2005, pp. 203-226. Fink-Eitel, H., Michel Foucault zur Einführung. Junius, Hamburg, 2002. Foucault, M., The History of Sexuality Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. R. Hurley [1984]. Random House, New York, 1985. –––, The History of Sexuality Vol. 3: The Care of the Self, trans. R. Hurley. Random House, New York, 1985. –––, ‘Technologies of the Self’, in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. L Martin and H Gutman et al (eds), University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1988, pp. 16-49. Glaser, B.G., and A.L. Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Strategies for Qualitative Research. Aldine de Gruyter, Chicago/New York, 1967. Hochschild, A.R., The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work. Metropolitan Books, New York, 1997. Honneth, A., The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995. –––, and M. Saar, Michel Foucault. Zwischenbilanz einer Rezeption. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 2003. IGES Institut für Gesundheits- und Sozialforschung Gesundheitsreport. IGES Verlag, Berlin, 2006.
GmbH
(ed),
Jürgens, K., Arbeits- und Lebenskraft. Reproduktion als eigensinnige Grenzziehung. VS Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2006.
56
Care of Self as Demarcation
______________________________________________________________ Küchenhoff, J., ‘Die Fähigkeit zur Selbstfürsorge - die seelischen Voraussetzungen’, in Selbstzerstörung und Selbstfürsorge. J. Küchenhoff (ed), Psychosozial, Gießen, 1999, pp. 147-164. Moldaschl, M., and G.G. Voß, (eds), Subjektivierung von Arbeit. Hampp, München, Mering, 2003. Noddings, N., The Challenge to Care in Schools. An Alternative Approach to Education. Teachers College Press, New York, 1992. Pongratz, H.J., and G.G. Voß, Arbeitskraftunternehmer. Erwerbsorientierungen in entgrenzten Arbeitsformen. edition sigma, Berlin, 2004 Roseneil, S. and S. Budgeon, ‘Cultures of Intimacy and Care Beyond ‘the Family’: Personal Life and Social Change in the Early 21st Century’. Current Sociology, vol. 52(2), 2004, pp. 135-159. Weber, M., Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1978. WHO, Otttawa Charter for Health Promotion. Ottawa, WHO, 1986. Winnicott, D.W. Playing and Reality. Routledge, Oxford, 1980.
SECTION II
Contextualised Intimacies
Love, Sex and In Between: Being a Woman and Middle-Class in Singapore Goh Shuzhen Abstract In this chapter I aim to develop a cultural analysis of how Singapore’s new upper middle-class women construct and negotiate their notions of romance, love and sex, and how these affect and reflect the way in which their lives are constructed. The analysis will contribute to a better understanding of different social trends – the breakdown of the institutionalised notions of family and marriage; an evolutionary change in social mores, values and beliefs; the negotiation of private and public spheres with the advent of advanced economic development. This paper utilises existing literature, as well as information derived from participant observation and in-depth interviews with 12 new upper middle-class women. Adopting a Bourdieusian approach, I attempt to understand the negotiations and dynamics involved in the careful construction of these women’s lived realities in comparison to the theoretical and common concepts held. In this paper I contend that there appears to be unspoken and unseen double standards intricately built into the “man”-made structures and institutions of society that still favour men over women. These biases result in a different set of standards used for judging women. In negotiating these different standards (within their positions in the work system), women have allocated love and romance in the realm of leisure, with a shifting emphasis on elements of romance. With the increasing importance placed on something as intangible, ambiguous and fleeting as “romance” it becomes more difficult for these women to find someone adequate. Additionally, sex has become an arbitrator of sorts between their fantasy realm of romantic love and the realities of their everyday life. The findings suggest that sex has actually taken on a new dimension and become an important aspect of a modern definition of women’s relationships, and should not be dismissed lightly as promiscuity. Key Words: Love, sex, Singapore, structures, women and class, work and intimacy. ***** 1.
Introduction In this chapter, I discuss the supposed ‘problem’ of a new group of upper middle-class Singaporean women that are increasingly deciding to put off marriage. I wish to understand their rationale behind these decisions,
60
Love, Sex and In Between
______________________________________________________________ rather than to immediately label it a ‘social problem.’ I suggest understanding this phenomenon through two different approaches. Firstly, I will explore modern women’s relationship ideals and expectations through understanding their conceptualisations of ‘love and romance’ and their importance in romantic coupling.1 I argue that with the increasing importance placed on something as intangible, ambiguous and fleeting as ‘romance,’ the more difficult it is for these women to find someone that they believe is adequate. Secondly, the sexual dimension of romantic couplings is also addressed. Although these women are not married, they are by no means sexually inactive. Sex has actually taken on a new dimension and become an important aspect of modern women’s relationship. The lack of formal courtship rituals has left more grey areas in modern relationships. Thus, sex has evolved to become a tool to negotiate these less well-defined areas, and should not be taken lightly or simply dismissed as promiscuity. This article will discuss these issues of love, romance, sex and marriage in relation to the still largely male-favouring culture of Singapore. In a system created by men and that systematically favours men, how do these women negotiate their own cultures, positions and identities? Intimacy, emotions and seduction are all powerful tools of manipulation used on and by women. Women often have to display or withhold emotions and affection carefully, as they understand that in them lies the power to control and manipulate a man or a situation. Looking at constructions of intimate relations between men and women is thus an effective way of understanding masculine domination - how they translate into attitudes towards love, sex and marriage - and how women try to arbitrate them. 2.
Study Design This research was carried out in two phases; through a series of semi-structured interviews with 12 single, new upper-middle class women and some fieldwork. 2 The fieldwork took place in a nightclub where one of my informants held her birthday party. It provided an excellent opportunity to engage in participant-observation, as those who turned up happened to fit into the criteria of women that I wished to study, after which I approached them with the request for interviews.3 3.
Love and Sex in Modern Times Giddens introduced the concept of a “pure relationship” in his work The Transformation of Intimacy.4 He proposes that consenting parties enter into a relationship, for as long as they continue to derive the mutual physical and psychological rewards that are expected. The love affair is seen as a kind of “confluent love” as opposed to “romantic love” as it acknowledges the importance of sexuality and sexual satisfaction that has come to be expected from a happy union. Romantic love on the other hand, has always functioned
Goh Shuzhen
61
______________________________________________________________ on an assumption that true, deep-felt affection was not compatible or did not require the sanctions of lust or bodily gratification. It was seen as emotional and spiritual gratification - with relation to heart, mind and soul, rather than to body5. Giddens’ argument was that this fundamental transformation of the nature of intimacy would evolve in late modernity into his ideal “confluent love-pure relationship.” 6 He believed that this could be achieved through “plastic sexuality” - sex stripped of its reproductive functions and performed with sexual pleasure as the objective. Such relationships are only monogamous to the extent that it is mutually desirable. He believes that women are the main agents of these changes as they begin to champion the right to their own sexual pleasure and can now increasingly afford birth control. However, one must be careful to question how far this attitude has been assimilated into their approaches towards sex and love. In Diane Yeo’s work on the practice of “Free Love” amongst young Singaporean women, she points out the deep “structural gender inequalities” that are embedded in the system and the difficulty of eliminating them. 7 Giddens’ ideal of equality is thus far from being achieved. Wolf suggests that a woman is made and not born. 8 Through a back and forth process of love and control, and exploration and control, she learns how to play the social role of a woman. The socializing pressures are often placed on her by the dominant culture (read a ‘man’-made culture). This endless masquerade is taught to her and with the awakening of her own passions and desires; she has to learn how to negotiate these forces to create a harmony for her own reality. Although as Tang mentions in her studies, that middle-class women have taken more initiative and are more aggressively pursuing their objects of desire (emotional or sexual), these women still have to maintain some kind of respectability and must be careful not to step too far out of bounds.9 These middle-class women straddle the professional world of men and the socio-cultural world of womanhood - having to maintain an image of passivity and fragility. Tang notices a general contradiction in these women’s narratives. On one level they represent themselves as active sexual agents and dispel myths of conservatism and passivity, but as lay individuals they seem less confident about their supposed ‘liberation’ (emphasis author’s own). Tactics of submission and passivity are still carefully applied so as to maintain the man’s intrigue. Love and sex are social constructions and are culturally imbued with meaning. The way in which new upper middle-class women construct their notions of intimate relations are therefore laden with cultural meaning. 4.
Between Love and Romance Meyer mentions that the way office relationships are still associated as workplace taboos show the inherent incompatibility of work and love.10
62
Love, Sex and In Between
______________________________________________________________ Therefore, unlike the middle-class women of the past who did not have to manage this delicate balance, these women are now made to allocate love into the domain of leisure. This has perhaps led women to want to adopt a more fantastical, casual and pleasure-seeking approach to romance, love and sex. Instead of a stable marriage or finding a steady partner whom you can potentially build a life with, women now seek the fancy and thrill of romance and more intense emotional attachment and understanding. Marriage is no longer just a practical union. They want it to be a romantic and spiritual union. As described by Paula Kamen in her work on modern women and their evolutionary development in the realms of sex and love, modern women seek a “best friend,” not “a meal ticket.”11 These women no longer require men to support them financially; they are more interested in looking for a partner that will “keep the romance alive” (Sally).12 The emphasis here is on the ability to have a relationship that can provide them with the qualities of a freer, leisurely domain to enjoy outside of their work life. 5.
Leisure and Commitment ‘Real love’ requires sacrifice and commitment. These women understand, however, that they are also searching for something more. On top of a stable relationship, they also crave the spark of romance. They seemed to commonly value in a man, the traditional values of stability, drive and ability to provide for them. However, they also mentioned more fleeting and romantic ideas of charm, being smooth and suave that hinted at another dimension of this construction. I mean as you get older, of course you want a stable man. But you also want to feel interested you know? I want to feel like I’m damn “xing fu” (lucky). You want him to sweep you off your feet. (Mary) For me, love is fascination. I want to be madly in love; swept off my feet. I want that feeling. Of course you want him to be a nice guy. But we all want that something more, right? (Xiao Ling) The ways in which these women arrange and organise their lives are also telling of this pattern. I would hate to have to work too hard in a relationship. I hate fights, I hate confrontations. I just want to have a nice time. I want to be happy and feel loved. (Xiao Ling)
Goh Shuzhen
63
______________________________________________________________ I don’t usually meet my boyfriend on weekdays. I’m too busy and tired after work. So I only meet him on weekends. We’ll spend it at his place; nothing too stressful. Just watch T.V. or something. (Shimin) Women report a similar desire for a relationship that is simple and does not require too much work. They want it to be fun and thrilling, as much as it needs to be manageable along with the rest of their lives. They need to be able to experience enjoyment, thrill and yet shelve it when they have their own matters to attend. In fact, when asked what had made her relationship last, Mei Mei replied that: “We get along because we irritate each other; but not too much.” This shows the kind of conflicting construction of romance and love. Women want simplicity and comfort, but also hope to experience thrill and find the other party interesting. In Wolf’s work, she discussed the need for female genital stimulation to achieve arousal and climax since women do not go into a period of heat like animals do. She suggests that the men who are able to attend to understand and attend to women’s physical needs could possibly be the “fittest” men as described in Darwin’s evolution theory.13 However, it is not merely a physical courtship that is required. These women also desire such tempting and teasing in terms of emotional courtship. Men who are not able to strike the balance and that manage both holding their interest and providing them with a level of comfort are unable to satisfy these women’s needs, and are deemed undesirable partners. 6.
Fairytale Notions of Love Meyer suggests that despite the fact that fairytale notions of extreme good and bad are often inapplicable to adult life, in times of emotional turmoil women still tend to revert back to such archaic and simplistic ways of managing their experiences. When women are falling in love, she claims that the men are “most likely enveloped in almost mythical goodness.”14 This way of coming to terms with emotional experiences seems to be still evident today, in contemporary Singapore. As an informant mentioned, the idea of wanting a tall, dark and suave man, is still very much an image of the perfect knight in shining armour that comes from fairytales. When asked to describe the qualities that they had found attractive in a man, the informants often mentioned qualities that can be traced to such fantastical, fairytale notions of romance and the perfect man: When I see him work, he’s very authoritative. Like very professional and he looks like someone with power. He wears all these Hugo Boss suits to work, which are very sexy, drives a BMW and all that. But it’s not all these
64
Love, Sex and In Between
______________________________________________________________ reasons that attracted me to him in the first place. More like cause he’s very charming? When he works he’s very charming? (Mary) At a first glance, the qualities that Mary mentioned as ‘attractive’ qualities appear to be very materialistic and practical. However, it seems that the material qualities such as the Hugo Boss suit or the flashy car are not valued for their monetary aspects. They are valued because it adds to the intangible charm that this man has. He is made to seem more perfect than he is, and these material possessions serve to glorify him further. Another point to note is the way in which these qualities seem to reflect the archaic ideal of a prince charming. This is all coherent with the middle-class desire for luxurious courtship. These kind of fantastic ideas highlight the importance that these women place on the romance they want out of love. They want more than merely emotional and spiritual companionship; they want gratification. They need to have experienced the leisurely romantic ideal of being pursued before they are willing to commit to a more serious relationship. 7.
The Modern Day Mating Ritual The Lack of Well-Defined Rituals: The modern dating scene is suffering from a lack of formal courtship rituals. The modern day dating scene has many more configurations of couple-hood.15 This has led to a common, expressed confusion amongst informants. There is a general sense of uncertainty and “not knowing where things are going” (Mary). Unlike the past whereby courtship rituals amongst the middle-class were very well established and intentions were well stated and clear to all, the state of modern day dating is a much more complicated and messy ocean of possibilities. Although there are still certain traceable patterns, informants report what seem to be more varied styles of courtship and different patterns of ‘getting together.’ I don’t know what’s going on also. We go out, we kiss, hug, but he says he wants to keep it under wraps, so… there is no status or anything. Then I feel like he’s playing with me. (Mary) I didn’t know of any like obvious courtship. We just went out a lot, did all the things that couples do, and then one day I found that we were together. (Mei Mei) In the past, middle-class courtship was a public affair as much as a private one between two people. Men had to declare their interests to the
Goh Shuzhen
65
______________________________________________________________ woman, her family and make it known to the public. Intentions were well stated and clear so as not to cause confusion or scandal.16 Courtship and coupling could thus be pursued without the kind of confusion it causes in women today. Romance and love having been shelved alongside leisure practices, means that such activities could be seen as casual affairs, with no real consequences. The Rejected Tactics of Overt Confrontation: The idea of talking about the relationship also seems daunting for these women as it implies a certain level of embarrassment on their part. I don’t want to talk to him also, I don’t want it to seem like I’m pressurising him. Then like what if he tells me something I don’t want to hear. It’s very pai-say (embarrassing). Cause that means I’d have to reveal my position in this. (Mary) These women do not wish to reveal their own positions in the relationship. They believe that it would make them seem too vulnerable. You don’t want to come across as too needy. Like you’re desperate to get with him or what, but at the same time you wanna know what the hell is going on. (Linda) They believe that they are negotiating a very fine balance. They want to know the direction of the relationship, but do not wish to seem overtly aggressive - a trait that is still culturally assumed to be masculine. They want to know that the man desires them and want to be with them without having been the ones who pushed for it. Within such a cultural framework, and given the new shape of things, these women thus employ what they believe to be more subtle strategies of aggression. New Strategies of Subtle Aggression: Sex as a Litmus Test: Unlike tactics of overt confrontation, these women see sex as a way to negotiate their situation and find the answers they need. I am afraid he just wants to bang me and then after that he just disappears. But it’s like damn sian (tiring) not knowing where we are going, sometimes I just want to sleep with him and see what happens. If he goes away at least I know he’s an asshole and not worth being hung up over. But if after sex he stays then I know he’s more serious about me. (Mary) Sometimes the only way to get over it is to just do it. After you’ve done it then you know you can forget it. Sometimes
66
Love, Sex and In Between
______________________________________________________________ it’s not having had the guy before and then you think you never gave it a shot. (Xiao Ling) The uncoupling of sex from marriage and love also spelled a significant change to the way intimate relationships were viewed. These new middle-class women who choose to delay marriage are certainly by no means a sexually inactive group. Sex however, has not been stripped off its emotional content. In the relationships with these men they feel uncertain of, sex is their way of expressing their emotions. By offering themselves physically they are indirectly expressing that they are also offering themselves emotionally. The idea that these women think that “men only want one thing” (Sally) (this one thing being sex) shows that they believe sex to be the litmus test of a man’s real feelings towards them. If after sex, and having gotten what these women believe they want, men still continue to show interest, they are then seen as having real feelings for the women. Sex is thus used to measure where they stand in a relationship and to decide how far to go/what level of relationship to expect from a man. In a time where there is less structure and authority (i.e. religion, strict family control) governing how people should act in terms of love, romance and sex, women have to attempt to strike their own equilibrium through new strategies. 8.
Conclusion Being financially independent of their parents and still part of the secure emotional unit that their families provide enables these women both freedom and the comfort of home life.17 It is a convenient arrangement, which they believe marriage will disrupt. In an attempt to preserve their own identities apart from the domestic realm, and to pursue their personal success and independence, they have chosen to put off marriage in favour of their working lives. This, they believe, gives them a sense of independence and freedom. As one informant put it, “my parents always say if you aren’t married, you’re still a child.” (Translated from Mandarin – Xiu Zi). This has led to a more leisurely approach to love. They search for romance and fantasy and look to love as a sort of refuge away from the realities of their working lives. They understand that love is a commitment, but pursue the fantastic romance as an ideal. Cultures and structures are not rigid and unyielding. They are often fluid and changeable, but this change requires a shift in what Hochschild calls “emotional cultures.”18 This study on “emotional cultures,” however, was only done within the context of family. It can be extended to include the emotional culture of work within the lives of these women as well. The idea that work has such a tightly bound emotional culture and being unable to de-ritualise work, women seek for an emotional culture that is looser and less rigid in their leisure affairs. Work relations have become the core, and love and romance the periphery. To accommodate the heavily
Goh Shuzhen
67
______________________________________________________________ structured emotional cultures of work relations, these women want more carefree and leisurely personal relationships. They want romance, although they understand its fleeting nature. Women want to be able to enjoy something that is not as strongly structured as the emotional culture of work. Romance thus becomes the prerequisite for committed love. Therefore, when their relationships become too emotionally unmanageable, they use sex as a way to measure the amount of commitment that is required. In a way, sex has thus become a tool to either ritualise or de-ritualise romantic relationships. This should not be mistaken as using sex to trade for love, but the careful using of sex as a tool for women’s own cultural manipulations.19
Notes 1
Romance has long been identified as a middle-class luxury, and the financial independence of these women allow them the ability to be more picky and demanding with regards to their romantic expectations. This article, therefore argues that with the increasing importance placed on something as intangible, ambiguous and fleeting as “romance”, the more difficult it is for these women to find someone that they find adequate. Adapted from: S Seidman, Romantic Longings: Love in America, 1830 – 1980, Routledge, London, 1991, Chapter 1-2. 2 Criteria for selection of informants: 1) Aged between 24 to 36 years old; 2) University educated; 3) Experience of working full-time; 4) Monthly Income of $3000 and above; 5) Chinese Singaporean; 6) Unmarried. 3 The interviews were semi-structured to enable the flexibility and room to allow for informants to describe their experiences and to speak on matters that were found to be more pertinent. This allowed for exploration into different ideas and realms that were not initially considered, and for a broadening of the issues that went way beyond what was first expected. It allowed for the enlightenment of the researcher as it gave a lot more insight into the workings of the culture and how things were perceived. The interviews lasted on average, about one, to one and a half hours and were recorded so as to ensure the integrity of the sessions. Some of these sessions were conducted in focus group discussions so as to encourage more dynamic responses; debates about different perceptions and to see how these conflicts were resolved within the culture. 4 A Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994. 5 Giddens, op.cit., pp. 44-45. 6 Ibid. 7 D Yeo, "Free love": an exploratory study of young women in Singapore, NUS Academic Exercise, Singapore, 2000.
68
Love, Sex and In Between
______________________________________________________________ 8
N Wolf, Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood, Random House, New York Random House, 1997. 9 S Tang, Intimate Bonds: A Study of Female Sexuality in Singapore, NUS Academic Exercise, Singapore, 2001. 10 J Meyer, ‘Power and Love: Conflicting Conceptual Schemata’, in The Gender of Power, K Davis, M Leijenaar and J Oldersma (eds), Sage Publications, London, pp. 21-41. 11 P Kamen, Her Way: Young Women Remake the Sexual Revolution, New York University Press, New York, 2000. 12 Names of informants have all been changed to protect their privacy. 13 Wolf, op. cit., Chapter 3. 14 Meyer, op. cit., p. 36 15 The existence of things like “fuck buddies”, “friends with benefits” and “casual dating” makes it difficult for these women to be ensured of their own status; unless relationships have been relatively long-standing and well defined by both parties. 16 Seidman, op. cit., Chapter 5. Although Seidman’s study is largely based on how the concept of Love has changed and evolved in America, Singapore’s rapid growth and industrialisation in recent years have led to its people experiencing similar problems that were brought about by the industrialisation era in America. Although in some ways culturally dissimilar, the differences marked by what is claimed to be a more Asian and “Confucian” way of thinking have become diluted with the wide proliferation of American lifestyles and ideologies through the massive importation of American media and consumerist products. 17 Due to land scarcity, Singapore’s cost of housing is exorbitant. Her Housing Board Authority allows only married couples, or singles above the age of 40 to apply for the more affordable public housing. Private housing is priced as close to $1000/sq. ft. (close to $1 million for a small sized apartment), and is often unaffordable on a one person’s income. This has meant that singles often stay with their parents till they are married. 18 A R Hochschild, ‘The Emotional Geography of Work and Family Life’, in Gender Relations in Public and Private: New Research Perspectives, L Morris and E S Lyon (eds), MacMillian Press Ltd, London, pp. 13-32. 19 I would like to extend my gratitude to Dr. Jennifer Jarman for her kind help in the research and writing process.
Goh Shuzhen
69
______________________________________________________________
Bibliography Giddens, A., The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994. Hochschild, A.R., ‘The Emotional Geography of Work and Family Life’, in Gender Relations in Public and Private: New Research Perspectives. L. Morris and E.S. Lyon (eds), MacMillian Press Ltd, London, 1996, pp. 13-32. Kamen, P., Her Way: Young Women Remake the Sexual Revolution. New York University Press, New York, 2000. Meyer, J., ‘Power and Love: Conflicting Conceptual Schemata’, in The Gender of Power. K. Davis, M. Leijenaar and J. Oldersma (eds), Sage Publications, London, 1991, pp. 21-41. Seidman, S., Romantic Longings: Love in America, 1830 – 1980. Routledge, London, 1991. Tang, S., Intimate Bonds: A Study of Female Sexuality in Singapore. NUS Academic Exercise, Singapore, 2001. Wolf, N., Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood. Random House, New York, 1997. Yeo, D., "Free love": an exploratory study of young women in Singapore. NUS Academic Exercise, Singapore, 2000.
Masculine Identities and Affective Equality: Exploring Love and Care in Men’s Lives Niall Hanlon Abstract This paper outlines concurrent research on masculine identities and affective equality, which commenced in September 2005 at the Equality Studies Centre, University College Dublin, Ireland. The purpose of the research is to examine the way a diversity of men in Irish society identify with love and care labour. The paper outlines methodological and theoretical foundations of the research as well as some preliminary findings of the first empirical phase. This phase involved in-depth interviews (care conversations) with six key men’s groups in civil society about their views and perceptions of the affective relations of the men they work with and support. The analyses of these interviews are contributing to the design of life-story care narratives to be constructed with a diverse group of men in the second empirical phase. Key Words: Care, gender, identities, inequality, masculinities, men. ***** 1.
Introduction The purpose of the research is to examine the way a diversity of men in Irish society define their identities in relation to love and care labour, that is love and care relations conceptualised as forms of physical, emotional and mental work.1 The research is first and foremost about equality. More specifically it is concerned with equalities in caring relations and how caring equality relates to masculine identities. As a man who has worked in caring professions and as someone deeply concerned with equality I have a personal and political interest in this issue. More broadly caring relations are central to any discussion of gender equality. In this paper I will briefly summarise four central aspects of the research: 1. The conceptual framework of inequalities I draw on. 2. The theoretical context of masculinities studies. 3. The research rationale and methodology. 4. Preliminary findings of Exploratory Phase 1. 2.
Conceptual Framework of Inequality The egalitarian theorists, Baker, Lynch, Walsh and Cantillon have developed a conceptual framework of equality.2 The framework depicts inequalities as multidimensional and complex. They are generated from four
Masculine Identities and Affective Equality
72
______________________________________________________________ main sources within interlacing economic, cultural, political, and affective systems (Figure 1).
Economic System
Political System
Cultural System
Affective System
Figure 1: Systems of Inequality (simplified representation)
These systems give rise to five dimensions or sets of inequalities: 1. Inequality of resources (e.g. income, wealth, environment, time and space). 2. Inequalities of recognition and respect (of status, social valuation, social imaging). 3. Inequalities of representation (power over decision-making). 4. Inequalities of working and learning (life-chances and quality of life in these domains). 5. Inequalities of love, care and solidarity (caring and affective relationships). Whilst the origins of particular inequalities (e.g. income resources) tend to generate from within particular systems (e.g. economic systems), a complex interconnection between each system is appreciated. The inequalities experienced by different social groups may form in different and complex ways. For example, Gay men primarily experience respect and recognition inequalities with their source within cultural systems. These inequalities have important implications for working and learning, resources, power and especially love, care and solidarity. These inequalities may be specific to particular localised contexts and often interface in complex ways.
Niall Hanlon
73
______________________________________________________________ Affective inequality is one of the most innovative and interesting aspects of the framework which is now generating a good deal of research of which this project form part.3 Affective inequalities are inequalities of love, care and solidarity. Love, care and solidarity are understood as forms of work required for the development, sustenance and maintenance of love and care relations.4 Affective equality is basically about the distribution of the work of love and care and concerned with its associated benefits and burdens. Affective equalities enquire as to who does the work of love and care and under what conditions, of who undertakes unequal burdens in this work, and who is denied access to the benefits of love and care relations. According to Lynch, love and care relations involve physical, mental and emotional work as well as cognitive skills. They involve caring tasks as well as a caring orientation or sensibility, enacted by moral imperatives. It is important to mention that according to Lynch’s framework there are key conceptual distinctions between love, care and solidarity work. A basic difference is that they each involve different intensities of emotional commitment and engagement.5 3.
Theoretical Context of Masculinities Studies Despite many significant advances achieved by contemporary feminism, labours of love and care continue to be highly gendered practices.6 The literature on caring overwhelmingly finds that men avoid most of the burdens of ‘other centred work’ whilst availing of many of its benefits. Feminists have long argued that the gender division of affective labour is one of the principal causes of social, political and economic inequalities. Profeminist masculinities studies have a good deal to say about how men overwhelmingly benefit from these relations despite much greater recognition now given to differences among men. Connell, one of the most prominent masculinities writers, argues that prevailing constructions of masculinity are built around hierarchical relations of hegemonic, complicit, marginalised and subordinated masculinities based on competition and dominance.7 Similarly, Bourdieu argues that masculinity is constructed in opposition to femininity. He notes that: “(m)anliness… is an eminently relational notion, constructed in front of other men and against femininity, in a kind of fear of the female, firstly in oneself”.8 It seems that within masculinities theory, including profeminist variants, there are historical tensions between what I refer to as ‘power’ and ‘pain’ perspectives on masculine identities and gender relations. The power perspective emphasises the gains of men and masculinity based, in part, on men’s avoidance of love and care labour. Pain perspectives are inspired by what Connell describes as the ‘toxic’ effects of the gender order for men’s lives.9 In fact, Connell argues that the affective burdens of masculinity are exactly the consequences of privilege. Pain perspectives are more
74
Masculine Identities and Affective Equality
______________________________________________________________ sympathetic to the burdens that dominant constructions of masculinities impose on men’s affective relations, yet many of these theorists remain cognisant of the power and dominance of men and masculinities.10 Charting a course between these sometimes opposing conceptions of masculine identity can be a tricky business. On the one hand a male power perspective stands accused of underestimating the extent and complexity of differences between men and indeed between men and women as gender relations intersect with key social divisions such as class and ‘race’. On the other hand a men’s pain perspective is vulnerable to accusations that it is blind to the privileging of men and masculinities. One of Michael Kimmel’s central arguments, one of the worlds leading authorities on men and masculinities, is that men’s sense of injustice is derived from male privilege and a sense of entitlement.11 I believe that the framework of inequality that I have outlined is a useful way to further develop the theoretical insights of masculinities studies in this complex area without necessarily losing sight of men’s power and privilege or male ‘pain’. 4.
Research Rationale and Methodology The rationale of the research is to understand the way that different men in Irish society define and construct their masculine identities in relation to love and care labour and to appreciate the significance of these identities dominant definitions of masculinity ‘write-out’, or seriously restrict the role of love and care in men’s lives. The underlying idea of this research is to explore the affective complexities and contradictions of caring in men’s lives in the contemporary context of Irish society. The research occurs in the context of relatively little empirical work conducted in Ireland, although there is increasing interest in affective equality and also on masculinities research in Europe generally.12 In designing the research I have considered debates within masculinities studies and feminist theory about researching men’s lives. I have been particularly influenced by the tradition of profeminist standpoint traditions which are based on a critical self-reflection on one’s own gender location.13 One important feature to this has been to engage with a process of professional psychotherapeutic reflection running in parallel to the research in a similar way to Jackson.14 The importance of this process has become more salient as the research has progressed especially in the way that emotional identifications intersect with political and ideological commitments. The research design involves a critical reflexive approach to interviewing and analysis. The first phase, which is nearly complete, involves eight interviews with key members of different men’s groups in Irish society. The second empirical phase will involve constructing life-history narratives with a diversity of Irish men. Diversities in relation to both the men and the
Niall Hanlon
75
______________________________________________________________ men’s groups are based around key social divisions and relations of inequality including social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, geographical location, family care status and marital status. The idea is to explore the meaning that care has for the person and the significance of key relations in the person’s life trajectory. I hope through these narratives to be able to identify life patterns, and the way that people make sense of their care relations with respect of material, symbolic and emotional relations. There is a lively debate about the pros and cons of conducting qualitative interviews with men, especially in relation to their intimate and emotional lives.15 Despite reservations, I do not believe that the disadvantages outweigh the advantages here although I accept that these narrative interviews will require careful consideration and planning. 5.
Preliminary Findings (Phase 1) This phase is almost complete and I can offer some very preliminary insights from my analysis thus far. So far, six men’s groups were involved in detailed dialogical interviews (Table 1): TABLE 1 Main Affective Concern
Groups Equality Concerns
Separated Fathers Group Resources (fathers) Respect and recognition (fathers) Decision-making (fathers) Work-life balance (fathers) Consciousness raising –education- (fathers) Equal distribution of love and care Community Development Group Resources for social services Intersection Respect and recognition of disadvantaged men between economic marginalisation and Community empowerment Employment social exclusion with caring relations Education and training Access to social (care) services and strengthening inter-personal relationships Traveller Men’s Organisation16 Intersection Resources for social services between economic Respect and recognition for Travellers marginalisation and Representation for Travellers/Community social exclusion empowerment Rights of joint custody of children and shared parenting
76
Masculine Identities and Affective Equality
______________________________________________________________ with caring relations
Relationship between homophobic and heterosexist society and caring relations of Gay men
Human spiritual and social development
Isolation and secondary care needs of older men and how older men deal with aging
Employment Education and training Access to social (care) services and strengthening affective relations Gay Men’s Group Resources for services Respect and recognition for Gay men Community empowerment Employment Education and training (sexual health and personal development) Access to social (care) services and strengthening affective relations Catholic Religious Group Respect and recognition for people (especially spiritual) Development work / empowerment Education and missionary work Holistic social and spiritual care Older Men’s Group Resources for services (especially health and community services) Respect and recognition for older men Community empowerment Education and training (e.g. health, activities) Access to social (care) services and strengthening affective relations
I intend to complement these with two more interviews which reflect more dominant masculinities, but I first wanted to concentrate on more subordinated and marginalised positions.17 The separated fathers group were overwhelmingly concerned with the rights and recognition of joint custody and shared parenting arrangements with their ex-partners and children. They viewed the men in their group as oppressed victims of injustices in caring relations. The community development group overwhelmingly focussed on economic marginalisation, social exclusion and oppression and how these issues affected the men’s caring relations. They saw the men to be extremely affectively disadvantaged which they evidenced by the high incidence of drug addiction, alcoholism, psychological and psychiatric problems and relationship breakdown and disharmony which the men experienced. The Traveller men’s group argued that many of the affective concerns of Traveller men are similar to those of
Niall Hanlon
77
______________________________________________________________ marginalised ‘settled men’ but that there were also specific issues such as racism, housing and family breakdown which had particular significance for them.18 The Gay men’s group was primarily concerned with issues of respect and recognition for Gay men’s lifestyles and how these symbolic relations impacted on Gay men’s care relations. The Catholic Religious men’s group was primarily concerned with the problems that men experienced in realising a more holistic and spiritual identity and interestingly in meeting reflective demands of caring equality. The older man’s group were primarily concerned with the care needs, loneliness and social isolation of older men and the difficulties they experienced in relating in a fast changing world and of a sense of decline of community and extended family. Underlying the different affective concerns of the groups I have initially identified three themes. These are best considered as a spectrum of opinions: A. Recognising ‘Pain’ or ‘Privilege’ Although men’s power was not invisible in the interviews, there was greater sympathy overall for a male pain perspective. However most of this sympathy was in respect of the marginalisation and subordination of the men rather than as a denial of men’s avoidance of caring per se. My sense was that at the heart of these dilemmas lurked the issues of men’s agency, power and responsibility. Some of the groups were reluctant to acknowledge men’s privileging least it was seen to take away from the men’s pain. B. Recognising ‘Masculine’ or ‘Feminine’ Caring There was also a good deal of uncertainty about whether men could care as well as women and whether caring capabilities were essential characteristics. Some of the groups felt that men’s ways of caring were undervalued. It seemed that the meaning of caring was a site of struggle because ‘feminised’ concepts of caring created material, symbolic and emotional demands on men that requires fundamental adjustments of identities and caring relations. C. Validating Men or Reconstructing Masculinities There was lots of uncertainty about whether men would be better off affectively becoming ‘more like women’ or whether men should in some how reaffirm a sense of masculinity particular to men. There was a sense that the men were trapped between the need to achieve a sense of esteem and validation as men and their desire to develop and sustain emotional intimacies with others. The sense was that men were themselves conflicted about the importance of intimacy and emotion in their lives, which could often conflict with the public goals of masculinity.
78
Masculine Identities and Affective Equality
______________________________________________________________ 6.
Conclusion All the men’s group reflected tensions, contradictions and uncertainties about where the men were located in affective relations of inequality. It was clear that masculine identities were crucial locations of anxiety and struggle for the men in respect of their caring relations. Overall, the men’s affective relations were complex with different dimensions of inequality interacting and reinforcing each other. A quote from Tom, a community development worker with Traveller men demonstrates this: [G]uys who realise they are in poor form because of something else and go home and have a row with the wife… they could draw back to their low self-worth… for example, guys who would be on the housing waiting list and would have a meeting with the County Council people, go home in bad form and the wife would be saying you promised me we’d be in a house this time last year and everything blows up, and it’s brought back to the guys, and it’s internalised, and it’s blamed on themselves not being articulate enough and not being able to state their case the same as a country fella, you know in the housing office… I think it’s born out of frustration… in not being able to express that stuff as well because of the low levels of education and the low levels of vocabulary and what they are trying to say doesn’t come out well and I can see there is a lot of fighting a lot of trauma and stuff in families in the Traveller community. I can see all the social determinants that can affect that you know people are staying in caravans and being promised a house year after year and they have kids and there’s only gas heaters and if the kids go near them they get burnt and you know the Ma is blaming the Da, and the Da has got nowhere to go, and he goes and has six cans and causes a row; cos that’s the money spent, and there’s no other money coming in and they have nowhere to turn and all these things are like a pressure cooker. It’s ironic because I can see they really, really care and have love for their family and that’s probably because they worry so much and spiral the opposite way than they intend. 19 Many interesting issues about love and care in men’s lives have been raised in these exploratory interviews. However, at this stage of the analysis the research is pointing me towards a more detailed investigation of masculine identities and care giving in men’s primary love relations.
Niall Hanlon
79
______________________________________________________________
Notes 1
K Lynch, J Baker, J Walsh and Maureen Lyons, Affective Equality: Who Cares? Love Care and Solidarity Work, Palgrave Macmillan, London, Forthcoming 2008. 2 J Baker, K Lynch, J Walsh and S Cantillon, Equality from Theory to Action, Palgrave, Hamphire, New York, 2004, pp 21-42. 3 Lynch, Baker, Walsh and Lyons, op. cit. 4 K. Lynch, ‘Love labour as a distinct and non-commodifiable form of care labour’. The Sociological Review, no.55, vol. 3, 2007, pp. 550–570. 5 ibid. 6 D Bubeck, Care, Gender and Justice, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995. 7 R Connell, Masculinities, Polity, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 67-81. 8 P Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2001, p.53. 9 The costs of masculinity for men, according to Connell, come in the form of ‘toxic’ affects from competitiveness, aggression, and violence, and include high rates of mortality and illness, affective relational problems and mental health issues. R Connell, Gender, Polity Press, UK, 2002, pp. 142-151. 10 V Seidler, Rediscovering Masculinity: Reason, Language and Sexuality, Routledge, London, 1989. V Seidler, Transforming Masculinities: Men, cultures, bodies, power, sex and love. Routledge, London, 2006. 11 M Kimmel, The Gender of Desire: Essays on Male Sexuality, SUNY Press, New York, 2005, p. 234. 12 J Hearn, K Pringle, U Muller, E Olesky, E Lattu, J Chernova, H Ferguson, Ø G Holter, V Kolga, I Novilova, C Ntimiglia, E Olsvik, and T Tallberg, ‘Critical Studies on Men in Ten European Countries; (1) the State of Academic Research’. Men and Masculinities, vol. 4, 2002, pp. 380-408. 13 J Hearn, ‘Sociological Issues in Studying Men and Masculinities’, University of Manchester Discussion Paper, Department of Social Administration, University of Manchester, 1989. 14 D Jackson, Unmasking Masculinity; a critical autobiography, Unwin Hyman, London, 1990. 15 A discussion of interviewing men is found in D Owens, ‘Men, Emotions and the Research Process: The Role of Interviewing in Sensitive Areas’, Qualitative Research: The Emotional Dimension, K Carter and S Delamont (eds), Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot, UK, 1996. Michael Floods research on male sexuality confirms that it is possible for men to successfully interview men about sensitive issues; M Flood, ‘Doing Research on Men and as Men:
80
Masculine Identities and Affective Equality
______________________________________________________________ Politics and Problems’, Masculinities: Renegotiating Genders (Conference Paper). University of Wollongong, 20th June, 1997. 16 Travellers are a traditionally nomadic indigenous ethnic minority group in Ireland. They are arguably one of the most socially excluded and economically marginalised groups in Irish society and commonly experience direct and institutional racism. 17 Two interviews are to follow these. The first is with a men’s trade union group. The second is with a men’s social networking group. 18 ‘Settled’ is a term used to distinguish between the non-Traveller majority population and Travellers. However there are ‘settled’, Travellers who no longer practice as nomadic lifestyles. 19 The respondent is Tom, a community worker and facilitator of a number of men’s groups working with marginalised men in rural Ireland.
Bibliography Baker, J., Lynch, K., Walsh, J. and Cantillon, Sara, Equality from Theory to Action. Palgrave, Hamphire, New York, 2004. Bourdieu, P., Masculine Domination. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2001. Bubeck, D., Care, Gender and Justice. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995. Connell, R., Masculinities. Polity, Cambridge, 1995. Flood, M., ‘Doing Research on Men and as Men: Politics and Problems’, Masculinities: Renegotiating Genders (Conference Paper). University of Wollongong, 20th 1997. Hearn, J., Pringle K., Muller U., Olesky E., Lattu E., Chernova J., Ferguson H., Holter Ø. G., Kolga V., Novilova I., Ntimiglia C., Olsvik E., and T. Tallberg, ‘Critical Studies on Men in Ten European Countries; (1) the State of Academic Research’. Men and Masculinities, vol. 4, 2002, pp. 380-408. Hearn, J., ‘Sociological Issues in Studying Men and Masculinities’. University of Manchester Discussion Paper. Department of Social Administration, University of Manchester, 1989.
Niall Hanlon
81
______________________________________________________________ Jackson, D., Unmasking Masculinity; a critical autobiography. Unwin Hyman, London, 1990. Kimmel, M., The Gender of Desire: Essays on Male Sexuality. SUNY Press, New York, 2005. Lynch, K., Baker, J., Walsh J., and Maureen Lyons, Affective Equality: Who Cares? Love Care and Solidarity Work. Palgrave Macmillan, London, Forthcoming 2008. Lynch, K., ‘Love labour as a distinct and non-commodifiable form of care labour’. The Sociological Review, no. 55, vol. 3, 2007, pp. 550–570. Owens, D., ‘Men, Emotions and the Research Process: The Role of Interviewing in Sensitive Areas’. Qualitative Research: The Emotional Dimension. K. Carter and S. Delamont (eds), Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot, UK, 1996. Seidler, V., Rediscovering Masculinity: Reason, Language and Sexuality, Routledge, London, 1989. –––, Transforming Masculinities: Men, cultures, bodies, power, sex and love. Routledge, London, 2006.
An Ethnographic Deconstruction of Sex & Relationships Education in Scotland1 Paul Gilfillan para Ninian: mi sol, mi corazón.
Abstract This chapter begins by presenting ethnographic data on the behaviours of Scottish working class teenagers and proceeds to an analysis of discursive behaviour observed surrounding the area of sexual relationships. The paper not only argues that sexual and/or intimate relationships are tied to wider social, cultural and economic realities, but are to be privileged as uniquely disclosive of the nature and power of social and cultural realities in the lives of teenagers. On this basis, the chapter considers some of the challenges faced by Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) in Scotland today when adolescent/teenage behaviours are understood as social, cultural and class practices. This chapter also argues for the increasing salience and presence of ‘sexual relationship’ work in the lives of a younger generation due to a powerful mix of new cultural and economic conditions that have arisen since the 1980s. The article notes the increasing challenges faced by any SRE curriculum today and concludes SRE as currently configured by the State is unlikely to recognize the dominant forces shaping young peoples’ sexual relationships as this would require a ‘deconstructing’ reflexivity towards SRE once recognised itself as a social and class practice by its professional practitioners. Key Words: Ethnography, policy, relationships, Scotland, sex education, working class. ***** 1.
Introduction A commonplace observation made in both the popular press and academic commentary in Scotland in recent years is that Scotland not only has one of the worst health records in Europe but one of the worst sexual health records.2 About these two facts there is very much a consensus. Unfortunately, when it comes to proposing solutions to these problems, in particular the poor sexual health record of young Scots, the consensus comes to an abrupt halt.
84
An Ethnographic Deconstruction of Sex & Relationships Education
______________________________________________________________ In this presentation I will approach the issue of sex education from an ethnographic or anthropological standpoint. My assumption as an ethnographer is that before there are facts, figures and health statistics concerning young people, before there is a cottage industry of research and policy recommendations devoted to this issue, there is a series of social and economic conditions that young Scots are immersed within which need to be known and conceptually mapped. Not having time for any detailed mapping,3 I will offer instead two brief ethnographic anecdotes recorded while doing fieldwork in the small Fifeshire village of Cardenden on the east coast of Scotland; a small post-industrial village with an approximate population of 4,830 and, using this as a baseline, explore the lived experience of some young people so as to evaluate the dominant State sponsored paradigm of sex education in use in Scotland today as well as the other sex education paradigm in Scotland today – that of Relationships and Moral Education (RME) developed by the Catholic Church. 2.
Ethnography For a number of months during fieldwork I lived in the main street of the village and was routinely able to witness and record the behaviours of young locals in the street. A particular characteristic was a remarkable comportment in public space and a particular relationship to language that seemed linked to their being-in-public-space; a form of behaviour I propose to privilege as revelatory of the ‘lifeworld’ of working class adolescents. Let me begin then by citing two examples from my fieldwork diary: 21.8.2000 I was going on a walk with my wife’s sister-inlaw to the local supermarket with my two-year-old daughter Candela. We passed two young boys. One boy shouted ‘Ya fuckin slag’ to one of two girls walking to the fast-food place as the two boys walked in the other direction. The boy had a pizza in a box he had just bought from the take away. He threw a large piece of it at an oncoming bus. He next proceeded to throw a can of coca cola into the river and then followed with the pizza box. After our shopping we went to the park. The same young boy walked towards a young teenage couple. He shouted ‘Are ye shaggin [having sex] her yet....’ I go over to him and say... Another fieldwork journal excerpt: 10.9.2000 It's 9.30 p.m. and I'm preparing Candela’s bed. A group of teenagers at the bus stop outside. Only two or
Paul Gilfillan
85
______________________________________________________________ three are talking. Half the street can hear. One boy says he is ‘wantin a gobble’ from one of the girls. I only can see two. A bus for Kirkcaldy arrives but nobody gets on. Five walk away from view. Four are left. ‘Ah'm no wantin fixed wi ye. Ah'm no wantin oot wi ye. Ah want tae shag ye’ one boy says to a girl. Two boys move off leaving one boy and a girl at the bus stop. Next I hear one boy calling back ten yards away but clearly audible to all within fifty yards of the main street: ‘Ah'll be back tae get ma baws emptied.’ Presently, I hear the girl speak. She is trying to elicit agreement from a boy. 'Ah'm no a slag, eh?' she asks him. I hear another voice. A young boy, white jersey, baseball cap, is outside the takeaway talking on a mobile phone. He says: ‘Ken what Ah'm gonnae dae? Ah'm gonnae bend ye o'er and fuck ye like yer no there.....What?...A dug?...Kick it in the teeth. Ken what Ah dae right, if any dug gits on ma nerves, Ah jist gie it a kickin. Dae that....’ At this a male friend of his comes out from the takeaway and asks 'Why are ye getting fuckin drunk? On a Wednesday!’ And then adds ‘Who are ye talkin tae?’ His friend replies ‘She says ye've got a nice voice.’ He responds to this saying 'Tell her she's got a braw pair e tits.’ By any standards, this behaviour is in need of explanation and presents something of an interpretive challenge. I argue this linguistic violence is grounded in poverty; that these speakers, when confronted with a space or opportunity for linguistic freedom and invention, flee from language as if it were a dead tool in their hands because a particular class condition is revealed in their particular relationship towards and use of language; in this case the ‘refusal’ to use language. I argue these opportunities to speak reveal a class-based political economy of speaking; that the vicious language emerges from being subject to the public realm as themselves for the first time; being in public without the protection of parents with the result that, among the disadvantaged, public space is experienced as a keenly felt interrogation. In place of an original occupation of space as a child, of childhood days of play and freedom from self-consciousness in public space, there is the advent of self-consciousness and along with this comes awareness of objectivity. Their very show of insensitivity is in fact a show of being dominated by a deep sensitivity to negative public evaluations of themselves. If they cannot resist despoiling a virginal space by endlessly writing their name or disturbing the peace by shouting obscenities, it is because they are in no position to resist this interrogation by furnishing trajectories full of promise and imagined futures. Ordinarily, then, it is adolescents from the
86
An Ethnographic Deconstruction of Sex & Relationships Education
______________________________________________________________ poorer families most unable to contest this interrogation who resort to extremes of behaviour. Because it is in the public realm most of all that our desire to be somebody is triggered, so it is in public they reveal their positionality; get into trouble for the most trivial of reasons, turning the private drama they instantiate into a public spectacle for the ethnographer to witness. 3.
State Paradigm Far from an occasion of mutuality then, the particular discourse and comportment surrounding sexuality glimpsed in the above anecdotes indicates a form of sexuality that is an occasion for witnessing the opposite of love. Far from the exercise of care, this situated sexuality is a site for enacting de-personalisation of self and others; where sexual relationships are to be privileged as sites where a will to dominate, a desire for power and acts of violence are exercised most intimately and where sexual relations are characterised by predatory behaviours and a will to victimise others. Such sexual relationships are to be privileged as evidence of the internalisation of an inauthentic and oppressive way of being sexual and being human. One might well wonder what kind of Sex and Relationships Education could combat such casual linguistic-come-sexual violence that we presume characterises the relations of these young people glimpsed above. The reason I wish to ground a discussion of sex education policy among a working class location arises from the fact that the research literature is clear that it is the poorer classes, those from postcode areas characterised by multiple deprivation, that have higher rates of teenage pregnancies, single parent families, children living in poverty and cohorts of unsupervised young people often practicing high-risk sexual behaviours that justifies the call for sex education in schools.4 In August 2002 Malcolm Chisholm, then Minister for Health and Community Care in the Scottish government, set up a twenty-one member expert group to produce a sexual health strategy for Scotland and in September 2003 the draft sexual health strategy for Scotland was published.5 In this document there is the clear prioritization of imparting information to young people. The educational strategies deployed to change adolescent behaviours are consistent with the assumption that changing consciousnesses changes behaviours. Hence, just as with poverty reduction strategies used elsewhere, there is a focus upon ‘consciousness raising’ strategies and pedagogical techniques aimed at ‘demystifying’ sexuality, breaking down taboos that prevent the free and frank discussion of sexuality and the free and frank ‘demystified’ accessing of information and services. However, a criticism of such strategies, whether it is poverty or sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) to be reduced, is that such sexual health
Paul Gilfillan
87
______________________________________________________________ programmes nowhere address the substantive issues of philosophical anthropology nor the material-come-cultural environment in which the young people these policies are aimed at are immersed in. All of this despite the clear evidence-based link between poverty and poor sexual health.6 Given the research already available to policymakers an obvious policy conclusion would be to develop sexual health strategies that would recognize the centrality of the issue of poverty. If there is no such policy embedded within sexual health strategies then the net result will be the need for SRE is neverending as a change in consciousness does not change poverty or multiple deprivation. However, the government strategy is about much more than simply effecting changes in behaviour. Nothing less than a revolution in consciousness is aspired to. Hence an integral aim of sex education is to challenge gender stereotypes and traditional assumptions as to what constitutes male and female roles and behaviours. The aim is to deconstruct machismo ways of ‘doing masculinity’ as well as subordinate behaviours traditionally associated and internalised by girls. The overall aim is to create relationships between the genders characterised by equality. Significantly, however, there is no advertence to the fact that it was wider social and cultural and historical forces that were central in how Western societies transformed gender relations; that it had nothing to do with curricular provision but a Judeo-Christian culture allied to affluence, legal reforms, medico-technological innovation (the contraceptive pill) and a post-manual and post-industrial occupational structure that was able to absorb women into the workplace which has modified gender relations. This recognition of the importance of wider structural forces should lead us not only to be realistic about what changes can be expected of pedagogical techniques, but whether such policies are desirable at all. If we take the example of programmes cited as successfully challenging ‘essentialised’ gender behaviours as examples of successful educational intervention, we have to treat such claims and objectives with some scepticism. As an example then, while the standard progressive aim of liberating boys from gender stereotyping and liberating girls from domesticity to be more ambitious may seem unobjectionable as a general principle, we have to ask whether such ‘social engineering’ initiatives that challenge gender roles are to teach girls, for example, how to value their husbands without their economic functioning; whether it is proposed we should develop curricula that liberate girls from expecting their husbands to provide physical and financial security; whether we should really teach working class boys not to integrate their manhood/manliness with the traditional role of earning and providing for their family i.e. dissociate their ‘sense of self’ from reproducing the material existence of dependent others? Another obvious question is whether the teachers of Sex and Relationships Education who are to affect such ‘gender engineering’ politics
88
An Ethnographic Deconstruction of Sex & Relationships Education
______________________________________________________________ know how to do this themselves. Have they, in the course of their own lives, moved beyond stereotyping of the male and female? Does the teacher of SRE need to liberate herself of all ‘essentialist’ linking of masculinity and money? This particular instance is cited because among working class localities there are objective reasons why roles and tasks are gendered; why there is a sexual division of labour. In working class Scotland for example, the sexes are routinely ‘segregated’ and there still is a sexual division of labour because the economic question remains the dominating organising problematic in their lives and even more so within a family context. For the working class mother, what gender equality or ‘female liberation’ often means in practice, is that she considers herself less-than-equal in her marriage if not in full-time employment; which means the woman, more often than not, doing a routine manual semi-skilled job often on an insecure contractual basis and with no occupational pension - in addition to running a family and a household. Such a class-based perspective helps us to evaluate educational policies. When in school a boy participating in role-playing may appear to the liberal policymaker to be learning to explore his masculinity in a ‘nontraditional’ manner, the fact is that if masculinity is de-essentialised and understood as a series of class practices, for example, such boys have yet to begin to ‘do masculinity.’ When working class masculinity is understood as a ‘cultural form’ and a cultural practice borne from many years of exposure to and assimilation to being employed in the bottom half of the occupational hierarchy, as well as forming and reproducing a family under these disciplining conditions, it is realized that ‘masculinity’ does not emerge from consciousness nor an eternal masculine nature but a set of lived material conditions and experiences. It stands to reason then that only a very different set of real and lived material conditions and experiences (and not an educational intervention involving role playing) could hope to change this form of ‘doing masculinity.’ A consequence of this perspective is that to describe ‘traditional masculinity’ as ‘stereotypical gender behaviour’ amounts to what Pierre Bourdieu terms symbolic violence insofar as it aims to delegitimise another class’s construction of gender; as well as reifying ‘gender’ by imagining one can extract it, its constitution and structuration, from the real world and make of it, via policies of social engineering, what one will. Insofar as this paradigm of understanding gender and its alleged malleability constructs sex education policy, SRE is constructed by the hopes and fears of a secular and liberal middle class elite. Setting the policy goal then of ‘relationships equality’ between the genders is problematic. It is done within the context of the government’s failure, after fifty years of policymaking, to establish educational or health equality between the classes. Indeed, the evidence is that these indices of inequality have increased.
Paul Gilfillan
89
______________________________________________________________ I argue that what policymakers have to recognize and make curricular provision for is the fact that outside of school, sexuality and behaviours between the sexes are heavily socialized; are subject to being structured by socio-cultural and economic/market forces; that sexual and gender behaviours must be approached as class practices, for example. Often, then, the only prospect of seeing the ‘core skills’ and ‘learning outcomes’ that SRE programmes set for their pupils meeting with any success depends upon the extent to which fundamental social realities are faced up to and incorporated into SRE. Successful SRE will indeed mean transcending class practices, transcending social gender inequalities, tackling the violence perpetrated by boys on girls, but to imagine one can do this with sex education policies that fail to recognize and combat class structures is to surround a series of (for the most part) enlightened objectives by a wall of inadequate policies preventing any chance of success. 4.
Church Paradigm In 2002 The Catholic Education Commission rejected the Statesponsored Sex and Relationships paradigm. Predictably enough, the Church viewed the State-sponsored programme as unacceptable; as a species of ‘secular fundamentalism’ insofar as it discriminated against Christian beliefs. The Church issued its own Guidelines and Guidance Notes for the teaching of Relationships and Moral Education (RME) for Catholic schools7 and in 2005 began the Called To Love project.8 The fundamental inspiration of the Catholic approach to sex education is its theological understanding of human sexuality and its appeal to the empirical evidence, such as the ever-increasing rise in the number of abortions in Scotland,9 which the Church claims proves that liberal secular sexual health strategies, such as the prioritisation of making information about condom use freely available in schools, far from helping young people come to a mature understanding of their sexuality, actually worsens their situation. The Church’s opposition to condom use as a means of ensuring safe(r) sex is not only theological but empirical. While the Church does not deny the use of a condom during intercourse greatly reduces the risk of unwanted pregnancies, advocating the use of condoms is hardly a responsible policy any particular father or mother should recommend to their adolescent children as a means of keeping them safe. As a recent report authored by Anne Williams and published by the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics has it: Sperm have a diameter of 50 microns. Naturally occurring holes in the wall of a latex condom have a diameter of 1 micron. The HIV retrovirus, which causes AIDS, has a diameter of 0.1 microns… AIDS viruses swim freely through
90
An Ethnographic Deconstruction of Sex & Relationships Education
______________________________________________________________ the holes in a condom. That is a fact that should be widely publicized.10 In the Church-sponsored programme Called To Love what is immediately striking about the Catholic understanding and its classroom materials and curriculum provision for relationships education is its underpinning theology. Specifically, the very intimacy that Catholic theologians ascribe to the inner life of God is believed to hold profound truths for human sexuality. Deus caritas est recently declared Pope Benedict in the inaugural encyclical of his pontificate: God is love. For the Church, in the words of Pope John Paul II, human sexuality “is by no means something purely biological, but concerns the innermost being of the person as such.” 11 In his encyclical Familiaris Consortio, John Paul II wrote: God is love and in Himself He lives a mystery of loving communion. Creating the human race in His own image and continually keeping it in being, God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation and thus the capacity and responsibility of love and communion. Love is therefore the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.12 There is a shocking quality to Catholic theology’s rigorous stapling together that which late-capitalist modernity and its cognoscenti class everywhere sunders apart: the self and sexuality; there is the clear rejection of the ‘liberation’ of sexuality from morality, personhood, parenthood, children; its relentless integralism that theorises human sexuality to the very limits, and beyond, of its intelligibility. However, a criticism I would like to make is that much of the Relationships and Moral Education programme traps Catholicism into what Joseph Margolis has termed ‘eighteenth century thinking.’ What Margolis means by this is classical Enlightenment-style unitary thinking that has yet to free itself from universalist assumptions about Reason. What I mean by borrowing this phrase in this context is not to call on the Church to free its understanding of human sexuality and development from ‘universalist’ assumptions, but to suggest the Church needs to put its universalism at stake by plunging into the specificities and contingencies of historicity and culture – such as those of Scottish working class locations, for example. I suggest this work of integrating universalist and particularist realities and truths is a pressing research priority for Catholic sex education in Scotland today. Having a beautiful vision of human sexuality is important; but possessing the means of translating such a vision into the lives of working class youths is infinitely better.
Paul Gilfillan
91
______________________________________________________________ 5.
Conclusion There are in Scotland today two models of sex education: the Religious and the Secular, the Church and State programmes, Relationships and Moral Education (RME) and Sex and Relationships Education (SRE). Perhaps the ghost at each of these banquets is culture and class. Can SRE or RME work among the working class? One might as well ask the same question of music education or science education. If we cannot expect long established unequal educational outcomes to be reversed in these subjects, we have no right to expect it in any other aspect of the curriculum. How much easier and familiar to develop a sex education programme, repeat the education, education, education policy mantra, than address the real issue of long durée patterns of social inequality.
Notes 1 This paper emerges from background research in preparation for a threeyear international ethnographic research project (beginning January 2008) jointly funded under the United Kingdom Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) / Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Religion and Society research programme led by the Department of Religious Education at Glasgow University. 2 This poor sexual health record is well documented in the literature. I refer the reader in particular to two excellent studies in which can be found more extensive bibliographies: 1) J van Loon, Deconstructing the Dutch Utopia, Family Education Trust, London, 2003; 2) P Boydell and C Mackellar, Informing Choice: A New Approach and Ethics for Sex and Relationships Education in Scotland, Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, 2004. 3 For a lengthier review of the issues involved in representing class locations and lives I refer the reader to my article ‘Fundamental Ontology versus Esse est percipi’. Space and Culture, vol. 12-2, 2009 (forthcoming). 4 Social Exclusion Unit, Teenage Pregnancy: Report by the Social Exclusion Unit, The Stationary Office, London, 1999; M Henderson, D Wight, G Raab, C Abraham, K Buston and G. Hart, ‘Heterosexual Risk Behaviour Among Young Teenagers in Scotland’. Journal of Adolescence, vol. 25, 2002, pp. 483-494; P West, D Wight and S Macintyre, ‘Heterosexual Behaviour of Eighteen Year Olds in the Glasgow Area’. Journal of Adolescence, vol. 16, 1993, pp. 367-396. 5 Scottish Executive, Enhancing Sexual Wellbeing in Scotland: A Sexual Health and Relationships Strategy, Scottish Executive, Edinburgh, 2003. 6 I should point out that the researchers who put together the documentation which accompanies the government’s strategy explicitly highlight the connections between poverty and poor sexual health. However, if we are to
92
An Ethnographic Deconstruction of Sex & Relationships Education
______________________________________________________________ believe the researchers’ claim to have developed policies in light of sensitivity to material poverty, we must believe that sex education policies sensitive to working class realities must bear a striking resemblance to those liberal–secular policies made with no reference whatever to working class reality! 7 The presence of the Catholic Church within State education in Scotland is sizable given the historic legislation of 1918 which continues to give the Church an extremely influential role within its schools – some 15% of all State schools. Enthusiastic support of Catholic schools by the First Minister Alex Salmond and his predecessor Jack McConnell, combined with the high profile excellence of Catholic schools in government inspections, would seem to endorse Catholic education and policymakers. 8 Called to Love project, viewed on 20 April 2007, . 9 The number of abortions in Scotland has risen steadily since the 1967 Abortion Act. In 2006 there were 13, 081 abortions performed in Scotland, about 36 per day. National Health Service (Scotland), viewed on 19 March 2007, . 10 A Williams, The Morning After Pill, Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, Edinburgh, 2005, pp. 16-17. 11 John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio: Apostolic Exhortation on the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1981, p. 20. 12 Ibid. p. 19.
Bibliography Adonis, A. and S. Pollard, A Class Act: The Myth of Britain’s Classless Society. Penguin Books, London, 1998. Benedict XVI., Deus Caritas Est. Catholic Truth Society, London, 2006. Bourdieu, P., Language and Symbolic Power. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1991. Boydell, P. and C. Mackellar, Informing Choice: A New Approach and Ethics for Sex and Relationships Education in Scotland. Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, Edinburgh, 2004. Charlesworth, S., A Phenomenology of Working Class Experience. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999.
Paul Gilfillan
93
______________________________________________________________ Charlesworth, S., P. Gilfillan and R. Wilkinson, ‘Living Inferiority’, in Cultures of Health, Cultures of Illness. G. D. Smith and M. Shaw (eds), British Medical Bulletin, vol. 69, 2004, pp. 49-60. Gilfillan, P., Cardenden 1999: An Ethnography of Working Class Nationalism in a Scottish Village. Unpublished PhD thesis: University of Edinburgh, 2002. John Paul II., Familiaris Consortio: Apostolic Exhortation on the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World. Catholic Truth Society, London, 1981. Van Loon, J., Deconstructing the Dutch Utopia. Family Education Trust, London, 2003. Margolis, J., Life Without Principles: Reconciling Theory and Practice. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1996. Marshall, G., Repositioning Class: Social Inequality in Industrial Societies. Sage Publications, London, 1997. Quinn, P., Easterhouse 2004: An Ethnographic Account of Men’s Experience, Use and Refusal of Violence. Unpublished PhD thesis: University of Glasgow, 2004. Reid, I., Class In Britain. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1998. Scottish Executive, Respect and Responsibility: Strategy and Action Plan for Improving Sexual Health. Scottish Executive, Edinburgh, 2005. Social Exclusion Unit. Teenage Pregnancy. Stationary Office, London, 1999. Wilkinson, R., Mind The Gap: Hierarchies, Health and Human Evolution. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 2000. Williams, A., The Morning After Pill. Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, Edinburgh, 2005.
Intimacy Intervened: Happenstance and Gender Social Norms as Determinants of Intimate Relationships among Mexican Low-Income Women Roberto Castro Perez Abstract “Intimate relationships” and “intimacy” might have various meanings for people in Mexico. For many individuals living in conditions of high marginalisation, the presence of two apparently contradictory elements is common: randomness and strong social norms. Randomness is associated to everyday poverty and the lack of material conditions that would allow individuals for certain control over their own intimacy processes. Simultaneously, prevailing social norms are associated to gender and social class hierarchies, rendering intimate relationships with a clear power unbalance. This chapter offers the main findings of a research project in Mexico on the social origin of the intimacy developed by lower social class men and women. We show here that love is a social competence historically determined by the social conditions that produce it. Intimacy, too. Through a qualitative analysis of ten in-depth interviews conducted with women who have suffered severe intimate partner violence, we show how, in the social production of their everyday life, individuals produce the material conditions that make it possible for certain feelings to prevail over others, such feelings being expressed under specific norms. The “domestic production of feelings” (following Heller) is mediated by both structural determinants (such as the dominant forms of masculinity and femininity, social class and culture), and by specific interactional patterns within the couples. Key Words: Feelings, gender norms, intimacy, Mexico, randomness.
***** 1.
Introduction The constitution of “intimate relationships” for love presents significant variations in the Mexican context. An important number of individuals living in conditions of extreme marginalisation report the presence of two apparently contradictory elements in their everyday life: unpredictability and patriarchal social norms. The former is associated with everyday poverty and the lack of the material conditions that would allow individuals to maintain certain control over their own processes of intimacy. We have already described elsewhere the world vision of the lower classes in
96
Intimacy Intervened
______________________________________________________________ this country, which is derived from their poor material conditions of life. 1 At the same time, the prevailing social norms are closely linked to gender and social class hierarchies, rendering intimate relationships with a clear imbalance of power.2 Thus, love is a social competence, historically determined by the social conditions which produce it, as is intimacy.3 In the social production of their everyday life, individuals also produce the material conditions that make it possible for certain feelings and emotions to prevail over others, such feelings and emotions being expressed within specific norms. The “domestic production of feelings” is mediated by both structural determinants (such as the dominant forms of masculinity and femininity, social class and culture), and by specific patterns of interaction within couples.4 These patterns of interaction simultaneously represent the expression and the re-enactment of the basic agreements concerning the distribution of power within couples. In this chapter, we describe some of the findings of a research project undertaken in Mexico concerning the social origin of intimacy, as experienced by women of lower social class. We will illustrate the central role played by several counter-empowering mechanisms, which are exerted over women and which render intimate relationships as an apt context for the reproduction of gender inequalities. The study forms part of a wider quantitative research into violence against women. We carried out in-depth interviews on 10 women who attended to public health services and who suffered intimate partner violence during pregnancy. We were interested in reconstructing the life course followed by these women before finding themselves under the extreme oppression in which they were living at the moment of the interview. Thus, that which emerged was a combination of data relating to the social determinants of intimacy and the historically specific ways in which these are constructed. This chapter is based on the qualitative analysis of these interviews. 2.
Counter-Empowering Mechanisms What is revealed in the collected interviews, besides the daily drama of these women, is the existence of weakening mechanisms or what we might also term counter-empowering mechanisms.5 These mechanisms systematically undermine most efforts towards autonomy, independence and control in the life of women. These are mechanisms which contribute to the long and sustained process of socialising into subordination, which is what we found in the women in our study.6 Some counter-empowering mechanisms have already been identified by Herrera and Agoff, even when they do not label them under this term.7 They mention, for example, the mechanisms for devaluing women, used by close female relatives. For instance, the mother in-law and the sisters in law, on the one hand, contribute to justify, in the eyes of the partner the repressive control of women for not
Roberta Castro Perez
97
______________________________________________________________ fulfilling the expectations placed on them; and, on the other hand, they foment the tolerance which the family members of the husband usually manifest, concerning violence against women. In other parts of the text cited, diverse types of abuse are presented which can be better described by applying the concept which we propose here. For example, the fact that women would be deprived of their liberty by being shut in, appear to us to be simultaneously a counter-empowering mechanism and an expression of its consequences. 3.
The Formation of the Couple and the Establishment of Mechanisms for Submission Let us term as “courtship” those couple relationships where each one lives separately, normally in the abode of their respective parents. And use “cohabitation” to refer to those relationships where both live together, meaning either a free union or in fact a matrimony, with either or both interpretations (civil and religious). In the material collected, it is possible to identify a typical pattern concerning the relationships of courtship and the process of forming a relationship: its accidental nature, randomness, full of unforeseen outcomes which are very far from the stereotypical image where the fiancés get to know each other, fall in love and together construct the aspiration and the project of a life together. These accounts show that a number of women met their partners and began to live with them within the lapse of a few weeks. In one case for example, the interviewed woman indicated that she met her partner some days before her fifteenth birthday. Two days after this date she had sexual relations with him and after three days they began to live together. In another case a woman narrates that having finished a relationship of a few months with a boyfriend living in the United States, she met her current partner. Her mother encouraged her to get married. The boyfriend and his family proposed a lapse of eight months before the wedding. The mother objected and indicated that she would “permit” only one month. In this account the betrothed appear to be improvising their union and their habitational space (ending up in his parent’s home) and, of course, the relationship between them being practically one of strangers. But, above all, it is an account where she, the interviewed woman, appears to be subject to orders outside her own will: the relationship is more imposed than chosen. In another case, following three months of courtship, she became pregnant. Possessed with fear she decided not to tell her parents anything, or rather she thought that “the best thing would be that I should unite with him even though we don’t get married right now, but the best thing would be for me to leave my house for shame or for fear of how my father might react.” (7)8 But the boyfriend took the initiative and without consulting her, decided to talk to her father about the situation. Thus, a discussion took place between the two men, the exact
98
Intimacy Intervened
______________________________________________________________ content of which remains unknown to her. The fact is that after this, she began to live with her partner, in a small room that his parents passed over to him. This refers to a form of integration of the couple which is characterised by poor planning, where in many cases a pregnancy is the fundamental motive for beginning to live together. It refers in the end to this cognitive orientation which we have documented elsewhere, characteristic of certain low-income people, which permits individuals to live the unexpected as if it were normal, as a strategy for dealing with daily uncertainty.9 This disposition also affects intimacy, because women find themselves sharing various aspects of their intimacy, almost without realising. In all these cases a series of counter-empowering processes can be observed which turn out to be crucial for understanding this phenomenon. These processes present themselves from the beginning of the relationship as well as throughout it and fulfil the function of clearly establishing the hierarchy of men over women. These processes take advantage of diverse kinds of symbolic domination, which are expressed through the collaboration of many women when faced with the male mandate. Thus, it is the case that the relationships of courtship are structured according to a number of accepted basic values, where the hierarchy of men over women is accepted as well as the women’s orientation to serve men. For example, Rocío received an order from her mother to end a relationship with a certain boyfriend whom, given that his parents were relatives between them, was regarded as “a devil’s child.” In order to finish the relationship Rocío had to invent a story that she had a serious illness which was going to prevent her from fulfilling her respective gender roles: ...and each year I will have to undergo operations because these don’t normally turn out well, I said to him, and then with three operations or more one cannot have children, I said to him and then I think: what will they say in the village? That you married a weakling, can you imagine? Instead of a wife who brings you food out to the field, you will have a weakling, whom you have to take care of ... (3). The process of counter-empowering, which operates in courting relationships and at the beginning of cohabitation, is developed through various control mechanisms which men impose on women. Such controls aim at undermining and eventually suffocating the capacity that women have to be autonomous in certain areas of their lives. Firstly, they control their time and the use women make of it: (When we were going out together) on one occasion he was waiting for me but it was very late and I told him that I
Roberta Castro Perez
99
______________________________________________________________ wanted to get home … This annoyed him so that he pulled my arm and he said ‘now you will see how it feels to love god in a strange land,’ he said something like that (1). Secondly, they control friendships. Aurora tells how she used to study folk dance and would soon have received her qualification to become a dance teacher. From the beginning of the courtship her partner began to go and collect her from the school and by doing this he made it impossible to go out with her friends once the classes had finished. After a time the control over her friends became more radical: ... besides this, some friends who had studied since primary school with me ... went to visit me at my house when I was two or three months pregnant and at that moment he arrived and became very serious as if he was annoyed to see that they had come to visit me. They felt uncomfortable and left after a short time and from that moment onwards I never saw them again or had any communication with them. And my cousins with whom I got on with very well, I also lost touch with them because they also began to realise what he was like and that he absorbed all my time totally... (7). A third context where men take control refers to that of women’s studies and jobs. In the collected accounts stories abound where one realises that there is a coincidence: where a masculine partner appears on the scene, many women begin to find it increasingly difficult to continue studying or working. In extreme cases, the boyfriend or husband openly denies them “permission” to carry on. Thus María, who studied computer sciences, began to face objections, until one day she had to suspend her activities when her partner “had had enough and destroyed her things.” Leonor was unable to finish her dance studies in spite of being so close to graduating. When Maribel wished to work instead of studying, she also came up against a terminating opposition: “He did not allow me to work, he said no, that he had taken me away in order that he should support me and that I did not have any need to go out to work... I did not agree, and I told him that I wanted to work, but no, never would he allow me to work.” (1) In another case, it is the mother herself (Rocío’s) who goes to the boyfriend “in order that he should not give her permission to work” as a teacher of pattern cutting and clothes making.
100
Intimacy Intervened
______________________________________________________________ Obviously, a fourth space for control is the woman’s own body, particularly concerning anything related to sexuality and pregnancy. Firstly, the external appearance of the body is controlled: there are women who relate that their partners are questioned by other relatives or neighbors about their personal appearance.10 “Why do you allow her to wear so much make up?” is a typical question that boyfriends and husbands face, which frequently translates into repressive behavior on their part towards their partners. Why does it bother relations and neighbours so much that a woman with a partner dresses to her own taste? Because such conduct on the part of a woman is seen as the transgression of a norm, which seems to read: “now that they have an owner they have no need and (ought not) to go around dressed up as if they were on the look out for a partner.” Moreover, they now have an owner and therefore do not freely control the area of their own intimacy. It is an indication of the social mechanism that seeks to regulate the conduct of women with respect to their personal appearance and which operates to the detriment of women’s autonomy concerning their own bodies; a mechanism which is only possible on the basis of taking for granted the subordinate character of women. As is to be expected, sexuality and the reproductive capacity of women are also controlled. Various women indicate that men intend to “impregnate” their partners as a way of defining their power over them and of controlling their sexuality and maybe assuring that they remain faithful. Leonor’s account illustrates the pressure which was put on her to have sexual relations, the guilt that she feels, the lack of knowledge that she had about the subject, her dependence on her partner concerning these things, as well as her suspicion that her partner had “made her pregnant on purpose” as a means of controlling her: he said that if I said no, that if he could not have relations with me, that as we had been going out together for a long time, that he would look for not girl friends as such but an adventure somewhere else and this of course did not please me, more than anything because he argued that he loved me very much. And then later he began to say other things because he was also very jealous. He said that maybe I was not a virgin and he began to manipulate me in this way, because I would not give in… Thus it was at this time that I swore I had not had anything with anyone else. But apparently he did not believe me, and thus he said that the only way he would believe me was that if I would demonstrate it and that was when I gave in. But then I felt very bad, and besides when we had relations it was extremely painful both physically and morally because I
Roberta Castro Perez
101
______________________________________________________________ was not convinced about doing it… it was truly terrible, in spite of the fact that I loved him very much, it was horrible. The thing which affected me most was the fact that we weren’t married and that I had done this more than anything because of a manipulation and not because I was totally convinced. He had asked me during these days about the date of my last menstruation, but it was embarrassing for me to talk about these things with him. The reason was that I did not talk to anyone about sex, with none and my parents are very reserved people, they hardly talked about these things with us, the only thing I knew was that which they had told us in school... And he asked me the date of my menstruation. I did not tell him but he insisted so much supposedly in order to take care of me. And in the end I told him the date of my last menstruation and after we had had relations, about a month later he asked me if I had my period. I told him no, but I never, in no way imagined that I could be pregnant. Because he had also told me that he knew how to ensure that I would not become pregnant without having to take anything and I did not imagine as I had no idea, but I was also too ashamed to ask. So after about a month he said to me ‘Do you know what?,’ he says, ‘we are going to go so that you can do a pregnancy test.’ I said to him what for and he says ‘because the most certain thing is that you are pregnant.’ I said to him ‘no, you can’t mean it,’ he says ‘yes.’ So we went and when we saw the results he says ‘I knew it;’ I said ‘but how come?’ I said, ‘How come you’re so calm about it?’ He says ‘I knew that you would become pregnant,’ I said ‘but you said that you knew how not to make me pregnant,’ he says ‘well any way you are pregnant,’ he says, ‘there’s nothing we can do about it.’ That’s why I think he planned it, because all this time he should have taken care of me either with a condom, or with the rhythm method or using withdrawal. And thus I have always had this doubt and besides this we have talked about this and he has denied it, but he has never totally convinced me. Yes because at this time he behaved a little more possessively towards me and said that he would never leave me for anything. … (7). In other cases women did not only “suspect,” but also they were clearly aware that their men had used pregnancy as a resource to control them. Men also knew it. In the interviews there are elements which show that
102
Intimacy Intervened
______________________________________________________________ some men consider the possibility of “making a woman pregnant” as a means of expressing their power and which they can thus use as a form of intimidation. For example Maria relates a conflict that she had with her partner from whom she was separated. He sent her specific threats: He sent a message with a woman, she told me that he talked about me a lot and that he said he was going to make me pregnant out of vengeance, that he was going to abandon me when I gave birth and that he would never again have anything to do with me and many other things... (1). A situation of forcing and resistance is thus presented; a situation in which women experience their desire not to get pregnant as a form of struggle against the wishes of the partner. Naturally when a pregnancy occurs in these circumstances, the women cannot live it without yet again giving in. The case of Esmeralda is paradigmatic: her mother abused her during childhood. When she was able to, she abandoned the home, her mother sentenced her: “you will return here defeated.” She attempted to study to become a secretary but this was interrupted because she took on a partner who did not allow her to continue. She became pregnant and he distanced himself, to the extent that she gave birth alone in a public hospital, without any support from him. The violence within this couple escalated, until one day he expelled her from the house. He abandoned her and returned to his first wife, but only until the time that he found out that she was going out with somebody else. Thus he returned, forcing her to finish the relationship and invaded her house along with all the children that he had procreated with another woman. They had another daughter. She was finally able to separate herself from him, but at a terrible cost: he took away the two daughters. Three years later Esmeralda has not seen them because they live in another country. In a park Esmeralda met a second partner, who was also married and had a family. The two men (the previous partner and the new one) fought to take possession of her, a situation which totally overwhelmed her. The new partner won and also imposed a relationship of control and abuse over Esmeralda. She lived literally kidnapped in the house of the mother-in-law. Finally she managed to escape. Throughout the relationship he had tried to make her pregnant at any cost. She did not want a new pregnancy. What she wanted was to recover her daughters (the ones she had had with the first partner). She maintained control using injections which she applied secretly in the health centre: Reply: he got angry because he could not make me pregnant... I was using injections, which they applied to me
Roberta Castro Perez
103
______________________________________________________________ in the health centre. I did not wish to become pregnant. When I left I began to work in a household, because what I wanted was to be calm, I thought that being distant was going to be good but he searched and searched for me. Thus he began to go for me at work and to take me all over the place. So we began to have problems, because he wanted me to get pregnant. And he achieved this because I got ill I’m not sure from what, I think maybe from nerves, because I suffer from depression, my stomach hurt, I had a fever and pain. I had to stop working, I told the mistress for whom I worked that I was ill, but she found another maid because she needed someone to help her... Thus, as I became ill and I couldn’t go for the injection... Question: What did you think when you realised that you were pregnant? Reply: How sad, I felt defeated once again (she cries) because I did not want this (4). To feel once again defeated is the expression of a woman who throughout her life has faced various forms of defeat. This new defeat (knowing that she has become pregnant when she did not wish to be so), is also related to the certainty that in this condition, and in the future with the new infant, she will be more vulnerable. And given that the pattern of the majority of these women is that they have been robbed of their right to study and to work, they become even more dependent on their partners. Vulnerability and dependency are in the last instance the objective expression of the fact that these women have been subject over the years to a “successful” process of counter-empowerment. Finally, the vulnerability and dependence of women resulting from the power of men “to make them pregnant” is reinforced by another masculine power: that of not acknowledging the paternity of the foetus or of the newly born child. Since many men view themselves as being governed by an uncontrollable sexual impulse, they fear that the “baby may not be theirs” 11 but someone else’s governed by similar impulses. This fear is also a resource that men can use to their discretion in order to manipulate or intimidate their women. In reconstructing the trajectory which women follow in order to form their relationship, we have emphasised the randomness, accidental, dramatic and violence in women’s biographies. Such trajectories nevertheless also include behaviour indicating solidarity and by warm elements such as tenderness, affection and love. It happens however that these are “aspects”
104
Intimacy Intervened
______________________________________________________________ which are developed in specific social contexts and which respond to particularities inherent to these; because of this, falling in love in these social conditions, and intimacy, do not mean the same thing as among individuals from the middle and upper social classes. This fact becomes evident on examining the questions made by the interviewer (Clara), and the type of replies she attained. In order to explore the origin and the development of the couple relationship, Clara insistently inquired whether the women were “in love,” and if this was the reason why the couple had gotten together. The replies show an unmistakeable pattern for distancing on the part of the interviewees, with regards to the phrase “falling in love”: in fact none of them used it. The case of Jasmin illustrates the point: Question: Did you fall in love with him or why did you get together with him? Reply: It was because he loved me and I too loved him (2). The same occurs in the case of Beatriz: Question: ... were you in love with him? Did you fancy him or did you love him? Reply: Well yes I fancied him, but now I feel that I don’t love him any more, maybe for the same reason (the violence) I’m not sure... (5). 4.
Conclusion We maintain that romantic love with gender equity and the form of intimacy which is usually concomitant to it, is based on a series of assumptions, as much concerning equality as concerning the material conditions of life. Among people who live in a context of marginalisation, this may consist of a residual or marginal experience. When certain conditions (both material and those concerning gender) are fulfilled, one can consider “falling in love” or “loving the other unconditionally” in the typical phrases used by certain sectors of the middle class. But when such conditions have not been covered, when economic survival continues to be a fundamental urgency and the oppression of gender is a central, subjective experience, any love discourse and all everyday life - including of course couple relationships - remain submerged in this reality. What we found in the accounts of the women interviewed are descriptions of specific forms of love, forms which are affected according to the class they pertain to and their gender condition. Forms of love whose determinants become more evident, and with margins of negotiations which are more flexible on the part of
Roberta Castro Perez
105
______________________________________________________________ women, who may for example find a relationship acceptable “if he does not hit me” or “if he does not insult me.” It is possible that not everything may be “negative” in the lives of the women interviewed, as might appear from our analytical and narrative emphasis. There are also experiences of solidarity and love, but these must be understood as social aspects which are historically determined by the conditions of class and gender. These aspects determine the specific form in which intimacy and love unfold. In light of the collected accounts, we have evidence to postulate that these concern forms of intimacy which are not chosen, but are instead imposed and which are lived within the framework of an oppressive social structure.
Notes 1 R Castro, La vida en la adversidad. El significado de la salud y la reproducción en la pobreza, CRIM-UNAM, Cuernavaca, 2006. 2 R Castro, Violencia contra mujeres embarazadas. Tres estudios sociológicos, CRIM-UNAM, Cuernavaca, 2004. 3 L Boltanski, El amor y la justicia como competencias. Tres ensayos de sociología de la acción, Amorrortu, Buenos Aires, 2000. 4 A Heller, Teoría de los sentimientos, Ediciones Coyoacán, Mexico, 1999. 5 We do not assume that this concerns women who were originally empowered but who later ceased to be so. It is clear to us that this concerns women in a clear situation of vulnerability. However along with this concept, we wish to direct our attention towards those social processes which exacerbate this vulnerability. No matter how oppressed women are in poverty and inequality, they continue to have certain micro powers, such as their will to emancipate themselves their aspirations towards a better life and their inclination to resist and defend themselves, when faced with arbitrariness and aggression. And it is these micro powers which are destroyed by the processes of counter-empowering. 6 In a personal communication, Florinda Riquer has suggested the term socialisation into subordination, in order to reveal the social process of placing women in situations and contexts of subordination. However, I prefer to continue using the concept of counter-empowering mechanisms because it better captures the frequently coercive character of these mechanisms used against women. In the sociological literature, socialisation refers to a set of learning processes (values, norms, behaviors, etc.) which are generated through social interaction and that are internalised by the individual. In our case, by contrast, we speak of mechanisms which are imposed onto women, regardless of whether or not they conform to this new reality or whether they internalise them or not.
106
Intimacy Intervened
______________________________________________________________ 7
C Herrera, C Agoff, ‘Una aproximación cualitativa a la violencia de pareja: lo que dicen las mujeres’, in Encuesta Nacional sobre Violencia contra las mujeres 2003, G Olaiz, B Rico & A Del Río (eds), INSP-SSA, Cuernavaca, 2003, pp. 111-122. 8 The numbers between parentheses refer to the number of the interview where the accounts were taken down. 9 R Castro, La vida en la adversidad. El significado de la salud y la reproducción en la pobreza, CRIM-UNAM, Cuernavaca, 2006. 10 This concerns a world where the precarious social links abound, that is, links which are not supported on a solid basis of trust. The gossip and maliciousness “related” by other people to the partner” play a central role in the processes of counter-empowering, which affect many women. Rodriguez and de Keijzer have also written about the role of gossip in the relationship of a couple. 11 In another work we have developed this argument in more detail. R Castro, La vida en la adversidad. El significado de la salud y la reproducción en la pobreza, CRIM-UNAM, Cuernavaca, 2006.
Bibliography Boltanski, L., El amor y la justicia como competencias. Tres ensayos de sociología de la acción. Amorrortu, Buenos Aires, 2000. Castro, R., La vida en la adversidad. El significado de la salud y la reproducción en el ámbito de la pobreza. CRIM-UNAM, Cuernavaca, 2000. –––, Violencia contra mujeres embarazadas. Tres estudios sociológicos. CRIMUNAM, Cuernavaca, 2004. Giddens, A., La transformación de la intimidad. Sexualidad, amor y erotismo en las sociedades modernas. Cátedra, Madrid, 1995. Heller, A., Teoría de los sentimientos., Ediciones Coyoacán, México, 1999. Rodríguez, G., and B. de Keijzer., La noche se hizo para los hombres. Sexualidad en los procesos de cortejo entre jóvenes campesinas y campesinos. Population Council & Edamex, Mexico, 2002.
Intimate Social Values and Economic Transformation: An Interpretation of Qualitative Interviews from Russia, China and Eastern Germany Christopher S. Swader Abstract Against the backdrop of the post-communist transitions to a free-market economic culture, this paper empirically explores the changing valuations of face-to-face intimate socialization in Russia, China and Eastern Germany using data from qualitative interviews. Young successful male entrepreneurs, managers and businessmen from the most-dissimilar countries of China, Russia and Eastern Germany (specifically the cities of Shanghai, Moscow and Leipzig) were selected as the group theoretically most-adapted to the new economic system. Semi-structured interviews explored their valuations of face-to-face communication now and in 1990, whether or not the economic change impacted their values, and in which ways their values may conflict with one another. This younger generation’s values are then contrasted with those of the generation before them, their fathers. The end result is a depiction of how the shift to a market economy may influence family values and socialization attitudes through the mechanisms of generational changeover and cognitive dissonance. Key Words: Capitalism, market economy, post-socialism, value change. ***** The post-communist economic transformations present a perfect opportunity to investigate the conjuncture between structural economic change and individuals' social values. That real changes in the lives of millions of people result from these transitions and that many social theorists have spent enormous energy hypothesising on the economy-society question both justify close scrutiny on transition questions. This paper will make an exploration into the connection between economic structural change and individuals’ values related to this event. The intent is to explore the validity of a possible link between the free-market economy and sociality. This link is well theorised in the sociological classics, embodied for example, within Durkheim's1 organic solidarity, characterised by abstracted social relations due to the expansion of the economic division of labour. Of course, Marx2 and those following him specifically posit capitalism as inimical to true sociality because its mode of operation implies the conversion of human labour, and social relationships overall, into
108
Intimate Social Values and Economic Transformation
______________________________________________________________ commodities. Meanwhile, Weber3 warned us about the dangers of capitalism's tool of calculative rationality in entrapping us within an "iron cage." While such classics have investigated the economy-sociality nexus with zeal, modern theorists are ambivalent on the issue. Habermas,4 in echoing the past in warning against the "colonisation" of everyday life by abstract forces such as monetisation, is joined in his concern by other critical scholars such as Richard Sennett.5 On the other hand are more optimistic accounts such as Viviana Zelizer's,6 who warns against a "hostile worlds" approach regarding money and sociality, arguing that our worries regarding this mix are unfounded. Moreso, modernisation theorists such as Ronald Inglehart7 actually argue that economic development and wealth have a positive impact on social values, leading to a "postmaterialist" value structure. After having a look at the contemporary literature, one is left with the impression that a study of the effects of capitalism on sociality is no longer in vogue, as even those with potentially relevant findings on this question tend to place the blame elsewhere. As a case in point, Xiaoying Wang8, in a lucid article on the "post-communist personality" points to rising hedonism, egoism, and a lack of discipline in China, but blames these entirely on the corrupted remnants of the communist past. In such modernist accounts, capitalism is the sacred cow. In contrast, through focusing on family and socialization valuations as a critical subset of a wider sociality, this paper explores the extent to which changes in intimate social values in post-communist societies may be linked also to capitalist culture. 1.
Method The first step in the “how” of my design involves the concept of generations. If sociality, as defined by communicative behaviour at the face to face level between individuals, were to be challenged or mutated in any way by the transition to a free-market economy, one would certainly be able to detect generational (in the Mannheimian sense)9 differentiations of this aspect, since members of these generations would be differently affected by their varying exposures to and reactions to the system in change, the economy, since these changes occur at different stages of their lives. I hypothesise the younger generation to possess less emphasis on social values because of their need to adapt to the new system within their working lives. In addition, males are demonstrated by other research to possess overall less compassionate, more competitive, and more materialistic values; thus I have chosen men as the theoretically ‘most-affected’ gender and thereby decide to interview men for this reason.10 Furthermore, economically successful persons in the new economic spheres, such as entrepreneurs, managers and businessmen, are hypothesised to be mostaffected by the economic system since their monetary success and occupational positions are symbols of successful adaptation to the free-
Christopher S. Swader
109
______________________________________________________________ market economy. This study uses a most-dissimilar case design, which seeks to determine whether a common de-socialisation in three different societies could be linked to the common fact of a transition to capitalism. These interviews were conducted in the “most-affected” cities of the three societies in question, the historical and contemporary economic centres of Shanghai, Moscow and Leipzig.11 Therefore, in these cities, qualitative interviews were conducted with a most-affected group of young (between 32-49 years old) successful professionals (19 interviews total), and a comparable less-affected group, the generation above them, who were, in nearly all cases, their own fathers (13 fathers, one mother).12 Interviews were focused on social values, those values emphasising intimate face-to-face relations. Within approximately 90-minute interviews, informants were asked questions in a semi-structured format about their contemporary values (2005-2006), values 15 years ago (at the beginning of the transition), how the economic change might have affected their values and possible value conflicts.13 This particular paper will present results only related to the valuations of family and socialization, which are fundamental values in relation to sociality, since the existence of the family as a centre of intimate interpersonal communication is nearly universal and socialization is the key mode through which values of any kind would be transferred to future generations. Differences between generations will offer us a potential direction of social change, while variations within generations and between countries may offer clues as to the mechanisms of change. 2. Results A. Family Valuations As a caveat, it should be stated that my interest is not with politicised "family values" but rather, quite literally with how individual persons value their interaction with their family members. In this regard, this section is entitled "family valuations" in order to highlight my interest in how individuals engage in the process of valuing families regardless of the political spin. Dissociation of my argument from the mainstream politicised conservative concept becomes obvious since I link the economic culture, a mainstay of conservative ideologues, to family devaluations. Within the interviews, individuals were asked in an open-ended manner about the things that are important to them. Their responses deal with many issues, but among them is a focus on the family, in which they reflect on both nuclear and extended families using their own interpretations. In analysing their responses, I have found differences in how the younger and older cohorts reflect on their families. To begin with, the dominant theme for the older informants in China, Russia and East Germany when they refer to their family valuations is that the family is the most important thing in their
110
Intimate Social Values and Economic Transformation
______________________________________________________________ lives. The following is a typical response of the older informants on this question:14 (Shanghai 6) In my opinion, family is the most important. The Chinese people always attach great importance to the harmony of family. You will feel it is a pity if you don't enjoy a harmonious family, even though you have an excellent job and earn a lot. While disinterest in family life is an exception within the older group, such devaluations of the family are common among the younger informants. The following is an example from those businessmen for whom family is clearly devalued compared to work: (Leipzig 9) A: Well, I have a certain deal with the family that during the week, work comes first and on the weekends family comes first. With exceptions of course in both directions. Q: Okay, and how do you feel when these conflicts emerge? A: I can handle that relatively well. It’s rather the family, I’d say, that has its problems. A second category of our younger cohort of businessmen comprises those who do value the family very highly, much like the older generation norm. Aside from the question of whether or not informants value family very highly, another dominant theme among the businessmen we interviewed in the three countries is a conflict between the family and work, as illustrated in the following exchange: (Leipzig 7) Q: In what way do you think do some of your values conflict with others? A: Yes, it is considerable... there is for example the value of family versus the value of business and making progress versus the value of social thinking. B. Socialization In light of the fact that our young businessmen display considerable variety compared to the older generation concerning their adherence to
Christopher S. Swader
111
______________________________________________________________ traditional valuations of family, it becomes interesting to inquire as to how they, as compared to their fathers, attend to their roles in socializing the next generation. Within the interviews, this issue is asked about through the question, “which values would you like to transmit to your children or grandchildren?” In nearly every case, our older informants give examples of the values they try to transmit to the younger generations. Within the older generation, one of our exceptions (Leipzig 8) is an informant who prefers to let the child be socialised by “life.” When he is asked whether he would impart moral values into his grandchild, he responded, “Life has to do that. That does not serve any purpose. You can be an example for him.” This “naturalist” approach is more common among the younger informants. Another interesting case, expressing an opinion similar to many of the other older informants, is Moscow 10, who despite being very familyoriented, does not see that the modern society would use his values: I am not sure that I will be able to teach them these values and moreover in the time of world capitalism I am even not convinced that this is useful. Other values apply here. Similar to their fathers, our businessmen are often able to provide details about the values they would like to pass to the next generation. It is also interesting to note that the generations speak, to a large extent, of the same values which they would like to transmit. Key values spoken of by both generations are honesty, tolerance and determination, among others. Within the younger generation, it is notable that the Chinese businessmen display much more variety in their answers to the socialization question than do our informants from Eastern Germany and Russia. For example, some do not or cannot, name values which they would like to pass on to their children and are noticeably caught off-guard by the question. The following exchange is the most obvious example of this phenomenon. (Shanghai 5) Q: Now your daughter is nearly three years old and she will attend preschool soon. A: It's too early to talk about such things. She is not old enough to go to preschool. Q: Two or three years later? A: Yes, three years later. Q: What values and principles do you require in her? A: I haven't thought of such a question. You are requiring
112
Intimate Social Values and Economic Transformation
______________________________________________________________ me to think of the problems of 15 years later. (He laughs.) Q: Don't you think she should develop some values and principles from an early age? A: I think I will let her lead a princess life for raising a daughter involves more money than raising a son. We have to find opportunities to let her broaden her mind, buy nice things for her and take her to go on holidays abroad regularly so as to heighten her horizon. Then, we will find a good husband for her. After that, we don't hold much responsibility for her. The reason for broadening her mind is for the fear that she might choose a husband who isn't suitable for her. It's the main reason for doing so. Some other Chinese businessmen adopt a naturalist approach, consciously choosing to not impart any specific values into their children and rather preferring to let them develop independently. In one unique case, Shanghai 7 expresses the irrelevance of the question for him, for the generation gap between him and his daughter is too big. Although several younger Chinese informants, as demonstrated above, less readily describe the ideal values for their children, a parallel is found among some of our younger informants from Moscow and Leipzig regarding the difficulty of actually implementing or transmitting these ideals to their children. For example, Moscow 5, a very rich businessman, regrets the lazy and materialistic attitude of his son, but seems unable to break it down. He reports that his son does nothing, only plays computer games all day long and acts as a consumer: Q: Do you think you will succeed in doing this [Making his son more active]? A: I think so. I showed him the possibilities of a beautiful life. Further, if it is not possible, so be it. I suggested that he comes to me under my auspices and does a lot of things I would like him to do. There is a reward however. He will receive money for a driver’s license and for his own car to drive, but he will have to drive it to the university. Another informant indicates how a time conflict between work and family may impede his attempt to pass his values to his son. These work-family conflicts and feelings of guilt may actually represent a form of cognitive dissonance. Such is apparent in the following excerpt from Leipzig 1, who feels like his mind is pulled back and forth between work and family:
Christopher S. Swader
113
______________________________________________________________ Q: Why do you think those value conflicts exist? A: Well, that is easily explained. The work just has to be done, and that takes a certain time. And then, on top of the regular work, you also have to be active in this job, to participate. Like that club (a volunteer activity he participates in), for example, and all that is voluntary, which means it is work you do not get paid for but also takes up time. Well, and that takes away free time, I would say, that a regular employee (as opposed to an entrepreneur) would have, and he would be able to spend with his family. Yes, and that is time I cannot spend with my family. Q: How do you feel when those kinds of conflicts arise? A: Well…torn back and forth, well, you feel kind of like in a running wheel…you constantly move…but you never really reach the finish line, because, then you are doing neither one nor the other right. Then you are not really at home, and if you are at home you are somewhere else in your thoughts, and the other way around… Notice this informant’s reports that he is “somewhere else in his thoughts” while at home and his complaint that he can “neither do one thing or the other right,” neither work nor family. This implies an opposition between these cognitive elements for him. Combined with his limited time and the negative feeling he has associated from this opposition, he is experiencing a classic case of cognitive dissonance, a point that will be expanded upon in the discussion section.15 Finally, a pattern among our younger informants is that some of them did not see the older generation as role models during their young adulthood, since apparently, older persons did not have the necessary values to succeed in the post-communist society. This pattern is not so typical of the east-Germans, but is common with our Russian and Chinese informants. These informants represent a group that was “authority-less” during the transition. Another group chose their role models from contemporary culture, such as the billionaires Onassis and Khodorkovskii (Moscow 5) or famous sportsmen. Relatively few informants from Russia and China report members of the generation above them as role models. In many cases, the older informants recognise and lament that they are no longer authority figures for the younger generation.
114
Intimate Social Values and Economic Transformation
______________________________________________________________ 3.
Discussion To summarise the information gathered so far from our informants, on the level of basic family valuations, we notice a difference between the older and younger generations. The older informants display a strong intercultural near-unanimity in describing family as the centre of their lives. In contrast, the younger informants are divided into two groups, a family first group and a group where family is not prioritised in the first place. Nearly all cases of family devaluation of or ambivalence regarding family values are due to the competition between family and work. We will return to this competition in a moment. Regarding socialization, there is high apparent continuity between generations regarding value transmission to the next generation. Most informants of both generations are able to easily name values to pass on and tend to name similar values. The one major exception is our group of younger Chinese informants, some of whom have difficulties answering the socialization question - in stark contrast to their fathers - and others who prefer to let their children develop “naturally” with little parental influence over their values. However, to poke beneath the surface within Russia and Eastern Germany reveals some important socialization factors not otherwise seen. For example, difficulties in implementing family values are observed in Russia and China because of high work valuations and materialism. In addition, some informants, East Germans especially, display a degree of cognitive dissonance between work and family. Finally, among our Russian and Chinese informants especially, there is evidence that the generation above them did not provide adequate role models during the transition.
A. Brainstorming Notable as to its links to the intergenerational gap in family valuations and in socialization difficulties is the competition between work and family. Critical readers might suggest that our businessmen may tend to be highly work focused only because they are in the work stage of their life course, and that they, upon retirement, will reflect nearly the same family valuations and socialization emphases of their fathers. Of course, this is not an easy argument to dismiss, but it should be noted that the work valuations, of which there is no space to thoroughly report here, between our older and younger informants are qualitatively different. Our older informants also tend to focus very much on work in their interviews, even though a vast majority of them are retired. Moreover, the qualitative meaning that they give to work is different from their sons; for the older informants, work tends to represent duty and social contribution. In contrast, our businessmen often begin to speak of work as a contribution as well, but they add the additional purposes of personal achievement and money. These individualised and monetised aspects of the meaning of work are tied to contemporary culture and were
Christopher S. Swader
115
______________________________________________________________ condemned by the communist work culture; they may be period indicators unrelated to aging. If this contemporary meaning of work is also associated with a greater drive and time commitment to work activities - and certainly many of our younger interviewees demonstrate this - it could then represent the cultural development of a greater focus on work independent of fluctuations due to life stage. This focus on work causes a great deal of difficulties within the young informants. They cite difficulties of balancing time between work and family activities, but even more surprising are the problems some report in balancing their minds in terms of thinking about the differing requirements of work and family only in their particular spheres, and indeed, those two ways of thinking seem to conflict with one another. Recall the Leipzig interviewee’s feeling that he is in a “running wheel” and can neither do one thing, work, nor the other, family, right. His thoughts are torn back and forth between the two worlds. In other examples, it becomes clear that informants feel they have to sacrifice their social morality in general (for example, honesty in the case of Leipzig 5; pressuring employees and not paying them what they are worth in the case of Leipzig 2) in order to be successful in the modern economic environment. Other informants allude to similar conflicts, which altogether could be recognised as a form of cognitive dissonance between “work-thinking” and “family-thinking,” symbolic of a larger rift between money and sociality. To take this thought experiment a step further, if we accept that our former family-oriented informants may have become more work-oriented as a result of the post-communist transformations, the growing cognitive conflict between work and family would result in an increasing feeling of dissonance and thereby a need to resolve this dissonance (as per cognitive dissonance theory).16 So, if such dissonance indeed occurred and continuously increased in intensity, how was it resolved? An interesting fact helps us resolve this question. If I were to arrange my young informants (since the older informants exhibit very little dissonance) along a scale of the amount of psychological discomfort shown when they speak of family and work in the interviews, the Leipzig informants, by far, would show the most dissonance, followed by the Russians, and then by the Chinese. Interestingly, this appears to be directly proportional to the informants’ family valuations, amount of focus on child socialization and respect of the older generation. The most-family oriented individuals tended to be the most psychologically conflicted as well. What does this suggest in light of cognitive dissonance theory’s leading means to resolve dissonance? If two cognitive elements are in conflict, A and B, the most direct way to resolve this dissonance, aside from inventing a “cognitive overlap” between the elements by redefinition (which is also found within the informants) is simply to either reduce the value of A or the value of B.17 It is
116
Intimate Social Values and Economic Transformation
______________________________________________________________ possible that my least conflicted informants are so because they have already devalued the family in comparison to work. The conflicted Leipzigers, in contrast, remain conflicted because they, more family oriented, have not yet devalued the family as a response to cultural pressures to enhance the value of work. Congruent with this hypothesis is that the Leipzigers also still hold the older generation as role models and take an active role in socializing the next generation, two family-value support mechanisms which are comparably lacking among our less-conflicted, more work-centred informants. Furthermore, the most-conflicted Leipzig informants tend to be religious, another factor that would strengthen their family orientations. Finally, it is possible that the German welfare-state, the equivalent of which does not exist in Russia or China, has to some extent shielded the Leipzigers from the insecurities of the market culture which otherwise might have enhanced their work valuations at the expense of family. Aside from the many influences that may battle with one another within individual minds through the mechanism of cognitive dissonance, value change may also be affected at the social level through intergenerational changeover. First, - changeover is important because of the natural “fresh contact” of the impact of the new generation facing and learning about their culture for the first time;18 this freshness becomes exacerbated when the existing culture itself is changing so rapidly that the older generations have little to say about it - as some of my informants report - and few social forms have been developed to cope with it. Also, the generational changeover must necessarily involve the notion of peer influence; members of the transition generation influenced one another, as classmates and friends, in their reactions to change and establishment of new cultural norms in the “fresh” new society. B. Concluding Remarks Within the microcosm of our informants, who symbolise two generations, for the most part united across three countries in terms of coping with a major social shift to the free-market economic system, it is clear that that an intergenerational gap exists. It is not inconceivable that this gap might be indicating a wider social change, thus highlighting the need for much more research on the topic. Specifically, quantitative research could do much to validate these indications across a sample of post-communist populations, testing also how women and lower classes might differ from the upper and upper-middle class men interviewed in this research.19 More qualitative work could help us discover more about the processes and mechanisms of valuation and value change. I should highlight that I do not intend to imply that the family was “better off” under socialism. Nearly any review of families during socialist times would problematise the notion of an ideal socialist family.20 Rather, the
Christopher S. Swader
117
______________________________________________________________ case of my informants highlights some of the ways in which the capitalist economic system of the present - alongside with the communist past and transition-era events - also may stress the sociality of its subjects.
Notes 1
E Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, The Free Press, New York, 1933. 2 K Marx and F Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Norton, New York, 1978. 3 M Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Unwin Hyman, London, 1930. 4 J Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 2: Lifeworld and System, Beacon Press, Boston, 1989. 5 R Sennett, The Corrosion of Character, W.W. Norton, New York (1998). 6 V Zelizer, The Purchase of Intimacy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005. 7 R Inglehart, 'Globalization and Postmodern Values'. The Washington Quarterly, vol. 23, issue 1, 2000, pp. 215-228. 8 X Wang, 'The Post-Communist Personality'. The China Journal, vol 47, 2002, pp. 1-17. 9 K Mannheim, ‘The Problem of Generations’, in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, P Kecskemeti (ed, trans.), Oxford University Press, New York, 1952, pp. 276-322. 10 AM Beutel and MM Marini, ‘Gender and Values’. American Sociological Review, vol. 60, 1995, pp. 436-48. 11 In Eastern Germany, interviews were conducted in Leipzig rather than Berlin because the historical division of, and subsequent reintegration of, the city during communist times means that it does not exclusively represent East German society. 12 In one case, a Moscow respondent’s mother was interviewed, since the father was no longer living. 13 1) What are the most important things in your life?; 2) Which types of moral principles guide you in your life?; 3) What are your biggest goals in life?; 4) Who is your biggest role model and what do you admire about them?; 5) Which values do you try to instill in your children/grandchildren?; 6) In 1990, What were the most important things in your life?; 7) Were there any moral principles that guided you? If so, what were they?; 8) What were your biggest goals in life?; 9) Who was your biggest role model and what did you admire about them?; 10) Which values did you try to instill in your children/grandchildren, or if you had none, which values would you have liked to instill in them if you had some at that time?; 11) Why did your
118
Intimate Social Values and Economic Transformation
______________________________________________________________ values change between 1990 and today?; 12) Compared to before, how often do you think about money and material things?; 13) Compared to before, how often do you think more about costs and benefits nowadays, for example about the costs of getting married, having children, or going on vacation?; 14) Compared to before, how often do you think other people use you for money or material gain?; 15) How do you feel when you see an advertisement that encourages you to spend more money or buy certain products in order to be successful?; 16) How do you feel when you see movies or television shows that show a rich man as the model of success?; 17) In which ways do you think any of your values are in conflict with others?; 18) How do you justify one value with another if they are in conflict?; 19) How do these conflicts make you feel? Are they a source of anxiety?; 20) How do you think these conflicts can be resolved? 14 The longer paper presents examples from each country in most cases. In this shorter version, only one example is presented for the sake of time. 15 L Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1957. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. pp. 44-45. 18 Mannheim, p. 293. 19 I am currently conducting such a quantitative study, which will compliment the qualitative interview data with a World Values Survey data analysis. 20 For the Russian case, see V Shlapentokh, ‘The Soviet Family in the Period of the Decay of Socialism’. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, vol. 22, Summer 1991, pp. 267-280. Regarding the Chinese case, see E Vogel, ‘From Friendship to Comradeship: the change in personal relationships in communist China’. The China Quarterly, vol. 21, 1965, pp. 46-60.
Bibliography Beutel, A. M. and M. M. Marini, ‘Gender and Values’. American Sociological Review, vol. 60, 1995, pp. 436-48. Durkheim, E., The Division of Labor in Society, translated by G. Simpson. The Free Press, New York, 1933. Festinger, L., A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1957.
Christopher S. Swader
119
______________________________________________________________ Habermas, J., The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 2: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, Beacon Press, Boston, 1989. Inglehart, R., 'Globalization and Postmodern Values'. The Washington Quarterly, vol. 23, issue 1, 2000, pp. 215-228. Mannheim, K., ‘The Problem of Generations’, in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. P. Kecskemeti (ed, trans.), Oxford University Press, New York, 1952, pp. 276-322. Marx, K. and F. Engels, 'The Communist Manifesto', in The Marx-Engels Reader, Norton, New York, 1978. Sennett, R., The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Influences of Work in the New Capitalism, W.W Norton & Company, New York, 1998. Shlapentokh, V., ‘The Soviet Family in the Period of the Decay of Socialism’. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, vol. 22, Summer 1991, pp. 267-280. Vogel, E. ‘From Friendship to Comradeship: the change in personal relationships in communist China’. The China Quarterly, vol. 21, 1965, pp. 46-60. Wang X., 'The Post-Communist Personality'. The China Journal, vol 47, 2002, pp. 1-17. Weber, M., The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, T. Parsons and A. Giddens (trans.), Unwin Hyman, London, 1930. Zelizer, V., The Purchase of Intimacy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005.
Which Interests are at the Heart of Sex and Relationships Education in Scotland? Lorna Savage and Rebecca Mancy Abstract This paper seeks to address recent and ongoing controversy surrounding Sex and Relationships Education in Scotland. Sex education guidance in Scotland remains ambiguous, sometimes deliberately so, resulting in tensions between ideological positions and social groups and as such strongly polarised opinions are often voiced expressing the view that Sex and Relationships Education is either too liberal or not liberal enough on issues such as marriage and homosexuality. We propose that a stronger emphasis on understanding conceptions of the human person and in particular, the role and place (if any) of love and romantic relationships in education as a potential path to relieving tensions surrounding the sex education content and delivery. By addressing the fundamental areas of love we wish to explore the possibility of carving out a space of agreement and consensus in Sex and Relationships Education in Scotland. Key Words: Adolescence, love, relationships, sex education. ***** 1.
History of Sex Education in Scotland Sex education in Britain is relatively new and nationwide government legislation is limited. Prior to the Education Act 1993, it was the responsibility of head teachers and governors to decide upon the provision of sex education in schools and indeed whether it would be delivered at all. Since its introduction to British legislation in 1993, only 1064 words have been devoted to sex education provision between three government Acts.1 If a comparison is made with other school subjects using the same three Acts, then it can be seen that sex education is under-addressed, for example entire chapters of legislation have been devoted to religious education some of which contain as many as 25 sections. This is not surprising since sex education is relatively new in comparison to religious education. The legislation also appears to use ambiguous language which causes confusion about what must be taught. This is evident with today’s legislation, which has no explicit mention of relationships and concentrates mainly on the information provision and risk aversion. The legislation dictates that young people must learn about Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), other sexually
122 Which Interests are at the Heart of Sex Education? ______________________________________________________________ transmitted diseases and they must be taught about the importance of marriage. From a legislative perspective, the promotion of marriage is the full extent to which statutory sex education addresses relationships, despite it being renamed Sex and Relationship Education (SRE). The legislation discussed above is primarily British, but since devolution it has been over-ridden in Scotland with Scottish legislation. Sex education guidance and legislation in Scotland is even more ambiguous than the British legislation because sex education is not compulsory in Scotland. Scottish legislation simply states that school sex education policy should: be developed in accordance with parents’ wishes; ensure that schools have regard to “the value of a stable family life in a child's development”2; ensure that the content of teaching is appropriate to each child's age, understanding and stage of development and that guidance should be produced where appropriate.3 This information only applies to schools who actually deliver sex education which they have no obligation to do outside the 5-14 science curriculum. As a consequence legislation has experienced direct opposition for its ambiguity. The Christian Church for example is not happy with the term “stable family life” 4 because it does not explicitly mention marriage and therefore can be interpreted in a number of different ways. It is suggested that guidance is developed in order to clarify any confusion caused by Scottish legislation, however the guidance which has been produced is messy and disjointed. It has been produced for both the Personal and Social Development curriculum and the Health Education curriculum and therefore several different documents are often relevant. Between these two curricula, the Scottish Executive identify a need for children to learn about inter-personal relationships in their Personal and Social Development Guidelines 1993, yet this does not address matters of sex education. It appears therefore that while it is named Sex and Relationship Education, as a result of the disjointed nature of the guidance, sex education and relationships education are tackled separately in Scotland, unlike in England and Wales where both are incorporated into the PSHE framework where there is separate SRE guidance. The lack of sex education legislation in Scotland and the confusing guidance has ultimately led to huge variety of sex education provision amongst schools, which drives debate and contention about what should be addressed. 2.
Contention Surrounding Sex Education Sex education has always been a controversial subject with cultural, political and religious debates constantly being voiced. Not only is the content of sex education debated, but its impact on childhood development is also addressed. The conservative argument underlines the importance and protection of childhood innocence while the opposing view argues that
Lorna Savage and Rebecca Mancy
123
______________________________________________________________ children’s exposure to aspects of sexuality cannot be entirely regulated and therefore children need to be well informed in order to protect themselves. Since images relating to sexuality are so evident in society, liberals also argue that every individual has the right to access information on sexuality. Within this context, legislation has been criticised for not taking account of the prevalent images of sexuality in British culture which children are constantly exposed to through experience and the media. In the limited number of situations where young people are taught about how to deal with projections of sexuality, they are only educated in protecting themselves for the future and not how to cope with their own developing sexuality while at school.5 Disparity is not only evident when discussing sex education content but there is also a debate about whether it should be the school’s responsibility to provide sex education at all. Many individuals feel that parents should be accountable for teaching their children about sex since they know their child better than anyone. Similarly it is widely believed that school-based sex education encourages sexual activity and promiscuity and therefore should not be delivered: a point of view often supported by the popular press.6 Abstinence Only programmes have therefore been proposed in Britain, replicating sex education provision in the United States. This proposal itself has caused even greater controversy because for some interested parties it is believed that school-based education is needed. Children need to be fully provided for and it is believed that this is only possible when parents’ teaching is supplemented with school based sex education.7 These opinions however have been cast from the outsider’s perspective. That is, they are being voiced by those people who feel as though they ought to have a stake in sex education provision, but are not directly involved in it, neither attending the classes nor delivering them. It also appears that conflicts relating to sex education provision from these parties are highly polarised, with those having more balanced views being drowned out in the debate. The insider’s perspective (from those children and teachers who are directly involved in sex education classes) is considerably different. In a relatively recent study by Measer it was established that young people felt that sex education classes were important, expressing happiness that they had access to relevant sexual health information.8 They found it considerably disturbing therefore that their parents could withdraw them from sex education classes, potentially hindering their access to wanted information. This is a particularly important point not only from a student standpoint but also in terms of sexual health. Interestingly, while there is a great deal of contention from outsiders about whether too much is taught in sex education classes, young people themselves feel that sex education is still not explicit enough with regards to HIV/AIDS, contraception and sex
124 Which Interests are at the Heart of Sex Education? ______________________________________________________________ education information in general. The Measer study shows that children believed that the education they are currently receiving is vague and not thorough enough. In essence, young people argued that sex education provided too little information, too late.9 One of major drives from the government for sex education provision is the moral panic surrounding sexual practices amongst adolescents which are believed by some to be contributing to Scotland’s negative sexual health record. While some parties have implied that the increase in sexually transmitted infections (STIs) is a direct result of increased sexual activity caused by sex education provision, in reality this is not the case. School based sex education has been proven to be better at encouraging children to wait until after the age of 16 before embarking upon sexual relationships than sex education delivered by parents and peers.10 Chlamydia is the latest widespread STI epidemic in Scotland with the Scottish Government issuing concerns relating to its apparent increased presence. In reality, however, Chlamydia has always been evident in Britain, and the rising number of cases is more likely explained by the fact that diagnosis is much easier now with recent medical advances and there is an increased awareness of young people who are visiting genito-urinary clinics reasonably regularly, as a result of sex education provision and an increased awareness for the risks. It should be understood therefore that while the number of reported instances has risen, so too has the number of treatments. People are therefore less likely to un-knowingly carry the infection than in the past. Similarly, research does not substantiate the argument that sex education has caused increased promiscuity and earlier sexual experiences. Findings show that between 1950 and 2002, the average age for a person’s first sexual experience has only dropped by four years from 21 to 17. Much of this age drop was accounted for between 1965 and 1975 when sex education was not yet in place. Similarly, when comparing Scotland’s sex education programmes to those delivered in the Netherlands (who have a better sexual health record) there is no difference in the age of first sexual experience.11 3.
Contention Surrounding Sex and Relationship Education Specifically why the name of sex education in Scotland was changed to Sex and Relationship Education (SRE) is not immediately clear. It may have been as a direct response to young people’s desires for more relationships education; however, there is a view that SRE was put in place to satisfy the Catholic Church after Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 was repealed in Scotland. Section 28 stated that it was prohibited to “intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality”12 or to “promote the teaching in any
Lorna Savage and Rebecca Mancy
125
______________________________________________________________ maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”.13 When it was repealed in 2000 on the grounds that it was discriminatory it was acknowledged that the only way that the Catholic Church would not appeal was if a legal requirement was established that stated that schools must promote marriage and that teachers are prevented from encouraging sexual activity.14 This promotion of marriage has obviously caused contention surrounding SRE content, especially since heterosexual ideology is diminishing: an institution which conventionally dominated sex education provision.15 Certainly, traditional Christian principles argue for relationships which are heterosexual, monogamous and reserved for the home, but there appears to be a migration of what was traditionally bad sex over to the good side, with many people accepting the concept of homosexuality and unmarried couples. This highlights the more liberal attitudes, which are emerging from some groups in society. The recent consultation document issued by the Scottish Executive demonstrated such theoretical contention in a real life context. Some individuals and faith groups lobbied for more focus on marriage, relationships, love and fidelity and the promotion of heterosexuality as the norm, while Equalities Groups found it important that Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender issues were not excluded from SRE programmes.16 The latter is supported by student opinion which cried out for more attention to be paid to homosexuality in school in order to develop a greater tolerance for this lifestyle.17 Due to the variety of family and moral values evident in Britain, young people have expressed a wish for less focus upon right and wrong, especially when discussing family set-ups. Young people acknowledge that not everyone comes from the same background and sex education should acknowledge this diversity and not strive to promote one ‘normality’.18 As noted above the legislation has not incorporated any additional relationships education detail other than its stipulation to promote marriage, which could be interpreted as an attempt to promote normality. SRE, which is delivered in school, appears to abide by this. Relationships education is delivered in a very external manner. It focuses on the appearance of relationships and the relationship set-ups that young people are involved in rather than on feelings and emotions, which are evident in relationships. Certainly, love and emotions are largely neglected in national SRE Guidance and the 5-14 Curriculum. Despite efforts to transform sex education in order to focus more on relationships this has not been effectively achieved as yet. Relationships education has been described as religious instruction. That is, it does not promote critical thinking about relationships; rather it tends to be about instilling knowledge and promoting a set of values among young people.19 Research has shown that young people (especially girls) have
126 Which Interests are at the Heart of Sex Education? ______________________________________________________________ been forced to turn to magazine problem pages in the absence of emotional education in school-based sex education.20 These problem pages are not regulated and are not necessarily written by qualified counsellors causing major concerns if young people are turning to them for advice. We therefore propose the need for a more direct focus on emotions and the concept of love in school based sex education programmes in order to fully prepare adolescents for adulthood and help them overcome some of the obstacles which they are likely to face. 4.
What About Concentrating on Love? Helen Fisher, one of the leading researchers within the field of love, argues that love is universal. Her findings show that love does not differ according to age, gender, race or sexual orientation and in fact love is a result of a discrete system of neural activity, which controls all basic human emotions. In the most physiological sense, love is thought to embody three stages: lust, attraction and attachment. Lust is the most commonly used term for a person’s sex drive, which is driven by androgenic hormones. During the second phase people are believed to feel physical changes. They experience increased energy; an increased heart rate and they may begin to sweat. These changes occur as a result of increased norepinephrine (also known as adrenaline), a suppression of serotonin and increased dopamine around the body. This stage is thought to be a craving for an emotional union. Finally when the attachment phase is reached, two more hormones are released by the nervous system: oxytocin and vasopressin, which are thought to create a bond which keeps couples together. At this stage, individuals are likely to experience security and social comfort; essentially these stages drive procreation. The sex drive is used as encouragement to motivate people to find a mate, the attraction phase is meant to help a person select a particular mate while attachment is intended to motivate a couple to stay together (at least long enough to raise their children).21 Many of these physical changes are thought to take place during sex. Therefore, since love (from the above definition) is a physiological bodily function, it may be argued that it has a role to play in the science curriculum along with matters of reproduction. Certainly, by adopting this approach, there is a chance that there will be consensus on at least one aspect of the SRE programme, since a scientific approach could be taken which is devoid of moral debate. Alternatively a more psychological concept of love has been defined in literature as a social sentiment, which is linked to an idyllic setting.22 This however is the definition of love in the broadest setting. The Bible is much more descriptive in its definition of love:
Lorna Savage and Rebecca Mancy
127
______________________________________________________________ Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end... And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.23 In this sense love has been defined by some as an illusion or a psychological state in order to drive people towards marriage and procreation. It has therefore been expressed as a commitment tool in relationships.24 Interestingly, while the above definitions of love are by no way similar, the purpose of love holds true for both parties. Love is thought to embody jealousy, trust, caring, need, intimacy, commitment, passion, expression of affection, self-disclosure, tolerance, moral support and unexpressed feelings.25 These aspects of love have been identified as a source of commitment problems in adult relationships.26 If, as Furman suggests, that adolescents learn about romantic relationships from their parents and society, then it may be that adolescents will face the same problems in their own relationships.27 Indeed, Measor identified the shock that young people claimed to experience when becoming involved in romantic relationships because it involves a wealth of unexpected emotions, like insecurity which young people claim to be unprepared for.28 Certainly adolescents tend to overly romanticize their relationships and when faced with reality young people are unprepared. They are faced with unexpected events and emotions which come as a shock and it is within this context that SRE has a considerable role to play. In this situation the role of experience, while important, can be over rated. Education has an opportunity here to prevent some of the heartbreak that comes with relationships experience, while still not leaving young adolescents naïve when entering relationships. This is particularly useful since it has been highlighted that adolescent suicides can be related to relationship troubles.29 SRE could potentially reduce this and make young people happier in their relationships. 5.
Contention Relating to Love With such disagreement apparent in the current sex education regime in Scotland, it would be naïve to think that contention would not arise from the proposal of focusing more on love and emotions as part of relationships education. Five potential problems might arise when trying to incorporate an understanding of love into relationships education. These are:
128 Which Interests are at the Heart of Sex Education? ______________________________________________________________ the feeling of vulnerability expressed by teachers who must address the matters of love; the belief that love is a private matter and should not be intruded upon by teachers; the fact that attitudes towards love may vary between age and gender making it difficult to incorporate into classes; the cultural variations of love and the difficultly of defining and portraying love.30 Point one is not particularly new to sex education provision. Teachers have always acknowledged their embarrassment with teaching pupils about personal matters such as sex, the only difference being that teachers feel that they need to disclose personal information about their own lives in order to teach about love.31 The final three points are far more realistic challenges to teaching about love in relationships education. Certainly from the definitions of love provided above it is already apparent that there is little consensus. The definition of love however is not the important point. What is important is that sex education is currently thought of as religious instruction and allows little freedom for adolescents to come to their own conclusions about what is right and wrong. Since there is such confusion about love, even amongst adults, it is within this remit were sex education could move away from information provision and allow young people to search for their own values through discussion. This wealth of contending material allows for an interesting discussion within classes. Whether this is what is best for young people is the more pressing matter. The optimistic viewpoint is that more discussion or love and emotions will better prepare young people, which for example may reduce overromanticising relationships that often end in disappointment and heartbreak. Similarly a greater focus on love and emotions can also be delivered in such a way that will help young people develop romantic relationship skills. Relationship skills are defined here as the methods needed to cope with jealousy and insecurity, to effectively communicate and to express feelings which are all fundamental components of a relationship. Likewise, a greater focus on emotions and love is likely to comfort young people by helping them to realise that most young people are probably experiencing the same feelings. While faith groups may have strong opinions about teaching about love and the context in which it is taught, it would be surprising if they oppose it completely, especially since they argue that the only plausible excuses for sex are: marriage, reproduction and love.32 The pessimistic view is that emotions will not be discussed effectively as teachers may feel uncomfortable about discussing what they believe to be private matters. This could lead to misinformation being delivered to young people causing more potential disappointment than if sex education continued along its current path. If sex education were regulated in
Lorna Savage and Rebecca Mancy
129
______________________________________________________________ a more systematic way, however, and not left down to school to implement this problem could easily be overcome with training. 6.
Conclusion This chapter has highlighted some of the contention surrounding Sex and Relationships Education in Scotland. It acknowledges young people’s opinion that too little information is delivered too late. Therefore a desire for more discussions of emotions and love was expressed. The purpose of this chapter is not to state that school-based sex education must incorporate matters of love and emotions in order to be effective. Clearly this would depend on what one defines as effective. To some, sex education is already effective because it is reducing teenage pregnancy but to others, like adolescents, it needs improving. Instead, our intent is merely to encourage more discussion around the subject in an attempt to develop consensus about the need for emotional discussions in SRE classes. Kinsey once said, ‘love is the answer’ and it is the view of the authors that love could indeed be the answer to some of the contention surrounding SRE in Scotland.
Notes 1
Great Britain, Education Act 1993, Chapter 35, HMSO, London, 1993; as well as Great Britain, Education Act 1996, Chapter 56, HMSO, London, 1996; and Great Britain, Learning and Skills Act 2000, Chapter 21, HMSO, London, 2000. 2 Section 28 of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1980; as well as Standards in Public Life etc. (Scotland) Act’, 2000; and Section 56 of the ‘Standards in Scottish Schools Act, 2000 and Scotland, The Education (Scotland) Act, 1996. Chapter 43, HMSO and Scotland, Standards in Scottish Schools Act 2000. ASP 6, HMSO, 2000. 3 Ibid. 4 BBC News, Sex Education will Emphasise Marriage, viewed on 16 March 2000, <www.news.bbc.co.uk>. 5 Ibid. 6 Health Department, Enhancing Sexual Wellbeing in Scotland – A Sexual Health and Relationships Strategy: Analysis of Written Responses to the Public Consultation, 2005; as well as BBC News, Sex Education ‘only does so much’, 2006. 7 BBC News, Sex Education – Whose Responsibility, 2000. 8 L Measor, C Tiffin and K Miller, Young People's Views on Sex Education: Education Attitudes and Behaviour, Routledge Falmer, London and New York, 2000. 9 Ibid.
130 Which Interests are at the Heart of Sex Education? ______________________________________________________________ 10
E Lee and T Jenkins, Teenage Sex: What Should Schools Teach Children, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 2002. 11 Ibid. 12 Section 28 of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1980. 13 Ibid. 14 F Abrams, ‘Section 28 deal with bishops will force teachers to promote straight marriage’, The Independent Online, viewed on 25 February 2000, . 15 L Measor, C Tiffin and K Miller, 2000; as well as D Epstain, S O’Flynn and D Telford, Silenced Sexualities in Schools and Universities, Trentham Books, Stoke-on-Trent, 2003. 16 Health Department, Enhancing Sexual Wellbeing in Scotland – A Sexual Health and Relationships Strategy: Analysis of Written Responses to the Public Consultation, 2005. 17 L Measor, C Tiffin and K Miller, 2000. 18 Ibid. 19 E Lee & T Jenkins, 2002. 20 L Measor, C Tiffin and K Miller, 2000. 21 H Fisher, ‘The Drive to Love: The neural mechanism for mate choice’, in The New Psychology of Love, R J Sternberg and K Weis (eds), Yale University Press, New Haven, 2006; as well as BBC Science and Nature, The Science of Love: Key Points, viewed on 27 February 2007, ; and H Fisher, ‘Lust, Attraction, and Attachment in Mammalian Reproduction’. Human Nature, vol. 9, no. 1, 1998, pp. 23-52; and H E Fisher, ‘The Nature of Romantic Love’. The Journal of NIH Research, vol. 6, no 4, 1994, pp. 59-64. 22 R W Simmon, D Eder and C Evans, ‘The Development of Feeling Norms Underlying Romantic Love Among Adolescent Females’. Social Psychology Quarterly, vol. 55, No 1, 1992, pp. 29-46. 23 The Holy Bible New Revised Standard Edition: Catholic Edition 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 13, 1993, p. 175. 24 G C Gonzaga, D Keltner, E A Londahl and M D Smith, ‘Love and the Commitment Problem in Romantic Relations and Friendship’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 81, no 1, 2001, pp. 247-262. Also J M Halstead and M J Reiss, Values in Sex Education: From Principles to Practice, Routledge Farmer, London & New York, 2003. 25 Z Robin ‘Measurement of Romantic Love’. Journal of Personal Social Psychology, vol. 16, 1970, pp. 265-273; as well as C H Swensen and G Trahaug, ‘Commitment and the long-term marriage relationship’, Journal of Marriage Journal, vol. 47, 1985, pp. 939-945; and R J Sternberg, ‘A Triangular Theory of Love’. Journal of Psychological Review, vol. 93, 1986, pp. 119-185.
Lorna Savage and Rebecca Mancy
131
______________________________________________________________ 26
G C Gonzaga, D Keltner, E A Londahl and M D Smith, ‘Love and the Commitment Problem in Romantic Relations and Friendship’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 81, no 1, 2001, pp. 247-262. 27 W Furman, 'The Emerging Field of Romantic Relationship'. Current Discussions in Psychological Science, vol. 11, no 3, 2002, pp. 177-80. 28 L Measor, C Tiffin and K Miller, 2000. 29 W A Collins, ‘More than Myths: The Developmental Sequence of Romantic Relationships During Adolescence’. Journal of Research on Adolescence, vol. 13, no 1, 2003, pp. 1-24. 30 J M Halstead and M J Reiss, Values in Sex Education: From Principles to Practice, Routledge Farmer, London and New York, 2003. 31 L Measor, C Tiffin and K Miller, 2000; as well as J M Halstead and M J Reiss, 2003. 32 R Parker and P Aggleton, Culture, Society and Sexuality: A Reader, Routledge, London and New York, 1999.
Bibliography Abrams, F., Section 28 deal with bishops will force teachers to promote straight marriage, viewed on 1 March 2007, . –––, Sex Education - Whose Responsibility, BBC News viewed on 1 March 2007, . –––, Sex education 'only does so much', BBC News, viewed on 21 November 2006, . –––, The Science of Love: Key Points, BBC Science and Nature, viewed on 27 February 2007, . Collins, W. A., 'More than Myths: The Developmental Sequence of Romantic Relationships During Adolescence'. Journal of Research on Adolescence, vol. 13, no. 1, 2003, pp. 1-24. D'ambrosio, J., Rethinking Love, viewed on numerous occasions throughout June 2007, .
132 Which Interests are at the Heart of Sex Education? ______________________________________________________________ –––, Sex and Relationship Education Guidance. Department of Education and Employment, Dfee publishing, Nottingham, 2000. Epstain, D., S. O'flynn, and D. Telford, Silenced Sexualities in Schools and Universities. Trentham Books, Stoke-on-trent, 2003. Fisher, H., 'The Nature of Romantic Love'. Journal of NH Research, vol. 6, 1994, pp. 59-64. –––, 'Lust, Attraction and Attachment in Mammalian Reproduction'. Human Nature, vol. 9, no.1, 1998, pp. 23-52. –––, 'The Drive to Love: The neural mechanism for mate choice', in The New Psychology of Love. R. J. Sternberg and K. Weis (eds), Yale University Press, New Haven, 2006. Furman, W., 'The Emerging Field of Romantic Relationship'. Current Discussions in Psychological Science, vol. 11, no. 3, 2002, pp. 177-80. Gonzaga, G. C., et al., 'Love and the Commitment Problem in Romantic Relationships and Friendship'. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 81, no. 1, 2001, pp. 247-62. Great Britain, Education Reform Act 1988, Chapter 40, HMSO, London, 1988. –––, Education Act 1993, Chapter 35, HMSO, London, 1993. –––,Education Act 1996, Chapter 56, HMSO, London, 1996. –––,Learning and Skills Act 2000, Chapter 21, HMSO, London, 2000. Halstead, J. M. and M. J. Reiss, Values in Sex Education: From Principles to Practice. Routledge Falmer, London and New York, 2003. Health Department, Scottish Executive, Enhancing Sexual Wellbeing in Scotland-A Sexual Health and Relationships Strategy. Analysis of Written Responses to the Public Consultation, The Stationery Office, Edinburgh, 2005. Health Education Authority, Health Update and Sexual Health, London, 1997.
Lorna Savage and Rebecca Mancy
133
______________________________________________________________ The Holy Bible New Revised Standard Edition: Catholic Edition, 1 Corinthians: 13:4-8, 13, 1993, p.175. Kinsey, A., et al., Sexual Behaviour of the Human Female. Indiana University Press, Philadelphia, 1953. Lee, E. and T. Jenkins, Teenage Sex: What Should Schools Teach Children. Institute of Ideas, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 2002. Lewis, J. and T. Knijn, 'The Politics of Sex Education Policy in England and Wales and the Netherlands since the 1980's'. Journal of Social Policy, vol. 31, no. 4, 2002, pp. 669-94. Measor, L., C. Tiffin, and K. Miller, Young People's Views on Sex Education: Education Attitudes and Behaviour. Routledge Falmer, London and New York, 2000. Parker and Aggleton, P., Culture, Society and Sexuality: A Reader. Routledge, London and New York, 1999. Robin, Z., 'Measurement of Romantic Love'. Journal of Personal Social Psychology, vol. 16, 1970, pp. 265-273. Scotland, The Education (Scotland) Act 1996, Chapter 43, HMSO, 1996. –––, Standards in Scottish Schools Act 2000, ASP 6, HMSO, 2000. Scottish Executive, Report from the Working Group on Sex Education in Scottish Schools (McCabe Report), The Stationery Office, Edinburgh, 2000. Simon, R. W., D. Eder, and C. Evans, 'The Development of Feeling Norms Underlying Romantic Love Among Adolescent Females'. Social Psychology Quarterly, vol. 55, no. 1, 1992, pp. 29-46. Sternberg, R. J., 'A Triangular Theory of Love'. Journal of Psychological Review, vol. 93, 1986, pp. 119-85. Swensen, C. H. and G. Trahaug, 'Commitment and the long-term marriage relationship'. Journal of Marriage, vol. 47, 1985, pp. 939-45.
Is it Haram (Religiously Forbidden)? A Comparison of Love Laws for Arabs and Americans Don E. Love Abstract Through interpersonal experience, mass media and cultural institutions individuals develop cognitive scripts for romantic behaviour. These scripts determine what a person thinks is and is not appropriate (i.e., socially legitimate or legal) for themselves and others in intimate relationships. This study used free-form responses from 64 romantic couples in the U.S. and the Middle East to determine a typology of laws that govern how love should be communicated by and with romantic partners. Results identified four basic love laws: Lovers should (1) express how they feel about each other, (2) be physically intimate, (3) share information with each other and (4) share activities. The study also compared how romantic partners from the Middle East and the U.S. engage in these different forms of behaviour Both American and Arab participants prioritised the need to express feelings and to be physically intimate. However, Arabs were significantly more likely to share activities and help their partner than were Americans. Religiosity had significant influence on communication but adherence to a particular religion (i.e., Islam or Christianity) did not. Results of the study are discussed in relation to culture and religion in the West and Middle East. Key Words: Arab, communication, intimacy, love, Middle East. ***** 1.
Introduction Although intimate communication research has traditionally focused on a limited number of regions around the globe, the need for understanding the communication behaviours of worldwide populations continues to increase.1 International events such as the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East have heightened world awareness of differences in cultural values and illustrate the importance of interculturalists who “understand both culture and communication... professionals with a deep understanding of specific countries and world regions”.2 The region known as the Arab world is one of the areas that has received little attention from social science scholars.3 Although there are over 289 million people in the 22 Arab countries in the Middle East and North
Is it Haram (Religiously Forbidden)? 136 ______________________________________________________________ Africa and nearly 15 percent of the population of the United States is of Arab ethnic origin, the need for interpersonal research pertaining to this population continues.4 Part of the reason for the dearth of research in this area is the difficulty of access to Arab families.5 Travel restrictions, inadequate language skills, government censorship and potentially threatening socio-political environments have made conducting research within the Arab world extraordinarily difficult and continue to hide the culture behind the ‘Muslim veil’.6 Those studies that have been conducted deal with mass communication or Arab students living in either the United States or other non-Arab countries.7 Although most trainers and intercultural theorists would agree that the best way to learn about a culture is through immersion,8 few interpersonal communication scholars have been able to interact within Arab society to conduct empiric research. The growing importance of Arab populations in business, education and politics necessitates a more accurate and informative portrayal of their communication behaviours. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the social interaction of Arabs in their home country environment when communicating in romantic relationships and contrast these behaviours with Westerners who have traditionally been referenced in the development of theories and scholarly research on romantic love. 2.
Theoretical Framework for the Study One way of exploring the emotions of lovers in relationships is by identifying the scripts they follow when they interact with their partner.9 The scripting approach posits that people use cognitive “social laws” to govern what they should or should not do. These cognitive structures, or love laws, influence interactants’ shared understanding of what happens during common activities and allows them to smoothly engage in social behaviour such as ordering at a restaurant or asking someone out on a date.10 Research on love laws will provide insight into how love is communicated between intimate partners and how background variables such as culture or religion influence behaviour between intimate partners. Since existing literature offers no insight into the social laws utilized during romantic or potentially romantic interaction, the following research questions are posed for this study of love: RQ1: What are the types of love laws reported in romantic relationships? RQ2: What background variables are characteristic of the different love laws? RQ2a: What is the relationship between culture and love laws? RQ2b: What is the relationship between religion and love laws? RQ2c: What is the relationship between religiosity and love laws?
Don E. Love
137
______________________________________________________________ 3. Method A. Participants The participants for the study were obtained through a network sampling method.11 This technique employs interpersonal networks and derives participants from the interpersonal network of other individuals. Undergraduate students enrolled in communication classes at a large Midwestern university in the United States and a small private university in United Arab Emirates aided in the collection of data for this study. Sixty-four couples participated in the study reflecting responses for 128 respondents. Thirty couples were of Arab descent and thirty-four were of American ancestry. The individual respondents ranged in age from 18 to 68 years with a mean age of 36.04 and a standard deviation of 15.81. Relationship length ranged from under a year (37%) to over 20 years (34%). The types of relationships represented in the sample were described as dating (21%), living together (10%), and married (69%). No participants reported they were engaged. B. Procedures The couples were independently given self-administered questionnaires with instruction about how to respond to the following situation: Over the past several weeks your partner has been especially thoughtful. He/she has said and done a number of things that you really like and you greatly appreciate him/her. As a result of these actions, you feel as if you have ‘fallen in love all over again.’ Unfortunately, for the past several days your partner has been out of town and you have not been able to express your renewed feelings of love. Today, he/she is coming back to town and you are now able to express how you feel... The respondent was asked to record the sequence of actions and accompanying dialog that they thought would have occurred if this situation actually happened. Respondents were also asked to provide personal information such as sex, age, religion and attitudes about marriage. C. Data Analysis As an overall perspective, an inductive analytical framework was employed with the intention of reducing data, comparing categories and drawing conclusions to answer research question one. In the data-reduction phase, data was selected and coded according to thematic regularities. To determine the reliability of the clustering, a sample of the data was given to
Is it Haram (Religiously Forbidden)? 138 ______________________________________________________________ two coders familiar with the Arab and American culture and independently placed into thematic categories. Comparisons of the coders’ data classifications with the original clustering analysis revealed a 90% reliability rate. The second phase of data analysis aimed at answering research question two. This was done by examining the background variables that characterize the love laws developed in the first phase of the study. Frequency counts were used to examine background variables and personal scripts. The frequency distribution for culture, religion, and level of religious commitment were determined. Chi square analysis was employed to determine if a statistically significant relationship existed between any of the background variables and the love laws. 4. Results A. Research Question 1 Coders identified four primary forms of love behaviours in the 128 personal scripts. A script type was decided to be primary if it (a) was more developed than other elements contained in the script or (b) if the other activities of the script lead to or centred around the selected type. The four love laws were Expression about how one feels toward the other person, Physical intimacy, Sharing information with the other person and Sharing activities. The script types and their frequencies are displayed in Table 4.1. Table 4.1 Frequencies of Love Laws Type Expression Physical Intimacy Information Exchange Action Total
Frequency 51 40 19 18 128
Percentage 39.4% 31.6% 14.9% 14.1% 100.0%
Expression scripts accounted for 39.4 percent (n = 51) of the data. Scripts were considered expressive if the respondent or both the respondent and the partner communicated feelings of love, missing, and/or other emotions. The second most common personal script was Physical Intimacy. These scripts focus on tactile interactions with 92.5 percent (n = 37) involving sexual activity. Physical intimacy accounts for 31.6 percent (n = 40) of the love laws. Information Exchange scripts were the third most common script type, accounting for 14.9 percent (n = 19) of all scripted data. Scripts falling into this category contained information sharing activities as the primary means by which the couples reconnected.
Don E. Love
139
______________________________________________________________ Action scripts are the least common script category occurring in 14.1 percent (n = 18) of the time. Action scripts focused on either activities in which partners participate together or on actions that one lover does for the other. Examples of action activities included watching a sunset, cooking dinner, going for a walk and taking care of goats. B. Research Question 2a Frequency counts of scripts by respondent’s culture (see Table 4.2) shows that both Americans and Arab choose Expression and Physical Intimacy scripts most often to express love to their partners. However, Arabs are much more likely to use Action scripts than are Americans. Chi square analysis indicates a significant relationship between culture and love law selection [X2 (df = 3, N = 128) = 7.91, p = .05]. Table 4.2 Love Law Frequencies by Background Variable Variable Expression Physical Info. Action Intimacy Exchange Culture American 30 20 12 6 Arab 21 17 6 16 Religion Muslim 17 11 9 13 Christian 25 22 13 10 None 3 4 1 0 Religious Commitment High 14 11 20 25 Moderate 12 10 7 9 Slight/None 7 10 2 1 C. Research Question 2b Religious affiliations identified on the questionnaire were Catholic, Muslim, Protestant, or None. Due to the small response in some categories, Catholics and Protestants were incorporated into the Christian classification. There were few differences in the script frequencies for individuals with different religious affiliations. Chi square analysis of the observed frequencies according to religious affiliation indicates that there is not a statistically significant relationship between religion and love laws [X2 (df = 6, N = 128) = 6.15, p >.05]. D. Research Question 2c Respondents also reported the depth of their religious commitment. Unlike religious background, the analysis of religious commitment demonstrates diversity in regard to love scripts. Participants were sorted in
Is it Haram (Religiously Forbidden)? 140 ______________________________________________________________ these categories based on the upper, middle, and lower third scores. Chi square analysis of religious commitment and love scripts indicates a statistically significant relationship [X2 (df = 6, N = 128) = 18.14, p < .01]. 5. Discussion The four themes emerging in this study provide unique insight into Arab and American communication in romantic relationships and demonstrate the usefulness of scripting theory12 for exploring intercultural communication outside of the United States. The results also provide a foundation upon which future research on Arab/Western intimate communication can be developed. Middle Eastern intimate partners exhibited some communication behaviours that were different from their Western counterparts. Arabs did more things for their partners than did Americans such as making dinner or buying presents. Arab intimates also engaged in more actions with their romantic partners including spending time in a private setting or playing with their children. Although Arabs and Americans both prioritised expressing romantic feelings to their companions, Arabs are less likely than Americans to engage in detailed conversation about the more mundane aspects of daily life such as what happened while they were apart or how the journey turned out. Much of the difference between the two cultures has been attributed to contrasts in religious background. The results of the present study did not support this claim as no significant differences between Muslim and Christian romantic behaviour were demonstrated. In contrast, religious commitment did seem to have an impact on intimate communication. Participants who described themselves as very religious showed their love by both doing things for their partner or by engaging in activities with their partner. Less religious participants expressed love through sex and other forms of physical intimacy. It would seem that the moral imperatives to honour, obey, and/or provide for one’s partner that characterize both Islamic and Christian teachings is equally influential on dedicated devotees to both religions. In turn, excessive physical intimacy ranging from holding hands in public to sexual role-playing could be considered inappropriate (i.e., haram) for either religious group and is, therefore, avoided by the most faithful. Since this study was exploratory in nature, several areas for future research can be identified. To extend the communication themes of this study, researchers might examine them quantitatively to determine the degree that these love laws are manifest in larger populations. Research could also be done on how these behaviours are influenced by other factors such as age or sex and gender. For example, do men express love physically more than women? Or how do the love laws followed by partners change during the course of a long-term relationship? These factors could also be explored
Don E. Love
141
______________________________________________________________ within cultural groups to provide additional insight about Middle Easterner and Western similarities and/or differences. Though systematic analysis, the intimate communication behaviours of Arab society can be identified in intercultural or cross-cultural studies. Then, more accurate descriptions of Arab people will be reflected in the research and books used by Westerners as they seek to understand the culture and more effectively interact with individuals who are a part of Arab society. It is in this way that “a mutually beneficial interactive environment in which individuals from two different cultures can function in a way beneficial to all involved"13 can be developed throughout the Arab countries of the world.
Notes 1
E Feghali, ‘Arab Cultural Communication Patterns’. Intercultural Journal of Intercultural Relations, vol. 21-3, 1997, pp. 345-387. 2 R Shuter, ‘The Centrality of Culture’. Southern Communication Journal, vol. 55, 1990, p. 239. 3 A Al-Krenawi, and J Graham, ‘Culturally Sensitive Social Work Practice with Arab Clients in Mental Health Settings’. Health and Social Work, vol. 25-1, 2000, pp. 9-20. 4 N Kawach, ‘Arab Population Rose to 289m Last Year’. The Gulf News, August 13, 2002, p. A5. 5 Feghali, op. cit., p. 350. 6 F Al-Darmaki, ‘Attitudes Towards Women’s Roles and Psychological Adjustment: A Study on the United Arab Emirates Female College Students’. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998, p. 8. 7 D Love and W Powers, ‘Communicating Under Uncertainty: Interaction Between Arab Students and Western Instructors’. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, vol. 31-4, 2002, pp. 217-231. 8 F Casmir, ‘Foundation for the Study of Intercultural Communication Basedon a Third-CultureBuilding Model’. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, vol. 23, 1999, p. 92. 9 R Schank and R Abelson, Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Understanding, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, 1977, p. 87. 10 S Fiske and S Taylor, Social Cognition, Random House, New York, 1984, p. 176. 11 M Granovetter, ‘Networking Sampling: Some First Steps’. American Journal of Sociology, vol. 81, 1976, pp. 1287-1303. 12 P Anderson, ‘Cognitive Schemata in Personal Relationships’, in Individuals in Relationships, S Duck (ed), Sage, Newbury Park, CA, 2003, pp. 1-29.
Is it Haram (Religiously Forbidden)? 142 ______________________________________________________________ 13
F Casmir, op. cit., p. 92.
Bibliography Al-Darmaki, F., ‘Attitudes Towards Women’s Roles and Psychological Adjustment: A Study on the United Arab Emirates Female College Students’. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. Al-Krenawi, A. and Graham, J., ‘Culturally Sensitive Social Work Practice with Arab Clients in Mental Health Settings’. Health and Social Work, vol. 25-1, 2000, pp. 9-20. Anderson, P., ‘Cognitive Schemata in Personal Relationships’, in Individuals, in Relationships. S. Duck (ed), Sage, Newbury Park, CA, 2003, pp. 1-29. Casmir, F., ‘Foundation for the Study of Intercultural Communication Basedon a Third-Culture Building Model’. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, vol. 23, 1999, p. 92. DeTurk, S., ‘Intercultural Empathy: Myth, Competency, or Possibility for Alliance Building?’ Communication Education, vol. 50-4, 2001, pp. 374-384. Feghali, E., ‘Arab Cultural Communication Patterns’. Intercultural Journal of Intercultural Relations, vol. 21-3, 1997, pp. 345-387. Fiske, S. and S. Taylor, Social Cognition. Random House, New York, 1984. Gordon, S., ‘Micro-sociological Theories of Emotion, in Micro-sociological Theory: Perspectives on Sociological Theory’, H. Helle, and S. Eisenstadt (eds), Sage, Beverly Hills, 1985, pp. 133-147. Granovetter, M., ‘Networking Sampling: Some First Steps’. American Journal of Sociology, vol. 81, 1976, pp. 1287-1303. Kawach, N., ‘Arab Population Rose to 289m Last Year’. The Gulf News, August 13, 2002, p. A5. Love, D. and W. Powers, ‘Communicating Under Uncertainty: Interaction Between Arab Students and Western Instructors’. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, vol. 31-4, 2002, pp. 217-231.
Don E. Love
143
______________________________________________________________ Schank, R. and R. Abelson, Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Understanding. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, 1977, p. 87. Shuter, R., ‘The Centrality of Culture’. Southern Communication Journal, vol. 55, 1990, pp. 237-249.
SECTION III
Representations of Intimacy
Disarticulations: Love, Language and Knowledge in Contemporary Retellings of the Bluebeard Tale Lucy Butler Abstract This paper reads Jane Campion’s film In the Cut as an example of the way in which contemporary female writers and filmmakers are using the Bluebeard tale to critique the relation of romantic love to language and knowledge. In these works, Bluebeard’s central image - chamber of dismembered female corpses - evokes not only the repeated failure of the romantic ideal, but a broader collapse of language and meaning. Redeploying the tropes of concealment, violation and revelation at the “heart” of the Bluebeard tale, Campion’s film probes the problematic relation of romantic love to knowledge. A cultural mythology which encourages the idea of total fulfillment in the experience of romantic love reduces the loved object to an aspect of the imagined completion of the self. When one’s identity is staked in one’s conception of the other, it becomes both imperative and impossible to penetrate the other’s private spaces. The fundamental otherness of the loved object and the slipperiness of language make the romantic ideal of absolute unity untenable: the effect is the destabilising of the lover’s identity, and love thus becomes defined by the anxiety it provokes. Bluebeard, in its contemporary manifestations, exposes the self-defeating violence inherent in the impossible demand for total disclosure which characterises the prevailing narrative of romantic love. Key Words: Bluebeard, dismemberment, In the Cut, Jane Campion, knowledge, language, love. ***** This paper reads Jane Campion’s film In the Cut as an example of the way in which contemporary female writers and filmmakers are using the Bluebeard tale to critique the relation of romantic love to language and knowledge. In recent retellings, Bluebeard’s central image - a chamber of dismembered female corpses - testifies to the self-defeating violence inherent in the impossible demand for total disclosure which, this paper argues, is characteristic of the prevailing narrative of romantic love. I will examine the way in which In the Cut interrogates the relationship of romantic love to knowledge by refiguring the tropes of concealment, violation and revelation at the “heart” of the Bluebeard tale. Roland Barthes in A Lover’s Discourse depicts the lover’s quest for definitive knowledge of the loved object not as innocent or loving but as an
148
Love, Language and Knowledge in the Bluebeard Tale
______________________________________________________________ act of intrusive violence in the service of the lover’s own anxious search for self-identity, and he figures this violence as a physical dismemberment.1 Barthes’s lover is a tormented semiotician who seeks knowledge and mastery of the loved object through a discourse which in fact obscures the beloved. The instability and opacity of language renders the other ultimately unknowable, undermining the romantic ideal of absolute unity and destabilising the lover’s identity. The Bluebeard story, first committed to print by Charles Perrault in 1697, lends itself to a critique of the popular narrative of romantic love. Through its repeated destruction and reformulation of the romantic couple, Bluebeard undermines the ideal of romantic love as a singular and unique merger of souls, as well as illustrating the lengths to which we will go in an attempt to achieve this ideal. Bluebeard’s depiction of serial monogamy is particularly resonant within a contemporary context, where the prevalence of divorce and remarriage testifies to the endurance of the romantic ideal even in the face of its continual collapse.2 Bluebeard, in its multiple historical and contemporary variations, has received significant critical attention in recent years. Maria Tatar’s 2004 study Secrets Beyond the Door identifies curiosity, secrecy and “women’s problematic relationship to knowledge” as the defining characteristics of the Bluebeard tale.3 The story turns, Tatar suggests, on “the quest for intimacy through knowledge.”4 Cristina Bacchilega’s appraisal of postmodern Bluebeard tales also highlights issues of language and knowledge. Both Bacchilega and Tatar read Jane Campion’s 1993 film The Piano as a refigured Bluebeard tale exploring the power of sexual knowledge in particular. Both critics analyse the film in terms of a conflict between Ada’s aural, immersive experience, and the acquisitional visual culture of her Bluebeard husband. The film aligns itself with Ada’s bodily discourse, Bacchilega asserts, as the audience is challenged to come to know the mute protagonist through subtle, sensual signifiers, rather than rely upon linguistic exposition.5 Campion returns to the Bluebeard tale a decade later, performing a more explicit demythologizing of romantic love in her “erotic thriller” In the Cut. The film, based on a novel of the same name by Susanna Moore (1995), centres on Frannie Avery, a single woman in her mid-thirties living in New York’s East Village. Frannie teaches creative writing at NYU, and is compiling a book on slang. The noir narrative is initiated when Frannie stumbles upon a scene of oral sex in the basement of a seedy bar where she has gone to meet one of her students to discuss his term paper. The faces of both participants are obscured, but Frannie sees a tattoo of the three of spades on the man’s wrist. A short time later a detective turns up at her apartment investigating the murder of a young woman. The woman has been “disarticulated,” Detective Malloy explains, and a part of her body was found
Lucy Butler
149
______________________________________________________________ in Frannie’s garden. The detective, Frannie notices, has a tattoo of the three of spades on his wrist. He asks her out for a drink and she, with some trepidation, accepts. The rest of the film charts the fraught development of their relationship. While Frannie moves around the city collecting scraps of language (slang, cop-speak, and subway poetry), Detective Malloy seeks clues as to the killer’s identity. However, in the latter half of the film, after it has been revealed that the woman in the basement sex scene was the same one who was dismembered, Malloy himself becomes a suspect. The killer is in fact Malloy’s partner Rodriguez, who has the same tattoo. A contemporary incarnation of Bluebeard who mock-romances his victims with sentimental ballads and leaves his “signature” engagement ring on their severed hands, Rodriguez’s killing spree leaves body parts scattered around the city. His third victim is Frannie’s half-sister Pauline, and the fourth would be Frannie herself, but she shoots him dead in a final showdown set in a lighthouse outside the city. Frannie then walks home to Malloy, whom she had left handcuffed to the radiator in her apartment after mistaking him for the killer. In forensic terminology, to “disarticulate,” is to remove the limbs from a body. Frannie records the word in her notebook, appreciating, no doubt, the punning association between speech and dismemberment. Barthes describes language as a skin: “I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words.”6 In Campion’s critique of romantic relations, skin and language are linked as the troubled borderlines of identity. They provide the grounds for inter-personal connection, but also delimit such connection, indicating the irreducible otherness of the loved object and the impossibility of the romantic dream of complete merger. The multiple resonances of the word “cut” come into play here. In a telling instance of the slipperiness of language, to cut denotes penetration, incision, reduction, separation and division, yet it also marks a place of intersection, the convergence of two trajectories. In the Cut foregrounds visceral, sensual experience in its interrogation of the contradictions and reductions riddling the mythology of romantic love. For example, in contrast to verbal dialogue marked by violence and power play, the tentative and tender touching of hands and feet in the film suggests a corporeal connecting in which difference and distance are both maintained and respected. Hands and feet are mobilised in the mode of demythologizing critique, but they also represent another form of expression that counters the disarticulating forces of language. Such modern Bluebeard retellings often point to the dire consequences of dismissing physical intuition in favour of verbal and visual signifiers. Wendy Haslem identifies In the Cut, along with films such as Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003) and P.T. Anderson’s PunchDrunk Love (2002), as part of a new wave of Gothic-influenced, revisionist
150
Love, Language and Knowledge in the Bluebeard Tale
______________________________________________________________ romance films which privilege body language over words as a means of communication. These “anti-romance romances” explore emotional estrangement, Haslem writes, “by highlighting the gap between seeing, hearing and understanding.”7 In the Cut complicates and destabilises the romantic narrative in the Gothic register by confounding the visual and aural senses. The film critiques a heavy cultural reliance on the visual as a source of truth. The instability of visual perception is highlighted by a camera lens which conveys a partial and distorted view of the world as seen through Frannie’s eyes. Frannie’s literal and figurative myopia is exacerbated by the mystifying effects of the mythology of romantic love, and through subjective cinematography the viewer is made to experience this disorientation. Haslem astutely observes that the distortion of the senses in the “anti-romance romance” presents “a challenge to the desire for omniscience, the ability to see and hear all.”8 In the Cut further challenges the viewer’s expectation of transparency through the use of raw sound in which words are muffled and sometimes lost beneath the ceaseless din of city life. The viewer joins the lovers in seeking “moments of clarity” amidst a bewildering cultural onslaught of sound and image. The unstable developing relationship between Frannie and Malloy dramatises the difficulties of attempting to see another person clearly through the lens of romantic convention. What is ultimately at stake in the film is the lovers’ ability to know each other, when such knowledge can only ever be partial and provisional. In all of her work, Campion tends to complicate classically “masculine” and “feminine” attributes, and In the Cut is no exception. While the visual economy that the film critiques is implicitly phallocentric, Malloy is the character most aligned with embodied experience - he operates primarily on the level of “gut instinct” - while Frannie typically subordinates sensual experience to cerebral analysis. Frannie’s first words to Detective Malloy when she finds him in her stairwell are: “Do I know you?” He shows her his badge by way of identification and she immediately asks: “How do I know that’s real?” Frannie usurps the investigative position; her interrogative approach to life and love is underlined (and to some extent undermined) by the camera’s subjective identification with her point of view. In classic noir fashion, Malloy treats his relationship with Frannie, initially at least, as an extension of his investigation. But his fluid approach to knowledge marks a distinct departure from generic convention, a fact which contributes to the misrecognition of him by both Frannie and the viewer. He muses: “There’s something I know but I don’t know it yet.” He has an open and speculative approach to knowledge, and although he asks Frannie many questions, he does not demand or expect precise answers. “I’m wondering if you saw something at that bar,” he says. “Something you don’t know you saw.” Rather than demanding revelation, Malloy wonders, and his choice of
Lucy Butler
151
______________________________________________________________ words reveals his distrust of memory and visual perception. This contrasts sharply with Rodriguez. When Frannie, asked to identify an assailant by flipping through a book of mug shots, protests that she does not trust memory, Rodriguez angrily references her “claim” to academic knowledge: “You’re a teacher. People fucking rely on your memory.” The killer is a man intolerant of ambiguity, and insistent on the veracity of the visual image. When Rodriguez begins his killing spree, his identity is under siege. He has been emasculated and disempowered by the authorities, who “put his balls in a drawer” after he attempted to kill his wife for throwing his San Juan Man of the Year trophy out the window. “Ritchie takes that stuff serious,” Malloy remarks. Rodriguez carries a yellow water pistol in place of his confiscated gun, but this belies a serious lack of humour where his masculinity is concerned. The irony of the “man of the year” award being the motivation for the attempted murder of his wife indicates that, as Sue Gillet observes, The serial killer in In the Cut is not simply a lone psycho. He operates in a culture in which the metaphorical ‘disarticulation’ of male subjects from their bodies and desires is violently displaced onto the cut-up bodies of women.9 Rodriguez’s mutilation of the female body is motivated by his own isolation. Malloy comments of the killer: “this guy likes blood.” He likes blood because the inside seeps out. In Kristevan terms, the ambiguous, borderline nature of blood threatens the subject with the erasure of their own (bodily) boundaries, a prospect which inspires profound ambivalence.10 In his cutting, Rodriguez can both contact and contain the other’s intolerable ambiguity: as a cop, he is privy to the forensic process of examining, naming and cataloguing the body parts that he creates. His form of fragmentation does not mobilise meaning but seeks to fix it. His project is ultimately impossible, however - he cannot possess the other even through these most extreme measures, even with his ring on her severed hand, and her insides literally exposed, she continues to elude him - this accounts for the serial nature of his crimes. In both recent and historical incarnations, Bluebeard is strongly associated with the space he inhabits. Rodriguez’s imprisonment in his own disarticulated consciousness, his narrow and hollow mode of masculine identity, is evoked by the lighthouse in which he holds Frannie, a refiguring of Bluebeard’s gothic tower. The phallic structure ringed by metal bars and the single searching beam skimming the surface of a dark sea evoke his isolation and the futility of his attempts to penetrate an unknown other. The lighthouse is more than a phallic symbol: it is the scene of an epistemological conflict played out on the skin that is language and on the language of skin. The conflicting claims to this symbolic space are expressed when Frannie,
152
Love, Language and Knowledge in the Bluebeard Tale
______________________________________________________________ fleeing Malloy in a near-fatal instance of misrecognition, wakes to find herself in Rodriguez’s car crossing the New Jersey bridge. “Where are we going?” she asks. “To the lighthouse,” he replies. “To the Lighthouse,” she echoes blearily. “I teach that book.” “Yeah? I fish there.”11 In a brutal parody of romantic expectation, Rodriguez has equipped the lighthouse with music, wine and all the ritual props of romance. Swaying and crooning, he closes his eyes and presses his cheek to hers: You ever been in love? See I met this girl. I been thinking about her my whole life. You know, dreamin’ about her. But the thing is, I don’t know if she loves me. I mean, all women want love right? What about you? You want love? Wanna be kissed? My guess is you want it so bad it hurts. I’m right.12 Rodriguez becomes the menacing mouthpiece for the mythology of romantic love, threatening Frannie with barely coherent clichés. This girl is a generic feminine image: the loved object is interchangeable, and the plastic bag full of cheap engagement rings Rodriguez produces reinforces this point. He “offers” Frannie a ring on the end of a flick blade, then strangles her until she yields to his kiss. The film cuts to the climax of Frannie’s mother’s romantic narrative, a courtship story dramatized throughout the film in a series of sepia-toned flashbacks. Rodriguez is the sadistic aspect of the romantic fantasy incarnate, and in this moment cultural and personal mythologies coalesce; shooting Rodriguez, Frannie banishes both, and steps out of Bluebeard’s chamber. The sound of the gun going off is accompanied by a black screen flecked with white, an amorphous image pointing beyond the confines of narrative representation to that which escapes the story and explodes the cinematic frame. The white flecks evoke light on waves, suggesting a shattering of the knife-edge of knowledge represented by the narrow lighthouse beam. In this dispersal of meaning, the significance of the lighthouse is transformed. Bluebeard’s tower gives way to a more fluid figuration of seeing and knowing as suggested by Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse. Woolf’s lighthouse implies an alternative form of representation more able to accommodate the subjective nature of human perception and the complex inconsistencies of individual subjectivities. In contrast to rationalist, realist modes, modernist stream-of-consciousness expresses a non-unitary selfhood that suggests less oppressive relations
Lucy Butler
153
______________________________________________________________ between self (and self and self) and other.13 Though this modernist intertext, the trope of dismemberment takes on another aspect, suggesting a fragmentation that addresses the struggle for self-wholeness (in and through another), creating renewed possibilities for connection when the self is no longer conceived as a chamber to be defended or violated. Frannie is a particularly opaque character. Her speech is sharp, and most frequently doubled and ironic, full of metaphor and poetic allusion. Her student Cornelius remarks, with a mixture of frustration and fascination: “You never speak. It’s always just jive.” Frannie actively resists the romantic clichés that would lull the killer into the comforting belief that he can access her inner world. As such, she represents all that he is compelled to eradicate, namely the slipperiness of language and the linguistic prison of his own disconnected consciousness. Malloy also identifies Frannie’s opacity. It is an acknowledged source of anxiety for him (“you’re smarter than I am, I’m running just to keep up”), but he is able to respect Frannie’s otherness because he understands and accepts the limits of language. His own embodiedness opens him to other aspects of connection, making the prospect of intellectual isolation less threatening. In the Cut does not give us the sadistic satisfaction of seeing the “mystery” of femininity punished, as per noir convention. Nor are we encouraged to view woman as a deceptive surface. Instead, these tropes are revealed to be displacements of an alterity which renders the romantic myth of finding salvation and self-identity in another untenable. The film challenges both the lover’s and the viewer’s desire for omniscience: Campion does not demand that her protagonist disclose herself entirely to the camera’s intrusive eye, but rather requires the viewer to accept uncertainty as to Frannie’s feelings and motivations. It is telling that many critics found the ambiguity inherent to the film infuriating. There was a widespread critical insistence on reading Frannie in terms of the familiar script of female masochism, reduplicating the killer’s fallacy by demanding a comforting exposition at the expense of the complexity of subjectivity. The fact that Campion, like Margaret Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates among others, has revised the Bluebeard tale more than once underlines the fact that rewriting romantic love is a continual process of revisiting a shifting set of stories, each with multiple and often unstable meanings which resonate with the tale’s heterogeneous oral origins. In the process, Bluebeard himself is subjected to the dismembering violence of demythologizing critique. In the Cut, like other contemporary retellings of the Bluebeard tale, can be read both for and against the investigative impulse to know and to reveal. This ambivalence exists in Perrault’s tale itself. His appended morals may censure female curiosity, but in narrative terms Bluebeard’s wife is ultimately rewarded for her curiosity and cunning, inheriting her husband’s riches when he literally loses his head. The compulsive curiosity of the
154
Love, Language and Knowledge in the Bluebeard Tale
______________________________________________________________ female protagonist in Bluebeard revisions can be reframed as a productive female/feminist quest to demystify the realm of romantic love, or read as a doubling of the quest for intrusive and oppressive knowledge of the other in which Bluebeard himself engages. Campion’s highly investigative film offers no “clear cut” answers, but it does encourage us to question the kind of knowledge and assurances we seek.
Notes 1
R Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse, Vintage, London, 2002, p. 71. A Lurie, ‘One bad husband: what the “Bluebeard” story tells us about marriage’. American Scholar, vol. 74, no. 1, 2005, pp. 129-132. 3 M Tatar, Secrets Beyond the Door: The Story of Bluebeard and His Wives, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2004, p. 3. 4 Ibid., p. 6. 5 C Bacchilega, Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1997, p. 130. 6 R Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse, Vintage, London, 2002, p. 73. 7 W Haslem, ‘Neon Gothic: Lost in Translation’. Senses of Cinema, no. 31, 2004. 8 Ibid. 9 S Gillet, Views from Beyond the Mirror: The Films of Jane Campion, AFI & ATOM, St Kilda, VIC, 2004, p. 94. 10 J Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Columbia University Press, New York, 1982. 11 J Campion, In the Cut, 1993. 12 Ibid. 13 D Brown, The Modernist Self in Twentieth-Century English Literature: A Study in Self-Fragmentation, Macmillan Press, Houndsmills, 1989. 2
Bibliography Bacchilega, C., Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1997. Barthes, R., A Lover's Discourse: Fragments. Vintage, London, 2002. Brown, D., The Modernist Self in Twentieth-Century English Literature: A Study in Self-Fragmentation. Macmillan Press, Houndmills, 1989. Gillet, S., Views from Beyond the Mirror: The Films of Jane Campion. AFI & ATOM, St Kilda, VIC, 2004.
Lucy Butler
155
______________________________________________________________
Haslem, W., 'Neon Gothic: Lost in Translation'. Senses of Cinema, no. 31, 2004. Kristeva, J., Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia University Press, New York, 1982. Lurie, A., 'One bad husband: what the "Bluebeard" story tells us about marriage'. American Scholar, vol. 74, no. 1, 2005, pp. 129-132. Moore, S., In the Cut. Picador, Sydney, 2004. Tatar, M., Secrets beyond the Door: The Story of Bluebeard and his Wives. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2004. Warner, M., From the Beast to the Blonde: on Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. Vintage, London, 1995. Woolf, V., To the Lighthouse. Wordsworth Classics, Ware, 1994.
Audiovisual References In the Cut. Jane Campion, 2003. Lost in Translation. Sofia Coppola, 2003. Punch-Drunk Love. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002. The Piano. Jane Campion, 1993.
No More Happily Ever After? The Representation of Intimate Culture in Contemporary Romantic Comedy1 Beatriz Oria Abstract One of the most remarkable aspects of romantic comedy is its capability to depict social change and the state of contemporary intimate culture, helping define the changing relationship between the sexes through time. In this regard, Celebrity (1998), one of Woody Allen’s ‘light comedies’ of the 1990s, constitutes an accurate reflection of its historical context in its depiction of the changes undergone by ‘American’ intimate culture during the last decades of the 20th century, which include greater gender equality, the development of the pure relationship and the devaluation of marriage. Like most of Allen’s films throughout his career, Celebrity deals with human relationships, and more specifically with the problems attached to the creation and up keeping of heterosexual romantic relationships in the contemporary age. In spite of their ‘light’ tone and trivial appearance, Allen’s films present an accurate reflection of the society in which they are inscribed; namely, an ‘American’, urban, educated, middle-upper class society; and sometimes have more to say about contemporary issues such as love, romance, commitment or marriage than many sociology books. Taking this into account, this essay proposes an analysis of Celebrity as a representation of contemporary discourses on love and sex. With this purpose, I will make use of Anthony Giddens, David Shumway and Steven Seidman’s theories, among others, in order to analyse Allen’s use of generic conventions in Celebrity in connection with the wider cultural context in which the film is inscribed. My intention is trying to determine to what extent the depiction of issues traditionally associated to this director’s filmography, such as the search for self-identity and the state of contemporary intimate relationships between the sexes, has changed since these questions were first tackled by Allen in the seventies. Key Words: Confluent love, intimacy, pure relationship, romantic comedy, romantic love, self-identity, self-realisation, Woody Allen. ***** Celebrity tells the parallel stories of Lee (Kenneth Branagh) and Robin (Judy Davis), a couple which takes separate ways after he, suffering from middle-age crisis, decides to leave his partner in order to live the life he has been missing for sixteen years and find his real identity before it is ‘too
158
No More Happily Ever After?
______________________________________________________________ late’. From that moment on, the film shows us the different paths their lives take. For reasons of time, I will focus only on the story of Lee, the male protagonist, a mediocre journalist and ‘wanna-be’ novelist, who tries to get into the world of show business. In spite of the sharp social satire which frames the film, romantic comedy can be considered as the ‘predominant’ genre in Celebrity. One of the most remarkable aspects of this genre is its capability to reflect social change and the state of contemporary intimate culture, helping define the changing relationship between the sexes through time. The seventies, for instance, witnessed the advances of the ‘sexual revolution’, a phenomenon which was conveniently depicted by romantic comedy, for example by the so-called ‘nervous romances’ Allen made during the late seventies. The sexual liberation brought about not only the conception of sex as a domain of pleasure, self-expression and self-realisation, but also an uncoupling of sex from love which prompted the acceptance of non-monogamous and nonheterosexual lifestyles.2 In this way, the weakening of the link between sex, love, commitment and marriage caused a deep crisis in the traditional heterosexual couple, which, in accordance with the times, was faithfully represented by Allen in Annie Hall (1977) and subsequent films like Manhattan (1979).3 The aim of this paper is to show how, just as these films portrayed seventies preoccupations such as the breakdown of marriage, Celebrity also displays a notable engagement with its historical context. However, as I will argue later on, it retains some elements of the ‘nervous romance’, putting forward that the impact of the sexual revolution is far from over in the late nineties. In fact, Celebrity suggests that some of its effects may have actually intensified, bringing about in some cases an even greater sense of instability within the couple than in the seventies, which reveals Allen’s nostalgia for old-fashioned romance. Thanks to the historical perspective given by the decades gone by since the beginning of the sexual revolution, some sociologists have been able to evaluate its effects on succeeding generations. The disconnection of sex and marriage was made extensive to an uncoupling from any form of commitment, which proved to have a devastating effect in the successful formation and up keeping of solid relationships, a phenomenon which has seen a steady increase from the early seventies up to the present day. This disconnection has hampered the construction of meaningful relationships and has created a society in which “sex is available ... but love is not.”4 Instead, we only have easy access to ‘free’ love, a term coined in the sixties, which, according to Mary Evans, today is “neither ‘free’ (in the sense of given without ties) nor ‘love’ (in the sense of the involvement of feelings and emotions other than those of immediate sexual desire).”5 Freed from the constrains of the past, love is invested with a higher potential for selfrealisation and personal satisfaction. The result of this is higher hopes on
Beatriz Oria
159
______________________________________________________________ what relationships can offer, which brings about greater disenchantment when they fail to materialise. This rise of expectations renders today’s search for love much more problematic than it was in the past. Although discourses of personal satisfaction and equality within the couple continue to exist ever since the sexual revolution, Evans sees a significant increase of expectations “of complete personal fulfilment in the private sphere” as the only desirable pattern of relationships between human beings.6 This excess of hope brings about deeper disappointment than in the past when expectations are not met, because the emphasis on the private sphere as ‘haven’ from the public world is more marked today than in previous decades. The gap between the degree of satisfaction expected from a relationship and reality creates increasingly fragile relationships, a situation which is faithfully reflected in Celebrity: since Lee’s marriage does not meet the levels of self-realisation and the emotional and sexual fulfilment promised by contemporary views of love, he leaves his wife with the hope to find his true self somewhere else, presumably in another kind of relationship, this time more in agreement with contemporary discourses on intimacy. According to Evans, the result of this rise of expectations and the subsequent impossibility to fulfil them is an increase in our appetite for love,7 which is precisely what Lee experiences, as he propels himself into a frantic search for his perfect match. However, Lee’s search proves to be quite fruitless, since he seems to mistake physical closeness (that is, sexual intercourse) with real intimacy. When he realises that sporadic encounters with different women can only fulfil him momentarily he finally decides to pursue what Anthony Giddens calls “the pure relationship” with the hope to find his self-identity.8 He believes to have found it with Nola (Winona Ryder), but he is wrong, because he confuses confluent love with romantic love and his quest for identity fails. This is so because, according to Giddens, the reflexive project of the self can only be realised within the pure relationship, which is not the same as romantic love. The pure relationship implies a “rolling contract” between the two members of the couple which keeps the relationship open to negotiation. It is also characterised by open communication and the free expression of individual needs, as well as by a democratisation of sex which sets no limits upon sexual activity. It also presupposes equality of resources between the members of the couple.9 According to Giddens, the pure relationship is connected with the concept of “confluent love,” which constitutes the right path towards the achievement of self-identity. While romantic love depends upon “the projective identification of amour passion,” which “cuts across the development of a relationship whose continuation depends upon intimacy”,10 “confluent love” implies opening oneself to the other. In contrast with romantic love, which brackets off the ars erotica and presents an imbalance
160
No More Happily Ever After?
______________________________________________________________ in gender terms, “confluent love” presumes emotional equality within the couple and introduces the ars erotica into its core.11 In the case of Celebrity, it is clear that Lee’s love for Nola is much more romantic than confluent. His total idealisation of his (unknown) partner leads him to see in her the answer to his flawed identity. The reason for this is that romantic love “presumes a psychic communication, a meeting of souls which is reparative in character. The other, by being who he or she is, answers a lack… And this lack is directly to do with self-identity.”12 Celebrity, in fact, enacts this meeting of souls when Lee thinks he has identified his right partner in Nola when, in fact, what he sees is an idealised image of himself projected by romantic love. However, this projective identification is not the best path towards the achievement of a coherent selfidentity. For Giddens, this can only be found in the pure relationship, in which the individual does not simply “recognise the other” and in the responses of that other find his self-identity affirmed. Rather, …self-identity is negotiated through linked processes of self-exploration and the development of intimacy with the other.13 As was to be expected, Nola does not turn out to be Lee’s twin soul because the basis of the pure relationship is absent. In this way, when she refuses to settle in a serious relationship he is taken back to the starting point of his quest. Indeed, the film ends as it began for Lee: single and in the same unsatisfying social position as before. The film tries to depict contemporary discourses of intimacy, showing the difficulties experienced by both sexes nowadays in the establishment and up keeping of fruitful relationships. As I have said before, one of the reasons for this difficulty lies in the fact that some of the conflicts aroused by the sexual revolution seem to be far from resolved today. That is why Celebrity still retains some ingredients of Allen’s ‘nervous romance’ in its representation of the “difficulties men and women face in initiating, establishing and sustaining attachments in an age that has seen the splitting of sex and self from previous guarantees of romantic and emotional fulfilment.”14 This is specially true in the case of Lee: although he starts out advocating the principles of sexual liberation (he left his wife because he wanted to ‘explore’ other possibilities), the film shows, in the line of other ‘nervous romances’, that this freedom has turned sour for him. Although we are no longer in the seventies, when female liberation shook the pillars of heterosexual relationships, third-wave feminism teaches Lee that the sexual revolution is not just a male prerogative, as he meets a series of powerful and sexually liberated women who exercise total control over him. This reversal
Beatriz Oria
161
______________________________________________________________ of roles, the proliferation of masculinised women and feminised men like Lee is directly related to contemporary discourses on gender equality, which entail the narrowing of the gap between the sexes.15 In this way, Lee comes to realise that one of the consequences of this new climate of equality is that women no longer want to commit to a serious relationship, which he discovers when he is turned down by Nola. Therefore, Lee learns that “the breakdown of marriage is revealed to bring not plenitude but loss,”16 a typical conclusion of the ‘nervous romance’. In this context, Celebrity’s lack of a happy ending for Lee reveals Allen’s nostalgia for the past and traditional notions of the couple: after having a taste of the nineties new climate of sexual liberation, Lee now longs for old-fashioned romance again and the security of marriage, as his proposal to Nola proves. The film’s ending for Lee seems to regret this new situation of equality between the sexes, in which women no longer want to settle down with a single man for life, implicitly yearning for a more traditional type of woman. According to Babington and Evans, the typical Allen character (played here by Branagh) is usually attracted by both kinds of women (traditional and new independent). However, at the end the traditional woman is normally preferred because she is perceived as being less problematic.17 On the other hand, the ‘new woman’ is frequently caricatured by Allen, as is the case in Annie Hall or Manhattan. In Celebrity, the ‘new women’ Lee meets are highly attractive, but their freedom and independence proves too threatening for Allen: Nicole’s (Melanie Griffith) and the supermodel’s (Charlize Theron) unsettling (sexual) power over men, Nola’s lack of dependence on a man… even Bonnie’s (Famke Janssen) intellectualism, which is characteristic of the ‘new woman’, is satirised when we learn that she has sold a script, something she has despised all through the film. As Babington and Evans point out, whether these characters are “self-conscious caricatures of male fears about the New Woman” or a “reflection of his own real anxieties” is hard to know.18 In any case, most Allen’s films privilege tradition over the new values emerged in the “postVietnam, New York Jewish culture of heightened radicalism and feminism.”19 This tradition is usually embodied by women like Robin, Lee’s ex-wife, whose uncomplicated sexuality and lack of pretentiousness do not pose a menace to the hero’s ego, offering him the key to happiness through marriage or a traditional heterosexual union. The partnership with this traditional woman constitutes a reassuring standpoint for the man, as she seems to exist “solely to celebrate the superiority of the male.”20 This is Robin’s case, whose inferiority with respect to Tony (Joe Mantegna) is presented by the film as an asset rather than an obstacle for the achievement of happiness. As a conclusion, it can be said that romantic comedy proves an appropriate genre to explore the topic of self-identity because cultural
162
No More Happily Ever After?
______________________________________________________________ representations of love have frequently been linked to the project of personal self-realisation. In the case of Celebrity, this connection is explicitly fore grounded by the narrative since both protagonists expect to find their true selves in the relationship with a member of the opposite sex. The dénouements of both stories seem to endorse the validity of contemporary discourses about love and selfhood which connect the successful achievement of self-identity not with romantic love but with the pure relationship. Similarly, the generic analysis of Celebrity shows that romantic comedy constitutes the ideal vehicle for the exploration of contemporary ideas about sex, love, and the relationships between the sexes in general. Thus, Celebrity’s (sad) ending confirms Deleyto’s argument that “contemporary uncertainties about the institution of marriage and durable heterosexual relationships seem to have affected the traditional convention of the happy ending in the genre.”21 Lee’s misery at the end of the film reflects the historical context in which it is inscribed: the age of equality between the sexes, the pure relationship and the devaluation of marriage. In this way, Celebrity reflects its historical context accurately and shows an interest in contemporary discourses on intimate matters. However, ‘showing’ these discourses does not mean ‘supporting’ them. Although the film is rationally aware of the relevance of these ideas, sentimentally it seems to argue for the contrary, endorsing traditional notions of the couple. The impossibility of reprising the ideal situation of the old days leaves us with a rather bleak vision of love: the case of Lee tells us that, in the present context of gender equality, relationships are doomed to failure, which condemns most people to a sad state of loneliness and a permanent search for a mate. On the other hand, Robin’s story shows that those relationships which succeed do so at the expense of a loss of individuality in one of the couple’s members. The fact that this role is assumed by the woman points to Allen’s increasing conservatism, as the film shows a belief in the need to maintain traditional structures of female subordination under patriarchy if the couple is to succeed. The final message is that satisfactory relationships between men and women are impossible in the present context, in which feminist advances and new intimacy discourses render unviable traditional models of heterosexual union and the unbalanced distribution of power they implied; which betrays Allen’s nostalgia for a past in which traditional models of womanhood allowed for satisfactory heterosexual relationships and a happy ending was still possible for romantic comedy.
Notes 1
Research towards this essay was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education, project no. BFF2001-2564 and by the DGA (Ref. H12). I would
Beatriz Oria
163
______________________________________________________________ also like to thank Dr. Celestino Deleyto for his help in earlier versions of the essay. 2 S Seidman, Romantic Longings: Love in America, 1830-1980, Routledge, New York and London, 1991, p. 155. 3 Although Woody Allen has been usually credited with the ‘invention’ of the ‘nervous romance’, films like Semi-tough (1977), Starting Over (1979) or The Goodbye Girl (1977) are also frequently included under this label. 4 M Evans, Love, An Unromantic Discussion, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2003, p. 142. 5 M Evans, p. 135. 6 M Evans, p. 127. 7 M Evans, p. 130. 8 A Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992, p. 58, 138, 192. 9 A Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy, pp. 193-195. 10 A Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy, p. 61. 11 A Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy, p. 62. 12 A Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy, p. 45. 13 A Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1991, p. 97. 14 F Krutnik, ‘Love lies: Romantic fabrication in contemporary romantic comedy’, in Terms of Endearment: Hollywood Romantic Comedy in the 1980s and 1990s, P Evans and C Deleyto (eds), Edinburgh U.P, Edinburgh, 1998, p. 18. 15 C Potter, I love you but… Romance, Comedy and the Movies, Methuen, London, 2002, p. 245. 16 F Krutnik, ‘The Faint Aroma of Performing Seals: The “Nervous” Romance and the Comedy of the Sexes’, The Velvet Light Trap, No. 26, Fall, 1990, p. 69. 17 B Babington and P Evans, Affairs to Remember: The Hollywood Comedy of the Sexes, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1989, p. 168. 18 B Babington and P Evans, p. 169. 19 B Babington and P Evans, p. 167. 20 B Babington and P Evans, p. 168. 21 C Deleyto, ‘Love and other Triangles: Alice and the Conventions of Romantic Comedy’, in Terms of Endearment: Hollywood Romantic Comedy in the 1980s and 1990s, P Evans and C Deleyto (eds), Edinburgh U.P, Edinburgh, 1998, p. 142.
164
No More Happily Ever After?
______________________________________________________________
Bibliography Babington, B. and P. Evans, Affairs to Remember: The Hollywood Comedy of the Sexes. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1989. Deleyto, C., ‘Love and other Triangles: Alice and the Conventions of Romantic Comedy’, in Terms of Endearment: Hollywood Romantic Comedy in the 1980s and 1990s. P. Evans and C. Deleyto (eds), Edinburgh U.P, Edinburgh, 1998, pp. 129-147. Evans, M., Love, An Unromantic Discussion. Polity Press, Cambridge, 2003. Giddens, A., Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1991. –––, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992. Krutnik, F., ‘Love lies: Romantic fabrication in contemporary romantic comedy’, in Terms of Endearment: Hollywood Romantic Comedy in the 1980s and 1990s. P. Evans and C. Deleyto (eds), Edinburgh U.P, Edinburgh, 1998, pp. 15-36. –––, ‘The Faint Aroma of Performing Seals: The “Nervous” Romance and the Comedy of the Sexes’. The Velvet Light Trap, no. 26, Fall, 1990, pp. 5772. Potter, C., I love you but…Romance, Comedy and the Movies. Methuen, London, 2002. Seidman, S., Romantic Longings: Love in America, 1830-1980. Routledge, New York and London, 1991.
Audiovisual References Annie Hall. Woody Allen, 1977. Celebrity. Woody Allen, 1998. Manhattan. Woody Allen, 1979. Semi-tough. Michael Ritchie, 1977. Starting Over. Alan J. Pakula, 1979. The Goodbye Girl. Neil Simon, 1977.
Of Multiple Collisions and Interethnic Conflicts: Making Sense of Personal and Interpersonal Relationships in Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004)1 Olga Seco Abstract The U.S. production Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004) constitutes one of those instances of fictionalisation of a never-ending reality, as is the spread and consolidation of racial hatred and violence among people. The film’s very title refers back to the actual crash of a dozen of characters in the city of Los Angeles, and its immediate consequences: as the protagonists bump into each other, cultural and ethnic differences come to the surface, leading in most cases to tragic denouements. The present paper tries to explore the issue of personal and interpersonal relationships as presented in the film, taking into account the formal and narrative strategies that come into play. In particular, the paper will focus on the self-conscious use of the so called multiprotagonist technique, on the one hand, and the display of a specific setting, on the other, as the most suitable mechanisms to express onscreen the complex and troublesome dynamics of interpersonal and interethnic conflicts. Key Words: Crash, race, interpersonal multiprotagonist technique, setting.
relationships,
conflict,
***** During the 78th Academy Awards ceremony, spectators around the world witnessed the - for many - unexpected triumph of Crash (2004), a modest low-budget U.S. film written and directed by Paul Haggis.2 The filmmaker presented an urban drama which tackled the problematisation of personal and interpersonal relationships in contemporary U.S and set up racial and ethnic conflicts as point of departure and structuring element. In this sense the movie continued the trend of many contemporary films, TV series, soap operas and talkshows committed to reflecting onscreen the current multicultural and multiracial reality of the country. Examples of how the media has repeatedly shown the vicissitudes of race relations and cultural clashes as experienced by individuals - engaged either in intimate relationships or in more group-like social alliances - include contemporary popular TV series like ER, Grey’s Anatomy, My Name is Earl or Lost, and films from different decades such as West Side Story (1961), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), Do the Right Thing (1989), Dangerous Minds (1995) or the more recent ones The Fast and the Furious (2001 and its
166
Of Multiple Collisions and Interethnic Conflicts
______________________________________________________________ sequels 2003, 2006), Romeo Must Die (2000), Everyday People (2004) or Babel (2006), to name but a few. Several reasons may account for the increasing and, in many cases, ubiquitous interest in once and again portraying visually the multiethnic realities of the U.S. On the one hand, as Beltrán suggests, the ethnic demographic shifts of the last two decades manifested the starting dissolution of an essentialist white ethos. Beltrán quotes Howe and Strauss’ words which claim, “demographically, this - for today’s teens - is America’s most racially and ethnically diverse and least Caucasian generation.”3 On the other hand, a film such as Crash appears, more than as part of a vogue, as an impending necessity in the post 9/11 era and given the current political climate of war tension. Accused by some of being a “feel-good” race movie which came out at a time when “blackness is most desired as part of a triumphant narrative of nation,”4 the film’s overall message - appropriately framed within Christmas time - transmits a feeling of tolerance and respect for the other. Whatever were the grounds that the film was conceived on, Crash presents itself not only as a narrative about racial reconciliation, but also as a story about the necessity of intimate bonds and feelings of closeness among individuals coexisting within the same geographical space.5 Graham’s (Don Cheadle) soliloquy - “In L.A nobody touches you … I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something” -6 points actually to the later emotional and physical connections undergone by the film’s numerous characters, in a probably unconscious attempt to end up with personal isolation and social estrangement. This paper tries to explore the issue of personal and interpersonal relationships as presented in the film, taking into account the formal and narrative strategies that come into play. In particular, the paper will focus on the self-conscious use of the so called multiprotagonist technique, on the one hand, and the display of a specific setting, on the other, as the most suitable mechanisms to express onscreen the complex and troublesome dynamics of interpersonal and interethnic conflicts. Haggis creates a particular microcosm in which the disconnected lives of blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians and Middle East immigrants get together only to literally collide with one another. Through a complex web of multiple storylines the film’s characters criss-cross, meet and interact in contemporary L.A; the result is a movie that articulates the difficulties of human reconciliation and the social cleavages arising from cultural differences which, as suggested here, legitimise racial confrontation. Contrary to previous films in which racial tensions simply remained submerged or were resolved within the narrative boundaries - think of the buddy films of the 1980s and 90s -7, interracial conflict is in Crash the main motif. Characters speak overtly about the devastating effects of racial prejudice on everyday life experience and see themselves inevitably driven
Olga Seco
167
______________________________________________________________ by it. Thus, disregarding any sense of political correctness - something which has been somehow the trend in most race relations films - characters in Crash do not mince their words and utter here and there racist insults, as the first of the film’s car crashes shows: -You Mexicans don’t know how to drive! She blake too fast! -I blake too fast? I blake too fast? Maybe you see over steering wheel you blake too! -Stupid wetback! Perhaps more important, though, is the film’s departure from traditional ways of narrating conflict. As said before, the filmmaker creates an ensemble piece which beautifully gathers and connects the characters’ experiences and reactions as they bump into each other. In a postmodern era which reflects the fragility and fragmentation of the self and insists on the multiplicity of identities, perspectives and discourses, a recent cinematic tendency has also felt the necessity to leave behind the classical narrative pattern of the hero and his individual quest. The new postulates demand a redirection into a wide variety of quests and hopes as experienced by a plurality of people. This is precisely the overall intention in Crash, which deals in more or less equal terms with an assortment of characters of varied cultural backgrounds, who relate to one another in multiple ways and under multiple circumstances. In this sense, the multiprotagonist technique and its focus on a variety of individuals with more or less independent narrative lines constitutes the best narratological device to convey most of the film’s ideological meanings.8 Just as multiprotagonist films tend to avoid strict narrative hierarchies among plotlines and characters themselves, Haggis’s work tries to escape exclusive racial identifications and biases. Far from sympathising with any ethnic group in particular, the different storylines gradually disclose each character as both victim and victimiser, thus proving that racism and prejudice no longer work in a single direction but spread across individuals and cultures.9 The moral message becomes diversified, and so does spectators’ sympathy: the ensemble plot allows for heterogeneous and plural identifications on the part of the audience, which comes to terms not with a single protagonist and his/her point of view - as is the custom in classical narratives - but, rather, with the whole bunch. Identification on the part of the spectator is achieved not only through the film’s manipulation of the different narrative threads, but also through formal and stylistic devices. A more or less constant use of closeups, together with a particular type of filming as conveyed by a handycam, turn the viewer into one more participant who gets closer to the action and becomes a first hand witness of the existing tensions among characters. It is
168
Of Multiple Collisions and Interethnic Conflicts
______________________________________________________________ nonetheless editing and, more specifically, the rapid cross-cutting and juxtaposition of plotlines, that appropriately reflect the dynamism which distinguishes the characters’ everyday interactions. The film’s marketing campaign already emphasised the imprint of movement through the motto “Moving at the speed of life, we’re bound to collide with each other.” The final impression is, nonetheless, never chaotic; on the contrary, there is a general feeling of continuity and fluidity between one scene and the following one, between one story and the next. This is achieved both at formal and narrative levels. Repeatedly, the final part of someone’s action in a scene is continued in the next by another character’s action within a different narrative context. For instance, the image of a character pulling or pushing a door extends to the following scene as another character performs the same movement - that of pulling or pushing a door - within his or her own plotline. In the same way, images of cars passing by and belonging to different narrative lines are graphically matched, once more establishing a clear and effective liaison between characters and stories. Some other times, it is the characters’ words that produce such effects of continuity, as it refers orally to a previous image of a non-related plot. For instance, there is a moment when the audience witnesses how Graham brings groceries to his mum; in the following scene, we listen to Jean’s (Sandra Bullock) phone conversation and her complaints about María (Yomi Perry), her cleaning woman, not having gone to the grocers’. According to Jamieson, urban settings offer more possibilities than rural areas for creating social networks out of unconnected social worlds.10 In multiprotagonist films the city is also perceived as “a laboratory for carefully controlled ethical experiments.”11 Here Los Angeles becomes the meeting point of characters and storylines and the actual space where individuals both experience and endure the consequences of the physical “touch.” The location appears as particularly suitable, given the city’s achieved notoriety for a long history of racial violence. The film brings back memories of more or less recent episodes of violence such as the Rodney King beating in March 1991 or the race riots of the 1960s, when black cultural nationalism reached its highest peak. Despite black activists’ insistence on non-violent activity, this did not prevent U.S citizens from a wave of inner-city revolts throughout the country. Los Angeles became one of the most publicly damaged places. As Reid explains, all the episodes of urban uprisings and black insurrections were nationally telecast. In this way, “destruction and destructive seemed to define the black community,” which “intensified white middle class America’s opinion of blacks as violent people.”12 Crash actually retakes the stereotype of black male individuals as dangerous criminals through the characters of Anthony (Ludacris) and Peter (Larenz Tate), the two carjackers. Yet this is not the only stereotype reproduced in the film. All in all, the movie gravitates towards ethnic and cultural overgeneralisations which provide
Olga Seco
169
______________________________________________________________ spectators with easily recognisable stereotyped patterns: the bad niggas, a couple of black assimilationists, the exotic Latino woman, the racist white cop, the tragic mulatto, or the Middle East immigrant who finds difficulties to adapt to a new life. The construction of these characters reveals another important aspect in relation to both the postulates of the urban drama and the film’s general dogma: the city of Los Angeles has become, in the year 2004, the urban icon of postmodernity, a new multicultural site, as a result of the blurring of physical boundaries. One aspect of this phenomenon is particularly highlighted: accent. Not speaking “correct” American English is a sign of weakness on your part and a useful weapon in the eyes of your opponent. As had previously happened with Ria and her “encounter” with the Asian woman, the Persian’s imperfect speech is also mocked by the white shopkeeper, who has some objections to selling a weapon to an “arab”.13 What “correct” means in a country characterised by such a mixture of ethnicities and nationalities becomes, of course, manifestly arguable. All in all, those characters that do not produce language as they presumably should are punished in some way or another, either because they do not fulfil others’ linguistic expectations or because they fulfil them too much. The film can thus be said to reproduce the basic central tension that, according to Sollors, has characterised the history of American ethnic interaction: that one established between the individual’s power of descent and his/her desire to, at the same time, consent to a new identity,14 as the claim of the Persian man shows: “I speak English. I am American citizen. I have rights like you!” Although the streets of L.A are set as initial battleground, the film broadens its spectrum to the consequences of racial clashes in both public and private spheres. While the latter unfolds the effects of racism and prejudice within the domestic domain, the former exemplifies institutional discrimination. As a matter of fact, the daily lives of families and couples find themselves distressed by the disseminated bigotry of the establishment. The public institutions depicted in Haggis’s feature - the field of politics and government practices, the LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department), the media and the world of entertainment and TV - appear as largely white instruments of power within U.S. society. Against them, individuals (particularly those of minority groups) remain highly defenceless. This is the case of black Cameron (Terrence Howard), whose middle class social status as a wealthy TV producer means nothing when confronted with the humiliating manners of the white majority around him. By tackling issues such as these, Crash becomes openly and, at many points, explicitly critical of the country’s governing policies that place individuals in positions of inequality. 15 To conclude, Crash exploits a familiar issue, that of the conflictive nature of race relations in contemporary U.S., this time through the experimental technique of the multiprotagonist narrative. In accordance with
170
Of Multiple Collisions and Interethnic Conflicts
______________________________________________________________ the premises of such narratives, which “...refuse to simplify social complexity and ... provide answers,”16 Haggis’s work neither finds nor offers clear solutions to the racial problem. This is why the film ends just as it had started: a car crash and the tensions that have arisen as a result; this is also why the general course of events is framed within a circular structure which starts and ends with Graham’s discovery of his brother’s corpse. In this context, the film’s final message deviates from the general practice by which most race stories have traditionally relied on utopian endings, and insists rather on the difficulties of human reconciliation. The city of Los Angeles turns up as a hostile territory and site of confrontation between individuals, who find in their physical and emotional encounters the key to both personal and interpersonal fulfilment. The result is a moralising tale where characters initiate an introspective journey of self-discovery which eventually furnishes them - and the spectators - with a new sense of humanity.17
Notes 1
The research carried out for the writing of this article was funded by the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (HUM2004-00418/FILO). I would like to thank all the members of the research project I belong to, for their very useful comments. 2 The filmmaker thus repeated the success of the preceding year, when Million Dollar Baby (2004) was awarded the Oscar not only to best motion picture but also to Haggis’s best screenplay. 3 M C Beltrán, ‘The New Hollywood Raceless: Only the Fast, Furious (and Multirracial) Will Survive’. Cinema Journal, vol. 44, no. 2, 2005, p. 55. 4 J Chang and S Chan, ‘Can White Hollywood Get Race Right?’, in Alternet, 19 July 2005, viewed on December 2006, . 5 Jamieson argues for a particular form of intimacy, called “disclosing intimacy,” which goes beyond matters of love and sexuality between the couple. This foregrounds the necessity of being close to others, sharing thoughts and showing feelings as the main goals in all personal relationships in western societies. See L Jamieson, Intimacy. Personal Relationships in Modern Societies, Polity Press, Oxford, 2002 (1988). 6 These words - coming from African American detective Graham Waters take place at the beginning of the film, in a moment of mental detachment after the car bump he is involved in together with Ria (Jennifer Esposito), his female colleague. 7 “Buddy Films” is the name applied to those U.S. American productions particularly successful during the 1980s and 1990s - which feature two male characters as protagonists of their narratives. These films usually highlight
Olga Seco
171
______________________________________________________________ the special bond that is established among the two men, revolving around the friendship developed between them and, in many cases, revealing a certain homoerotic dimension more or less latent within the male “couple” (for a full interpretation of the buddy film see C J Fuchs, ‘The Buddy Politic’, in Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema, Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark (eds), Routledge, London and New York, 1993, pp. 194-210). In this case I am referring more specifically to films such as the Lethal Weapon series (1987, 1989, 1992, 1998), the Die Hard films (1988, 1990, 1995, or 48 Hrs (1982) and Another 48 Hrs (1990) in which white men are bonded with men of colour. 8 For a study on the multiprotagonist narrative technique, see C R Berg, ‘A Taxonomy of Alternative Plots in Recent Films: Classifying the “Tarantino Effect”’. Film Criticism, XXXI, December 2006, p. 15, as well as: M M Azcona, ‘All Together Now. The Rise of Multiprotagonist Films in the 1990s’, Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Zaragoza, 2007, p. 9. 9 It is probably the Asian community the worst represented of all. 10 Jamieson, p. 86. 11 H L Hsu, ‘Racial Privacy, the L.A. Ensemble Film, and Paul Haggis’s Crash’. Film Criticism, XXXI, December 2006, p. 143. 12 M A Reid, Redefining Black Film, University of California Press, California, 1993, p. 74. 13 While Ria makes fun of the Asian woman’s accent in the first of the film’s car crashes, the owner of the shop where Persian Dorri (Bahar Soomekh) and her father try to buy a weapon seems also annoyed at the man’s awkward way of speaking English. After the client’s insistence on getting a gun which can protect him and his family-run business of future breaks-in, the shopkeeper rudely complains while asking: “Is that the closest you get to English?” 14 W Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity. Consent and Descent in American Culture, Oxford University Press, New York, 1986, p. 5. 15 The film makes sure audiences recognise this is Schwarznegger’s California: there is a moment in which a picture of the governor can be clearly made out on one of the LAPD office’s walls. 16 Azcona, p. 132. 17 Hsu refers to Crash as a film about “universal sentimentalism.” Hsu, p. 145. Bibliography Azcona, M. M., ‘All Together Now. The Rise of Multiprotagonist Films in the 1990s’. Unpublished PhD Dissertation. University of Zaragoza, 2007.
172
Of Multiple Collisions and Interethnic Conflicts
______________________________________________________________
Beltrán, M. C., ‘The New Hollywood Raceless: Only the Fast, Furious (and Multirracial) Will Survive’. Cinema Journal, vol. 44, no. 2, 2005, pp. 50-67. Berg, C. R., ‘A Taxonomy of Alternative Plots in Recent Films: Classifying the ‘Tarantino Effect’’. Film Criticism, XXXI, December, 2006, pp. 5-62. Chang, J. and S. Chan., ‘Can White Hollywood Get Race Right?’. Alternet, 19 July 2005, viewed on December 2006, . Fuchs, C. J., ‘The Buddy Politic’, in Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema. S. Cohan and I. R. Hark (eds), Routledge, London and New York, 1993, pp. 194-210. Hsu, H. L., ‘Racial Privacy, the L.A. Ensemble Film, and Paul Haggis’s Crash’. Film Criticism, XXXI, December, 2006, pp. 132-157. Jamieson, L., Intimacy. Personal Relationships in Modern Societies. Polity Press, Oxford, 2002 (1988). Reid, M. A., Redefining Black Film. University of California Press, California, 1993. Sollors, W., Beyond Ethnicity. Consent and Descent in American Culture. Oxford Univerity Press, New York, 1986.
Audiovisual References 48 Hrs. Walter Hill, 1982. Another 48 Hrs. Walter Hill, 1990. Babel. Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2006. Crash. Paul Haggis, 2004. Dangerous Minds. John N. Smith, 1995. Die Hard. John McTiernan, 1988. Die Hard 2. Renny Harlin, 1990. Die Hard: With A Vengeance. John McTiernan, 1995. Do The Right Thing. Spike Lee, 1989. E.R. Warner Bros. Television, 1994-. Everyday People. Jim McKay, 2004. Grey’s Anatomy. Buena Vista Televisión, 2005-.
Olga Seco
173
______________________________________________________________ Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. Stanley Kramer, 1967 Lethal Weapon. Richard Donner, 1987. Lethal Weapon 2. Richard Donner, 1989. Lethal Weapon 3. Richard Donner, 1992. Lethal Weapon 4. Richard Donner, 1998. Lost. Buena Vista Television, 2004-. Million Dollar Baby. Clint Eastwood, 2004. My Name Is Earl. National Broadcasting Company, 2005-. Romeo Must Die. Andrzej Bartkoviak, 2000. The Fast and the Furious. Rob Cohen, 2001. West Side Story. Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise, 1961.
Intimacy and Absence across the Globe: The Literary Relationship between Georgiana Molloy and Captain James Mangles Jessica White Abstract How can intimacy be created and maintained by two people who have never met, and who are separated by ten thousand miles of land and sea? This paper explores the relationship between Georgiana Molloy, who immigrated to Western Australia in 1829, and Captain James Mangles, an amateur botanist who lived in London. At his request, Molloy collected and shipped specimens of Australian flora to him. With the boxes she sent letters which, with their lightly flirtatious style, differed markedly from those she had previously written to family and friends. As they exchanged letters, boxes and seeds, the correspondents established a relationship that was of monumental importance to Molloy. Her passion for botany overflowed into her correspondence with the man who initiated it, resulting in rich, potent letters that drew on the sensuous language of botany and, in doing so, compelled Mangles’ attention. To this end, the paper argues that absence is a condition that, however unwanted, is immensely productive. The spaces in the relationship - between England and Australia, between Mangles and Molloy, between the words on the page - were necessarily filled by Molloy’s imagination. This led to an abbreviation - however metaphorical - of the distance between them. Key Words: Australia, botany, distance, England, intimacy, letter-writing, seduction. ***** 1.
Introduction “Much to my surprise in Dec last I received a particularly choice box of seeds, and your polite note, requesting a return of the Native seeds of Augusta.”1 These were the first words penned by Georgiana Molloy - the daughter of a landowning family in Scotland who sailed to Western Australia in 1829 - to Captain James Mangles, an amateur botanist living in London. Encapsulating their relationship, the phrase refers to their exchange of seeds, both English and Australian, and to the difficulty of negotiating questions of decorum and proximity through their letters when they were separated by 11, 000 miles of sea. While this distance between England and Australia has often been couched in negative terms, the relationship between these two
176
Intimacy and Absence across the Globe
______________________________________________________________ writers indicates that absence can be immensely productive. The traversing of vessels - ships, boxes, letters, seeds and metaphors - across the ocean meant that, out of the space between the two countries, a particularly intimate relationship was conceived. It was a relationship which, ironically, would not have been possible without such distance. Unable to meet Mangles in person, the usual checks on a developing friendship were dismissed. Consequently, Georgiana’s gratitude and affection for her correspondent blossomed rapidly and luxuriously in the space between them. 2.
Hardship Georgiana’s arrival on the shores of what were to become the settlement of Augusta coincided with a loss. A few days after they landed, she gave birth to her first child in a tent in driving rain; it was so wet an umbrella had to be held over the bed. Ten days later the child died. Georgiana’s distress was still apparent three years after the event, as she wrote to Helen Story, who had also lost a child: I truly sympathise with you, for language refuses to utter what I experienced when mine died in my arms in this dreary land, which no one but Molloy near me. O, I have gone through much and more than I would ever suffer anyone to do again.2 Georgiana’s grief was so overwhelming that language itself could not even be called upon to undertake its customary task of creating meaning. Instead, Georgiana attempted to give meaning to her child’s death through the wordless act of planting English flowers on its grave, but the gesture was futile: “Its grave, though sodded (sic) with British clover, looks so singular and solitary in this wilderness, of which I can scarcely give you an idea”.3 The ameliorating effects of a British plant had been overwhelmed by the strangeness of her surroundings. In her letters to her family and friends, Georgiana returned constantly to the theme of her isolation. In 1833, a few years after her arrival in Augusta, she detailed to her friend Margaret Dunlop the domestic work she had to undertake, writing, “I wish I had you here to help me…What golden dreams we used to have about your coming to stay with me, how would you like to be nearly 3 years in a place without a female of your own rank to speak to, or be with you whatever happened.”4 Although she and her husband had acquaintances in the district, what Georgiana sorely missed was intimacy and an accordance of mind, and it was this that she found in her relationship with James Mangles.
Jessica White
177
______________________________________________________________ 3.
A Botanical Affair Mangles became acquainted with Georgiana through his cousin Ellen Stirling, the wife of the governor of Perth, which was the original settlement in Western Australia. A retired naval officer living in England, Mangles visited Perth in 1831 and, after meeting several people in the colony, he requested that they collect specimens and seeds for him. Georgiana, known to Ellen Stirling, was added to this network in 1836. On learning that she had an enthusiasm for flowers and gardening, Mangles sent Georgiana a box of seeds, asking that she take the seeds for herself, fill the box with Australian specimens and return it to him in England. As she began collecting the seeds for Mangles, Georgiana also wrote him letters that were strikingly different in tone to those she had written to her family and friends. In place of her previous complaints about domestic chores and childbearing was an increasingly passionate discourse on her surroundings. Where, in an early letter to her sister she complained that “were it not for domestic charms the eye of the emigrant would soon weary of the unbounded limits of thickly clothed dark green forests,”5 to Mangles she was extolling the virtues of the flora she encountered: “the plant with small white pendulous blossoms tipt (sic) with red is particularly beautiful and more like the flower of a dream.”6 Georgiana’s literary relationship with Mangles therefore became inextricably bound with her growing intimacy with, and affection for, the Australian landscape and its botanical inhabitants. However, it was not Mangles’ request alone that prompted Georgiana’s curiosity about her surroundings. Soon after she received Mangles’ first letter, her only son fell into a well and drowned. While this might have been yet another blow that caused Georgiana to revile her surroundings, it interestingly had the opposite effect. Where her previous child’s death, linked to her hostile surroundings and traumatic arrival, was unmentionable even to a close friend, the death of this second child was described at length to a stranger, and it also led Georgiana further into the bush. For collecting specimens allowed Georgiana to take her mind off her grief, as she wrote to Mangles, “Since my dear Boy’s death, my leisure has been much extended and I have, up to the present time, daily employed it in your service.”7 The absence of her child made Georgiana immensely productive, and as she realised how essential this production was to her mental and emotional well being, the tone of her letters to Mangles became more energetic and enthusiastic. Georgiana’s first reply to Mangles, written before her son’s death, was brief and the tone plain and straightforward. She mentioned repeatedly her lack of time, and warned that: as all my former pursuits have necessarily been thrown aside (by the peremptory demand of my personal attention
178
Intimacy and Absence across the Globe
______________________________________________________________ to my children and domestic drudgery), I feel that it will be long ere I can make any adequate return in Australian productions.8 Her second letter, however, was written after her son’s death and extended across many pages, describing in detail the circumstances of the tragic accident. “Painful as it is to record,” Georgiana wrote, “distance of place compels me.”9 Into this awkward phrase she compressed the weight of the distance from England and the necessity of writing a confession to alleviate her grief. She was aware of stepping beyond the boundaries of propriety and apologised “for thus using towards a Stranger the freedom and minute detail that Friendship warrants and desires” and, as she acknowledged, it was their isolation that magnified her grief: Acute indeed was the blow, and when you reflect, how dead we are to the world, and completely weaned from that sphere of pursuits, actions and modes of life in which we used to move, I trust you will pardon and excuse my continuing thus egotistically and minutely on our present affliction.10 It was by writing so “egotistically and minutely” about the event that Georgiana attempted to alleviate her grief. Writing was a means of making contact, drawing someone closer, and of feeling less alone. For this reason, it was a concern that uniformly engrossed migrants to Australia. Even those with only basic literacy struggled to compile messages to send to those they knew on the other side of the globe, while women, despite their overwhelming burdens of domestic labour, left aside their sewing to write when they could. Recipients were exhorted to reply, and to reply often, for letters and news could take six months to arrive, and the mail was few and far between. As consequence of the sheer emotional pull of the written word in a world where there were so few letters, it was difficult for Georgiana to negotiate the appropriate degree of proximity as she wrote to Mangles. In her first letter she touched on the unsettlement created by Mangles’ gift of British seeds, writing “If we were nearer I should much hesitate to accept so magnificent a present of so many long wished for seeds.”11 The distance between England and Australia had disrupted conventional etiquette and, Georgiana, raised in the polite world of the upper middle-class, acknowledged this. However her isolation and the scarcity of English plants made the gift too rich to refuse. From this first exchange of letters, then, distance had forced the correspondents closer.
Jessica White
179
______________________________________________________________ When Georgiana closed her second “voluminous epistle,”12 she sealed it in a box with the specimens she had collected. This was in March 1838. In November that year the box still had not left Augusta, owing to a paucity of shipping vessels. In the interim she wrote Mangles a further two letters, explaining that “untowardly enough, you will receive my first epistle in the box after this my third.”13 Her closeness to Mangles was being established even though she had neither posted any more letters to him nor received any replies: being so much employed on your behalf, and having so frequently written to you, I feel much better acquainted with you, than you can be with me, therefore I trust you will not be surprised at my throwing aside the garb of formal etiquette usually worn by those not personally known to each other.14 Thus the account of her child’s death lay enclosed in the box with the dormant seeds, while Georgiana continued to write and establish her intimacy with Mangles. Fully cognisant of the dynamics of the situation, she playfully wrote: you, I doubt not have often heard of the inexhaustible properties of a Lady’s Pen, and as you brought this infliction from an unknown person on yourself I shall have less compunction in visiting you, altho’ etiquette would demand the reverse.15 Her depiction of an English drawing room recalls the formality of etiquette, while at the same time her playful tone undermines it. Again, distance facilitated the disruption of convention and heightened Georgiana’s sense of closeness to Mangles. This association was underscored in Georgiana’s relationship to Mangles through their exchange of seeds, which germinated and continued life. In this sense they were also representative of the other vessels - namely boxes and letters - which Georgiana and Mangles sent one another. Once opened, the contents taken out, perused and looked over, meaning became lodged in the recipient’s mind, where it grew, was observed and contemplated. Through this process - the sending of meaning through different channels of communication - the distance between Georgiana and Mangles was narrowed.
180
Intimacy and Absence across the Globe
______________________________________________________________ 4.
Metaphors On another, more symbolic level, this process - of the expansion of meaning - was replicated through Georgiana’s use of metaphors. The word “metaphor” stems from the Greek word metaphérein, which is composed of the words meta, meaning “over” and pheréin meaning “to carry”. In essence, the meaning of one object is carried over to another, seemingly replacing it, although the ghost of the original word still hovers. In Georgiana’s writing, her use of metaphor appeared in her descriptions of flowers, which had ties to the rich history of the language of flowers. Originally, this language (which became so prevalent; it was even given a scientific term - “floriography”), existed in the Orient. It was brought to the European public’s attention through the letters of Lady Wortley Montague in the early 18th century, in which she reported a means of communicating through objects and flowers.16 Georgiana was no stranger to the language of flowers, as she wrote of one of the books Mangles sent her: “the Language and sentiment of Flowers I could look at repeatedly with unwearied pleasure.”17 It is possible that she was referring to the newly published Flora’s Lexicon: An Interpretation of the Language and Sentiment of Flowers, which was released in 1839. While it cannot be determined whether she was conscious of drawing upon this language, it certainly appeared often in her writing. When describing her garden to her sister, she wrote that she “frequently endeavoured to introduce the Native plants among the exotics,” but they were often unsuccessful, “for want of their native shelter.”18 Her personification recalls her own homesickness and attempts to adjust in her new country, and she eventually became comfortable enough with her surroundings to attempt to introduce them to her garden, thereby actively bringing the bush into her domestic sphere. On meeting Georgiana for the first time, her neighbour, Mrs. Bussell, wrote, “Tea was ready, and on the table was a beautiful bunch of wildflowers, for her garden was not in order and she could not be without flowers in her room.”19 The outside world was brought into what was previously the stable centre amidst those dark green forests which had now become familiar - and even beloved - through the associations built up with the flora which they housed. Indeed, they had become as beloved as the domestic sphere itself. Given the mingling of these worlds - bush and settlement, inside and outside, English and Australian - it is scarcely surprising that images of floral entwinement are peppered liberally throughout Georgiana’s letters. Not only was this indicative of a growing attachment to her adopted land, it also revealed her increasing involvement with Mangles. Continuing her description of growing native plants, she wrote:
Jessica White
181
______________________________________________________________ The Purple creeper alone has consented to be domesticated, and has associated its beautiful Purple flowers with a very elegant Pink climbing Plant from Mauritius. I never saw it in England, therefore have sent you some seeds to entwine round the pillars of a conservatory. It is ever flowering with us.20 Her choice of words is laden with eroticism. The image of a vine curling around a conservatory pillar not only conveys the obvious connotations of entwinement, but also brings to mind the longstanding tropes of woman as ivy, clinging to the phallic male, and also as the serpent in Eden, a symbol that was conflated with dangerous and sexual femininity. Additionally, the phrase, “it is ever flowering with us” hints at perpetual orgasm. The erotic overtones of these phrases are evoked again a few lines later: “I must thank you for the beautiful Crimson species you sent me, which formed a very handsome variety in the union.”21 Although the context of this union cannot be determined, its the coexistence with the words “crimson” and “handsome” conveys a flirtatiousness that was absent from Georgiana’s previous letters to her family and friends. In other instances, Georgiana used words that were loaded with a suggestiveness that is difficult to disregard: I never ride out that it is not on your account. The other day, when in search for Nuytsia I had (the) most delightful success. We went (for) a very nice ride in a south easterly direction, following a small tributary stream to the Vasse. The banks were thickly studded with Banksia, Accaccia (sic) & the She-oak; the ground was adorned with the crimson flower of Kennedya, but not so profusely as it will be a week or two hence…I discovered a plant I have been almost panting for, a very small neat white blossom, on a furze looking bush.22 Molloy’s description of the richness of the vegetation creates a vision of a lush and fertile landscape. Again, her reference to the redness of the Kennedya, and the promise of it flowering further, has connotations of a flourishing sexuality, while the use of the word “panting” - jarring in a period where women were expected to keep their exhalations subdued - recalls the passion Georgiana harboured for her flowers, and which spilled into her literary relationship with Mangles.
182
Intimacy and Absence across the Globe
______________________________________________________________ 5.
Conclusion As a metaphor never states exactly what one means, but only infers through the transference of images, Georgiana’s intentions towards Mangles remain open to interpretation. However her choice of images, and the history of those images, would suggest that she was producing a peculiarly erotic subtext that would have, at the least, delighted and charmed her correspondent, just as it continues to delight her contemporary readers. And through the travelling of those images, and the other, more material facets of their relationship - the boxes, letters, words and seeds - the space between Mangles and Georgiana was filled with feelings of regard, affection, gratitude and interest. Without their positions on opposite sides of the globe and without the distance between them, Molloy and Mangles would never have discovered their intellectual and emotional intimacy.
Notes 1
Georgiana Molloy to Captain Mangles, 21st March 1827, Letter books 18251845 (manuscript), Battye Library, MN479A/1-2. 2 Cited in A Hasluck, Georgiana Molloy: Portrait with Background, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, 2002, p. 99. 3 Ibid. 4 Georgiana Molloy to Margaret Dunlop, Jan 12th 1833 (manuscript), Battye Library MN768. 5 Hasluck, p.129. 6 Molloy to Mangles, 21st November 1838, MN479A/1-2. 7 Molloy to Mangles, 25th January 1838, MN479A/1-2. 8 Molloy to Mangles, 21st March 1837, MN479A/1-2. 9 Molloy to Mangles, 25th January 1838, MN479A/1-2. 10 Ibid. 11 Molloy to Mangles, 21st March 1837, MN479A/1-2. 12 Molloy to Mangles, 25th January 1838, MN479A/1-2. 13 Molloy to Mangles, 21st November 1838, MN479A/1-2. 14 Ibid. 15 Molloy to Mangles, 25th January 1838, MN479A/1-2. 16 J Goody, The Culture of Flowers, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 234. 17 Molloy to Mangles, January 31st 1840, MN479A/1-2. 18 Hasluck, p. 208. 19 Hasluck, p. 237. 20 Molloy to Mangles, 25th January 1838, MN479A/1-2. 21 Ibid. 22 Molloy to Mangles, 1840, extracts, MN479A/1-2.
Jessica White
183
______________________________________________________________
Bibliography Goody, J., The Culture of Flowers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Georgiana Molloy: Portrait with Background. Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, 2002. MN479A/1-2. Letter books of James Mangles, 1825-1845 (manuscript). Battye Library, Perth, Western Australia. MN768. Papers of Georgiana Molloy. Battye Library, Perth, Western Australia.
Love Beyond Ethnicity: The Problematic Representation of Intercultural Relationships in British and Indian Cinema1 Elena Oliete Abstract Love and interpersonal relationships constitute a crucial factor in the construction of the individual’s social identity, as power relations imbued with issues of gender, class and ethnicity are always at stake. That is why the private intimacy of an intercultural love relationship becomes a public arena of both cultural intermingling and confrontation. Cinema, as a dynamic domain of culture, both reflects and participates in the construction of the complex relation between dominant and marginal groups within a society. In this sense, the analysis of the representation of interethnic love bonds on screen becomes a useful tool for understanding social hierarchies in a given context. Haunted by the feared phantom of miscegenation that may destabilise this hierarchical social order, representations of interethnic heterosexual love has been highly problematic. British cinema has tackled this issue in different kind of cinematographic productions, however it is in the films dealing with the imperial past that the clash between intimate and public matters reveals the complexity of the relationships between culture and power. Interestingly enough, the Indian cinematographic industry has also dealt with Anglo-Indian love relationships which mirror similar patterns of representation in their own system of dominant discourses. Based on the theories of identity and cultural studies by Du Gay, Gardner and Young I will study the representation of intercultural love relationships in both British and Indian films dealing with the Raj.2 In doing so, I will try to demonstrate how the cinematographic representation of intercultural relationships problematises the hierarchical construction of dominant social discourses of the community they stand for. Key Words: Britain, cinema, Colonialism, ethnicity, gender, identity, India, , intercultural intimacy, post-colonialism. ***** In the globalised world of the turn of the century, two fundamental processes seem to be converging: the gradual emergence of an international economic order and the inexorable spread of multiculturalism. Paradoxically, these phenomena are also provoking ever more intense ethno-nationalist passions in both developed and developing countries.3 In other words, while ethnic groups are increasingly exerting the right to both greater private and
186
Love Beyond Ethnicity
______________________________________________________________ public recognition of their identities, other sectors, dismayed by the growing pluralising of society, are launching vigorous attacks vindicating the historical exclusivity of their nationhood and culture. In the light of this reality, it will be the purpose of this paper to show the extent to which these two approaches are brought into conflict as a result of interethnic heterosexual intimacy. As I hope to show, romantic relationships of the type are clear indicators of the power structures within particular societies, especially when these relationships are seen as destabilising set hierarchies through the possibility of miscegenation. This is why, the representation of interethnic love in the media, more especially in cinema, has always been highly problematic. Basing this study on the theories of identity put forward by Du Gay, Gardner, and Young, I propose to compare the representation of intercultural love relationships in an illustrative selection of British and Indian films which look back to the times of the Raj as the basis of the construction for present-day national identity.4 In the age of post-colonialism, neo-imperialism, globalisation and free markets the “national imaginary,” to use Anderson’s phrase,5 is still constructed in terms of inclusion and exclusion.6 A community is formed by people who “share our way of life,” and consequently, those who differ from us are seen to threaten this community, and are thus relegated to the sphere of “otherness.”7 In view of this, identities are no more than contingent artificial constructs based on empty categories such as race, class, culture and nation, which include and exclude people according to the interest of the dominant group. In his article on race and psychology, Rustin explains the construction of racism as the empty category which is filled by the “schizoid mechanisms” of the mind. Melanie Klein explains the schizoid mechanisms of the human mind as a paranoid splitting of objects into loved and hated in which rational thought is absent. These mechanisms include: “the suffusion of thinking processes by intense, unrecognised emotion, confusion between self and object due to the splitting of the self and massive projective identification, and hatred of reality and truth.”8 According to Rustin, these mechanisms imply an irrational projection onto “the other” of the hated - or socially unacceptable - attributes of the self. In this way, “the effect of getting rid of bad feelings into the other is to allow the self to perceive itself as wholly good.”9 Rustin concludes that the unconscious mental processes of the mind in the identity formation of the individual interact with social processes to constitute categories of inclusion and exclusion.10 This combination of the mental - or private - and social - or public - has deep implications in the construction of identities based on race, but it is equally important in how it affects women.11 Mainly because of women’s association with reproductive roles, the female body has traditionally been associated to mother earth and the land.12 Hence, in patriarchal societies, women come to symbolise the “nation’s spiritual and material vitality… invoked to safeguard the existing
Elena Oliete
187
______________________________________________________________ order against the perils of modernity.”13 Consequently, female members of the community are conferred the role of transmitting and reproducing national and ethnic categories as well as maintaining the boundaries of these ethnic and national groups.14 Given this crucial connection between nationalism, ethnicity, gender and sexuality one can begin to understand why the issue of miscegenation has never been welcomed in societies which try to preserve their identity borders against foreign influences. These boundaries may be destabilised by members of mixed ethnic or cultural background whose “in-betweenness” does not conform to any of those pre-established artificial categories. Because in patriarchal societies the continuation of the family line is based on the paternal law,15 couples that bring together an “acceptable ethnic man” and an “outsider woman” are tolerated, as it is the woman’s cultural background that is sacrificed and not the man’s. Rutherford affirms that the Law of the Father functions as the guardian against miscegenation in order to propagate and maintain the community’s ethnic patrilineality.16 Hence the concern in patriarchal societies in keeping women’s choice of partners within the limits of their own community. In line with this idea, Gardner explains the pervasive myths that have always accompanied the inconsistent equation of racial mixing between blacks and whites in Western culture in general and the United States in particular: “miscegenation, or illicit sexual intercourse, between white males and black females that results in a mixed race progeny upgrades the black race to a higher intellectual capacity and responsiveness to Western culture, and hence is permissible. On the other hand, black male and white female sexual activity can only result in a progeny of lesser intellectual capability.”17 Likewise, in his analysis of miscegenation during the colonial period, Robert Young reaches the same kind of conclusion, arguing that the relationships between a white man and a non-white woman could be affected because “the white male, belonging to a strong, conquering race, (is) in a position of power.”18 Thus, even though the threat of miscegenation is never absent, there is a hierarchy of acceptance depending on which one - the male or the female partner - is the “outsider” member in the couple. In this sense, it is worth mentioning Daileader’s analysis on how women’s bodies are historically represented as the boundaries of the nation and how these discourses have created many cultural products dealing with the concept of “Otheophillia,” that is, the legitimate use of racist violence exerted towards both members of the interracial couple consisting of a black male and white female.19 Given the threat that interethnic love poses to the maintenance of the status quo in closed communities, there has been a relevant avoidance of the depiction of this kind of relationships in cinema, in spite of the growing visibility of mixed couples in society. More concretely, both British and
188
Love Beyond Ethnicity
______________________________________________________________ Indian nations apply the same kind of discourses of ethnic-nationalism and patriarchy in mainstream cinema. One of the main mechanisms that British cinema has employed for the construction of a national identity in the context of post-colonialism and globalisation is a nostalgic harking back to imperial times. Films recreating the age of the Empire proliferated during the 1980s, precisely the time when the Conservative party in power aimed at a revitalisation of the economy through the implementation of free market policies. These aggressive neoliberalist policies made national cultural boundaries more permeable to foreign contact. This, together with the waves of immigration Britain had “suffered” in the previous decades, fomented a feeling of threat to traditional British cultural identity. Increasing multiculturalism provoked the reactive effect of a sector in society of white Britons who viewed themselves as the only legitimate inheritors of the Isles.20 In cinema, films set in the past explore and reconstruct British identity by looking nostalgically to the years that witnessed the country as an imperial power. This is even more evident in the trend of Raj films, which depict the life and conflicts of the British in India. On the one hand, critics such as Salman Rushdie condemn Raj revisionism as “the artistic counterpart to the rise of conservative ideologies in modern Britain.”21 On the other hand, critics such as Davies or Higson view these films’ portrayal of the past as both alluring but also conflictive, especially in terms of gender, class and race relations.22 It is interesting to notice that a recurrent topic in these cinematographic productions is their portrayal of interethnic love as a source of trouble. In Heat and Dust (Ivory, 1982), A Passage to India (Lean, 1984) and the Jewel in the Crown (Morahan and O’Brien, 1984), for instance, intercultural relationships between Indian men and British women never reach the conventional romantic happy ending of comedies, adventure films or certain melodramas. Interestingly, it is invariably the white female characters that are castigated for trespassing the hierarchical boundaries of white patriarchal domination. Olivia (Greta Scacchi) in Heat and Dust is expelled from her own community and ends up living in isolation in the Indian mountains, being occasionally visited by the Nawab (Shashi Kapoor), her Indian lover, who often expressed his views of this relationship as “a revenge” upon the British. In A Passage to India, Adela (Judy Davies) returns to England alone, having been rejected by both British and Indian communities after her unfortunate friendship with Dr Aziz (Victor Banerjee). In this particular film it is worth noticing that allowance is made for a final reconciliation of the male bonding between Fielding (James Fox) and Aziz while it is clear that the heterosexual couple has no possibility of re-union. The worst case of punishment for the female heroine is that of Daphne Manners (Susan Wooldridge) in the TV series Jewel in the Crown, who is
Elena Oliete
189
______________________________________________________________ gang raped and subsequently dies when giving birth to her child after her love affair with the Anglicised Indian Hari Kumar (Art Malik). As against these dramatic presentations of doomed relationships, another TV series, The Far Pavilions (Duffel, 1984), takes a less alarmist view of interethnic romance by allowing its main couple to be finally united. Interestingly enough, in this particular case the person of colour is not the man but his lover, Anjuli (Amy Irving), an Indian princess. Even so, the narrative and representation of this love relationship are arranged in such a way as to render the final happy union acceptable before Western audiences. For one, Anjuli’s Russian background makes her only a half-Indian. Secondly, for all the make-up she wears to impersonate the character of Anjuli, this personage is very evidently played by a white American actress a fact that helps “soften” the interracial sex scene, a long-standing taboo in cinema.23 Even though both Anjuli and Ash (Ben Cross) have sex and eventually marry, the ending does not hint at the prospect of mix-breed offspring - such a possibility is left to the spectators’ imagination. Thirdly and most importantly, the portrayal of Anjuli as the stereotypical passive and submissive Indian woman who poses no threat for the reaffirmation of white patriarchal values embodied by the British hero, is crucial for the final marriage to be considered appropriate in Western eyes. In any case, the couple decides to settle in the Indian mountains, isolated from both British and Indian communities. It could thus be said that through their presentation of interethnic intimacy during Britain’s imperial past, British Raj films reveal the anxiety that intercultural love still poses to the construction of contemporary British identity in an increasingly multicultural world. Even though both the economic and political situation of countries such as India and the United Kingdom differ in many aspects, a significant parallelism could be drawn in terms of nationalistic identity representation in contemporary cinematographic productions of both nations. The urge to represent a coherent - and often jingoistic-national identity in some British films of the Conservative decade of the 1980s, finds a similar situation in India in the early 1990s. As a consequence of the economic liberalisation that followed the four decades of Nehruvian’s state-controlled protectionist “mixed-economy,”24 Bombay’s (now Mumbai) film industry underwent important changes. Labelled as “the (Indian) age of effortless abundance,” the 1990s produced films that depicted the themes and dreams of Indian yuppies and the middle classes.25 The display of middle-class wealth and consumption, together with globalising trends such as Western style clothing or Coca-Cola drinking, is accompanied “by a strong Hindu presence on the screen.”26 Addressed to an Indian spectatorship, but also to the profit-making market of the Indian diaspora (non-resident Indians or NRI), Hindi cinema of the 1990s and early 21st century “reconciled Hindu nationalism and
190
Love Beyond Ethnicity
______________________________________________________________ ‘Western’ style consumerism, becoming a site were both comfortably coexisted.”27 The Indian film industry seems to portray a coherent image of the “new nation” in the post-independence era. This imagined “Indianness” appears unified under the rubric of dominant north Indian Hindi-speaking culture as was the case of the dominant “Englishness” in the discourses surrounding the identity of the British nation. Thus, in spite of including elements of Western capitalist consumption, contemporary Indian films reaffirm “the supremacy - moral and practical - of India over the West.”28 Indian identity is celebrated and even turned into a myth, especially reaffirming the patriarchal family as the norm and projecting a representation of the Indian woman as “ideally modern, yet moral and chaste.”29 It is precisely now, in the new millennium, after almost five decades of postcolonial independence, that some Indian films dare to look back to preindependence times and revise past inter-cultural relations between Indians and Britons. As a “new born” nation, and hence more vulnerable to the permeating influence of Western culture, India seems to leave even less space to the representation of inter-cultural intimacy in mainstream cinema than Britain. This is the case of Lagaan, Once Upon a Time in India (Gowariker, 2001),30 and Kisna, the Warrior Poet (Ghai, 2005).31 Both films are set in the British Raj period, and both include a love relationship between an Indian man and a British woman. Interestingly, the “positive” cinematic portrayal of these love relationships derives from the male partner being the “insider” and the “outsider” member of the couple being a white woman, who has no problem in submitting to the man’s cultural background. Western or Westernised Indian women have frequently been portrayed in Indian cinema as sexually active female characters playing vamps or prostitutes in contrast to “pure” traditional Indian heroines. In Gangoli’s words, “by constructing the Anglo-Indian and the westernised as ‘other,’ the boundary between ‘us’ (the moral East/good Hindus) and ‘them’ (the immoral west/the AngloIndians) is more sharply etched out.”32 It is in this sense that the portrayal of white female characters in the films analysed is far more positive and hence love - yet not sex - between the interethnic couple is allowed. In both Lagaan and Kisna, the gori - white - girls who fall in love with Indian men are clearly attracted to Indian culture and they often appear dressed in saris and performing Indian dances while embracing the man of their dreams. This process of “Indianisation” allows the spectator to sympathise with these white characters. Even so, the interethnic union never transpires, as the hero finally chooses an Indian wife, and relegates his love feelings for the white girl to the realm of spirituality. The chorus of the main song in Kisna is repeated once and again along the film: “Nothing survives for ever but love.” Although this love evidently refers to the interracial
Elena Oliete
191
______________________________________________________________ couple’s feelings for each other, the fact that the story is set in the 1940s - a period of very tense relations between Britain and India, makes it impossible for the couple to remain in India. At the end of the film, Katherine (Antonia Bernath), the British girl, asks Kisna (Vivek Oberoi) to accompany her to Britain, but he decides to stay in his “new born” country and fulfil his duty towards his community by marrying his Indian fiancée and forming a traditional Indian family. The film ends with Katherine, now an old woman, returning to India, where she discovers that Kisna had died and that his ashes were thrown to the Ganges, more concretely in the place were they, as a young couple, had bathed together as a spiritual ritual of union (although not actual marriage). Katherine sets out her desire in her will that her ashes should be likewise thrown in the river so that they might be united for ever in the spiritual sphere. In Lagaan, the hero, Bhuvan (Amir Khan), is also caught between his love for a British woman and an Indian fiancée. Yet again, in this film, the British girl, Elizabeth (Rachel Shelley), is madly in love with Bhuvan but accepts the impossibility of their union and sacrifices her feelings for the welfare of the Indian couple. Bhuvan says and sings that his true love belongs to Gauri (Gracy Singh), yet some scenes show that he is deeply attracted to the gori girl. The irresistible attraction white women feel for the Indian heroes and their final rejection by the Indian lover in contemporary Indian films could also be analysed as a parody or subversion of the colonial stereotype that constructed the dark men’s avid sexual attraction for white women.33 Both films, then, allow for interethnic relationships but love is relegated to the realm of intellectuality and spirituality. Yet, sexual contact never occurs and consequently there is no threat of miscegenation. The hero fulfils his duty in choosing an Indian partner, usually portrayed as the traditional Hindu woman who, in being closely related to the land, will perpetuate true Indian identity by bearing Indian children. Thus, just as British films portrayed interethnic love relationships as highly problematic and a threat to the maintenance of Britishness, Indian films reaffirm the duty of Indians to remain within the boundaries of their community. For our increasingly globalised and multicultural world, cinematic representations of intimacy between people of different ethnicities still tend to underline the problematic aspects of such relations rather than their normalness. For all the liberalisation of the economy across the world, it could be argued that these filmic depictions of doomed romances point to current nationalistic cultural protectionism.34 Indeed, however different their cultural backgrounds, as a colonising and a colonised country, both Britain and India present parallel patterns in the filmic portrayal of imagined national communities.
192
Love Beyond Ethnicity
______________________________________________________________
Notes 1 I am indebted to Dr Chantal Cornut-Gentille D’Arcy and Dr Herrero for their helpful suggestions and the material they provided. Research towards this essay was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education, project no. BFF2001-2564, by the DGA (Ref. H12) and by Obra Social CAI “Programa Europa XXI.” 2 ‘Raj’ was the term used to refer to British imperial rule in India. 3 K Kumar, ‘“Britishness” and “Englishness”. What Prospect for a European Identity in Britain Today?’, British Studies Conference. Veliko Turnovo, March 1993, pp. 82-5. 4 Contemporary British Raj films are Heat and Dust (Ivory, 1982), A Passage to India (Lean, 1984), The Jewel in the Crown (Moranhan and O’Brien, 1984) and The Far Pavilions (Duffell, 1984), while India deals with the Imperial past in Lagaan (Gowariker, 2001), Kisna (Ghai, 2005) and Rang de Basanti (Mehra, 2006). 5 B Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso, London and New York, (1983) 1991, pp. 5-7. 6 See P Du Gay and S Hall, ‘Who Needs Identity?’, in Questions of Cultural Identity, S Hall and Du Gay (eds), Sage, London, pp. 1-18. 7 E San Juan Jr, Racism and Cultural Studies, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2002, p. 64. 8 M Klein in M Rustin, ‘Psychoanalysis, Racism and Anti-Racism’, in Identity: A Reader, P Du Gay, J Evans and P Redman (eds), Sage Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi, 2004 (2000), p. 187. 9 M Rustin, ‘Psychoanalysis, Racism and Anti-Racism’, in Identity: A Reader, P Du Gay, J Evans and P Redman (eds), Sage Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi, 2004 (2000), p. 189. 10 Rustin, p. 193. 11 San Juan, p. 61. 12 For further information on the subject, see S B Ortner, ‘Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?’, in Cultural Studies Reader, J Munns and G Rajum (eds), Longman, London, 1996 as well as, S Walby, ‘Towards a Theory of Patriarchy’, in The Polity Reader in Gender Studies, Polity Press Staff (eds), Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994, and G Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy. O.U.P., Oxford, 1986. 13 San Juan, p. 81. 14 San Juan, p. 85. 15 F Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, in Marxist Writers (1884) 2000, A Library of the Marxists Internet Archive, viewed on 26 February 2007, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/ originfamily/ch02d.htm.
Elena Oliete
193
______________________________________________________________ 16
J Rutherford, Forever England. Reflections on Masculinity and Empire, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1997, p. 149. 17 L Gardner, White/Black Race Mixing, Paragon House, Minnesota, 2000, p. 13. 18 R Young, Colonial Desire. Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race, Routledge, London, 1996 (1995), p. 108. 19 See C R Daileader, Racism, Misogyny and the Othello Myth. Interracial Couples from Shakespeare to Spike Lee, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, 2005. 20 P Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack, Routledge, London, 1998 (1987); J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, MacMillan Press Ltd, London, 1993 (1989). 21 S Rushdie, in British Cinema in the 1980s, J Hill (ed), O.U.P., Oxford, 1999, p. 99. 22 See F Davies in J Hill, p. 80-4, A Higson, ‘Re-presenting the National Past: Nostalgia and Pastiche in the Heritage Film’, in Fires Were Started. British Cinema and Thatcherism, L Friedman (ed), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1993, p. 123-8. 23 The use of white actors and actresses to play non-white roles was a common trait in the 1950s and 1960s in both American and British movies which involved an interracial relationship in their plot or else a plot of a halfcast “passing” from white and it seems that this trend was still present during the 1980s. Young, p. 95; R Wiegman, ‘Race, ethnicity and film’, in The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, J Hill and P C Gibson (eds), O.U.P, Oxford, 1998, pp 163. 24 J Virdi and C K Creekmur, ‘India: Bollywood’s Coming of Age’, in Contemporary Asian Cinema, A T Ciecko (ed), Berg, New York, 2006, p. 133. 25 D Raheja and J Kothari, The Bollywood Saga, Aurum Press, London, 2004, p. 117. 26 Virdi and Creekmur, p.136 27 Ibid. 28 G Gangoli, ‘Sexuality, Sensuality and Belonging: Representations of the ‘Anglo-Indian’ and the ‘Western’ Woman in Hindi Cinema’, in The Cinematic ImagiNation: Indian Popular Films as Social History, J Virdi (ed), Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, New Jersey and London, 2005, p. 159. 29 G Gangoli, p. 157. 30 This film enjoyed great popularity in India and abroad and was even nominated as best foreign film in Hollywood’s Oscar Awards.
194
Love Beyond Ethnicity
______________________________________________________________ 31
Rang de Basanti (Mehra, 2006) is a very recent and popular film which portrays an interracial relationship between an Indian man and a British woman. However, although the film has many flashbacks to the times of the British Raj, the main narrative is set in the present, that is why I preferred not to include this film in this analysis. However, it is interesting to notice that this couple is not allowed a happily-ever-after ending either, even in presentday-India. 32 G Gangoli, p. 145. 33 Gardner, p. 21. This is also portrayed in Forster’s book and Lean’s adaptation A Passage to India, in which the British lawyer employs the following statement as an argument for the rape accusation of Adela against Dr. Aziz: “I want to state what I believe to be a universal truth: the darker races are attracted to the fairer but not vice versa.” 34 Other filmmakers coming from a multicultural background and financing their films with trans-national corporations, are also producing other kind of films that intend to portray a positive representation of intercultural couples which celebrated the blurring of nationalist boundaries. The case of Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham (2002), Bride and Prejudice (2004) and, especially, Paul Mayeda Berges’ Mistress of Spices (2005) could be an interesting subject of further analysis on this topic.
Bibliography Anderson, B., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, London and New York, 1991 (1983). Daileader, C. R., Racism, Misogyny and the Othello Myth. Interracial Couples from Shakespeare to Spike Lee. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, 2005. Du Gay, P., ‘General Introduction’, in Identity: A Reader. P. Du Gay, J. Evans and P. Redman (eds), New Delhi Sage Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, 2004 (2000), pp. 1-6. Du Gay, P. and S. Hall, ‘Who Needs Identity?’, in Questions of Cultural Identity. S. Hall and P. Du Gay (eds), Sage, London, p. 1-18. Dyer, R., The Matter of Images: Essays on Representations. Routledge, London, 1993.
Elena Oliete
195
______________________________________________________________ Engels, F., Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, in Marxist Writers, (1884) 2000, A Library of the Marxists Internet Archive, viewed on 26 February 2007, . Gangoli, G., ‘Sexuality, Sensuality and Belonging: Representations of the “Anglo-Indian” and the “Western” Woman in Hindi Cinema’, in The Cinematic ImagiNation: Indian Popular Films as Social History. J. Virdi, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey and London, 2005, pp. 143-162. Gardner, L., White/Black Race Mixing. Paragon House, Minnesota, 2000. Gilroy, P., There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack. Routledge, London, 1998 (1987). Higson, A., ‘Re-presenting the National Past: Nostalgia and Pastiche in the Heritage Film’, in Fires Were Started. British Cinema and Thatcherism. L. Friedman (ed), University of Minesota Press, Minneapolis, 1993, pp. 109129. Hill, J., British Cinema in the 1980s. O.U.P., Oxford, 1999. Hill, J. and P.C. Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, O.U.P., Oxford, 1998. Kothari, J. and D. Raheja, The Bollywood Saga. Aurum Press, London, 2004. Kumar, K., ‘“Britishness” and “Englishness”. What Prospect for a European Identity in Britain Today?’. British Studies Conference. Veliko Turnovo, March 1993, pp. 82-96. Lerner, G., The Creation of Patriarchy. O.U.P., Oxford, 1986. Ortner, S. B., ‘Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?’ in J. Munns and G. Rajum (eds), Cultural Studies Reader. Longman, London, 1996. Rustin, M., ‘Psychoanalysis, Racism and Anti-Racism’, in Identity: A Reader. P. Du Gay, J. Evans and P. Redman (eds), Sage Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi, 2004 (2000), pp. 183-200.
196
Love Beyond Ethnicity
______________________________________________________________ Rutherford, J., Forever England. Reflections on Masculinity and Empire. Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1997. San Juan, E. Jr., Racism and Cultural Studies. Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2002. Solomos, J., Race and Racism in Britain. MacMillan Press Ltd., London, 1993 (1989). Virdi, J. and C. K. Creekmur, ‘India: Bollywood’s Coming of Age’, in Contemporary Asian Cinema. A. T. Ciecko (ed), Berg, New York, 2006, pp. 133-143. Walby, S., ‘Towards a Theory of Patriarchy’ in The Polity Reader in Gender Studies. Polity Press Staff (eds), Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994. Wiegman, R., ‘Race, ethnicity and film’, in The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. J. Hill and P. C. Gibson (eds), O.U.P, Oxford, 1998, pp. 158-168. Young, L., Fear of the Dark. Routledge, London and New York, 1996. Young, R., Colonial Desire. Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. Routledge, London, 1996 (1995).
Audiovisual References A Passage to India. David Lean, 1984. Bend It Like Beckham. Gurinder Chadha, 2002. Bride and Prejudice. Gurinder Chadha, 2004. Heat and Dust. James Ivory, 1982. Kisna, the Warrior Poet. Subhash Ghai, 2005 Lagaan, Once Upon a Time in India. Ashutosh Gowariker, 2001. Mistress of Spices. Paul Mayeda Berges, 2005. Rang de Basanti. Rakesh Omprakash Mehra, 2006. The Far Pavilions. Peter Geoffray Duffel, 1984. The Jewel in the Crown. Christopher Morahan and Jim O’Brien, 1984.
Bye-Bye to Romance?: Representations of Victorian Love in David Lean’s Hobson’s Choice (1954) Esther Pérez-Villalba Abstract Surprisingly, David Lean´s Hobson Choice (1954), winner of several prestigious national and international awards, remains largely unexplored in scholarly terms.1 Based on the play by Harold Brighouse (1916) and set in late Victorian Salford, this comedy revolves around the lives of widower Henry Hobson and his three daughters, and especially around the apparently atypical “love” story between Hobson’s eldest daughter, Maggie, and her father’s exploited employee Will Mossop.2 This paper will consider representations of “love” and patterns of affection as experienced by these two characters. It will analyse how the issues of class and power relations interwoven into this “love” story work to empower Maggie, and to question romantic notions of love that were very much in vogue during the Victorian period. This paper also considers how and to what extent this “love” relationship, set in a given industrial and capitalist framework (concerned with self-interest and enterprise), is sustained by a reversal of deep-rooted gender roles, as well as by a (literal and metaphoric) re-mapping of traditionally gender-bound private and public spaces. Key Words: Class, David Lean, femininity, film, gender, Hobson’s Choice, romantic love, Victorian period. ***** David Lean’s Hobson Choice (1954) is a black and white, filmic adaptation of a play by Harold Brighouse (1916).3 Set in late Victorian England, the plot revolves around the lives of alcoholic widower Henry Hobson (Charles Laughton) and his three daughters, Maggie (Brenda De Banzie), Alice (Daphne Anderson) and Vickey (Prunella Scales). It is especially concerned with the “love” story between the protagonists: Hobson’s eldest daughter, Maggie, a resolute, middle-class “spinster-to-be” and her father’s exploited employee Will Mossop (John Mills), a gifted but naïve and almost illiterate working-class shoemaker. Winner of the 1954 Golden Berlin Bear and of the 1955 BAFTA Film Award, this film still remains largely unexplored in scholarly terms.4 This paper aims to shed some critical light upon this work by analysing the “love” story between the main characters Maggie and Will. To this end, I
198
Bye-Bye to Romance?
______________________________________________________________ propose to examine the film’s treatment of this particular romance in relation to some mid-to-late Victorian hegemonic discourses on love, femininity and masculinity. This will enable me to determine to what extent these two characters’ “romantic” relationship is a conventional Victorian one. A good number of well-known novelists of the Victorian period (e.g.: the Brönte sisters, Jane Austen and/or Elizabeth Gaskell, to name just three) invariably used romantic love and passion as a major driving force in their works.5 As Houghton notes, the idea that men and women were born ‘for the chief purpose of falling in love, or being fallen in love with’ was a rather typical Victorian (one). The whole attitude is exactly what we call Romantic, and it was, in fact, a direct inheritance from Romanticism: partly from its naturalism, which found the instincts good and appealed to the feelings or the heart as the supreme guide to conduct and wisdom; partly from its idealism, whether Platonic or chivalric.6 What stands out most conspicuously in Hobson’s Choice is the extent to which its approach to love appears to differ from this definition of romance: initially, there is no room in the film for passion or romanticism in the relationship between middle-class Maggie and working-class Will.7 Maggie, tired of working in her father’s shoe shop for no salary, and angry at being categorised as “passed marrying age” because she is thirty, decides to start a new life.8 In a move which suggests a surprising degree of determination for a woman of her time, she chooses to break with her past life by forcing marriage upon Will, her father’s most skilled worker, and a man she knows will be easily-led and the weakest half of the couple. The important point here is that Maggie’s (personal) decision to marry entails going directly against her father’s will and orders - and in the process, against hegemonic Victorian discourses which supported the idea that “obedience … (was part of daughterly Christian duty.”9 This relationship, set up so suddenly by Maggie, is totally artificial: for one because, initially at least, it is patent that Will has no feelings for her (he has a working-class girlfriend), and secondly, because it is motivated exclusively by Maggie’s self-interest and thirst for money. For Maggie, marriage is no more than an entrepreneurial partnership - the road to business and economic success. This concern with business, money and work is evident in her daring declaration of “love” for Will, which is anything but romantic. Indeed, Maggie’s cold, analytic, and assertive explanation of intentions is so extreme that it is almost comic: -Willy? -Yes, Miss Maggie.
Esther Pérez-Villalba
199
______________________________________________________________ … -Come up, come with me. Shut the door. Come here. … -I’ve been watching you for a long time, and everything I’ve seen, I’ve liked. I think you’ll do for me. -What may, Miss Maggie? -Will Mossop, you’re my man. (Almost speechless, he suddenly needs to sit down) -What do you want me for? -To investing. You’re a business idea in the shape of a man … My brain and your hands will make a working partnership. -Partnership…that is different (relieved). I thought you were asking me to wed you. -I am … I’ll tell you what Willy. It’s a poor sort of woman that will stay lazy when she sees her best chance slipping from her. -I’m your best chance? -You’re that Willy … You’re going to wed me, Will.10 This intimate link between the couple’s “love” story and money and business is also visually, ironically emphasised throughout the film by the mise-en-scène: whenever they appear on screen showing signs of sentimentalism, tenderness, or subtle seduction tactics, the frame is filled in by high, smoky chimneys, dirty rivers and brick factories which suggest the working and economic activity surrounding both the city and their - mostly entrepreneurial relationship. Given its business-oriented, unromantic nature, Maggie’ and Will’s relationship can be said to recall the marriages of convenience, still common in the 19th century and usually arranged by parents to improve their families’ social and/or economic status.11 As Houghton stresses, A great proportion of the marriages … did not take place from love at all, but from some interested motive, such as wealth, social position, and other advantages; and in fact it is rare to see a marriage in which true love has been the predominating feeling on both sides.12 Taking into account these words, it would seem that the film’s depiction of Victorian “love” is probably closer to reality than the passions described in novels of the time. In fact, considering the film’s recurrent emphasis on the intertwining of economic profit, business and marriage, it appears that Maggie’ and Will’s attachment is very much a typically English,
200
Bye-Bye to Romance?
______________________________________________________________ mid-to-late Victorian, middle-class kind of arrangement. Whereas Jeffrey Weeks sees marriage as “a vital organising factor in the development of middle-classness” in Victorian Britain, Houghton notes the link between the British middle classes and the advancement of the Industrial Revolution: “so immersed in business, what counts is tangible results - profits, … personal advancement, professional and social. The test of value, including that of thought, becomes utility in the narrow sense.”13 On the other hand, however, Hobson’s Choice can also be said to grossly fictionalise Maggie’s marriage to Will by, for example, having the coming-together of the couple fully organised by the potential bride who, in Victorian society, would have been the person with the least say in the deal. In fact, this partial “fictionalisation” of mid-to-late Victorian society seems to affect crucially some representations of femininity and masculinity as embodied by Maggie and Will. Thus, the success of the protagonists’ “love” story is presented as depending upon a significant reversal of gender roles. By means of such a manoeuvre, hegemonic Victorian notions of public and private space are remapped, both literally and metaphorically.14 For example, Maggie is not a weak, dependant and sentimental creature, but an extremely practical woman endowed with rationality and analytical thinking characteristics more often than not related to masculinity in the Victorian period. Her determination, entrepreneurial spirit and capacity to lead people to do what she wants are so strong that, as the pun in the title suggests, the only alternative people are offered is to follow Maggie Hobson’s choice.15 This film is also relevant because it conspicuously reflects on the fact that “what happens in domestic and private life is not immune from the dynamics of power, which has often been seen as definitive of politics.”16 Maggie turns to marriage in order to annoy her father and escape unpaid labour. Yet, she deeply redefines this potentially-oppressive-for-women institution by challenging the traditional division of labour between the sexes: Maggie forces Will to undertake the domestic chores, which he accepts quite willingly.17 Moreover, she is the one in charge of decision-making and the one who uses her brain to solve problems: when her father refuses to pay her and her husband-to-be a fair wage for their work in the family shop, her solution is to open a rival shoe-shop. To this end, she manages to get a loan from one of her father’s most distinguished customers. Similarly, it is she rather than Will who successfully bargains the price for their new home-shop. Ultimately, she even manages to convince her father to allow her sisters to marry the men they love. This said, and however extreme the role-reversal portrayed in the film may seem, the characterisation of Maggie as a strong and determined woman is in fact likely to be well-grounded in Victorian reality. As the examination of different primary texts suggests, some traditional accounts of the Victorian period are only “half-true portraits of the Victorian age,” for
Esther Pérez-Villalba
201
______________________________________________________________ they simplistically misrepresent “Victorian women … as badly educated, somewhat silly girls, evolving into docile or dominated wives, devoted mothers, and meddlesome ladies.”18 Research shows that “there is no single reality of what a lady was” and that Victorian (middle-class) women “displayed a wide variety of personalities and characters.”19 In fact, unlike what has traditionally been thought of “truly well-reared Victorian girls understood that swooning, helplessness, and sentimentality deserved ridicule, not admiration,” and “ladies were eager participants, not observers on the sidelines, in the life and achievements of the Victorian age.”20 Although from a feminist point of view Maggie’s empowerment is presented as inverting the traditional gender dichotomy, it could also be argued that the female protagonist’s position of power in the couple is due less to the reversal of gender characteristics and roles than to class and class differences. This is certainly so at the beginning of the film, when it is the combination of Maggie’s determination and her middle-classness that overwhelm the naïve, semiliterate and pliable Will. From her more knowledgeable stance, she obliges/persuades him to take decisions he is not initially willing to assume (e.g. marrying her and breaking up with his previous girlfriend, leaving his master Henry Hobson, etc.). As the story advances, however, it turns out that Maggie is not so self-interested and exploitative. In other words, as the film progresses we find that power positions in the couple gradually become more balanced - although they clearly remain circumscribed to middle-class parameters: early in the film, Maggie acts as Will’s mentor in a “reverse” Pygmalion-like sort of relationship. As a conscientious “pupil” eager to learn, her husband improves his literacy and, in the process, he gains in self-esteem and authority in the relationship. The new, transformed Will is largely “Maggie-made”: she is the one who convinces him that he is a very gifted craftsman who does not deserve to be exploited by his mean master. Ultimately, she is also responsible for his labour and personal success. But Will is not the only one to undergo transformation. Although less noticeable at first sight, Maggie also goes through an important, twofold evolution. On the one hand, she experiences a gradual but steady physical and aesthetic transformation. Maggie is initially presented as “a proper old maid” - as her father nastily reminds her. Indeed, her very long but rather grey hair and worn-out face lead spectators to believe she is much older than her actual age. Nor do her unadorned garments and Puritan-like hairstyle rejuvenate her in any way. And yet, as the film progresses and her relationship with Will develops, this old-maid image is gradually shed in favour of a more colourful and fashionable one, represented in her change of garments. Even her hair, now done in ringlets, looks blonder and her face, with a little make-up, younger.
202
Bye-Bye to Romance?
______________________________________________________________ Such patent changes in Maggie’s appearance and physique ultimately suggest her acceptance of some of the beauty tenets of the time. In the process of getting to know Will and winning his heart, it appears that Maggie learns to enjoy wielding established beauty-canons to her advantage and, by the same stroke of hand, it denotes a new strategic approach to love on her part. She makes greater and sharper use of her feminine wiles as Will becomes more self-confident and therefore more powerful in the relationship. In fact, Maggie’s changed aspect seems to be a deliberate and well-planned move on her part to keep Will’s interest in her alive. In other words, her device is to keep the couple going - not so much through bossiness - now that Will is more self-confident - but by means of an added dose of alluring femininity. Apart from her physical transformation, Maggie also undergoes a significant change in attitude, especially as her previous unsentimental and rather tough behaviour finally cedes, allowing some traces of sentimentality and tenderness to emerge. From this perspective, it could be argued that Maggie’s efforts to improve her looks and appearance are not motivated exclusively by her aspirations to succeed economically and socially. On the contrary, her new “feminine-self” hints at the existence of genuine romantic feelings lurking below her façade of will power and determination. Thus, after the wedding ceremony, Maggie rather “off-handishly” discards her bride’s bouquet only to, on second thoughts; rescue one of the flowers from the sink - perhaps as a memento of that special day. This surprising gesture on her part seems to denote the internal battle going on in her mind between two different drives: utilitarianism on the one hand and dreamy romance on the other. Ultimately, she even addresses tender words to Will as she kisses him: “you great soft thing,” she tells him against the background sound track of a romantic melody. To conclude, in its depiction of the Victorian past, the film Hobson’s Choice seems to deliberately distance itself from those ultra-romantic, nineteenth-century, novelistic accounts of attraction and love by presenting an apparently most atypical couple - Maggie being the boss and decisionmaker and Will the meek and obedient companion. As I hope I have demonstrated, however, Maggie’s strong personality, her drive and determination were not such strange character-traits for a woman at the time. Her ambition and desire for success were, likewise, more reflections of the values of the middle classes than a grossly exaggerated misrepresentation of a Victorian woman. Maggie initially uses marriage as a “means to an end,” from there its apparent portrayal in the film as a totally unromantic affair. And yet, the relationship in which she and Will get involved turns out to be a two-way learning process which actually transforms both of them. Thus, as Will develops more self-confidence so too does Maggie become less of a bully; her character softens and her old-maid airs and looks are replaced by a
Esther Pérez-Villalba
203
______________________________________________________________ more delicate and feminine demeanour. But does this “levelling out” of power relations in the couple imply that one day, that is, when Will has truly become his own master, Maggie will step down and assume a traditional feminine role? This is the question that Hobson’s Choice leaves unanswered.
Notes 1
D Lean, Hobson’s Choice, Homevision, UK, 1954. In this paper I will use just the title to make reference to the film. 2 H Brighouse, Hobson’s Choice, 1916, The Project Gutenberg, viewed 14 February 2007, . 3 Lean, op. cit. and Brighouse, op. cit. 4 Sargeant’s book is one of the very few sources that makes reference to this film - even if very briefly. A Sargeant, British Cinema: a Critical History, BFI, London, 2005, pp. 5 & 178. 5 Interestingly enough, fiction and romance have often been intimately linked and “the rise of romantic love more or less coincided with the emergence of the novel.” A Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy. Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992, p. 40. 6 WE Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, Yale University Press, New haven and London, 1975, pp. 374-375. 7 Some sources note that, in mid to late Victorian England, inter-class marriages were not that uncommon, mainly due to “the struggle for social advancement … (and) wealth” (WE Houghton, p. 186). As Weeks also points out, “There are even signs, by the end of the nineteenth century, of increased intermarriage between the skilled worker and other strata of the working population, a sure indication of a diminishing sense of social distance.” J Weeks, Sex, Politics, and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800, Longman, Hong Kong, 1989, p. 74. 8 Although in the Victorian period many women married well before that age, it was not uncommon to find (especially middle-class and upper-middleclass) women who married when they were thirty or at an older age (JM Peterson, Family, Love and Work in the Lives of Victorian Gentlewomen, Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis, 1989, p. 10). In fact, there was a considerable “rise of the average age of marriage in the nineteenth century” (Weeks, op.cit. p. 29). 9 JM Peterson, op.cit., p. 8. 10 Lean, op.cit. 11 Ibid., p. 3. 12 Houghton, op.cit., p. 381. 13 First quote: Weeks, op.cit., p. 28. Second quote: Houghton, op.cit., p. 111.
204
Bye-Bye to Romance?
______________________________________________________________ 14
For a discussion of Victorian ideas on the distinction public/private see Peterson, op.cit., p. x. 15 The phrase “Hobson’s Choice” is an English idiomatic expression which means “no choice apart from the given one” (Wikipedia, viewed on 11 December 2006, ). The meaning of this expression becomes a pun when used as the film’s title, for its main protagonist is called Maggie Hobson. This title then suggests that, as noted in the main text, there is no alternative apart from accepting Maggie Hobson’s Choice. 16 S Moller Okin, ‘Families and Feminist Theory: Some Past and Present Issues’, in Feminism and Families, H Lindemann Nelson (ed), Routledge, New York and London, 1997, p. 17. 17 Although finding men participating in domestic chores was rather rare in the mid and late Victorian period, males were then much more domestic than we may imagine and, certainly, much more than they had been in the eighteenth century, when “the coffee house had often been the centre of man’s social life.” Houghton, op.cit., p. 342. 18 Peterson, op.cit., p. ix. Peterson bases her study on the analysis of a large number of diaries and letters written by/for the “mothers, sisters, wives and daughters of the rising professional men of Victorian England.” Peterson, op. cit., p. 2. 19 Ibid., p. 32. 20 Ibid., p. 13, 33.
Bibliography Brighouse, H., Hobson’s Choice, 1916, The Project Gutenberg, viewed 14 February 2007, . Giddens, A., The Transformation of Intimacy. Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992. Houghton, W.E., The Victorian Frame of Mind. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1975. Moller Okin, S., ‘Families and Feminist Theory: Some Past and Present Issues’, in Feminism and Families. H. Lindemann Nelson (ed), Routledge, New York and London, 1997, pp. 13-26. Peterson, J.M., Family, Love and Work in the Lives of Victorian Gentlewomen. Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis, 1989.
Esther Pérez-Villalba
205
______________________________________________________________ Sargeant, A., British Cinema: a Critical History. BFI, London, 2005. Weeks, J., Sex, Politics, and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800. Longman, Hong Kong, 1989. Wikipedia. ‘Hobson’s Choice’, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc, 22 February 2007, viewed 22 February 2007, .
Audiovisual References Hobson’s Choice. David Lean, 1954.
SECTION IV
Challenging Intimacies
Exploring Strangeness In the Plurality of Teacher-Student Relationships1 Momoyo Mitsuno Abstract School teachers, who work for others, are exposed to a reflexivity that makes them vulnerable, as they are both employees and persons. This experience of vulnerability is missing in the experience of ‘Otherness’. This paper explores strangeness that teachers experience in teacher-student relationship in the context of contemporary Japanese schools. It focuses on cases of teacherstudent love, as sexuality particularly highlights teachers’ vulnerability to understanding themselves as teachers and as persons. Although love is regarded as positive and crucial for teaching and learning pedagogically, sexualised teacher-student love meets a contradiction. A recent report on the increased number of sexual harassment cases in Japan is an example of this contradiction. While the relationship of ‘Otherness’ keeps teacher-student interactions normal and in order, physical involvement in teacher-student love makes the taxonomy of school interactions cease to function. The paper explores some subjective experiences of teacher-student relationship. It introduces teachers’ private writings shown in public space, that is, blogs written by self-proclaimed teachers, as a way to reach teachers’ personal reflexivity. These blogs express the strangeness between teachers’ roles, the bloggers’ experience of being a teacher, and their self-knowledge. The paper argues strangeness as an emerging way of making a relationship with others and with oneself. Key Words: Strangeness, teacher blogs, teacher-student relationship. ***** 1.
Teacher-Student Love Teachers do not teach by themselves. Teaching occurs when there is a meaningful communication between a teacher and a student.2 Teaching needs another. However, would it be possible to keep a teacher-student relationship when the relationship involves diverse personal desires set in motion by living individuals? The case of teacher-student love is an empirical site of the question, as love supplies a pedagogical bond on the one hand, but its bodily dimension, namely sexuality, brings complexity to a teacherstudent relationship on the other. The recent scandal of a sudden increase in teachers’ sexual harassment cases in Japan3 makes it evident that a teacherstudent relationship loses its socially sanctioned normality and starts to claim
210
Exploring Strangeness in Teacher-Student Relationships
___________________________________________________ its hedonistic aspect when it turns sexual. The problem is not just about onedimensional relationships of teachers exploiting their position to make students into objects of desire. Teacher-student love that accompanies sexuality also posits a question about what draws individuals into a teacherstudent relationship. We make sense of who we are in a teacher-student relationship by referring to the ethical and political existence of others. The notion of Otherness is helpful to understand; it is the difference between a teacher and a student that makes teacher-student interactions meaningful in their relationship. One teaches or learns through one’s experience of the other. One such argument of teacher-student relationship is seen in a Lacanian analysis of teacher-student love. It suggests that a teacher-student relationship is not just a relationship of social roles, but that it involves one’s subjective desire for the other between a teacher and a student. Love is necessary in a pedagogical teacher-student relationship. Drawing on the Lacanian notion that love is insatiable because it announces the disjunction of the sexes, Daniel Cho argues that love has a positive effect on the teaching and learning of knowledge.4 Desires for the other, including sexual desires, inspire a teacher’s teaching and a student’s learning. Out of desiring for the other, the creative force of eros emerges in a teacher-student relationship. It is desiring love, not caring love, that makes one become aware of one’s position and move beyond one’s position toward a “collective subjectivity” through inquiry. “Love becomes a path for both to seek knowledge from the world together.”5 Cho’s inquiry into the erotic teacher-student relationship suggests a social creativity between a categorical teacher-student relationship and an “imaginary space of love.”6 However, the analysis of teacher-student love from a Lacanian perspective assumes that there exists a meaningful correspondence between a teacher-student relationship and subjects who are involved in the relationship, and suggests that such a correspondence would stay as it is happily ever after as long as there is a meaningful existence of the other. As is obvious in a case of teacher-student sexual relationship, an interpersonal bond between a teacher and a student is not always safeguarded by the logic of Otherness, but may rather mutate itself into a personalised relationship through one’s bodily involvement in the other. Sexualised teacher-student relationships rifts teachers from the representativeness of the social relationship. Instead, a teacher’s desire to engage with an individual student makes his/her teacher experience a site of vulnerability, not empowerment, because the teacher has to seek unity in his/her experience between behaviours and personality as teacher and person. A teacher-student love can liberate individuals involved in the relationship from a categorical relationship, but the love that tolerates a sexual relationship can also
Momoyo Mitsuno 211 ______________________________________________________________ disorganise the relationship and provide anxiety to a teacher, such as the fear of losing his/her job as a teacher or the fear of losing trust from control over other students. It is not difficult to find such teacher’s experiences of vulnerability when we look at blogs written by in contemporary Japanese schools. The bloggers write about their teacher experiences in a context where there was an epidemic of teachers’ sex scandals.7 When the bloggers address sexuality in their writings, the meaning and experience of being a teacher becomes vague or somewhat strange. In what follows, I look at some unusual writings from teacher blogs in Japan which appear to be attempts by teachers to cope with their relationships with students while being aware of an emerging discourse of asexualised teacher-student relationship in their experiences. 2.
Material Source and Conceptual Framework Before exploring these blogs, I introduce first how I chose to use blogs as a data source in this paper and second, how I carried out the exploration conceptually. First, I look at blogs to find teachers’ subjective experiences, although the use of blogs as source materials came accidentally to me as a researcher who usually enjoys reading personal blogs of both friends and strangers. A researcher of online diaries, Viviane Serfaty, argues that online diaries are “a way to find out how other people fashion their lives.”8 Likewise, blogs communicate not just records of individuals’ activities, but also records of those who discover themselves as subjects in their personal lives. I started to become concerned about and interested in the strangeness of the teacher blogs because there seems to be no ‘ideally’ reflexive selfwritings in the blogs. Instead, the unexpectedness of the blog writings suggested that the blogs did not blindly adhere to particular processes. The blog entries I introduce in this paper are selected from a Japanese blog community site with an educational focus, where I conducted research from March 2006 to August 2006.9 The blogs are selected in terms of their popularity in the blog ranking on the portal site; a high ranking indicates that a blog is being read widely and updated frequently. The blog entries in the paper are my English translation of the original Japanese, and they are built in this paper as hyperlinks Secondly, I use a seemingly inconclusive word, strangeness, as an analytic concept for this paper because the word seems to capture the experiences this paper explores. While feeling strange about someone or something is often an individual’s personal sense, sociologists have suggested that a personal sense of strangeness can be located in the way individuals relate to others. The idea of strangeness was explored earlier by George Simmel in his sociology of strangers. Simmel’s sociology of strangers asks what a stranger is. In his notion, a stranger does not represent
212
Exploring Strangeness in Teacher-Student Relationships
___________________________________________________ non-participation from society, but is an organic member of society who experiences an intimate relationship from a distance. Strangeness brings coolness and objectivity to a close relationship with others.10 Recently, Jeffrey Alexander further developed the notion of strangeness, applying it to a person who experiences marginality but is not disadvantaged, dominated, anomic, nor deviant. In arguing what he calls ‘cultural structure’ in the social production processes of strangeness, he points out that strangeness is closely linked with a ‘standard of interpretation’ that makes actors ‘rational’. Strange actors carry coolness and distance to a social space, where relationships with others are normalised and rationalised, and strangeness creates ‘subjective ambiguity’ in a person in his/her interpreting reality.11 Simmel’s and Alexander’s ideas of those who are strange suggest that for something or someone to be strange, there needs to be a meaningful relationship between oneself and others. In other words, strangeness is not a resistance or a challenge to a meaningful relationship, but rather in an integral aspect of that relationship. Strangeness occurs to an intimate relationship, a relationship where one finds the very uniqueness of one’s engagement with others and with oneself. My use of strangeness in this paper employs both Simmel’s and Alexander’s ideas. But the context of strange teacher blogs is two-fold: strangeness occurs to bloggers’ engagement with their experience as a teacher, which is expressed in their blogs, and to an engagement arising from a communication between the bloggers and me as a reader in expressing and reading the experience. 4.
Sexuality in Teacher Blogs The issue of sexuality is critical in a teacher-student relationship. As teachers work closely with students, the closeness is both ethical and physical. It would be odd to think of the two separately in a real existing teacher-student relationship. Nevertheless, the physical dimension of closeness is rarely translated into a sexual closeness in the context of school culture. For example, in the Japanese cultural context, a close teacher-student relationship means not an intimate relationship, but rather one of trust. This culture has facilitated teachers not only to teach students intellectually, but also to guide them emotionally and physically.12 Closeness between a teacher and a student in this sense is a symbolic closeness, and does not involve personal closeness. However, this symbolic closeness between a teacher and a student becomes ambiguous in teacher blogs when they write about teachers’ sexual harassment behaviours. While the bloggers demonstrate clear rational thinking about the difference between a close relationship of trust and a sex offence, they also address some uneasiness with becoming close to students that haunts their reality of teaching.
Momoyo Mitsuno 213 ______________________________________________________________ A blogger, “Elementary School Teacher,”13 says that whether a teacher’s act is an act of sexual harassment or not depends on whether he/she has a good relationship of trust with the student involved. Despite his definition, a tension of sexual harassment is expressed when the blogger writes about physical interactions in school, such as teaching Physical Education. He feels at a loss as to how to distinguish teaching physically from making a sex offence; according to the blogger, there is no legal criteria he can draw on to avoid an accusation of sexual harassment. Instead, harassment in his behaviours is contingent on the judgement of other people. Most of this blogger’s writings are scenes of his everyday job in school, and do not tell much about his personal life. However his school life and personal life merge when the blogger writes of his professional concern about keeping teaching free from the risk of becoming an offender. In one blog entry, the blogger cautions himself when he reads a teaching material in sexual terms, and suspects himself as a potential sexual harassment teacher. The blogger becomes vulnerable to his self-understanding as a teacher and a person. The vulnerability of the blogger comes not only from the fact that the legitimacy of his professional behaviours is vulnerable to the judgement of other people, but also from himself, where his capacity as a teacher and his personal sexuality are not separate. “I don’t mind something sexual. This is the truth I feel inside. But I don’t want to be dismissed because of sexual harassment or other indecent behaviours.”14 The crisscrossing of his personal interests and his professional interests results in his disbelief in his own moral judgement and actions as a teacher. A close engagement with a student can make a teacher either a committed teacher or a pervert in a classroom. The line that divides the two is clear: whether sexuality is involved in the teacher-student relationship or not. However, while the distinction is clear, this distinction creates a disjuncture within the blogger who holds his capacity as a teacher on the one hand and personal sexuality on the other. A personal fear of sexuality leads to a fear of pursuing a duty as a teacher. Another blogger, ‘Super Teacher,’15 writes an episode regarding a harassing phone call to school which was answered by a female teacher. After the accident of a sexually harassing phone call, the blogger writes: “We had a big laugh in the staff room. It happens often.” The sentence expresses a stressful situation the blogger went through which was alleviated by laughing and taking it easy. The blog entry ends with the following statement: “Be careful, everyone.” Careful of what? Careful of taking a phone call. Although students are not involved in this episode, the episode illustrates the blogger’s fear of taking phone calls from outside school because phone calls from outside can bring school-unowned contexts (such as sexuality) to schoolowned contexts. The blogger’s entry indicates his vulnerability to and the fear of encountering sexuality in school.
214
Exploring Strangeness in Teacher-Student Relationships
___________________________________________________ Meanwhile, one teacher blogger who seems to have found a clever solution, ‘Hopeless Teacher’16, presents himself as a teacher tough on sexual harassment and freely expresses some hedonistic aspects of his personal life at the same time. The blogger shares with other teacher bloggers an opinion about the importance of building trust with students while avoiding accusations of sexual harassment. However, while concerned about an occurrence of sexual harassment, this blogger often writes about sexual topics in his blog. What allows the blogger to express his sexuality in public is his claim that his blog is not his job but his personal hobby, even if he presents himself as a teacher in the blog and even if his hobby appears to be quite engaged in Otaku culture, which sexualises school girls as cultural commodities.17 The sexual topics in the blog are often followed by the blogger’s descriptions of his hopeless life in both private and public, such as his failures to find a girlfriend and his embarrassing classroom teaching experiences. The writings of his sexual hobby and personal character flaws convey the blogger’s message: the fact that a teacher has a particular sexual orientation or personal attributes does not make the teacher a sexual harasser, as long as sexuality and teaching are kept separate in his work. When a reader suggests that the blogger might as well find a partner from amongst his students, he rejects the idea, explaining that he is just not interested. Instead, he says that he never touches the body of a female student because it is “suicidal.” Episodes involving personal sexuality written by ‘Elementary School Teacher’ and ‘Hopeless Teacher’ indicate a kind of personal reaction to their own negotiation of sexuality in students-related situations. While addressing the importance of making good relationships with students, both bloggers try to eliminate sexual elements in that relationship and become aware of their own sexuality. Their blog writings try to interpret this experience in terms of what is public and what is private in their blogs. However, there is some strange quality in this interpretive activity. The blogs introduce to the writings of teacher experience other elements such as hobbies and other personal concerns. These elements intrude the blogger’s concern about teachers’ vulnerability into a teacher-student relationship, which turns a story of a vulnerable worker into a writing that is strange. Hopeless Teacher particularly stands out in this strange element. In a blog entry, Hopeless Teacher talks about one of sex offence incidents that occurred in 2004, a male teacher who molested his male student. Instead of criticising the morality of this teacher, the blogger points out this teacher’s sexual orientation and his failure to make a distinction between public life (teacher) and private life (homosexual Lolita). The blog entry writes that in terms of unconventional personal traits, there is not much difference between this sex criminal teacher and the blogger, but that no matter how hopeless a teacher may be as a person, he/she is not stupid as a
Momoyo Mitsuno 215 ______________________________________________________________ teacher as long as he/she never involves students in his/her personal sexuality. His management against sexual harassment does involve his management of personal sexuality. Then, his writings of teachers’ sexual harassment seem to be written from his personal perspective, not a professional perspective. For instance, an episode of “Don’t be tricked by schoolgirls” is itself a strange story about a former teacher (the blogger’s friend) who was seduced and humiliated by his favourite student. In this story, it is students, not a teacher, who are the harassers. The episode describes the cruelty of a schoolgirl and her friends who tricked the former teacher. The teacher in the episode is described as someone who miserably resigned from his teaching job, switched his career to the more impersonal sector of IT industry and developed a distrust of women. The blog entry starts with “What image do you have about high school girls?” and ends with “Due to his request, I decided to report the truth about school girls. If you have any horror stories about schoolgirls, please email me.” These sandwiching sentences in the blog entry personalises a writing about a teacher’s sexual harassment experience. The blogger writes that he wrote the entry because he had to “smash the nation-wide fantasies about schoolgirls”, which comes as a concern of his hobby, Otaku culture. He invites readers to join his personal concern, “please email me.” While the blogger tells a story of a poor former teacher who shared an intimate moment with a school girl and subsequently resigned his job, he also observes the story from the perspective of Otaku culture. With the blogger being both a story-teller and an observer of a cruel story, the cruel story of cruel schoolgirls yields no cruel conclusion in a blog, but the cruelty becomes obscured in the blogger’s Otaku fantasies about school girls and in his communication with blog readers (“please email me”), which brings some absurdity to the blog entry. This episode relates a story of students harassing a vulnerable teacher, but it is not written as if this were a counter-discourse to a popular view of teachers’ sexual exploitation of their students. Rather, the experience is written in relation to his hobby. In this blog, an intimate relationship with a student relates to his personal hobby, not to his professional concern, which makes Hopeless Teacher’s blog strange. In what follows, I will make an extended focus on this particular blog, Hopeless Teacher, to further consider how his personal engagement with his hobby becomes strange in negotiating with teachers’ problematic situations with sexuality by looking at his other blog entries that write of sexual harassment. 5.
A Strange Blog of a Strange Teacher ‘Hopeless Teacher’ talks about direct and indirect sexual topics as the blogger passionately talks about his hobby, Otaku culture, which praises the sexuality of young females and the dubiousness of religious cults. This
216
Exploring Strangeness in Teacher-Student Relationships
___________________________________________________ eccentric aspect of his private hobby often cuts in the blogger’s story of being a teacher. In “Dame Kyoin’s students are also maniacs”, he talks about some of his students showing their interests in his hobby of religious cults. The blog expresses the blogger’s satisfaction of being understood by his students, and ends with the blogger’s self-pity about the fact that female students are not interested in his hobby of religious cults. His hobby plays a significant role in his writings and makes his blog personal. But the sexual and eccentric element of his hobby makes his persona strange. In the blog entries; “Dame Kyoin wants to speak to Ero Kyoin”, and “Dame kyoin condemns Baka Kyoin,” Hopeless Teacher attacks the teachers who became national news for their sex offences. He attacks the teachers not for their immorality but because of their professional vulnerability: “a teacher is subject to misunderstanding of any kind.”18 This claim about the tension between teaching and sexuality becomes strange when he makes the following claims: “Go to a sex shop like me,” or “Please rent a porn video if you want to see underpants.” His writings of sexual harassment in conjunction with his hobby of Otaku culture resonate strangely with the psychoanalytical claim about the association of a teacher-student relationship with desires. “But this is a fairy story. If practiced in real life, it is criminal!” The blogger is not torn between a person happy in his Otaku culture and a teacher fearful of sexuality in real social situations. Rather, this blogger, like other teacher bloggers do, writes of the uneasiness of being a teacher and being a person at the same time. But he does so not in a dysfunctional manner, but rather successfully, by writing a personal blog as a teacher and achieving a persona in this blogging capacity, though the subject in this blog does not represent a particular identity, but rather stays strange. 6.
Loosening Boundaries The teacher bloggers I have examined are by no means transgressing what school teachers are expected to be, but they are strange and remind us of what Simmel and Alexander call strangeness, a quality that enters into an intimate relationship. However, while Simmel and Alexander talk about the feeling of strangeness toward “others,” the strangeness of teacher bloggers is their strangeness toward themselves. What is particularly strange about teacher blogs? My answer is: the strangeness of the bloggers’ selfhood. While reaching students and making a trust relationship with them are crucial to teaching, it takes a teacher’s intense energy to make a commitment to being someone other than just being oneself. Being close to a student makes a teacher vulnerable to his/her personal emotions. Especially, sexual teacherstudent love highlights the contradiction between playing a role and being a person. Teacher bloggers in this paper seem to negotiate their vulnerability to this contradiction in themselves by taking a distance, namely, by writing their own personal stories and introducing personal dimensions such as a
Momoyo Mitsuno 217 ______________________________________________________________ hobby. A blog creates a space which encompasses the role of a teacher, the bloggers’ lived experiences and their reflexivity. It allows a blogger an objective capacity to observe himself while engaging with the volatile quality of teacher-student relationships. But this objectivity does not come from laws that criminalise teachers as paedophiles or from schools that provide teacher identities. It is a personal objectivity created in a blogger’s personal engagement with his relationship with students and with himself. The bloggers express the uneasiness of sexuality in a teacher-student relationship from their personal dimension, such as Hopeless Teacher’s hobbies of religious cults and Otaku sexuality, Elementary School Teacher’s concern about the sexual element of Chinese characters, and Super Teacher’s fear of answering a phone call from outside school. In writing about sexuality in a teaching-learning context, the bodily process of normalisation and rationalisation in education is brought to the self-awareness of bloggers, which does not distance the bloggers from their social role as teachers, but rather makes them strange by observing their identities as teachers from another personal dimension. The meaning of teaching, which comes from teachers’ commitment to teaching and engagement with students, loosens the friction of public and private in this strangeness. A personalised way of being a teacher, i.e. a teacher blog, allows a blogger to have a strange reflexivity about teacher-student relationships. Furthermore, as strange teacher bloggers bring their self-awareness of being a teacher to a categorical teacher-student relationship, a student becomes a subject, not an object, of education.
Notes 1
I would like to thank the participants of the Persons, Intimacy and Love conference for their interdisciplinary feedback. I also thank Dr. Kevin McDonald for his encouragement to pursue my interest in strangeness and Dr. Tim Marjoribanks for his feedback in preparation of this paper. Finally, I would also want to thank the editors of Intimate Explorations, Ms. Beatriz Oria for her patience and help with editing and Dr. Alejandro CervantesCarson for his generous comments in the revision of this paper. 2 B Gowin, Educating, Cornell University Press, 1981; R Vanderstraeten, and G Biesta, ‘How Is Education Possible? Pragmatism, Communication and the Social Organisation of Education’. British Journal of Educational Studies, vol. 54, 2, 2006, pp.160-74. 3 Mainichi Daily News, ‘Hundreds of Teachers Sacked for School Sex Offences’. Mainich Daily News, 17 May 2005, sec. Domestic, p. 8. 4 D Cho, ‘Lessons of Love: Psychoanalysis and Teacher-Student Love’. Educational Theory, vol. 55, 1, 2005, pp. 79-95. 5 Cho, p. 83. 6 Cho, p. 84
218
Exploring Strangeness in Teacher-Student Relationships
___________________________________________________ 7
Mainichi Daily News, op. cit. V Serfaty, ‘The Mirror and the Veil: An Overview of American Online Diaries and Blogs’, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2004. p. 125 9 Burogumura, viewed on 15 April, 2008, . 10 G Simmel, ‘The stranger’, in On individuality and social forms, D N Levine (ed), University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1971, pp. 143-149. 11 J C Alexander, ‘Rethinking Strangeness: From Structures in Space to Discourse in Civil Society’. Thesis Eleven, vol. 79, November, 2004, pp. 87104. 12 G Le Tendre, ‘Guiding Them On: Teaching, Hierarchy and Social Organisation in Japanese Middle Schools’. Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 20, 1, 1994, pp. 37-59. 13 Itsudemo ippai ippai, viewed on 15 April, 2008, < http://ultramarutti.blog26.fc2.com/blog-entry-97.html/>. 14 Itsudemo ippai ippai, viewed on 15 April, 2008, < http://ultramarutti.blog26.fc2.com> . 15 Tenka muteki no chugaku kyoshi, viewed on 15 April, 2008, < http://ameblo.jp/ayuku0926/>. 16 The original blog is located at http://blog.livedoor.jp/damekyouin/. But the blog was closed in October, 2007. 17 For a reference, see for instance a popularly developed knowledge of the word at wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otaku, viewed on 15 April, 2008 18 Dameyo dame dame dame kyoin, viewed on 15 April, 2008, < http://blog.livedoor.jp/damekyouin/ >. 8
Bibliography Alexander, J. C., ‘Rethinking strangeness: from structures in space to discourse in civil society’. Thesis Eleven, vol. 79, November 2004, pp. 87104. Cho, D., ‘Lessons of love: psychoanalysis and teacher-student love’. Educational Theory, Vol.55, issue 1, 2005, pp. 79-95. Gowin, B., Educating.. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y, 1981. Le Tendre, G., ‘Guiding them on: Teaching, Hierarchy and Social Organisation in Japanese Middle schools’. Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 20, issue 1, 1994, pp. 37-59. Mainichi Daily News, ‘Hundreds of teachers sacked for school sex offences’, 17 May 2005, sec. Domestic p. 8.
Momoyo Mitsuno 219 ______________________________________________________________ Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, ‘Kyoushokuin No Waisetsu Kouitou Nikakaru Choukaishobuntou No Gutaiteki Joukyouni Tsuite (Situations of the Disciplinary Punishment Cases Concerning Teachers’ Indecent Behaviours’), 2005, viewed on 26 June 2007, <www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/houdou/17/08/05081202/006.htm>. Serfaty, V., The Mirror and the Veil: An Overview of American Online Diaries and Blogs. Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2004. Simmel, G., ‘The stranger’, in On Individuality and Social Forms. Donald N. L. (ed), University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1971, pp. 143-149. Vanderstraeten, R. and G. Biesta, ‘How Is Education Possible? Pragmatism, Communication and the Social Organisation of Education’. British Journal of Educational Studies, vol. 54, issue 2, 2006, pp.160-74.
I’ll Look After You if You Look After Me: Friendship, Family and Intimacy In a Hostel for Homeless People Rebecca Brown Abstract This paper is from the research project “(No) family (No) food - an oral history project with homeless people and service providers” (NFNF), which is a component part of “Changing Families, Changing Food”, an interdisciplinary research programme funded by The Leverhulme Trust at the University of Sheffield. NFNF uses oral history interviewing with staff and service users in a large hostel for homeless people which provides accommodation for homeless men and women aged 18 upwards. Recent years have witnessed a change in the provision of accommodation for homeless people, moving from dormitory-style accommodation providing the basics of a meal and a bed aimed primarily at single homeless men, to supported housing with an emphasis on the provision of packages of support and resettlement. In light of these developments, this paper will explore relationships of care within a supported housing setting. It seeks to explore the carer/cared for interplay between staff and residents and amongst residents, and how bonds, friendships and intimate relationships are formed and maintained through a mutual exchange of support. This paper will also address the frequency and intensity of which these bonds occur and the importance of the formation of a fictive family within these bonds. Key Words: Care, fictive family, homelessness, intimacy, love. ***** 1.
Introduction This paper is based on preliminary results from the research project “(No) Family (No) Food” which is a component part of the “Changing Families, Changing Food” Programme at the University of Sheffield. “Changing Families, Changing Food” is an inter-disciplinary research programme funded by the Leverhulme Trust. The Programme is organised into three strands: pregnancy and motherhood; childhood and family life; and family and community. It is in this third strand, family and community, where “(No) Family (No) food” is included. “(No) family (No) food” uses food as a lens through which to understand the constructions of relationships of care with the aim of
222
I’ll Look After You if You Look After Me
______________________________________________________________ exploring the relationships between staff and service users, and amongst service users of supported housing for homeless people. It expands on a previous study conducted by Graham Smith in the mid-nineties in a hostel for homeless people in a Scottish city. The study found that service users and staff use food to construct fictive kin and family relationships. It also indicated that food and feeding amongst staff and service users were underpinned by a number of ideological perspectives, including those that were reminiscent of the deserving poor, the family as a shelter in a hostile world and food as charity as well as more recent developments including the provision of food as dividing professional bodies from clients’ bodies.1 This new study seeks to examine these findings further and in light of recent developments in the provision of accommodation for homeless people by using memories of food as a key way of exploring relationships within supported housing for homeless people. This paper will use data from this study which reveals insights into bonds of care, friendships and intimate relationships within the hostel. Homelessness is a challenging concept which holds many definitions. Broadly, homelessness is a problem faced by people who do not have a place to live that is, “supportive, affordable, decent and secure.”2 There is much debate over a precise definition of homelessness, however it is widely accepted that homelessness is more than lacking a roof or rooflessness. A home is not just a physical space, it provides, “roots, identity, security, a sense of belonging and a place of emotional wellbeing.”3 Rough sleepers are most visible, however the vast majority of homeless people live in hostels, squats, bed and breakfasts or in temporary and insecure conditions with friends and family.4 Homeless people are amongst the most vulnerable people of society, and suffer from a combination of poor housing, unemployment, low income, bad health, poor skills, loneliness, isolation and relationship breakdown.5 In 2006, Government street counts estimated that there were about 502 people sleeping outside in England on any one night.6 In 2005, Local Authorities in England accepted 100,170 households (not individuals) as unintentionally homeless and in priority need, who therefore were owed the duty to be housed by their Local Authority.7 These official figures, however, do not include people staying in hostels, bed and breakfasts, squats, on friends’ floors and in overcrowded accommodations; these people are therefore ‘hidden’ from official statistics. Crisis8 estimate that there are around 380,000 ‘hidden homeless’ in Great Britain.9 Provision of services for the single homeless population in Great Britain is predominantly provided by the voluntary sector. Over recent years however voluntary sector provision has been changing, due largely to the implementation of “Supporting People” in 2003.10 Large city centre hostels
Rebecca Brown
223
______________________________________________________________ are making way for smaller cluster units aimed at specific groups. The large hostels that remain are changing their emphasis from institutional care to support and resettlement and the single homeless population has been fragmented into groups decided by their vulnerability. The Department for Communities and Local Government11 illustrate the changes in supported housing by the development of hostels describing how; Supported housing for homeless and potentially homeless single people used to be dominated by large hostels which were targeted at single homeless men and offered few services beyond the provision of a meal and a bed. This picture has changed considerably over the last 15 years. Many of the larger hostels for homeless people have closed. Newer schemes tend to be smaller in scale and have greater emphasis on resettlement. Provision has also become more specialised, being targeted at specific groups within the homeless population.12 2.
Methodology This study is based in a supported housing hostel with this contemporary emphasis on packages of support and resettlement into permanent independent living. The hostel is in Sheffield and is run by a national Christian charity. It provides supported temporary housing for up to 50 residents, aimed at anybody who is homeless and above 18 years of age. It is fully catered and each resident has their own bedroom sharing a landing with usually 4 other residents, where they share a kitchen and bathroom, except for one landing where the bedrooms are en suit. Each resident is also assigned a key worker, who provides support and guidance through their resettlement program. Residents can stay at the hostel for up to two years. Oral history interviews were carried out with both staff and residents between September 2006 and February 2007. With the permission of the manager, staff were initially approached and invited to be interviewed. Following this, and with the help of staff who had already taken part in the study, residents were invited to participate. Residents were approached to take part via staff or by approaching them in the common room of the hostel. Most residents who were approached were keen to take part, and liked the idea of telling, recording and archiving their life stories. Residents in particular showed much enthusiasm for this prospect. Many participants spoke of their enjoyment of the interview process and thanked the researcher for the opportunity to tell their stories. Some of the younger participants, however, at first approached the interview with slight unease, as they did not believe that they had much of story to tell, and were slightly puzzled as to why such a large institution in the city, the University, would want to know
224
I’ll Look After You if You Look After Me
______________________________________________________________ their story, however, this emotion paralleled excitement about making and being a part of historical records. On approaching each participant, the researcher used a private room in the hostel to explain in full the research and what participating would involve. Potential participants were given information packs to keep, and appointments were made with those willing to participate. Of the staff asked to be interviewed one declined, and of the residents two declined. Interviewees were asked to sign consent forms prior to the interview, where they were given the opportunity to ask the researcher any questions, it was also explained to the interviewees that they could withdraw from participating at any time without giving reason. Interviews were carried out in either the training room or the interview room in the hostel, which were deemed the most appropriate and private rooms that could be accessed, however inevitably in this setting there were interruptions to the interviews. All interviews were recorded and transcribed in full and field notes taken. Pseudonyms have been use throughout this paper to protect the privacy of the interviewees, all of whom gave consent for direct quotes to be used.13 Thirteen interviews were completed, including six with staff and seven with service users. This paper will concentrate on six of the interviews conducted with three staff and three residents, chosen because of lengthy discussions relating to relationships and friendships. A. Residents Jake is 22 and has been staying at the hostel for eight weeks. Simon is 44 and has been staying at the hostel for seven weeks. Lorraine, in turn, is 52 and has been staying at the hostel for five weeks. Jake and Simon share the same landing, which is the landing with the en suite rooms. They are in the same friendship group and spend most of their time with each other and the others who share that landing. B. Staff Katie is a project worker, in her 20’s and has been working for the hostel and in the homelessness sector for 18 months. Lauren is also a project worker in her 20’s and like Katie has been working for the hostel and in the homelessness sector for 18 months. Ann, who is the hostel chaplain, has been working at this hostel for five years; her involvement in the homelessness sector has been for more than 20 years. 3.
Making a Home, Making a Family Staff and residents form close bonds of support and friendship, and as a home is created within the hostel so too are fictive families. Bonds are developed through circumstance, common attitudes and the need of economic
Rebecca Brown
225
______________________________________________________________ and social protection within the hostel. Sharing living arrangements, meal times and hobbies and pooling resources allows the fictive family to be maintained and be used as a successful tool in the ongoing dynamic of an “us” versus “them” (meaning other residents) mentality of hostel life. The hostel acts as a temporary home for the residents who were asked about their feelings of its homeliness. They believed that it is the people at the hostel that make it feel like home. The feeling of home was further enhanced for residents Jake and Simon because they have been able to form close bonds and recreate the idea of a family with each other and the people they share their living space with, in a united front, against other residents. Jake has re-created a family with residents who share his living space, which has enabled Jake to call the hostel his home. Jake: This is now my home. Wherever I live I class as my home, it’s just that simple. My mum’s home will always be a home if I need one. But this is now my home for now until I get my own place. A lot of people won’t class this as their home. I will because I live there [sic]. Researcher: What makes it homely for you then? What is good about here that makes it home? Jake: Where I am here? The landing I’m on. It’s like a little family up there now with us, Richard, Trevor, Me, Simon, and hopefully, Paul…when we get him on there when new guy leaves. So then that will be five of us. Researcher: So what is it about that flat that makes you feel it’s homely for you? Jake: It is not the place itself. It is the people that I live with. I am lucky to be on there and it took me quite a lot effort to get me sen [sic]14 put onto that floor. It were [sic] worth the effort because it’s like a little family. I mean today we just bought 150gm tobacco between us, that is going to last us about 2 weeks anyway, but on Thursday, there is going to another 100gm turned up because I get paid and Simon gets paid. Researcher: Right ok. So when you get paid, you all buy stuff to share? That must work out very well. Jake: It does for us. But other landings are like, “have got this or got that?” We’re like “no.” It’s what we decided to do, chip in, we are together, because that saves on your pocket and you don’t have to buy it on your own. Researcher: You said that it’s like a little family? What makes it a little family?
226
I’ll Look After You if You Look After Me
______________________________________________________________ Jake: Simon is dad; me, the mother, Richard and Trevor are the kids, there you go. That is the order of the things. I like to clean and I like to cook. So I do most of that. Researcher: What makes Steve the dad? Jake: Because he is pain in the arse and a twat and tells everybody what to do.15 In Jake’s opinion he is able to call the hostel home because of the people he lives with. He believes them to be a small family who have specific family roles. He uses the metaphor of the family to describe how he is able to create a home at the hostel. This familial formation fashions a sharing of trust, which allows these residents to pool their individual limited resources and therefore stand a better chance of coping within the hostel and to stick together against other residents. Jake and Simon were asked why they believe they have been able to form such close bonds with the people they share a landing with. Both Simon and Jake answered that this was because they all have a love of football and that they belong to the same group within the hierarchy of hostel life: the drug users at the bottom, the drinkers and then everybody else. Simon: Well it is simple as, because the majority of people in here are drinkers or they take drugs, while me I love football, I live and breathe football, and so do they. Researcher: Are they Blades fans as well? Simon: No they’re not, they are Wednesday fans, but still?16 17 In the same way Jake describes their close bond: Mainly it’s like, everyone in here are like alcoholics or drug users. And we are not. None of us are. None of us have drink problems. We’ve all had issues with violence somewhere along the lines. But other than that really, we’re all clean and sober 90% of the time, we occasionally get too drunk. But we deal with that, by sleeping. But just, none of us will steal or rob off somebody in here.18 Staff at the hostel too, endeavour to create a homely environment and recreate the family. They were asked how they attempt this and answered on two levels. Firstly, on a practical level, adding items such as tablecloths and flowers to the tables in the dining room, having carpet, and the residents having their own bedroom. Secondly, staff believe that the home is created
Rebecca Brown
227
______________________________________________________________ by the atmosphere that forms a family like environment within the hostel. Katie explains: I think it is pretty homely, compared to other hostels. It is a nice hostel. It is very clean apart from the odd bod [sic]19 but…and staff have made it really homely, because it is more like a family environment. That is mainly because we are all somehow interrelated. All the staff. Because we all get on. We talk to the residents like their human, you think it would happen anywhere. You chat with them and talk to them straight in the way they can understand rather than how you think you need to talk to them on the same level. Erm… I think, people sometimes because it’s a homely atmosphere, people find it difficult to leave. It is loneliness, when you move out. You have got your own place. It’s great, because you don’t have to live here anymore with rules and blah, blah, blah, but people come back all the time just to say hi and just to hang around. Because as staff I really do think we have made a big effort to make sure it is their home, and we always say to them ok, it is not your home, not as you want it to be but it is your home for now. It is where you live, and as much as you can make your room your own and be yourself. It is difficult because we have to ensure that does not affect other people and health and safety. Erm… but, more than anything it is the staff and the atmosphere that makes it what it is.20 Therefore the family-like atmosphere is created by the staff. It is this that Katie believes makes the hostel homely for residents. Adding to this Ann and Katie both feel a sense of motherhood towards the residents which adds to the sense of creating a family and intensifies their bonds of care. Ann and Katie feel they have to take on the responsibility of the family for the residents and give them a sense of being cared for. For example, Ann explains how and why she cares for some residents over others: Some you think are awful, there are those hard to work with but you still have a liking for them. Particularly some teenagers, you know, for me they could be my children. I suppose that gives you an extra thought about how would I want somebody to treat my kids, and I suppose I push the mile further when they’re concerned because I think they have got a future ahead of them, if you can break that
228
I’ll Look After You if You Look After Me
______________________________________________________________ cycle. It will maybe let them get into employment and into accommodation and get them on their feet.21 Katie also believes she has a duty to mother some residents which strengthens the bond of care within the caretaker/cared for relationship. …There is not a running theme erm…may be it is. Yes. May be it is because erm…people that I don’t think can look after themselves, who I think need someone to love them. I think maybe that’s it, may be the people that I wish I could reverse their life and change it then it would be their parents actually give a shit. I think they’re the ones you form more of an attachment to. Because, you want to mother them or care for them, because, you can see how much damage has been done. I am not saying that they are not part…that they are just someone that things happen to. I know that they are their own person they can make their own life choices, especially when they reach adulthood, which they are supposed to be here. But some people are teenagers, they are teenagers it is bizarre.22 Ann and Katie are trying to give the residents a family. However this might be reciprocal, in that the residents create a family for the staff, as well. For example, not only do Ann and Katie become mothers to the residents, but the residents are becoming children to them and therefore giving Ann and Katie a sense of purpose, of being needed and belonging. This is particularly significant for Katie. The hostel has given her a meaning and structure to her life that before was missing. Katie began working at the hostel after volunteering on Christmas Day; here she describes the events leading to her volunteer work. Erm…well, I volunteered on the Christmas Day, because I, erm…I had a fall out with my dad. Erm…my sister was travelling around the world. So I did not have anywhere…well I did have somewhere to go but I chose not to. Erm… instead, I decided I was going to be the martyr, and stay on my own at Christmas, erm…and wallow in self pity. So I was in my student house, so I was like I’m staying here, and then as I was walking through the middle of the town I stopped to get a Big Issue, and then the guy said, “What are you doing for Christmas?” I said, “Oh nothing, I’m going to be on my own.” Because he said, “Are you going to be with your family?” I said,
Rebecca Brown
229
______________________________________________________________ “No I’m not I’m going to be on my own.” He was like, “Oh… I’m going to be on the street.” And I was like, “Well you just totally put that into perspective.” You know I mean no matter how much…I did not go home obviously, but I thought have some perspective. At that moment I didn’t feel like I could go home but I have a loving caring family and I have a home, more importantly. So I rang here and said, “Are you doing soup runs or anything like that.” Because I thought that they did do things like that and spoke to a chaplain and she said, “Come down on Christmas Day if you want.” So I did…23 Since her mother’s death, Katie has been lacking direction and stability. She had often switched jobs, changed university courses and failed courses/modules. Katie had no real anchor in her life, which was further exaggerated at Christmastime. It was here that her troubled time was made to feel less significant by comparing herself to those who are homeless. Katie was able to find comfort in this. This seems to be the turning point for Katie. Therefore the family that Katie was missing was replaced by the hostel, and the purpose to her life was discovered in helping and mothering others. 4.
Finding and Making Love Hostel life for some residents had been a time of reflexivity and change, of questioning and ambivalence, and of despair and integrity. This was especially apparent in the life stories of Lorraine. Lorraine had arrived at the hostel directly from leaving a painfully abusive and violent relationship of more than 20 years. She was extremely candid about her experiences in this relationship, and of her emotions during the abuse. She described in detail instances of psychological and physical abuse at the hands of her expartner, yet she also described her feelings of love and responsibility for him. Lorraine was experiencing a particularly reflexive point in her life, at the hostel she was for the first time in 20 years able to sleep at night, able to talk openly about her life, and able to form relationships with others outside of the abusive relationship. Lorraine was also able to fall in love. Lorraine had known Chris for five weeks. Chris lives on the streets and usually spends his nights in a tent in a graveyard just outside of the city. Chris is an alcoholic and has a history of violence and he is banned from all night shelters and hostels in the city because of his violence. However Lorraine believes she is his saviour as he is hers. Lorraine spends many nights with Chris in his tent, and believes she sleeps best when he is next to her on the streets than when she is alone in the hostel. Chris holds Lorraine’s hand and cuddles her; he has also bought her flowers.
230
I’ll Look After You if You Look After Me
______________________________________________________________ I never thought I would meet anybody else. I thought I’m going to be on my own, which never bothered me, because I thought I’ve just had enough of men. And the first weekend I were here I met Chris, he’s Welsh, he’s been in the army and at first I didn’t like him because he drinks a lot. But I’ve got to know him and I know why he drinks. He’s homeless, and I’m bringing him down off drink now, I know it’s not the right thing to do but when you’re homeless and you’re walking the streets, there’s no where for you to go, you just turn to it. I never thought that I’d ever meet anybody, I mean he’s a lot younger than me, he’s only four years older than my daughter. I’m not going to let myself go too deep because, I mean I’m 13 years older than him, it’s a big difference. I act young for my age, but he’s a brilliant guy, brilliant. I slept with him last night he’s got a tent, in the church yard. I slept rough with him because he’s made up with cold, he weren’t very well, and he said to me, “I can’t take this life any more, I want to end it.” So then I started crying, I said, “oh no, you can’t go,” so I said, “I’ll stop with you tonight,” and he were brilliant then, and said thank you for stopping with him.24 Lorraine feels uneasy about her new relationship, Chris’s violence and drinking remind her of the relationship she has left, however the feelings of love and intimacy outweigh the negative feelings she has about Chris. Chris offers Lorraine feelings and experiences she thought she would never have, and small gestures of intimacy are exaggerated at this fragile stage for Lorraine. Chris is so different he’s so gentle and kind, I’m not used to it you know. All time I’m think will he change, will he turn. I mean I never thought John would but he did. But Chris isn’t like that I don’t think. He paid for me to go in a bed and breakfast, and that was the first time I’d slept with him. But he was so kind, we had a bath and then we sat on the bed and he were platting my hair. And it were like, I’ve never had a guy like that before, he’s so kind. You know when your walking, I mean when I used to walk with John he’d be a mile in front, we’d never hold hands or anything like that, But Chris he’s holding my hand all time, or putting his arm around me and kissing me. And when I leave him, like this morning, he kissed me. It’s so…like I think “wow is this really happening to me.”
Rebecca Brown
231
______________________________________________________________ 5.
Conclusion By exploring the relationships of staff and residents in the hostel, it is possible to gain an insight into how and why bonds of care are constructed. Residents and staff are able to create a home in the hostel which is achieved in the main by forming fictive family relationships. For residents this is an important way of coping with hostel life and is a benefit both economically, as residents are able to pool resources, for food and tobacco for example, and socially, as residents are able to form a united front against any hostility. These familial relationships can also provide the much-needed support at this difficult life point. For staff family relationships, beliefs and roles are also significant. They seek to provide familial bonds with residents, as it is what they believe to be lacking in their lives. Staff have sought to create mother/child relationships as a way of fulfilling the residents, but also as a way to help themselves feel worthwhile in the harsh reality of their often disenchanting everyday work. Intimate relationships are also important in the construction of bonds of care which was particularly important for Lorraine, who had formed an intimate relationship with a fellow homeless person who provided her with much-needed feelings of love. However it is also important to note that these relationships, whilst intense and important in the lives of residents, are also incredibly fragile and short-lived. Lorraine has known Chris for five weeks, and likewise residents Simon and Jake had also only known each other for five weeks. Shortly after these interviews Jake moved from the hostel and no longer kept contact with Simon, and I am unsure of the future of Lorraine and Chris, as I have not seen Lorraine for some while. Therefore whilst these bonds of care are fashioned with intensity and meaning, they are also characterised by fluidity and uncertainty.
Notes 1 G Smith, P Nicolson and R Brown, ‘Despair or Integrity? Older homeless men’s emotional trajectories in the context of Erikson’s 8th Psychosocial Development Stage and their own oral stories’. British Journal of Social Psychology, Forthcoming. 2 Crisis, ‘What is Homelessness?’, Crisis, London, October 2005, viewed on 23 April 2008, . 3 A Warnes, M Crane, N Whitehead and R Fu, Homelessness Factfile, Crisis, London, 2003, p. 2.
232
I’ll Look After You if You Look After Me
______________________________________________________________ 4
DCLG, ‘More than a Roof, a report into homelessness’, DCLG, London, 2003, p.1, viewed on 23 April 2008, . 5 Crisis, loc. cit. 6 Department for Communities and Local Government, June 2006. 7 Department for Communities and Local Government, statutory homeless statistics, 2005. 8 Crisis is a national charity that fights homelessness and empowers homeless people to fulfil their potential and transform their lives. 9 Crisis, ‘How Many, How Much?’ Crisis, London, 2003. 10 The Supporting People program was launched on 1st April 2003 to provide a better quality of life for vulnerable people to live more independently and maintain their tenancies. The program provides housing related support to prevent problems that can often lead to hospitalisation, institutional care or homelessness and can help the smooth transition to independent living for those leaving an institutional environment (ODPM, 2004). 11 Formally Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM). 12 DCLG, ‘More than a roof: a report into tackling homelessness’, DCLG, London, March 2003. 13 This project has been approved by the university of Sheffield Research Ethics Committee. 14 “Me sen” northern English colloquialism meaning myself. 15 Jake is male, 22 years old and has been staying at the hostel for eight weeks due to a breakdown of relationship between his mother, siblings and himself. 16 The Blades (Sheffield United) and Wednesday (Sheffield Wednesday) are local rival football (soccer) teams. 17 Simon is male, 44 and has been staying at the hostel for 7 weeks due to being evicted from his rented home. 18 Jake, op. cit. p. 6. 19 “Bod” colloquialism meaning person. The interviewee is referring to some residents of the hostel. 20 Katie is female, in her 20s and a project worker at the hostel where she has been working for 18 months. 21 Ann is female and has been the hostel chaplain for the past five years, however she has worked in the homelessness sector for over 20 years. 22 Katie, op. cit. p. 8. 23 Ibid. 24 Lorraine is female, in her 50s and has been staying at the hostel for five weeks because she is fleeing a violent relationship.
Rebecca Brown
233
______________________________________________________________
Bibliography Carr H., ‘Someone to look over me: Making Supported Housing work’. Social and Legal Studies, vol. 14, 2005, pp. 387-408. Conradson D., ‘Spaces of Care in the City: The Place of a Community DropIn Centre’. Social & Cultural Geography, vol. 4, December 2003, pp. 507525. Crane M. and A. Warnes, ‘Policy and Service responses to rough sleeping among older people’. International Social Policy, vol. 29, 2000, pp. 21-36. Crane M. and A. Warnes, ‘The responsibility to care for single homeless people.’ Health and Social Care in the Community, vol. 9, 2001, pp. 436444. Crisis, How Many, How Much? Crisis, London, 2003. Crisis, What is Homelessness? Crisis, London, October 2005. DCLG, More than a roof: a report into tackling homelessness. DCLG, London, March 2003. DCLG, What is Supporting People. London, DCLG, 2004. Fraser H., ‘Women, love, and intimacy ‘gone wrong’: fire, wind, and ice’. Journal of Women and Social Work, vol. 20, 2005, pp. 10-20. Friedman B., ‘No Place Like Home: A Study of Two Homeless Shelters’. Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, vol. 3, October 1994, pp. 321339. Kerr D., ‘We know what the problem is: using oral History to develop a collaborative analysis of homeless people from the bottom up’. The Oral History Review, vol. 30, 2003, pp. 27-45. Miller A. B. and C. B. Keys, ‘Understanding dignity in the lives of homeless persons’. American Journal of Community Psychology, vol. 29, April 2001, pp. 331-354.
234
I’ll Look After You if You Look After Me
______________________________________________________________ Mulder M., ‘Faith-Based Homeless Shelters and ‘Hyper-Institutionalization’: A Case Study’. Michigan Sociological Review, vol. 18, 2004, p. 136. Pascale C. M., ‘There's No Place Like Home: The Discursive Creation of Homelessness’. Cultural Studies - Critical Methodologies, vol. 5, May 2005, pp. 250-268. Rickard W, ‘Collaborating with Sex Workers in Oral History’. The Oral History Review, vol. 30, 2003, pp. 47-59. Warnes A., M. Crane, N. Whitehead and R. Fu, Homelessness Factfile. Crisis, London, 2003.
Animals: Friendship and Love Chad Wolf Abstract In accordance with our everyday language, we make a whole variety of statements regarding our relationships with animals and their relationships with each other. One speaks of two pair-bonded swans as being in love or perhaps of two playful puppies as being friends. A man walking a dog tells a neighbour of their friendship or how much he and the dog love each other. But what exactly do we mean when we say these things? The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote (in Zettel), “Love is not a feeling. Love is put to the test…” and here he points out the depth of our concept of love; more than a feeling, love has criteria for its recognition, and one would say the same thing about friendship. Considering this, one wonders if one can apply the concepts of friendship and love to animals. This paper investigates our ordinary language and how it shapes our views of animal behaviour. Can an animal love? Can an animal have friends? Do our terms confuse us or do we mean something different altogether? These questions will be explored through a Wittgensteinian framework, investigating language to uncover facts and mistakes involving our talk of these concepts. Key Words: Animal rights, animals, ethics, ethology, friendship, language, love, philosophy, speciesism, Wittgenstein. ***** If philosophy does not concern itself with the actual world, the world of our everyday lives, it can tell us nothing at all. However, philosophical thought tries to resist leaving the mind for the actual world, and in this metaphysical wrestling match, philosophical thought can end up pulling the philosopher inward. And so I begin this paper with two anecdotes which I hope will lend others and myself enough strength to rip philosophy from the ether. In one case, I remember, three seats over from me, he sat gushing about his relationship with his dog - his best friend - a dog with a fickle personality who took umbrage with his occasionally ignoring her. When he finished his description, our argument began about the nature of their relationship and his description of the dog’s personality. In the back of my mind, I should like to say, that on some level I was aware of the futility of such an argument. When he said that he certainly felt that this dog and he possessed this relationship, I smiled, reached into my philosopher’s bag of
236
Animals: Friendship and Love
______________________________________________________________ quips, and said “How you feel about the issue is of little philosophical importance, it does not make it the case that the dog thinks that you are her best friend because you feel that she thinks it.” Some people in the room at the time may have felt that I had bested him. But let’s face it; most people could never lend any sympathy toward an argument against a boy and his dog, and as a result of my own sometimes more argumentative rather than inquisitive nature, I lost the opportunity to gain some valuable insight into the nature of relationships in general. In fact, I am not even sure that I so much disagreed at the time as much as I wanted to press him to defend his point. This argument strikes me now as strange because I grew up around such talk. When I go to visit, my parents tell me that Harry and Amber are in love with each other. They are dogs who my parents also refer to on occasion as married. They make an awkward couple: Amber weighs around 10 pounds at the most, and Harry around 60. He is a large black shaggy dog, and she is a tiny brown Chihuahua mix. The idea of speaking about dogs in such a way might strike some as strange - some people do not even let their dog in the house, but family and friends’ talking this way has made such talk too normal for me to perhaps ever reject. Not too long ago, my parents adopted a pair of kittens from the same litter and brought them home to meet their new canine extended family. Not long after, I called them up and inquired as to how everybody was getting along. At first they did not report very much; the kittens stayed in a cage to litter train them and to prevent them from being stepped on. After they had grown to a reasonable size, they received full reign over the house, and according to my mother, the black cat Milo made friends with Harry. They got along so swimmingly that my mother joked that Harry must believe Milo to be his son. It seemed so normal to me to speak this way about the animals in my life; even if most if it was said jokingly, it had a ring of truth to it. But of course the philosopher in my ear begged the question of whether or not this was purely anthropomorphising. In order to rid myself of the villain and to make amends to the aforementioned gentleman for my interrogation and slight intellectual dishonesty, I decided to engage in an investigation of the nature of non-human animals’ relationships with each other and with us. This investigation will not rely on copious references to the works of animal behaviourists, but rather look at what people, in my experience, say about animals, and just as importantly, what people do not say about animals. All of this causes me a certain anxiety: I worry, is not what I am speaking about really just people anthropomorphising animals? Does our language not limit us to using our own terms to speak about animals and in turn serve as an injustice to all involved: denying the uniquely human and not meeting animals on their own terms? But then why does it not strike me as strange
Chad Wolf
237
______________________________________________________________ that one can use these terms at all? Perhaps some do not use them at all, but even they could not deny that some people do, and when people use those terms, they understand them. Some common framework must exist because otherwise no understanding would take place at all. And in my experience, those I have encountered who did not necessarily straight away understand the concept found themselves soon understanding what was meant. One must do the philosophy of which I speak as detective work. The philosopher’s greatest tools in this case are not magnifying glasses or surveillance devices, but questions: who, what, where, when, and why. And as a detective, the philosopher must always lookout for the lying witness who tries to deceive with a statement that seems to make sense. The detectivephilosopher must learn to ask the questions to discover the contradiction: Does anyone actually say that? When do they say it? Is it appropriate here? So let us see if an investigation cannot dismiss or justify this talk of anthropomorphism and hopefully provide us with clarity regarding animals. Let us begin with a seemingly very simple question: how do we know when two human beings are friends? Well, they might tell us or we might make a conclusion based on their behaviour. It must be noted, however, that there exists no internal checklist maintained to judge friendship between two people or even that of our own friendships. And in turn, the question of ‘what is friendship’ cannot so simply be answered because friendship itself does not possess any one common strand. We speak of friends that we do not like, friends that we do not trust, friends who annoy us, we even say things like “He’s not my friend, but I am his,” or the other way around. Some friends we love to spend time with, but would never do them a favour, and others we cannot stand, but for whom we would lie out in the street and die. The complications of life which affect friendship makes it worthwhile to examine the friendship’s of younger children. Friendship at its beginning is marked by nothing more than play. Parents often arrange friendships between young children from parent’s own circle of friends. At their youngest, children have little notion of The Other or consideration of The Other’s feelings. It is for this reason that parents must often implore their children to learn to share and treat other children with kindness. Until a child masters language, only the most rudimentary play and socializing can be seen. Animals differ from humans in that they will never advance beyond this play except perhaps to no longer play at all. But doesn’t play in animals serve a purely biological purpose and then one wonders if that is really play? And here we run into the problem of trying to first deny any kind of human biological imperative for play, which include motor skills, language, and socialization, and then second thinking that perhaps there exists something beyond it, which animals lack. Perhaps someone can write a treatise called “The Metaphysics of Play,” but I should doubt I would read it.
238
Animals: Friendship and Love
______________________________________________________________ We do not speak of animals as having friends because we are just that cute, too lazy to come up with another word, or have no other choice, but because they do have very rudimentary friendships or in other words, primitive friendships. They play with each other, and they seem to have favourites amongst each other. If a description were given of the play of some animals, one might not know it from that of very young children. But maybe we are mistaken when we say that young children have friends, and like with animals we are being cute, lazy, restricted by language. This notion is nonsense. How could one be mistaken? We are tempted to perhaps make a list of requirements for friendship, but as stated earlier this will not do. Friendship cannot be seen as having one or a few simple elements that are conceptually essential. Friendships differ greatly within cultures, and still we have no trouble regarding the relationships of foreign people as friendships. And of course we are aware that an animal friendship is nowhere near the depth or complexity of a relationship between two human adults. It is similar to when one says “that dog is a genius.” Does anyone suppose that we mean he is the next Mozart? In the case of friendship between a person and an animal, it occurs to us that it seems reasonable to dismiss these claims of friendship as nothing more than a misinterpretation of the instinctual behaviour that arises from the fact that the person feeds that pet. And this leads to the conclusion that if the person did not feed the pet, the pet would be devoid of or possess less affection for that person. However, this ignores the fact completely that pets tend to be greatly affectionate toward even those who do not feed them. Maybe they are nice to everyone who is nice to them and they simply like attention. This is likely, but pets seem to bond more to those that they know more and from whom they have received more affection. Often family members get upset that pets play favourites, and sometimes the favourite is not even the person that feeds the pet. The former objections do not undermine the idea of friendship between humans and animals, but rather bring out the qualities, namely loyalty and affection, which compose such friendships. What else should we call these relationships? Is the pet my acquaintance, an associate? Am I not the pet’s friend? I certainly care for and treat it as I would a friend. Maybe we could come up with a new word, but how would we define this to someone who did not speak the language? It would end up difficult not to use friendship to define it. We often see our pets being our friends and us being their friend because they possess the rudimentary qualities which we wish our friends to possess, in most cases: loyalty, affection, etc. Depending on how we feel about the pet, we might treat them as we would treat our best friend. Some people even bring this to an extreme, going beyond what an animal can appreciate. Of course this does not describe everyone’s relationships with their pets in my culture and certainly not in other people’s culture, but what it
Chad Wolf
239
______________________________________________________________ does show is that when people speak in this way, they do not commit any crimes of anthropomorphism. Things become more difficult when we begin to speak about animals loving each other. For most of us love is a loaded word and a sacrosanct concept reserved for human beings and of those, only the ones who have matured. We tell children that they do not know what love is, but never in the same sense do we say the same about friendship. Do we say that animals are in love or that they love each other? What is the difference? Of course an animal never says “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.” So with regard to animals, the terms are interchangeable. On the issue of maternal love, we say that a mother animal loves her young. Although, maybe we should downgrade it to ‘care for’ as ‘love’ is something so much greater it seems. How can we draw such a line? Prescriptivism when it comes to language seems awfully silly in a case like this. What kind of distinction are we trying to make here? Obviously we must be making a distinction regarding the nature of how a mother human loves her child and how an animal mother ‘cares for’ its offspring. A mother could better answer the nature of this distinction for me. This distinction did not arise out of nowhere; is it innate in human beings or a product of culture? If it is the latter then it is a cultural judgment which I do not have any interest in engaging in. If it is the former then it seems clear that this feature should have arisen slowly overtime, and that the reason we say that an animal mother loves its young is because we see in them a primitive love which we now possess but now much more complex. Returning to the issue of animals loving each other in a romantic sense rather than a familial one, it becomes clear that it is a much more difficult concept to grasp. All of our concepts of love are so essentially different and cultural that it might be tempting to deny love as something natural or at least something natural that animals possess. So then why do we speak of animals loving each other? We certainly do not think that animals have ceremonies, anniversaries and traditions when it comes to love. No animals have ever fought over someone forgetting an anniversary gift. But we know they have courtship rituals just as we do and some pair for life. In our case, the depth of our concept of love comes from our language and our culture, but the fact that we see certain similarities and yet also see differences and continue to use the word implies that this is not simply a case of anthropomorphism. One here might object and say that we do not know the animal’s emotions and can certainly not say that the animal feels love. But here the problem lies in the treating of love as a feeling rather than as a judgment on the way someone behaves. Love is not the behaviour, but we do judge love based on that behaviour. Ludwig Wittgenstein, contrasting pain and love writes, “Love is not a feeling. Love is put to the test.”1 And here he clears up
240
Animals: Friendship and Love
______________________________________________________________ a conceptual mistake regarding the category to which love belongs. We judge love based on criteria, and a feeling of love is what Wittgenstein might call a characteristic accompaniment. Do we feel this feeling during all of our waking hours? Certainly not. And not having the experience of this feeling does not make anyone say “I do not love that person anymore.” A man who beats his wife might have this feeling and think that he loves her, but we would not say that he treats her as though he loves her, and all evidence points to him not knowing what love is. The same goes for animals. There are certain mating relationships which we do not call love and certain ones which we do, and for good reason as we see the most fundamental aspects of love in those animals. One does not say “those two spiders are in love,” but one does say it about dogs, primates, certain birds, etc. The concept of love does not seem to be able to get a grip when it comes to spiders. They do not seem to possess the primitive behaviours that we associate with love. The fear of anthropomorphising animals is unjustified and a result of our not realising that there exist degrees of complexity within these concepts. Our humanity is not removed because animals share certain qualities with us. At the same time, we must be wary not to assume any kind of ontological knowledge regarding animals and their relationships. We must be careful to consider the limits of our terms and not extend them too far. Finally, we also must be careful to avoid the slippery slope of altogether blinding ourselves when it comes to seeing the natural world as it is, in order to raise ourselves above it. As human beings, we are able to look at animals and see a primitive foundation on which to build our own relationships. An animal may not learn new behaviours or improve upon their instincts, but we certainly can. We can look at a mother animal and ask ourselves if we are doing enough for our children; if we are spending enough time with them. We can look at their friendships and remind ourselves of what the main root of our friendship is, and perhaps strip ourselves of the superfluities which deny us from taking pleasure in them. Hopefully, animals can teach us to be more human.
Notes 1
L Wittgenstein, Zettel, G E M Anscombe and G H von Wright (eds), G E M Anscombe (tr), Basil Black, Oxford, 1967, p. 504. The full text reads: Love is not a feeling. Love is put to the test, pain not. One does not say: “That was not true pain, or it would not have gone off so quickly”.
Chad Wolf
241
______________________________________________________________
Bibliography Wittgenstein, L., Zettel. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright (eds), G.E.M Anscombe (tr), Basil Black, Oxford, 1967.
Tell It Like It Is: The Importance of Acknowledging Love As a Component of Abnormal Sexuality David White Abstract The paraphilias are generally understood in terms of sexual desire and mental illness. The idea that real love might be just as significantly a part of the story is typically disbelieved and thus dismissed out of hand. Insofar as it ever is considered possible, it is typically thought to be irrelevant to the important questions of how to protect children and animals from sexual abuse and exploitation. But there is a growing body of evidence suggesting particularly in the case of paedophilia and zoophilia - that acknowledging the feelings of romantic love some people have for children or animals is just as important to understanding these phenomena as the sexual attraction is. There also are strong reasons to believe that unless we develop a better and more sophisticated understanding of the nature of paedophilia and zoophilia – including the importance of feelings of romantic love that form a part of these attractions - our ability to deal with people who have these attractions will remain inadequate and, as a result, more children and animals will remain at a greater risk for sexual abuse. Additionally, the denial of the reality of sincere feelings of love paedophiles can have for children can result in significant harms being inadvertently inflicted on children when providing them with support and treatment after they have been sexually involved with an adult. Recognizing the reality of these forms of feeling love, then, is crucial both to our ability to prevent abuse and to mitigate its harm when it happens. Key Words: Love, paedophilia, paraphilia, sexual abuse, sexual desire, zoophilia. ***** Edward Albee's play, The Goat, presents a portrait of Martin, a normal, well adjusted, successful, happily married man who falls in love with an animal. Albee has said of the play, “Every civilisation sets quite arbitrary limits to its tolerances.... It is my hope that people will think afresh about whether or not all the values they hold are valid.”1 But the play is remarkable because it challenges not just the limits of the characters' and the audience's ability to accept the violation of social norms, it challenges our ability to believe that real love knows no bounds. It does not merely ask us if we can accept a man having sex with an animal. It asks us to consider whether or not
244
Tell It Like It Is
______________________________________________________________ it is really possible for a person to experience the feelings Martin claims to have. And if it is possible for a man to be in love with a goat, what limits are there to love? With paraphilias generally, and zoophilia and paedophilia in particular, the way to understand them is usually described in terms of sexual desire and mental illness. The idea that real love might be just as significantly a part of the story is typically disbelieved and thus dismissed out of hand. While Albee brought this reaction to the surface with The Goat, Todd Solondz's film Palindromes sparked the same reaction to paedophilia. Late in the film Aviva, a thirteen year old girl, talks to her adult cousin, Mark, who has been accused of molesting his young sister. When he tells her that he did not do it, Aviva responds, “I know. I believe you because paedophiles love children.”2 Many reviewers and other viewers of the film have commented on this line, typically to express their discomfort with it and without ever seeming to consider whether or not she might actually be right. That she is not was just assumed to be the case. Insofar as it ever is considered possible for people to fall in love with animals or for adults to fall in love with children, it is typically thought to be irrelevant to the important questions of how to protect children and animals from sexual abuse and exploitation. This paper will argue that these beliefs are importantly mistaken. First I will briefly discuss what reasons there might be to explain why the possibility that some people feel real romantic love for animals or children is generally not considered. Then I will offer a few reasons to think that it is not only possible, it is actual. Following that I will discuss five reasons why it is vitally important that we not only consider, but also accept that these kinds of love are real. There are several reasons, none of them justifying reasons, for thinking that it is not possible for a person to fall in love with an animal or for an adult to fall in love with a child. First, the more alien an emotional experience is from our own and ones we typically see, the more doubts we have about it. Homosexuality provides us with a strong example of this. For people who have no same-sex attractions and who historically lived at times when any expression of same-sex affection was socially and legally forbidden, it was easy to dismiss the reality of romantic feelings between same-sex couples. Homosexual attractions, it was thought, must be a pathological confusion. Homosexual acts, at best, must be motivated by a desire to satisfy one's own lusts, not ways of expressing love. And the fact that such actions typically seemed disgusting to heterosexuals was one more reason to dismiss the idea that they could be “normal”. Today, more progressive societies have seen the error of such beliefs. In the case of homosexuality, many people are willing to accept that even if the idea of being attracted to people of one's own gender seems alien to them and even if
David White
245
______________________________________________________________ they do not want to see or think about same-sex sexual acts, homosexuality neither constitutes a mental defect nor is it merely reducible to lust. A second reason for denying the possibility of real love for zoophiles or paedophiles is related to the first. In the battle for the recognition of gay rights, the fight for recognizing the reality of gay love as nonpathological feelings has only been one objective. More often particular conflicts have been over restrictions on the recognition and acceptance of gay relationships. The fights against anti-sodomy laws and for gay marriage both are cases where the legitimacy of homosexuality has been closely linked with the case for accepting gay relationships. Accepting the legitimacy of samesex feelings is equated with accepting the legitimacy of acting on those feelings. So the worry is if the feelings of zoophiles and paedophiles are accepted as legitimate and non-pathological then we would be forced to accept interspecies and intergenerational sexual relationships. And since it seems clear that allowing those relationships would be to allow a great deal of harm to come to innocents, we should resist any acceptance of these attractions. But this thinking is flawed. We have no difficulty condemning certain actions without attributing their motive to mental illness. Some people who steal are kleptomaniacs or making an emotional “cry for help”, but most are not. We need not consider all thieves mentally ill in order to condemn acting on the desire to steal. Furthermore, the fact that wanting to have what other people have is a very natural human feeling does not mean that we are forced to accept theft. That stealing causes harm to innocents is sufficient to oppose it no matter how normal the desire to steal might be. Perhaps a more apt analogy to the cases of zoophilia and paedophilia would be adultery. There is nothing pathological nor impossible about falling in love with your best friend's spouse. Someone who claims to have done so need be neither crazy nor rationalizing lust. Yet at the same time there quite often might be good reasons not to try to pursue a relationship in such a case. It could lead to a great deal of emotional strife to all involved. So we can accept that feelings of love are real for zoophiles and paedophiles without condoning their pursuit of sexual relationships with animals or children. Just as we morally condemn adultery and legally prohibit stealing, we can do both with the sexual cases without dismissing the feelings behind the actions. A third reason to deny the reality of love is because the conviction that sex with animals or children is extremely harmful to them is so strong that it is hard to accept that a person who really claims to love animals or children would actually inflict such harms on them. One would have to not really be in love or would have to be mentally ill to inflict such harm on an animal or child. But there are two problems with this. On the one hand, it makes the assumption that all zoophiles and paedophiles act on their sexual desires. But there is no reason to believe that this is the case. In fact,
246
Tell It Like It Is
______________________________________________________________ zoophiles and paedophiles who do not ever act on their feelings are the ones who will be the most invisible to the rest of us. So reviled are such attractions that one would never expect such people to volunteer the information that they have them, and in the absence of acting on those feelings there is no reason for anyone to know that they have them. So there might well be a large number of zoophiles and paedophiles who do agree that sex with animals or children would cause harm and refrain from so doing because their love won't allow it. On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that both in the cases of animals and children it is possible for them to be sexually involved with a human adult and it not be likely to cause harm at all.3 Now this research is controversial, so we should be cautious about exactly what it might or might not show. But the fact that there is even a question raised in the scientific and academic community about the universality of the harmfulness of sex with animals or children means it is far too strong to conclude that zoophiles or paedophiles who think it might not be harmful are lying, rationalizing or crazy. The preceding discussion merely shows that the reasons people might have for thinking that zoophiles and paedophiles do not experience real love fail. But, of course, this is not the same thing as establishing that they really do experience love. And while I certainly don't claim to be able to offer definitive proof that they do, I think there are good reasons to believe it. First, it is quite common for zoophiles and paedophiles to report that they have such feelings. Now we don't need to accept that someone has an emotional experience just because they say so, but it is one thing to doubt specific emotional claims in particular cases and quite another to doubt an entire class of emotional claims. Yes, sometimes men tell women that they love them when they don't because they just want sex. But that does not cast into doubt the very possibility that men can be in love with women. So we can doubt the claims of some zoophiles and paedophiles in particular cases, but to extend that doubt to all cases is unreasonable. Additionally, there is research evidence to suggest that such doubts would be incorrect. In one study a researcher reports, Many ... zoophiles have a very close emotional attachment to their animal partners. They report that they love their animal partner as others love their human partner and are devastated when their animal partner dies. They care about the sexual pleasure of the animal as well as their own.4 The case of Mary Fualaau, better known as Mary Kay Letourneau, is particularly interesting regarding paedophilia on this point. Mary was a thirty-three year old teacher when she fell in love with Vili Fualaau, a twelve
David White
247
______________________________________________________________ year old student of hers. She was arrested and imprisoned for several years for having sex with Vili. After her release from jail she and Vili married. He is now in his mid-twenties and they are still together, raising their two children. She has always maintained from the very beginning that she was in love with the boy. She still says the same thing today. Public reaction to the case has been telling. Some refuse to accept that it is real love and believe her claims to the contrary are just a manifestation of mental illness. Others claim it was love, but that because Vili physically matured faster than other boys that even at age twelve her love for him should not count as paedophilia. Still others say because he is the only boy she fell in love with that this is just some strange anomaly and that even she isn't really attracted to children. In fact, every possible story is told here to prevent being forced to accept the most simple and obvious one: sometimes adults fall in love with children. Second, in general when we have reason to doubt the emotional claims of a person, we look for behaviours that seem to either support or contradict the claim that the person feels as they say. If someone says they are happy about something, their behaviour might lead us to say, ‘you do not look happy’. If a man claims to love his wife we might ask, ‘so why do you treat her so badly?’ or we might ask for a list of things he has done to back up the claim. Buying her flowers without an occasion, being willing to take her to the ballet when he'd rather go to a football game, and writing her love poems might be some good indications. With enough such evidence and no countervailing evidence, it would be perverse to deny that he loves her. With paedophiles there often is evidence of such demonstrations of love and affection. But the typical lens they are viewed through is one that interprets them as manipulative strategies designed to ‘groom’ a child to be accepting of a sexual relationship. In other cases an adult's desire to spend a lot of time with a child doing things they enjoy is pathological. What is charming playfulness when done by a parent is arrested development when done by a paedophile. Now in some cases, just as adults will fake romantic gestures with other adults, paedophiles can do the same with children. But we don't assume all adults are just faking it when it is with other adults, so such a general assumption is counter to the evidence when it comes to paedophiles. With zoophiles the case is more difficult. It's not that non-sexual forms of affection for animals are hard to imagine, it is that it is hard to establish whether or not it takes place. With paedophiles, there is always at least one witness to the interactions who can tell about them - the child. With animals there typically will be no witness. Zoophiles are understandably reluctant to share with others their interactions with animals. But researchers who have met with zoophiles report that they behave in very affectionate ways towards their animal partners and speak of them in a similar way. One research team writes this about a group of zoophiles they met: “They reminded us of some of the early gay groups we studied in the 1960s and
248
Tell It Like It Is
______________________________________________________________ 1970s,” and “The attendees showed affection toward their animals and at no time did we see any ill treatment of an animal.”5 So while the evidence is far from conclusive, there is reason to believe that zoophiles both talk and act like people who are genuinely in love. While the preceding considerations address the concern that claims to be in love might be insincere, it does not address the concern that they might be sincere, yet pathological. The psychological community considers both zoophilia and paedophilia mental disorders. So maybe these people think they are in love, thus explaining their claims and actions, but in reality they are suffering from a delusion. But the belief that any paraphiles including zoophiles and paedophiles - are mentally ill is increasingly controversial. There are prominent researchers who argue that there is no evidence at all to justify the classification of paedophilia or even of any paraphilia as a mental disorder.6 In fact, some research shows that there are no social or psychological differences between zoophiles or paedophiles and heterosexuals or homosexuals.7 These findings are reminiscent of those in the 1950s by Evelyn Hooker that helped establish that homosexuality is not a mental disorder.8 Now one might wonder if it really matters whether or not we correctly acknowledge that zoophiles and paedophiles have real, nonpathological feelings of love for animals or children. There are several reasons why it is vitally important. Firstly, it can make a significant difference in our ability to adequately treat sex offenders.9 If time and energy is spent ‘treating’ a mental illness that does not exist, then results are bound to be poor. The real goal in dealing with sex offenders is to ensure as best we can that they will not repeat their offences. And so an offender who correctly believes that he acted out of love is not likely to be much changed by any intervention that is based on the incorrect assumption that he is deluded. Furthermore, the assumption that sex offenders act based on lust rather than love has led to an emphasis on chemical treatments for sex offenders to reduce their sex drives.10 But what good does reducing the sex drive do if the person just wants to cuddle or, out of love, wants to provide their loved one with sexual pleasure? It is not unheard of for adults to agree to sex with adult partners they love even when they would rather not because they love their partner. So the elimination of lust from zoophiles and paedophiles will not stop them acting if their motivation is love. If we hope intervention with sex offenders will reduce recidivism, an important first step would be correctly identifying their motivations. Secondly and closely related, is the issue of prevention of sex offences before they begin. At some point in a zoophile or paedophile's life they become aware of their attraction to animals or children. That can present difficulties, as they are likely to know how socially reviled such feelings are, and so typically will not reveal them to anyone. But surely this is a recipe for
David White
249
______________________________________________________________ trouble. It is hard enough for heterosexual children to grow up and deal with romantic relationships. We also know how much harder it is for gay kids, especially when they are terrified about others knowing of their attractions. For zoophiles and paedophiles it can only be worse. With no one to help them develop emotional maturity and with the constant fear of discovery and persecution it should not be surprising if they eventually engage in unhealthy sexual relationships that cause their animal or child partners great harm. The recognition that the feelings of zoophiles and paedophiles are real and not pathological, then, would help to lay the groundwork for making it safe for them to talk about their attractions. And in such a context with a supportive social environment we would be able to help these people to refrain from acting on their desires in ways that will cause harm. As good as it is to prevent offenders from repeating their offences, it is infinitely better to prevent people from becoming offenders in the first place. Thirdly, in cases where paedophiles have had sexual relationships with children, doubting their feelings of love can inflict harms on the children they have been involved with. One of the long term harms children suffer who had sexual relationships with paedophiles is self-blame. Because they come to believe that the adult did not really care for them and was either pretending or deluded they question what must be wrong with them that they could not tell. Perhaps they conclude they were gullible because they were emotionally needy. Or they blame themselves for just being too stupid to see the truth. Another long term harm is self-doubt. If one was once deceived into believing that someone loved them, then maybe they will be deceived again. The ability to trust in adult relationships can thus be damaged. But for these harms to take effect the child must come to believe that the adult did not actually love them. In fact, sometimes one of the first steps in therapeutic interventions with children who have had sexual relationships with adults is to get them to accept this. Breaking the emotional bond the child has with the adult is seen as necessary to help them deal with the harm that has been inflicted on them. The only problem is that sometimes this means causing the child to have a false belief. And with correct beliefs that the adult really did love them, self-blame and self-doubts need not take root. So in the case of paedophilia, some of the harm that children experience and continue to experience into adulthood need not ever arise simply by recognizing the cases where the adult really was in love and not denying that aspect of the relationship. Fourthly, the failure to recognize the reality of love paedophiles sometimes feel for children means that we will overlook one source of harm to children that relationships with paedophiles present. In cases where paedophiles and children form a very close relationship that develops into love, there can be damage from the ending of that relationship even if no sexual activity took place. Upon discovering that a paedophile and child had
250
Tell It Like It Is
______________________________________________________________ any kind of relationship, often the only question that seems to matter is whether or not they had sexual activity. If they did not, it is thought that intervention came in time to save the child from harm. But that might well not be the case. Where strong and real emotional bonds form between a paedophile and a child the ending of that relationship can be very difficult for the child, especially if the ending was not at their initiative. The idea that adults who fall in love and then are dumped and suffer emotionally from that is nothing new. When teenagers fall in love for the first time with a peer and the relationship ends it can be very hard. When children lose a parent through death or through abandonment the harms can be devastating. One reason parents often are cautious about when their children start serious relationships is the very worry that the younger they are the harder it is to deal with the ending of such relationships. And so if a paedophile and a child form a loving, but not sexual relationship, the ending of that relationship can bring significant hardship for the child. Recognizing this can inform both how we should be cautious about allowing such relationships to develop and how we should respond to them when they do. Each of the last two points address only paedophilia and not zoophilia. That is because in each case they deal with psychological harms that can come to a child from relationships with paedophiles. And when it comes to animals, this is not the worry at all.11 The worry here is exclusively one of physical harm.12 In fact, we know with a great many cases of adultchild sex that there is no physical harm whatsoever and that the only harms are psychological. This, then, would seem to suggest that if we accept that sometimes zoophiles genuinely love animals and when they form a loving and sexual relationship with an animal the animal is unlikely to experience harm and, on the contrary, is likely to experience pleasure (both from the sexual and non-sexual affection received), perhaps we should fully accept inter-species relationships. If it is ok to pet a rabbit and to cuddle with a kitten, what is wrong with letting a dog hump your leg and enjoying it as well?13 Why is it worse to masturbate a pet than to scratch it behind the ear? We already have animal cruelty laws to protect them from human abuse, so if sexual interactions are neither physically nor psychologically harmful there seems to be no reason to object to them other than our own disgust at the idea. The character of Martin in The Goat is a good man. He feels appropriately badly about his infidelity to his wife, Stevie. He is concerned about how his relationship with Sylvia, the goat, will hurt both his wife and his son. But he also is shown as a man who truly cares about Sylvia and not as one who should be feared or loathed for loving her. In fact, Stevie's act of killing Sylvia at the end of the play seems far more troubling than Martin's love for her. Albee has also said this of his play:
David White
251
______________________________________________________________ The play is about love, and loss, the limits of our tolerance and who, indeed, we really are.... [All] I ask of an audience is that they leave their prejudices in the cloakroom and view the play objectively and later - at home - imagine themselves as being in the predicament the play examines and coming up with useful, if not necessarily comfortable, responses.14 The play, then, is not just about zoophilia, but about our ability to understand and tolerate that which is alien to our experience. Albee more than hints at this by suggesting several times that Martin might also harbour sexual feelings for his son. So while he challenges us generally to question the limits of what we can accept generally, it deals specifically with both zoophilia and paedophilia. We may not know what it is like to fall in love with a goat nor what it is like to be sexually aroused by one's own infant son, but we need not experience those feelings, as Martin did, in order to accept that they are possible for others. It might not be easy, but if we dare to be open-minded we just might find we can understand the ways some others experience love. Once we have done so, we can set about finding those useful, if not necessarily comfortable, responses to them Albee talks about. This paper is one attempt to do just that.
Notes 1
E Albee, The Alberta Theatre Projects Programme for The Goat, 2006, p. 2. T Solondz, Director, Palindromes, 2004. 3 P Singer, ‘Heavy Petting’. Nerve, March 1, 2001, viewed on 7 June 2006, http://www.nerve.com/opinions/singer/heavypetting/>; B Rind and P Tromovitch, ‘A Meta-Analytic Review of Findings from National Samples on Psychological Correlates of Child Sexual Abuse’. The Journal of Sex Research, vol. 34, no. 3, 1997, pp. 237-255; B Rind, R Bauserman and P Tromovitch, ‘A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse’. Psychological Bulletin, vol. 124, no. 1, 1998, pp. 22-53; B Rind and P Tromovitch, ‘National Samples, Sexual Abuse in Childhood, and Adjustment in Adulthood’. Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 36, 2007, pp. 101-106; R Green, ‘Is pedophilia a mental disorder?’ Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 31, no. 6, 2002, pp. 467-471. 4 A Beetz, ‘Human Sexual Contact With Animals’, Paper presented at the European Federation of Sexology Congress, June 2000, viewed on 20 January 2007, < http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/BEETZ.HTM> 2
252
Tell It Like It Is
______________________________________________________________ 5
C J Williams and M S Weinberg, ‘Zoophilia in Men: A Study of Sexual Interest In Animals’. Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 32, no. 6, 2003, p. 525. 6 R Green 2002; C Moser and P J Kleinplatz, ‘DSM-IV-TR and the Paraphilias: An Argument for Removal’. Presented to the American Psychiatric Association’s Annual Meeting in San Francisco, 2003. 7 P Okami and A Goldberg, ‘Personality Correlates of Pedophilia: Are They Reliable Indicators?’ Journal of Sex Research, vol. 29, no. 3, 1992, pp. 297328; C J Williams and M S Weinberg, ‘Zoophilia in Men: A Study of Sexual Interest In Animals’. Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 32, no. 6, 2003, pp. 523-535. 8 E Hooker, ‘The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual’. Journal of Projective Techniques, vol. 21, 1957, pp. 18-31. 9 L Lamberg, ‘Researchers Seek Roots Of Pedophilia’. The Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 294, no. 5, 2005, pp. 546-647. 10 B Brooks-Gordon and C Bilby, ‘Psychological Interventions for Treatment of Adult Sex Offenders’. British Medical Journal. vol. 333, 2006, pp. 5-6. 11 This is not to say that animals cannot suffer psychological harms. In fact, it is a common phenomena for some pets to form emotional attachments to their owners that result in them being greatly distressed if their owner dies, sometimes even resulting in their own demise. But any such possible psychological harm seem to count as much against simple pet ownership as they do against zoophilia. While such possible harms might be something we should be more concerned about, it does not raise any concerns especially for zoophilia. (Thanks to Fred Karns for making me aware of this point.) 12 One might wonder if the exploitation of animals is a worry here. Since, it might be argued, the animal is being used for sex, that makes the interaction unacceptably exploitive. But other than some extreme animal rights activists we do accept using animals for companionship, labour, laboratory experiments and food. So the idea that using animals for sex where there is no physical harm is worse than these is not plausible. 13 P Singer, ‘Heavy Petting’. Nerve, March 1, 2001, viewed on 7 June 2006, http://www.nerve.com/opinions/singer/heavypetting/> 14 E Albee, ‘From The Director’. Viewed on 17 October 2006, http://www.belvoir.com.au/341_prod_detail_general.php?production_id=127
Bibliography Albee, E., The Alberta Theatre Projects Programme for The Goat, 2006. –––, ‘From The Director’. Viewed on 17 October 2006, http://www.belvoir.com.au/341_prod_detail_general.php?production_id=127
David White
253
______________________________________________________________ Beetz, A. M., ‘Human Sexual Contact With Animals’. Presented at the European Federation of Sexology Congress, June 2000, viewed on 20 January 2007, < http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/BEETZ.HTM> Brooks-Gordon, B. and C. Bilby, ‘Psychological Interventions for Treatment of Adult Sex Offenders’. British Medical Journal. vol. 333, 2006, pp. 5-6. Green, R., ‘Is pedophilia a mental disorder?’ Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 31, no. 6, 2002, pp. 467-471. Hooker, E., ‘The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual’. Journal of Projective Techniques, vol. 21, 1957, pp. 18-31. Lamberg, L., ‘Researchers Seek Roots Of Pedophilia’. The Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 294, no. 5, 2005, pp. 546-647. Moser, C. and P. J. Kleinplatz, ‘DSM-IV-TR and the Paraphilias: An Argument for Removal’. Presented to American Psychiatric Association’s Annual Meeting in San Francisco, http://moser.gelteye.org, 2003. Okami, P. and A. Goldberg, ‘Personality Correlates of Pedophilia: Are They Reliable Indicators?’ Journal of Sex Research, vol. 29 no. 3, 1992, pp. 297328. Rind, B., R. Bauserman and P. Tromovitch, ‘A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse’. Psychological Bulletin, vol. 124 no. 1, 1998, pp. 22-53. Rind, B. and P. Tromovitch, ‘A Meta-Analytic Review of Findings from National Samples on Psychological Correlates of Child Sexual Abuse’. The Journal of Sex Research, vol. 34, no. 3, 1997, pp. 237-255. –––, ‘National Samples, Sexual Abuse in Childhood, and Adjustment in Adulthood’. Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 36, 2007, pp. 101-106. Singer, P., ‘Heavy Petting’. Nerve, March 1, 2001, viewed on 7 June 2006, Williams, C. J. and M. S. Weinberg, ‘Zoophilia in Men: A Study of Sexual Interest in Animals’. Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 32, no. 6, 2003, pp. 523-535.
254
Tell It Like It Is
______________________________________________________________
Audiovisual References Palindromes. Todd Solondz, 2004.
Negotiating Intimacies in an Eroticised Environment: Xiaojies in the Nightclubs, Karaoke Houses And Massage Parlours of South China Yu Ding Abstract This paper draws on the experience of a group of xiaojies with their clients and intimate partners in both their work places and everyday life, in two South China metropolitan cities: Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Most of the xiaojies come from rural background and have migration experience from the rural to the urban. They work in erotic or semi-erotic environments such as nightclubs, Karaoke houses and massage parlours in the cities, where they utilise their bodies, youth, sexual and social skills to negotiate intimacies with their clients. During the interactions with both the clients and the physical environment, they accumulate experience, skills and strength to achieve autonomy in this complicatedly sexualised space-time. It is argued in this paper that marriage and intimate relationships are one of the major motivations for their migration and entering the sex business. It plays an important role in shaping these women’s desire of gaining autonomy. Xiaojies’ small power is gathered in discursive and mundane acts like talking, putting on make-up and waiting, and it evokes changes and subversion in existing social/gender relations. Key Words: Desire, intimacy, marriage, migration, negotiation, xiaojie. ***** 1.
Introduction This paper draws on the experience of a group of xiaojies1 with their clients and intimate partners in both their work places and everyday life, in two South China metropolitan areas Guangzhou and Shenzhen. In more than a year’s time, I have interviewed 20 women who work as xiaojies and make friends with some of them. I visited nightclubs, streets, massage parlours, and Karaoke houses and conducted ethnographic observation on how they interact with the male clients. I joined them for grocery shopping, swimming and other daily activities to see how they are involved in a typical urban life. Also I spent three months living with 5 of them in Guangzhou and thus have a close interaction with them on a daily basis. During the stay and other visits to their homes, I conducted semi-structured interviews and open conversations on the topics of rural lives, marriage and intimate experiences,
256
Negotiating Intimacies in an Eroticised Environment
______________________________________________________________ urban lifestyle, experience working as a xiaojie, sexual experience, future aspirations, etc. In this paper I would like to make three main arguments. First, marriage and men-women relationships have an ongoing influence that not only shapes these xiaojies’ thought about leaving the village and existing relationship, but also motivates their entering the sex business, as well as encourages their exploration of new gender relations. Second, when these women come to the cities, they acquire more life skills, sexual skills, new perspectives/attitudes on sex, with an urban reference, and turn these into new sexual capital in a discursive yet powerful way that even may subvert existing gender relations. Third, their transition from rural wives to urban xiaojies and the skills and knowledge they obtain through this experience have opened up new pages in their future choices. Their negotiation of intimate relationships with men helps them to achieve a better deal in their lives. Most of these women come from small towns or rural parts of China and therefore form parts of the grand rural-urban migration in the opening-up China. Their migration experience and ideal of love and intimacy are mutually constituted, i.e. their love or marriage experience is one of the most powerful driving forces of their out-migration and the migration itself has also profoundly influenced their view and action in intimate relationships. After coming to the cities, they work in erotic or semi-erotic environments such as nightclubs, Karaoke houses and massage parlours, where they utilise their bodies, youth, and sexual and social skills to negotiate intimacies with their clients. During the interactions with both the clients and the physical environment, they accumulate their experience, skills learned and strength to achieve autonomy in this complicated sexualised space-time. For them, the waiting time, causal time, and time in between each transaction is not meaningless but rather provide opportunities to explore new ways of survival in this eroticised environment as well as in the broader social environment that is always adverse to them. It is argued in this paper that even discursive and mundane acts like talking, putting on make-up and waiting can be sites for potential change and subversion in existing social/gender relations. This is reflected in their desire to be freed from existing man-woman relationships which become an obstacle to the pursuit of their ideal life, i.e. a life that they have total control over hence a sense of security. As we can see from their daily life outside work, they have already projected new thoughts into the relationship with their husband or intimate partner. Some have chosen to jump out of the exclusive or unsatisfactory relationship of marriage and use their “sexual capital” in exchange for social capital that can buy them an urban life style; some have decided to stay single to avoid possible harm from the intimacy with their male partners; and some have given our conventional thought on child-rearing a hard punch, in that giving birth to a child means
Yu Ding
257
______________________________________________________________ women’s own enjoyment and achievement which has nothing to do with the father. 2.
Out-Migration: Love and Leave For married women, leaving the village means leaving behind their rural life, their whole family, husband, and more exactly, their dreams of depending on a man for a decent life. The sweetness of marriage may quickly disappear when they have to face the brutal reality of poverty, child-rearing, uncertain futures and in-law relationships. Studies have shown that migration from rural to urban areas in China is often linked with marriage. Davin speaks of migration, for some women, as a way of “buy[ing] themselves out of a situation in which they are not happy” (e.g. women work to pay off divorce charges or child-rearing costs after leaving unhappy marital relationships).2 It is, therefore, considered as “promoting female autonomy”3, especially when they are still under a relatively patriarchal rural environment. Beynon4, Tan and Short5 point out that migration supports exogamy, since many families in rural areas have the tradition of marrying out. Women utilise the migration opportunity to seek upward mobility in terms of financial condition, social status and stability. They also show the dilemma these women face in marriage and future settlement.6 I argue that marriage and men-women relationships have an on-going influence that not only shapes these women’s thoughts about leaving the village and existing relationships, but also motivates their entering the sex business, as well as encourages their exploration of new gender relations. For them, marriage seems to be a thing to escape from, to be confused about, to struggle for and perhaps to discard as a whole. Ding Yu: Have you told your husband about it (the fact that you are here a xiaojie)? Zhen jie: No, I haven’t.7 Ding Yu: Why not? Zhen jie: He knows it even if I didn’t tell. He himself is not competent enough! If he is more competent, he can let me stay at home! Otherwise, he can’t interfere with what I do. And he’s like, ok, you go out, no problem as long as you can bring money back home. Generally speaking, Hunan families… we have the “tradition” to do this… 7 out of 10 families come out… hmmm…we’ll know gradually (what the women do)… Just 2 out of 10 women come out for “work” are really working (da zhengjing gong). There are few that work “decent work”. Most of them are xiaojies. Ding Yu: So you mean your husband may know what you are doing?
258
Negotiating Intimacies in an Eroticised Environment
______________________________________________________________ Zhen jie: Most Hunan husbands know. It’s just that he may not raise this and also won’t blame you. He himself has no ability to earn more money, and we are poor! So he won’t interfere so long as you bring money back home. Look at our husbands at home! Hunan people are always like this. If you bring home money, he won’t say anything. He stays at home playing Mah-jong and cards, and play with women… He is looser than you! Last time when I returned home and gave him 6,000 yuan… he was like, today when you give him money he is very happy, and tomorrow when he cooks for you, you know what he cooked? No chicken, no beef, no meat at all! He just made plain hot pepper soup! It’s ridiculous! 6,000 yuan and just hot pepper soup! Ding Yu: Does he work at home? Zhen jie: Yes, but more comfortable than we women stay in Guangdong. He stays at home and watches TV, plays cards and sometimes farms. He thinks making money is easy in Guangdong? Like I can have money by just sitting there… Life is actually very bitter. Once you return home, it’s like you owe him something. I returned home twice this year. He didn’t recognize my work and my effect, didn’t think about my raising the two children and let them go to school, didn’t mention the pretty house I built, didn’t say that I treat his parents well… He didn’t give me any confirmation and recognition. They always want money and they just like money! Money, money, money!! They never speak of gratification, never mention the emotional bond we have and even the efforts I have paid! They only recognize money. (July, 2005) In this conversation, Zhen jie gives out two major messages about her relationship with her husband and in-law family: they are economically incompetent according to her standard and do not appreciate her care and love for the family and labour. She does not think her husband is loving. She used to expect more from them at the beginning of her marriage, but soon discovered they left her alone in the mess of rural life. Property division soon after marriage, her husband’s inability to make life better, the birth of her two children and the heavy workload all make her disappointed toward marital life. She thinks men should be the bread-winners, which reflects her traditional type of thought towards gender roles and family responsibility, while the reality puts her to rethink what women can do at a time when men are no longer the main supporter of a family. After all these years, she has not received as much love from her husband as she gives to him. She realised that
Yu Ding
259
______________________________________________________________ “when it comes to love, it’s always girl loves a boy more than the reverse. And it’s women who suffer more in any relationship”. She left the village when a female friend of hers took her to Guangdong and began her life as a xiaojie. In her own words, she has “been doing this in Guangdong for 15 years and never works other jobs”. This is not an easy decision to make for a then-26-year-old village wife. She thinks of herself as “clever and nice”, and someone who should not be wasted in a monogamous relationship with a notso-desirable husband. When she left the village, she has already had a very clear purpose - she not only wanted to earn more money during her urban stay, but also would like to explore how far she could get to along the way of love and sexuality. In other words, she is not content to be confined in the marriage bond and accept her unhappy marriage, but rather thinks it possible and better “to see whether there are any other men who may like [her]” through other forms of intimate relationships such as cohabitation, multiple partners, and open relationship. She said the exploration could satisfy her curiosity of “how other men may treat [her]” and her desire of “being cared about”. Bearing this in mind, she quickly adapted to urban life and overcame the hurdles in her way of success. Her experience as a xiaojie in the cities in a way facilitates her opening up new possibilities in gender relations. In fact, she keeps trying different forms of ‘love consumption’ while keeping her marital bond with her rural husband.8 Now, finding a comfortable way to live and enjoy sex becomes her major task. Wen and Nana are sisters who come from Sichuan. They are both married and working in a nightclub in Guangzhou. Wen told me about her husband soon after I got to know her and explained her leaving home as an action of obtaining security for herself. Wen: We want to make some money so that we can do some petty business back home. You want to rely on men? Men are not reliable. Men in Sichuan are not reliable at all. Ding Yu: Why do you think so? Is it possibly because of your own experience? Wen: They are all like this! Of course there will be good men who can support a family. But they are in a different level with us. Like us, we have come out here. It’s possible that… when you go back, they don’t like you. Sometimes people do mind this. And he definitely won’t marry you. Some may have already married and had a family… It’s hard to find one… And there are those who do nothing at all, just idling without having any proper job. People like those will be depending on your money because he has no income. Even if he is 23 or 24 (the writer’s note: a time to be independent), he doesn’t have any sense of family at all.
260
Negotiating Intimacies in an Eroticised Environment
______________________________________________________________ You see? When he is able to make some money, he will give you some for daily expenditure, but what about when he can’t make any money? Ding Yu: What about your husband? How’s your relationship? Wen: We always quarrel. We have no money, so we quarrel. He has a brother and a sister, and his mom spoiled him. He is over 30, but never has a proper job. Occasionally he can make some petty money through his friends’ help, but no proper and regular income. He does nothing at all at home. He’s the youngest son and loves drinking. You know, I hate him drinking. Whenever he drinks, I have to listen to his needs unconditionally otherwise he will quarrel with me. Say, sometimes he returns home at mid-night very drunk. He will shout at me and require that I make something to eat for him. If I don’t make anything he will quarrel with me. So I have to get out of bed and make things for him. I have no other way out… Ding Yu: Do you live at his home after marriage then? Wen: Yes. Didn’t we have a small bistro? We had that bistro in that small town so we didn’t need to worry about basic living needs such as food and clothing. But we are not able to guarantee to maintain it in our whole life. Are we? Can he ask his mother and sister for money in the future? A man who is over 30 and has no job, and still has to depend on others…you tell me, how can I believe in him? … We don’t have any savings. Now we don’t have child. What if someday we’ve got a child? We have to spend money, say, education for the child costs much! Our bistro is not running for life, and we can’t guarantee to make money. So I came out here to earn money just in case… (May 2006) They have an impression that Guangzhou men are better than Sichuan men in that they are more polite, cultured, caring and femalefriendly. This is part of the reason they came, with a hope that they can have more respect and recognition here. More importantly, as Wen said, she does not feel “secure” when she has to take care of all family responsibility instead of leaning on her husband for doing so. Marriage, for these sisters, as well as for many other women whom I have interviewed, was a way to gain financial and future “security”. It turns from a mere two-person relationship to a way to create social capital for women to live better. However, their marriage did not succeed in providing the sense of security they wanted. Leaving, therefore, becomes a possible choice.
Yu Ding
261
______________________________________________________________ Although Wen’s husband has been asking her to go home from time to time, and Wen herself is sometimes touched to the heart, she seems to make up her mind not to return. Unlike Zhen jie, who is much older and perhaps has gone through the “seven years itch” of marriage, Wen and Nana are still in the “honeymoon” period of their marriage. If we say that it is easier for Zhen jie to decide to stay in the city, the same may not be said for these sisters. They like their husbands, but there is something in their hearts that wants to speak out for itself. When I put forward the very complicated question of “what do you think you want the most in your life”, Wen pondered for a while and said, “A sense of security”. For her, it means not only financial security, but also a sense of achievement, independent and personal space in the long run. She told me she only realised this after marriage. Her younger sister, Nana, seems to enjoy more of a sense of popularity. She always holds her cell phone, sends and reads messages to and from her clients met in the nightclub. She enjoys talking about them among her sisters and roommates, and gossiping about her possibilities with them. Nana keeps herself open to any opportunities and thinks it is good to be able to have more comparisons and choices. Zhen jie very much appreciates her ability and sees being a xiaojie as a way to explore new relations with men and enjoy life. While Wen insists in her dream of obtaining “security”, Nana enjoys wideopen options with men. In their marriage experience, these women nonetheless found a good way to balance their paying-off and taking-in. Marital relationship is like a mirror through which they see more clearly how men-women relationships work and what they really want (or do not want). It was assumed as a way of gaining social status, stability and wealth, but now it turns out to be a driving force for these women to seek their own understandings of a happy life, an engine to start off a different experience, and a constant reminder of their desires on their migration path. Working as Xiaojies: Sex and the City These women’s love and marriage experience make them more aware of what they would face in the urban erotic/semi-erotic environment and how they would deal with it. For them, an intimate relationship is no longer a “pure relationship”9 but rather involves lots of “practical” issues such as financial considerations, career development, living conditions, urban identity, etc. Dealing with clients in their jobs therefore becomes a “profession” that needs skills and requires returns rather than merely spending time together. Through my visits to the night entertainment sites, I see these women’s agency and ability to negotiate intimacies with their clients, and how through this process they challenge the existing relationship with clients and try to take the space under control. In this part I put my 3.
262
Negotiating Intimacies in an Eroticised Environment
______________________________________________________________ emphasis on xiaojies’ small talk while waiting for jobs and trivial daily activities to illustrate how they utilise time as a site to exercise their agency and “gain back” autonomy that may be encroached upon by both the male clients and the sexualised environment. I will also analyse how they give meaning to these seemingly unimportant moments in their lives. I see “small” power gathering and growing in these moments, which indicate a greater potential to change and subvert the existing gender order and relations. The appearance and body shape is the most basic issue in the xiaojie-client relationship. Xiaojies’ bodies are competing sites where they try their best to be pretty. They usually spend quite a lot of time applying make-up and choosing clothes at home before they leave for work, and during work, they also frequent the toilet to check whether they still look good. Impression management is essential in their lives, and in this process they are actually empowering themselves. Nana and her sister Wen are both working in the same nightclub. Wen has spent over 10,000 RMB on clothes and makeup in the first three months of her work. That night when I was there in the lounge, I saw her constantly checking the mirror. “My blush was smudged by a client just now. He kissed me on the face.” She applied a thin new layer of shimmer rouge onto her face and made it perfect. “You have to always look good and young before a client. You know that. At the same time we make ourselves feel good.” I remembered one night I wanted to pretend to be one of them when I followed the girls into a Karaoke room in a nightclub. I was in my usual look, which is so different that the clients laughed at me at once, “Look at this one! She’s here to collect tips only!” At that point I noticed that not only did I not wear high-heeled shoes, and that I brought a handbag in, but also, and most importantly, that I did not wear a wonder-bra! The girls shared with me their “tricks” to appear sexual. It is actually not important whether you have good-looking breasts or not. The key is that you wear a wonder-bra or any bra that is thick enough to make them look big. In addition, you have to stand up and stretch your body as much as you can so that you look taller and have a nicer body shape. If the clients caress their breasts, as they usually will do, the wonder-bra will become a protecting tool that prevents direct contact between their body and the client’s hands. Sometimes the girls will “redirect” clients’ hands from their hips or thighs to their breasts because that is the most protected body part. For the clients, it is also enjoyable. Xiaojies refer to this as a “win-win” strategy. Language becomes a useful defence and re-production mechanism where xiaojies can consciously modify existing relations between them and clients. Gossip is flying around and topics about clients are always the most popular ones. In such small talk, past events can be re-constructed; memories can be modified; power relations can be altered or even reversed; and so their personal space is always in construction within their tactical manipulation of time. Juan once sighed that she loathes the moment where she is gazed upon
Yu Ding
263
______________________________________________________________ by male clients when they pick up girls like picking up a toy, sometimes with rude remarks over their physical appearance. In the backstage time-space, however, girls can counter-strike by language and imagination. They would judge clients’ appearance, language, richness, alcohol capacity, friendliness, etc. using their own standard. Also, they would talk about clients’ sexual capacity, say, who is most sexually attractive, who would be best in bed, who would be most suitable to live with and who would be a good husband. Sometimes they would grasp at the short intervals between jobs to discuss how to deal with a particular man who is either very much disliked or fancied by them. Then they adjust their tactics toward them when they are asked out again.10 They take control of when and how much to drink when with clients, and may abruptly put a stop to any on-going activities and hide in the en-suite toilet to vomit out excessive alcohol to relieve their stomachs. Usually the whole drinking process will not last long, since xiaojies always have good tricks to direct clients’ interest to other things like singing, dancing or just caressing. They will usually return to the lounge in about 15-20 minutes’ time to have a rest. They take up these interims as a chance to share experiences, explore tricks, or laugh over unhappy incidents, through which they somehow subvert the power relations. Such small occasions, in a Deleuzian sense, are not interstitial times; on the contrary, they are full of opportunitiesto become.11 This can be understood as a dynamic activity where women express their desire of being more powerful in their relationship with others, especially clients. They also take these direct and intimate interactions with men a good way to comprehend men-women relationships. The variety of clients also helps broaden their personal space which they utilise as social capital for future personal development. Some of them even think working as xiaojie can help screen out undesirable men types whom they will not consider for their future lives. Take Lanzi as an example. She got to know a university professor in the massage parlour which she is working for. She always wanted to go to evening school and so thought it was a good chance. She provided very good massage and free hours to the professor in order to give him good impression, and she finally succeeded. The professor thinks she is pretty, honest and hard- working, and recommended her to an evening school course which, according to her account, she benefited a lot from. What is more “beneficial” is that she married the professor’s son after a year. Her story becomes a “legend” among her friends. 4.
Future Aspirations: With or Without Men Lanzi of course represents one of the girls’ desires toward marriage and love life. These women came out from the villages or small towns in order to pursue a more secure life in the cities, and many of them have vague dreams about love and marriage. They have a sense that intimate relations
264
Negotiating Intimacies in an Eroticised Environment
______________________________________________________________ should build on a solid ground, which may constitute aspects of economy, future development, security, identity and so on that are not at all related to love. Their experience tells them the existing man-woman relationship may not be the best choice since marriage may be seen as a strategy rather than a result of natural flow of emotions. Some of them refer to themselves as “businesswomen” who know how to measure cost and gain. Therefore, marriage is only one of the options and when it does not work well, they will consider other options which may have higher “returns”, be it financial, emotional or psychological. “I won’t get married until I can’t live on by myself any longer! Marriage is really my last resort.” This is Hong’s claim, who is a 26 year-old unmarried girl. She knows well about men since she has been working in this field for seven years. The unbearable confusion and heartbreak with or without men make her determined to remain single. The idea of living without men is typical among xiaojies, especially the younger ones. Singlehood means better security and comfort for them, and cohabitation provides an alternative to feeling belonged to while keeping the options open. “Who says that women can’t fool around like men?” 41 year-old Zhen jie has a very powerful and impressive remark on men-women relationships. Her husband is a little short of her expectation yet her professional skills and social networks built in 15 years bring her reputation, money and urban living style. Her highs and lows remind her of the hardship of doing sex business, and what she has paid deserves equal return. She thinks it possible to keep her marriage but simultaneously enjoys sexual pleasure with younger men. From time to time, she buys sex from male prostitutes and enjoys their “new sexual tricks”. She drinks, gambles on horseracing and goes to nightclubs. In this way, she turned from an obedient rural wife to a sexy urban whore. “Why do you always think you give birth to a child FOR HIM? I can do it for myself! This is my own business.” No one knows better about independent child rearing than Li Juan. When I heard her saying this to me, I was so shocked and even felt a little ashamed of my “outdated” views. She sees women’s ability to give birth to children an appreciated gift, not what many of us, especially single mothers will usually think of. She holds that it is not a burden and failure to be a single-mother-cum-prostitute, but a woman’s achievement. 5.
Conclusion To the women I interviewed, intimacy is a platform to transform themselves. In different stages of their lives, they have built up different understandings towards intimacy, which makes it an ongoing project of the self.12 This paper illustrates xiaojies’ expectations, rethinking and aspirations of love and marriage through the lens of China’s rural-urban migration and
Yu Ding
265
______________________________________________________________ rapid commodification. It reveals that in intimate relationships, such as marriage, xiaojie-client relationship, cohabitation and child rearing, women constantly negotiate their roles and revise existing gender relations by accumulating small and discursive power. They are constantly searching for what they want and express their desire through seemingly deviant thoughts and remarks, but this is the way they evolve and become stronger.
Notes 1
Xiaojie (literarily “little sister”, means “fair lady” or “miss”). It is a respectful term for young unmarried women and later becomes a common practice to address female prostitutes. Also it is a term used by prostitute women to refer to themselves, instead of “sex workers”, which I believe is an empowering tactic through renaming. Since Chinese ancient times, Xiaojie is a respectful address used for young ladies with wealthy family backgrounds. In rural areas, people address women in other ways. During China’s Cultural Revolution, this word was cast as having a touch of capitalist or feudalist tint, and people stopped using it. After China’s economic reform, it was brought back into daily use by the influx of Hong Kong and Taiwanese businessmen. Gradually, it becomes a unique title for women prostitutes, introduced by businessmen. An interesting thing to note is that, about five years ago, it became taboo for non-prostitute women, because of its popularity among prostitutes. The former began to use other titles to address themselves. These rural women take it up as a way to enjoy urban identity. For married prostitute women, it has a connotation of “young and unmarried” and also gives them a sense of openness of options. Compared to “sex workers”, it keeps their future open, and gives them a “second virginity” since by so doing, rural wives become urban girls. 2 D Davin, ‘Women and Migration in Contemporary China’. China Report, vol. 41, Spring 2005, p. 32. 3 ibid., p. 33 . 4 L Beynon, ‘Dilemmas of the Heart: Rural Working Women and Their Hopes’, in On the Move: Women and Rural-to-Urban Migration in Contemporary China, A Gaetano and T Jacka (eds), Columbia University Press, New York, 2004, pp. 131-50. 5 L Tan and S Short, ‘Living as Double Outsiders: Migrant Women's Experiences of Marriage in a County-Level City’, in On the Move: Women and Rural-to-Urban Migration in Contemporary China, A Gaetano and T Jacka (eds), Columbia University Press, New York, 2004, pp. 151-76. 6 A Gaetano and T Jacka, ‘Introduction’, in On the Move: Women and Ruralto-Urban Migration in Contemporary China, A Gaetano and T Jacka (eds), Columbia University Press, New York, 2004, pp. 1-40.
266
Negotiating Intimacies in an Eroticised Environment
______________________________________________________________ 7
The names used in this paper are what the xiaojies prefer to use. Thus some of them are pseudonyms that they gave me and some are real names in the case that the informants do not mind revealing them. Consent was given before any interviews were conducted and the informants were all aware of the possibility of future publication. 8 E Illouz, Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997, pp. 37-39. 9 Anthony Giddens postulates a “pure relationship” in his 1991 book Modernity and Self-Identity, see also Jamieson’s analysis on ‘multidimensional intimacy’ in ‘Intimacy Transformed? A Critical look at the pure relationship’. Sociology, vol. 33, August, 1999, pp. 477-94. 10 M de Certeau, The practice of everyday life, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984, p. 480. 11 G Deleuze, Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life, Zone Books, New York, 2001, p. 170. 12 See Foucault’s “self technologies” in Technologies of the Self, Tavistock Publications, London, 1988. See also Gidden’s “project of the self” in Modernity and Self-Identity, 1991; and M Waters (ed), Modernity: Critical Concepts VII, Routledge, London and New York, 1999.
Bibliography Beynon, L., ‘Dilemmas of the Heart: Rural Working Women and Their Hopes’, in On the Move: Women and Rural-to-Urban Migration in Contemporary China. A. Gaetano and T. Jacka (eds), Columbia University Press, New York, 2004, pp. 131-150. Davin, D., ‘Women and Migration in Contemporary China’. China Report, vol. 41, Spring 2005, pp.29-38. De Certeau, M., The practice of everyday life. S. F. Rendall (trans), University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984. Deleuze, G., Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life. A. Boyman (trans), Zone Books, New York, 2001. Foucault, M., Technologies of the Self: a seminar with Michel Foucault. M. Luther et al. (eds), Tavistock Publications, London, 1988.
Yu Ding
267
______________________________________________________________ Gaetano, A. M., and T. Jacka (eds), On the Move: Women and Rural-toUrban Migration in Contemporary China. Columbia University Press, New York, 2004. Giddens, A., Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif., 1991. Illouz, E., Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997. Jamieson, L., ‘Intimacy Transformed? A Critical look at the pure relationship’. Sociology, vol. 33, August, 1999, pp. 477-494. Tan, L., and S. Short, ‘Living as Double Outsiders: Migrant Women's Experiences of Marriage in a County-Level City’, in On the Move: Women and Rural-to-Urban Migration in Contemporary China. A. Gaetano and T. Jacka (eds), Columbia University Press, New York, 2004, pp. 151-176. Waters, M. (ed), Modernity: Critical Concepts VII. Routledge, London and New York, 1999, pp. 175-193.
Disturbing Intimacies: The Micro-Politics of Interviewing the Embodiment of Political Evil1 Alejandro Cervantes-Carson For Galo Gómez Ogalde. Tell me, my friend, have I mourned you enough?
Abstract In this chapter I explore the complex analytical territory of the link between intimacy and political evil. An interview in 2003 placed me face to face with the person whom my generation, in the latter quarter of Mexico’s twentieth century, had grown to think embodied political evil: President Luis Echeverría. Finding a charismatic and charming person surprised me, yet what unsettled me was the inter-subjective bond that was created throughout the interview process; certain closeness, if you will. He had been the first president in Mexico to be legally accused for crimes against humanity and I had interviewed him at the peak of the special prosecutor’s case. The interview had not been on those themes, but the spectres of the case were inevitably and subtly interweaved into the whole experience. His social and political embodiment had met with my social and political embodiment, and in many ways it was not him and I that met, but historical, political and symbolic forces behind each one of us that were there at that meeting. This sense of being historically detached from the experience, dramatically contrasted with a bond that emerged: it was not only unreal that I was interviewing him, the embodiment of evil, but profoundly disturbing that I had felt a certain degree of intimacy. Key Words: Authoritarianism, cultural sociology, democracy, disturbing intimacies, embodiment of the political, moral crisis, political sociology, political spectres, Tlatelolco and the Dirty War in Mexico, troubled intersubjectivity. ***** 1.
The Context (as an Introduction) In August of 2003 I conducted a three-hour long interview with former Mexican President Luis Echeverría. The central purpose of that interview was to explore the paradigmatic changes that so profoundly transformed population policies during his term in office from 1970 to 1976,
270
Disturbing Intimacies
______________________________________________________________ and that produced a lasting effect over the demographic dynamics of Mexico in the 20th century. Our meeting, however, was inevitably crisscrossed by multiple subtexts that linked our conversations with historical memory and biography, violence and authoritarianism, and of course politics, power and democratisation. These subtexts were all condensed under the metaphor of Tlatelolco: the Mexico City student massacre of October 2, 1968. More than three decades later the Tlatelolco metaphor hung heavily as a spectre over our entire interview process. Echeverría was being investigated by a special prosecutor for ‘crimes against humanity’. The investigation was aimed at determining his responsibility and alleged involvement as Secretary of Government (Interior Minister) in the events that led to the massacre and cover up that followed. A separate and parallel investigation was trying to establish his level of knowledge and participation, as President of the country, in the design and implementation of what is now known as Mexico’s ‘dirty war’, during the decade of the 1970s.2 My generation grew up scarred by the events of Tlatelolco and the covertly launched ‘dirty war’ by the government against urban and rural guerrilla organisations, democratic and justice oriented social movements and all dissenting politics, in general. To meet with the person you had perceived to be, for decades, the embodiment of political evil, can only but create a subjective crisis, a crisis of the moral order and a crisis of ethical standards. This paper is part of a book project through which I am trying to make sense of this encounter and examine different angles of what I have termed the embodiment of the political. In this particular piece I would like to explore the ‘counter-intuitive’ relation of the interview experience to the concept and the dimension of intimacy. 2.
One Year Later, We Finally Meet As we crossed the threshold of his house and turned to our right after an entry hall, I could see him sitting down on a chair that was part of a small living room and reception area. From that point he had a perfect visual recognition of the entrance. “Dr. Cervantes”, he said while standing up, “right on time, right on the dot.” “Mr. President, I would not have thought otherwise. We finally meet”, I said as I was approaching.” I had rehearsed this moment a million times in my head. I wanted to feel a brief sense of control over the formality of the initial greetings and the awkwardness of introducing people. Rehearsing this moment again and again in the solitude of my inner self had provided me with some internal serenity; I had hoped it would allow me to gain centre from the beginning. But the rehearsal had also the purpose of negotiating the use of the title. “You can’t
Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
271
______________________________________________________________ but call him Mr. President, I thought and said to myself. These titles do not disappear after they leave office.” However absurd the moral conflict, I had refused, at the same time, to use the title throughout the interview. I was very much aware of the protocol, yet extending the title beyond his time in office meant a subtle recognition I did not want to grant. I believe I would have had the same problem with any other President, but then again this was not ‘any other President’; this President was in the minds of many a political criminal, an assassin. Whether one wants to rely on an old classic like Max Weber or on a post-structuralist like Barthes or Kristeva, the act of naming an authority that is not given by the power invested in an office, ceases to be a formal act and becomes a substantive one. It means recognising an authority that has a source that is not legal or constitutional. It is an act that draws from other domains of legitimacy, from culture, of course, from political ideas and perceptions, from customs and practices in politics. I just could not imagine myself doing that without feeling artificial and a bit subservient. My moral conflict, however, derived from the domain of the substantive, definitely not from the formal. I just could not extend recognition beyond the office, yet I felt that a formal gesture that indicated that I was aware and knew political protocol was necessary. “Mr President, yes Mr. President. I will say it once, at the beginning and that is it,” that is how I convinced myself of having reached a credible stance, a credible agreement with myself. Like landmines in an unknown territory, in a post-war zone, the interview preparation was full of moral conflicts that were randomly scattered and that forced me to proceed with ultimate care. The title and recognition conflict was absolutely minor but it signalled many that were to come. Whatever I decided probably would leave no trace over the interview, over the quality of the exchange with Echeverría, yet I still continue to suffer through it. No empirical or political consequence, yet a moral conflict to resolve. I dreamt with it many times and got stuck with it days on end. Echeverría was not alone, which was not surprising. Yet, I was not expecting he be accompanied by such a large entourage for the interview. It was clear that all of those folks were not security people; we had already been checked and rechecked when we entered the premises of his estate. Security people had followed us on our route from the back gate of the premises to the back door of his house. In silence they had followed every single movement of ours; every single one. We shook hands, our eyes met and he smiled. He then swiftly proceeded to introduce me to all five of his advisors. “Five advisors”, I thought, “was that actually necessary?” No, clearly not, it was a show of academic force, a show-off of resources, a power statement; later this move would become very clear. I did not have an entourage of five, but I had brought my own team and I actually felt pretty good about that: a film director, a cameraman and a sound specialist. And as things progressed that
272
Disturbing Intimacies
______________________________________________________________ day, I was very happy not to be alone. At least, I had a friend I could emotionally rely on and turn a complicit look, now and then. We did not agree on how to qualify, or more strongly, how to pass judgement on Echeverría’s administration, but we certainly knew that we were there for each other; throughout the interview Jaime was certainly there for me! The introductory situation had all the signs, symbols and body language of political power. I was not completely new to these power rituals, so I read the signs with a certain ease and went through the motions. But when he grabbed my arm right above the elbow, oh so slightly but with a firmness that was absolutely unmistakable, I knew that I was not dealing with any politician, but with one that was well versed in the odd art of interlacing charisma with power, sweet talk with force; an odd combination, but a very effective one. “Come with me”, he said softly and leaning in, “I have arranged a breakfast for all of us.” Moving away from the reception area and towards the dinning room, Echeverría guided me with his soft grip. Of all the texts on methodology or epistemology that I had read, it was only Bachelard that had mildly prepared me for this experience: expect the expected, of course, and simultaneously be prepared to expect the unexpected! 3 And how appropriate that I would recall him for this interview given that I read his text exactly during the period when Echeverría was (allegedly) launching the ‘dirty war’ in a ‘clean’ Mexico. As much as I owe him the preparation for this interview, Gaston Bachelard could not have warned me of what was to come. “Expect the expected, but be sure, simultaneously, to expect the unexpected - this is how I still recall one of his epistemological edicts.” I was by far too immature to fully understand the consequences of this statement. Today, however, I am not completely certain this understanding has to do anything with maturity. Yet during the interview process, I kept imploring: Gaston, please shed your light over me! With his soft yet firm grip on my arm, Echeverría made us two lead the pack into the dinning room. As we moved away from the reception area I noticed something on the wall that completely captured my attention. “No way on earth. That has to be absolutely impossible,” I tried to convince myself. “No fucking way!”, I insisted. It has to be an illusion! He just cannot, or maybe should not have that on the walls of his house.” As we turned the corner into the dinning room I caught Jaime’s gaze and made a gesture to him that had the intention of asking exactly these questions: Is that what I think it is? And if so, what in the hell is it doing here? While my gesture was calling upon a friend, it was also calling upon an expert on the subject. Jaime’s response was unmistakable: “Yeah, isn’t that remarkable?”, he said with his look. What we had recognised were panels of a Diego Rivera mural that had been painted parallel to the now cinematographically-famous Rockefeller Centre mural, which was ordered to
Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
273
______________________________________________________________ be destroyed by the funding Rockefellers themselves, when Rivera refused to erase the image of Lenin from his piece.4 Right there in his house, panel pieces of a mural that had been painted and given as a gift to the union of artist workers of New York. Panel pieces painted by the most famous and I would add mysterious Mexican muralist, now hung from the walls of Echeverría’s house. Unbelievable! 3.
Oh Dear! The Inter-Text of Reality or the Un-Stated Story of Two Degrees of Separation Beyond my research interest on the subject, Mexico had been noted and internationally recognised for implementing an incredibly successful family planning program. Since 1973 and for three consecutive decades governmental programmes had incorporated contraceptives as part of the general package of primary health care services, along with maternal and child care, throughout the country. This well supported and generously funded initiative made these services available to millions of Mexicans living both in urban and rural sites; services that were not even available to all women and couples in so called developed and industrialised nations, at the time. With the financial backing of international foundations and the matching of national funds the most ambitious governmental programs of the 20th century were launched. The result was a massive and widespread family planning program that created, at once, new rights for citizens and services that were previously inconceivable (ideologically and empirically) to many Mexicans. Within a neo-Malthusian international environment, Mexico’s policy accomplishments had been set as a standard to follow. Nations like India and China were admonished, by the United Nations, to understand that effectiveness was not at odds with legal standards based on the respect of human rights. It was the time of the “population bomb” mentality. Ideologies that equated national power with number of citizens were cornered and suffered dwindling support. The political and ideological environment had changed population growth was now conceived as the ultimate obstacle for economic development, for the modernisation of a society and for the construction of a modern life style. Population growth rates were set as one of the crucial variables that divided the world into developed and underdeveloped, and that categorised countries as first, second or third world nations. It is not a coincidence, I believe, that the professionals and politicians that authored such indicators and classification criteria came mostly from ‘developed’ nations and that they found allies among the political elites of the ‘developing’ nations. Mexico’s massive, highly organised, well funded and effective family planning program caught the attention of world observers, no doubt. But, what really created international praise was the effectiveness it had in
274
Disturbing Intimacies
______________________________________________________________ reducing fertility rates and consequently in bringing down population growth. The tipping point, however, was that everything had been set in motion by way of constitutional amendments and had been carried out by an impressively well-oiled and service-oriented governmental machinery. The right to decide freely about the number of children to have and when to have them were boldly enacted by introducing new articles in the constitution. Hundreds of thousands of physicians and nurses working for the state healthcare system were made responsible for the success of the program. The combination of these factors created the rationale behind the award the United Nations gave Mexico’s Population Council in 1986.5 It was Echeverría, as president, who had launched Mexico onto the scene of international modernisation by way of demographic forecasting and policy change. Yet, paradoxically, in his role as Minister of the Interior he had enforced prohibition measures that went in the opposite direction. In the mid-1950s, Edris Rice-Wray, a female public health physician from New Jersey had relocated from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Mexico City with the purpose of opening up the first family planning clinic in Latin America. Having been part of the team that synthesised the pill, this move had won her praise and popular recognition.6 Yet, Mexican legislation at the time and all the way up to 1970 made it illegal to prescribe contraceptives. The clinic had opened as a research facility and with time it became a covert service providing operation for women that wanted to limit or control their fertility. “Oh, they closed the clinic many times”, she confided in me. Every time we would get bad press, ‘Gobernación’ (the Ministry of the Interior) would move in slapping all these stickers on our doors. I would call the administrator, she would call our lawyers and normally by the end of the week the clinic would reopen. “Yet the last two times this happened”, she recalled, “there was damage to laboratory equipment and files disappeared. In putting things back together, I noticed that all the files from my wealthy and politically prominent women had vanished and among them the file of Echeverría’s wife. Yes”, she said with a smile on her face, “she had been covertly my patient for a couple of years.” That was the last conversation I had on the subject with Edris, my grandmother. 4.
Concluding Remarks: On Stories, Subjects and Intimacy Using, and perhaps abusing (let me apologise ahead of time) Merleau-Ponty, language interactions (or in Habermasian terms, communication acts) are constitutive of subjects and their disposition to relate to others and self. To put it briefly and somewhat crudely, we do not communicate from a primordial place of thinking and of relating to empirical reality, which is separate and exists before the act of communicating. We create our subject sense of being and subjectivity by way of our relations to
Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
275
______________________________________________________________ others, of our communication with what surrounds us. We are not before these acts; this is where we become and gain a sense of self. The stories we endorse and tell each other, the stories we create, recreate and share about history, social self and reality inform and infuse these subject producing moments of self and being. The particular story I brought with me to the interview; a story that was contextually driven and culturally produced by my generation (in the professional, academically oriented and politically left-leaning middle-class Mexico City of my upbringing) was that Echeverría could not be anybody but the embodiment of political evil. To be face to face with him problematised this story, yet to discover humanity in him relativised and frankly shattered the integrity of that narrative. But to feel certain closeness to him, throughout the experience of the interview, really through me into an incessant spiral of moral crises that I not only failed to anticipate, but actually (betraying the lessons of what I thought I had learned well from Bachelard) never was prepared to expect, even when now I can claim they were unexpected. The epistemological separation that I had assumed I would keep from him throughout the interview, was compromised from the get go. I had decided to keep my convoluted biographical and family connection to him hidden and unacknowledged throughout, but it created a subjective uneasiness in me as an interviewer. As well, I knew he was a charismatic politician, in the Weberian sense, but that idea did not prepare me for his charisma in an inter-subjective fashion. I was readily unprepared to deal with an Echeverría that wanted to and worked towards establishing closeness with me. His gestures and body-spatial moves had all the marks of a micro-politics of intimacy and were very clear: he kept me always next to him, leaned-in frequently to make comments, remarks and to ask questions that shut off his advisors and my team, and he used touch repeatedly as a discursive emphatic strategy, but mostly - I believe - to construct closeness, an intimate connection, if you will. Through these vignettes, I have tried to offer in this paper a slice of what I identify today as one of the strong sources of my post-interview moral crisis: the unexpected presence of intimacy. I would like to suggest that the experience was disturbing in a double sense: First, because the unexpected presence of intimacy shattered my narratives of evil that I had brought to the interview. And second, in a more productive way, because it disturbed and complexified my understanding of both the concept of evil and of intimacy, as well as their possible and obscure links.
276
Disturbing Intimacies
______________________________________________________________
Notes 1 I want to warmly appreciate the daily manoeuvres of Marcio and Martín who went out of their way to protect my writing time and space at Amélie. Special thanks to Jaime Casillas, without whom the interview would not have happened. He made the initial and crucial contact (through a source that prefers to remain anonymous) and directed the filming of the interview like a master. Arguments here have benefited from my research seminar (“Spectres of Violence, Authoritarianism and Biography”) held in the spring and fall of 2005 and the spring of 2006, at the University of Mary Washington College; thanks to all students that intervened. 2 De-classified documents can be found at: The National Security Archive. Report Documents 18 Years of “Dirty War” in Mexico, February 26, 2006, viewed on February 28, 2006, . 3 The reference is to: G Bachelard, Formation of the scientific mind, Clinamen Press, Manchester, 2006. It was first published in 1938. 4 There is a long sequence of the event in the film: Frida, Directed by Julie Taymor, 2002. 5 The National Population Council of Mexico (CONAPO), a governmental institution that has the constitutional charge of designing population policies and coordinating national actions, was the 1986 Laureate recipient of the United Nations Population Award. 6 Dr. Gregory Pincus was head of a collection of physicians and scientists that were responsible for the first successful synthesis and medical trials of the (female) contraceptive pill; yes, the famous Pill. Dr. Edris Rice-Wray was in charge of the medical trials in Puerto Rico, parallel to those happening under the supervision Pincus in Massachusetts. See for example: E S Watkins. On the Pill: A Social History of Oral Contraceptives, 1950-1970, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, USA, 2001, p. 31. The comparison of experiences between Puerto Rico and Massachusetts became a contentious issue between Edris Rice-Wray and Gregory Pincus. While RiceWray was concerned of side effects on women and recommended finishing the trial early, Pincus wanted to push forward. See: A Tone, Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America, Hill and Wang, Buchanan, New York, 2002, p. 222. Also see: A Stanley, Mothers and Daughters of Invention: Notes for a Revised History of Technology, Rutgers University Press, Piscataway, 1995, p. 277. These differences grew to become an unbridgeable rift between them. The correspondence that documents the exchanges and the conflict that ensued is actually housed at the Medical School of Harvard University.
Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
277
______________________________________________________________
Bibliography Aguilar-Camin, H. and L. Meyer, In the Shadow of the Mexican Revolution: Contemporary Mexican History, 1910-1989. University of Texas Press, Austin, 1993. Alexander, J., The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology. Oxford Univesity Press, New York, USA, 2003. Alvarez, S. E., E. Dagnino, and A. Escobar (eds), Cultures of Politics/Politics of Cultures: Re-Visioning Latin American Social Movements. Westview Press, Boulder, 1998. Bachelard, G., Formation of the Scientific Mind. Clinamen Press, Manchester, 2006. Camp, R. A., Politics in Mexico: The Democratic Transformation. Oxford University Press, London, 4th edition, 2002. Doyle, K., ‘Forgetting is not Justice. Mexico Bares Its Secret Past’. World Policy Journal, vol. summer, 2003, pp. 61-72. Denzin, N. K. and Y. S. Lincoln (eds), Handbook of Qualitative Research. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, second edition, 2000. Ellis, C. and A. P. Bochner, ‘Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity: Researcher as Subject’, in Handbook of Qualitative Research. N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds), Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, second edition, 2000, pp. 733-768. Gutmann, M., The Romance of Democracy: Compliant Defiance in Contemporary Mexico. University of California Press, San Francisco, 2002. Habermas, J., ‘Hannah Arendt's Communications Concept of Power’, in Power. S. Lukes (ed), Blackwell, Oxford, 1986, pp. 59-74. Habermas, J., The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory. The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1998. Merleau-Ponty, M., The Structure of Behavior. Beacon Press, Boston, 1963.
278
Disturbing Intimacies
______________________________________________________________ –––, Phenomenology of Perception. Humanities Press, New York, USA, 1962. The National Security Archive. Report Documents 18 Years of “Dirty War” in Mexico, February 26, 2006, viewed on February 28, 2006, . Paz, O., ‘Introduction’, in Massacre in Mexico. E. Poniatowska (ed), University of Missouri Press, Columbia, 1992, pp. vii-xvii. Poniatowska, E., Massacre in Mexico. University of Missouri Press, Columbia, 1992. Stanley, A., Mothers and Daughters of Invention: Notes for a Revised History of Technology. Rutgers University Press, Piscataway, 1995. Silverman, D., ‘Analysing Talk and Text’, in Handbook of Qualitative Research. N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds), Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, second edition, 2000, pp. 821-834. Taibo II, P. I., 68. Seven Stories Press, New York, 2004. Tedlock, B., ‘Ethnography and Ethnographic Representation’, in Handbook of Qualitative Research. N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds), Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, second edition, 2000, pp. 455-486. Tone, A., Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America. Hill and Wang, Buchanan, 2002. Watkins, E. S., On the Pill: A Social History of Oral Contraceptives, 19501970. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2001. Weber, M., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1958.
Notes on Contributors Rebecca Brown, at the time of this paper, was a Research Associate at the University of Sheffield working on the “Changing Families Changing Food” programme. She is now a Research Associate at Loughborough University in the Department of Social Science. Lucy Butler is a PhD candidate in the Creative Arts Program, School of Culture and Communications, University of Melbourne, Australia. Her dissertation identifies a critique of the mythology of romantic love through images of dismemberment in contemporary film and fiction. Roberto Castro Perez is a full professor at the Regional Center for Multidisciplinary Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico. He is the coordinator of the Research Program on “Health and Society”. His areas of interest are medical sociology, violence against women, and health and human rights. Alejandro Cervantes-Carson is Director of Research & Project Development at Inter-Disciplinary.Net (Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain). His research and writing are situated at the intersection of Political Sociology, the Sociology of Intimacy and Cultural Sociology. He is currently completing a manuscript on trans-frontier and internet love entitled: Diálogos de Amor Irreverente. (Dialogues of Irreverent Love). Wayne Cristaudo is Director of European Studies at the University of Hong Kong. In addition to having published widely in social and political philosophy, he has written on the problems of love and evil. His latest book is Power, Love and Evil: Contribution to a Philosophy of the Damaged, (Amsterdam – New York: Rodopi, 2007). He is presently completing two manuscripts, The Star and the Cross: Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s Post-Nietzschean Revivals of Judaism and Christianity and A Philosophy of Love. Yu Ding is a PhD candidate at the Department of Social Work and Social Administration, University of Hong Kong. Sabine Flick studied Sociology, Political Sciences and Psychoanalysis in Frankfurt/M. Germany. She is a PhD Candidate in the Universities of Frankfurt and Kassel Germany and member of the DFG graduate school “Gender Relations and Public Spheres. Dimensions of Experience.” Her research is situated at the intersection of Gender Studies, Industrial Sociology and critical Social Psychology.
280
Notes on Contributors
______________________________________________________________ Paul Gilfillan is a Research Fellow and Associate Lecturer in the Department of Religious Education at Glasgow University. His research and writing are situated at the interface of ethnography, class, religion and education in contemporary Scotland. Niall Hanlon is Government of Ireland Scholar in the Humanities and Social Sciences at University College Dublin, School of Social Justice, Equality Studies Centre; [email protected] Pauline Johnson is Associate Professor of Sociology and Head of the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. She is currently amalgamating her research interests in the public sphere with an interest in intimate life as a source of politically relevant motivations. Don Love is Assistant Professor of Mass Communication at the American University of Sharjah (United Arab Emirates). His research focuses on intercultural communication in the media and interpersonal contexts. Momoyo Mitsuno is completing PhD candidate at School of Political Science, Criminology and Sociology, University of Melbourne, Australia. Jessica Mjöberg is a doctoral student in sociology at Uppsala University, Sweden. With an interest in social psychology and social theory, she is currently working on her thesis concerning modern society and intimacy. Elena Oliete is lecturer at the University of Zaragoza (Spain) and member of a research project on cinema and cultural studies at the Department of English. Her field of research is the study of identity and race relations in British and Indian Cinema. Beatriz Oria is a lecturer at the Department of English, University of Zaragoza, Spain. Esther Pérez-Villalba is currently a Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). She is the author of the book How Political Singers Facilitated the Spanish Transition to Democracy, 1960-1982. The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, 2007. Lorna Savage is a doctoral student at the University of Stirling, studying early years education and social behaviours. This paper was written when she was studying towards a Masters of Research in Education at the University of Glasgow.
Notes on Contributors
281
______________________________________________________________ Olga Seco is currently a lecturer at the department of English Studies of the University of Zaragoza (Spain). Goh Shuzhen is currently a research scholar at the National University of Singapore. Christopher S. Swader is a PhD Fellow in the Graduate School of Social Sciences, at the University of Bremen, Germany. Bryan R. Weaver is a PhD student in philosophy at The University of Reading. David White is a doctoral student at the University of Calgary in the Department of Philosophy. He is currently writing a dissertation on the foundations of morality, as well as doing research on issues related to morality and sexuality. Jessica White is a PhD candidate at the London Consortium, University of London. Chad Wolf is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, where he studied literature and philosophy. His primary academic interests are Wittgenstein, Animal Rights and Poetry. Fiona Woollard is a PhD student in philosophy at The University of Reading.
