Marriage. Theoretical Perspectives on its Rise and Fall

PresentationDownload the presentationThe institution of marriage seems to have been undergoing significant transformations in the course of the last few decades. Marriage has been subjected to growing criticisms of the asymmetrical power relations which it encourages, the constraints which it imposes upon the freedom of individual family members, and the lack of emotional sincerity and authenticity which it seems everywhere to produce. Moreover, the very necessity of marriage has been called into question in view of the multiplicity of alternative forms of legalizing intimate partnerships. While the demand to recognize same-sex marriages does not challenge the very existence of marriage, it certainly calls for its radical transformation. Contemporary social imagination conceives of an increasing diversity of forms of life and institutional arrangements in which the traditional institution of marriage has no role to play, such as, single-parenthood, joint parenthood separated from emotional, sexual and economic partnership, same-sex families, communes, and so on. The workshop purports to examine the present and future of marriage in the light of the attempts of social and anthropological theory to identify the basic constituents of marriage and the social functions they may serve. The contributions to the first session consider the prospects of a general anthropological theory of marriage. Emmanuel Désveaux (EHESS) questions the very viability of the attempt to develop a general theory of marriage, to uncover its essential structure and function and to assign it a key role within a supposedly universal theory of kinship. For Désveaux, any such attempt will fail to do justice to the intrinsic elasticity of marriage. Lior Barshack’s (The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya) contribution departs from contemporary constitutional documents, both national and international, which consider the right to marriage as a cornerstone of the protection of human dignity. According to Barshack, the relationship between marriage and human dignity has to be explained by reference to the notion of descent, however loosely defined. The argument suggests that some notion of descent remains a significant, though not exclusive, raison-d’être of our institution of marriage, but by no means entails that descent plays such a role in all known forms of marriage.The contributions to the second session seek to challenge received notions about ‚forced‘ marriages. Edwige Rude-Antoine (Cerses, CNRS – Univ. Paris Descartes) examines the bearings of arranged marriages on the subject. While it is undeniable that arranged marriages imply a denial or misrecognition of subjectivity, they can also be regarded as constitutive of subjectivity. Bibiane Ramerstorfer (EHESS – Universität Wien) demonstrates that the term ‚forced marriage‘ has been employed by Western scholars in an exaggerated manner that betrays misunderstanding of the reality in which such marriages are conducted. On the basis of her study of arranged marriages in Yemen, Ramerstorfer argues that arranged marriages were misunderstood due to a deeper misunderstanding of the concept of honour in Yemenite and other societies. While equality and individual autonomy should not be compromised, the importance of the intercultural discussion requires a more refined understanding of the concepts and practices of non-Western cultures.In the final session Jean Clam and Eva Illouz look at the pressures to which the institution of marriage has been increasingly subjected as a result of the enhanced cultural emphasis on conjugal intimacy. The contribution of Jean Clam (Cerses, CNRS – Univ. Paris Descartes) focuses on the tension between marriage and desire. Clam argues for a necessary antinomy between the two. The more marriage liberates itself from financial, social and religious constraints and legitimates itself in terms of ‚pure‘ conjugal intimacy, the more desire appears utopian, elusive and unrealizable.In her concluding contribution, Eva Illouz (The Hebrew University Jerusalem and The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya) shows how love has become an experience at once central and problematic in our societies: love has become a central source of individual unrest and dissatisfaction. According to Illouz, love produces such effects because it mirrors the subject’s entrapment in the institutions of modern society. Illouz develops the argument by considering the phenomenon of commitment phobia.