As someone who has for a long time intellectually moved beyond inherited notions of monogamy, and who certainly subscribes to the sort of ethical precepts people who expound polyamory defend, I have often wondered why the notion itself is not one that appeals to me more.
Perhaps it starts with the word itself: the blend of Greek and Latin is itself disturbing. Why can’t it be “multiamory”? Or “poly-“…?
Well, poly-what? The inability to decide if it should be “polyeros” or “polyagape” together with the technical/commercial connotations of “multi”-anything no doubt explain this unhappy (not so) neologism. We think we know what “amor” is, and we very “nobly” want more of it in our lives.
But actually we do not know what “amor” is, no more than the ancients. We do not even know what “eros” is (and we are so far from understanding “agape” that it is no more than a hypothetical alien lifeform to most of us, inconveniently embedded in our superego). Continue reading “A cultural critique of polyamory”