Invisible Adjunct

I think your comments are very a propos. Also, what happens if "work" is replaced by "effort"? That's a more precise description of what is meant by the "relationship is work" phrase.

On a sidenote, Kipnis' stuff about "yearly-renewable marriage" contracts doesn't strike me as being "progressive" or ahead of the curve. America's "culture of divorce" -- a culture that is far more accepting of divorce than in the past -- is under intense intellectual attack due to the undeniably bad effects it has on children. Kipnis, if anything, seems 30 years behind the time, caught up in some fatuous "sixtyism," in which those arguments haven't been raised yet.

To look at the interview at Salon, I had to watch a commercial for "Thirteen". It is a depressing combination. Her brave words - "All the endless rules and edicts of love are training to larger forms of passivity" - seem an odd fit with drug-snorting pre-teens...

Writing about the heroic political possibilities of unrestained desire strikes me as a wondeful academic pose. Why stop at marriage, though? What about the daring and thrilling desire to defraud others? Are the executives at Enron wonderful transgressors, too? After all, they lied to the government and refused to follow staid routines and tight regulations...

Reviews of her book should be shipped off to Northwestern alumni to let them know what a wonderful civic education their alma mater still provides.

Strikes me as just another attempt to be "transgressive" and rake in $$$. I like very much the way you take her analogy and turn her ass over teakettle with it. Pure intellectual judo.

I think Mead nails what Kipnis is up to.

Indeed, for someone with such a skeptical eye for the supposed eternal verities, Kipnis gives lust a free ride.

And here's Kipnis from her NYT Mag piece a couple of years ago.

The prevailing cultural wisdom is that even if sexual desire tends to be a short-lived phenomenon, ''mature love'' will kick in to save the day when desire flags. The issue that remains unaddressed is whether cutting off other possibilities of romance and sexual attraction for the more muted pleasures of mature love isn't similar to voluntarily amputating a healthy limb: a lot of anesthesia is required and the phantom pain never entirely abates.

Let's leave aside the bits about "work," which you effectively demolish, and forget her "really big breasts," about which I think she's kidding, and look at that kernel of truth in her $$$raking enterprise: we do (pledge to) give up the frisson of new encounters when we commit and we do pay some price for that. What's the price? How do we justify it? And is that justification satisfactory? Kipnis may be silly, but the questions aren't.

The impression I got from the interview in Salon was that Kipnis is a dithering, intellectually flabby ninny. She says she's against Love but, as you note, conflates this with work via a pop-psychology bromide, with the result that her criticisms could only apply to the oppressive aspects of legal marriage. And then to suggest "yearly renewable contracts" as a possible alternative (I know, I know, I'm just repeating what you wrote, but I'm still aghast at the stupidity of it all) is like—

The hell with her. I'm having a drink. Want one?

Interesting to see Marx mentioned here by someone other than me. I think Karl (stormy marriage) & Fred (never married) would say, yeah, the kind of "work" involved in a marriage would ideally be non-alienated labour. However, both -- especially Engels -- were cynical about the whole deal; Engels called it "prostitution" in the "Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State." There's even a passage in there about the boredom of Protestant marriages vs. the raciness of Catholic ones that's germane to this discussion. In any case, the problem with marriage for Marx and Engels and other radicals is that it's part and parcel of the old society. If you look at communist utopias, e.g., "News from Nowhere", marriage is nowhere to be found. Out in the real world, many of the 19th c. utopian socialist communities and 60s/70s anarchist communities tried to get around marriage in some way or another.

I'm going on about this because it seems to me that Kipnis is actually on the right track. Marriage isn't working too well these days. Is this because of our sodomite Culture of Divorce? No, there's been a social redifinition of masculinity and femininity as well as a massive social change towards increased "flexibility". All of this has inevitably eroded the social base of the marriage and family, which for the moment are still rooted in Late Modernity. I give Kipnis credit for trying to develop an ethics for our new society.

If you want to defend marriage, you're going to have to defend its social base. That may include "effort" from the couple in question, but that's not nearly enough. At the very least you will need to redefine work and gender roles back to where they were before WWII. Good luck. Personally, i think the Kipnis route makes more sense.

I guess I'm dense, as I don't see what pre-WW2 work and gender roles have to do with marriage, the institution where partners commit themselves to the sharing of their lives and get their commitment recognized as having legal consequences. I hope Che isn't forgetting that a great many women worked in the '30s, for starters - the image of the stay-at-home housewife as a very widely practiced norm is about as closely connected to reality as French revolutionary tracts about feudal features like the droit de signeur. (That is, not at all.)

Divorce rates are higher, so nearly as I can tell, primarily because our culture(s) now put a different valuation on the merits of maintaining a not altogether satisfactory (or maybe much worse than that) marriage versus the merits of breaking it off. I'm unconvinced that this is all that deeply connected to specific economic circumstances - surely it is in part, but as a non-Marxist I have the liberty to say that a given pattern of work and off-work time needn't require this or that particular response, even though it may make some more or less likely and/or appealing. Values shape economics as well as vice-versa; it's not separate stories of a building, it's like the parts of a circulatory system, which when taken far enough all become other parts.

(I'm in favor of extending the blessings of matrimony to gatherings of sundry number and gender, as I think that society at large has an interest in rewarding the desire to make the commitment of shared life.)

I do admit to having a dim view of arguments of the form "I'm screwing you over as an act of protest against them", which disinclines me to respect Kipnis very much.

On che's points -

If we are going to really take up Kipnis' arguments against linking marriage status to financial issues or endorse this idea of a yearly contract, then how would it work? This assumes of course that we stay in "Late Modernity" and that the revolution does not show up to whisk away that pesky withering state, religious beliefs, and human inequality.

Would one (or more) partners be covered by the benefits of another in a relationship? How would the dissolution of such relationships work in terms of dividing income and possessions? Who would review whether or not "partnerships" were valid enough to warrant a company or the state to provide insurance or other material benefits?

If I was a canny HR person trying to comb back offering benefits, I'd be promoting Kipnis' position as a justification to lower labor costs in the name of "flexibility". IA is dead on in her assessment.

Che: I have two responses to your post. One is to your content and the other is to your tone.

Content: Economic circumstances have changed, as you state, but why do these economic circumstances have to lead to a weakening of the institution of marriage? I don't see a necessary causal shift. In fact, why not argue the opposite, that economic circumstances -- more instability, more dual-earner families -- should have strengthened the institution, since a stable marriage actually confers many economic benefits? In fact, the problem is cultural. I think Bruce put it very well. There's been a cultural shift in America towards individual fulfillment and liberty that I believe has been extremely destructive. At the same time, not all of it is going to be rolled back.

I do want to point out that I appear to be the only one in the discussion to mention children. The effects of divorce on children are entirely negative. All the bromides about "better happy apart than unhappy together" are pure drivel. I strongly recommend the Andrew Hacker review of the Gore’s conventional-wisdom-filled book in the 12/5/02 NY Review of Books. A very clear-eyed analysis of the situation which is a must-read for anyone interested in this question.

About your tone, let me lapse into polemics: go ahead and stay in your 1968 bourgeoisie
-hating dreamworld. Your children can grow up to be dysfunctional drug addicts while you shack up with your fifth temporary “life-partner” in your egocentric, fatuous voyage of discovery. That’s the ultimate fate of the “social liberation” you advocate. I love the “Late Modernity” phrase – maybe you can take your sixth life-partner and move to Cuba when America gets closer to its inevitable collapse.

I honestly don’t mean to be personally insulting but sometimes utterly wrongheaded viewpoints are best met by an imprecation such as this.

If the institution of marriage were as strong and essential as you imply, JT, why hasn't it better weathered the cultural storm you describe?

On your other point, I cannot believe you have the breadth of personal experience to assert that divorce is never better than staying together. Kipnis is a featherweight, but the institution isn't flawless: why, with all the economic advantages it offers, aren't all of the individual fulfillment junkies cashing in (in pairs)?

"Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State" -- wow, I haven't seen that quoted seriously in years! (*weeps a nostalgic tear for the simple-minded leftism of his youth*)

However, I must thank che for mentioning "the boredom of Protestant marriages vs. the raciness of Catholic ones"; it brought immediately to mind the classic debate on the subject, with the impassioned peroration:

"That's what being a Protestant's all about. That's why it's the church for me. That's why it's the church for anyone who respects the individual and the individual's right to decide for him or herself. When Martin Luther nailed his protest up to the church door in 1517, he may not have realised the full significance of what he was doing. But four hundred years later, thanks to him, my dear, I can wear whatever I want on my John Thomas. And Protestantism doesn't stop at the simple condom. Oh no! I can wear French Ticklers if I want."

And of course prior to that there's the Thomistic back-and-forth on a particularly trenchant quaestio (wav file).

Oh, and:

Marriage isn't working too well these days.

Speak for yourself, pal; mine's doing fine.

I read a long review of Kipnis' book in THE NEW YORKER and thought, What an idiot. What she is proposing is terminal adolescence, the never-ending thrill of groping in the back seat of your parents' station wagon. It's hot, it's heavy, you don't want your parents to find out, and if the cops catch you, you're in trouble! Dry humping as a political act--now THERE's a novel theoretical position.

Or to look at it another way: Wilt Chamberlin is the ultimate political revolutionary because he said he had sex with 20,000 women.

Marriage is work, but it is work in the sense of being a spiritual discipline, an ongoing commitment to a life with your partner. It's what some poets call "the real work"--the work that matters, the work that is essential, the work that has nothing to do with making a living and everything to do with making a life. Sex is a wonderful part of that process of living.

Marriage is not, as Kipnis suggests, a surrender of your individuality and personality. It is a deepening of it, deepened by the experience of sharing your partner's life. In marriage, you become part of something larger than yourself, but you do not lose yourself. Instead, you are enriched, made fuller, more whole.

I'm sorry to ramble on so much, but I believe her asinine view needs to be refuted in the strongest possible terms.

Hey BB, there was proper academic hedging in my post! I said "at least" and elswehere dated our notions of marriage as "Late Modern". That's broad enough to be almost meaningless. In any case, i don't want to get into an argument about the significance of WWII to marriage because that is a red herring. My point is only that marriage is a social institution and is therefore affected by social change -- which WWII brought in spades. Turning back the clock on marriage will therefore require turning back the clock on a host of other social institutions. Even if it's desirable, i don't think it's possible. You want to put the dividing line ahead of WWII? Fine. That doesn't change the substance of my argument.

Changing gender roles have a great deal to do with marriage. Change what "woman" and "man" are or do and you change the nature of marriage. Some redefinitions might make marriage more lasting, others might make it less so.

Give Kipnis some credit for raising issues in a provocative way that gets people talking about them. That's an accomplishment. It wouldn't happen if she just talked it at a bunch of snoozing undergrads or put it in massive, plodding monograph.

Of course the changing economic role of women has affected the institution of marriage in wealthy counties. While women in every nation work at least as hard as men, only in wealthy nations do women have the right to the earnings of their own labor, the ability to own property, and laws protecting them from murder, beatings, and confiscation of wages and property by fathers, brothers, and husbands.

They have Brittany Spears, Madonna, even "Sex and the City" in Iran, you know. Most of my Iranian friends have better exposure to American television, movies, and popular culture than I do. But it's still fine for your brother to kill you if he thinks you're having an affair.

I have some sympathy toward some of Kipnis' argument because I have seen marriages in which "it takes work, you know" was the rationalization for one person doing all the work. When it's only the two people, convincing the snookered one to act like the free one is reasonable. Sometimes the lazy one straightens out; sometimes they break up and find better matches; sometimes it turns out that that wasn't necessary work after all.

I wouldn't go nearly as far as she does - I wouldn't advise breaking one's word, which rules out adultery for me. On the other hand, look at the popularity of the 'Rules'. Those are such demented dishonesty-based principles that I expect demented reactions to the relationships based on them. Putting out the arguments against slogging along miserably doesn't solve the problem, but it's better than pretending there's no problem to be solved.

If marriage is dead because half of all marriages end in divorce, capitalism must have shuffled off this mortal coil long ago. Fifty percent of new business don't just fail; they fail in the first year.

Based on the excerpts, she seems to be suffering from a fair amount of intellectual confusion.

1) She condemns today's marriage for being a state in which "desire is organized contractually"...and her proposed solution is....short-term *contracts*. A bit of inconsistency here?

2) Whence comes the idea that marriage is associated with industrialization? As any Jane Austin fan should know, marriage existed in pre-industrial societies.

"I give Kipnis credit for trying to develop an ethics for our new society."

If the valorization of infidelity makes Kipnis an ethicist, then the "Playboy Philosophy" makes Hugh Hefner a philosopher.

Seriously che, I don't see how or why a defence of marriage c. 2003 commits one to a defence of marriage as it was organized pre-WWII or mid-19th century or earlier. Marriage is an ancient institution, yes, but it's not a static and unchanging monolith. Yes, gender roles have changed (and imho, for the better). But so too has marriage changed. Am I saying there is no room for further improvement? No, not at all. But I don't think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Which brings me to the next quick point I want to make. A couple of commenters here have mentioned children. This is an important issue that Kipnis glosses over. If long-term monogamous union is unacceptable, what alternative might there be for the raising of children? One reason why marriage persists, I believe, is that there probably isn't an acceptable alternative. Or if there is, we have yet to discover it, and won't find it in the pages of Kipnis' polemic. A string of temporary contracts with different partners? One needn't be a christian fundamentalist or a cultural conservative to argue that this would have a very bad effect on children.

I'm shocked, shocked, to see a professor write a book on monogamy as an evil of capitalism. And with the heavy use of provocative metaphors, no less!

Ambitious faculty say the darnedest things.

What really surprises me is that Salon has published such a pathetic interview. The witty (and oh-so-slightly naughty!) banter of Brilliant Writers is probably best left to themselves.

With the Bush Administration's economic policies, "factory work" has indeed become a dead metaphor. But wouldn't the argument Kipnis makes be interesting if we shifted to bureaucratic work, in which the US now specializes?

Joseph...you say: "With the Bush Administration's economic policies, "factory work" has indeed become a dead metaphor." The decline in manufacturing employment as a % of the population has been going on for decades, and long predates the Bush administration. Forty years ago, many of the people who are now academics and lawyers would have been factory foremen, or even skilled craftsmen (such as tool-and-die makers). We can talk about whether this change is good or bad, but it seems short-sighted to assign the blame or credit to an administration which has been in office for only 2 1/2 years.

I'm trying to imagine a "postmodern" tool-and-die maker....

better left nameless: "Reviews of her book should be shipped off to Northwestern alumni to let them know what a wonderful civic education their alma mater still provides."

I am not an alumni. Worse, my 2 daughters are students there. It will run me about $60K this academic year. Do you think this makes me happy?

OTOH, D-1 is in the Theater Dept not RTF. Theater, having a vast body of art and craft to master, and a strong tradition, does not seem to be given to this sort of thing. D-1 is a senior. We have kept pretty close track of her classes and are pleased with the ones that she has taken.

D-2 is in a hard core science program. She is a freshman and will be taking Multi-variate Calculus, Accelerated Introductory Chemistry, Classical Mechanics and Computer Programing. I do not think she will have much time for Kipnis.

More to the point, Kipnis is of a type present on every campus today. Have you read about the Columbia English Department? Northwestern is not the worst case by any means.

P.S. Kipnis is not a Ph.D. she has an MFA

I'll be up in Evanston in a couple of weeks. Maybe I will try to drop by and check the bona fides of her self promotion.

----------------

Not having read the book, I should limit my comments on the substance of this mater. It seems to me as it does to other commenters here that Kipnis is flogging a dead horse.

The monogamous lifelong marriage has gotten to be a rara avis. Not only do a large percentage of marriages end in divorce, but a third of all children (2/3 of AA births) are now born out of wedlock. Rebellion, is no longer needed, the Endangered Species Act is the ticket.

OOPS!

"It will run me about $60K this academic year."

What am I smoking? the correct number is $90,000.

I multiplied by 2 when I should have multiplied by 3.

[ If we are going to really take up Kipnis' arguments against linking marriage status to financial issues or endorse this idea of a yearly contract ... ]

Do the children get to have any say-so about renewing or not renewing the yearly marriage contract?

Or maybe the little ones are themselves to be put on contracts: "If you don't behave, we're gonna put you in the K. Marx Home. It's legal, kiddo."

This is the sort of book I'd never bother to read, although reading the reviews and comments is good for a laugh.

More Marxist feminist crap. Who cares? Marxism is a criminal ideology. We've seen in the past century what the Kipnis types are really about. Nothing's changed. She wants to live in Utopia. What an idiot.

Why is this kind of nonsense considered intellectual, interesting, etc.? The Marxists have been attempting to annihilate the family for over a century, so that every individual is completely dependent on the state. Nothing new.

What nitwits abound in academia! Kipnis is a bore and a conformist. Don't even have to read the book to know that. Obviously, she also cannot succeed at the most important task for anybody who wants a good love life... getting along with another person. She's clearly externalized her own ineptitude onto others. If she wants a decent love life, she might first consider dumping the brain dead ideology.

plz i need ifor abt (economic individuality in jane austin novels) with my thankfull
new student
moyo