Saturday, December 17, 2011

Reich, marriage, and future bisexuality

Reich, echoing Marx, sought the riddle of communism in the act of overturning the family. There have been many radical ideas about the government raising the children, parents sharing responsibility, etc. but I don't think either thinker meant something so radical. I think that just being in a marriage with someone you love, or who makes you happy, is a radical proposition in itself...

What are we to say about the woman who chooses not to go to university or work and chooses to be a housewife, and over top of that, chooses to be a housewife in a marriage without love? In an age in which more than 50% get divorced and women have full access to education and the workforce aren't we dealing with something neurotic when such a woman chooses to be in a loveless (maybe sexless, with love being understood as dependency and compliancy is more precise) marriage? In such a relationship don't we find early fantasies relating to "loving someone forever or for eternity" which have trumped later fantasies of independence and sexuality?

Isn't the future dependent on woman to give up that fantasy and to seek to develop her narcissistic side?

And, when the conservative talks of 'China rising' and lives, like the housewife, in the early 20th century isn't there another fantasy to be overcome? Hasn't capitalism linked all economies, mixed the populations, and taken racism from public discourse so that the readiness for a war or distrust of the cultural Other is no longer real?

Men too will have to give up their fantasy and their belief in language as if a cultural group, because they share a name, must mean that each individual has the same feelings. Also the belief that because an individual uses language that there must be an I that exists who is self-caused (causa sui) or is modeled from perfection as opposed to an I who exists from a lack before others.

By the very nature of this progression it will have to be women who will be active in it and men who will learn to be passive. However, coming from a place of masochism it won't be the rule of women but 'high noon' and establishing a center between the two poles.

And all this is the most beautiful picture of the current situation which doesn't even touch how much the current culture feeds into fear, demand for security, the pettiness and meanness that our culture gratifies, and the vast majority of sick people who don't have either of these ideals in marriage.

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