Interview by Franco Torchia with Brigitte Vasallo

"The Polyamorous Challenge: Towards a New Politics of Affection " (Paidós), by Catalan writer Brigitte Vasallo, has just been published in Argentina. The book, which became known in the Spanish-speaking world under its original title "Monogamous Thought, Polyamorous Terror," explores new ways of relating that transcend the violent pacts of monogamy, while also offering a profound critique of the notion of "polyamory" as a tool of affective capitalism. Franco Torchia interviewed her for his radio program " You Can't Live on Love" on Buenos Aires Public Radio. We have transcribed part of that conversation and provided the audio for the full interview.

FT : What do you notice the mass media doing with polyamory today?
BV: At least what has happened here in the Spanish context is that they have tried to deactivate its political power by trivializing the issue. This isn't unique to polyamory; it also happens with feminism. It's like trying to turn it into a funny practice that doesn't threaten or address any of the structural issues.

FT: In your work there are certainly several important themes, but there is one that interests me greatly that at least for this part of the world, for South America, for a good part of the region and Latin American countries still seems impenetrable, which is familialism.

BV: I would say that perhaps the way to get rid of it is by seeking alternatives. By doing what is unnecessary. Because it's also true that the emotional structures we have serve as a very important refuge and buffer against a world riddled with violence and an extreme difficulty in sustaining life itself. So I don't think we can dismantle any of those structures because of the harmful aspects we see in them, or reduce their importance so they aren't so central, if we don't build an alternative that allows us, precisely, for them not to be so central, not so necessary.

FT Exactly. -Is there a kind of lack of imagination in that sense in your opinion, Brigitte, or a “tendency”, very much in quotes, almost innate or innate to form families in a nuclear way, that is, traditionally?

BV: -Yes, absolutely. A lack of imagination is something that happens to us a lot, and it's also a consequence of these things being systems. When they're not systems, it's easy to imagine outside of them. But precisely what a system does is capture everything, take everything, and not even imagination is possible outside of that framework. 

FT: – In fact, you insist, and quite a lot, in The Polyamorous Challenge, as we know it in Argentina, on dismantling the binary system that, concomitant with other binaries, rests on the very category of monogamy, and on the very notion of polyamory. That is to say, as categories in themselves, they are opposing categories that appear reciprocal, and that therefore respond to a deceptive duality.
 

BV - Yes, absolutely. One of the things that surprises me, and that I surprise myself with, is how we've been dismantling the gender binary and how we see it there. How difficult it is for us to bring it to other areas of thought and practice. To dismantle the binary and understand that the concepts aren't necessarily opposites, that there are many ways of being, and that there aren't just two alternatives. In that sense, polyamory is a form of monogamy in that it's a formula within the monogamous system. I don't say this as a criticism, but as an acknowledgment that we're doing what we can, and that this system is the foundation upon which we're trying to build other things. 

But all those formulas that have the couple very much at the center, even if it is a multiple couple or a plural couple, I think still draw a lot from this same system. 

FT - Isn't the word "couple" also a problem? I mean, from an etymological perspective, if we're going to focus on that classical development, that 19th-century history of terms, the one that etymology at least traces, if we're going to adhere to that paradigm, it's a problem in itself. Because it contains, I believe, very problematic meanings and an illusion of parity.

BV: Absolutely. I actually believe that this construct of the couple as the nuclear center is a promise of happiness. That's why it's not so much a matter of blaming ourselves or looking at each other with some terrible gaze when we're in that situation, because what the system promises us is that within that framework, everything will be fine. The couple is heterosexual by definition; everything else is just other formulas that are put together. But this ideal couple, proposed by the system, which is heterosexual, also tells us that within that framework there will be no gender inequality, because what will actually exist is gender complementarity. And so genders are constructed with the expectation of this complementarity, which leads to this construction of couples—in this case, heterosexual, nineteenth-century, Eurocentric, bourgeois, etc. 

FT: There are, in your work as well, points that I consider very important regarding the notion of intimacy, regarding the notion of private life. They are not exactly the same for you, for your approach, but they do also refer to an illusion today. You discuss the notion of intimacy in these terms, at this historical moment, with everything that surrounds us.

BV: - To be honest, the issue of intimacy—we say here that the personal is political, and I sometimes reply, "but intimacy is private, and that's it"—there are parts of it that need to be protected from prying eyes. In these times, with a capitalism that demands we surrender all of that about ourselves and make it visible—the phrase "what isn't named doesn't exist" is often used here—I'm concerned about the direction that leads in times of symbolic capital, and in times when we are precisely the workers who surrender that. And I think we need to safeguard those parts for smaller spaces, for spaces where we aren't a brand, where no type of capital is activated, or at least less so—neither social nor sexual capital.

FT: What's your take, beyond the book, on the concept of private life? The movements of gender, sexual, and bodily dissidents, and others, in much of the world—to put it very simply—insist on not thinking in terms of private or public, or rather, everything in public terms. It's quite striking, at least to me, that so many thinkers and activists insist on private life, privatizing life itself.

BV: Absolutely. We activists come from where we come from. And nothing that happens is truly foreign to us. So, in that sense, there are undoubtedly several spheres that we need to observe and re-observe diligently and quickly. Because the systems capture all those cracks we try to create. I don't know if the word "grieta" (crack) has connotations in Argentina. But all those scratches we try to make on that wall of the system are quickly captured again. So we have to be very alert in that sense, and support each other a lot, because many eyes, many hands, and many ears are needed in what is happening to us. 

FT: In The Polyamorous Challenge, you posit the horizontality of relationships as a true endpoint, a kind of horizon. What about the financial correlate of this horizontality as an endpoint? How do we think about non-monogamous relationships and the financial management—and I use the word deliberately—of them?

BV: When I talk about horizontality, I think there's a confusion that complicates things. This horizontality has often been visualized as a horizontality within multiple couples in a polyamorous scheme with many partners, and that's a horizontality that doesn't necessarily tend toward equality. I find all that subtlety interesting to observe. 

In any case, when I talk about horizontality, I'm referring more to a kind of horizontality between the couple and other relationships. The couple, if it still exists, that is. The way I define the monogamous system isn't about having a partner of a specific type or with sexual exclusivity. Rather, I define it as that form of social organization in which the couple is at the center of society, and in which a certain kind of polyamory doesn't break that hierarchy but rather expands the number of people who will be at that center, which is the couple. And precisely one of my political commitments, and one of the reasons why I try to resist, to do my part in resisting the capture of this by neoliberalism, is because by recovering the affective networks that we already have, that we already had and that were like the organic way of existing in society before capitalism entered in the way it has in recent centuries, what it does is also provide us with a much broader financial organization, a much broader form of resistance. I always give very clear and simple examples like this, but I think they're revealing: Who do you pay rent with? How do you pay rent if you don't have a partner? Who lends you money at the end of the month when you're having not just a bad month, but a bad year? Who is socially responsible for that financial support? Who do you ask for money?

FT: – The pandemic and the political measures that the pandemic brought about in many countries, are they strongly restoring monogamy?

BV: -Absolutely. We could understand the initial shock of the virus, and we understand that the measures were urgent. But it's been a long time now, and they're still the same. It's like: lock yourselves up in pairs, almost like some misunderstood biblical commandment, in an apartment that will be comfortable and a safe space, where you can survive without going out to earn a living, where there are no other social connections, no more care, and where if you do this, you won't be harmful to society. It's just awful. 

And this brings us to the other core issue that interests me, with this whole charade of the nation-state. We've been told the same thing: in Spain we're going to be saved somehow, in Portugal they're going to be saved somehow. They've even made rankings of countries to see who's done better. It's absolutely terrible. And it's a super-reaffirmation of how this works. 

FT: Besides being Eurocentric and media-driven in the worst sense, the concept of polyamory, this kind of idea , in addition to being Eurocentric and classist, is in many cases very cis-sexist in my opinion, or very sexualizing. I think about the situation of asexual people, for example, or I think about the situation, on the other hand, of people who insist on their right to live alone, who are also the majority in big cities, in this possibilism as you say in a part of your work, or in this constant idea that feminisms or dissident movements are always rising up in favor of what should be done, of how to live. Well, the situation of these people is one that, a priori, seems much more coerced by all this; they have an even stronger feeling that they are being told all the time how to live, when they have no interest whatsoever in the development of a genital or physical sexuality, and when, on the other hand, they don't want to get involved with anyone.

BV: -Absolutely. On the one hand, the issue of sex and sexualization seems to me to stem directly from monogamous thinking. The way this whole idea of ​​hierarchy, relationships, and the couple at the center has been constructed, sex is the defining factor. I sometimes say, half-jokingly, that with all the things we do while we're having sex, what surprises me is that we have orgasms. Because we're essentially legitimizing our identity, affirming our subjectivity, creating the bond, the hierarchy. A whole host of things happen parallel to sex, where sex itself is secondary, thus diminishing its importance. Sexual exclusivity in this construct isn't the cause of the system; it's its consequence. The way we create these romantic relationships, these couples, and with sex as the marker of who is the partner and who is something else entirely, clearly inferior to the system, it's logical that we demand sexual exclusivity, because we're risking a lot, and not just symbolic things. We're gambling with who we're going to raise our children with and who we're going to pay the rent with in all this drift we've witnessed. 

In that sense, when we think about lives, identities, subjectivities, ways of being, ways of existing, the fact that monogamy is a system means there is no outside. There are, however, margins, and those who suffer the most are those on the margins. Because we can't live outside of capitalism. If I went to the mountains to grow my own food, I'd surely die of hunger within two days because I don't know how to live like that anymore, but in any case, that doesn't end capitalism or eradicate it from within me. There is no outside; that's why it's a system, otherwise, these practices would be widespread. But there are margins, and those margins are all those lives that are asked to do the same. The system brainwashes us in the same way, and makes us desire the same things—at least it tries to—and it permeates everything it does, but it doesn't leave us with the benefits, it doesn't give us access to those benefits.

We think the ideal is to have a partner, and yet for sex workers, it's clear how heavily penalized socially it is to have a partner. So, what's the verdict? Should you have a partner or not? We need to reproduce, but how many people are excluded from the possibility of reproduction by the system itself? We're talking about forced sterilizations, we're talking about 50,000 different realities, and we're also talking about the realities of trans people. 

So what's the conclusion? What does the system demand? The system demands that, but only for bodies that are desirable to the system—bodies that are productive in certain specific terms. And then, for the system, it's also desirable that other bodies and other lives remain in a subordinate position, because that's how things work. 

FT: Brigitte Vasallo has written Monogamous Thought, Polyamorous Terror, first published by La Oveja Roja in Spain in 2018, and it has just been published in Argentina under a different title: The Polyamorous Challenge: Towards a New Politics of Affection. If you'll allow me, I'd like to ask you to read, before saying goodbye—and thanking you so much for all these moments with this series on sexual diversity on Buenos Aires public radio—a book that has just been published in Argentina called Barbarous Loves: Polyamory and the Siege of Patriarchal Monogamy by the philosopher Abelardo Barra Ruatta. I'll send it to you quickly. Because from other angles, he's trying to address what you're doing so well here. And I think it's about breaking free from any confinement, from any house, and about interacting, about building community in the best sense of the word.

BV: -Thank you so much. And I want to take this opportunity to thank you for that abortion law you've secured for all of us.