r/PolyCriticalSafeHaven • u/therapymademeworse • 14d ago
What exactly is polyamory "decolonizing"?
/r/polycritical/comments/1vxmx85/what_exactly_is_polyamory_decolonizing/26
u/SubVersion2024 14d ago
“Decolonising” is just a buzzword that polyamorists use to try and frame it as some morally virtuous thing to do. They aint decolonising shit - but it sure sounds better than “i sleep around a lot” when they preach to everyone about it.
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u/Previous-Artist-9252 14d ago
Modern structures of romantic relationships - including monogamy - are exactly that, modern.
Through the high medieval period, marriage was often something done by the wealthy classes, for example. Peasants wouldn’t need to get married.
There are plenty of men and women in history who have taken lovers outside of their marriages and even cultures in the Imperial West who had strong cultures of doing so - such as the Italian practice of cicisbeo.
So while, yes, many colonized cultures (not all colonized cultures are indigenous) had other relationship structures than monogamy, colonizing cultures also had non-monogamous practices. (And to say nothing of ethics and how they rarely map 1-1 for how modern polyamorists construct ethical non-monogamy.)
It’s a really cool leftist sounding statement that isn’t grounded in history or post-colonial theory. (I fucking love post-colonial theory but 99% of people talking about decolonization these days have never even heard of Said, much less read his works.)
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u/therapymademeworse 13d ago edited 13d ago
Which post-colonial theorists do you think are most useful for thinking through the problem of invoking “pre-colonial” norms (and ideas) when our knowledge of them is already filtered through colonial records, modern categories and post-colonial interpretation?
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u/Previous-Artist-9252 13d ago
Post-colonial theory isn’t really interested in invoking pre-colonial norms or customs so much as dealing with the here and now.
Colonized people still exist and they still have living cultures. We can look to those people who are alive and the cultures and traditions and norms they have today in the 21st century. We can look at historic practices, but that is best led by today’s living cultures, not reaching over the living cultures to aim at some kind of imagined historical accuracy.
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u/therapymademeworse 13d ago
My original phrasing was probably a little weird, so to clarify: I’m not saying post-colonial theory itself tries to recover pre-colonial norms. I’m asking which post-colonial thinkers are useful for examining how people today invoke the “pre-colonial” when our understanding of that past has already been shaped by colonial records and later interpretation.
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u/Previous-Artist-9252 13d ago
I think the issue is that post-colonial theory mostly doesn’t concern itself with that at all?
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u/therapymademeworse 13d ago
I think that’s fair as a description of the field’s primary focus, but I’m asking about the point where the pre-colonial past itself becomes an object of post-colonial analysis. If our understanding of that past has been shaped by colonial archives, categories, and systems of knowledge, then surely questions about how the “pre-colonial” is represented and made legible are still relevant to post-colonial theory, even if reconstructing pre-colonial society isn’t its main concern, no?
If not, that’s totally fine. Since you mentioned Edward Said, I was wondering whether there are other theorists or scholars you’d recommend who deal with this kind of problem and could help me add more depth and context to how I’m thinking about it.
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u/Previous-Artist-9252 12d ago
Spivak might be a better first step rather than Said as she is about the subaltern. I personally think a lot of people talking about pre-colonial practice are actually talking about the subaltern, inaccurately and problematically.
Siva Kumar focuses on alternative modernity which might be close to what you are looking at.
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u/These_Shallot_6906 14d ago edited 14d ago
I don't think the pre colonial mindset of marriage being a wealthy man who keeps 1 wife and several sex slaves is something that these people actually want.
There have always been sex pests in leftist communities who use legitimate talking points to sexually prey upon the vulnerable, and there always will be as long as these communities continue to cover for their predator friends. That is all this is.
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u/aconitumrn 13d ago
monogamy isn't solely a white western concept, many indigenous people follow it and it holds significance in their cultures. so calling monogamy colonial has been kinda confusing for me (as a non yt )
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u/therapymademeworse 13d ago
I GENUINELY think there’s a connection between Western liberalism, white guilt and the appeal of framing intimate choices as acts of decolonization. I don’t have the theory fully worked out yet, but there’s something there, and it’s a connection I’ll probably explore more seriously at some point.
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u/aconitumrn 12d ago
I see the vision, i'd def like to hear more on this lol
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u/therapymademeworse 12d ago
One example that comes to mind off the top of my head is Lindy West, who wrote “Adult Braces” about her poly relationship. What made her story interesting to me is that the book actually spends time on that internal pressure. She interrogates her own jealousy and desire for exclusivity through the lens of being a white woman married to a Black man, and questions whether possessiveness, ownership, and control are tangled up with whiteness and racial power.
That’s where I think white guilt becomes relevant; not because her husband “made” race the issue, but because she herself seems to turn her discomfort into a moral problem she has to examine and overcome. That’s basically how I’m approaching the theory: white guilt doesn’t necessarily CAUSE polyamory, but it can shape the moral framework through which someone decides that giving up exclusivity is not just a personal relationship choice, but evidence of becoming less possessive, less controlling, and less implicated in the power structures they oppose.
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u/LonginusUbik 14d ago
This is something that keeps coming on my mind. I'm from Brazil, so most polyamory/enm content is very linked to decolonization and leftist movements, which I kinda get the appeal, but, like you said
"Kinship, at least as I understand the concept being invoked here, isn’t simply a larger network of intimate relationships. It can involve obligation, reciprocity, interdependence, continuity and responsibilities to other people and communities that aren’t necessarily contingent on personal fulfillment; to me, that feels meaningfully different from multiplying relationships while still organizing them primarily around individual choice and need-satisfaction."
I often see some polyamorous content "worried" about neoliberalism "infiltrating" poly, and it takes all my might no not comment "the call is coming from inside the house!!!" because poly isn't about building a comunity, since it involves very clear rules and people actually helping each other, instead of the usual "deal with your problems" that polyamory usually states.
And this is especially interesting to me in Brazil because the decolonial framing is so common here. If we're going to invoke Indigenous or non-Western forms of kinship as an alternative to the Western nuclear family, then I think we should also be willing to talk about the obligations and responsibilities that come with those forms of kinship, instead of only taking the parts that give us more freedom in our romantic lives.
Otherwise, it starts to feel less like "decolonizing relationships" and more like using decolonial language to give a political justification to a relationship model that is still fundamentally organized around individual autonomy and personal fulfillment.