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Methodology: Theoretical Framework--Part 6
The sources listed above will certainly help me in developing my thesis, but there are two texts that will form the basis of my argument: Eve Sedgewick’s Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire and Gayle Rubin’s “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex.” In order to begin my thesis, I will first need to define homosocial desire. Eve Sedgwick defines homosocial as “social bonds between persons of the same sex,” and she defines desire as “the affective or social force, the glue . . . that shapes an important relationship” (1-2). She goes on to explain that homosocial bonds can take many forms, and that there is a “continuum between homosocial and homosexual” (1). She also points out that the “glue” of desire can affect “an important relationship” in positive or negative ways (2). Sedgwick brings up another important point when she says the female continuum functions very differently from the male continuum. A lesbian, for example, can be easily accepted as a champion of women’s rights (“women” including heterosexuals as well), but a gay man would not be looked upon as a champion of men’s rights in the same way (a gay man is not a “real man”). This male continuum, Sedgwick argues, is a social construct that is forced upon men. To complicate matters, in Victorian society, the men are encouraged to develop intimate homosocial bonds with each other, but at the same time they are not to allow these relationships to cross over into feelings of homosexual desire. This can cause a great deal of stress in male relationships, and this stress gets directed into love triangles. Men can interact with each other as rivals and thus fulfill their homosocial needs without appearing homosexual. Sedgwick agrees with Rene Girard that the bonds between the men are at least as important, and probably more so, than the bonds between the men and the women (21). Also, because sex and gender are represented differently for men (penis versus phallus), men’s relationships with each other are allowed to become very complex (for women, sex and gender are the same, there is no real power, and so the relationships stay relatively simple) (24). Thus, for Sedgwick, the triangle is never symmetrical, but “a sensitive register precisely for delineating relationships of power and meaning” (27).
Understanding the idea of female exchange is the other vital component to my thesis (and important to Sedgwick’s argument as well). As Gayle Rubin explains, the theory put forth by Claude Levi-Strauss argues that the need to maintain kinship “seems to lie in an exchange of women between men” (115). Because men are in charge of this exchange, it can lead to “trust, solidarity, and mutual aid . . . [or] competition and rivalry” between them (116). Rubin argues that this situation helps only the men, and the woman is essentially nothing more than a “conduit to the relationship rather than a partner in it” (117). She also points out that gender must be carefully defined if this system is going to succeed; the way most cultures define gender is through work. By separating men’s and women’s work, the similarities between men and women become as unnoticeable as possible, and gender is clearly defined (121-122).
(As I work on the paper, I may need to include some information from other theoretical material, including Gender Trouble by Judith Butler and The History of Sexuality: An Introduction by Michel Foucault, as well as works by Freud, Marx, and Engle. Sedgwick and Rubin mention some of these sources, and so I believe they may prove useful for my thesis as well.)