Fluidity of Sexual Desires

       Leo Bersani's Against Monogamy poses an interesting perspective on the concept of monogamy. Monogamy is celebrated and is the norm of American society, but I had never thought of it as something that was perhaps unnatural in the sense that it obstructs our desires. Bersani argues that monogamy is something that "blocks circuits of desire" (11). As we have learned earlier in the semester, our sexual desires are more fluid than we think and perhaps by limiting ourselves to one partner, we are therefore depriving ourselves "of desire's appetites and curiosities" (11).
      I very much think that desire and monogamy is controlled by religion today, because conservative churches try to have desire only be heterosexual, and placing a taboo on homosexual desire. Also, monogamy is the norm because marriage between a man and a woman is what should be enacted. It is as a way to keep the families together, but at the same time it can be a hypocrisy when a person has desires outside of the norm but are rejected. Thus the essay forms an interesting position of how monogamy is more a cultural construct, by psychoanalysis points to humans having a plethora of desires outside of just a one-on-one relational context.