THE NATURE OF SOCIAL DESIRE
83
heir study historically. Further, heir proposals to create more cooperative and
relational subjectivities did not sufficiently address
he need for deep
institutional change that extends beyond he nuclear family itself. Raher han
challenge
capitalist
and
individualistic practices,
state
structures
hat
nurture
competitive
and
he authors focused on retooling he parenting
dynamics within he nuclear family.
Yet again, we may appreciate he emergence of an attempt to propose a
new understanding of human nature and desire. Like he Situationists and
social anarchists before hem, hese feminists looked beyond a reactionary
‘retumist’ outlook toward a reconstructive possibility of creating a new kind of
subject able to cooperate and live harmoniously with others. Although neiher
theorist identifies as anarchist, boh Chodorow and Benjamin expressed an
implicitly anarchist challenge to he idea hat hierarchy, hyper-individuation
and domination are inherent, necessary, and universal.
Rejecting romantic
notions of selfhood, notions predicated on a self that finds love and security
only through a dialectic of predation and protection, these theorists offer the
possibility of a kind of sociality marked by mutualism, a desire to see the oher
as part of, yet excitingly distinct from, the self.
TowarcI A SocioEROTic
Drawing inspiration from new psychoanalytic understandings of desire, oher
feminist theorists explored the radical potential of community, empathy, and a
new way of being in he world. One of the most striking contributions of this
new feminist culture was a new perspective on female sexual desire. The idea
of female sexuality, framed historically as the realm of competition over men,
of romance, and sexual domination, was now framed as the feminist desire to
bond with oher women, a desire to form mutualistic relationships poised on
he intersection between autonomy and connection.30 This new concept of
woman-bonding acquired new meaning within the context of an emerging
‘lesbian feminism’ hat captured the imagination of many feminists in the New
Left, engendering new understandings of eroticism.
From he late sixties through to he early eighties, several feminists
initiated discussions about a specifically ‘lesbian’ desire that was to be both
sexual and social. In 1980, Adrienne Rich played a primary role in highlighting
the social
dimension
“Compulsory
of lesbian desire in her ground-breaking article,
Heterosexuality
and
Lesbian
Existence31
Drawing
from
Chodorow, Rich challenged the idea of women’s innate desire for men. In this
essay, Rich uncovered a continuum of non-sexual forms of bonding between
women hat have always existed within he context of patriarchy, despite the
attempts of patriarchal institutions and practices to guarantee exclusive male
access to women’s attention and affection.32