the same coin: both emerge together at the same
moment in history, and both carry with them
the ungrounded belief that each of us has our
destiny in our own hands, that our happiness is
entirely a consequence of our life choices, and
our misery a surefire sign that we are doing
something wrong. In this connection the contemporary use of “passion” serves as a revealing
misnomer. For how many can recall that, originally, from classical antiquity through Descartes’
The Passions of the Soul, to undergo a passion
was to suffer an affliction over which one had
no control? To undergo a passion was to be on
the receiving end of an action, to be a patient
rather than an agent, and in this respect the idea
of choosing to live a life of passion, to “follow
one’s passion,” could have made no sense. But in
the modern world, in both work and love, this is
precisely what we are expected to do: to treat the
things that happen to us, that cannot but happen to us, as a result of the way our society is
structured, as if they were the result of our own
sundry projects of self-creation.
The rebranding of couples as “partners” is
the sad culmination of the modern transformation of couples into work-love units. heterosexual couples began calling one another “partners”
at some point in the late 1980s or early ’90s out
of a sense of solidarity with their gay friends who
could not yet be spouses. Believing themselves
to be friends of sexual otherness, they were at the
same time abetting the ongoing transformation
of marriage into a variety of modern capitalist
work. And it is at precisely this moment in the
history of marriage that it became feasible for
the institution to subsume same-sex couples: the
moment at which the hard work of individuals
had fully replaced exchange between families as
the basic model of what a marriage ought to be.
one recalls for example the scene from the 1999
film American Beauty in which the gay neighbors
ring the doorbell of Col. Frank Fitts, an abusive
ex-marine and collector of nazi paraphernalia.
“Let’s cut to the chase,” Fitts blurts out, “what
are you guys selling?” They explain that they
just wanted to welcome him to the neighborhood. “But you said you’re partners,” he replies,
Candidate: Lot (c. 1800 bc–c.1625 bc)
Dependents: Daughters
Credentials: offered virgin daughters as sex objects
to mob of townspeople in order to protect angel
guests from the crowd’s lusty advances.
Father of the Year Awards
Candidate: Peter the Great (1672–1725)
Dependent: Alexis Petrovich
Credentials: Imprisoned and tortured son to death
after hearing rumors that he was plotting rebellion.
Candidate: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
Dependents: Five nameless infants
Credentials: Disposed of illegitimate children in
foundling hospitals, despite having written an
entire work on the education of an imaginary child.
Candidate: William Faulkner (1897–1962)
Dependent: Jill Faulkner Summers
Credentials: Told daughter, “You know, no one
remembers Shakespeare’s child,” when she requested
he remain sober on her birthday.
Candidate: John Phillips (1935–2001)
Dependent: Mackenzie Phillips
Credentials: Allegedly bedded his nineteen-year-old
daughter on the eve of her wedding while both were
on drugs.
Candidate: Marvin Gaye Sr. (1914–1998)
Dependent: Marvin gaye
Credentials: Shot and killed son after he took
mother’s side in a minor dispute, with a gun that
had been a present from the singer to his father.
Candidate: Joe Jackson (1929–)
Dependents: The Jackson Five
Credentials: Whipped young son Michael with belt
and taunted him verbally, causing the future King of
Pop to sometimes vomit upon seeing his father.
“so what’s your business?” And so the partners
present one another: “Well, he’s a tax attorney.” “And he’s an anesthesiologist.” This, the
audience understands, is the “new normal”: the
same-sex couple, having embraced the model of
coupledom as partnership, represents the neighborhood, the domicile, and the good career; the
man who cannot comprehend this model is a
closet nazi.
