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Title: Butterflies, polyamory and ideology Author: Aviv Etrebilal Date: October 2013 Language: en Topics: free love, free association, Max Stirner, Friedrich Nietzsche, polyamory, anti-ideology, identity politics, Non Fides Source: Retrieved on 2/19/2016 from http://www.non-fides.fr/?Butterflies-polyamory-and-ideology Notes: Translated from french by Seaweed (with Aviv Etrebilalâs collaboration), early 2016, from the text "Papillons, amour libre et idĂ©ologie - Lettre sur lâinconsĂ©quence", published in october 2013 by Ravage Editions, Paris, France. https://ravageeditions.noblogs.org/post/2013/10/14/papillons-amour-libre-et-ideologie-lettre-sur-linconsequence-2/
Editorâs foreword
This essay is not yet another one on "free love", the âaffectsâ or
"deconstruction". It hopes to be more than that. Written in late July /
early August 2013, it served, until October, to lay the foundation for
many informal conversations. These discussions were deep and led to a
more nuanced and full understanding, as well as raising many questions
about the ideological relations that often govern the modes of thought
and relationships of the French anti-authoritarian milieu. So if this
text is not just another text on the affects, itâs because it is
foremost a text on ideology, on scenes and milieus, on inconsistency and
leftism. The way it managed to echo many and varied situations that do
not necessarily involve emotional relationships, but numerous other
issues such as power relations, the conformity of an anti-conformist
milieu, how alternatives become the norm, social roles , individual
patterns of consumerism, struggles and the tools of struggles etc., make
it a text whose primary purpose is to open a debate that will exceed it.
If we wanted to publish it today, after these few months of incubation
and excited discussions, it is precisely to open this debate, consistent
with the content of the text, beyond the limits of sub-cultures and
affinity groups. And thus we hope that it will continue its adventure.
October 2013,
Ravage Editions.
It is reassuring to see that for some generations of
anti-authoritarians, the dogmas which are too often used as our starting
points, that consume us and make us go round in circles in a vacuum, are
occasionally questioned, that when certain ideological principles end up
causing human collateral damage, we are able to question them, abandon
them or reformulate them. Companions recently released a text that
likely caused excited and important discussions[[â Amour libre â,
vraiment ? Et aprĂšs ? Published by Le Cri Du Dodo, June 20, 2013.]]. The
strength of the writing was that it guided us back in some small way to
individuality where it has more or less been replaced with dogma and
ideology, and individuals with stereotypes. And when those discussions
on free love, coupledom, polyamory, jealousy, non-monogamy etc. did take
place between us, most likely in environments where people live together
and have occasionally lost their sense of intimacy (squats, communities,
etc.) than elsewhere, there was no will to make these discussions public
through a text that would not just get passed between one or two groups
of friends.
"Free love" is a term in use since the nineteenth century. It originally
functioned to describe the anarchist rejection of marriage from the
perspective of the individual emancipation of women and men. Its
supporters rejected marriage as a form of slavery, primarily for women,
but also as an interference by the State and the Church in their
privacy, opposing marriage with the notion of "free cohabitation". It
consisted in the assertion that two individuals could freely choose each
other, love in an irreverent manner, without permission from the mayor
and the parish priest and give the finger to all those who wished to
interfere in their relationship. Once the concept interacted with
educational and communitarian anarchist circles at the end of the Belle
Epoque [i], in the form of so-called "loving friendship", it took
another sense, though anecdotally, but we shall return to this.
It is really during the 1960s, in contact with the hippie movement, that
the termâs meaning totally changed. It suddenly meant having various
forms of multiple and joint relationships, as well as opening sexual
intimacy to two or more people at once, especially in the form of
threesomes and group sex, and most of the time the free-lovers added a
dose of mysticism to it all (Tantra, sexual magic etc.).
But "free love" is an expression that is already, in itself, biased,
used as it is in a world in which we are not free in any way. It is no
wonder that this term prospered in both the educational and
communitarian settings of the libertarian movement from the end of the
Belle Epoque. Just re-reading that annoying rhetoric of the âen-dehorsâ
[1].
These libertarians, who generally lived in fairly closed communities,
where children were "protected" from the outside world (Amish-like) who
succumbed to all the ridiculous fashions of the time (oil diet, banning
of teas and caffeine, exclusive consumption of nuts, sickly Hygienism,
absolute scientism and progressivism etc.), had the feeling of living
apart from the world, of living freely. Given the quantity and quality
of the revolutionary work necessary to change the world, they used fancy
ideological footwork to find a most comfortable position: experience
freedom now, among themselves and within their community. These were not
the first [2] not the last [3] But we must speak of a total and
indivisible freedom because what good is freedom of movement, for
example, if there is nowhere to move but in streets filled with shops,
surveillance cameras and cops? The same goes for love, how to be free in
love when we arenât free anywhere else?
The typical and historical error of leftism, which is to be satisfied
with simply reversing the values of the enemy - to take money from the
rich and give to the poor rather than completely abolishing classes, to
reclaim the rhetoric of discrimination and turn it into sources of pride
(workerism, ethnic, gender and territorial pride of all kinds, âŠ), to do
politics better than the official politicians, to invert patriarchy
rather than abolishing it etc. - does not spare the arenas of romantic
and emotional relationships. It seems therefore that the thing to do
would be the opposite of previous generations, of all those parents who
have sacrificed their desires and their lives for the institutions of
the couple or of the family. It has long been felt that we can invent
something new simply by suggesting new prototypes of relationships,
modeled on negatives of the old, and then comply with them, as happens
with each new norm.
The standard in place today in the way of love and emotional
relationships within our milieu is the exhortation to diversity, the
moral principle of non-exclusivity, the "creation of an abundance of
affection" [4] and having multiple partners. The standard now having
been reversed, recalcitrance to the new standard is too. A
self-sufficient relationship between two people becomes the new deviance
to suppress.
It seems important to reaffirm that two people can feel good together
without experiencing the need to multiply their passionate adventures-
while also not presenting faithfulness as a moral tenet or wishing to
suppress âextramarital" sex because of thoughtless values. But there
will always be the loud mouths who believe themselves more liberated
than others who will cast down their judgment into the face of others:
"they are a couple, shame!"
Basically, why express opinions, as the parish priest or bishop, on
things that we do not own and which do not jeopardize our revolutionary
project? On things whose issues do not concern us? That one is a
believer in monogamy or of polyamory is not the problem of the other.
Only one thing is important: everyone should find their fulfillment in
their own way without being blinded by any ideology, whether from
patriarchal society and its moral imperatives or the milieus of those,
who, thinking themselves able to tell who is free and who is not in a
world of cages and chains, believe they possess the recipe for freedom.
Why refuse to see that the complexity of situations and the complexity
of individuals mix together? That if a rule could encompass everyone, it
would necessarily be defective and contribute to the negation of
individuals? That since it would be a rule, it would once again impede
freedom?
How many pamphlets are needed to explain how to fuck, how to love, what
relationships one should have with oneâs body? [5] How many narrow
standards for our desires and perceptions? How many of us, now past the
excitement of the misleading freshness of being sixteen or twenty years
old, have not managed to find ourselves in these new models of
pseudo-freedom? How many have had to suffer being told that they were
not made for freedom because they liked only one person and were loved
only by one person? How many have whipped themselves for experiencing
jealousy, have felt consumed by the other under the pretext of their
freedom? How many have felt uncomfortable under the inquisitive eyes of
those who believe they are free while living in a social order based on
domination? Forgotten in the sectarian and ideological confinement of
small cliques, is that there are still billions of people around us.
As in any ideological diversion, even before examining reality, we fit
reality to how ideology would like it to be. We do not try to do what we
want, we try to want what we should want, and there are plenty of
pamphlets, books and texts in the press catalogues of our milieus that
explain what we should want, rather than urging us to follow our
authentic, individual desires. So in this race for deconstruction and
pseudo-freedom, itâs all about being the most open of all, trying
anything, because we have to. Or more precisely, we have to in order to
feel part of the narrative of deconstruction, better than others, armed,
as it were, with a new form of progressivism. So we cannot see past the
beam that is in our eye, to invert the biblical metaphor, and no longer
see the infinite field of possibilities available to us in the
destructive urge- as though the deconstruction of the individual and the
destruction of this world could not do well together.
It was good old Kropotkin who said that "structures based on centuries
of history cannot be destroyed by a few kilos of dynamite" [6], and he
was right, in the sense that physical destruction is not sufficient by
itself, that it necessarily must be accessory to a profound renewal of
social relations. But nor did he want to express that a few kilos of
dynamite could not themselves be helpful in the emergence of splendid
possibilities.
Moreover, it is not a few visionaries of deconstruction, modeled on
Zarathustra (who retreated into the mountains for ten years, and one day
felt the need to share his wisdom with the little-people), that carry
the potential to create revolution. Revolution (and to a lesser extent,
insurrection) is a social fact, that is to say, like it or not, it will
necessitate that at one time or another a large stratum of the
population rises. It will be alongside the celebrated "real people" (as
we sometimes hear them described) that we might make a revolution, not
just with a few anti-authoritarian ultra-deconstructed types who will
only be able to participate on their extremely limited scale. Revolution
will be the work of these "normal" people, with their qualities and also
their many faults, and who are often light years ahead on this issue
(and many others âŠ).
But let us return to our butterflies. Armand said that "in love, as in
all other areas, it is abundance which destroys jealousy and envy. That
is why the formula of unconstrained love should become that of all
anarchist milieus." But how can we, then as now, afford to say with such
arrogance and satisfaction, what is THE form (" formula "!) of love and
sex to be adopted by THE anarchists (or any other social milieu)? The
term "free love" already contains in itself this form of exclusion,
since it implies that it alone is capable of bringing freedom, but we
seriously doubt the possibility of finding freedom through love, whether
it is called "free" or not. And is it really freedom that we seek
through love?
We must not delude ourselves that in the post-modern era, the concept of
freedom is unfortunately too often a pretext for denying individuality
as well as the denial of any real will to change the world. "I donât
care and fuck you" seems to be the new freedom, in other words, the
notion of a total and indivisible freedom, individual but conditioned by
the freedom of the other (which has long been central to anarchist
perspectives) was replaced by a sort of already pervasive liberal
outlook. Add to this a normalization process which expresses its
violence through the marginalization of individuals who are viscerally
opposed to these standards, explaining that if this does not work for
them it is because they are the problem. But there is nothing surprising
in this. After all, this small milieu is the product of the social
order, and it reproduces it in return.
But this liberalism has many facets, and goes far beyond the issue of
emotional relationships. By habitually thinking in terms of acceptable
and sanctioned beliefs and keywords, we ended up being no longer capable
of anything other than navel gazing with self-satisfaction in a cozy
little bubble where the billions of other humans are forbidden to enter,
despite the façade of ultra-social, inclusive speech.
We are told that freedom is about wandering, that it is to flutter, but
how then do we embed ourselves in a real revolutionary approach, with
continuity, in a neighborhood, a village, a region, a publication, a
place, a struggle? Are those who feel free to drift from one struggle to
another aware that they can only afford it because someone else is
maintaining the continuity? Do they realize that this romantic drifting
is really just another form of comfortable consumerism?
We are told that freedom is about wandering, that it is to flutter, but
how then do we embed ourselves in a real revolutionary approach, with
continuity, in a neighborhood, a village, a region, a publication, a
place, a struggle? Are those who feel free to drift from one struggle to
another aware that they can only afford it because someone else is
maintaining the continuity? Do they realize that this romantic drifting
is really just another form of comfortable consumerism?
And when we speak of the revolutionary process as a long process, one
which requires substantial efforts and a little "sacrifice" of oneâs
time, sometimes of oneâs freedom and often of oneâs comfort, how many
are they to be offended, exclaiming: "sacrifice, effort, yuck, dirty
capitalist!" Then congratulations dear comrades and companions, you are
free, you are not capitalists, you are super deconstructed, but why
bother? History will remember that you had fun, but other
revolutionaries will remember only that you consumed them, and in the
deepest way, this is where capitalism is found: in the consumption of
the efforts of the other, but also in the consumption of the body.
To clarify, so that the gossips do not spit their venom through my
mouth, this isnât about opposing revolutionary praxis to enjoyment. I
especially want to point out that happiness is not necessarily found in
the forms that the spectacle usually gives it. I am not here to advocate
any asceticism because what good is it to have fervently critiqued
activism only to reproduce it in other ways later. As the product of a
certain diversity of experiences, I say that the revolutionary project
is found elsewhere than in the false oppositions of leftist militancy
and post-modern and subjectivist milieus. Let those who doubt know that
we take pleasure and satisfaction in building subversive paths, and that
the flutterers and butterflies do not have a monopoly on ecstasy and
joy. For as beautiful as it is, the butterfly is an insect that lives
only a few days, and whose capacity therefore to develop projects, to
consider the future, is severely limited. Butterflies are attractive,
and itâs certainly quite romantic to compare oneself to them, but one
must choose between becoming revolutionary and merely reveling in the
myopia and the immediate gratifications of the inconsequential of
liberalism and anarcho-leftism.
We do not necessarily mean by leftism a specific milieu, but trends that
are found everywhere in our circles, whether among anarchists,
communists, squatters and even among the most ardent supporters of a
complete break with the left. As we have said, one of the most important
features of leftism is the reversal and inversion of dominant values,
which when wedded to a certain form of libertarianism becomes
liberalism.
May 68 has probably helped give birth to these new forms of
self-absorbed leftism, sometimes in spite of it. In a bourgeois society
with an entrenched and stifling morality, many have only sought to free
themselves by doing the opposite of what society expected of them, in
this way simply creating a mirror image of the same morals. If drug use
is a social taboo, why not make a symbol of it and then feel free
between two overdoses, oneâs head in the gutter? Is the couple a
cornerstone of alienation in this society? Then let us be free,
orgiastic, fuck as often as we can, collect our passionate conquests and
feel free while so many others have only loved people who have used
them.
One just needs to open a brochure on "free love", on so-called
"liberated" relationships, on non-monogamy, "emotional comfort" and the
famous "affects" to realize that the only thing that is being proposed
is the total negation of the individual and their use for the sole
purpose of egotistical instant gratification, mostly in a ratio of
economic accumulation, profit and social cannibalism. So it seems that
freedom is having the opportunity to shoot fifty strokes and to "have
choices". Reification on every level! Tonight it will be John, he is
tall and Iâd love to lay a tall one, I am saving Josephine for tomorrow
because I like mature women and the day after will be my fetish trip
with Billy. Joy unhindered! [7]
But this is a relationship of capital accumulation, of an emotional
capital, where the goods are human, considered as social stock,
emotional assets accumulated in a romantic bank account. So yes, we are
free to exploit and be freely exploited, but then the word âfreedomâ has
no meaning: social democracy has won, the economy has won, the time
period has won, even our emotional intimacy and our inter-personal
relationships have been penetrated to the point of nullifying any form
of free association of individuals.
When this world makes us believe that our freedom is found in a
supermarket, in the choice between several brands of shit brushes, it
operates with exactly the same strategy. Free love or post-modern
polyamory as they exist in our milieus are, for the most part, no better
than this "freedom to consume". They are actually very similar to that
of bourgeois libertinism or the sex friends and other fuck-buddies of
urban gilded youth. However, one difference is that bourgeois
libertinism gives its practitioners the exciting sensation of breaking
or circumventing social norms and prohibitions, providing the thrill of
non-conformity and of subverting dominant moral values, even if in a
very limited and superficial way. Libertinism in anarchist milieus
however is very different in that it enjoys a sort of majority support,
which gives the individual participant a sense of complying with the
ideological standards of their milieu, despite the unique desires of
each person, which of course are perpetually changing, never frozen as
with a milieu or any community that sets reductionist rules that must
apply to all cases and to all individuals.
Do John, Josephine and Billy really share the same vision of the
relationship I have with them, and under the sole pretext that we would
have âclearlyâ discussed? Are we all coming from the same situation when
we commit to this type of relationship? Does ideology, combined with the
dumbed down language of a world of domination, really clarify
everything?
Basically, there is little difference, if we ignore for a moment the
differences in posturing, between the free-love consumer and the Emirâs
harem from which he chooses every night who he will want to fuck and /
or to love while the others prepare him food. There is perhaps one
significant difference in our milieus, where an intertwining of leftism
and feminism has had an influence: women sometimes have a wider
tolerance in the practice of the harem. A bit like men in the rest of
society.
The most ideological supporters of free love ultimately make the same
mistakes as those who are blinded by ideology generally. They deny the
uniqueness and complexity of real-life individuals by replacing them
with interchangeable stereotypes. When two people start an ultra-defined
relationship, that is to say with the expected discussions intended to
âclarifyâ early on its terms and what each expects from the
relationship, we first have to consider the balance between them. Does
one of them already have several relationships and not the other? What
if one of them is considered "ugly", "beautiful" or "charismatic" and
not the other? What if one of them is only looking for affection while
the other hopes for love? How is their balance impacted if one of them
is happy and the other is unhappy and insecure, or if one is more
articulate than the other? Can anyone deny the importance of these
things?
How many people, not particularly eager to have a non-exclusive
relationship, have accepted one just to match the desires of the other?
But is this acceptance really freely chosen? For if John is in love with
Jeanne and in a weak position, and Jeanne explains her desire for a
non-monogamous relationship, John will accept. And Jeanne will have the
impression that everything is simple and easy, without wondering if John
would not have equally agreed to the opposite.
Is this weak yes so different from the "yes" that we give to the boss at
work?
We affirm that it is the same, and that talk of freedom in such cases
perpetuates what Nietzsche called "the sublime lie that interprets
weakness as freedom" [8].
Ideas of sexual liberation are beautiful and noble ideas, but each of
us, by passing them in the crucible of our own individuality and in the
recognition of the uniqueness of the other, give them different forms.
As we said earlier, we affirm that there is no single rule that can
govern human relationships, for the same reasons that we oppose Law,
because it can never take into account the complexity of the individuals
it puts under its control [9]. This is also why we counter unlearned and
undigested ideas from ideological brochures with an individual and
visceral ethics. We also affirm that the only relatively emancipated
relationship is the one with the welfare of each other as the center of
its attention, free from self-absorption and free from the traps and
imperatives of ideology. Why wouldnât the only valid rule of love be to
pay attention to the other, to treat oneâs companion properly, as an
individual, rather than foolishly applying rules intended to make
ourselves free through personal enjoyment, but without any sensitivity
to otherness? And why make the analytical error of confining criticism
of the economy to the formal economy, rather than to flesh it out in the
social relations that govern our alienated relationships?
In order to break the socially expected obligations of coupledom we
choose ideological polyamory and manufacture a different norm that will
last until new human dramas emerge. And it is no coincidence that the
events of May 68, beyond the incredible experiences of occupation and
destruction of factories and universities, the clashes and barricades
and the generally wonderful experience of having touched the possibility
of a real subversion of the existent, it is no coincidence that beyond
the Image dâEpinal [10] hide many human tragedies; suicides, overdoses,
betrayals and infinite sadness. It is no coincidence that behind every
experience of widespread emancipation (or at least experienced as such
by its protagonists) hide equally widespread human dramas, from May 68
to Woodstock, from sexual liberation to the Maoists and radical student
movements in the United States of 1960/70. No wonder too that so many
have bounced back on their feet, now forming the ruling classes of this
order, while many others who took the ideas at their word find
themselves languishing in jail in oblivion for over forty years, paying
for not being inconsequential like the others, for not having merely
sought pleasure and immediate gratification.
Those who were there merely to have fun, to flutter and navel gaze, have
profited. Those who believed and still believe in revolution have paid
the price. Profit for one group always implies the exploitation of
another, be it with the arms of capital and labor or with those of
ideology, whether autonomous or of the party.
While the butterflies forage, may the flowers revolt.
August 2013,
Aviv Etrebilal.
[i] La Belle Epoque is a period of Western European history. It is
conventionally dated from the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 to
the outbreak of WW1 around 1914. It was a period characterized by
optimism, regional peace, economic prosperity and scientific and
cultural innovations. In this climate the arts flourished, especially in
Paris. The Belle Ăpoque was named, in retrospect, when it began to be
considered a Golden Age in contrast to the horrors of World War I. ;
translatorâs note.
[1] It literally means outsider. Some individualists who were prone to
separation used to refer to themselves in this way. During the Belle
Epoque, the individualist movement could be roughly cut in two. One, the
âeducationistsâ, advocated for communities, pacifism, lifestyle
anarchism, social experimentations, etc., and another tendency known as
âillegalistâ, the most famous of which were The Bonnot Gang. Other
illegalists are Albert Libertad, Zo dâAxa and Renzo Novatore. Both
tendencies referred to themselves in this way, but it had a much
different meaning for each ; Tn.
[2] See for instance the followers of Fourrier, the utopians, etc.
[3] From the Kibbutzim, the post â68 semi-rural communities to the
pseudo-commune of Tarnac, etc.
[4] Cf. Contre lâamour (against love), Iosk Editions, August 2003,
available at infokiosques.net.
[5] Not unlike the pamphlets circulated by the reforming church during
the 1950s in the US.
[6] In an essay published in the journal Le RĂ©voltĂ© in 1887. But letâs
also remember that 7 years earlier in the same journal, he called for
âpermanent rebolt by word, by text, by the fist, by the gun, by
dynamiteâ
[7] In French: âJouir sans entravesâ a famous May 68 slogan ; Tn.
[8] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, 1887.
[9] On top of which of course, it will always belong to Power and its
maintenance.
[10] The expression Image dâEpinal has become proverbial in French and
refers to an emphatically traditionalist and naĂŻve depiction of
something, showing only its good aspects. Tn.