A Marriage of Convenience: Anarchism, Marriageand Borders

Abstract

Marriage, the legal and religious sanctioning of interpersonal relationships, rarely receives much attention in anarchist feminist thought. Major collections of anarchist writings (for example, Horowitz, 1964; Woodcock, 1977; Roussopoulous, 1989; and Guerin, 1998) cover many areas of social life but few have essays dealing with marriage. Popular works, such as Marshall (1993), in which contemporary institutions and social relations are addressed, do not include marriage as part of the discussion. This reflects, in part, the fact that anarchists generally consider the question of marriage to have an easy answer and many anarchists take their rejection of marriage for granted. As an institution or practice which, at least in western liberal democracies, is largely related to the state, marriage is generally rejected by anarchists as yet another undesirable intrusion by authorities into people’s lives. Anarchists, in viewing states and governments as irremediably oppressive institutions, do not wish to promote practices that might further legitimize the roles or extend the reach of these institutions. In saying this I should make clear that there are variations in anarchist perspectives on marriage. Where there is agreement, and where one can speak of a general ‘anarchist’ approach, is in viewing marriage as one of the many institutions that, in as far as it relates to the state, would have no place in a stateless world. On this there is widespread agreement; many believe that marriage contributes to the legitimation of state involvement in, and regulation of, interpersonal relations. Individualist anarchists, who emphasize personal liberty and autonomy rather than social justice and solidarity, and those inspired by them, such as Emma Goldman, have typically gone furthest in their critiques of patriarchy and bourgeois moral order. They tend to politicize interpersonal relations more than other anarchists and are less likely to enter marriage for any reason. Socialist or collectivist anarchists have often viewed such issues as less important than questions of revolutionary organizing (Haaland, 1993). Thus, they tend to view marriage situationally, as it relates to issues of socio-economic transformation.