Dysfunctional Families and Mating Systems

“Psychoanalytically, monogamy is inconceivable except as something that blocks circuits of desire”

I found Bersani’s argument really intriguing in that monogamy, which I have thought of as a completely acceptable institution, is actually oppressive in it that it blocks our own circuits of desire that we had as children and that we were taught to discipline. In refuting the legitimacy of monogamy, Bersani is also refuting the legitimacy of a family unit. After all, families are known for being dysfunctional. Bersani’s argument made me reflect on my own family. Technically, my parents have not been fully monogamous because they are divorced and remarried. In this way, I have been exposed to the cyclicality of desire. Monogamy proved problematic to my own parents because although they at one time found each other desirable, they lost interest after ten years, separated, and moved on to the next cycle of their desire. This reinforces Bersani’s argument, also in that because of my exposure to a technically not monogamous environment, I have personally been cynical on the institution of marriage and its mere normality because of its social construction, due to my own environment. Marriage not only reinforces monogamy, but also reinforces the limitations on one’s sexual desire.

Bersani also made me think of my own psychology class in which we have studied monogamy, polygyny and other mating systems. It was really interesting because monogamy is not very popular among other animals. In saying this, most other animals have found monogamy to be extremely limiting in terms of copulation and reproduction. My psychology textbook also posited that humans are not only monogamous, but also polygynous which means that the male is more likely to have more than one female. This apparently meant that the female is more “choosy” in finding her mate and the male is more aggressive in competing for a female. This oversimplification was almost laughable because of this gender studies class. Regardless, it seemed to me that humans are actually not naturally monogamous anyways and therefore Bersani is making a legitimate claim that monogamy and marriage are inconceivable because humans have many circuits of desire.