Bersani's Against Monogamy

One idea stuck out to me because Bersani mentions it numerous times and repeatedly comes back to relate some form of it to what he is saying. This idea is that monogamy itself has some kind of relationship to the desires and experiences of childhood. One claim he makes with regard to this idea is that, “The remark in the The Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality to the effect that in finding a love object we are re-finding it appears to ground monogamous impulse in the memory of an infinitely satisfying (if only in fantasy) infantile relation to the mother,” and he also brings in a professional opinion on the idea with, “The psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas expressed most forcefully the view of monogamy – and of marriage – as a regression to infantile securities.” This seems to say that monogamy is just a reflection of a parent-child relationship, which many people may not like to hear. This, in a way reminds me of when men say women have “daddy issues”, meaning that their something in their relationship with their father is negatively affecting their current relationship. This is a popular reference in many comedies today, such as How I Met Your Mother, when one character Barney, played by Neil Patrick Harris, is talking about girls with “daddy issues”, while ironically the audience knows that he himself also has “daddy issues” do to his almost non-existent relationship with his father. Bersani also talks about the Oedipal stage frequently in his essay. Thinking about this in relation to the character Barney, bring up the question of how the Oedipal stage is affected with only one parent in the picture, as Barney only had his mother. Throughout the majority of the seasons, it is clear that Barney is essentially against monogamy. Looking into it, I realize that Barney only had the attachment with his mother, without the rivalry with his father part. Bersani also brings up the idea again when he notes,“Monogamy disciplines the orgies of childhood. In constantly renewing our fidelity to that early loved object, we just as constantly betray the polygamous conditions in which we loved it.” This idea definitely identifies with the character of Barney, as he is in a way childlike and does not want to discipline his promiscuous ways with monogamy.

Another thing that intrigues me in this essay was when Bersani mentioned that, “Monogamy would be the intimate arrangement most consistent with the more general social right to private property.” I realize that in more patriarchal cultures and in many places decades ago, men were seen to be the dominant one in the household and Bersani's claim may be in a way consistent with that time period, but nowadays, I realize that I have never thought about monogamy as having “private property”. In contrast, I would actually say that polygamy makes it seem more like having property, because with monogamy, it seems like each of the two people are choosing each other mutually and one does not have a difference in power over the other enough to define it as “property”, whereas with polygamy, for example with one man and several women, it seems like the multiple women are all there for the man and that the man has some kind of dominance over them, perhaps almost enough to say that they are considered his property.