Abstract
In an interview published as ‘Friendship as a way of life’, Michel Foucault discusses the possibilities inherent in homosexual relations for rethinking sex, love and friendship. ‘We must escape’, he says, ‘and help others escape, the two ready-made formulas of the pure sexual encounter and the lovers' fusion of identities’ (Foucault, 1989: 206). This line of flight has been variously taken up in academia, activism and everyday life, and one manifestation of this is the subject of this remarkable book: the pluralized ‘relationship orientations’ of non-monogamies and polyamories. In particular, Foucault's gesture towards gay life and love as pioneering was later picked up by sociologists such as Anthony Giddens, who in The Transformation of Intimacy (1992) heroized gay men (and those practising self-help) for providing the road maps for ‘confluent love’ and the ‘pure relationship’. While the giddiness of Giddens' vision of a new romantic and sexual utopia has been roundly critiqued, few have done as much as Christian Klesse to research those heroes so celebrated. Rather than unproblematically seeing gay and bisexual men (and their partners, lovers, fuck buddies and so on) as pioneers in the bedroom and the backroom, Klesse returns the study of love, sex and relationships to a slightly old-fashioned but nonetheless vital topic: power. Through a deft theoretical handling and some equally skilful empirical wrangling, power is resituated at the heart of the matter – the big power of law, state and discourse to frame and ‘hegemonise’ ideas about love and sex, and the everyday power within relationships. This move is in itself a significant achievement and contribution to several key debates; but Klesse's book has much more to commend it.
One of these is its handling of empirical material. After a clearing-house introduction that covers much of the terrain of contemporary sexuality studies, the fieldwork ‘stories’ in chapter 2 are written with clarity and candour, and are pitched perfectly, disclosing personal detail, accounting for feelings and experiences, and finding truly astonishing examples to illustrate the pros and cons of the research process. This is high praise from someone like me, with a professed allergy to research methods (and particularly to methods chapters). Painfully honest, funny and telling stories are recounted in such a way that it would be hard not to like what follows. And, indeed, what follows is immensely likeable stuff, for a variety of reasons. The next chapter discusses most fully the ‘spectre of promiscuity’ evoked in the book's title, and in particular shifting discourses about promiscuity from both outside and inside gay and bisexual ‘movements’. (My only problem with this chapter was I could not stop Nelly Furtado's song ‘Promiscuous’ from playing in my head as I read it. Sorry – now you're hearing it, too.) The chapter also explores debates about same-sex marriage, retreading much of what has been said recently, but inflecting it nicely with empirical content.
Chapters 4, 5 and 6, on bisexual non-monogamies, polyamories and ‘relationship work’ were for me the golden triad, the perfect (if fraught) three-way. These chapters provide nuanced accounts of the development of ideas and ideals about ‘relationship orientation’ (a cute repurposing of ‘sexual orientation’ used by one respondent). The only nagging question for me here was the slippage in terminology between describing bisexuality and polyamory as a ‘movement’, a ‘community’ and a ‘scene’ (and even at some points a ‘subculture’). I spent some time pondering what's at stake in each of these words, and what's revealed in the slippage. Minor niggle aside, the chapters chart howcertain ‘ideologies of non-monogamy’ are comingto ‘hegemonise’ bisexuality and polyamory – for example in the framing of the ‘active bisexual’ (or proper/real bisexual) as necessarily having at least one sexual partner of each gender. A self-identity such as bisexual celibacy would seem oxymoronic to this hegemonic formulation, and bisexual respondents felt at times uneasy about failing to ‘perform’ bisexuality through their sex lives. Tensions around designation of ‘primary partner’ and the thorny issue of marriage in this chapter begin to show some of the tensions and problems invisibilized in the ‘heroic’ accounts of certain sociologists.
Even more telling, and especially impressively told, is the story of the emergence of polyamory as a rescripting of ‘relationship orientation’ away from an emphasis on sex and towards one on love. Here Klesse provides a fine-detailed account of the rallying of ‘poly’ as a movement/community/scene/subculture (see what I mean?), and the inherent manoeuvres that work to secure in-group identity by ‘othering’ some forms of relationship and sexual practices, most notably swinging and ‘wife swapping’ (but also ‘casual sex’). Polyamory stakes a new claim on love and relationships, advocates suggest, through an emphasis on intimacy and care, and a corresponding de-emphasis on promiscuity and sex-for-sex's-sake. In chapter 6 he further debunks the Giddensian line through accounts of the negotiations (and non-negotiables) in his respondents' relationships. Refusing to simply accept non-monogamies and polyamories as romantic and erotic utopias of free choice and free love, Klesse gives a critical and insightful account of the fault lines, anxieties, risks and emotions that these relationship-forms bring along with them. Here he focuses on the ‘relationship labour’ that respondents have to put in, as well as accounting for ways that power takes hold. His exploration of intersections (gender, class, race, religion, age …) is particularly revealing, if at times painful. Anyone who's experienced non-monogamy will find at least some of this chapter familiar, and welcome in its frankness.
Finally, his findings are re-read and re-theorized through a return to core issues fleshed out earlier on – sexual citizenship, heteronormativity, publics and counterpublics, hegemony and power. While some will find his ending downbeat, for me it marks a significant and scholarly treatment of some complex and challenging issues. Indeed, I think that Klesse's insightful, rigorous and witty book represents a new high water mark in socio-cultural studies of sexualities and intimacies, and perhaps particularly studies of bisexualities.