Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Transformation of Intimacy

Giddens believes intimate relationships in the United States are in the process of profound transformation. By transformation he means a kind of democratization of the interpersonal domain, in a manner fully compatible with democracy in the public sphere. No longer an oppressive demand for constant emotional closeness, this new kind of intimacy would represent a negotiated agreement between individuals of equal standing and autonomy. I enjoyed Gidden’s use of non-normative language (that we have seen in Connell and Butler) to describe the intimacy we should strive for (words like egalitarian, autonomous, self-reflexivity, democratization), but his conclusions are confusing and arguments sometimes hard to follow and based upon essentialist gender assumptions. Citing data gathered from therapeutic works and self-help manuals, Giddens characterizes this change and traces its development further in chapters 5-7. His analysis in these chapters further deconstructs the transformation relationships in relation to addiction, codependence, and personal turbulence.

Following the historian Michel Foucault, Giddens privileges sexuality as both the metaphor and focus of self-identity in late modern capitalist societies. But unlike Foucault, Giddens does not conceive sexuality as a locus of social control. Instead, he reclaims sexuality as the site of "an emerging reflexive project of self". In chapter 5 Love, Sex, and Other Addictions Giddens describes addictions as a hindrance to self-reflection and transformation. Now, more than ever, Giddens states that the individual is continually making lifestyle decisions and these decisions are “defining who the individual is” (75). Giddens then moves to the addiction of sex, “Addiction is behaviour counterposed to choice, in respect of the reflexive project of self” (77).

In Chapter 6 The Sociological Meaning of Codependence, Gidden’s moves forward with his discussion on addiction. He defines a codependent person as someone who “in order to sustain a sense of ontological security, requires another individual, or set of individuals, to define her (or his) wants; she or he cannon feel self-confident without being devoted to the needs of others” (89). He contrasts an addictive relationship to a “pure relationship” one that has self-reflection as well as confluent love (90). In fact, addictive relationships hinder autonomy and self-identity and healthy intimacy. These troubles, argues Giddens, often are from childhood and relationships with parents. Reflection and transformation of “toxic” relationships between parents and children, however, “ allows clear insight into the connections between the reflexive project of self, the pure relationship and the mergence of new ethical programmes for the restructuring of personal life” (108).

Chapter 7 Personal Turbulence, Sexual Troubles addresses the issues of male and female sexuality and the notion of their supposed complimentary natures. In spite of his insistence on the importance of social institutions in constructing these narratives, Giddens assigns causality above all to the increasing sophistication of contraceptive technologies and women's concomitant demands for their own rights and pleasures (in reading from Monday). As the institutional restraints on women's behavior come into conflict both with women's sense of self and her pursuit of sexual pleasure, increasing tension develops between men and women. Women's demands arouse male violence and anxiety because they expose the constraints on women. Using a wide array of self-help literature and psychoanalytic theory, Giddens argues that while women have been socialized to value emotional intimacy over "episodic"-uncommitted-sex, their ties to others often come at the expense of their autonomy. And while women lose their autonomy through connection, men achieve manhood by suppressing connections to others. From early infancy on, men conform to the cultural imperative of masculinity by differentiating from the mother and denying their fundamental need for her love.

Simply put, men's and women's common longing for love takes different psychic forms. Men express the lack they feel in "overt rage and violence" against women (p. 117), whereas women express their lack by trying to connect with a man (or woman). Both men and women become "sex addicts," but women's addiction manifests a pathological need for approval and men's manifests a denial of that same need. Men's refusal to acknowledge their hidden emotional dependence on women means that they are "unable to construct a narrative of self which allows them to come to terms with an increasingly democratized sphere of personal life" (p. 117).

As we talked about Monday, Giddens's effort to challenge both Foucault's pessimism and inattention to questions of gender is admirable. But where Foucault overestimated the supremacy of power, in my opinion, Giddens underestimates it. In spite of his own sensitivity to the systemic nature of oppression, he neglects the relationship between sexual subjectivity and the powerful institutions that both regulate and construct it. Giddens reads much of his evidence self-help manuals-literally rather than as culturally/socially constructed objects (that often speak to specific groups of people). In so doing, he relies on a model of development that presumes the construction of gender relations he wants to explain (ex: men's disconnection). This odd inattention to the structural origins of gender norms leads Giddens to a perhaps unwarranted optimism (take for example the statement "the aversion felt by many towards homosexuality no longer receives substantial support from the medical profession" (p. 14). How far have we truly come in transforming intimacy from patriarchical and plagued with addiction and other psychoanalytical ills to an egalitarian relationship? Also, has the transformation occurred in certain groups of people or societies (i.e. upper-middle class Americans?) or is it a universal transformation?

1 comment:

Laurax Olson said...

Laura,

I agree that Giddens made a few too many essentialist claims and over generalized men and women's sexuality. This was distracting to me for the majority of the reading. But at the same time I give him credit because he does make good points. And at the time I'm sure a lot of what he is saying was revolutionary and new. But I also wonder whether or not this transformation he speaks of has only taken place in certain communities or classes. I think it is more possible for certain societies to make this transformation of intamacy given different economic and social situations.

Very good summary!

heart,

LAURAX