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This book is about ways to understand masculinity as systemic and corporeal, structural and performative all at once. It argues that the tension between an understanding of "masculinity" in the singular and "masculinities" in the plural poses a problem that can better be understood in relation to a concomitant tension: between systems on the one hand, and bodies on the other - between abstract structures such as patriarchy, kinship or even language, and the various concrete forms taken by gendered, individuated corporeality.
The contributions collected here investigate how masculinities become apparent, how they take shape and what systemic functions they have. What, they ask, are the relations between the abstract and corporeal, metaphorical and metonymic manifestations of masculinity? How are we to understand masculinity as a simultaneously systemic and corporeal, performative concept?
List of contents
Contemporary Masculinities in the UK and the US: Between Bodies and Systems; Kevin Floyd and Stefan Horlacher.- Modern Day Mercenaries? Cowboys, Grey Men, and the Emotional Habitus; Paul Higate.- Rugged Individualists and Systemic Coups: Imagining Mercenary Masculinities in The Dogs of War (1974); Charity Fox.- Privileged Crises in the Wake of 9/11: Universalizing Masculinity in Ian McEwan's Saturday and Oliver Stone's World Trade Center; Elahe Haschemi Yekani.- Does the Body Politic Have No Genitals? The Thick of It and the Phallic Nature of the Political Arena; Wieland Schwanebeck.- The Use of Celebrity Men in Anti-Trafficking and Ending Demand Interventions: Observations on the "Real men don't buy girls" Public Service Campaign; Sarah L. Steele and Tyler Shores.- "Stand It Like a Man": The Performance of Masculinities in Deadwood; Brigitte Georgi-Findlay.- The Tragic "Complexity of Manhood": Masculinity Formationsand Performances in James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room; Velina Manolova.- "Guys Like Me Are a Dying Breed": The Politics of Irish-American Masculinity in Recent Movies and TV Series; Alexandra Schein.- White Supremacists, or the Emasculation of the American White Man; Michael Kimmel.- Law, Language, and Post-Patriarchal Malaise in William Gaddis's A Frolic of His Own; Katja Kanzler.- Wall Street and Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Film and Fiction; Ulfried Reichardt.- Index.-
About the author
Stefan Horlacher is Chair of English Literature at TU Dresden, Germany. He is the author of two monographs and the editor or co-editor of 17 books. His latest publications are
Configuring Masculinity in Theory and Literary Practice (2015);
Männlichkeit. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch / Metzler Handbook on Masculinities and Masculinity Studies (2016), and
Transgender and Intersex: Theoretical, Practical, and Artistic Perspectives (2016).
Kevin Floyd is Professor of English at Kent State University, USA, a recent recipient of Fulbright and Alexander von Humboldt grants, and the author of
The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism(2009; French translation 2013). His articles have appeared in journals including
Social Text,
Rethinking Marxism,
Cultural Critique,
Mediations,
Science and Society, and
Works and Days.
Summary
This book is about ways to understand masculinity as systemic and corporeal, structural and performative all at once. It argues that the tension between an understanding of “masculinity” in the singular and “masculinities” in the plural poses a problem that can better be understood in relation to a concomitant tension: between systems on the one hand, and bodies on the other - between abstract structures such as patriarchy, kinship or even language, and the various concrete forms taken by gendered, individuated corporeality.
The contributions collected here investigate how masculinities become apparent, how they take shape and what systemic functions they have. What, they ask, are the relations between the abstract and corporeal, metaphorical and metonymic manifestations of masculinity? How are we to understand masculinity as a simultaneously systemic and corporeal, performative concept?
Additional text
“Contemporary Masculinities in the UK and the US is a very enjoyable collection of rather heterogeneous texts. … the collection accomplishes very well what it set out to do, namely to raise awareness of the gap Between Bodies and Systems.” (Monika Müller, Anglia, Vol. 138 (4), 2020)
Report
"Contemporary Masculinities in the UK and the US is a very enjoyable collection of rather heterogeneous texts. ... the collection accomplishes very well what it set out to do, namely to raise awareness of the gap Between Bodies and Systems." (Monika Müller, Anglia, Vol. 138 (4), 2020)
