American marriage in modernity: Cultural reproduction, relationality and dissidence.

Abstract

This dissertation addresses the subject of American marriage in its modern cultural forms. Understanding these forms as companionate, it engages a selective historical survey of developments in the fields of intimacy, sexuality and partnership in the modern and contemporary United States. It subsequently explores an analysis of the forms and functions of marriage, utilizing anthropological, historical and other theoretical perspectives on the family, marriage and the reproduction of culture. This dissertation then turns to a number of contestatory accounts as case studies of marriage at its definitional limitations. Domestic partnership, same-sex marriage and transgender and intersex engagements with marriage challenge the dominant modern companionate form of marriage from a range of perspectives and positions. Following these concrete tracings of material challenges to marriage, this dissertation shifts its focus to a number of theoretical accounts. The feminist legal designs of Martha Fineman, the gay male socio-sexual theory of Guy Hocquenghem and the lesbian fiction of Monique Wittig provide the source material in this final block of chapters. The theoretical positions developed in these works each identify major problems within modern marriage for the embodied subjects whose needs they address.