A Polyamory Primer

Polyamory Primer A guide

 At the end of the 20th century, an old practice acquired a new theory.

The theory explained that it was possible to maintain what were called open relationships,

 if you could get everyone involved to agree on certain conditions of public information.

 In other words, you could sleep around and not have your bf/gf/husband/wife leave you . . .

 . . . as long as they were never exposed to the details of your other affairs.

 What this meant was the restriction of information.

 Contrary to a popular slogan of the time, information did not want to be free.

 But by imprisoning information, you could be free.

 You both agreed to be non-exclusive, promising that the other would not know when, where, how, and with whom.

 No hints.

 No confessions.

 No clues.

 No detective work, either.

 What was secret must stay secret. That was the whole of the law.

 If both partners accepted this, then they were free to kiss.

 But not to tell.

 The most serious betrayal was raw information.

 Text became privileged space, dense with meaning and implicated currents of desire and impact. Intercourse and the physical plane devolved to the merely symbolic.

 Social identities crept inward, byzantine architectures constructed with meticulous precision; levels of fact, innuendo, discourse and negotiation buried and nested and folded into an onionskin of selves ever more dense and self-referential.

 New truths were announced:

 “Identity is plural.”

 “Communication is fiction.”

 “Relation is artifice.”

 But when was this ever not the case?

 And so secrecy became the new honesty.

And the real was exposed as threaded with necessary subjectivity and Heisenbergian mutations.

 A great theory!

 Maybe.

 But in practice . . .

 (as you might imagine)

 . . . it never quite worked out that way.

 Because although identities are constructed . . .

 and although the real is not separable from the subjective . . .

 and although we do create meaning through narrative, with the structural implications of discourse and text . . .

 . . . our actions define us too.

 Whether or not we’re good at the spin.

 All stories are built upon actions. Every act creates a meaning. And acts, like Derridian speech, are things that cannot be erased, taken back, untraced.

 They do not leave us unscathed.

 In the end, the information gets free.

 And it’s not the information, but the act,

 that makes the impact,

 that creates the meaning,

 that constructs the real.

 That breaks the heart.

 Or rather, it is the information.

 But it’s also the act.

 There’s no escape from one into the other.

 One is the Other.

 In summary, let’s review:

 The theory states,

 It’s not what you do . . .

 . . . it’s how you say it.

“In Search of Adele H,” a Twitter movie, https://twitter.com/adelehugo

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A Polyamory Primer

by adelehugo on Jul 16, 2009

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A Polyamory Primer — Presentation Transcript