The Politics of Forbidden Liaisons: Civilization, Miscegenation, and Other Perversions

Should we not scrutinize the role of sexual domination in warfare and war's particularly repugnant expression, conquest, before we giddily salute the so-called civilization Europeans introduced into this hemisphere some five hundred years ago?

Stephanie Wood, "Sexual Violation in the Conquest of the Americas"¹

In this essay, I trace the evolving politics of sexuality in North America and its connections to the expropriation of resources from oppressed populations in what has become the United States of America. To help illustrate the evolution of the politics of sexuality over time, I interpret messages emanating from Sigmund Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) and Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (first published in 1955), One-Dimensional Man (1964), and An Essay on Liberation (1969). I offer a comparative interpretation of literary portrayals of forbidden heterosexual liaisons between American Indian men and Anglo women and erotic lesbian liaisons between Latina women. Captivity narratives written by Anglos as they "civilized" North America help to illuminate connections between the oppression of sexuality and the expropriation of resources from American Indians. The women they portray only rarely expressed their own voice—and almost never to declare, define, or celebrate their women's sexuality. Over time, however, we can observe a gradual change in norms governing the sexual conduct of Euroamerican women vis-à-vis Indian men, as civilization comes to dominate the Americas. Celebrations of lesbian sexuality by twentieth century Chicana writers constitute a force that opposes oppression of peoples of all genders and ethnic identities. Their voices tell us about the power of love to heal the lives of the exploited and generate a new vision of hope for oppressed peoples, and they urge us to recreate the world to make vilification and exploitation unacceptable.

The Politics of Sexuality

The "politics of sexuality" is "the study and practice of or opposition to the oppression of sexuality."² Throughout history many cultures have had many norms about accepted forms of sexuality. Those who violate norms and engage in forbidden behaviors are "deviants." Deviant behaviors can pose a real threat to the survival and well-being of communities and societies. Whether or not expressions of sexuality are oppressed because they threaten the survival of a particular group, however, those with the power necessary to shape and enforce norms enrich themselves and solidify their authority by emphasizing distinctions between themselves and the deviants that justify expropriation and oppression. Over time, as societies change, so do sexual norms, inclusion of different groups in the "deviant" category, and the logic of oppression. By examining the changing nature of the oppression of sexualities and opposition to oppression, we can learn more about both the dynamics of the colonial domination of the peoples of the Americas and the political significance of erotic stories by and about women.

Prominent Western psychological and political theories have tried to explain the logic of sexual control by "civilization." Freud believed the control of sexuality was one of the key preconditions for the evolution of civilization. Civilization and Its Discontents describes the "irremediable antagonism between the demands of instinct and the restrictions of civilization"³ and explains why the individual's sexuality must be controlled by civilization. He admitted that what civilized man considered licentious behavior might indeed be delicious but maintained that it could not be standard practice, or else civilization would be precluded. Norms of sexual conduct that "restrict possibilities of satisfaction" lead to the "replacement of the power of the individual by the power of a community," which "constitutes the decisive step of civilization."⁴ In Freud's day, Westerners commonly believed that American Indians and other "savages" had no morality and, hence, no restrictions placed upon their sexuality. They also failed to understand that most American Indian societies had very effective mechanisms to mediate between individual and communal power.

Marcuse's Eros and Civilization was a twentieth century response to neo-Freudians who had allegedly, through shallow and prejudiced interpretations of Freud's work, destroyed its revolutionary potential. In Eros and Civilization, Marcuse set out "to demonstrate that beneath the apparent pessimism and conservatism...