I can’t take credit for this maxim, really. It was Paul Austin who said it to me in my nice 2-bedroom campus apartment when I was first in graduate school. But here’s the gist of the reasoning. Marriage, as currently conceived in Western culture, is a feudal institution. Like all feudal institutions, it’s about an exchange of obligations under a tradition of feudal law, no different than serf to vassal to lord, no different than how mediaeval Western monarchs were obligated to the Vatican. The obligation, quite right, consists of an exchange of (in modern terms) stability, safety, security – including financial security (what the husband is supposed to provide – just ask most would-be wives what they’re looking for), for consistent sex (at least until the kids are born) – just ask most men what they are looking for. Yes, they’ll dress it up as love and companionship, but you can get that with buddies. The difference is kissing and such. Want more evidence? Up until the 1960′s (i.e. just recently), what were the traditional Western (Roman Catholic or Protestant) wedding vows? And remember, most people (probably your parents) were married in a church. Well, they varied somewhat, but they were versions of the same text. Here goes:
- Woman: “With my body, I thee worship.”
- Man: “With all my worldly goods, I thee endow.”
Any questions? Yes, yes, I’m “terrible” and not ‘romantic’ and all that. I’m actually quite passionately romantic in some ways, but I’m just not deluded that that has anything at all to do with marriage. Marriage – in the main – in the Western tradition – is exactly what Mr. Austin says it is. Yes, I know we’ve “practically” said it’s an exchange of sex for money, and therefore a form of prostitution. First, I never said “practically”. Second, I’m not the first to make this observation. I think Victor Hugo might have, too, and quite a lot of other folks. That’s what a feudal contract is, my dear – an exchange of value for value, where the obligations of both parties are clearly delineated in the ritual reading and consenting of the contract. What do you think a divorce is? You sue for divorce. It’s a suit brought, in feudal law, for breach of contract. Perhaps the husband isn’t providing and protecting, or perhaps the wife slept around. It’s only been in recent years that a wife could sue for the husband sleeping around, you know. Didn’t used to be like that, at all. So yeah, people write their own vows, and get married at the justice of the peace (a legal entity), or in Vegas (a financial one – good place for a gamble), but the feel, the vibe, the attitude when people are dating, planning their lives, or just hooking up, is generally the same equation. It is what it is – deal with it. If you don’t like it, don’t get involved in it. But let’s not pretend. Am I saying all marriages are like that? No, of course not – and every mother’s baby is beautiful and smart. No, here’s the thing: marriage, prior to feudalism, prior to the second millenium in the West, was a religious mystery, with much more emphasis on other things. The rite was very, very different. And yeah, it may seem self-serving to say that my people are still keeping that right, and I wouldn’t get roped into one of these feudal things if you paid me. Truth is, though, the Western country in which I live doesn’t just accept the mystery created in the Church. Nope, you still have to go down and get the paperwork done at some government office. So yeah, I’m in it too. Doesn’t matter what I feel – I can be sued for breach of contract, and I can be held, by the power of the state, to my feudal obligations. Like it or not, the vassal and serf thing is still going on, which is why one particular historiographical school (Read Kantorowicz “The Kings Two Bodies”) insists that there is no “modern” era in the West, that the tripartate construction of ages (Ancient, Mediaeval, Modern) – which was originally an occult fiction (read about Joachim of Fiore, and check out Strayer “On the Mediaeval Origins of the Modern State”) – is just that, a fiction – and that we are still living in a society with an essentially feudal structure and set of arrangements. Why do you think people keep doing it? Is it impossible to think of a different model? Like I say, some of us are using a *very* different model, but the state still makes us sign that contract. Keep in mind, I’m not knocking the model, if that’s what you want. There’s a logic in it. Women have an impulse to secure an inheritance for their offspring, and man wants efficacy by the seed of his loins taking shape in the world and extending his name (or identity, if he doesn’t keep the name) into the future, past his own death. In that sense, the way most people do marriage is an animal means of preserving the species, thereafter preserving desirable traits (every couple thinks some of its traits are desirable, if not every individual does), and ultimately trying to defeat death – the central philosophical and visceral/tangible problem of the world and of the West, as my people has always said it is. Not criticizing marriage, and not even criticizing the Western/feudal construction of it. I want the species to survive. I do think it creates a lot of problems – from overconsumption to urban sprawl to gender issues (there’s a reason women wore those big skirts back then – now the skirts are gone, but the limp wristedness and constantly seeking a strong (feudal) leader – like George Bush – or even Barach Obama – a strong “executive” remains. Feudalism is a cause of many serious social, political, religious, and cultural problems, and very practical ones right down to whether people starve or get medical care.
But I’m not criticizing the individual relationship between some man and some woman. As one of my fathers said, “The way of a man with a woman – who can know it?” Such a thing is utterly unique and can’t be judged. In that way, I break with the West and all its books and seminars and social chatter about how marriage is supposed to work, and what the model/ideal marriage is like (think Plato and the forms vs. the particulars). I think individual persons are absolutely unique in all of time and space, and marriage is the union or attempted union of such persons, and produces something likewise unique, whatever you think it is you’re doing, and whatever cellular contract you signed (wouldn’t it be interesting if they expired in 2years like Sprint or T-Mobile?). In other words, the contract was never the whole story, even with people who think it is, which is something a lot of them find out after it’s assented to or signed. All of the attempts to explain it, or explain it to others, or legislate it for others (I just love it when someone gives me marital advice, or tells me we’re doing it wrong), are attempts to reduce marriage to the contract – to something transferrable – something standardized. Nope, before there was the contract, there was something else. I’m not going to preach my religion to you, here, but I’m also not taking notes from the West – it has nothing to teach us – it has said what it has to say. When it comes out of its feudalism, maybe we’ll check in again.
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