Abstract

This dissertation uses genealogical discourse analysis to unpack recent Western conceptions of monogamy and non-monogamy in the public sphere. Beginning from the premise that discourses surrounding monogamy and non-monogamy (taken together as a system of non/monogamy) have come into particular prominence in recent years, this dissertation deploys a thread of queer theory focused on the study of broader conceptions of "intimacy" to explore the ramifications of such a prominence in the public sphere. More specifically, drawing on theorizations of spatiality (Temporary Autonomous Zones, Mapping/Reterritorialization, Heterotopia) and the concept of "privilege", I formulate the theoretical lens of "intimate privilege" to explore how non/monogamy is distributed throughout, takes up, and creates forms of intimate space. In exploding the overly-simple notion that monogamous sexuality is societally privileged, while non-monogamies are marginalized, I show how while there is a societal meta-narrative that centres monogamy, it is really the intersectionality of non/monogamy with other forms of privilege/oppression that truly locates a subject practicing (or connected to) non-monogamous intimacy as having intimate privilege, defined as the emergent state in which one's intimacies hold societal privilege. Engaging in theoretical and discursive analyses of the contemporary public sphere presences of three major forms of non-monogamy (adultery, polygamy and polyamory) through texts such as journalistic articles, policy documents, self-help literature, television programs and Internet sites, I continue the academic discussion surrounding non-monogamies that is just beginning to come into its own in the fields of social science and humanities, as well as to complicate less-nuanced discourses on non/monogamy that are circulating more broadly in the public sphere.