‘Christian Nations’,‘Polygamic Races’ and Women’s Rights: Toward a Genealogy of Non/Monogamy and Whiteness

This article offers a reading of historical discourses around non/monogamy with attention to their ‘racial resonances’. These 19th-century discourses helped to naturalize monogamy and to establish it as desirable, moral and feminist (and alternatives as undesirable, immoral and un-feminist). The article’s aim is to suggest that, like those surrounding other aspects of sexuality, discourses around non/monogamy cannot be adequately contextualized-or challenged-without attention to the ways in which they are constituted through race.