{"id":29762,"date":"2026-09-14T09:45:57","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T04:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/?p=29762"},"modified":"2026-09-14T09:45:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T04:15:59","slug":"non-consensual-commitment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/non-consensual-commitment\/","title":{"rendered":"Non-consensual Commitment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Commitment is inherently non-consensual. While commitment, as conventionally understood, may be consensual in the course of the time it is made or lived, it constitutes and sustains a promise of consent<\/em> yet to be sought and ever unfulfilled, thereby engendering and hosting a \u201ccommitted consent.\u201d<\/em> On the other hand, consent, for which the freedom to be revoked remains indispensable, must remain uncommitted, in commitment to its own meaning. Commitment, even if it does not secure the promise of consent, at the very least consents to a promise securing the ceaseless availability of the self that does, or does not, consent.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before I present my observations contextual to commitment\u2019s practice, let\u2019s look at the meaning of the word. At its very core, it is defined as \u2018a promise to do something or to behave in a particular way.\u2019 From this definition, two aspects chiefly invite attention: a.<\/em> As commitment necessitates an act of promise, in what way, then, does it stand distinct or similar in meaning from promise itself? b.<\/em> Commitment may be understood as something, in its structure and practice, non-casual. May non-commitment, then, be understood as casual?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To begin with the aspect of promise, firstly, though commitment and promise may appear similar in their moments of convergence, they remain distinct in their enactment, practice, and manner of being felt. Commitment does not necessarily need to be performed into being through verbalisation or gesture. Promise, whereas, must be rendered evident in some way or another. Also, and more importantly, in commitment, certain promises exist alongside commitment for as long as the commitment itself remains intact. They do not, however, eclipse or supersede commitment; for although commitment may be understood as a repetition of a set of promises, it exceeds the sum of those promises in its practice. It does not end, or grow weak, at any moment of a promise\u2019s fulfilment, but instead sustains<\/em> itself through repetition. Unlike commitment, promise remains bound to a distinct temporal future, within which it is spent<\/em> through its actualisation. For example, when two people go on a date and both decide to meet again, it is a promise they make to one another to do so. In the course of subsequent meetings, should they begin to like each other and enter a committed relationship, they do not necessarily declare everyday after that, that they remain committed to one another. Rather, they live it, through the repetition of promises made to each other, to themselves, or assumed essential to what a relationship requires in order to remain committed. Each gesture, each act of fulfilling a promise, allows the commitment, bound by no time limit, to remain. Commitment, then, can be called a timeless promise. And a promise, in turn, a commitment in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving to the second aspect of commitment\u2019s meaning, commitment is non-casual by nature and in essence. However, non-commitment, as we understand it, is not synonymous with \u2018casual\u2019. Etymologically, casual is derived from the Late Latin casualis<\/em>, meaning \u2018by chance,\u2019 itself from the Latin casus<\/em> i.e. \u2018chance, occasion, opportunity; accident, event.\u2019 So, for something to be casual, there ought to be no plan of action<\/em> behind it. In other words, any set of actions, whether in adherence to commitment or non-commitment, if planned, cannot be casual.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One does not randomly and accidentally, one evening, casually commit to someone in a street one chanced upon to walk in at random. Commitment is, past all doubt, non-casual. Commitment always needs some planning, thinking and consideration. But in a manner similar to commitment, non-commitment too can be considerably thought out, planned, and committedly practised, and therefore cannot always, in the truest sense of the word, be called casual. One can remain<\/em> or stay<\/em> committed, and equally remain uncommitted, but, one can only ever be casual by accident. The way we understand and practise \u201ccasual relationships\u201d today is not exactly what the term means. First, because a relationship implies being connected, this runs against the very idea of casualness \u2013 for, one may fall into a casual interaction with someone, or go on a casual date, but being connected cannot itself be an accident. Second, even where a relationship \u2013 the very one we call a casual relationship, in which one is expected to remain unserious and open to unexpected events throughout \u2013 is decided to remain uncommitted, there persists a commitment to remain uncommitted. And one cannot betray that commitment, for its betrayal is scarcely different from the betrayal of a commitment, or a committed relationship, itself. \u2018Casual relationship,\u2019 in that sense, is an oxymoron, for a relationship cannot be confined to a moment, but by nature, is stretched across time, unlike any casual incident, which, being accidental, is bound by no such duration. Any such relationship might more rightly be called a consensually uncommitted relationship<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entering the frame, in the practice of commitment, consent comes as a default condition, as the practice implies an agreement, most often made with an-other. On the one hand, there is consent, explicit or implicit, through which one comes into a commitment; on the other, there is another that arises through the acts of commitment itself and exists in the realm of it. The former consent, being formative of commitment, marking rites of passage and thus remaining visible to public and academic scrutiny alike, has been discussed at such length that it now appears not so complicated to decipher and contest. The latter consent, within the realm of commitment, remains, thus far, devoid of consensual agreement in many instances and spaces. To illustrate this through a form of commitment called marriage: differentiating between a marriage that is consensual and one that is non-consensual does not remain as contested a terrain as that of marital rape which is a matter of consent inside the commitment of marriage. While a certain degree of differing opinion on whether arranged marriage is non-consensual cannot be overlooked, on the matter of consent within marriage, especially regarding sexual acts, opinions no longer circle around a cultural framework alone, but become more acutely ideational, conceptual, and gendered. It therefore becomes important to understand commitment in terms of the consent it engenders and thereby regulate, comprehend, and define commitment through that very consent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an attempt to understand commitment through the one who commits \u2013 the subject of commitment, who thereby ascribes to it and re-acts its meaning \u2013 Judith Butler\u2019s analogous intervention in feminism regarding performativity helps us a great deal. Butler, on the matter of women as the subject of feminism, opposing the sovereign existence attributed to that subject, claims that performativity \u201cconstitute(s) the illusion of an abiding gendered self\u201d\u00a0 (Butler 1990). Otherwise said, Butler contests the conventional assumption of feminist politics which assumes \u201cwomen\u201d as a coherent subject existing prior to and independent of feminism to be represented. \u201cWomen\u201d as a category<\/em> is a product of discourses and structures that claim to represent it as an already-existing group. Similarly, in commitment there is no committed self that pre-exists commitment, or the act thereof, awaiting commitment; rather, such a self is customarily produced from within and sustained throughout commitment itself. The self (the real? self) preceding commitment produces a committed self through commitment and thereafter remains in consent with the conjured committed self for commitment\u2019s sake. This is precisely why betrayal of a commitment feels so personal, because it is a betrayal of one-self that is committed \u2013 the one produced through\/in commitment \u2013 by the one that precedes commitment. Both remain the selves of one<\/em>, but not one self. The one self remains free not to be committed but has to surrender its freedom for commitment, while the other that is a product of commitment itself, cannot not be, and so remains committed. Commitment, therefore, cannot be consensual, for the very agency of self required for consent is enfeebled in the making and practising of it. In instances where this may seem contested, the self, the committed self, and the consenting self (the self of the moment) may come into agreement or disagreement as to whether an act within the realm of commitment is consensual or non-consensual. But so long as the self preceding commitment and the committed self remain \u201cone,\u201d or say, remain in \u201cconsent,\u201d but where they do not, it is precisely a breach of commitment. Put comparatively, in consent, the self that consents constitutes, through its performing agency, the self of<\/em> consent. Though bound to the \u201cscript of performance,\u201d the self that performs consent, as well as the self produced through that performance, reserves, or ought to, the right of withdrawal from it at any moment. In commitment, by contrast, the self that commits to the self that remains committed possesses no such agency of its own. Put more pointedly, one cannot choose to not commit for a day, or a week, and thereafter resume. One must remain<\/em> \u201cconsensual\u201d to the committed self in one\u2019s non-consent to the act of consent itself, ceaselessly.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be clear, and to forestall any misreading: to say that commitment is inherently non-consensual is not to claim that every individual act of consent within the realm and course of a commitment is itself non-consensual. Rather, it is done so to show what commitment as a form demands, and as to afford the analysis a framework within which to define commitment in terms of the consent it stages, for commitment remains, indeed, a form of agreement whose performance cannot, and should not, be understood disregarding the \u201ctheatrics of consent<\/a>.\u201d In a time of consensual non-commitment, commitment stands in ever-greater need of a check upon consent. While consent is mutually arrived at, its revocation requires only one side. Similarly, commitment must surrender its imagined enduring permanence that initially distinguishes it from a promise or a mere act of consent and grow more vulnerable to be revoked, unilaterally, by any side, at any time so as to make space for consent. In a society where \u201cwomen\u201d are disproportionately, and often involuntarily, burdened by the many forms of \u201ccommitments,\u201d consent for and in commitment appears as the only way out. To truly commit is to retain, and continually forgo, the very freedom that would release one from commitment. A commitment to which consent cannot be withdrawn is anything but consensual, just as a freedom subject to rule is anything but a freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References: <\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cover image by Will O<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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