Love is a losing game: power and exploitation in romantic relationships

Abstract

The article elaborates an account of exploitation in romantic love relationships. As a starting point, I borrow Vrousalis’ analytical Marxist definition of economic exploitation under capitalism. Second, I briefly discuss Federici’s conception of capitalist exploitation of women’s labour in the family and in the romantic couple. I introduce and discuss, then, Jónasdóttir’s theory of ‘love power’, which currently counts as the most elaborated critique of exploitation affecting sexual love. I proceed to sketch out my own account, according to which love power is not extracted or appropriated, as Jónasdóttir puts it, but rather suffocated as result of what I call ‘romantic exploitation’. In this view, lovers’ positions of vulnerability and power over, that may give rise to exploitation, are brought about by an intersection of norms defining and regulating notions of romance, gender, race, labour, etc.

Keywords:

• Romantic love
• power
• domination
• exploitation
• intersectionality

Acknowledgments

A previous version of this article was presented at the Workshop ‘Radical Perspectives on Exploitation’, Humboldt University (Berlin), in September 2016. I would like to thank Miriam Müller for the invitation and all the participants in the conference, in particular Nora Kreft, Maeve McKeown, Eva von Redecker and Nicholas Vrousalis, for their helpful questions and comments. A special thanks to Mark Haugaard and to two anonymous referees for their sharp criticisms, which have substantially helped me to strengthen my arguments.

Notes

1. The adjective ‘romantic’ is a controversial one: What counts as romantic love has currently become the object of heated debates (see e.g. Grossi and West 2017, Jenkins 2017). In this article, I roughly intend it as a social relationship between adult human beings who are not biologically tied; the relationship is usually characterized by profound affection and care, expectations to share important aspects of the partner(s)’ life and the desire to feel ‘at one’ with them (usually, in sexual ways), a shared history and projects for the future, a certain degree of dependence on the partner(s). I will come back to the norms defining and regulating romantic love in Section 6.

2. This little story does not intend, obviously, to exhaustively and correctly report the real Fitzgeralds, but only to be employed as a highly stylized introductory example.

3. Among the most influential accounts of power-free love, I mention here only: Nozick 1989, Frankfurt 2004, Helm 2009. In the article, I do not explicitly problematize any of these philosophical accounts of love as power-free domain; since they are so influential in the current panorama of philosophies of love, more detailed discussions would be needed.

4. For an overview on such critical love studies, see Jónasdóttir and Ferguson (2014).

5. More recently, Vrousalis (forthcoming) calls the power involved in this relation ‘subordinating power’.

6. This conception of love has been for example outlined by Honneth (2014), Chapter 6.1.

7. The more recent reorganization of care work in the labour market and as value-producing service has neither eliminated home-based, unpaid care nor abolished the gender division of labour in which it is embedded. Under present-day capitalist conditions, reproductive or care labour is still unequally distributed in the couple or in the household, especially if the (heterosexual) couple has children (Federici 2008, p. 100; see also Grunow and Evertsson 2016). Moreover, care work in the market is still not adequately paid, and performed especially by women, mostly by migrant women or women belonging to discriminated minorities. With reference to the U.S. context, see e.g. Glenn (2010); with reference to the European context, see Lutz (2011).

8. There are many critiques of the exploitation of women’s labour, many theories discussing the interrelation between patriarchy and capitalism (and racism), and many critiques of such positions. In this article, I do not intend to refer to such debates; I rely upon Federici’s seminal texts, which she wrote as political pamphlets for the ‘Wages for Housework’ struggle back in the 70s, because I find them particularly insightful in the ways she depicts also romantic norms as interlaced with gender and capitalist ones.

9. With words that recall Foucault’s idea of disciplinary power, Federici (1975a) writes that women are ‘trained to be docile, subservient, dependent and, most importantly, to sacrifice’ themselves ‘and even to get pleasure from it.’ Those who do not comply are considered abnormal and made feel guilty (p. 17, my italics). On the role that Foucault’s disciplinary power might play for the present account of romantic exploitation, see Section 5.

10. In Federici’s view, only once we have recognized the role of certain conceptions of love, marriage, family, care and womanhood for the capitalist system, we can think about alternative ones (Federici 1975a, p. 20). In her later work, she calls conceptions of this sort ‘metaphysical underpinnings of the social order.’ (Federici 2004, p. 170).

11. On the reasons and methodology of Jónasdóttir’s appropriation of Marx, see Jónasdóttir (2009).

12. The example of Zelda and Scott can be useful to better understand Jónasdóttir’s theory: since the Fitzgeralds’s life style is largely stranger to capitalist and bourgeois values, the exploitation dynamic in their love relationship can be explained mainly by referring to gender norms and not to economic ones. It is important to clarify, however, that Jónasdóttir does not intend to deny economic exploitation of women, both in and outside the household, or that economic exploitation is interrelated to exploitative love; however, she believes that the sexual and romantic type of exploitation and oppression must be critically analysed in its own right, as if it were a separate phenomenon (see Jónasdóttir 2009).

13. See also Jónasdóttir (2011), pp. 55–56.

14. As seen before, this argument compares also in Federici’s argument.

15. Does the opposite hold? Consider: (i₂) Scott lacks some desideratum x (e.g. sexual satisfaction) that is a requirement for, or a constitutive feature of, his flourishing (in which case x is the object of Scott’s need); (ii₂) Scott can only obtain x from Zelda, and (iii₂) Zelda has it within her discretion to withhold x from her husband. On Jónasdóttir’s account, under the current sociosexual order, (ii₂) is not very strong: Scott is inclined to think he can obtain x also from other partners; exclusivity and monogamy are not decisive factors for his conception and practice of love. Moreover, (iii₂) does not properly hold either: In principle, Zelda could have it within her discretion to withhold x from her husband; de facto, however, a bundle of well-rooted beliefs and norms prevents her from exercising this power. For example, she might believe that if she does not sexually satisfy Scott, someone else would; alternatively, Zelda might think that if she does not prove herself to be sexually available, he would lose interest in her.

16. This point is suggested also by Barriteau (2014), p. 91.

17. On Foucault’s notion of power and gender norms, see e.g. Bartky (1990), pp. 63–82.

18. The relationship between powerful social norms and the power relation A - B could be better specified by applying Amy Allen’s (1999) early feminist theory of power, which results from the combination of a ‘foreground perspective’, which ‘targets particular power relations between individuals’, and a ‘background perspective’, which ‘focuses on the background conditions that allow these particular power relations to appear’ (p. 130). Whereas I refer to the background perspective in terms of social norms (of gender, class, race, romance, etc.), Allen proposes to distinguish between subject-positions, cultural meanings, social practices, institutions, and structures (pp. 131–135).

19. Although the strength and originality of Jónasdóttir’s theory lies in her critical reconstruction of the particular kind of exploitative dynamic that skews love and sexual relationships, she does not disavow intersectionalist approaches: see Jónasdóttir (1994), Chapters 3 and 4; Jónasdóttir (2009), pp. 72–73. For an intersectionalist feminist theory that engages in a fruitful dialogue with Jónasdóttir, see especially Ann Ferguson’s work, e.g. Ferguson (1991, 2014).

20. I do not want to subscribe to a fully constructivist view about romantic love, I do not want, namely, to argue that romantic love is merely a social construct. As Jónasdóttir argues, love in its most basic, anthropological meaning, which includes also romantic, heterosexual love, has to be considered as both natural and social. Unfortunately, this is not the context to examine the properly natural components of romantic love and to depict the intertwinement of society and nature that pertains to love.

21. It is possible, however, that the separation between ecstatic eroticism and care becomes the pattern also regulating the love relationship between two gay men (or lesbian women). In this case, the relationship might become exploitative as well.

22. The following examples refer to African Americans since the literature targeting love and racial oppression in the U.S. context is large. In other social and geographical contexts, racial and ethnical relations are characterized by different traits.

23. The consequent strategies enacted by these women for resisting but also autonomously appropriate such ascriptions might also give rise to conceptions of love and romance that challenge hegemonic, ‘bourgeois’ notions of love and romance. Regretfully, I cannot address here the ways in which nonwhite feminists have conceived of love by openly challenging some of the norms I have briefly listed under (i); for some precious indications, see e.g. Lugones (1987), Hooks 2000, Lorde (2007), Ureña (2017).

24. Black women who compete on these markets tend to make themselves more acceptable, desirable, by ‘endorsing traditional gender ideology. In a context in which men are intimidated if not repelled by “strong women”, becoming more submissive seemingly increases a woman’s chances of finding a Black male partner’ (Collins 2004, p. 256).

25. Explanations for this double standard is rooted in the history of slavery in the United States: Historically, ‘good Black women’ were those who managed to resist White men assaults and advances; on the contrary, Black men’s intercourse with White women was a proof of their masculinity and a tactic of resistance against White male power (Collins 2004, p. 262).

26. This topic has been recently disclosed to the broad public by Moonlight, a movie directed by Barry Jenkins released in 2016, which won three awards, for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay, at the 89th Academy Awards.

27. These statements are only working hypotheses for subsequent inquiries. Recently, I have argued that one distinctive feature of present-day neoliberal society, namely its fixation on moral and economic debt/guilt, does reinforce traditional, dichotomous gender identities (Gregoratto 2017).

28. This idea of love recalls Audre Lorde’s (2007) conception of ‘the power of the erotic’. In her view, powerful love is both suppressed under the current sexist, racist and capitalist social order, but also one of the resources and potentials to rely upon in the struggle against this order. As previously seen, on Jónasdóttir’s (2011) account love power is the capacity to transform both the self and the collectivity (pp. 13–14). On the analogies and differences between Lorde’s erotic love as power and Jónasdóttir’s notion of love power, see Barriteau (2014).