Civil union or the aesthetic fluidity of the false family

In the construction of this article, we start from two new concepts in the socio-human sciences: that of fluidity, applied with great resonance in the interpretation of the new dynamic forms of contemporary society by Zygmunt Bauman, and that of aesthetics, in the sense of the type of judgment with which we approach the external world, as defined by Immanuel Kant. Their utility lies in verifying and explaining the manner in which new inconsistent social and familial formulas are projected and articulated, in synchrony with the liquefaction and aesthetification of all social structures of the “old order” of tradition orof the “steel carcasses” of modernity. The redefined family as a fluid aesthetic group is one in which its axes of stability, the vertical link of descent, and the supportive horizontal link of marriage are fractured and declared unusable. “Projects” of relationships in permanent construction emerge in their place, inconsistent and unstable by their very nature, whose integrative capacity is relative and manifests only as long as the satisfaction they offer lasts. These projects, which replace the “solid” social institutions in everyday social life, not only have a mimetic effect, taking on the apparent form of the relationship/structure they replace, but also have a dissolving effect. Civil partnership is such a satisfactory solution for mimicking marriage for those who do not find enough satisfaction in getting married, but nor so little that they give up on it. Its consequences, in terms of fluidizing sexual ties within the family, are of the same nature as those of incest, which fluidize the lineage ties.