Polyamory: Mono-normativity – Dissident Micropolitics – Desire as transformative Power?

Abstract

We conceptualize knowledge productions, technologies of power, and practices that produce an exclusively dyadic structure of couple relationships as elemental and »natural« form of living together, as mono-normativity. Non-monogamous constellations are pathologized and interpreted as effect or cause of a lack or personality deficiency within this framework. Based on qualitative empirical studies we trace the question of desire in the context of polyamory. In this empirical perspective, desire presents itself as affective intensity that produces plentitude and abundance rather than lack. Following the theoretical line of Spinoza and Deleuze/Guattari, we explore desire as a productive, dynamic power that stimulates processes of transformation. We discuss if and to what extent ways of life of «ethical polyamory” can be read as «lines of flight” and «imperceptible” micropolitics that escape the mono-normative matrix and therefore intervene in existing logics of domination.