I want to say the experience of marriage, is a discourse-
not only between two people, though mainly that- but including many others : past, present and future. Sometimes it
even seems to include specters or ghosts, but at any rate marriage is a
discourse, a conversation in the world, of the world and about the world.
By the way , how well do we know the world? It's shifting
sands of humanity, changing
weather, oceanic depths,
astronomical heights, frames of
finite and infinite time? A large
part of our experience of life is
not knowing and precarious,
Isn't that true in a marriage also?
Well, I say that it is, AND just being married doesn't give anyone some kind of Bible or automatic regulatory system that will set the unknown and the precarious right. See, we don't know everything about the world, and there is nothing guaranteed about the world as we like to think of it. Neither the world, nor our partners in marriage.
The real difference between the discourse of marriage (the conversations which are its life's blood) is that it not like the other discourses/conversations we have, say political, administrative, scientific- it is not undertaken to gain mastery, to ward off the dangers of the unknown, the evade the precarious , to gain power , to put ourselves in the thrall of a certain doctrine. Happily married people do not insist on strict conformity, or common conviction in all things. They do not subjugate or attempt to subjugate one another. Its not about answering or insisting that every question be answered. Sometimes in marriage its best to say nothing at all, just wait for another time or occasion when a contentious matter can be handled without recrimination or regret, completely differently than you first imagined.
Well, I say that it is, AND just being married doesn't give anyone some kind of Bible or automatic regulatory system that will set the unknown and the precarious right. See, we don't know everything about the world, and there is nothing guaranteed about the world as we like to think of it. Neither the world, nor our partners in marriage.
The real difference between the discourse of marriage (the conversations which are its life's blood) is that it not like the other discourses/conversations we have, say political, administrative, scientific- it is not undertaken to gain mastery, to ward off the dangers of the unknown, the evade the precarious , to gain power , to put ourselves in the thrall of a certain doctrine. Happily married people do not insist on strict conformity, or common conviction in all things. They do not subjugate or attempt to subjugate one another. Its not about answering or insisting that every question be answered. Sometimes in marriage its best to say nothing at all, just wait for another time or occasion when a contentious matter can be handled without recrimination or regret, completely differently than you first imagined.
The marriage
discourse is not about power.
The 'secret' method of the marriage discourse is the
loosening, baffling, or at the very least, lightening and letting go of power so that
the uncertain character of the world and of the spoken word of this world is
aware of itself, comfortable with its uncertainty and incompleteness with and always ready to learn something
new, about the world and each other.
Marriage, and the discourse of marriage helps us redeem ourselves from our only too human desire to control and dominate.
Marriage, and the discourse of marriage helps us redeem ourselves from our only too human desire to control and dominate.
In so far as the letter of democracy arrives in
the envelope of radical subjectivity, who could object?
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