Polyamory in the context of capitalist culture | Letters

All polyamory participants talk as if they are living in a social vacuum, unaffected by the wider social order, writes Sydney Peiris

In your article ('There's so much joy in being poly', G2, 25 September) one person declares: "What I love about polyamory is that I'm my own person and no one owns me. I don't own any of you, either. We're all free." It seems to me this represents the vision of the human in capitalist culture: the unfettered, autonomous, rational, economic man. All polyamory participants talk about their feelings as if they are living in a social vacuum, unaffected by the wider social order in which they live. Kathleen Lynch, the Irish educationist, argues that our education system too enshrines the rational autonomous subject. Instead she advocates education for nurturing affective relationships and the recognition that we are profoundly dependent and interdependent on others for much of life. Relationships, whether monogamy or poly, are vitiated by the values currently celebrated in capitalist culture: narcissism and hedonism.
Sydney Peiris
Wolverhampton

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