Rewriting White Masculinities in Contemporary Fiction and Film 3031533496, 9783031533495

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Rewriting White Masculinities in Contemporary Fiction and Film Josep M. Armengol

Rewriting White Masculinities in Contemporary Fiction and Film

Josep M. Armengol

Rewriting White Masculinities in Contemporary Fiction and Film

Josep M. Armengol Department of Modern Philology University of Castilla-La Mancha Ciudad Real, Spain

ISBN 978-3-031-53348-8 ISBN 978-3-031-53349-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53349-5 Translation from the Spanish language edition: “Reescrituras de la masculinidad: Hombres y feminismo” by Josep M. Armengol, © Josep María Armengol Carrera / Alianza Editorial, S.A. Madrid, 2022. Published by Alianza Editorial. All Rights Reserved. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Cultura Creative RF/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

To my niece Julia and to my nephew Marc, so that all the wonderful differences of their childhood don’t ever turn into inequalities.

Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 7

Part I 2 Studies of Masculinities: State of the Art and Latest Trends . . . . . . . . A Quick Update of the State of the Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11 11 15 16

3 Poststructuralism and the “Death” of the White Male . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interrogating Maleness and Masculinity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interrogating Heterosexuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interrogating Whiteness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Poststructuralist and Identity-Based Approaches to Masculinity . . . . . . . . Rethinking the Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Revising Masculinities from an Interdisciplinary Perspective . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

19 20 25 28 33 39 45 48

4 Masculinity as (a) Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cultural and Literary Representations of Masculinity: An Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Masculinity Studies in Contemporary Literary Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Men in Feminist Literary Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Sex or the Death of the Author? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53 54 57 61 66 70

Part II 5 Boys Don’t Cry? Masculinity and the Politics of Emotion . . . . . . . . . . The Feminization of Sentiment in Contemporary Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . Boys Don’t Cry? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The “Soft Male” as a Social Phenomenon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

75 76 83 86 vii

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Contents

Emotions as a Driving Force of Social Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 The Political Potential of Emotions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 New Fatherhood(s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Literary Revisions of the Father Figure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 6 Dangerous Liaisons? Friendships Between Men in Western History and Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Cultural and Literary History of Male Friendship: An Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Homophobia as an Obstacle to Intimacy Between Men: The Sportswriter by Richard Ford . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Political Potential of Male Friendships to Transform Masculinities and Gender Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Masculinity as Violence? Cultural and Literary Revisions . . . . . . . . . . Gendering Violence: Theoretical Explanations for the Relationship Between Masculinity and Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Male Violence(s) in Contemporary Western Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Images of Violence as a Test of Manhood in Cultural and Literary History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Revisions of Male Violence in Contemporary U.S. Literature . . . . . . . . . . “Old” and “New” Representations in Literature and Cinema: Ernest Hemingway’s “An African Story” and Susanne Bier’s In a Better World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

107 109 115 121 128 131 133 138 145 151

155 159

8 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

Chapter 1

Introduction

A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. —Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949) If feminism was the great revolution of the twentieth century, changing men could be one of the most important social revolutions of the twenty-first century. —Victoria Sau, “Nueva(s) paternidad(es)” (2003)

This book focuses on the social construction and cultural (i.e., literary and film) representation of hegemonic (i.e., white, heterosexual) masculinity.1 We must admit that this may seem limiting, or even contradictory, from the start. As a globalized society, our world is, after all, a mosaic of different cultural concepts of masculine identity, which vary according to factors such as sexuality, age, racialization, and social class, among many others. Thus, hegemonic masculinity, though dominant, is just one model among other types of masculinities, including gay or racialized masculinities (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005; Robinson, 2000, 194; Kimmel, 1997, 6). In Jack Halberstam’s words, “many […] lines of identification traverse the terrain of masculinity, dividing its power into complicated differentials of class, race, sexuality, and gender” (1998, 24). Moreover, some, women, as Halberstam himself elaborates in Female Masculinity (1998), can be considered as “masculine” as men. As a gender construct and not a biological inner essence, masculinity can be, and is constantly, performed by both women and men. In Halberstam’s words, “masculinity in the 1990s has finally been recognized as, at least in part, a construction by female- as well as male-born people” (Halberstam, 1998, 36). Despite this, or perhaps due to this, the materiality of the body continues to play a central role in both the construction and the deconstruction of gender, especially by (self-identified) males or females, as is obvious from current transgender theory and political practice. 1

In her already classic work Masculinities, Raewyn Connell was the first person to use the concept of hegemonic masculinity, which involves the subordination of women but also of some men, mostly homosexuals. Furthermore, Connell posits that patriarchal oppression is a mechanism which interconnects different models of masculinity. See also Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) for an update and (re)definition of the concept.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. M. Armengol, Rewriting White Masculinities in Contemporary Fiction and Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53349-5_1

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1 Introduction

Halberstam’s use of the word “female” in the title suggests his specific material (ist) or bodily approach to the subject. After all, feminism, as Judith Gardiner reminds us, argues that masculinity and femininity play neither parallel nor complementary roles, that masculinity and femininity affect male and female bodies differently and that the relationship between gender (masculinity/femininity) and sex (maleness/ femaleness) depends on cultural factors (2002, 15). As Gardiner concludes in this respect, “masculinity and femininity have differing meanings and uses in male and female bodies and in differing cultural contexts” (2002, 15). Thus, the analysis of hegemonic masculinity, particularly as embodied by white heterosexual males in contemporary culture, may be said to be a subject worth studying in its own right. However, by concentrating on the dominant model of masculinity, instead of nonwhite or gay masculinities, this study might also be criticized for expanding on the analysis of a model of masculinity that is already hegemonic in social, political, and cultural terms. While acknowledging such potential criticisms as fair, it must also be remembered, however, that hegemonic masculinity is not always as “visible” as it may seem. From the eighteenth to approximately the mid-twentieth centuries, the historical constructions of gender, racialization, and sexuality were associated exclusively with the “marked” bodies of women, colonized or enslaved people, and homosexuals, respectively. Thus, men—and, above all, white heterosexual males— have largely remained invisible or “unmarked” in terms of gender (Haraway, 1991, 324; Robinson, 2000, 194). In Western patriarchal discourse, the universal person and the masculine gender have been synonymous. While women are commonly defined by their sex, (white) men are considered representatives of universal subjectivity with no specific gender. However, it seems obvious that males are also marked by gender, and this process of gender acquisition—the transformation of biological males into men who interact on a social level—is a fundamental experience for them. As Kimmel and Messner (1998, x-xi) note, men always see themselves and the world from a gender perspective, even though it often seems that they act without taking this into account. If men often seem unaware of their gender, this is probably because the mechanisms that make us privileged tend to remain invisible to ourselves. Nevertheless, the traditional conception of masculinity as the “invisible” norm contributes only to perpetuating social and gender inequalities. Ultimately, invisibility is the fundamental condition for perpetuating male supremacy, as it is difficult to determine what remains invisible (Robinson, 2000; Easthope, 1986).2 Because masculinity seeks to maintain its hegemony by passing itself off as normal and universal, it is essential to make it visible for analysis and critique.

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Robinson speaks of two types of invisibility. On the one hand, there is the invisibility of the marginalized, of those who inhabit the fringes of society, of history, and of culture. On the other, there is the invisibility of those in power. “Whereas the former are invisible in the sense of being underrepresented, the latter are invisible behind a mask of universality” (2000, 194).

1 Introduction

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It is true that, in a sense, men are already sufficiently visible.3 After all, the majority of scientific studies, in the traditional sense, have focused on these topics. Nevertheless, those who study masculinity insist that such works, in a deeper sense, do not truly approach the masculine experience. For example, masculinity is treated as an implicit category in many sociological studies, which frequently presume that men are the dominant gender. Most of the texts by sociologists, such as Marx and Durkheim, for example, use concepts such as “society”, “working class”, and “organization”, all of which implicitly refer to men. However, only a small amount of work has approached masculinity explicitly as a gender category, and as a result, not only the dynamics of masculinities but also their history remain largely unchartered. According to Michael Kimmel, Men […] have no history. Sure, we have libraries filled with the words of men about the works of men–stacks of biographies of the heroic and famous, and historical accounts of events in which men took part, like wars, strikes or political campaigns. We have portraits of athletes, scientists, and soldiers, histories of unions and political parties. And there are probably thousands of histories of institutions that were organized, staffed, and run entirely by men. So how can I claim that men have no history? Isn’t virtually every history book of men? After all, as we have learned from feminist scholars, it’s been women who have had, until recently, no history. In fact, if the book does not have the word women in the title, it’s a good bet that the book is largely about men. Yet such works do not explore how the experience of being a man, of manhood, structured the lives of the men who are their subjects, the organizations and institutions they created and staffed, the events in which they participated. American men have no history of themselves as men. (1997, 1-2)

Thus, rather than being marked by gender, (white) men seem to have been consistently universalized. Women’s studies have shown how the act of equating males to generic humans has frequently led to ignoring the specific experiences of women in an eminently androcentric society. Nonetheless, masculinity studies point out that our knowledge about men and masculinities has also been limited by these universalizing concepts. The incorrect idea that the male experience equals the human experience has influenced the way women have been treated, but it has also limited our perceptions of men themselves. Hence the need for masculinity studies,4 which Harry Brod defined early on as

3 In the same way that Robinson points out different connotations of the term invisibility, she establishes two different meanings for visibility: “Making the normative visible as a category embodied in gendered and racialized terms can call into question the privileges unmarkedness, although visibility can also mean a different kind of empowerment, as the history of movements for social equality in the United States has taught us. Identity politics—what Peggy Phelan refers to as “visibility politics”—is largely based on the assumption that invisibility is both the cause and effect of political and social exclusion” (2000, 2). 4 In fact, Brod uses the term men’s studies, not masculinity studies, which is preferred here. Although widespread, the use of the term men’s studies is ambiguous. It is not clear, for example, if it refers to studies by men or about them. Hence Kimmel’s claim that we should drop the term altogether and begin to use the name studies of masculinities instead. Henceforth, in this study, then, I will use the term studies of masculinities, instead of men’s studies and sometimes masculinities studies, simply for abbreviation purposes.

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1 Introduction the study of masculinities and male experiences as specific and varying social-historicalcultural formations. Such studies situate masculinities as objects of study on a par with femininities, instead of elevating them to universal norms. (1987, 40)

Focused on the “specific and varying social–historical-cultural formation” of white masculinity, particularly its cultural (i.e., literary and film) representation, this book is thus divided into several chapters. While the first three Chapters (2–4) focus on an introductory and mostly theoretical perspective on the study of masculinities in general and on the study of hegemonic masculinity in particular, the following Chapters (5–7) concentrate on applying the theoretical findings on masculinities to the analysis of a select number of themes—namely, the politics of emotion (with a special emphasis on new fatherhood models), homosociality and friendships between men, as well as gender-based violence. These themes were selected not only due to their obvious relevance and because they are key social issues but also due to their central role in masculinity studies, including their cultural representations, many of which implicitly or explicitly address these aspects. While offering a brief introduction to the context and development of masculinity studies, Chapter 2 emphasizes some new directions within the field, particularly the repercussions of poststructuralist thinking on the latest research on gender, including masculinity. Although masculinity studies concentrate on the analysis of men and male identities, poststructuralism has recently challenged rigid concepts of identity, including gender identity. By questioning a number of binary oppositions, such as man/woman or masculine/feminine, this line of deconstructive thought, supported mostly by queer studies within gender studies, has demonstrated that gender identity is, as we shall see, very far from being stable and fixed. On the basis of deconstructing stable and rigid notions of identity, as we will see in Chapter 3, poststructuralism has also questioned the internal coherence and even the very existence of (white) (heterosexual) masculinity, which is the main subject of this essay. Whereas queer theory, for example, has shown that heterosexuality is a sociohistorical construct, as changeable as it is contradictory, whiteness studies have shown that the “white race” is also a political and cultural fabrication. Influenced by Michel Foucault’s ground-breaking work on sexuality, the field of masculinity has demonstrated how the biological concept of sex itself can be a discursive construct that loses its meaning if isolated from social and cultural discourse. In this manner, poststructuralism argues that the supposedly fixed masculine identity is an artificial gender construct that is not only contradictory but possibly nonexistent. Nevertheless, feminist scholarship has frequently defended that much poststructuralist work highlights the instability, fragility, and internal inconsistencies of masculinity while neglecting its political and often oppressive aspects. Even though the discussion on gender identity and its fluidity is heated and open, Chapter 3 aims to contribute to the current debate without intending (were it possible) to close or resolve it. Indeed, it will be argued that it may be possible to reconcile feminist ideals with, as we will see, a deconstructive analysis of gender internal contractions, including masculinity. In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of studies devoted to the analysis of cultural representations of masculinities, particularly in literature

1 Introduction

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and cinema.5 While earlier studies from the 1970s and 1980s were mostly grounded in psychology and sociology, more recent theoretical work has increasingly focused on cultural, especially literary and film, representations of masculinity (Armengol et al., 2017). As Michael Kimmel suggested (2009, 18), the focus of these studies seems to have shifted from the social and behavioral sciences to literature and the humanities. In line with the latest critical currents, this study also incorporates the field of cultural representations into the discussion on men and masculinities, particularly literature and film. In fact, literature and cinema have always played central roles in the representation of the contradictions and internal conflicts of masculinity since (gender) ideology, as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick points out, is, at least implicitly, narrative (1992, 14–5). Following this idea, Chapter 4 seeks to explore the role of masculinity studies in contemporary cultural and critical theory. The chapter starts by offering an overview of cultural studies, especially literary studies on masculinities, analyzing their origin and development. While its beginnings may be traced back to the late twentieth century, the field has swiftly developed and expanded over the last few years, incorporating innovative contributions from queer, feminist, and critical race studies, as we will see (Armengol et al., 2017). In addition to highlighting new critical perspectives, this chapter will also highlight some of the theoretical implications of re-examining cultural representations from the perspective of masculinities. As we will see, these studies may be useful not only for questioning patriarchal concepts of masculinity but also for identifying new, alternative, and gender-equitable models of being a man in our societies (Carabí and Armengol, 2014). On the other hand, the chapter explores, and defends, men’s active participation in feminist literary criticism. Just as the participation of men in feminism has been questioned on several occasions, some scholars are wary of their implications regarding feminist literary criticism and argue that this practice is, and should be, developed by and for women.6 Nevertheless, our discussion will try to demonstrate that, just like there are more men embracing feminism, they can, in an analogous manner, adopt a critical feminist perspective to studying literary masculinities. In the same manner, we will use the examples of several authors who used their literary works, regardless of their gender, to rethink traditional masculinities and gender relations. All these eminently theoretical arguments will be developed and exemplified in the following chapters, all of which draw on cultural productions, especially contemporary Western (i.e., European and, above all, U.S. American), literature and cinemas, with a special focus, as already advanced, on fatherhood, friendships between men, and gender-based violence in today’s world. The order in which the main themes of this second part are presented is not casual. Emotions are fundamental aspects of human life and play a fundamental role, as will be shown, in parent–child relationships, as well as in male homosocial ties. In turn, affection conditions violence, which 5

See, for example, the bibliographical section of Michael Flood’s book “Masculinities in culture and representation” as well as his subsection on “Literature and literary theory” (2021). 6 See, for example, Braidotti, (1987); Scholes (1987); Schoene (2000); Armengol (2003); Armengol et al. (2017).

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1 Introduction

can also be defined as an emotion, even if it is negative. For example, the fear that men often feel about expressing their emotions can lead them to resort to violence as a (socially legitimized) way to masculine emotional expressivity. For this reason, it is inaccurate (at least partly) to state, as some scholars have (see, for example, Carlton et al., 2020), that men cannot express their emotions. It is possibly more appropriate to say that men have been taught to repress some emotions, particularly those that show vulnerability, but have been encouraged by society to express other feelings, such as rage, by means of violence. Therefore, due to the emotional component not only of fatherhood but also of friendship, as well as of violence, the chapter on emotions precedes, and in a certain way introduces, subsequent discussions on other emotional aspects of masculinity, whether positive or negative. As we shall see in Chapter 5, in Western culture, reason and “objectivity” have traditionally been considered to be superior to the world of emotional experience and “subjectivity”. As a result, the importance of emotions has often been called into question. Nevertheless, this chapter aims to show that emotions frequently complement rationality. Furthermore, they can even be a source of social and political change, promoting a more egalitarian consciousness. As we will see, emotions have played a key role, for example, in encouraging women to work together for gender equality (Fricker, 1991) or in the African American struggle for racial justice. Based on Eng’s vision, Chapter 5 analyzes the specific relation between masculinity and the politics of emotions in contemporary culture. Even though emotions are usually considered “feminine”, we seek to demonstrate that the connection between emotions and femininity is a specific historical and cultural construction. This implies, on the one hand, that masculinity and emotions have not always been mutually exclusive and, on the other hand, that what has been socially created can also be culturally questioned. Thus, this chapter analyzes the close, although often veiled, relationship between masculinity and emotions in Western culture and history, with the purpose of demonstrating and illustrating their political potential to transform masculinities and gender relations, especially in relation to fatherhood (Bueno et al., 2000; Armengol, 2010; Scheibling, 2020). In fact, men’s capacity for change becomes particularly obvious in contemporary fatherhood practices. Far from traditional masculine ideals, these new parent–child relationships not only question the traditional equation of paternity with distant and patriarchal attitudes but also promote emotional closeness and mutual care between fathers and children, thus undermining the very same concept of hegemonic masculinity that they were traditionally based on. To illustrate this, the chapter makes use, once again, of a number of particularly innovative representations of fatherhood(s) in contemporary European and, especially, U.S. fictions. The following chapter continues to develop the theme of emotions through male homosocial relations, particularly friendship between men, with a twofold objective. On the one hand, we will see how the emotional distance that currently seems to separate (heterosexual) men is not something universal or unchangeable but rather a product of specific cultural and historical factors, mainly related to the pathologization of homosexuality at the end of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, we will also argue that what was built by (pseudo) scientific and cultural discourses can

References

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be, in turn, revised and changed, demonstrating the political potential of friendships and emotional relationships between men to fight against homophobia, as we will see, sexism and racism in our societies. This will be illustrated, once again, through different cultural products, both literary and cinematic, mostly borrowed, again, from contemporary European and, above all, U.S. works text represent and/or deconstruct friendships between men from, as we shall see, particularly novel perspectives. Although gender-based violence is, as we shall see, one of the main problems in contemporary society, the close relationship between masculinity and violence has recurrently become naturalized and, therefore, has not been sufficiently analyzed. For this reason, Chapter 7 pursues two different, albeit complementary, objectives. First, the chapter aims to explore the specific social, cultural, and historical ties between masculinity and violence in Western culture. Second, when analyzing masculine violence as a product of social and historical factors rather than biological or essentialist factors, this chapter demonstrates that it is possible and desirable to start to delink the archetypical association between violence and virility in our societies. As in the foregoing chapters, this last part will make use of contemporary European and, especially, U.S. literary and film examples to, on the one hand, question patriarchal understandings of masculinities and, on the other, also contribute to the search for new, alternative, and nonviolent ways of being a man. As will be illustrated in Chapter 4, this is, after all, one of the main objectives of rereading contemporary literature and culture from the perspective of masculinity studies. Ultimately, this volume suggests how the analysis of masculinities is as interesting as it is necessary, not only to better understand the lives of men but also to be able to rethink and, ultimately, change them with the final goal of improving the lives of both men and women. If feminism was the great social revolution of the twentieth century, changing men and masculinities may very well become, as the late feminist psychologist Victoria Sau (2003) defended, one of the most important social revolutions of the twenty-first century, or, in the words of Octavio Salazar, “the revolution that so many women have been awaiting for centuries”.7

References Carabí, Àngels and Josep M. Armengol, eds. Alternative Masculinities for a Changing World. New York: Palgrave, 2014. ———.Richard Ford and the Fiction of Masculinities. New York: Peter Lang, 2010. ———. “Travestismos literarios: identidad, autoría y representación de la masculinidad en la literatura escrita por mujeres.” Hombres escritos por mujeres. Ed. Àngels Carabí and Marta Segarra. Barcelona: Icaria, 2003. 81–98. Armengol, Josep M. et al. (eds.). Masculinities and Literary Studies: Intersections and New Directions. New York: Routledge, 2017. Beauvoir, Simone De. The Second Sex [1949]. New York: Vintage, 1959.

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When the quote is from a source written in Spanish in the Bibliography, the translation is free by the author.

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Braidotti, Rosi. “Envy: Or with My Brains and Your Looks.” Men in Feminism. Ed. Alice Jardine and Paul Smith. New York and London: Methuen, 1987. 233–41. Brod, Harry. “The Case for Men’s Studies.” The Making of Masculinities: The New Men’s Studies. Ed. Harry Brod. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987. 39–62. Bueno, Eva P., Terry Caesar, and William Hummel (eds.). Naming the Father: Legacies, Genealogies, and Explorations of Fatherhood in Modern and Contemporary Literature. New York: Lexington Books, 2000. Carlton, Sara et al. “Conceal, Don’t Feel: Gender Differences in Implicit and Explicit Expressions of Emotions.” Modern Psychological Studies 25.1 (2020): 1–26. Connell, Raewyn and James W. Messerschmidt. “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept.” Gender and Society 19.6 (2005): 829–59. Easthope, Anthony. What a Man’s Gotta Do: The Masculine Myth in Popular Culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1986. Fricker, Miranda. “Reason and Emotion.” Radical Philosophy 57 (1991): 14–7. Gardiner, Judith Kegan. “Introduction.” Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions. Ed. Judith Kegan Gardiner. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 1–29. Halberstam, Jack. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. Haraway, Donna J. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York and London: Routledge, 1991. Kimmel, Michael. Manhood in America: A Cultural History [1996]. New York: The Free Press, 1997. ———. “Masculinity Studies: An Introduction.” In Debating Masculinity. Ed. Josep M. Armengol and Àngels Carabí. Harriman, TN: Men’s Studies Press, 2009. 16–30. Kimmel, Michael and Michael Messner. “Introduction.” Men’s Lives. Ed. Michael Kimmel and Michael Messner [1989]. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998. ix–xvii. River, Jo, and Michael Flood. “Masculinities, Emotions and Men’s Suicide.” Sociology of Health and Illness 43.4 (2021): 910–27. Robinson, Sally. Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Sau, Victoria. “Nueva(s) paternidad(es).” First Catalan Conference on Masculinities, Diversity, and Difference. Barcelona Center for Contemporary Culture (C.C.C.B.), Barcelona, 14 March 2003. Scheibling, Casey. “‘Real Heroes Care’: How Dad Bloggers Are Reconstructing Fatherhood and Masculinities.” Men and Masculinities 23.1 (2020): 3–19. Schoene-Harwood, Berthold. Writing Men: Literary Masculinities from Frankenstein to the New Man. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000. Scholes, Robert. “Reading Like a Man.” Men in Feminism. Ed. Alice Jardine and Paul Smith. New York and London: Methuen, 1987. 204–18. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire [1985]. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.

Part I

Chapter 2

Studies of Masculinities: State of the Art and Latest Trends

A Quick Update of the State of the Art Whether we love men or hate them, we—as feminists—have no task more necessary than understanding them. —Deirdre English, Mother Jones (1980)

Even though studies of masculinities have originated thanks, mainly, to the intersections between feminist and LGTBIQ + studies, both of which have a long history, specific work on men and masculinities remains a relatively recent addition to academia, especially if we compare this with more established fields such as women’s studies. While several courses began to appear in some of America’s most liberal institutions in the mid-1970s,1 masculinity studies did not emerge as a field of academic inquiry in itself until the early 1990s. In fact, many progressive academics started to work on masculinity in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when masculinity studies provided them with a critical and theoretical structure that was sufficiently strong for them to do so (Newton, 2002). Since then, these studies have increasingly gained visibility in several college courses, programs, and journals worldwide. While there is no specific department for studies of masculinities,2 several former women’s studies departments in the U.S. have been renamed departments of gender studies over the last decade, as both masculinity studies and LGTBIQ + studies have already been included in their curricula.3 Moreover, since the late 1980s and early 1990s, 1

The University of California at Berkeley led the way by incorporating this field of study into its curriculum in 1976 (Kidder, 2002, 1). 2 Personally, I agree with Harry Brod’s idea that it is neither necessary nor convenient. As he explains himself, studies of masculinities «do not demand that attention to men is greater, but qualitatively different […] they are a complement, not a cooptation, of women’s studies. For these reasons, it seems best to eschew the conceptualization at the field as gender studies» (1987, 60). 3 That is the case, for example, of the former women’s studies departments and programs at Indiana University (Bloomington); at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey; and at UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles). While Indiana University created a new «Department of Gender © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. M. Armengol, Rewriting White Masculinities in Contemporary Fiction and Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53349-5_2

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many sociology, psychology, anthropology, history, philosophy, and English departments, among others, have incorporated the analysis of masculinity into their courses and programs. Thus, the subject of masculinity is not, and should not be, limited to (departments of) gender studies but is progressively becoming an interdepartmental, transversal, and interdisciplinary object of study. Despite having gone through (at least) two main waves,4 research on men and masculinities has since at least the 1990s entered a new phase in which variations among men are seen as central to the study and understanding of men’s lives. As Kimmel and Messner noted, in the first generation of studies, there was an incorrect assumption that one version of masculinity (white, middle-aged, middle-class, heterosexual) was the sex role into which all men were trying to fit into our society. According to this premise, men of color, younger men, older men, working-class men, gay men, etc., were all regarded as departing from the traditional definitions of gender and embodying “problematic” versions of masculinity. In Kimmel and Messner’s words: Such theoretical assertions, however, reproduce precisely the power relationships that keep these men in subordinate positions in our society. Middle-class, middle-aged, heterosexual white masculinity has become the standard against which all men are measured, but this definition, itself, is used against those who do not fit as a way to keep them down. The normative definition of masculinity is not the “right” one but the one that is dominant. (1998, xiv–xv)

Since the 1990s, masculinity scholarship has placed growing emphasis on the fundamental feminist insight that gender is a system of power rather than simply a set of stereotypes, gender roles, or observable differences between women and men. Second, most recent studies see masculinity as a plural and dynamic entity and are particularly concerned with showing how masculinity varies according to race, sexual orientation, social class, and age, among other factors.5 Thus, presently, most Studies» (offering courses on masculinity studies, LGTBIQ + , and women’s studies), Rutgers and UCLA have simply added the term «gender» to their path-breaking women’s studies programs, thus creating departments of «Women’s and Gender Studies». Both options appear equally useful to underline the relevance of offering not only women’s studies but also gender studies. 4 Influenced by feminist texts, the first wave, which emerged mostly in the U.S., runs roughly from the mid-1970s to the 1980s. Among the key texts that resulted from this period,oneshouldmakereference to books such as Warren Farrell’s The Liberated Man (1974). Although these texts were clearly inspired by feminism, they mainly focused on denouncing the negative effect of traditional gender roles on men, rather than on the question of men’s privilege and their oppressive power over women (Armengol et al., 2017; Kidder, 2002, 1–4; Kimmel and Messner, 1998, xiii–xv). As Kimmel and Messner (1998, xiii) have noted in this respect, these works «discussed costs to men’s health (both physical and psychological) and the quality of relationships with women, other men, and their children». We should not, nevertheless, forget other important feminist texts of this first wave of studies of masculinities that explored the costs but also the privileges of being a man in contemporary culture (Kimmel and Messner, 1998, xiv) such as JosephPleckandJack Sawyer’s Men and Masculinity (1974). 5 Such a perspective can be seen in several recent works, such as Harry Brod (1987); Michael Kimmel (1987; 2000); Raewyn Connell (1998); Jeff Hearn (Gender); and Michael Kimmel and Michael Messner (1989). Probably, Connell’s Gender and Power (1987), represent «the most sophisticated theoretical statements of this perspective» (Kimmel and Messner, 1998, xv).

A Quick Update of the State of the Art

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scholars in this field seem to share the view that we cannot speak of masculinity as a singular term but must analyze masculinities,6 the ways in which different men construct different models of masculinity. Recent scholarship has shown not only how masculinity varies according to different categories but also how each of these aspects modifies the others (Armengol, 2021; Kimmel and Messner, 1998, xv– xvii). Although the so-called third wave of feminism, which was usually situated around the 1990s to the 2020s, emphasized intersectionality concerning the analysis of women’s experiences, that same intersectionality, as well as the challenge to a single definition of masculinity as the norm, is another axis around which a large part of current academic work revolves (Armengol et al., 2017).7 In this sense, the study of the (both synchronous and diachronic) variation in masculinities throughout the life course has been gaining increasing scientific relevance. In fact, topics such as what it means to be a man at different moments and ages, as well as the similarities and differences of the different age models of masculinity, from adolescence to midlife to old age, have become the focus of numerous recent studies. However, the focus on variation has not precluded ongoing studies of hegemonic masculinity. Elaine Tyler May noted, for example, that the persistence of hierarchies of race and gender requires that we continue to acknowledge and investigate the structure and hegemony of white masculinity (1998, xiv). Similarly, Peter Middleton has argued that a valid political project can only emerge when white men analyze themselves and their own history more deeply than they have done thus far. In his words: To do that, it is important to speak of what we know and to recognize that [understanding our masculinities] is a dialogue as well as a struggle. Other men, other cultures, will have other things to say to which we need to listen. Our ability to hear those men will be much greater if we understand our own masculinities more clearly. (1990, 12)

While it is true, as has been suggested, that first-wave studies already focused on white men, there is a key difference between the first and second phases, above all in their respective treatment of hegemonic masculinity. The first wave analyzed white men as the standard and the norm, often neglecting other, nonwhite masculinities. On the other hand, the second wave theorizes and reconceptualizes white manhood as just one version of masculinity, despite being the dominant one (Kimmel, 1997, 6). In other words, second-wave masculinity studies focus on white manhood’s cultural specificity, as well as on the social mechanisms that afford it its hegemony. If the first wave analyzed (white) masculinity, understood as the only model, the second wave thus studies it as a specific gender (and racialized) construct, instead of being “normal” or “universal”, paying special attention to its hegemonic status within current power structures. Moreover, the new wave insists on the view of white masculinity 6

Harry Brod (1994, 82–3) provides a genealogy of the term masculinities in its present usage. Some authors already speak of a fourth wave of feminism, which could be situated from the 2010s onwards, particularly influenced by technology, social networks, and the #MeToo movement. Personally, I consider it is still too venturesome, nonetheless, to speak of a fourth phase, mainly based on «the means»—in other words, technology and digitalization—rather than the ends of feminist thinking, even recognizing its enormous influence on the movement. 7

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as contradictory and shifting rather than stable and uniform. Since society is always in flux and white masculinity is a social construct, masculine gender norms are also equally in flux (Kidder, 2002, 2). Therefore, within their multiple and varied research areas, masculinity studies have shown signs of evolution and growth since the 1990s, as suggested by Michael Flood’s growing annotated bibliography Men’s Studies: “The book, originally including about 600 entries, contained over one thousand when it was updated as The New Men’s Studies less than a decade later” (Kidder, 2002, 2). The themes explored have also expanded. For example, in 1987, Harry Brod referred to five key areas of research: work and family (especially how men’s supposedly essential public roles have an impact on their private fathering functions); violence (particularly the connection between masculinity and militarism); health (for example, “what are the percentages of miscarriages and birth defects among offspring of males working with genotoxic substances?”, “how are codes of masculinity and Type A cardiovascular disease personalities related?”); sexuality (heterosexuality, homosexuality, and pornography); and culture (the male hero and the changing representations of masculinities in literary genders such as detective and adventure stories) (1987, 41–2). While Brod originally referred to five main areas of research, today the list is significantly longer. Indeed, Michael Flood’s annotated bibliography on men and masculinities (2022), which has become increasingly voluminous since its inception in 2002, includes a wide variety of masculinity-related topics, such as race/ ethnicity, whiteness studies, friendships, social class, the media, age, bodybuilding, sports, culture and representation, feminist theory, queer theory, language, emotions, schooling, and men’s movements, among others. Moreover, Flood’s list suggests not only an increase in the number of masculinity-related topics but also in the different perspectives on each of these issues. For example, while Brod’s bibliography associates only cultural representations of masculinity with literature, Flood’s updated section on “Masculinities in culture and representation” includes such varied perspectives as literature and literary theory, film, photography and television, advertising, men’s fashion and clothing, etc. There is abundant evidence of the rapid growth of the field of masculinity studies. For example, in the 1990s, several new organizations and academic journals, such as the American Men’s Studies Association (1991), the Journal of Men’s Studies (1992), and Men and Masculinities (1998), were established that are dedicated to the study of men and masculinities. Since 2012, the Spanish journal Masculinidades and cambio social, as well as NORMA (Nordic Journal for Masculinity Studies), have also been founded. One should also make reference to other key works in the field, such as E. Anthony Rotundo’s American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (1993), “the first published history of masculinities” (Kidder, 2002, 2); Michael Kimmel’s Manhood in America: A Cultural History (1996); and Kimmel and Amy Aronson’s co-edition of Men and Masculinities: A Social, Cultural and Historical Encyclopaedia (2003), one of the first (and most complete) interdisciplinary encyclopaedias dedicated to the study of masculinities. In addition, 2019 saw the birth of the Routledge International

New Directions

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Handbook of Masculinity Studies, edited by Lucas Gottzén et al., which compiles several chapters on masculinities from eminently interdisciplinary perspectives and thereby complements the Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities, edited by Michael Kimmel, Jeff Hearn, and Raewyn Connell for the first time in 2004.

New Directions As more and more work is being done in the name of masculinity studies, new questions arise, including new trends and future challenges. As has been suggested, since the 1990s, these studies have entered a new phase focused on how masculinity is influenced by sexuality, racialization, class, and age (Armengol, 2021), among other factors. Thus, increasing attention is being given to racialized, gay, and working-class men, among others, whose specific identities and experiences were largely ignored by first-wave masculinity studies. Research has also been conducted on white men and masculinities as a specific gendered and racialized identity rather than as the paradigm of universality. However, while many masculinity scholars seem to be paying increasing attention to all these identities, others insist on the dangers of any identity construction. For example, Alan Petersen (2003, 61) argues that social science conceptions of identity (originally developed in the 1950s) tend to rely on one or two oppositional views, one psychological reductionism and the other sociological reductionism. The first treats identity as a relatively fixed and stable characteristic of the person; the second treats identity as acquired, socially constructed, and/or socially imposed. These two basic conceptions, Petersen explains, have dominated thinking about identity up to the present and have greatly influenced the development of so-called identity politics.8 Identity politics has traditionally assumed that there is a causal relationship between identity and politics, with the former determining the latter. This is particularly evident in gay and lesbian literature, where there is a recurring tension between the conception that sexual identity is something that is always present (but has been hidden and repressed) and that which has never been socially accepted (but remains to be invented or achieved). In Petersen’s view, this has often meant the reduction of the political to the personal and the limitation of political activity to self-discovery and personal growth and transformation. In feminist psychology, particularly, the dictum “the personal is political” has usually implied that the political is personalized, as seen in the use of ideas of empowerment, revolution from within, and the focus on validating women’s reality (Petersen, 2003, 61–2). Thus, identity politics (and identity itself) may be “arbitrary” and “exclusionary”, acting as a normative 8

Petersen (2003, 61) himself acknowledges, however, that there are in-between positions. For example, psychoanalysis often intersects with socially informed theories. Although grounded in social constructionism, the present study will itself rely on different disciplines (see chapter 3), including psychology and psychoanalysis. It does indeed seem both possible and desirable to move away from psychological or sociological reductionism, since psychological and sociological approaches to gender often complement each other and are not always mutually exclusive.

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and regulatory system. For example, in many works about men and masculinities, masculine identity is often understood as being simply a composite of various natural and socially constructed attributes. Therefore, men can be homosexual, Black, white, heterosexual, able-bodied, young, and so on. The problem with using this additive model identity is that, no matter how detailed the description is, there will always be exclusions and disjunctions between imposed identity labels and categories and personal experiences. In Petersen’s words: There is literally an infinite number of ways in which the components of identity can intersect or combine to make up masculine identity. There is arbitrariness about any identity construction, which will inevitably entail the silencing or exclusion of some experiences. (2003, 62)

Petersen’s criticism of traditional conceptions of identity as stable and fixed is clearly indebted to the growing influence of poststructuralism on the social sciences and humanities since the 1980s. Indeed, poststructuralist thinking has played a key role in questioning fixed notions of racialized, national, and sexual identity, among others. The emergence of poststructuralist approaches to the social sciences has radically questioned established beliefs and categories, especially those that assume the existence of fixed and mutually exclusive identities, such as men and women (Armengol, 2019; Petersen, 2003, 66). Thus, one of the most significant (and controversial) debates in academia currently concerns itself with the coexistence, on the one hand, of the poststructuralist challenge to subjectivity and identity and, on the other hand, of the work of several scholars who continue to see identity (whether sexual, racialized, and/or national) as central to our lives (see, for example, Robinson, 2000; Braidotti, 1987). This debate impinges directly on the present work. After all, this study focuses on the analysis of a supposedly masculine identity. However, poststructuralist thinkers such as Petersen have set out to question the very existence and internal coherence of concepts such as whiteness, heterosexuality, and masculinity/ maleness. Thus, it now seems necessary to further investigate the repercussions of poststructuralist thinking on the analysis of white heterosexual masculinity, the main focus of this study.

References Armengol (ed.). Aging Masculinities in Contemporary U.S. Fiction. New York: Palgrave, 2021. ———. “Past, Present (and Future) of Studies of Literary Masculinities: A Case Study in Intersectionality.” Men and Masculinities 22.1 (2019): 64–74. Armengol, Josep M. et al. (eds.). Masculinities and Literary Studies: Intersections and New Directions. New York: Routledge, 2017. Brod, Harry. “Envy: Or with My Brains and Your Looks.” Men in Feminism. Ed. Alice Jardine and Paul Smith. New York and London: Methuen, 1987. 233–41. ———. “Some Thoughts on Some Histories of Some Masculinities: Jews and Other Others.” Theorizing Masculinities. Ed. Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994. 82–96.

References

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———. “The Case for Men’s Studies.” The Making of Masculinities: The New Men’s Studies. Ed. Harry Brod. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987. 39–62. Connell, Raewyn. Gender and Power [1987]. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. English, Deirdre. Mother Jones. San Francisco: Mother Jones Reprint, 1980. Farrell, Warren. The Liberated Man. New York: Random House, 1974. Kidder, Kristen M. “Men’s Studies.” Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinity, 30 August 2002. http:// www.referenceworld.com/mosgroup/masculinity/mstudies.html. Kimmel, Michael (ed.). Changing Men. New Directions in Research on Men and Masculinity. Newsbury Park: Sage, 1987. ———. Manhood in America: A Cultural History [1996]. New York: The Free Press, 1997. ———. The Gendered Society. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. ———. “Violence.” Men and Masculinities: A Social, Cultural, and Historical Encyclopedia. 2 vols. Ed. Michael Kimmel and Amy Aronson. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio Press, 2003. 809–12. Kimmel, Michael and Michael Messner. “Introduction.” Men’s Lives. Ed. Michael Kimmel and Michael Messner [1989]. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998. ix–xvii. May, Elaine Tyler. “Prologue.” Him/Her/Self: Gender Identities in Modern America. Ed. De Peter G. Filene. 1974. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ix–xiv. Middleton, Peter. The Inward Gaze. Masculinity and Subjectivity in Modern Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1990. Newton, Judith. “Masculinity Studies: The Longed for Profeminist Movement for Academic Men?” Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions. Ed. Judith Kegan Gardiner. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 176–92. Petersen, Alan. “Research on Men and Masculinities: Some Implications of Recent Theory for Future Work.” Men and Masculinities 6.1 (2003): 54–69. Pleck, Joseph and Jack Sawyer (eds.). Men and Masculinity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974. Robinson, Sally. Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Rotundo, E. Anthony. American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era. New York: Basic Books, 1993. The Men’s Bibliography: A Comprehensive Bibliography of Writing on Men, Masculinities, Gender, and Sexualities. Ed. Michael Flood, 4 January 2022. http://www.xyonline.net/mensbiblio/.

Chapter 3

Poststructuralism and the “Death” of the White Male

[Poststructuralism] involves a fundamental questioning of established categories and concepts, especially those that assumed the existence of fixed, homogeneous, and mutually exclusive identities, including man and woman. —Alan Petersen, “Research on Men and Masculinities: Some Implications of Recent Theory for Future Work” (2003) We have a designation of human identity—white male—that apparently has no real referent in the world in which we live. —Thomas DiPiero, White Men Aren’t (2002)

Philosophically, Western culture has traditionally revolved around a number of binary oppositions generated by the Cartesian assumption of a radical division between knowing subject and passive object of knowledge (Waugh, 1992, 1–6). Thus, one finds a number of dualisms resulting from the subject-object split, such as mind/body, spirit/matter, reason/emotion, white/black, man/woman, masculinity/ femininity, heterosexuality/homosexuality, etc. Western culture and philosophy have recurrently used these binary oppositions to define identity and difference. For example, whiteness has long been defined as the opposite of blackness (Armengol, 2014), just as masculinity has traditionally been defined as the opposite of femininity (Segal, 1997, 173). Although the term poststructuralism has been defined in different ways, most poststructuralist thinkers, such as Derrida, Barthes, Foucault, and Lacan, seem to share the view of language and meaning as fluid and contingent rather than stable and fixed (Oliver, 2000, 56; Dinshaw, 1999, 1–10; Waugh, 1992, 1–6). As poststructuralist philosopher Jacques Derrida (1998) has argued, meaning results from what he calls différance, a simultaneous process of differentiation and postponement. In his view, meaning is produced not only by using difference as a means of self-affirmation but also by a process of deferral. In this respect, Derrida (1998) contends that meaning keeps being deferred, is able to slide, and, therefore, cannot be fixed. In (re)defining language and meaning as slippery and indeterminate, most poststructuralist thinkers also set out to question fixed meanings and established concepts, especially those that assumed the existence of clearly limited and mutually exclusive (sexual) identities.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. M. Armengol, Rewriting White Masculinities in Contemporary Fiction and Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53349-5_3

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Challenging dualistic conceptions of identity, Derrida (1998), for example, has shown how the two elements in any binary opposition are unequally weighed. More often than not, there is an imbalance of power between the two terms. Any attempt to define an identity always depends on excluding some elements. In other words, identity converts difference into “otherness” to secure self-certainty. For instance, the perception of men and women as “opposite sexes” (with their corresponding “genders”, masculine/feminine) implies that one is either a man or a woman and that these two categories are mutually exclusive. As Gutterman notes: This sense of difference then becomes the demarcation of otherness when gradations of value are placed on the two distinct domains. In Western culture, of course, that which is usually associated with men (activity, culture, reason) is usually held in higher esteem than that which is associated with women (passivity, nature, emotion). (1994, 221)

Poststructuralist thinkers such as Derrida and Gutterman have thus played a key role in rethinking supposedly fixed meanings and oppositions, particularly those that relied on clearly defined binary identities. In questioning fixed racialized, sexual, and gendered identities, poststructuralism has also challenged the very existence of an (apparently) unitary concept of (white heterosexual) masculine identity, the specific subject of this study. Thus, poststructuralist theories and approaches to masculinities would seem to put the present work under severe pressure since it might very well be grounded in a fluid, changing, contradictory, and perhaps even nonexistent object of study. Therefore, much of the present chapter focuses on the effects of poststructuralist thinking on the analysis of white heterosexual masculinity. On the other hand, much of the scholarship has continued to emphasize the relevance of identity (gender, sexual, and/or racialized) to our lives. Thus, the debate between poststructuralist and identity-based analyses of masculinity has become one of the most controversial ones, leading to the current discussion about, for example, the possibility of nonbinary genders or gender self-determination by trans people. While both approaches have often been regarded as antithetical, I will try to demonstrate how it is possible, and maybe also productive, to start rethinking the discussion from new theoretical perspectives. Using the latest work of different contemporary thinkers, much of the present chapter will, in effect, be centrally concerned with combining poststructuralist and identity-based studies of masculinities. In so doing, there is also an attempt to reconcile feminist identity politics with poststructuralist analysis of the internal fissures and contradictions of hegemonic masculinity, which are, in fact, the central axes around which the following sections revolve.

Interrogating Maleness and Masculinity The traditional view of the concept of maleness (and femaleness) as a fixed and stable biological/essentialist identity may be, as has been, questioned from different theoretical perspectives, most of them inspired, as we have said, on poststructuralist theory. One of the first (and most influential) challenges to the conventional biological

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distinction between the sexes came from the work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault. In the last chapter of the History of Sexuality (1976), volume I, Foucault, suggested that we should give up looking at “sex” as both univocal and casual and that we should begin treating it as an effect rather than an origin.1 In his view, “sex” is nothing but an effect of power and, more specifically, of the hegemonic discourse of (hetero)sexuality. In his words: The notion of “sex” made it possible to group together, in an artificial unity, anatomical elements, biological functions, conducts, sensations, and pleasures, and it enabled one to make use of this fictitious unity as a casual principle, an omnipresent meaning: sex was thus able to function as a unique signifier and as a universal signified. (1984, 187)

Thus, Foucault seems to believe that morphology is itself the effect of a hegemonic epistemology and that power constructs what it purports simply to represent. In his view, the body is only “sexed” through a number of discursive practices and gendered power relations that endow it with an idea of biological or “natural” sex. Thus, the body is meaningful only in the context of power relations.2 This has a number of far-reaching consequences (Butler, 1990, 51). First, if the immutable category of sex is contested, then perhaps “sex” is as culturally constructed as gender. Most likely, sex was always gender(ed), so the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all. Moreover, if there is no sex, only gender, then gender itself becomes a free-floating construct, with the result that man and masculine, as Judith Butler concludes (1990, 6–7), might just as easily signify a female body as a male one and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one. Thus, men are no (necessarily) males, and vice versa. There are a number of reasons for this, such as cultural specificities in men and males; distinctions between boys, men, young males, and males; the different forms of intersexuality (not conforming to XX or XY chromosomal patterns); the various physiological and cultural forms of gender change (trans identities), whether temporary or permanent; and, finally, the differential relation of men and males to history and transhistory, respectively (Hearn and Collinson, 1994, 101).3 Little wonder, then, that most queer scholars insist that we need to dissociate masculinity from maleness. As Jack Halberstam, for example, explains, “there is still no general acceptance or even recognition of masculine women and boyish girls” (1998, 38). Thus, it seems both possible and desirable to dissociate masculinity from maleness and gender from sex. The 1

As Dinshaw points out, “it is […] Foucault’s analysis in the History of Sexuality, volume I, of the production of sex as the truth of the modern liberal subject that has broken the ground for many queer historical projects over the last twenty-five years” (1999, 15). 2 In this context, Margaret Mead’s early comments on American masculinity become particularly insightful: “Maleness in America is not absolutely defined; it has to be kept and reearned every day” (qtd. in Dubbert, 1974, 1). 3 Hearn and Collinson insist, however, that these (sociological) distinctions are not necessarily in keeping with other social usages of the terms men and males, as, for example, in government and other official statistics. For example, in the Anglo-American context, births, deaths, and much other demographic information are unambiguously classified for males and females, although much, though not all, information on economic activity is classified by men and women (Hearn and Collinson, 1994, 101).

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transition from affiliation marriages to romantic marriages, the development of the feminist movement, the social upheaval caused by World War I, and the development of sexological models of sexual definition at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries played key roles, as Halberstam explains (1998, 15, 48), in breaking apart the traditional links between gender, sex, and sexuality. If “sex” is itself a product of the dominant (hetero) sexual discourse, the category of “sex” might itself disappear through the challenge of heterosexual hegemony. There is no reason to divide human beings into male and female sexes except that such a division meets (and naturalizes) the economic needs of heteropatriarchal discourses. Gendered binary oppositions such as masculinity/femininity would therefore be the product of patriarchal gender relations. In fact, they are naturalized terms that keep patriarchy concealed and, hence, protected from radical critique.4 As Judith Butler herself elaborates: No longer believable as an interior “truth” of dispositions and identity, sex will be shown to be a performatively enacted signification (and hence not “to be”), one that, released from its naturalized interiority and surface, can occasion the parodic proliferation and subversive play of gendered meanings. (1990, 33)

Although many scientists and scholars continue to attempt to find irreducible biological/genetic/hormonal differences between the sexes5 as well as between homosexuals and heterosexuals (Kimmel, 2000, 21–46; Segal, 1997, 61–4),6 we can (and should) also question the sexual binary. One way of doing so is to emphasize the social construction of sexual organs.7 In this respect, Pierre Bourdieu (2001) has shown how the social conception of sexual organs is not simply a ratification of 4

As is known, Monique Wittig suggests that lesbians are not women because they do not form part of the heterosexual matrix. 5 Thomas Laqueur (1990, 5–6) insists that, before the Enlightenment, sexual inequality depended on differences of social hierarchy and rank, but had nothing to do with biological dualisms. However, from the end of the eighteenth century onwards, supposedly biological differences were increasingly invoked to justify sexual inequality. In 1803, for example, Jacques-Louis Moreau argued not only that the two sexes were different but also that they were different regarding every single aspect of both body and soul, that is, physically and morally. Similarly, in 1889, biologist Patrick Geddes argued that women’s cells were different from men’s, the former more passive and conservative; the latter more active and energetic. 6 See, for instance, two recent best-selling books like Why Men Don’t Iron (1999), by Ann and Bill Moir, and Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps (2001), by Allan and Barbara Pease. Both texts insist that gender differences exist because men and women’s brains world completely differently and their biological differences mean that they can never think or behave in the same way. John Gray’s long-time bestseller, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (1992), provides a similar view. Petersen (2003, 64–6) warns against the dangers of the biological approach to (gender) difference, which can work as a regulatory practice. As he says, “there needs to be greater sensitivity to the history of the deployments of natural knowledge for the control and/or annihilation of that which is deemed to be different and to the potential for such knowledge to be used to delineate boundaries between the normal (i.e., included) and the abnormal (i.e., excluded)” (66). 7 See Petersen (2003), Schiebinger (1993), or Haraway (1991), who argues that although the concept of gender appeared within a liberal context in the first decades after World War II, it “failed to interrogate the political-social history of binary categories like nature/culture, and so sex/gender, in colonialist western discourse” (226).

Interrogating Maleness and Masculinity

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physiology or “nature” but rather the product of a construction that stresses some differences at the same time as it diminishes some similarities. For example, the representation of the vagina as an inverted phallus, which recurs in several medical texts of the Middle Ages, is itself a product of a social construction. Such a representation relies on a number of binary options, such as positive/negative, superior/ inferior, activity/passivity, up/down, or man/woman, which have come to dominate an eminently patriarchal social order. Masculinity gains its power by legitimizing and inscribing domination in biology, which is itself a naturalized social construction.8 The fact that men and women have long been viewed as two different versions, superior and inferior, of the same physiology helps explain why, until the Renaissance, no anatomical term existed to describe the female sex, which is represented as the male sex but with a different organization: And also why, as Yvonne Knibiehler shows, early nineteenth-century anatomists (in particular, Virey), thinking in the same terms as moralists, tried to find in the female body the justification for the social status that they assigned to it in the name of the traditional oppositions between inside and outside, sensibility and activity, passivity and reason. And one would only have to follow the history of the “discovery” of the clitoris as related by Thomas Laqueur, extending it to the Freudian theory of the “migration” of female sexuality from the clitoris to the vagina to complete the demonstration that, far from playing the founding role that they are sometimes given, the visible differences between the male and female sex organs are a social construction which can be traced back to the principles of division of androcentric reason, itself grounded in the division of the social statuses assigned to men and women. (Bourdieu, 2001, 15)9

It appears, then, that even the sexual organs, which play a determining role in the description of any human being as male or female, are socially constructed. What social scientists call “sex” differences refer to a set of anatomical, hormonal, chemical, and physical differences between women and men. However, there are enormous ranges of femaleness and maleness). In virtually all the sociological research that has been conducted on the attributes associated with masculinity or femininity, intragender differences (among women and among men) have been shown to be greater than intergender differences (between women and men) (Kimmel, 2000, 4).10 Like sociology, psychoanalysis has also helped to undermine fixed notions of sexual difference. For instance, in his twentieth seminar, Encore (1973), Jacques Lacan famously proclaimed the absence of sexual relationships. Although Lacan’s manifesto has been subject to a number of different interpretations, what he truly suggested is that there can be no sexual relation (and, hence, no sexual difference) outside or beyond language and the symbolic order. More specifically, Lacan contends in this essay that language, which he sometimes refers to as “the Other”, 8

In this respect, Michael Kimmel has argued that “the search for a transcendent, timeless definition of manhood is itself a sociological phenomenon—we tend to search for the timeless and eternal during moments of crisis, those points of transition when the old definitions no longer work and the new definitions are yet to be firmly established” (1997, 5). 9 Londa Schiebinger’s Nature’s Body (1993) shows how natural history contributed to the naturalization of the sexual binary. 10 See Butler (1990, 106–11) in this respect.

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always stands in between two partners in a well-known arrangement, which is improperly called a “sexual” relationship. It becomes impossible, therefore, to talk about any “essential”—or, in Lacan’s terms, presymbolic—sexual difference. Similarly, in his Écrits, Lacan suggested that the male must “have” the phallus, while the female must “be” the phallus (1977, 282–8). However, it is necessary to qualify that, for Lacan, the male seems to only “have” the phallus, just as the female seems to only “be” the phallus since the fullness of signification, which the phallus represents, is unattainable by both women and men. In Lacan’s view, one can never be completely male since maleness can only be approximated and is ultimately unfulfilled and unfulfillable. The phallic function, as defined by Lacan, states that what is most purely phallic is that which is least material, most ideal. Therefore, real men approximate that function with many difficulties since their own corruptible corporality, as DiPiero (2002, 231) explains, distances them from the unattainable idea of masculinity. As Peter Middleton concludes, a “real man” is of course a fantasy ideal representing aspirations neither realizable nor necessarily desirable if they were” (1990, 3–4). In his recent book Can the Monster Speak? Report on an Academy of Psychoanalysts (2021), Preciado goes further, charging against the psychoanalytic school itself for its outdated approaches to sex and gender. Historically, a consensus has emerged that, in Western culture, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were particularly significant for the consolidation and radicalization of the sexual binary. There had always been a sexual division in both Europe and the U.S. However, what was new from this period was, as Kimmel (1997, 53) indicates, from the turn of the century, the strictness and the degree to which women and men became situated in separate spheres. The separation of spheres was largely the result of increasing industrialization in Europe and the U.S.. The casual conviviality of the workplace with domesticity began to disappear in the new world of the factory system and mass production (Kimmel, 1997, 53). With respect to the growing industrialization of the nineteenth century, the feminist historian Sandra Bem added another key historical factor that, paradoxically enough, helped consolidate the sexual binary: the feminist struggle for women’s rights. Bem (1993, 80–1) argues that, even if undesired, first-wave feminism reinforced the sexual binary for two main reasons. First, it was mainly separatist. Second, instead of joining feminists, men often reacted to women’s rights (for instance, their right to vote) by underlying sexual difference, which they often used to against sexual equality. Like history, cross-cultural anthropology (Butler, 1990; Moore, 1994; Cornwall and Lindisfarne, 1994; Yanagisako and Collier, 1987) has also shown how the Western sexual binary is historically and culturally specific, questioning the traditional distinction between sex (biology) and gender (culture). Cross-cultural anthropology has shown how this division is itself a product of Western ethnocentric discourses that fail to take into account important aspects of cultural variation.11 For example, Native American individuals do not have two sexes but three, including in their sexual repertoire the figure of the berdache, who is capable of acting as male 11

For an excellent description (and critique) of some of the most relevant cross-cultural anthropological studies on sexual and gender variability, see Kimmel (2000, 47–65).

Interrogating Heterosexuality

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or female depending on the social context. While the berdache is a highly respected figure in his/her society, it is an ambiguous gender in our society, as Jack Halberstam (1998, 49) concludes, and is often transformed into deviance, thirdness, or a blurred version of either male or female. As Judith Butler (1990, 299n2) reminds us, anthropologists such as Marilyn Strathern and Carol MacCormack have described a number of sexual universals, suggesting, for example, that most societies worldwide distinguish between women and men and that nature is almost invariably represented as female, in need of protection and subordination by a culture that is always described as male, active, and abstract. While this might be taken as evidence for the universality and “naturalness” of the traditional sexual binary, one should bear in mind that the gendered politics that construct and maintain this distinction are effectively disguised by the discursive production of nature and, indeed, a natural sex that is defined as the unquestioned foundation of culture (Butler, 1993, 105). Moreover, scholars such as Clifford Geertz have argued, as Butler (1993, 105) elaborates, that its universalizing structure misses the multiplicity of cultural understandings of “nature”. From all this, one can conclude, then, that the “biological” concepts of maleness and “sex” are anything but unproblematic. Since most definitions of masculinity, as Preciado points out (2021), rely on the (biological) concept of maleness or manhood, the concept of masculinity (studies) is itself put under severe pressure and questioned. For instance, Harry Brod defines masculinity studies as “the study of masculinities and male experiences as specific and varying social–historical-cultural formations” (1987, 40; emphasis added).12 In the first sentence of The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (1996), George L. Mosse defines masculinity as “the way men assert what they believe to be their manhood” (3; emphasis added). Finally, Michael Kimmel has defined gender as “the sets of cultural meanings and prescriptions that each culture attaches to one’s biological sex” (1997, 2–3; emphasis added). Given these physiological understandings of masculinity, then, it is clear that we can (and should) also question some studies of masculinities, especially those based on eminently biological assumptions.

Interrogating Heterosexuality Like the concept of maleness/masculinity, the notion of heterosexuality has been radically challenged, especially by queer theorists. Since the 1990s, these theorists have questioned the taken-for-granted uniformity of heterosexuality, not only by insisting on its cultural construction but also by emphasizing its internal ideological contradictions and inconsistencies. Inspired by poststructuralist trends, much of

12

In fact, Brod uses the term men’s studies, instead of masculinity studies, which is preferred here.

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queer theory, for example, has questioned the traditional view of heterosexuality as fixed and uniform and has emphasized its hybrid nature (Preciado, 2021).13 Probably, the most radical challenge to the presumed unity and stability of heterosexuality has come from Judith Butler’s work. In her seminal Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Butler suggests, for instance, that the “unity” of gender is the result of a regulatory practice that tries to render gender identity stable and uniform through compulsory heterosexuality.14 In her view, the power of this practice is, through a repressive and exclusionary system of production, to restrict the relative and complex meanings of “heterosexuality” and “bisexuality”, as well as the subversive potential of their convergence and resignification. Thus, she is suspicious of conceptions of heterosexuality as a coherent model. In this sense, she coincides with other queer theorists, such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Carolyn Dinshaw, who also insist on the inextricability of “the normative” and “the deviant”, claiming that they often become indistinguishable.15 For example, in her landmark Between Men (1985), Sedgwick puts forward the concept of “homosociality”, which “bears an equally close relation to homosexuality and homophobia”. In other words, homosociality and homosexuality, Sedgwick argues, are closely related to each other. It would appear, then, that the ideal of coherent and “uncontaminated” heterosexuality, which Monique Wittig describes as the foundation for the heterosexual matrix, is an unattainable ideal. In Butler’s words: A psychoanalytic elaboration might contend that this impossibility is exposed in virtue of the complexity and resistance of an unconscious sexuality that is not always heterosexual. In this sense, heterosexuality offers normative sexual positions that are intrinsically impossible to embody, and the persistent failure to identify fully and without incoherence with these positions reveals heterosexuality itself not only as a compulsory law but as an inevitable comedy. (1990, 242)

Within the Western nuclear family, heterosexuality is inseparable from reproduction and is meant to ensure the social and economic survival of the family unit. Strictly speaking, a childless heterosexual couple is not purely “heterosexual” since he or she fails to identify “fully and without incoherence” to one of the central tenets of heterosexuality. Therefore, this seems to lend further support to the view of heterosexuality 13

In fact, the view of heterosexuality as a coherent system has been radically challenged by most queer studies. As Dinshaw explains, “this view is such a basic one in the field of queer studies and is so widely held that specific documentation seems at once futile and unnecessary” (215). However, she mentions the work of Judith Butler (1993) as a “theoretical starter”; she refers the work of Jonathan Katz (1995) as “a full-length discussion of modern heterosexuality.” 14 Butler terms this regulatory practice the heterosexual matrix: “I use the term heterosexual matrix throughout the text to designate that grid of cultural intelligibility through which bodies, genders, and desires are naturalized. I am drawing on Monique Wittig’s notion of the “heterosexual contract” and, to a lesser extent, on Adrienne Rich’s notion of “compulsory heterosexuality” to characterize a hegemonic discursive/epistemic model of gender intelligibility that assumes that for bodies to cohere and make sense there must be a stable sex expressed through a stable gender (masculine expresses male, feminine expresses female) that is oppositionally and hierarchically defined through the compulsory practice of heterosexuality” (1990, 292n6). 15 In any case, these scholars differ from Monique Witting in this respect, since she sees heterosexuality and homosexuality as two completely different realities.

Interrogating Heterosexuality

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as intrinsically contradictory. Indeed, Butler describes it as a “comedy” based on the concepts of repetition and performance. The performative status of heterosexuality becomes nowhere clearer than in its “imitation” by homosexuals. The replication of heterosexual constructs in gay contexts shows the artificial nature of the so-called heterosexual “original”. Therefore, gay, as Butler herself comments, is to straight not as copy is to original but rather as copy is to copy. As she concludes, “the parodic repetition of the ‘original’ […] reveals the original to be nothing other than a parody of the idea of the natural and the original” (1990, 95). It would seem, then, that the presumed stable and fixed nature of heterosexuality has been contested on a number of occasions. Indeed, the very concept of heterosexuality has a discrete history (Stokes, 2001, 15). The term “heterosexuality” was first used in the American medical context in 1892 in an article by Dr. James G. Kiernan.16 In Kiernan’s view, heterosexuality has a perverse connotation, referred to as nonreproductive male–female erotic desire—in other words, anal or oral sex. Since reproduction normalizes different-sex eroticisms, sexual pleasure occurring outside a reproductive context was pathologically observed by Kiernan and others. Like Kiernan’s work, Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s well-known tract Psychopathia Sexualis (1893) also described the term heterosexuality as a nonreproductive, pleasure-centered pathology. However, Krafft-Ebing, unlike Kiernan, began to refer to heterosexuality as the “normal” different-sex erotic standard. The reason for this semantic change is obvious. Krafft-Ebing discusses heterosexuality vis-à-vis case studies of men psychically troubled by homosexual desire. Thus, heterosexuality begins to assume its shape as a cure for psychosexual deviance. Finally, Freud’s “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality” (1905) helped consolidate the power of heterosexuality as modern society’s dominant norm, as Paul B. Preciado has so clearly demonstrated (2021). As Stokes concludes in this respect, Freud “helped to constitute our belief in the existence of a unitary, monolithic thing with a life and determining power of its own: ‘heterosexuality’” (2001, 66). Nevertheless, understanding the historical and discursive construction of heterosexuality helps us see it as a term that is anything but stable, eternal, and immutable since its meanings have radically changed over the years.17 The concept of (hetero)sexuality, as Foucault concludes in the first volume 16

It might be worth pointing out that Foucault traces back the birth of homosexuality as a pathology in 1870. In his own words, “the psychological, psychiatric, medical category of homosexuality was constituted from the moment it was characterized – Westphal’s famous article on “Contrary Sexual Feelings” (1870) can stand as its date of birth […] The sodomite had been a temporary aberration, the homosexual was now a species” (1984, 56–7). 17 In his influential work Gay New York (1994), U.S. gay scholar George Chauncey explains that the very opposition between homosexuals and heterosexuals is relatively recent, and it is only after World War II that homosexuality and heterosexuality appear as mutually exclusive options in the U.S.. Prior to that, bisexuality was generally accepted. Heterosexual men could have homosexual lovers, and they were not feminized, as long as they played the “active” role in the homosexual relationship. The radical separation between heterosexuality and homosexuality after World War II, as well as the growing description of homosexuality as a deviant or abnormal behavior, may be put down to several factors. Among these, one should mention the growing conservatism of the 1950s—when both the press and the newly invented TV set promoted the (heterosexist) ideal of

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of the History of Sexuality (1976), is not a natural given but rather a specific cultural and historical construction influenced by discourse and power relations. In Foucault’s words, Sexuality [is] a historical construct […] a great surface network in which the stimulation, the intensification of pleasures, the incitement to discourse, the formation of special knowledges, the strengthening of controls and resistances, are linked to one another, in accordance with a few major strategies of knowledge and power. (1984, 129)

Interrogating Whiteness Like heterosexuality and masculinity, the concept of whiteness has also begun to be questioned in recent years (Hunter and Van der Westhuizen, 2021). Inspired by poststructuralist work on culture and discourse, much of the latest research on white masculinity (see, for example, Kimmel, 1997, 2019) suggests that the principal elements of identification (whiteness, maleness) are impossible since, according to the cultural and discursive framework that has defined them, no one could ever be completely white and/or completely male. The ideal white man, as Thomas DiPiero (2002, 9) argues, is not simply a fiction but a fiction constructed to prohibit comprehensive identification. Because nobody has ever truly been completely white or completely male, we have a radical division between our structures of meaning and our sociopolitical practices, which implies that we have a definition of human identity (white male) that apparently has no real referent in our everyday realities. In DiPiero’s words: On the one hand, it seems hardly surprising that such might be the case since it is probably no more likely that any other identity for which we have a name perfectly corresponds to real individuals. On the other hand, it seems particularly ironic that the standard by which all others have traditionally been measured and through which all are made into fictionalized others is itself an impossible and nonexistent model. (2002, 9)

One could mention several examples to support this argument. For example, the well-known “one-drop-of-blood” rule, which developed in the eighteenth century in the American South and has survived to the present, states that no person with any identifiable nonwhite heritage whatsoever—however distant in the past and however culturally similar to European, especially Anglo-Saxon traditions—may be identified as white. Ironically, however, nobody can truly account for the sexual dalliances of long-dead ancestors. Thus, “a great deal of racial consternation and hysteria arises in the people for whom such pedigree matters” (DiPiero, 2002, 9– 10). On the other hand, the very concept of whiteness seems both culture-specific and context-bound.18 According to Winthrop Jordan, the term white began to be family life—as well as McCarthy’s witch hunt, which involved the persecution of both communists and homosexuals. 18 For example, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Greek and Italian immigrants in the U.S. were not usually regarded as white, although both groups today would most likely be regarded

Interrogating Whiteness

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commonly used to describe/classify human beings in American colonies toward the end of the seventeenth century. As Jordan himself explains, There seems to have been something of a shift during the seventeenth century in the terminology Englishmen in the colonies applied to themselves. From the initially most common term, Christian, at mid-century there was a marked drift toward English and free. After about 1680, taking the colonies as a whole, a new term appeared—white. (qtd. in DiPiero, 2002, 240)

The historical origins of the “white” race appear to be indissolubly linked to social and economic factors. In his seminal two-volume work The Invention of the White Race (1994, 1997), which focuses on the plantation colonies of Anglo-America during the period from the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to the cancellation of the original ban on slavery in the colony of Georgia in 1750, Theodore W. Allen argues that the origins of the white race were determined by a number of class conflicts. There was—in the absence of a system of racial oppression—an increasing class struggle in Anglo-America between the plantation elite on the one hand and, on the other hand, the debt-burdened small planters and the vast majority of the economically productive population, particularly bond-laborers, three-fourths Anglo-Saxon and one-fourth African American. In this specific social context, the “white race” was invented as a form of social control. Its establishment in continental plantation colonies, signaled by the enactment of the “Act Concerning Servants and Slaves” in 1705, officially consolidated the system of privileges of European-Americans, of even the lowest social class, vis-à-vis any person of any degree of African ancestry, not only bondlaborers but also free Negroes, whether they possessed property or not (Allen, 1995, 24).19 It seems, therefore, that there was a clear subordination of class by race in the Anglo-American colonies at the turn of the century. Thus, southern colonizers were able to diminish the social differences between upper-class and lower-class whites: “Race became the primary badge of status” (qtd. in Allen, 1995, 24). Only because “race” consciousness became more relevant than class consciousness was the continental plantation bourgeoisie able to achieve and maintain the degree of social control necessary for enriching themselves on the basis of chattel bond-labor. Thus, the “white race” was invented as a form of social control whose distinguishing characteristic was the participation of the laboring classes: nonslaveholders, self-employed as white by nearly everyone (DiPiero, 2002, 10). Barrett and Roediger describe organized labor activity as one of the reasons why previously “nonwhite” groups became white. They contend that Greeks and Italians participated in an important strike of the Western Federation of Miners in 1912, and the category of white worker expanded after that event (1997, 404). Allen (1997) provides a detailed account of the social and historical reasons for the reclassification of the Irish as white. 19 Allen insists that it was only white, upper- and lower-class males who were privileged by white supremacy. As he explains, his book is particularly interested in analyzing the “remolding of male supremacy as white male supremacy, as an essential element to the system of white-skin privileges” (1995, 24). Therefore, Allen seems to agree with Thomas DiPiero (2002), Peggy McIntosh (1997), and Kathleen Neal Cleaver (1997), among others, all of whom argue that whiteness and masculinity are closely linked. As Cleaver explains, for example, “central to the nineteenth-century worker’s devotion to whiteness was his assertion of maleness, with its perils and yearnings, and his uncertain claim to republican citizenship in the world of men” (1997, 159).

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smallholders, tenants, and laborers. In time, this “white race” social control system, which had begun in Virginia and Maryland, became “the model of social order to each succeeding plantation region of settlement” (Allen, 1997, 251). Moreover, the invention of “whiteness” served to prevent rebellion from European-American bond-laborers. The fear of white servants and Negroes uniting in rebellion, a prospect that made some sense in the 1660s and 1670s, disappeared completely during the next half-century. It is no less significant, as Jordan elaborates, that the only rebellions of white servants in continental colonies occurred before the official institution of slavery (qtd. in Allen 1997, 252). After the 1700s, with the invention of the “white race”, every white man, no matter his economic status, could at least find pride in his race. Moreover, the black workers’ immediate control fell almost entirely into the hands of lower-class white males. After the invention of “whiteness”, white, lower-class men enjoyed an increasing (and unprecedented) number of privileges. For example, the 1750 act repealing the ban on slavery in Georgia included a “deficiency” provision requiring the employment of one “white man Servant” on each plantation for every four Negroes employed. Moreover, it forbade the employment of Negroes except in cultivation and coopering. Although this system of white-skin privileges was not invented by the European-American laboring classes but rather by the plantation bourgeoisie, the European and American workers were claiming them by the middle of the eighteenth century. Very soon, white workers were demanding the exclusion of Negroes from skilled trades, claiming that barring black men from competing for employment would avoid jealousy between slaveholders and nonslaveholders. “Within two decades”, as Allen concludes, “slaveholding would end, but the appeal to ‘white race’ solidarity would remain the country’s most general form of class-collaborationism” (1997, 253).20 Of course, there were other factors that intersected with these class conflicts to make possible the “invention” of the white race. Enlightenment philosophers such as Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hume, and Locke, to name just the best-known, also played a key role in the invention of the white race. Whereas the Comte de Buffon—one of the eighteenth century’s best-known naturalists, admitted to France’s prestigious Académie des Sciences—had established in his Histoire Naturelle (1749– 1804) a clear-cut distinction between the black and white races, “varieties of the human species”, Enlightenment philosophers such as Rousseau and Locke refused any notion of a natural hierarchy internal to the human order, declaring in opposition that all men are naturally free and equal. However, these philosophers were no less racist than Buffon was. Indeed, they simply replaced Buffon’s distinction between different “races” with the distinction between the human and the animal (DiPiero, 2002, 95). Thus, contemporaries disrupted the Great Chain of Being with a line, a radical break distinguishing the human from its closest nonhuman neighbor on the 20

For example, Allen notes that while the elite planters got rich in the Anglo-American colonies, many landless European-Americans remained relatively poor. “Denied social mobility, these wouldbe planters were to have the white skin privilege of lateral mobility—to the “frontier”” (1997, 257).

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Chain.21 The reason for this difference was to establish the division between whites and nonwhites. As DiPiero concludes from all this: Two sorts of binary logic thus interrupt the ostensible seamless continuity of the Great Chain of Being: whiteness/nonwhiteness and reason/lack of reason. But it is not the case that these two binaries form a simple, coincidental disruption of the Great Chain […] by the end of the seventeenth century, and certainly well into the eighteenth century, most observers associated whiteness with reason. (2002, 95)

According to Enlightenment, it would appear, then, that to be white is to be human, and to be human is to be white. This has several implications. On the other hand, the concept of whiteness is deprived of its purely racial or ethnic character at the moment of its universalization. As Montag explains, whiteness is “no longer conceivable as a particularistic survival haunting the discourse of universality but, rather, as the very form of universality itself” (285). On the other hand, nonwhite people are no longer considered human; they are now considered animals. As John Locke put it, a child in its innocence and naïveté might “demonstrate to you that a negro is not a man because white color was one of the constant simple ideas of the complex idea he calls man” (qtd. in Montag, 1997, 288). The belief in the intrinsic superiority of the white race was reinforced by the nineteenth-century Anglo-American imperialist project. There is, indeed, a striking contrast in expansionist rhetoric between 1800 and 1850 (Horsman, 1997, 139–140). The debates of the early nineteenth century reveal a pervasive sense of the future destiny of the U.S., but they do not reveal the racism that describes the mid-century debates. By 1850, however, the emphasis fell on the American Anglo-Saxons as a distinct, superior people who were destined to bring civilization, good government, commercial prosperity, and Christianity to the American continents and to the world.22 Horsman (1997, 139–140) attributes this radical change to several factors. 21

As DiPiero (2002, 95) defines it, the Great Chain of Being was a conceptual framework that facilitated the contemplation of the entire natural world as an unbroken existential unit. 22 Although Americans often drew on their Anglo-Saxon origins and traditions to justify their radical superiority, Horsman claims that the term “Anglo-Saxon” has been historically misused since, in reality, there was never a specific Anglo-Saxon in England. As he explains: A number of tribes from northern Germany began to settle in England in large numbers in the fifth century; they were not a homogeneous group of “Anglo-Saxons”, and they did not completely replace the Celtic tribes already living in England. Later the Viking invasions resulted in the settlement of other groups from northern Europe, and the Normans were added to the mix by the Conquest. When in the nineteenth century the English began writing “Anglo-Saxon” in a racial sense, they used it to describe the people living within the bounds of England, but, at times, they also used it to describe a vague brotherhood of Englishspeaking peoples throughout the British Isles and the world. In the United States in the nineteenth century the term “Anglo-Saxon” became even less precise. It was often used in the 1840s to describe the white people of the United States in contrast to blacks, Indians, Mexicans, Spaniards, or Asians, although it was frequently acknowledged that the United States already contained a variety of European strains. However, even those who liked to talk of a distinct “American” race, composed of the best Caucasian strains, drew heavily on the arguments developed to elevate Anglo-Saxons. (1997, 140–1)

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First, there were new assumptions derived from a racist trend in Western thought in the first half of the nineteenth century. Very often, the ideas of superior and inferior races that defined American thinking also determine the thinking of English and Western Europeans in general by the mid-nineteenth century. When Gobineau published his work on the inequality of the human race in 1854, he was simply summarizing and elaborating on more than half a century of ideas on race rather than inaugurating a new era. Moreover, in the first half of the nineteenth century, the United States was anxious about justifying the enslavement of blacks and the expulsion and possible extermination of the Indians. Thus, the American intellectual community not only welcomed European ideas but also provided European racists with scientific theories deriving from supposed knowledge and observation of blacks and Indians. “In this era, the popular periodicals, press, and many American politicians”, as Horsman (1997, 140) concludes, “eagerly sought scientific proof for racial distinctions and for the prevailing American and world order; the intellectual community provided the evidence they needed”. It appears, therefore, that whiteness is a cultural and political construction that has been historically variable (Hunter and van der Westhuizen, 2021; Kimmel, 1997, 2019). Therefore, it has not always been easy to identify who white males are. For instance, DiPiero (2002, 10–1) reminds us that it took a Supreme Court decision to determine whether Bhagat Singh Thind, a native of India who was applying for American citizenship, was white. Finally, he was not considered white. The Supreme Court argued that the words free white persons are words of common speech to be interpreted in accordance with the understanding of the common man. Thus, white masculinity appears to be determined at least as much by people’s beliefs and opinions as it is by the physical characteristics that seem to define it. As DiPiero concludes in this respect: If it were simply the case that any person who appeared to be a white male simply was a white male, the identity would have no problematic political or ideological dimension since there would be no question of a legitimacy to which some people were not entitled. That is why we cannot simply and unproblematically point to the person who seems both white and male: you have to know what he looks like before you can actually see him. (2002, 10–1)

The widespread belief that the identity of the white heterosexual male is something evident is thus easily questionable. White heterosexual masculinity is simply the mythic model against which we all measure ourselves.23 It is nothing but an ideal version of manhood.24 No real man, as Kimmel reminds us (1997, 2019), can live up to the impossible expectations raised by this ideal form of masculinity. More often than not, masculinity, as Gardiner (2002, 10) explains, is “a nostalgic formation, always missing, lost or about to be lost, its ideal form located in a past that advances

23

In Kimmel’s view, the history of white masculinity is “less about what boys and men actually did than what they were told that they were supposed to do, feel, and think and what happened in response to those prescriptions” (1997, 10). 24 In The Feminine Mystique (1963), Betty Friedan already argued that what we think we know about ourselves as men and women often involves a considerable amount of fantasy and myth.

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with each generation in order to recede just beyond its grasp. Its myth is that effacing new forms can restore a natural, original male grounding”.25 From all this, we may conclude that the very existence and internal consistency of white heterosexual masculinity are well under scrutiny. Does it follow, therefore, that we should give up beforehand masculinity studies as well as any attempt to analyze hegemonic masculinity? Inevitably, the question leads us back to the (much-heated) debate between those who defend the category of (sexual) identity and those (mostly poststructuralist) thinkers who advocate its dissolution.

Poststructuralist and Identity-Based Approaches to Masculinity One of the most important (and controversial) debates in academia currently concerns itself with the coexistence, on the one hand, of the poststructuralist demythification of subjectivity and identity and, on the other hand, the work of several scholars who see identity (whether sexual, racialized, and/or national) as central to our lives. This question has been the subject of numerous intellectual debates, such as those between queer theorists and gay activists, or between women’s and gender studies scholars (Dinshaw, 2009, 70). The present study will show how the poststructuralist critique of sexual identity is (also/especially) relevant to studies of masculinities by examining a number of opposite views. Even though this discussion greatly surpasses the objectives of this study,26 the following pages will simply be devoted to demonstrating, first, how the poststructuralist critique of the concept of identity is also (and especially) relevant to gender and masculinity studies and, second, how different perspectives on the theme have attempted to bring together points of view which, in principle, seemed totally opposed and irreconcilable.27 While not aiming to put an end to the debate in any way, some of the ideas and perspectives that have been 25

Insisting further, Gardiner suggests that feminism is also a fantasy. Unlike masculinity, though, feminism is a utopian discourse of an ideal future, never yet attained, whose myths promote alliances that help deal with conflicts. Both masculinity and feminism, as Gardiner elaborates, are fantasies and myths of power: Masculinity [is the fantasy] of the natural congruence of male self with social privilege and feminism of a perfectly self-regulating collectivity. In both cases, adherents often believe they can picture their ideals brightly outlined against the gray confusions of the present, yet without a clear path to reach them. This unmapped gap, then, this zone of frustration and anxiety, is the “crisis” the loss of the past or the deferral of the future ideal. (2002, 11)

26

For an in-depth discussion on poststructuralism, and in particular the relationship between identity/feminist politics and poststructuralist/queer theory in the U.S., see Butler (1990, 1993), Oliver (2000, 65). 27 Several masculinity scholars have recently taken up this discussion. See, for example, Chapman and Rutherford (1988), Brittan (1989), and Middleton (“Socialism”).

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brought to it from gender and masculinity studies may contribute to enriching it and, in the best of cases, point to possible paths for reconciliation when/if it is considered feasible and necessary. In fact, much of the latest masculinity scholarship advocates a poststructuralist dissolution of sexual identity. It has been argued that since masculinity is closely linked to patriarchy and sexism, the very concept of maleness should be dispensed with forever. Many scholars advocate replacing the category of masculinity (and femininity) with that of androgyny. Blurring any clear-cut distinction between male and female sexual organs, John Stoltenberg’s book, Refusing to Be a Man (1989), argues, for example, that the variety of people’s sexual organs can be placed along a continuum. Stoltenberg asks men to think of their penises as not significantly different from a woman’s clitoris, providing a view of eroticism as polymorphic. While the binary sexual model continues to dominate most social, cultural, and political institutions in the Western world, scholars such as Stolenberg and Patrick Grim insist that sex differences are not as important as is usually assumed. In Grim’s words: Let us suppose that in some case, we do have firm and unambiguous empirical evidence of differences between the sexes; let us suppose that we can prove that men are characteristically more aggressive, that women are generally more “communicative” and the like. What follows from suitably hard data revealing suitably fundamental differences even if we have it? Not as much, I think, as often assumed. (1992, 12)

While much work on sex differences ends with an appeal for further testing, Grim explicitly rejects such an appeal. “In light of the deep difficulties of attempting any satisfactory test, in light of the social dangers of a test gone wrong, in light of the inconclusiveness of the best data for any social purposes and given the variety of genuinely pressing demands on our social energies”, he concludes, “I see little reason for continuing such testing” (1992, 16). Given the difficulties and social dangers of trying to “demonstrate” sexual differences, this author concludes that testing sexual differences is neither possible nor desirable. Certainly, relying on a binary model of sexual difference for feminist and masculinity studies can reinforce, rather than question, patriarchal divisions, even if undesired. One can set out to fight (sexual) discrimination without realizing that the tools she/he uses to do so (man/ woman, masculinity/femininity, heterosexuality/homosexuality, etc.) are themselves the product of socially discriminatory conventions, which are naturalized by political means. Thus, (sexual) difference may be the result of domination. As Bourdieu insists, the concept of “difference” usually “appears when one adopts the point of view of the dominant on the dominated” and, indeed, “that from which it seeks to differentiate itself […] is the product of a historical relation of differentiation” (2001, 48). Despite these claims, some scholars continue to rely on sexual identity and suspect most poststructuralist attempts to erase sexual differences. In their view, sexual difference is a fundamental aspect of one’s identity, not simply an external mark of oppression. Like many women’s studies experts, some masculinity experts believe that consideration of one’s sexual identity is indispensable. Although few critics

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35

contend that masculinity is eternal and unchangeable, many masculinity scholars, such as Harry Brod (1987, 61), argue that there is a sufficiently unitary object of study denoted by the concept of masculinity to justify its investigation and analysis under one rubric. It is true that several theorists, perhaps most notably Judith Butler (1990, 13), have long argued that the feminist effort to identify the white male as the enemy is a counter-discourse that uncritically mimics the discourse of the oppressor instead of offering a different set of terms.28 Some have even claimed that patriarchy is over.29 Nevertheless, white heterosexual masculinity is still often regarded as stable and unitary. Oftentimes, masculinity is described as a fixed category, that is, as a counterexample to the types of masculinity, usually queer, that seem “more informative about gender relations, [and can] be generative of social change” (Halberstam, 1998, 23).30 Many scholars continue to regard white heterosexual masculinity as a homogeneous category, insisting that white men, mostly since the 1960s, have been lumped into one distinct category. As Sally Robinson explains, In fact, I take a certain delight in imagining one possible response to my arguments here. How can we lump all white men, regardless of their differences, into one seemingly monolithic category? The delight comes from both the irony of this question (what feminist woman wouldn’t laugh at this? What victim of racial profiling wouldn’t snicker at this payback?) and from the fact that anyone who articulates it will be further confirming the arguments I am making. (2000, 20–21)31

Crucially, Robinson reminds us that the poststructuralist deconstruction of masculinity and sexual identity should not underestimate the fundamental question of power relations. It has indeed been argued that poststructuralism focuses on discourse and cognition, thus neglecting material conditions and oppression in favor of symbolic and subjective particularities. Despite the poststructuralist emphasis on 28

In this sense, Harry Brod notes that one must also be sensitive to inappropriate expropriations of concepts from nonhegemonic cultures by the hegemonic culture. In his words: For example, the use of the term “macho” [in English] as a synonym for “sexist” ignores the positive connotations of this term within Hispanic cultures, in the same way that its popularization in the United States is a case of white men using their white skin privilege to deflect the critique of their male privilege, just as the use of working-class male images to denote traditional sexism renders the sexism of middle-class and upper-class men less visible and therefore less challenged. (1994, 92)

29

As The Women’s Bookshop of Milan put it, “patriarchy has finished, it does not have female credit anymore and it has ended. It lasted as long as its capacity to mean something to the female mind. Now that it has lost it, we have become aware that, without it, it cannot last” (1998, 3). Of course, such a claim proves not only naïve in light of persisting sexism and homophobia, but particularly dangerous, as it might weaken the feminist struggle for gender equality, even if undesired. 30 Although Halberstam traditionally figures as a queer scholar (and, therefore, as advocating the dissolution of fixed sexual identities), here he relies heavily on the view of white masculinity as a fixed identity. 31 Although Robinson avoids monolithic conceptions of white heterosexual masculinity all through his book, Marked Men (2000), her words at the end of the introduction reveal that, occasionally, she also falls prey to reductionist biases.

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the erasure of sexual and gendered boundaries, one should keep in mind that our everyday life is still governed by an important number of generic power relations, which can, as Kimmel points out in Angry White Men (2019), cause the project of sexual dissolution to seem naïve, at best, and utopian, at worst. After all, many people still believe that men and women differ in certain ways, and those differences justify a differentiation of social roles along sexual lines. Even though most differences between the sexes seem to be social rather than biological or physiological, the treatment of differences that are in fact merely social, as if they were fundamental, appears to be a clear example of socially unjust treatment. Elaborating on that, Patrick Grim comments: Standard paradigms of racism and sexism involve precisely this feature […] differences between individuals or groups, real or imagined, are taken to be inherent and fundamental […] The true sexist holds not just that some particular group of women are by force of circumstance scatter-brained and fragile, but that women are so by nature. (1992, 10)32

Moreover, it must be remembered that Western culture is eminently patriarchal. This means that men continue to dominate the public sphere, especially in economic terms of production, while many women remain confined to the private sphere, the domestic space of reproduction. Generally, patriarchy is grounded in three main principles (Bourdieu, 2001, 69): women’s confinement to home-related jobs, women’s inferiority vis-à-vis men, and men’s monopoly of technology and machinery. As Pierre Bourdieu elaborates, The first is that the functions appropriate to women are an extension of their domestic functions—education, care and service. The second is that a woman cannot have authority over men and, other things being equal, therefore has every likelihood of being passed over in favour of a man for a position of authority and of being confined to subordinate and ancillary functions; the third principle gives men the monopoly of the handling of technological objects and machines. (94)

Before discussing the possible dissolution of sexual difference, one should bear in mind that masculinity remains the hegemonic model worldwide. Although masculinity, as we have seen, is far from monolithic or uniform, it remains inseparable from notions of power and privilege; it often refers to the symbolic power 32

Throughout his article, Grim establishes a distinction between “fundamental” and “social” sex differences. In his opinion, genuinely “fundamental” differences “must in several ways be free of social influence” and they should be “more than mere social epiphenomena” (1992, 4–5; emphasis added). Grim contends that there are few fundamental sex differences and “in cases in which we are significantly ignorant, there may be ethical reasons for preferring a social explanation rather than the fundamental difference on which the standard argument relies” (16). The implication is, of course, that if a sex difference is acknowledged to be socially constructed, rather than fundamental, then it can also be socially deconstructed much more easily. Grim’s argument can be contested in (at least) two different ways. First, so-called “fundamental” differences may not exist at all. As poststructuralism suggests, there is nothing outside/beyond language and the symbolic order. Second, acknowledging the social construction of sex differences does not always lead to their revision. After all, it is known that race is a cultural/ethnic construction, only minor biological/ “fundamental” distinctions exist between the different races, and yet racism persists in most societies worldwide.

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of the State and to unequal distributions of wealth. Masculinity, as Jack Halberstam (1998, 24) explains, seems to extend outward into patriarchy and inward into the family; it represents the power of inheritance, the consequences of traffic in women,33 and the promise of social privilege. Masculinity continues to discriminate against “other-ed” groups—especially women, homosexuals, and racialized groups. Hegemonic masculinity is always defined by opposition, as masculinity is intrinsically opposed to femininity (as well as homosexuality and ethnicity). As Segal insists, gender “encapsulates relations of difference which, although they are shifting and precarious, are always already structured through assumptions of the dominance of masculinity over femininity (without the assumption of dominance, ‘masculinity’ starts transforming into ‘femininity’)” (1997, xxiii). Thus, hegemonic masculinity seems to reject everything that differs from it, projecting the responsibility of differential definition onto its “Other”. As the unmarked gendered and racial identity, dominant masculinity causes those identities that it excludes from itself to define it (Kimmel, 2019). To fully understand its hegemony, one must pay attention to the differential systems of meaning that produce and back it up. Because of its dominant meaning, masculinity occupies a hegemonic position in contemporary Western culture, but it is important to distinguish hegemony from brute force. As Thomas DiPiero explains, Hegemony differs from coercion in that it involves the production of meaning as a way of unifying and ordering people (the word “hegemony” itself derives from a Greek word meaning “leader”). A hegemonic position […] quilts together portions or fragments of meaning from different realms, in the process forming a way of knowing that becomes a world view for a given community. (2002, 12)34

Hegemony has two main (interrelated) functions (DiPiero, 2002, 13). First, it joins together differing social discourses. Second, through that very act of joining together, new possibilities and new modes of thinking are expressed. Thus, one could define hegemonic masculinity as the narrative construction of a unified meaning that incorporates different elements under a single rubric, dismissing meanings or components that do not apply. In other words, hegemonic masculinity is the social and political act that constructs the illusion of a unified social group by proposing a system of cultural, political, ideological, and personal beliefs that can be accepted as nearly universally valid for a given group of people. Above all else, then, its power is created and sustained as a form of knowledge, despite its representation as a bodily reality. As DiPiero elaborates, As a hegemonic identity that casts other identities as inadequate substitutes or failed approximations of itself, white masculinity has for the past three hundred years—since, that is, roughly, the time that the identity “white” has come into the picture-governed not only questions of racial and gender identity but also broader issues of signification in domains not 33

Halberstam acknowledges, though, that sexism and misogyny are not necessarily intrinsic of masculinity, even though historically it has been very “difficult, if not impossible, to untangle masculinity from the oppression of women” (1998, 25). 34 DiPiero’s view of hegemony in an ideological sense is thus indebted to Gramsci, who argued that hegemony tries to sell the privileges of a few people as convenient to all.

38

3 Poststructuralism and the “Death” of the White Male generally associated with the color of one’s skin or the arrangement of one’s genitalia or, indeed, the manner in which one presents oneself to the world as a member of a particular sexed or raced group. (2002, 13)

It would appear that the power of masculinity derives from epistemological rather than corporeal factors. Above all else, its hegemony arises because it causes different kinds of subjectivity to become expressions of the central position that it represents. Manifestations of difference are subsumed into terms not only designed to represent the central position but limited to such use. Thus, hegemonic masculinity functions as the “least common denominator of subjective identity” (DiPiero, 2002, 23) because part of its mythology has long been that it is an identity in which expressions of other identities are included. However, hegemony also presents itself as a unitary and monolithic entity owing to several specific political and ideological processes. In her seminal work Male Subjectivity at Margins (1992), Kaja Silverman uses the concept of “dominant fiction” to try to understand how ideologically produced subjectivity conceals the contradictions informing its own construction. Borrowing from Lacanian psychoanalysis, Silverman shows that masculinity, like femininity, is based on a “lack”, which is disguised by a number of ideological fictions. In her own words, “the normative male ego is necessarily fortified against any knowledge of the void upon which it rests” through a “dominant fiction”, which she defines as “the representational system through which the subject is accommodated to the Name-of-the-Father” (1992, 61). “Its most central signifier of unity” Silverman elaborates, “is the (paternal) family, and its primary signifier of privilege the phallus” (34). Linked to narrative devices such as realism and verisimilitude, Silverman’s concept of dominant fiction consists of the images and stories through which a society reaches consensus and images and stories through which cinema, fiction, pop culture, and other forms of representation “presumably both draw upon and help to shape” (30). Silverman’s concept of dominant fiction, for which she remains partly indebted to Althusser, shows how a subject is hailed by particular social and political structures. Recognizing itself in those structures, the subject then reproduces them in everyday life. In this manner, despite its internal fissures and contradictions, white masculinity, as Silverman explains, keeps functioning as a hegemonic epistemology and as a differential system for the production of social meaning, which implies that the dissolution of sexual difference is anything but unproblematic. This is also the view held by the French feminist philosopher Françoise Collin (1995, 1997). Although she explicitly rejects essentialist and dualist approaches to sexual difference, dismissing them as metaphysical, Collin also warns against the dangers of sexual dissolution. In her words: That there is a difference between the sexes is an undeniable fact. That this difference “should” disappear or, on the contrary, focus on itself overcoming domination is in the order of the postulate. There is difference, but what is different cannot be essentialized. Both statements, “there is no woman”, or “woman is this”, are similarly speculative and similarly inquisitorial. (1995, 14)

The erasure of sexual difference may indeed neglect the importance of gendered power relations as well as women’s realities. As Collin elaborates, the end of sexual

Rethinking the Debate

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difference, “which insists on the porosity or on the untold boundary between the sexes and tends to make the difference between the sexes an indifferent difference, eludes not only the figure of domination, in other words, the political figure which runs through it, but also the entirety of the tragic relation of the sexual relationship” (1995, 8). The erasure of sexual difference overlooks important historical and social aspects of sexual discrimination and, in so doing, proves itself to be both a naïve and a utopian idea. In Collin’s own words, it “immediatizes ‘the end of histor’ (jumping over the dialectic variations), where in a sort of happy uncertainty there would be no men nor women (or Jews or Greeks, or masters or slaves…), in an atopy which differs in only one letter from utopia” (1995, 8). Moreover, sexual “indifference” often means identification with, and assimilation into, the dominant model. Thus, concepts such as “universalism” or “mankind” are often synonymous with terms such as “man” and “masculinity”. As Collin herself concludes, “under a cloak of universalism, […] women only become fully human if they become men (or imitate them)” (9). Thus, denied sexual difference is often transformed into sexual “indifference”, and ultimately, into a paradoxical reinscription of the very differences the strategy was supposed to eradicate. The notion of “neutralization” of sexual marks often has the paradoxical effect of conferring power upon humans. As Jacques Derrida concludes: When you say, “well you are in a neuter [sic] field, no difference”, we all know that in this case, the subject will be man. So, this is a classical use of man to neutralize the sexual mark […] So, to the extent which universality implies neutralization, you can be sure that it’s only a hidden way of confirming the man in his power. That’s why we have to be very cautious about neutrality and neutralization and universality. (1987, 194)35

Rethinking the Debate At this point, masculinity scholarship seems to be caught up in a debate between those who vindicate sexual identity and/vs. those who advocate its “death”. Nevertheless, both positions seem equally fruitless. For instance, Robert Bly, who views masculinity as a fixed sexual identity, fails to envision new ways for men and women to interact—ways that solve the problems that he discusses. Rather, he returns uncritically to the past. On the other hand, John Stoltenberg, who advocates the dissolution of masculinity, leaves us with very little to hold on to once we have refused to be a man. It is as if men should start from scratch, since all of their past concepts of masculinity are to be rejected on this account. Thus, very little attention has been given to the positive aspects of masculinity that can be maintained once the negative aspects have been rejected. Stoltenberg (1989) calls for a refusal not to be masculine in some of its aspects but a refusal to be a man. However, such a step may not be necessary. It seems both feasible and desirable, as May and Strikwerda (1992, xix) indicate in this respect, to provide new definitions of masculinity that are empowering or at least enlightening for men without contributing to the further oppression 35

In the same volume as Derrida (1987), Naomi Schor (1987, 98–110) also provides a feminist critique of the neuter.

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of women. In other words, there are many other positions one can take, all of which are inspired by feminism; these positions offer more options to those who find it hard or impossible to abolish masculinity altogether. For example, it is possible to degender features and behaviors without degendering people. As Kimmel points out, “we will still be women and men, equal yet capable of appreciating our differences, different yet unwilling to use those differences as the basis for discrimination” (2000, 266). Rather than choosing between fixed notions of sexual identity and the dissolution of sexual difference, it might be more convenient to start rethinking this debate in different ways. Many innovative approaches to the discussion have come from recent queer studies. It is true that in the current cultural and historical situation, the terms “man” and “woman” are not the same. In the Western patriarchal world, the cultural context suggests that there is a difference. As Derrida explains, “in our language, when one says ‘Man’ with a capital M and ‘Woman’ with a capital W […] it’s not all the same, not at all, because ‘man’ with a capital M means ‘mankind’. Woman with a capital W means […] ‘truth’ or things like that, but doesn’t mean mankind or womankind” (1987, 195). Nevertheless, this is not an eternal and universal situation. This could change. As Derrida himself indicates, keeping sexual difference has only the meaning of a “strategical phase” (1987, 194).36 As soon as you have achieved the first stage of deconstruction, Derrida explains, then the opposition between women and men stops being useful and necessary. In Derrida’s philosophy, sexual difference is associated with the concept of provisionality. As he himself puts it: We need to find some way to progress strategically. Starting with the deconstruction of phallocentrism and using the feminine force, so to speak, in this move and then—as this would be the second stage or second level—to give up the opposition between men and women. (1987, 194–5)

Certainly, Derrida’s thesis has not gone unchallenged. While he accepts claims to female specificity only as a temporary tactical necessity for important political aims, arguing that we must eventually come to a utopia of sexual indifferentiation and varied singularities, many feminist scholars insist that difference has a future. In their view, sexual difference not only questions masculinity as the universal norm 36

Derrida’s view of sexual difference as a “strategical phase” appears to be similar to Gayatri Spivak’s concept of “strategic essentialism”. In “Three Women’s Texts” (1989), Spivak defines “strategic essentialism” as an essentialism that relies on binary oppositions but that is able to “situate feminist individualism in its historical determination” (176). Obviously, Spivak is fully aware that the term “strategic essentialism” may be, and has been, used to justify essentialism. However, she insists that the emphasis should be more on noting how we ourselves and others are essentialist, without claiming a counteressence disguised under the excuse of strategy. Influenced by Derrida, Spivak reminds us that deconstruction does not involve doing away with essences, which she sees as necessary, but to challenge and deconstruct them: The most serious critique in deconstruction, is the critique of something that is extremely useful, something without which we cannot do anything […] One should always, as she says, deconstruct “identity by identities”. (qtd. in Oliver, 2000, 401)

Rethinking the Debate

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but also prevents the assimilation (and disappearance) of the “Other” into the dominant norm. As the feminist scholar Myra Jehlen indicates, “the claim of difference criticizes the content of the male universal norm. But, beyond this, it represents a new understanding that if the other is to live, it will have to live as other, lest the achievement of integration be crowned with the fatal irony of disappearance through” (qtd. in Schor, 1987, 110).37 This insistence on the importance of sexual difference is understandable if one takes into consideration that many scholars, influenced by Simone de Beauvoir, seem unable to distinguish between difference and domination. Because they see (sexual) difference as the direct consequence of (sexual) inequality, they suggest that the end of patriarchy would also entail the end of sexual difference. As Collin herself explains, “‘one is not born, but rather becomes a woman’, if taken verbatim, would lead one to suppose that, once that forced and unhappy historical path has been surpassed, woman (man) would not make sense anymore and (human) Man would become humanity which is fully the subject of its destiny, pure freedom” (1995, 8–9). Nevertheless, this view mistakes equality for sameness. Being equal means being identical; being different always means being unequal. As Collin insists in this respect: We can find here again, regarding women and men, traces of Enlightenment thought according to which equality involves identity: you can only be a Man in one way […] The foreigner only has the right to equality if he becomes native (or mimics it) […] The destruction of the alienation is the destruction of difference. (1995, 9)

Despite the views held by Jehlen and Collin, one should bear in mind that the end of patriarchy and domination does not necessarily entail the end of sexual difference. Although equality and sameness are often confused, one should take care to distinguish between the two terms. The direction of the gendered society in the third millennium is not for women and men to become increasingly similar but for them to become more equal. “Such a transformation”, as Michael Kimmel elaborates, “does not require that men and women become more like each other, but, rather, more deeply and fully themselves” (2000, 268). When we speak of sexual difference, 37

Whereas many theorists, some of them women, have drawn on the tools of deconstruction to dismantle metaphysical conceptions of Woman, it is at least curious, as Schor (1987, 109) comments, that no feminist theoretician who is not also a woman has ever fully espoused the claims to a feminine specificity, and irreducible difference. Schor explains that there is a division between masculine and feminine positions on difference: “Those who adopt the masculine position press for an end to sexual difference and only grudgingly acknowledge claims for feminine specificity, those who adopt the feminine position concede the strategic efficacy of undoing sexual oppositions and positionalities, all the while pursuing the construction of difference” (110). Schor insists that the most active site of feminine resistance to the discourse of indifference is a certain insistence on doubling, which may well be the feminine way of subverting the unitary subject: “Women occupy in modern Western culture a specific liminal cultural position which is […] connected to their anatomical difference, to their femaleness. Women are bilingual, bifocal, bitextual” (110). Schor’s argument about a “feminine position” on difference (which attempts to undermine sexual inequality and yet maintain sexual difference) seems interesting. However, in its emphasis on anatomy and femaleness, it ends up relying on essentialist conceptions of gender and is thus (at least partly) flawed.

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we should distinguish between “opposition” and “difference”. Opposition means two, opposition is man/woman. On the other hand, differences suggest an indefinite number of sexes. As long as we maintain sexual dualism in the classical sense—an opposition of two—Derrida explains that “the arrangement is such that the ‘gift’ is impossible. All that you can call ‘gift’—love, jouissance—is absolutely forbidden by the dual opposition” (1987, 198). In Derrida’s view, what is needed is the end of sexual opposition, not the end of sexual difference itself. A certain neutralization can reconstruct phallogocentric privilege. However, there is another neutralization mechanism that can neutralize sexual opposition rather than sexual difference, liberating the field of sexuality for a very different sexuality—a more multiple and varied sexuality. In Derrida’s words: At that point there would be no more sexes […] there would be one sex for each time. One sex for each gift. That can be produced within the situation of a man and a woman, a man and a man, a woman and a woman, three men and a woman, etc. […] This is sexual difference. It is absolutely heterogeneous. (1987, 199)

Such an attitude toward indeterminacy is indeed very common among queer researchers, who tend to use antifoundational methods informed by poststructuralist theories of the sign.38 For example, in their seminal text Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern (1999), Carolyn Dinshaw analyzes a number of medieval texts where the meaning of concepts such as “sex” or “heterosexuality/ homosexuality” varies radically in the space of a few lines and where “natural” and “unnatural” sexual practices are confusingly proximate.39 According to Dinshaw, sex indeterminacy derives from two main factors. First, sex depends on systems of representation and, as such, is fragmented and contradictory. In other words, its meaning or significance cannot be definitively determined without exclusivity or reductiveness; moreover, such meanings and significances change with changes in place and time. Second, sex is indissolubly linked to other cultural phenomena, and the indeterminacy of cultural phenomena is central to her historical vision.40 Scholars such as Dinshaw thus manage to keep “sex” as a useful identity category while also insisting on its intrinsic heterogeneity and indeterminacy (see also Dinshaw, 2009, 69).41 In so doing, queer theory has started to move beyond the dichotomous debate 38

Insisting on the indeterminacy of sexuality, Dinshaw has even suggested that concepts such as sex, sexuality, or gender might be “white” terms. It might be a good idea, as Dinshaw insists, to use them carefully as “provisional” terms (2009, 76–77). 39 As Carolyn Dinshaw concludes, “these criteria of naturalness have everything to do with proper gender roles” (1999, 7). 40 Dinshaw’s explicit reference to “other cultural phenomena” is linked to her attempt to challenge any “invidious formulations that suggest that queer articulations of indeterminacy can’t tell us a thing or have nothing to do with living in the ‘real world’, past or present” (1999, 22). Moreover, she complains that analysis of interrelations between sexuality and other cultural phenomena is only occasionally pursued. 41 Dinshaw’s text does not only question the binary between gay/queer theory but also other key binary oppositions in gender studies as essentialism/social constructionism. Indeed, she reminds us that Michael Foucault, who is traditionally regarded as the father of constructionism, acknowledged his debt to John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in

Rethinking the Debate

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between poststructuralism and approaches based on gender and sexual identity. It is true, as Asian American queer scholar David Eng (2009) has noted, that most epistemologies are still addressed and unacknowledged and supposedly universal, fixed, and unitary subjects (88–89). For example, the white, Euro-American, middle-class woman remains the unacknowledged, universal subject of feminism, just as the white, Euro-American, middle-class gay man is the unacknowledged, universal subject of most gay and queer studies. In the same manner, the white, Euro-American, middleclass, heterosexual man also remains the unacknowledged and presumably universal, coherent, and stable subject of masculinity studies. Nevertheless, the assumption of a universal, coherent subject for masculinity studies may, and should, be questioned for different reasons. On the one hand, it is important to bear in mind, as has already been noted, that conceptions of masculinity vary according to factors such as class or ethnicity. Second, no masculine identity is stable and coherent. As David Eng explains, masculine subjectivity is “the hybrid result of internalized ideals and lived material contradictions that were once external” (2001, 25). Most discourses that equate a given (usually white heterosexual) masculine essence with purity, wholeness, authenticity, and self-will can be traced back to Enlightenment theories and the legacies of abstract liberal humanism. However, poststructuralist theory has challenged most of these liberal assumptions, showing how belief in autonomous and transparent masculine subjectivity is an illusion. In doing so, it has also been shown how all masculine identifications are always failed identifications, a continual passing as a coherent and static social identity. In David Eng’s own words, “even the most orthodox of subject positions, finally, are ambivalent and porous” (2001, 26).42 Challenging traditional conceptions of masculinity as un unitary and fixed, Eng advocates a new definition of masculinity studies as “subjectless” (2009, 89). However, his redefinition does not entail doing away with the subject. He simply defends a view of the subject as problematic. There is, indeed, a key difference between the classical poststructuralist view whereby the subject never existed and Eng’s argument that sees the subject as heterogeneous and contradictory. Eng questions the liberal humanist belief in the subject as intrinsically problematic, which is Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (1980), where homosexuality is seen as a transhistorical constant and where a “specific gay essence grounds both community and history” (1999, 30). In Foucault’s words: [Boswell’s] introduction of the concept of “gay” (in the way he defines it) provides us both with a useful instrument of research and at the same time a better comprehension of how people actually conceive of themselves and their sexual behavior […] sexual behavior is not, as is too often assumed, a superimposition of, on the one hand, desires which derive from natural instincts, and, on the other, of permissive or restrictive laws which tell us what we should or shouldn’t do. Sexual behavior is more than that. It is also the consciousness one has of what one is doing, what one makes of the experience, and the value one attaches to it. (qtd. in Dinshaw, 1999, 33–4) 42

See also Butler (1993, 122).

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not the same as doing away with the subject. Thus, David Eng does not advocate for the total dissolution of the subject. Like Judith Butler (2002, 318), Eng simply contends that we should suspend all commitments to that which the term “the subject” describes and that we ponder the linguistic function if fulfilled in the consolidation and concealment of authority. Taking all these innovative ideas into account, this study starts from the critical assumption that gender identity, both masculine and feminine, cannot be ignored nor taken for granted. Categories such as masculinity and gender continue to be socially and theoretically relevant, even if merely due to their frequently repressive and oppressive effects. However, in agreement with poststructuralist and queer thinking, we contend that hegemonic masculinity is not unitary or monolithic but rather heterogeneous, multiple, and contingent. As Hearn and Collinson indicate, white masculinities “may indeed be simultaneously Irish, Jewish, and English; heterosexual masculinities may also be celibate, narcissistic, gay, bisexual […] In short, types of men do not exist as separate categories or as separate in themselves” (1994, 114). Thus, masculinity comprises a multiplicity of national, racialized, and sexual factors, which will necessarily lead to internal conflict and contradiction. Masculinity is not a unitary concept but simply represents trends and possibilities that individuals draw on at different moments and coexist in complex and shifting relationships. In other words, completely different notions of masculinity can refer simultaneously or sequentially to the same individual. As Cornwall and Lindisfarne elaborate in this latter respect: Meaning depends on who is speaking and who is being described in what setting. Masculinity has multiple and ambiguous meanings which alter according to context and over time. The meanings of masculinity also vary across cultures and admit to cultural borrowing; masculinities imported from elsewhere are conflated with local ideas to produce new configurations. (1994, 12)

Moreover, the present work not only views masculinity as a contradictory and variable concept but also contends that it is necessary to delve into its fissures, contradictions, and variations. In other words, this study does not aim to “solve” (were it possible) masculinity’s internal contradictions, let alone reduce its complexity and plurality. In contrast, the present thesis aims to focus on the complex, plural, and often contradictory constructions of being a man. After all, gender and masculinity studies, as queer scholar Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick commented, should never give up exploring “the indisseverable girdle of incongruities under whose discomforting span, for most of a century, has unfolded both the most generative and the most murderous plots of our culture” (1998, 90). This study thus sustains that it is possible and convenient to combine and reconcile feminist politics with the poststructuralist analysis of masculinity’s internal fissures and contradictions. As Judith Butler noted, “the deconstruction of identity is not the deconstruction of politics; rather, it establishes as political the very terms through which identity is articulated” (1993, 288). To claim a poststructuralist understanding of subjectivity and identity is not to place politics in the discourse of fragmentation. Equally important, it is not to set politics against poststructuralist thought. Rather, it is to think of the two fields in a dialectic tension

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(Eng and Hom, 1998, 17). Nevertheless, it is important to ponder the new political possibilities that this knowledge opens up for studies of masculinities since a full understanding of the fragmented male subject allows us to question the exclusionary components of our own gendered and identity-based claims. After all, a monolithic vision of contemporary masculine identity overlooks the existing social, racialized, and sexual differences among men. Moreover, it reinforces the view of masculinity as natural, fixed, unitary, eternal, and immutable. In this way, masculinity could actually go unanalyzed and unchallenged. Thus, it is no longer clear that feminist theory should rely on notions of primary identity to address the task of politics. Instead, we should wonder about the new political possibilities that might emerge from a radical poststructuralist critique of the subject. As Butler herself elaborates in this respect: If the genealogical critique of the subject is the interrogation of those constitutive and exclusionary relations of power through which contemporary discursive resources are formed, then it follows that the critique of the queer subject is crucial to the continuing democratization of queer politics. As much as identity terms must be used […] these same notions must become subject to a critique of the exclusionary operations of their own production: […] Who is represented by which use of the term, and who is excluded? From whom does the term present an impossible conflict between racial, ethnic, or religious affiliation and sexual politics? The different ways of applying the term, what kind of policies are enabled by what kinds of usages, and which are backgrounded or erased from view? In this sense, the genealogical critique of the queer subject will be central to queer politics to the extent that it constitutes a self-critical dimension within activism, a persistent reminder to take the time to consider the exclusionary force of one of activism’s most treasured contemporary premises. (1993, 319–20)

Revising Masculinities from an Interdisciplinary Perspective If we start from the premise that hegemonic masculinity is varied and multiple, it also seems logical that this study relies on numerous disciplines. In other words, the very object of study of the present work seems to call for the use of an interdisciplinary methodology. On the basis of what Jack Halberstam has described as a “queer methodology” (1998, 32),43 the following chapters will analyze a number of masculinity-related issues from different disciplinary perspectives, including recent path-breaking contributions from sociology, psychology and psychoanalysis, history, anthropology, and literary theory, among others. Using an interdisciplinary approach to masculinities, this study relies on what Halberstam has defined as “a scavenger methodology”, which makes use of a number of different disciplines and approaches to collect and produce information on a given subject. Historically, the general models

43

“I call this methodology queer because it attempts to remain supple enough to respond to the various locations of information on […] masculinity and betrays a certain disloyalty to conventional disciplinary methods” (Halberstam, 1998, 32).

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that have governed related research have been biological, anthropological, psychological, and sociological.44 Although each of these perspectives helps us to better understand the meaning and forms of masculinity,45 each is also limited in its ability to fully explain its workings (Kimmel and Messner, 1998, xi). For example, in biology, genetic reductionism, which links different-sex behaviors to different genetic factors without hesitation, is undermined by the latest genetic theory, which, since the 1970s, completely rejects earlier assumptions that genes determine complex human action in any stable or direct way. There are no genes for everything, “let alone for such complex historically and socially shaped features of human existence as sexual desire or urban guerrillas” (Segal, 1997, xv, xvi).46 We may be born males or females, but we always become men and women in a given sociocultural and historical context. Biological differences between males and females would seem to influence some parameters related to differences in social life but would not determine the behaviors of men and women in any one culture. Indeed, these psychological and social differences would appear to be the result far more of the ways in which different cultures interpret, adapt, and modify these biological inheritances. For instance, observed normative temperamental differences between men and women who are assumed to be of biological origin, as John Gray argues in his popular book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus (2010), are often translated into political prescriptions in culture. Therefore, “what is normative (i.e., what is prescribed) is translated into what is normal, and the mechanisms of this transformation are the assumed biological imperative” (Kimmel and Messner, 1998, xi). Although several anthropological works, such as Margaret Mead’s landmark text Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), have shown that the wide variations among cultures in their prescriptions of gender roles point to the fluidity of gender and the primacy of cultural organization,47 many anthropological models, such as David Gilmore’s Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity (1990), insist on the universality of gender differences, which they 44

In addition to these main models, scientific research on men and masculinities has also benefited from a number of key texts on other areas, such as philosophical approaches to masculinity. In this respect, one should mention the works of Larry May and Robert Strikwerda (1992), Kenneth Clatterbaugh (1990), or Harry Brod (1987), among others. However, May and Strikwerda themselves acknowledge that although there have been many popular books on masculinity, as well as many books in social science and literature, “there have been very few books on philosophy and masculinity” (1992, xii). 45 For a detailed analysis of the different contributions of each of these models to masculinity studies, see Kimmel (2000, 21–107). Michael Flood has also listed the most relevant sociological, psychological, anthropological, and cultural texts on masculinities studies (2002). 46 As Segal insists, “this knowledge has failed to stall the absurd illusions fuelled by beliefs in the potential of the massively funded […] Human Genome Project in the USA, set up to identify the genetic determination of all aspects of human behavior” (1997, xvii). 47 As Kimmel and Messner insist, “Mead observed such wide variability among gender role prescriptions – and such marked differences from our own -that any universality implied by biological or anthropological models had to be rejected” (1998, xii). Although the empirical accuracy of Mead’s work has been questioned in its specific arguments, the general theoretical arguments remain convincing.

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put down to specific cultural adaptations to the environment. Such positions reveal obvious conservatism since they assure that the differences between men and women are the differences that nature or cultural evolution intended and are thus not to be tampered with (Kimmel and Messner, 1998, xii). Psychological models have made some decisive contributions to masculinity studies, accounting for many of the internal conflicts and fragile sexual identities that haunt the minds of men; the power and meanings of masculinity stem not only from anatomy or familial interaction but also from broader social and political gendered relations. Nevertheless, the power and meanings of masculinity come not only from the anatomy of family interactions but also from broader social and political gender interactions. As Lynne Segal elaborates, “it is the difficulty of moving beyond the pervasive methodological individualism of all psychological thinking (beyond the idea that all explanations of personal and social phenomena can be reduced to facts about individuals) that makes it hard to understand why change is so slow and so contradictory” (1997, xxxvi). On the other hand, although psychological theorizing about gender has described specific developmental sequences for both males and females, these models have also been challenged by feminist psychoanalysts such as Nancy Chodorow and Carol Gilligan. These scholars have shown, for example, how a number of ideological assumptions make masculinity the standard and the norm against which the psychological development of both males and females is measured. Inevitably, femininity becomes problematic and less fully developed. As a consequence, femininity becomes inevitably problematic and less fully developed. Moreover, Chodorow, as Kimmel and Messner (1998, xiii) remind us, insists that the “essential” differences between the sexes are socially constructed and, therefore, subject to revision. In a recent book, queer theorist Paul B. Preciado (2021) also denounced not only sexism but also heterosexism in psychoanalysis, which, in his opinion, seems to be incapable of explaining sexual differences beyond the androcentric, homophobic, and transphobic binaries on which this theory is based. Despite their essential contribution to masculinity studies (Pascoe and Bridges, 2015; Kimmel, 2000), some sociological models still rely on “sex role theory”. Several sociologists keep talking about “sex roles”, namely, “the collection of attitudes, attributes, and behaviors that is seen as appropriate for males and appropriate for females” (Kimmel and Messner, 1998, xiii). In this way, masculinity is often associated with technical mastery, aggression, competitiveness, and cognitive abstraction, whereas femininity is associated with emotional empathy, sociability, and passivity. However, several feminist scholars have also set out to challenge this theory, showing how a compartmentalized division of feminine and masculine roles not only ignores the permanent relational nature of gender but also tends to point out differences without taking inequalities in these roles into account, which often makes masculinity the norm against which both sexes are measured.48 From what has been pointed out, it seems clear that studies of masculinities may benefit from an interdisciplinary methodology that analyzes different questions from

48

For an in-depth analysis and critique of sex role theory, see Kimmel (2000, 89–92).

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highly divergent (sometimes conflicting) perspectives and, in so doing, helps to maintain a critical focus on each of them. The following pages will therefore focus on deconstructing hegemonic masculinity from these different perspectives, including some of the latest contributions from the areas of sociology, psychology and psychoanalysis, anthropology, philosophy, history, and literary work, among others.49 In this sense, there will be a special emphasis on representations of masculinity in literature. This process will be carried out for several reasons. First, due to the nature of gender itself, which, as we have seen in this chapter, works frequently as a discursive construction and production of language. In line with this, Halberstam, for example, correctly makes us recall that gender studies need to crossover the traditional divide between the so-called truth of sexual behavior and the “fiction” of textual analysis. While scholars such as Cindy Patton have complained about the dominance of textually based forms of queer theory, Halberstam wonders if there is a form of theory that is not textually based. “Isn’t the sexual ethnographer studying texts? And doesn’t a social historian collate evidence from texts? […] Conversely, readings of texts also require historical contexts and some relation to the lived experience of subjects” (Halberstam 1998, 33–4). Second, our research will frequently use cultural and literary examples to illustrate its theses, thereby accepting the principle that “gender is (a) representation” and that “the representation of gender is its construction” (De Lauretis, 1987, 3). Thus, one deduces that studies of cultural representations of gender are particularly relevant to the analysis of social, institutional, or personal constructions of masculinity (Armengol, 2019; Reeser, 2011). Little wonder that since the 1990s, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of studies of literary masculinities.50 While the first masculinity studies in the 1970s and 1980s usually came from the fields of psychology and sociology, since the 1990s masculinity scholarship seems to be paying special attention to cultural and literary representations of masculinity (Armengol, 2014; Reeser, 2011). The following chapter will thus focus on these issues.

References Allen, Theodore W. The Invention of the White Race. Volume I. Racial Oppression and Social Control [1994]. London and New York: Verso, 1995. ———. The Invention of the White Race. Volume II. The Origin of Racial Oppression in AngloAmerica [1994]. London and New York: Verso, 1997.

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As will be seen, this study will borrow heavily from sociological approaches to masculinities. While sociological theory is generally grounded in both quantitative and qualitative methods, sociological analyses of masculinity, particularly the most influential (see, for example, Kimmel, 1997, 2000; Beneke, 1997; Kaufman, 1994; Brod, 1987), tend to use a qualitative, rather than a quantitative methodology. Thus, the sociological parts of the present study will also be focused on qualitative, rather than quantitative, data. 50 See Michael Flood’s section on “Masculinities in culture and representation”, and his subsection on “Literature and literary theory” (2002).

References

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Armengol, Josep M. Masculinities in Blacks and Whites: Manliness and Whiteness in American Literature. New York: Palgrave, 2014. ———. “Past, Present (and Future) of Studies of Literary Masculinities: A Case Study in Intersectionality.” Men and Masculinities 22.1 (2019): 64–74. Barrett, James R. and David Roediger. “How White People Became White.” Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror. Ed. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997. 402–6. Bem, Sandra Lipsitz. The Lenses of Gender. Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993. Beneke, Timothy. Proving Manhood: Reflections on Men and Sexism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Bourdieu, Pierre. Masculine Domination. 1998. Cambridge: Polity, 2001. Brittan, Arthur. Masculinity and Power. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Brod, Harry. “The Case for Men’s Studies.” The Making of Masculinities: The New Men’s Studies. Ed. Harry Brod. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987. 39–62. ———. “Some Thoughts on Some Histories of Some Masculinities: Jews and Other Others.” Theorizing Masculinities. Ed. Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994. 82–96. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1990. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge, 1993. Chapman, Rowena and Jonathan Rutherford. Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988. Clatterbaugh, Kenneth C. Contemporary Perspectives on Masculinity: Men, Women and Politics in Modern Society. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990. Cleaver, Kathleen Neal. “The Antidemocratic Power of Whiteness.” Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror. Ed. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997. 157–63. Collin, Françoise. “Poética y política, o los lenguajes sexuados de la creación.” La conjura del olvido: escritura y feminismo. Ed. Nieves Ibeas and María Ángeles Millán. Barcelona: Icaria, 1997. 61–74. ———. “Praxis de la diferencia. Notas sobre lo trágico del sujeto.” MORA: Revista del área interdisciplinaria de estudios de la mujer 1 (August 1995): 2–17. Cornwall, Andrea and Nancy Lindisfarne (eds.). Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. De Lauretis, Teresa. Technologies of Gender. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology [1967]. Trans. Gayatri Spivak. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ———. “Women in the Beehive: A Seminar.” Men in Feminism. Ed. Alice Jardine and Paul Smith. New York and London: Methuen, 1987. 189–203. Dinshaw, Carolyn. Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999. ———. “Queer Perspectives.” In Debating Masculinity. Ed. Josep M. Armengol and Àngels Carabí. Harriman, TN: Men’s Studies Press, 2009. 68–79. DiPiero, Thomas. White Men Aren’t. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. Dubbert, Joe. A Man’s Place: Masculinity in Transition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1974. Eng, David. “Race and Masculinity.” Debating Masculinity. Ed. Josep M. Armengol and Àngels Carabí. Harriman, TN: Men’s Studies Press, 2009. 80–92. ———. Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001. Eng, David and Alice Y. Hom. “Introduction.” Q & A: Queer in Asian America. Ed. David L. Eng and Alice Y. Hom. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998. 1–21. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. I. 1976. London: Harmondsworth, 1984.

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Gardiner, Judith Kegan. “Introduction.” Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions. Ed. Judith Kegan Gardiner. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 1–29. Grim, Patrick. “Sex and Social Roles: How to Deal with the Data.” Rethinking Masculinity: Philosophical Explorations in Light of Feminism. Ed. Larry May and Robert Strikwerda. Lanham: Littlefield Adams Quality Papers, 1992. 3–19. Gutterman, David S. “Poststructuralism and the Interrogation of Masculinity.” Theorizing Masculinities. Ed. Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994. 219–38. Halbersta, Jack. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. Haraway, Donna J. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York and London: Routledge, 1991. Hearn, Jeff and David L. Collinson. “Theorizing Unities and Differences Between Men and Between Masculinities.” Theorizing Masculinities. Ed. Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994. 97–118 Horsman, Reginald. “Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial AngloSaxonism.” Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror. Ed. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997. 139–44. Hunter, Shona and Christi van der Westhuizen (eds.). Routledge Handbook of Critical Studies in Whiteness. New York: Routledge, 2021. Katz, Jonathan Ned. The Invention of Heterosexuality. New York: Dutton, 1995. Kaufman, Michael. “Men, Feminism, and Men’s Contradictory Experiences of Power.” Theorizing Masculinities. Ed. Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994. 142–63. Kimmel, Michael. Angry White Men. New York: Nation Books, 2019 ———. The Gendered Society. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. ———. Manhood in America: A Cultural History [1996]. New York: The Free Press, 1997. Kimmel, Michael and Michael Messner (eds.). Men’s Lives [1989]. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1977. Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. May, Larry and Robert Strikwerda. “Introduction.” Rethinking Masculinity: Philosophical Explorations in Light of Feminism. Ed. Larry May and Robert Strikwerda. Lanham: Littlefield Adams Quality Papers, 1992. xi–xx. McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies.” Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror. Ed. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997. 291–9. The Men’s Bibliography: A Comprehensive Bibliography of Writing on Men, Masculinities, Gender, and Sexualities. Ed. Michael Flood, 4 January 2022. http://www.xyonline.net/mensbiblio/. Middleton, Peter. The Inward Gaze. Masculinity and Subjectivity in Modern Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1990. Montag, Warren. “The Universalization of Whiteness: Racism and Enlightenment.” Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror. Ed. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic. Philadephia: Temple University Press, 1997. 281–93. Moore, Henrietta. “Divided We Stand: Sex, Gender, and Sexual Difference.” Feminist Review 47 (1994): 78–95. Oliver, Maria Antònia. “Crossroads and Battlegrounds: The Borderlands as Social and Imaginary Space in Contemporary Writings by Chicanas.” Diss. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2000. Pascoe, C. J. and Tristan Bridges (eds.). Exploring Masculinities: Identity, Inequality, Continuity, and Change. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Petersen, Alan. “Research on Men and Masculinities: Some Implications of Recent Theory for Future Work.” Men and Masculinities 6.1 (2003): 54–69. Preciado, Paul B. Can the Monster Speak? Report to an Academy of Psychoanalysts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021. Reeser, Todd W. Masculinities in Theory: An Introduction. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

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Robinson, Sally. Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Schiebinger, Londa. Nature’s Body. Boston: Beacon, 1993. Schor, Naomi. “Dreaming Dissymmetry: Barthes, Foucault, and Sexual Difference.” Men in Feminism. Ed. Alice Jardine and Paul Smith. New York and London: Methuen, 1987. 98–110. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet [1990]. Barcelona: Ediciones de la Tempestad, 1998. Segal, Lynne. Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men [1990]. London: Virago, 1997. Silverman, Kaja. Male Subjectivity at the Margins. New York: Routledge, 1992. Stokes, Mason. The Color of Sex: Whiteness, Heterosexuality, and the Fictions of White Supremacy. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001. Stoltenberg, John. Refusing to Be a Man. Portland, OR: Breitenbush Books, 1989. Waugh, Patricia. “Introduction.” Postmodernism: A Reader. Ed. Patricia Waugh. London: Edward Arnold, 1992. 1–10. Women’s Bookshop of Milan/Libreria delle Donne di Milano. Il patriarcato è finito (è accaduto non per caso). Trad. María-Milagros Rivera [1996]. Barcelona: Pròleg, 1998. Yanagisako, Sylvia and Jane Collier. “Toward a Unified Analysis of Gender and Kinship.” Gender and Kinship. Ed. Jane Collier and Sylvia Yanagisako. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987. 14–50.

Chapter 4

Masculinity as (a) Representation

Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth. —Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried (1990) Re-vision—the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction—is for us more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival […] We need to know the writing of the past, and know it differently than we have evert known it; not to pass on a tradition but to break its hold over us. —Adrienne Rich, «When the Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision» (1975)

This chapter argues that to gain deeper insight into the social construction of masculinity, it may be particularly useful to analyze its cultural and, especially, literary representations. In this sense, it must be admitted, however, that a number of critics, perhaps most notably Harold Bloom, have long insisted on the distinction between the “literary” and the “nonliterary”, or the division between literature and society whereby literature and aesthetic values are separated from society or considered to be beyond it. In Bloom’s view, the aesthetic is an individual rather than a social concern. In his own words, “cultural criticism is another dismal social science, but literary criticism, as an art, always was and will always be an elitist phenomenon. It was a mistake to believe that literary criticism could become a basis for democratic education or for societal improvement” (1994, 18). However, equally renowned scholars, such as Pierre Macherey (1995, 1989), Terry Eagleton (1983), and Fredric Jameson (1981), among many others, have radically questioned the traditional distinction between literature, on the one hand, and society and politics, on the other. Terry Eagleton, for example, has argued that “there is, in fact, no need to drag politics into literary theory […] it has been there from the beginning” (1983, 194). Culture and literature have always been centrally concerned with managing the conflicts and contradictions of politics and society. Since ideology and politics, as Michel Foucault has shown, are inseparable from discourse, literature, as a discursive practice, becomes itself a privileged site of ideological struggle and contestation (see also Armengol, 2019).1 1

See also Collin (1997), who has argued that «there cannot be a transformation of social relations without a symbolic transformation» (63).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. M. Armengol, Rewriting White Masculinities in Contemporary Fiction and Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53349-5_4

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Focusing on the growth of fictional representations of masculinity as a field of study, the present chapter begins by providing an overview of studies of literary masculinities, briefly analyzing their origins, as well as their development and latest findings. The chapter then analyzes the new and numerous critical possibilities generated by a rereading of literature by these studies. Like the issue of men in feminism in general (Digby, 1998), men’s participation in feminist literary criticism has been subject to much controversy, which this chapter specifically addresses. Equally controversial has been the (ir)relevance of the sex of the author to textual criticism, the focus of the next section. Since masculine identity is plural, complex, and often contradictory (see Chapter 3), it seems logical to assume that the fiction produced by white male authors may also be so. Thus, I argue that the fiction written by these authors can produce both traditional and innovative representations of masculinity, as the literary examples discussed in the following chapters also illustrate. In conclusion, this chapter attempts to introduce and explore the subject of masculinity studies in literary criticism. By applying these studies to the analysis of both social constructions and literary representations of masculinity (Armengol, 2019, 2010), we intend, ultimately, to establish a dialog between different disciplines—such as sociology and psychology, on the one hand, and cultural and literary studies, on the other—as well as critical theories—such as masculinity studies and literary critical theories—and to question the traditional divisions between society and culture, political practice and literature, the social (con)text and the literary text.

Cultural and Literary Representations of Masculinity: An Introduction As an increasing number of studies are being published on literary representations of masculinity, it seems necessary to recognize how this field is indebted to several sources. The main one is, without a doubt, feminist literary criticism, which has since the 1960s and 1970s come to explore literary representations of women and femininity. In this respect, it is worth acknowledging the path-breaking work of feminist writers such as Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir, as well as Ellen Moers (1976), Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar (1979), or Maggie Humm (1994), to name but a few. Likewise, much of the current work on literary masculinities is indebted to gay and queer literary criticism. Although masculinity scholars are indebted to several literary critics in this sense, David Bergman seems to have played a key role in shaping the vision of homosexuality as a literary construction, suggesting that gay men “learned to speak about their sexuality in a rhetoric of despair and degradation” (1991, 6–7). Another invaluable primary source is the work of queer authors such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1992). Although the book covers a relatively short fragment of English literature, from the mid-eighteenth- to mid-nineteenth-century novel, Sedgwick made a highly innovative contribution to masculinity scholarship

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by drawing “the ‘homosocial’ back into the orbit of ‘desire’, of the potentially erotic” (Sedgwick, 1992, 1). Thus, starting from not only feminist but also gay and queer premises, current research on literary representations of (heterosexual) males goes back at least to the 1980s. Even though the key text by David Leverenz on representations of masculinity in American literature from the mid-nineteenth century, Manhood and the American Renaissance (1989) is still considered a seminal text, the field had already been researched as of the early 1980s and even more so since then. In this sense, the work of Alfred Habegger Gender, Fantasy and Realism in American Literature (1982) had already explored the representations of masculinity in the realistic novels of Henry James and William Dean Howells, in the same manner as Peter Schwenger’s Phallic Critiques: Masculinity and Twentieth-Century Literature (1984) had analyzed masculinity in the fiction of de Mailer, Mishima, and Hemingway. In this text, Schwenger also points out the interface between sexuality and literary style, claiming that “there is such a thing as a masculine style” (1984, 12). Two other influential early texts that also focused on literature were the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985), which, as already pointed out, drew on erotic (literary) triangles to challenge the traditional duality between “homoerotic” and “homosocial” desire; and the anthology Men in Feminism (1987), edited by Alice Jardine and Paul Smith, which focused on feminism (made by men) in literature and culture. Double Talk: The Erotics of Male Literary Collaboration (1989), by Wayne Koestenbaum, and Engendering Men: The Question of Male Feminist Criticism (1990), by Joseph A. Boone and Michael Cadden were equally influential. While the former was centered on the literary collaboration between male authors,2 the edition by Boone and Cadden of Engendering Men signaled “several avenues” (1990, 4) from which a practical criticism by men doing feminism might emerge.3 Andrew P. Williams (1999), in turn, focused on images of masculinity from British literature in the early modern era, while David Rosen, in The Changing Fictions of Masculinity (1993), had already drawn out the first history of masculinity in British literature. Of course, women have also made decisive contributions to the feminist analysis of literary constructions of masculinity. Like Boone and Cadden, the work of Laura Claridge and Elizabeth Langland Out of Bounds: Male Writers and Gender(ed)

2

More specifically, Koestenbaum argued that when two men write together, they engage in double talk, «they rapidly patter to obscure their erotic burden, but the ambiguities of their discourse give the taboo subject some liberty to roam» (1989, 3). 3 Boone and Cadden (1990) noted that, in the 1990s, men have already begun to redefine themselves as men and, therefore, as critics of the literary and cultural texts that we had inherited and were in the process of recreating. «In engendering ourselves, in making visible our textual/sexual bodies», these scholars concluded «we thus acknowledge our part in a movement whose time, we hope, has come» (7).

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Criticism (1990), for example, analyzed several male writers to examine the feminist inclination of their works.4 Furthermore, if most studies on literary masculinities focused on the dominant Anglo-American context, Michael Kane’s work Modern Men: Mapping Masculinity in English and German Literature, 1880–1930 (1999) suggested rereading, from a comparative perspective, some of the canonical works of both modernist British and German literature, with reference to the issues of masculinity, homosociality, and nationalism. In turn, Peter Murphy’s Fictions of Masculinity (1994) used authors such as Kafka, Günter Grass, and the Egyptian Mahfouz to compare different constructions of literary masculinities in different cultures. Following Hispanic anthropologists (Mirandé, 1997), several earlier texts on literary masculinities were also published in, for example, Spanish and/or focused on the Hispanic context; these included Nuevas Masculinidades (2000) and Hombres escritos por mujeres (2003), both edited by Àngels Carabí and Marta Segarra. While the former examined several models of masculinity in literature and the media, both Hispanic and international, the latter was centered on the representations of masculinity drawn out by women writers from all over the world. Therefore, since the 1990s, the field has continued to rapidly develop and expand, ranging from Ben Knights’s Writing Masculinities (1999), focused on the narratives of literary men from the twentieth century, to Writing Men (2000) by Berthold Schoene, a literary history of (British) masculinities, from Frankenstein to the “New Man”. The latter included a great corrective to the recurring heterosexist biases in the field, incorporating several gay authors and fiction texts.5 Among the latest contributions to the field, one finds the work of Todd W. Reeser in Masculinities in Theory (2011), one of the first introductions to masculinities from the perspective of the humanities, including literary studies, and two studies by Stefan Horlacher, Constructions of Masculinity in British Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present (2011) and Configuring Masculinity in Theory and Literary Practice (2015), both on British literature.6 These texts have been recently complemented by Alternative Masculinities for a Changing World (2014), edited by Carabí and Armengol, who explore nondominant models of masculinity in contemporary (U.S.) culture and literature and Masculinity and Literary studies (Armengol et al., 2017), which illustrates the intersections between masculinities and literary criticism, as well as some of the latest developments stemming from them. Equally recent is the volume Aging Masculinities in Contemporary U.S. Fiction (Armengol, 2021), focused on the intersections of gender and age, specifically on mature masculinities in contemporary U.S. fiction.

4

Thus, Claridge y Langland (1990) insisted on the subversive and feminist potential of several texts written by male writers, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and Henry James’s The Bostonians (1886), among others. 5 It is important to recognize, in any case, that some critics such as Peter F. Murphy (1994) had already started this path. 6 See also Armengol (2010), who demonstrates the applicability of masculinity studies to literary criticism through an in-depth analysis of the fiction of American contemporary author Richard Ford.

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Masculinity Studies in Contemporary Literary Criticism Despite the growing body of work on literary masculinities, the field remains largely unexplored in academia, especially in comparison to literary studies on women. While the feminist analysis of literary women has already become part of the academic curriculum and is often familiar to both male and female students, the analysis of literary masculinities is not often applied and remains largely unknown. As the literary critic Berthold Schoene explains, Ask any discerning (male) student to write an essay on Jane Austen’s representation of women or the straitjacketing impact of patriarchal gender politics on the women in Shakespeare’s comedies, and the result is often clearly and cogently argued. However, ask them to comment on the representation of men, and the response is often a mixture of discomfort, nervous agitation and silence. (2000, viii)

There are several reasons for this. On the one hand, the analysis of the images of women in literature has a fairly long history within feminist literary criticism, while the feminist analysis of literary masculinities is a relatively recent—and by comparison—small addition to academia. Except for a few critics, such as Fiedler (1998) and Leverenz (1989), men have just begun to analyze masculinity in contemporary culture and literature. As Peter F. Murphy indicates, “more recent, and sometimes more radical, books have been written by sociologists, psychologists, and historians, not literary or cultural critics” (1994, 4). Furthermore, very few texts suggest how an analysis of literary masculinities should proceed. No matter how well-intentioned, it does not seem to be enough for men simply to adopt and start imitating feminist perspectives, aims, and resolutions. To address the specific dilemma of their masculine condition, men, as Schoene (2000, ix) elaborates in this respect, must try to develop their own counter-discourse against patriarchy. Although we still lack a critical vocabulary pertinent to the analysis of literary masculinities, this approach may prove beneficial for several reasons. First, just as the erroneous assumption that male experience equals human experience affected literary criticism of women as characters and authors, this approach has limited our perceptions of men in literature. Therefore, masculinity studies entail a radical revision of the way we read literature and of the way we perceive men and masculine ideals in literature (Armengol, 2010, 2017, 2021). As James D. Riemer indicates, “in the past 10 to 15 years”, masculinities studies have “examined our culturally defined ideals of masculinity and how they affected men’s lives, transforming universal human experiences into ones that are distinctly masculine” (1987, 289). Thus, in the approach to literature, we can shift the focus from the manner in which men’s lives reflect abstract and universal issues to a more intimate, personal concern with how cultural values, particularly those related to ideals of masculinity, affect men’s lives on a personal level (293–5). For example, rethinking supposedly universal and genderless issues such as emotions and fatherhood (Chapter 5), friendships (Chapter 6), and violence (Chapter 7) from a masculinity perspective may help to illustrate, as we will see, how masculinity ideals affect, and often restrict and complicate, men’s lives

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in current culture and literature. Another implication of this rereading is the analysis of a significant part of literary works as social documents reflecting a certain society’s conceptions of masculinity.7 Since the social fabric is plural rather than monolithic, masculinity studies, as Riemer (290) indicates, are centrally concerned with showing the multiple conceptions and representations of being a man in fiction. For example, Ernest Hemingway’s representations of stoic, tough, violent, and apparently unemotional male characters from In Our Time (1925) differ substantially from John Steinbeck’s portrait of the close and atypically affectionate friendship between two men in Of Mice and Men (1937). Therefore, literary representations of masculinity are, in the same way as social concepts, determined by culture. It is not surprising, then, that researchers have paid increasing attention to representations of masculinities from the global South or beyond the Anglophone world. For example, scholars have paid increasing attention to those of Malawian writers Ken Lipenga, South African Pumla Dineo Gqola, and Turkish Nedim Gürsel, who, in their portrayal of ethnic masculinities, have demonstrated how concepts of being a man are not universal but variable in different cultures and epochs. Thus, it is no wonder that the relationship between studies of literary masculinities and masculinities has been defined as reciprocal (Armengol, 2019; Riemer, 1987, 291), as cultural and literary constructions of masculinity feed off each other. Just as rereading literature for what it says about social conceptions of being a man widens the base of masculinity studies knowledge, information obtained from other fields, such as sociology or psychology, can illuminate our rereading of literature in new and interesting ways, affecting the shape of literary criticism itself. Despite the undeniable value of literature as a social document reflecting our masculine ideals, however, such literary analyses cannot be considered literal sociological, psychological, or anthropological studies. As James D. Riemer insists, we cannot expect studies of literary masculinities to “give the ‘whole’ truth about manhood in relation to a particular social, economic, racial-ethnic environment”, although they can “offer valuable insights into areas for further, potentially corroborating research by sociologists, psychologists, and social anthropologists” (291).8 If, as Teresa de Lauretis reminds us, “gender is (a) representation” and “the representation of gender is its construction” (3), it follows that cultural representations of gender are particularly relevant for analyzing, and rethinking, its social constructions. Although literature is neither a “case study” nor a “recipe”, literary works, such as the Nobel Prize Toni Morrison, frequently have something that “enlightens”, something that “opens the door and points the way”, something that “suggests what the conflicts are” (Evans, 1984, 341), offering valuable insights into several social issues, including the social construction of gender (Armengol, 2021, 2010). 7

Social historians such as Michael Kimmel (1997) and Joe Dubbert (1974) have already made such a use of the literature, although on a limited scale (Riemer, 1987, 290). 8 In addition to shedding light on the social construction of masculinity, applying masculinities studies to literature is also valuable in rereading works by authors who have been often associated with defining and perpetuating ideals on masculinity (Riemer, 1987). Such a rereading entails not only questioning patriarchal masculinities in literary texts but also challenging former traditional critical readings of these texts.

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In addition to the social and historical value of “classic” literary works (i.e., mostly by white men), we should, in any case, avoid restricting the analysis of masculinities to works that focus on the values of the white, middle-class, and heterosexual man, which James D. Riemer identifies as a “limitation characteristic of a majority of the research and scholarship” on masculinities (291). By studying literary works that depict men’s lives beyond the bourgeois experience (Carabí y Armengol, 2014), we can see how masculinity varies according to class, as we can see in the working-class characters of novels such as Christ in Concrete by Pietro Di Donato or People of the Abyss by Jack London, as well as ethnic (Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison) or sexual (Chaos, by Edmund White) specificities. Hence, there is a growing number of publications on literary representations of African American (Awkward, 2002), Asian (Eng, 2001), Jewish (Rosenberg, 2001), or Indian (Sinha, 1995) racialized identities, among others,9 as well as on gay characters, written by critics such as Schoene (2000) or Knights (1999). From this, one could conclude, then, that the aim of these rereadings is to offer a radical Re-vision, what the writer and essayist Adrienne Rich beautifully described as “the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering and old text from a new critical direction” (90–91). In Riemer’s words: To change men’s lives [one needs] more than recognition of the limitations and negative effects of our present ideals of manhood. There also must be recognition and reinforcement of positive alternatives to traditional masculine ideals and behaviors. (298)

Admittedly, there are few “positive” or “alternative” images of masculinity in literature. The literary tradition has provided us with men who embody any number of traditional masculine ideals and men who fight the burden and limitations of those ideals. Seldom are we provided with positive images of men who represent alternatives to those traditional ideals (Riemer, 298). There are, however, some “positive” images of masculinity, which are as interesting as they are rare (Carabí y Armengol, 2014). As the late African American writer and critic bell hooks argued (2021), it is not true that men cannot or do not want to change, despite the fear that they frequently experience doing so. For example, in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (1937), George and Lennie fight economic hardship and social isolation by developing, as we have already noted, a close friendship pattern that is unusually intimate, supportive, and generous. Similarly, in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977), the protagonist, known as Milkman “Dead”, becomes increasingly relational and other-directed. As the novel advances, he moves beyond the traditionally masculine, individualistic, self-centered, and competitive values inherited from his father, Macon. Similarly, Tayo, the protagonist of Ceremony (1977) by Leslie Silko, returns to his Native American origins to reshape his masculinity. Moving away from violence and War in the Pacific, Tayo chooses to rediscover his ancestral heritage and the communal values of his culture. In so doing, he finally becomes a much more relational, caring, 9

Of course, the list of works which explore literary representations of ethnic masculinities is too long to be included here. For a more detailed list, see Michael Flood’s detailed bibliography on gender and masculinities in the sections on “Literature and literary theory” and “Literature and ethnicity”.

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and nurturing male character. In Richard Ford’s Independence Day (1995), Frank Bascombe gradually abandons the manly code of individualism and emotional disengagement, ultimately becoming a more relational, nurturing, and supportive father and lover. Similarly, in Rock Springs (1987) and A Multitude of Sins (2001), both by Ford, several male characters, as we shall see in Chapter 7, move away from their violent fathers or their equally aggressive male friends, embracing a new, alternative, nonviolent model of manhood.10 Making us aware of these innovative literary texts (for example, see Armengol, 2021; Armengol et al., 2017; Carabí and Armengol, 2014) might be one of the most significant contributions that masculinity studies can make to literature and, indeed, society. “For, in the end, it will be easier for men to revise the way they live their lives if”, as Riemer (299) suggested: “we can help them recognize the possibilities of what they might become”.11 As is the case for masculinity studies in general, many recent studies in literature seem to be characterized by their growing specificity, drifting away from previous literary “histories” of masculinity to case studies and more specialized themes. In this way, for example, if Embodying Masculinities (Armengol, 2013) approaches literary representations of the male body in contemporary culture and literature, Murdering Masculinities (Greg Forter, 2000) focuses on fantasies on gender and violence in contemporary crime fiction. In turn, most of the chapters included in Masculinities and Literary Studies (Armengol et al., 2017) explore the interrelations between masculinity and specific topics such as transnationalism, affect, fatherhood, aging, and neoliberalism, among others. Furthermore, as we have mentioned, there is a growing list of texts that explore literary representations of racialized masculinities (for example, see Gallego, 2021), which dilutes the historical tendency of the field to focus on white masculinity as the norm. Nevertheless, in addition to the current academic interest in “racialized” masculinities (normally understood as nonwhite), we should not forget the interest in the study of white masculinity as an equally racialized and gendered construct, as the intersections between masculinity and whiteness studies are among the latest advances and innovations in the field.12 While intersectionality has become one of the main axes around which a large part of current research on (literary) masculinities revolves, it is important to point out that the majority of these recent works are divided between, on the one hand, the emphasis on gendered and racialized identities and, on the other hand, poststructuralist theories, from which they frequently draw, which insist that our identities are neither stable nor fixed. As in gender studies in general (see Chapter 3), the more novel approaches for the discussion of literary and cultural theory are those that have proven capable of combining sexual politics and poststructuralist theories in new and productive ways. David L. Eng’s work, Racial Castration (2001), is, as we have already seen in Chapter 3, a good example of this. In the introduction, Eng insists that his project attempts to interrogate “the commonalities that support, as 10

See Armengol (2010). For an extensive study on alternative masculinities in culture and literature, see Carabí and Armengol (2014). 12 See, for example, Armengol (2014); Robinson (2000). 11

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well as the dissonances that qualify, coalitions among men” (4). Eng also argues that precisely because the feminization of the Asian male in the Western cultural imaginary often results in his figuration as feminized or homosexualized, we must take care to explore the theoretical links between queer studies, with their focus on (homo)sexuality and desire, and women’s studies, with their focus on gender and identity, in relation to the production of Asian male subjectivity (16). Thus, Eng combines (feminist) sexual politics and queer theory in innovative ways. Jean Bobby Noble’s Masculinities Without Men? is equally novel (2004), as it applies Jack Halberstam’s concept of “female masculinity” (1998) to literary texts. Even though this author questions the exclusive association of (literary) masculinity with being a man, Noble (2004) goes even further than Halberstam. If Halberstam (1998) established a close connection between female sex and lesbian/butch masculinity, Noble avoids this at all times, searching for “a postqueer masculinity”, albeit mindful of trans issues (xxxix). Where Halberstam distinguished between masculine and feminine masculinities, presenting them as very distant from each other, Noble defended their interdependence, redefining them as dialogic instead of as opposite concepts. However, much of Noble avoids presenting masculine masculinity as the original masculinity and feminine masculinity as a derivative; this author proves their inextricability, insisting that female and male masculinities influence one another (xli). By analyzing the interconnections between male and female masculinities and applying them to literary texts such as The Well of Loneliness by Hall Radclyffe and Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg, among others, Noble (2004) thus manages to innovate the study of literary masculinities in a drastic way, presenting female masculinity as one of the more promising current and future research paths. Additionally, these texts show, once again, that literary and social constructions go hand in hand. In fact, some of the most relevant contributions to studies on masculinity have come from literary essays such as Between Men (1985) by Sedgwick or Female Masculinity (1998) by Halberstam, which also make ample use of cinematic and cultural representations, among others. Similarly, concepts that were originally “sociological”, such as Connell’s “hegemonic masculinity” (2003), are constantly applied to literary and cultural criticism. Instead of pitting literary against psychosocial studies on masculinities, it may be more fruitful, therefore, to start to see them as complementary (Armengol et al., 2017; Carabí and Armengol, 2014; Armengol, 2021). Literary works are “imaginary”, but it is precisely imagination we need the most in our current societies, if we are to live happier and more fulfilling lives. In Tim O’Brien’s words, “fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth” (22).

Men in Feminist Literary Criticism Whether by men or women, studies of literary masculinities, such as studies of masculinities in general (see Chapter 2), are often clearly informed by feminism (Boone and Cadden 1990, 1). However, it now seems pertinent to address the more

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specific question of men in feminist literary criticism. These two issues are not exactly the same. As Toril Moi indicates, “while the latter is an interesting and relevant problem in its own right, it is strange, to say the least, not to find a single discussion of the difference between these two questions” (1989, 186). It seems appropriate, therefore, to address this particular issue here, which has also raised a particularly controversial, and still open, debate within masculinity studies. Literary hermeneutics has shown how texts are not simply mimetic or reflective; they are not limited to describing real or fictional worlds. Because a text may be interpreted differently by each of its readers, texts, as Ben Knights (1999, 22) elaborates, produce a multiplicity of meanings and new performances of themselves. Readers play a central and active role in those meanings so that reading is an interactive and social act. In our interpersonal reading practices, we have traditionally been considered gendered beings (Knights, 1999, 22; Fetterley, 1978). As Judith Fetterley has shown, both women and men are taught to read as men. While there are some exceptions to the rule,13 the Western reader has been usually addressed as a man because of three main factors (Knights, 1999, 22): (1) cultural assumptions about knowledge, about gender, and about maturity; (2) the terms of the text itself, especially its power as a discourse, an address that makes proposals about who reads it and according to what basic rules; and (3) institutions of education and reading. Elaborating on that, Ben Knights comments: The dominant traditions in Western literatures have addressed the reader on the understanding that the normal position was that of being a male [...] The ideal community of readers with whom any one individual has been invited into solidarity would be made up of men. Reading as a man has thus been proffered to all, whatever their actual gender, as the neutral and universal position from which other positions are deviations. (1999, 22)

Many feminist literary critics (see, for example, Pearce, 1991; Reid, 1989; Fetterley, 1978) have long focused their attention on this fact, which they have also tried to question and modify. In doing so, they have shown how women can become “resisting readers” (Fetterley, 1978) of the patriarchal discourses addressed to them. However, what about men? Can they also become “resisting readers”? Opinions seem to be divided in this respect. Men’s participation in feminist literary criticism is often considered yet another example of what Laura Mulvey famously described as the “male gaze”.14 A man who decides to take a look at feminist criticism may be easily criticized, as Ruthven explains (1991, 1), by a type of feminist theory that sees “looking” as a voyeuristic activity engaged in by men to the detriment of women, who are thus objectified.15 Elaine Showalter’s article “Critical Cross-Dressing: Male Feminists and the Woman of the Year” (1983), the first prominent article on the male 13

For instance, most of the original readers of the novel were women (see, for example, Fiedler, 1998; Eagleton, 1983). 14 As Laura Mulvey famously defined it, the male gaze often becomes “a perversion, producing obsessive voyeurs and Peeping Toms whose only sexual satisfaction can come from watching, in an active controlling sense, an objectified other” (1990, 31). 15 Joseph Allen Boone notes, for example, that in the autumn of 1984 the Harvard’s Center for Literary Studies created its Feminist Literary Theory Seminar, although “men were specifically not invited to this meeting; some of the founding members felt that the topic was too sensitive, that the

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feminist critic phenomenon, seems to confirm Ruthven’s worst suspicions. In this essay, Showalter denounces the appropriation of feminist criticism by several prominent male literary critics (such as Jonathan Culler, Terry Eagleton, Wayne Booth, and Robert Scholes), eager to benefit from its early successes in the 1980s. Concurring with Showalter’s views, a number of critics, such as Robert Scholes, have thus conceded that men’s engagement in feminist literary criticism is impossible, insisting that men will never manage to read as women. As Scholes himself recognizes, with the best will in the world, we shall never read as women and perhaps not even like women. For me, born where I was born and living where I have lived, the very best I can do is to be conscious of the ground upon which I stand: to read not as but like a man. (1987, 218)

It is true that patriarchal notions of masculinity are constantly being reinforced through social practices of communication, including literature, both oral and written. Nevertheless, fictions are not monolithic but provide some room for play and negotiation since they are performative and rely on the reader to go on reinscribing or changing themselves. In other words, there is no such thing as a text in itself since a text becomes meaningful only when it is read. In this sense, male readers, as Ben Knights (1999, 23) elaborates, can also learn to read against the dominant assumptions of both texts and the institutions of reading, interpretation, and criticism.16 In the end, they could reap benefits from doing so. While it is true that men have usually been the beneficiaries of their textual identification with the universal, such identification may reinforce identities and narratives that, while giving power and privileges to men, reduce, and/or distort them in other ways. As a fictional construct, masculinity has often been restricted by the narratives addressed to us. Therefore, men might develop a gender-specific perspective to achieve what Ben Knights calls “estranged masculine readings”, namely, “readings which—while reflexively conscious of the gender identities of those practising them—do not accept a hegemonic masculinity as an inescapable given” (1999, 23). The male feminist critic does not need to be charged with hermeneutical rape since “entry and interpenetration”, as Jane Gallop (1982, xiii) reminds us, does not always mean “disrespect or violation”. Most men who write feminist literary criticism are totally convinced of both the value and the need for their job. Most of them see radical feminism as a practice of exemplary resistance to an oppressive regime. In addition to personal relationships with feminist women, their attitude toward feminism, as Ruthven (1991, 9) elaborates, is often commitment rather than curiosity. Certainly, it is often said that men will appropriate feminism; that because men are used to running things, they will take over feminist criticism if given half the change, their appropriation of it constituting another form of oppression and colonization; and that the academic men who are interested in feminist criticism will soften its radicalism by professionalizing it, transforming it into an optional “approach” to women in the seminar needed to reach a group consensus Before opening its doors to men” (1989, 162). 16 After all, both women and men have also had to learn to read as men. As Knights insists, reading as a man is as «unnatural» for a man as learning to curse or spitting in the street (1999, 23).

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literature and offering it as something both new and relevant to students fed up with traditional approaches. However, all these arguments, as Ruthven (1991, 11) suggested, are weakened by the fact that even the latest feminist trend is heavily dependent on men to articulate its position and continues to require their services. For example, female feminists working in socialist and Marxist political parties, struggling against racism and imperialism, fighting dictatorships, and mobilizing against nuclear war and ecological disasters have always had to work with men. Feminist theory is also indebted to the work of men, such as John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Engels, while feminist literary criticism has made extensive use of Michel Foucault’s work on sexual and discursive practices, Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction, and Jacques Lacan’s analysis of the close links between psychoanalysis and linguistics (Armengol, 2019; Ruthven, 1991, 11). It seems, therefore, that men can play, and have played, a key role in literary theory and criticism. Little wonder, then, that a number of feminist critical texts, such as Gloria Anzaldúa and Analouise Keating’s edition of This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation (2002), have incorporated male-authored contributions. In her preface to the book, Gloria Anzaldúa comments that This Bridge We Call Home, published thirty years after This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981), edited by herself and Cherríe Moraga, remains indebted to the earlier text in terms of both character and structure. However, she elaborates that This Bridge We Call Home expands on the previous text in a new manner. One of the key differences between the two texts is the gender of the contributors to each volume. This Bridge We Call Home incorporates a number of contributions by white males. Anzaldúa acknowledges that, in so doing, the text risks the displeasure of many women of color. Nevertheless, she is convinced that, although it would have been easier for her to limit the dialog to them, criticism “comes from woundedness, and stagnates our growth” (2002, 3). It is true that many women of color have a somewhat possessive feeling about This Bridge Called My Back and view it as a safe space, as “home”. However, it is equally true, as Anzaldúa insists, that there are no safe spaces. “Home” can be unsafe and dangerous because it is associated with intimacy and thus thinner boundaries. Staying “home” and not moving out from our own group comes from resentment and proves limiting. “To bridge means loosening our borders, not closing off to others”. As Anzaldúa elaborates, Bridging is the work of opening the gate to the stranger, within and without. To step across the threshold is to be stripped of the illusion of safety because it moves us into unfamiliar territory and does not grant safe passage. To bridge is to attempt community, and for that we must risk being open to personal, political, and spiritual intimacy, to risk being wounded. Effective bridging comes from knowing when to close ranks to those outside our home, group, community, nation and when to keep the gates open. (2002, 3)

In Anzaldúa’s view, then, change will decline unless we attach it to new growth or include new growth in it. On the other hand, we need to move away from simply focusing on what has been done to the “Other” (victimhood) to a wider level of agency, one that questions what we are doing to each other. This does not entail abandoning previous ideas but rather “building on them”. Moreover, including white males is not an attempt to restore their privilege but rather a “refusal to keep walking

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the color line”. “Whiteness”, as Anzaldúa elaborates, “may not be applied to all whites, as some possess women-of-color consciousness, just as some women of color bear white consciousness” (2002, 2). Moreover, including (profeminist) men in feminist critical debates may help challenge traditional gender divisions. In her own words, “these inclusions challenge conventional identities and promote more expansive configurations of identities—some of which will soon become cages and have to be dismantled” (2002, 4). In this sense, separatist views on feminist criticism seem to remain ignorant about the conditions in which feminist discourses operate and circulate (Ruthven, 1991, 9–10). Even when written by and specifically for women, feminist criticism is also read by academic men. After all, no literature teacher can afford to ignore feminist contributions to Marxist studies of the institutionalization of literature, particularly the indictment of androcentricity, which becomes apparent through the preponderance of male authors on academic syllabi (Ruthven, 1991, 9–10). One should also try to avoid separatist views because they end up dividing the sexes in such a way that men must either ignore feminism or criticize it. Most separatist feminists, as Ruthven (11–2) explains, argue that men should be discouraged from writing feminist literary criticism for the same reasons that they should be discouraged from teaching in women’s literature courses since having the oppressor talk about his oppression to the oppressed is morally inappropriate. However, such a view, as Ruthven (11–2) herself elaborates, fails to examine the unquestioned identification of men with oppression. Rather than identifying men with a universal and unproblematic conception of patriarchy, female feminist critics should encourage men to incorporate the lessons of feminism into everything they do and write. In this way, they would contribute to a transformation of society that would render superfluous much current feminist polemic (Ruthven, 1991, 11–2). If feminism is, first and foremost, the struggle against patriarchal oppression, men should not worry about definitions and essences (“am I truly a feminist?”) but rather take up an unambiguous antipatriarchal position (Moi, 1989, 184). It is not enough to be interested in masculinity, male sexuality or gender differences. Such interests must somehow be developed as a part of the antipatriarchal struggle. Therefore, the question, as Toril Moi concludes, is not so much a matter of territory (whether men should be in feminism) but rather of ideological position (whether they should be against patriarchy). Thus, there are various areas from which male feminist criticism might emerge. First, young men, as Joseph A. Boone (1989, 174) indicates, seem more likely to engage in feminist criticism than older men are. We need to account for an important generational factor since there are now men in academia young enough for feminism to have been a fundamental component of their intellectual formation. Moreover, we should avoid lumping all men together as a uniform category. We should pay special attention to marginalized male voices, particularly gay voices, whose interests often intersect, though they do not always coincide, with those of female feminists (Boone, 1989, 174). Just as it seems important to account for the diversity and disagreement within the feminist movement itself, women and men also need to keep this principle in mind when considering the possibilities of a male feminist critical activity. In this sense, male feminist literary criticism is not about “more of the same”. Rather, it is

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about the “imagination of difference that does not break down into two agendas, but that opens onto a complicated map of contiguities” (Miller, 1987, 141–2). However, the fact that men can be feminists but not women is crucial, as male feminists cannot simply repeat the words and actions of female feminists. Speaking as they do from a different position, the “same words” acquire “different meanings” (Moi, 1989, 184). Repeating the words of a female feminist, however honestly, a man signals that he has not considered the differences in power—and therefore in speaking position—between them. Therefore, feminist literary criticism should articulate its own antipatriarchal discourse while being conscious of the specific place it occupies in feminism and from the point of view of the writer (Schoene, 2000). As Toril Moi elaborates in this respect: The main theoretical task for male feminists, then, is to develop an analysis of their own position and a strategy for how their awareness of their difficult and contradictory position in relation to feminism can be made explicit in discourse and practice. (1989, 184)

The Sex or the Death of the Author? While it seems clear, then, that both women and men can practice feminist (literary) theory, male feminism is not and should not always be identical to female feminism.17 Like the sex of the critic, the sex of the author remains an equally important aspect of textual criticism.18 Admittedly, the relevance of knowledge about the author to knowledge about the text was diminished repeatedly in the twentieth century (Knights, 1999, 135). The relevance of the author to literary criticism was questioned by several formalist perspectives of the first half and middle of the twentieth century, although it was Roland Barthes who famously proclaimed the “Death of the Author” in his 1968 essay. Moreover, both Marxist and poststructuralist studies have tended to play down the importance of the individual author. Marxist historians have argued, for example, how the subjectivities of “individuals” are always shaped and constructed by social and political circumstances, claiming that individualism is itself a specific historical phenomenon. On the other hand, poststructuralist thinkers insist on the dangers of treating “experience” as an unmediated category, the absolute possession of the autonomous and sovereign individual. As Ben Knights concludes from all this, “at the end of the day, any account of the texts as a wave of codes, or as the product of linguistic and cultural practices, is bound to diminish the significance of the individual author” (1999, 136).19 Nevertheless, a number of scholars have insisted that the sex of the (male) author cannot be ignored. For example, some critics have argued that the fact that a novel 17

Similarly, it has been argued that while masculinity affects both men and women, it influences male and female bodies in different ways (Halberstam, 1998). 18 On the importance of keeping sex/maleness as an analytical category, see also Chapter 3. 19 It has already been pointed out (see Chapter 3) that both historicism and poststructuralism have also challenged essentialist notions of “sex”, claiming that it is a historical and discursive, rather than an immutable and biological, construction.

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is written by a man matters because the fact itself explains features of the text’s content and/or style. For instance, in analyzing works such as Henry James’s The Lesson of the Master, James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, Ben Knights himself stresses the importance of taking gender into consideration in what might otherwise become “an ostensibly gender-neutral discussion about art and the artist” (1999, 50). However, Knights insists that, in terms of content, these male-authored works are far from monolithic, unambiguous, or unitary: We find in masculine narrative a recurrent ambivalence towards the figure of the male artist, who is at once envied for his direct contact with a highly charged and precious domain and also despised as not altogether a man […] Such a figure is divided where a man is conventionally supposed to be unitary. (50-1)

On the other hand, some critics have referred to stylistic features that are supposedly distinctly masculine. In Writing Men (2000), Berthold Schoene, for example, argues that a major concern among many contemporary British male writers is their self-conscious envisioning of an écriture masculine, which would question their predecessors’ often stereotyped and profoundly patriarchal conceptions of masculinity (xiii). Similarly, in Phallic Critiques, Peter Schwenger insists that “there is such a thing as a masculine style” (1984, 12). Just as Virginia Woolf (2016) defended her belief in the feminine sentence, and just Hélène Cixous posited the existence of écriture feminine, Schwenger claims that “the time has come […] for the question of a masculine mode to be taken seriously” (1984, 7). In Schwenger’s view, a masculine style is characterized by several features. First, any attempt to define a woman’s style or a man’s style depends to some degree on content. In his own words, “masculine or feminine subject matter, then, will influence the effect of any style” (1984, 11). Second, “feminine” and “masculine” styles need not be defined strictly by sex. Thus, a man’s style is not limited to men: It certainly is not one that is written by all men. It is not a style ‘natural’ to men but one that is artificially created. Moreover, its masculine style is not absolute but relative. Because of the elusiveness of both style and sex, it will never be possible to objectively pinpoint the ‘masculinity’ of a piece of writing. (1984, 12)20

Although Schwenger believes that écriture masculinity is not the same as male writing, which leaves him immune to the charge of essentialism, he keeps using the terms “male” and “masculine” style quite interchangeably throughout his work. Moreover, his theory of a “masculine” style is fraught with several other problems and contradictions. For example, one wonders about the very existence, and critical usefulness, of a category that is not possible “to pinpoint objectively”. Even if you 20

Obviously, Schwenger relies heavily on Hélène Cixous for his defense of an écriture masculine. As is known, Cixous also insisted that écriture feminine is not confined to female writers and, indeed, she mentioned several male authors as examples of such a practice. Moreover, she argued that “it is impossible to define a feminist practice of writing and this is an impossibility that will remain, for this practice can never be theorized, enclosed, coded–which doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist” (1975, 54).

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can tell by careful reading whether a text is written in a “masculine style”, what happens to this case? Does it not become circular? What about those stereotyped, stylised genres—[...] some forms of journalism, or romantic fiction are examples—where the genre itself is so formulaic that anyone might learn to do it? There seems to be a dead end here. (Knights, 1999, 137)

Finally, since Schwenger insists that a “man’s style” largely depends on content, the notion can very easily fall prey to sexual stereotyping. After all, it is often the case that stereotypical female attributes such as emotions and passivity are labeled “feminine”, while stereotypical male attributes such as strength and aggressiveness are defined as “masculine”. By arguing that form depends greatly on content, it is highly likely that the literary representations of stereotypical male and female attributes will be defined as “masculine” and “feminine” styles, respectively. Laura Claridge and Elizabeth Langland make a similar point in relation to écriture feminine. These critics acknowledge that the écriture feminine of French feminists has provided several “generative insights” and has helped to undermine a phallocentric ideology in a number of ways. Nevertheless, they insist that defining a language that is playful, open, disruptive, nonhierarchical, and anti-theoretical as “feminine” and one that is logical, closed, rigid, hierarchical, and theoretical as “masculine” keeps the very binary oppositions a Cixous or Irigaray are trying to dismantle (1990, 5–6).21 Moreover, this attribution of traits to gender makes the appropriation of language for political reasons easier. Certain gender-identified constructions (e.g., “a text trying to close itself is male, whereas a text striving to remain open is female”) can be viewed as “fictions of an era”, political strategies whereby certain marginalized forms are appropriated by certain marginalized readers as the “prototypical” genres of their own voices (Claridge and Langland, 1990, 6). After all, “male-traditional” has usually been equated with the technological rationality that has been a target of social critics from the early Romantics to the Frankfurt School. Similarly, the term “feminist”, as Graff (1987, 137) elaborates, is often equated with the worldview which has been named “contextualism” or “historicism” and may be exemplified in philosophical trends such as modern pragmatism, existentialism, and poststructuralism. From what has been suggested, it would appear, then, that neither content nor form can help us determine the sex of the author. Thus, one may be tempted to proclaim the “Death of the Author”, at least insofar as his/her actual biological sex is concerned. Nevertheless, it is my contention that as long as patriarchy continues to exist, it does not seem ethically advisable to ignore knowledge about the sex of the writer.22 Indeed, knowledge about the sex of the author (and, by extension, about his/her racialized, class, and/or sexual specificities) becomes absolutely essential to continue the work begun in the 1970s by feminist scholars, who have long been working not only to recuperate silenced women authors but also to redefine the curriculum both in higher education and in schools to present more women’s texts. Knowledge of the author, 21

Toril Moi (1989) has made similar points. This does not mean, though, that the abolition of patriarchy would necessarily entail the «death of the author» or his/her sex. As has been suggested (see Chapter 2), equality should not be mistaken for sameness. It is both possible and desirable to be equal and yet be able to keep your (sex) differences.

22

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as Knight insists, has been central to this enterprise, and the perseverance of women authors and scholars struggling against patriarchal oppression should be taken as “a role model for women readers and students-and in turn for a new generation of women writers” (1999, 137).23 Moreover, the project of “degendering” literature often ends up privileging male fiction. For example, the formalist tendency of the 1940s and 1950s to ignore (the sex of) the author often favored men’s texts over women’s literature. The fatal flaw of the formalist position (at least as adopted in mainstream Anglo-American literary criticism in the 1940s and 1950s) was its naïveté about its own critical assumptions. As Ben Knights elaborates, Curiously, the impersonality of the author and the priority accorded to the words on the page almost always favoured texts by men and went along with a canon whose advocates unabashedly overlooked the implicit theories upon which it rested. (1999, 136)

In this sense, one should bear in mind that our knowledge about an author (however minimal or impressionistic) always influences how we read. Since one of the first things that we want to know about people is their sex, that knowledge (with all the attached assumptions and presuppositions) becomes part of the framework within which we read. Bearing all this in mind, one must concur with Ben Knights, then, that the sex of the (male) author matters, “if for no better reason that because if the reader does not know, she or he will make it up” (1999, 137–8). In line with these arguments, one can conclude that the sex of the author tends to influence his or her literary works, although it does not (always) determine them. It does not seem fair to lump all male (and female) writers into the same category. Just as not all women writers can be considered feminist, there is the exemplary feminism of various male writers who managed to move away from patriarchal representations of women and gender. These include, among others, Samuel Richardson, whose eighteenthcentury novel Clarissa has been described by Terry Eagleton as “arguably the major feminist text of the language”; Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879) and Hedda Gabler (1890), which represent the “frustrations and tragedy of women trapped in the conventions of a patriarchal society” (Ruthven, 1991, 11); Henry Jamses’ The Bostonians (1886), which Judith Fetterley has described an excellent analysis of the power relations between men and women as social classes; and Thomas Hardy, who challenged the sexual ideology of this time by creating characters such as Tess Durbeyfield and Sue Bridehead, “whose failure to conform to acceptable patterns of behavior caused social upheavals which are replicated in formal disruptions in the novels” (Ruthven, 1991, 11). Texts such as Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Clarín’s La Regenta are equally subversive, as they represent not only two examples of work written by men but also by starring heroines who openly denounce their suffocation as women in a clearly patriarchal society (Armengol, 2003). It is probably true, as Sally Robinson reminds us, that white male novelists (like black, women, and/or gay writers) have been grouped into one category in post-sixties American culture. As Robinson explains, 23

For a deeper analysis of the close relationship between sexuality, authorship, and representations of masculinity in (nineteenth-century) women’s literature, see Armengol (2003).

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4 Masculinity as (a) Representation While white male novelists […] might have until recently been read simply as ‘novelists’, many might now find themselves categorically defined as white male novelists: they might find themselves marked, not read for their expression of a personal, individualized vision but, like women writers or African American writers, habitually read as exemplars of a particularized (gender and racialized) perspective. (2000, 16)

The analysis of white male authors as a specific gendered and racialized group helps, without a doubt, to rethink universalizing conceptions of white men and their (literary) works as representative of the human experience. Nevertheless, one should also bear in mind that white masculinity, as Chapter 3 tried to demonstrate, is far from static and monolithic. Thus, white male fiction is equally complex and varied and has provided both conservative and innovative perspectives on men and masculinities, as the following chapters will also try to illustrate and exemplify. Yet it is surprising, to say the least, to see how little work exists on male authors challenging the same patriarchal structures that women fight, especially since most literature professors teach male writers. Certainly, any struggles they fight against patriarchal culture, as Claridge and Langland elaborate (1990, 19), are likely to provide “knowledge […] of the sort sure to empower everyone—women and men—in the analysis of the gender status quo”. Rather than identifying men with an unquestioned and vague notion of patriarchy, it might thus be more helpful to strive to locate male voices as a third or “odd term” (Boone, 1989, 166) in a gendered discourse that consists of (at least) men, women, and the cultural ideology that we call patriarchy. In this way, we could perhaps begin to move away from the unproblematized equation of maleness with a universal patriarchy, which often proves simplistic and (at least partly) inaccurate (see also in this respect Armengol et al., 2017).

References Armengol, Josep M. “Past, Present (and Future) of Studies of Literary Masculinities: A Case Study in Intersectionality.” Men and Masculinities 22.1 (2019): 64–74. ———. Masculinities in Blacks and Whites: Manliness and Whiteness in American Literature. New York: Palgrave, 2014. ——— (ed.). Aging Masculinities in Contemporary U.S. Fiction. New York: Palgrave, 2021. ———. “Richard Ford.” Men and Masculinities: A Social, Cultural, and Historical Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio Press, 2004. 311–4. ———. “The Politics of Masculinity and/as Emotion: Walt Whitman’s Celebration of Male Intimacy in the First Person.” Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 66 (2013): 73–86. ———. Travestismos literarios: identidad, autoría y representación de la masculinidad en la literatura escrita por mujeres.» Hombres escritos por mujeres. Ed. Àngels Carabí and Marta Segarra. Barcelona: Icaria, 2003. 81–98. Armengol, Josep M. et al. (eds.). Masculinities and Literary Studies: Intersections and New Directions. New York: Routledge, 2017. Anzaldúa, Gloria E. “Preface.” This Bridge We Call Home. Ed. Gloria E. Anzaldúa and Analouise Keating. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. 1–5. Awkward, Michael. “Black Male Trouble: The Challenges of Rethinking Masculine Differences.” Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions. Ed. Judith Kegan Gardiner. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 290–304.

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Bergman, David. Gaiety Transfigured: Gay Self-Representation in American Literature. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon [1994]. New York: Riverhead, 1995. Boone, Joseph Allen. “Of Me(n) and Feminism: Who(se) Is the Sex that Writes?” Gender and Theory: Dialogs on Feminist Criticism. Ed. Linda Kauffman. Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1989. 158–80. Boone, Joseph Allen and Michael Cadden (eds.). Engendering Men: The Question of Male Feminist Criticism. New York: Routledge, 1990. Carabí, Àngels and Josep M. Armengol (eds.). Alternative Masculinities for a Changing World. New York: Palgrave, 2014. Claridge, Laura and Elizabeth Langland (eds.). Out of Bounds: Male Writers and Gender(ed) Criticism. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990. Collin, Françoise. “Poética y política, o los lenguajes sexuados de la creación.” La conjura del olvido: escritura y feminismo. Ed. Nieves Ibeas and María Ángeles Millán. Barcelona: Icaria, 1997. 61–74. Digby, Tom. “Introduction.” Men Doing Feminism. Ed. Tom Digby. New York and London: Routledge, 1998. 1–14. Dubbert, Joe. A Man’s Place: Masculinity in Transition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1974. Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. Eng, David. “Race and Masculinity.” Debating Masculinity. Ed. Josep M. Armengol and Àngels Carabí. Harriman, TN: Men’s Studies Press, 2009. 80–92. Evans, Mari (ed.). Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation. New York: Anchor, 1984. Fetterley, Judith. The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978. Fiedler, Leslie A. Love and Death in the American Novel [1960]. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1998. Gallego, Mar. “Black Masculinities and Aging in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Love.” Aging Masculinities in Contemporary U.S. Fiction. Ed. Josep M. Armengol. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 125–38. Gallop, Jane. Feminism and Psychoanalysis: The Daughter’s Seduction. London: Macmillan, 1982. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Graff, Gerald. “Response to ‘The Philosophical Bases of Feminist Literary Criticisms’.” New Literary History 19.1 (1987): 137. Forter, Greg. Murdering Masculinities: Fantasies of Gender and Violence in the American Crime Novel. New York: New York University Press, 2000. Habegger, Alfred. Gender, Fantasy, and Realism in American Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Halberstam, Jack. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. hooks, bell. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love. New York: Washington Square Press, 2004. Humm, Maggie. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Feminist Literary Criticism. New York: Harvester Wheats-Heaf, 1994. Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious. Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981. Kane, Michael. Modern Men: Mapping Masculinity in English and German Literature, 1880-1930. London and New York: Cassell, 1999. Kimmel, Michael. Manhood in America: A Cultural History [1996]. New York: The Free Press, 1997. Knights, Ben. Writing Masculinities: Male Narratives in Twentieth-Century Fiction. London: Macmillan, 1999.

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Koestenbaum, Wayne. Double Talk: The Erotics of Male Literary Collaboration. New York and London: Routledge, 1989. Leverenz, David. Manhood and the American Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. Macherey, Pierre. The Object of Literature [1990]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ———. A Theory of Literary Production [1966]. London and New York: Routledge, 1989. Miller, Nancy K. «Man on Feminism: A Criticism of His Own.» Men in Feminism. Ed. Alice Jardine and Paul Smith. New York and London: Methuen, 1987. 137–145. Mirandé, Alfredo. Hombres y Machos: Masculinity and Latino Culture. Boulder: Westview Press, 1997. Moers, Ellen. Literary Women. New York: Doubleday, 1976. Moi, Toril. “Men Against Patriarchy.” Gender and Theory: Dialogs on Feminist Criticism. Ed. Linda Kauffman. Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1989. 181–8. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Issues in Feminist Film Criticism. Ed. Patricia Evans. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. n. p. Murphy, Peter F. (ed.). Fictions of Masculinity: Crossing Cultures, Crossing Sexualities. New York and London: New York University Press, 1994. O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: HarperCollins, 1990. Pearce, Lynne. “John Clare’s Child Harold: The Road Not Taken.” Feminist Criticism: Theory and Practice. Ed. Susan Sellers. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991. n. p. Reeser, Todd W. Masculinities in Theory: An Introduction. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Reid, Su. “Learning to ‘Read as a Woman’.” Teaching Women: Feminism and English Studies. Ed. Ann Thompson and Helen Wilcox. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989. n. p. Riemer, James D. “Rereading American Literature from a Men’s Studies Perspective: Some Implications.” The Making of Masculinities: The New Men’s Studies. Ed. Harry Brod. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987. 289–300. Rich, Adrienne. “When the Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision.” Adrienne Rich’s Poetry. Ed. Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi and Albert Gelpi. New York: Norton, 1975. n. p. Robinson, Sally. Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Rosen, David. The Changing Fictions of Masculinity. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993. Rosenberg, Warren. Legacy of Rage: Jewish Masculinity, Violence, and Culture. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001. Ruthven, K. K. Feminist Literary Studies: An Introduction [1984]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Schoene-Harwood, Berthold. Writing Men: Literary Masculinities from Frankenstein to the New Man. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000. Schwenger, Peter. Phallic Critiques: Masculinity and Twentieth-Century Literature. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire [1985]. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Showalter, Elaine. “Critical Cross-Dressing: Male Feminists and the Woman of the Year.” Men in Feminism. Ed. Alice Jardine and Paul Smith. New York and London: Methuen, 1983. 116–32. Sinha, Mrinalini. Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly Englishman” and the “Effeminate Bengali” in the Late Nineteenth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. Smith, Paul. “Men in Feminism: Men and Feminist Theory.” Men in Feminism. Ed. Alice Jardine and Paul Smith. New York and London: Methuen, 1987. 33–40. Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men [1937]. New York: Penguin, 1974. Williams, Andrew P. (ed.). The Image of Manhood in Early Modern Literature: Viewing the Male. Westport and London: Greenwood Press, 1999.

Part II

Chapter 5

Boys Don’t Cry? Masculinity and the Politics of Emotion

As men in the “Men’s Movement”, we recognise that we have to retrace our steps and rediscover in ourselves those traits which have been called “feminine” […] passivity, warmth, intuition, tenderness, love, EMOTION. We have to discover in ourselves that which has lain dormant for hundreds of years, that society has obscured and hidden until we act as robots—stiffly, automatically, coldly. —South London, Men Against Sexism (1974)

Traditionally, the world of emotions has been associated with women and femininity. Since masculinity has traditionally been defined as the opposite of femininity (River and Flood, 2021; Armengol, 2013, 73–4; Segal, 1997, xxiii), men and masculinities have usually been defined as rational and unemotional. Thus, many masculinity scholars associate masculinity with emotional control and repression. It is often claimed that men are actually victims of patriarchal masculinity as well because it inhibits the expression of men’s inner emotional selves and thus makes them prone to multiple psychological and even physical problems. Indeed, much contemporary research on men’s emotions seems to have been directly influenced by the men’s studies in the 1970s, which, in line with feminist arguments, insisted that men also needed liberating emotionally. As Joseph Pleck and Jack Sawyer put it, “some of us are searching for new ways to work that will more fully express ourselves rather than our learned desire for masculinity” (1974, 95). Many studies of literary masculinities, such as Shamir and Travis (2002, 1–2), have provided similar arguments, claiming that men (in fiction) prefer “freedom” and individuality to women, sexuality, and emotional attachments. Important scholars such as Nina Baym and Leslie A. Fiedler, to name only a few, have also read culture and literature, especially through the nineteenth century, as illustrating men’s flight from the sphere of sentiment. While masculinity and emotions have thus been usually defined as intrinsically opposed, the present chapter sets out to demonstrate how the exclusive equation of emotions with femininity is a cultural and historical construction. This axiom has two main ramifications. First, masculinity and sentimentality have not always been mutually exclusive. Second, what was culturally and historically constructed can also be deconstructed from sociocultural and historical analytical perspectives. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. M. Armengol, Rewriting White Masculinities in Contemporary Fiction and Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53349-5_5

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Thus, the chapter analyzes the close, though often neglected, relationship between masculinity and emotion in culture and history and, in doing so, the political potential of emotions to transform existing sociocultural relations and structures. It is true that some studies have focused almost exclusively on helping men explore and express their emotional inner selves, thus neglecting other sociopolitical aspects of masculinity. However, a number of masculinity scholars have defined emotions as opposed to social change in masculinities and gender relations (River and Flood, 2021; Armengol, 2013; Segal 1997; Robinson, 2000). Nevertheless, drawing on the innovative work of other writers, we attempt to challenge this binarism by defining emotions not as preceding political practice but as political practice, not against the social but as social. To illustrate this, we analyze the political potential of profeminist men’s emotions as part of the feminist struggle for social and gender equality. As a concrete example, we will focus on several existing “new fatherhood” models that exist not only in culture but also in the contemporary literature. The chapter as a whole should also serve, therefore, to illustrate one of the main theoretical arguments put forward in Chapters 2 and 3, namely, that masculinity is far from stable or monolithic. Although patriarchal structures undeniably keep oppressing women—as well as some (homosexual) men—the fact that some men are actively and emotionally involved in feminism—as well as caring for their daughters and sons—seems to challenge monolithic views of masculinity as synonymous with patriarchy.

The Feminization of Sentiment in Contemporary Culture Despite the pervasive and radical separation between masculinity and emotion in contemporary (Western) culture, emotion has not always been considered feminine. In her seminal text XY: On Masculine Identity (1992), Elisabeth Badinter (1995, 26–8) refers, for example, to the rise of male sentimentality in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in France and England. Badinter explains that the crudeness of the men of Henri IV’s court and the men of the Fronde (1648–1653), both of whom diminished women and feminine values, was soon contested by the French précieuses, ladies “refined” in sentiment and language. French preciosity reached its height between 1650 and 1660 and became the first expression of feminism in both France and England. The précieuse was an emancipated woman who advocated feminist values. For example, she defended a new model of womanhood that considered the possibility of her social ascension and her right to dignity. She demanded the right to education and attacked marriage as the very cause of the institution of patriarchy. Challenging the authority of both fathers and husbands, the précieuses rejected not only marriage but also maternity. As Badinter comments, “they advocated trial marriage and the severance of such marriage after the birth of an heir, who would be entrusted to his father’s care” (1995, 26–7). The précieuses claimed their right to both freedom and love, so they advocated tender and Platonic sentiments between men and women. Challenging the patriarchal bonds between men and women who married each other without love, the précieuses saw love as, first and foremost, the

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love of a man for a woman rather than the opposite. As Badinter herself concludes in this respect, “by demanding of a man in love a limitless submission which bordered masochism, they reserved the dominant model of masculinity, that of the brutal and demanding man, or the vulgar husband who believed everything was permitted to him” (27). Thus, the précieuses seemed to reverse traditional gender norms. A few men, the précieux, accepted the new rules. Although their number was small, their influence was remarkable. As Badinter (27) explains, they adopted a feminine and refined style—long wigs, extravagant feathers, band collars, chin tufts, perfumes, and rouge—which was all copied by other (lower-class) men. Men who wanted to be distinguished now made it a rule to appear civilized, courteous, and delicate. Traditionally, feminine values began to progress in the seventeenth century to the point of appearing dominant in the following century.1 The debate over masculine identity was even more explicit in England than in France (Badinter, 1995, 28). In addition to their freedom, English feminists demanded sexual equality, that is, the right to sexual pleasure and the right not to be abandoned when they became pregnant. England seemed to experience a significant crisis of masculinity between 1688 and 1714 (the period of the Restoration), which entailed questioning the roles of men and women in marriage, the family, and sexuality. The meaning of gender and masculinity became the object of a much-heated debate. English feminists not only asked for the equality of desires and rights but also asked men to be gentler and more feminine. Thus, the Enlightenment, in both England and France, brought about the “feminization of customs and of men” (Badinter, 28).2 As Badinter (29) elaborates, the Enlightenment represents the first rupture in the history of virility and was the most feminist period of European history before the present day. On the one hand, manly values were being challenged or at least not attracting much attention. War no longer had importance, and the status it once had and hunting had become an amusement. Young noblemen spent more time working in salons or in ladies’ boudoirs than training for war. On the other hand, feminine values became central to the world of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. As Badinter herself concludes, the “delicacy of speech and attitudes were gaining more importance than the traditional characteristics of virility. One can say that in dominant classes, unisexism was winning out over the oppositional dualism that usually characterized the patriarchy” (1995, 29).3 1

Although the précieux were originally aristocratic men, their influence extended to lower-class men over the eighteenth century (Badinter, 1995, 28). 2 It is true, however, that the précieux were differently received in England and in France. As Badinter (1995, 27) explains, the image of the “feminized” man who adopted feminine behaviors aroused in England a fear of homosexuality that we do not see in France among those who despised the précieux. The “new man” of the English Restoration is portrayed as a pervert, as vain, Petty and bewitching as a woman. Women were pitied for having been abandoned by men and manly refinement was attacked. The English saw men’s feminization as a direct effect of French fashion on English customs. “Certain pamphlets”, as Badinter (28) concludes “very son saw a connection between the feminization of masculinity and betrayal, between traditional masculinity and patriotism”. 3 However, the 1789 French Revolution put an end to this development (Badinter, 1995, 28). When women publicly demanded the right to vote, the Convention refused them this. The deputies, who

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The feminization of French and English culture would, in turn, give rise to the eighteenth-century sentimental movement in Europe. As conventional notions of masculinity and virility were being challenged, men began to adopt traditional feminine values, such as delicacy of speech, good manners, gentle behaviors—and emotional expressivity. This contributed, at least in part, to the emergence of the European sentimental movement, which stressed the importance of the individual’s emotional state, encouraging men to explore, and express, their inner feelings. As Brian Vickers (1987, ix) noted, the movement postulated, and therefore encouraged, an ideal sensitivity to, and spontaneous display of, virtuous feelings, particularly those of pity, sympathy, or benevolence, as opposed to the prudent and rational mind. A number of philosophers and thinkers highlighted the relevance of men’s sensations and feelings, which they saw as inseparable from true manly virtue. For example, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Adam Smith emphasized the close relationship between man’s morality and his emotional life, which he defined as “the sentiment or affection of the heart from which any action proceeds” (1976, 65). More specifically, Smith stressed the role that emotions play in promoting moral sentiments such as pity or compassion. In his view, emotions play a fundamental role in promoting “sympathy”, which he describes as the emotion that men feel about the misery of others (56). Smith contends that we have no immediate experience of what another man may feel in any given situation. As he himself puts it, “though our brother is upon the [torture] rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers” (50). Clearly, our senses never did, and never can, carry us beyond our own self. Thus, it is by imagination and our emotions that we can only form a conception of what another man feels and generate empathy. In Smith’s view, our emotions, which he defines as “the impressions of our own senses” (56), allow us to put ourselves in another man’s shoes. Thus, we come to conceive ourselves undergoing all the same sufferings; we enter as it were into his body and mind and become, to some extent, the same person as him. In this way, we can finally form some idea about his feelings and sensations, “and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them” (9). In Smith’s view, emotions are the primary source of our fellow feeling for the misery of others and hence of moral virtue itself. By our emotions, we come either to conceive or be affected by what another man feels. Very often, emotions seem to be transferred from one man to another, almost instantaneously. Indeed, Smith contends that emotions are a central component of masculinity. Though not the strongest, the most masculine man seems to be totally bereft of emotional empathy. In his words, “men of the most robust make, observe that in looking upon sore eyes, they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own, which proceeds from the same reason; that organ being in the strongest man more delicate, than any other part of the body is in the weakest” (1976, 51). Insisting further, Smith explains that man regards emotional had not known the delights of the Ancien Régime, reaffirmed the separation of spheres and sexual dualism. Women were asked not to mingle with men and their business. As Badinter explains, “reinforced by the Napoleonic Code and ratified by the ideology of the nineteenth century, oppositional dualism” became the hegemonic ideology for a long time to come (29).

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empathy as the “greatest applause”, and he is often hurt when he finds that he cannot connect with another man emotionally. Men like to share their feelings with each other and dislike emotional coldness and distance from other men. They are often anxious about communicating to their friends about both their “disagreeable” and “agreeable” passions. As Smith himself concludes, men “derive still more satisfaction from their sympathy with the former than from that with the latter, and […] are still more shocked by the want of it” (59). Influenced by these philosophical ideas, eighteenth-century literature embraced the main tenets of the sentimental movement as well. While providing a detailed account of the form and content of the eighteenth-century sentimental novel is far beyond our scope,4 it may be relevant to note here some of its main characteristics (Vickers, 1987, xviii–xxiv). Usually, the sentimental novel focuses on the opposition between emotions and reason—and, hence, on other parallel dichotomies such as generosity vs. prudence and the belief in the pleasure of doing good vs. innocence exploited by unscrupulous power. The protagonist of the sentimental novel sympathizes with the suffering and disasters experienced by the other human beings he encounters. In describing an intrinsically benevolent and sympathetic protagonist, the sentimental writer also aims to move the readers, especially by providing them with the “sweet emotion of pity”. Therefore, the writer, hero, and reader of sentimental fiction often become the same generic “man of feeling” (Vickers, 1987, xi, xiv). Crucially, then, the sentimental novel often concerns itself with a “man of feeling”, which seems to lend further support to the idea that sentiment and masculinity have not always been mutually exclusive. Even though the eighteenth-century sentimental novel counts some heroines, perhaps most famously Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, many of the major sentimental writers of the time relied on men as heroes and protagonists for their works. Although the prototypical association of masculinity with emotion might come as a surprise to contemporary readers, one should never lose sight of the fact that the philosophical bases of the sentimental movement, which would in turn inspire the sentimental novel, were founded by (male) philosophers such as David Hume or Adam Smith, whose works concern themselves, on occasions implicitly, and often explicitly, with men’s emotions. Written at a time when women were still regarded as inferior human beings, these philosophical works paid little attention to women’s specific emotions and needs, which were generally considered unworthy of discussion. Given the patriarchal biases of eighteenth-century philosophy, as well as its influence on the culture and literature of the time, it is little wonder that the eighteenth-century sentimental novel often focused on male characters and their emotions, that is, for example, the case of Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771), which is replete with sentimental male characters. In chapter XIV, for example, Harley, the protagonist of the novel, is deeply moved by the story of the poor woman, giving her the “tribute of some tears” (Mackenzie, 1987, 151). Although Harley, the “man of feeling”, is the source of most tears, all the sympathetic male characters in the novel, as Vickers (1987, xxii) reminds us, are granted them. 4

In this respect, see, for example, Douglas (1998), Vickers (1987, xi), and Brown (1940).

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For example, the narrator yields “one cordial drop” to the memory of a good friend; the servant weeps at the parting; the father of the abandoned maid can only “burst into tears”; and an Old Edwards, halfway through his sad story, “paused a moment to take breath. He eyed Harley’s face; it was bathed in tears: the story was grown familiar to himself; he dropped one tear and no more” (Mackenzie, 1987, 136, 138, 154). While the eighteenth-century sentimental novel recurrently linked masculinity to emotion, the nineteenth century brought about a progressive feminization of sentiment. Most scholars seem to agree that, by the middle of the nineteenth century, sentimentality was seen as exclusively feminine. Indeed, work on sentimentality, as Chapman and Hendler (1999, 15–6) have pointed out, seems divided into studies of eighteenth-century “sensibility”, which recognize the centrality of the “man of feeling”, the relevance of male writers and philosophers to the cult of sensibility, and studies of nineteenth-century sentimentality, which tend to gender sentiment as female.5 Many scholars have identified the Industrial Revolution as one of the main reasons for the gradual feminization of sentiment in nineteenth-century culture. In his seminal work Manhood in America: A Cultural History, sociologist Michael Kimmel (1997, 52–9) explains that the Industrial Revolution brought about a radical separation of spheres between the two sexes. Admittedly, a division of labor between the sexes always existed, from hunting and agricultural societies to these early industrial societies on both sides of the Atlantic. However, what was new was “the strictness and the degree to which women and men were now seen as having a separate sphere” (Kimmel, 1997, 52). In the early part of the nineteenth century, men performed some work around the home, such as grain processing, leather work, and gathering fuel. However, virtually all these male household occupations were eliminated by the technological and economic changes introduced by the Industrial Revolution. Gradually, men left their small-scale, home-based jobs for the large-scale, industrial work of the factory. Thus, the casual conviviality of the workplace began to disappear in the new impersonal world of the factory system and mass production. As men became mere appendages to the machine, the workplace became increasingly crowded and dehumanized. Time and work discipline began to dominate. Increasingly, men had to deal with homosocial competition and peer pressure. As Thomas Drew explained, outside home was the “turmoil and bustle of fan active, selfish world”, where a man had to “encounter innumerable difficulties, hardships, and labors” (qtd. in Kimmel, 1997, 53). As the workplace became harder, the home became softer. As men began to perform their work outside the home in the public sphere, the domestic sphere became the domain of mothers and wives. Men ceded both responsibility and authority over household management. Gradually, women became responsible for childcare and the shaping of emotion and morality, acting as a “shire for upholding and exemplifying 5

One of the few critics who has shown the links between British sensibility and American sentimentality is Philip Fisher (1985), although few scholars, as Chapman and Hendler (1999, 15–6) note, seem to have taken up his point that «Sensibility […] cannot be easily differentiated from what I am calling Sentimentality» or his comparison between the affective patterns of Richardson, Sterne, and Rousseau’s texts and that of Stowe’s in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (94).

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all the softer virtues–love, generosity, tenderness, altruism, harmony, repose” (qtd. in Kimmel, 1997, 53). Therefore, the workplace was progressively masculinized, while the home became increasingly feminized. The home became a balm to soothe men from the hardships of the working day. Men thus began to increasingly reply to women to meet all their emotional needs. While in the past, men had relied on each other for friendship and emotional support, same-sex tenderness and affection were now tainted by fears of dependency. By the end of the century, those fears were translated into homophobia (Kimmel, 1997, 56). As the separation of spheres began to dominate in the early nineteenth century, women and the domestic world thus came to be regarded as “the institution of feeling” (Chapman and Hendler, 1999, 2–8). Gradually, then, the culture of sentiment became related to women’s moral and nurturing role in the private sphere of the bourgeoise family. To justify this spatial and emotional segregation, advice manuals for these newly domesticated women invented the “Cult of True Womanhood” (Kimmel, 1997, 54). These manuals set out to describe women’s moral and nurturing roles as wives and mothers in the domestic sphere as the best—and, in fact, only—way to true womanhood and femininity. In traditional nineteenth-century formulations of domestic ideology, by both male and female authors, the home came to be seen as a feminine realm where a woman reigned over the feelings of her children and husband.6 Written in New England between 1830 and 1840, popular texts such as The Mother at Home, The Mother’s Book, or The Young Mother, to name but a few, all encouraged women to provide their husbands and sons with moral and emotional support at home. For the man, then, the home became a “haven in a heartless world” (Lasch, 1979), where he could look for comfort after a hard day at work. The public sphere became a correspondingly masculine realm, a place of economic activity characterized by competition rather than sentiment or morality. In this way, the culture of sentiment became increasingly dissociated from masculinity and the public sphere. The feminization of sentiment in nineteenth-century society seems to have also been reflected in nineteenth-century culture and literature.7 In The Feminization of American Culture (1977), Ann Douglas, for example, has digressed at length and in depth on nineteenth-century sentimental culture and literature in the U.S., which she sees as clearly feminine. Douglas establishes opposition between, on the one hand, canonical male writers such as Hawthorne, Melville, Cooper, or Thoreau and, on the other hand, sentimental writers, mainly women, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sarah Hale, or Mary Lyon. The former Douglas defines as “serious non-commercial writers [who] wrote principally about men […] engaged in economically and ecologically significant activities [and who] attempted to re-educate, defy, and ignore a public addicted to the absorption of sentimental fare”. In Douglas’ view, these male writers 6

For a detailed list of works encouraging women to play a moral and nurturing role in the domestic sphere, see Cott (1977, 63). 7 The issue of nineteenth-century sentimental and domestic literature is well-documented. A detailed analysis of the subject is far beyond the scope of this chapter, which is simply focused on analyzing (and rethinking) the traditional view of sentimental culture and literature as an exclusively feminine phenomenon. For a deeper analysis of nineteenth-century sentimental fiction, see, for example, Fiedler (1998, 23–125), Hartman (1997), and Leverenz (1989, 135–204).

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used styles and subjects—such as the forest, the sea, and the city—that differed from those of many of their contemporaries and, in so doing, focused on “values and scenes that operated as alternatives to cultural norms” (1998, 5). On the other hand, in Douglas’ opinion, the latter group were mainly women who concentrated on conservative, anti-intellectual, domestically oriented “lighter productions of the press” (1998, 6, 8, 10). Written by and for women, sentimental fiction tended to focus on “feminine” themes such as purity, morals, good manners, the home, the education of daughters, and the sanctity of the childish heart. From Douglas’s viewpoint, sentimental culture and literature were, by and large, feminine phenomena. Although Douglas sees both women and (clergy)men as the main producers and consumers of sentimental literature, she is particularly concerned with demonstrating the “feminizing” force of sentimental fiction. In her view, sentimental literature, though practiced and read by women and Protestant clergymen alike, was engaged in representing and promoting traditional nineteenth-century “feminine” values, such as sentimentality, the child, gentleness, Christian morality, virginity, motherhood, and childcare (Douglas, 1998, 13). The view of emotions as intrinsically feminine can be found in studies of both nineteenth- and twentieth-century culture and literature. Influential critical texts such as R.W.B. Lewis’s The American Adam (1955) and Leslie Fiedler’s Love and Death in the American Novel (1960) view both nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature as centrally engaged with self-sufficient, individualistic, male characters, and protagonists. It is true that Leslie Fiedler, unlike R. W. B. Lewis, establishes some connection between masculinity and emotions in American culture. For example, Fiedler acknowledges Samuel Richardson as a paradigm of the sentimental novelist and admits the influence of the sentimental tradition on Cooper, as well as Melville and Hawthorne. However, as Chapman and Hendler (1999, 2–8) remind us, Fiedler points out that the homoerotic male bond underlying most classic American literature is a defense against the feminization of the sentimental (counter)culture of the time. Moreover, he agrees with Lewis that American literature is centrally concerned with representing a lonely individualistic hero who seeks independent masculinity on the frontier, thus evading familial responsibilities and emotional attachments. Moreover, he agrees with Lewis that literature is centrally concerned with representing a lonely, individualistic hero who seeks independent masculinity on the frontier, thus evading familial responsibilities and emotional attachments. Therefore, both Fiedler and Lewis end up establishing a radical separation between manhood and the “feminine” sphere of emotions. Influenced by these critical opinions, most contemporary scholars seem to keep dissociating masculinity from the world of emotions (River and Flood, 2021; Robinson, 2000). While the links between women and sentimentality have been analyzed at length and in depth, the position of the sentimental man thus remains largely unexplored. Few scholars seem to have taken up the project of questioning the traditional association of reason and the mind with masculinity and emotions and the body with women and femininity. Moreover, in constructing an alternative canon of women’s texts, feminist criticism has tended to ignore the use of sentimentality by canonical male writers. We tend to forget that much of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s

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The Scarlet Letter, for example, focuses on the tragic relationship between a single mother and her daughter and that such an overt representation of feminine emotions, particularly motherhood, has traditionally been regarded as a central feature of sentimentalism. By concentrating on the construction of an alternative canon of sentimental women writers, feminist critics have thus tended to diminish the importance of sentimentality in literature and culture. Thus, the origins of sentimentality in the “man of feeling”, as well as his influence on nineteenth- and twentieth-century culture and literature, have been all but lost.

Boys Don’t Cry? Although most related studies associate emotions with women, the radical opposition between reason and emotion based on sexual dualism proves to be an oversimplification. In this sense, one should stress, once again, that emotions cannot be considered exclusively feminine, although such a statement seems to run counter to several popular works in the field of masculinity and gender studies, which keep describing emotional men as “feminine” or androgynous.8 Pamela A. Boker, for example, has reread the fiction of Melville, Twain, and Hemingway as illustrating their common struggle with androgyny and their repression of the “feminine”. While some studies urge men to recover their deep masculine instincts and drives,9 others (Boker, 1996; Spilka, 1990) have explored men’s adoption of what they describe as feminine traits. Both seem to commit the same mistake: to believe that certain sexual attributes— such as aggressiveness, which has been usually considered specifically masculine, or compassion, which has been traditionally regarded as exclusively feminine—belong to one sex alone. However, aggressiveness belongs to both sexes, for example. It can also be synonymous with survival, action, and creation. Its total antithesis is passivity and death. Its absolute absence, as Badinter (1995, 201–3) elaborates, can entail the loss of human freedom and dignity. In effect, men can be caring and compassionate, just as women can sometimes be violent and aggressive. Even though love, nurturing, 8

Pamela A. Boker, for example, has reread the fiction of Melville, Twain, and Hemingway as illustrating their common struggle with androgyny and their repression of the “feminine”. In her words: Using the lives and fiction of Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and Ernest Hemingway as examples, I will demonstrate that, despite the apparently successful efforts of American male culture to control and displace female power, our male authors continue to struggle internally with the maternal/feminine in the form of their conflicting desires for separation from, and fusion with, the intrapsychic and symbolically depicted image of the mother. (1996, 3)

9

During their (therapeutic) sessions, several men’s groups, for example, encourage their members to shout or cry to release their aggressivity, which is treated as an essential(ist) masculine emotion. See Segal (1997, 283).

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and tenderness have been culturally defined as feminine, men do not need to express the affect of the other sex to have access to what are indeed human emotions. Clearly, men and women are gendered beings. However, we need to learn about degendering traits and behaviors without degendering people. As masculinity scholar Michael Kimmel has concluded in this respect, “being a man, everything I do [including expressing my emotions] expresses my masculinity” (2000, 266). Challenging the traditionally exclusive association of emotions with women and femininity, a number of scholars have set out to analyze the relationship between masculinity and emotions in contemporary culture. For example, in the introduction to their seminal edition of Sentimental Men: Masculinity and the Politics of Affect in American Culture (1999), Mary Chapman and Glenn Hendler explain that although sentimentality has often been relegated to the feminine domestic sphere, it is possible to “revise and complicate any understanding of sentimentality that occludes the meaning of […] masculine affect” (Chapman and Hendler, 1999, 2). Despite the traditional cultural association between emotions and the feminine private sphere, Chapman and Hendler illustrate how there is space in public life for sentimental men. They show how male involvement in the public sphere, traditionally characterized as the site of competition rather than feeling and compassion, often reveals that some emotion and intimacy scholars usually restrict to the home. Moreover, the essays in the section of the book titled “Domestic Men” identify several historical links between masculinity and domesticity, showing how men often participated in what has been described as the sentimental and domestic sphere. The essays in Sentimental Men thus demonstrate that men have always taken part in sentimental culture. By recognizing and analyzing the relevance of masculine sentimentality in our cultural history, the collection questions any simplistic gendering of sentiment as feminine, showing how the division between the public/unemotional/masculine and the private/emotional/feminine has long been problematized by contested discourses of race, class, ethnicity, and sexuality (Chapman and Hendler, 1999, 8). However, the aim of this collection is not only to demonstrate how “boys cry” but also to analyze the political significance of masculine sentimentality. In so doing, the book extends and expands on the work done by feminist scholars on the politics of sentiment by examining the parallels, as well as the differences, between male and female sentimental discourses (Chapman and Hendler, 1999, 8). In this sense, the book explores, for example, whether a privileged man can identify with an object of suffering in the same way that white women are said to have identified with racial others and whether that identification has the same political force and limitations as white women’s politics of emotional empathy. Challenging the critical master narratives proposed by influential (American) scholars such as Lewis or Fiedler, the collection also attempts to question the understanding of the (white, middle-class, heterosexual) man as a self-reliant and unemotional frontiersman by including men who do not conform to this hegemonic model of masculinity. The book thus analyzes the masculine emotional lives of African Americans and Native Americans, working-class men and downwardly mobile men, businessmen and poets, gay men, and family men, from the past and the present. In so doing, it traces historical changes and continuities in the topic at hand. The

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collection is also concerned with “spatializing” male sentiment, locating it as easily at the seaside as at the fireside, as readily in the halls of commerce as in the parlor. As Chapman and Hendler themselves conclude in this respect: Rather than see American “men of feeling” [...] as oxymorons—exceptions to the hard and fast gender rules of sentimental culture—we consider them exemplary of the competing definitions of masculinity available. (1999, 8–9)

Moreover, the essays in the volume analyze sentimentality not only as a literary genre or rhetorical form but also as a practical consciousness that includes many cultural forms, including letters, portraits, and photographs. Many of the essays do indeed illustrate how many of the cultural conventions associated with female sentimentality also recur in the male cult of sentiment: the dying child; the destruction of families by death, poverty, and the unnecessary suffering of marginalized people. Therefore, the articles seem to “supplement the feminist work done on sentimentality by treating men as producers and consumers of sentimental culture” rather than only as mere exemplars of an unemotional code of masculinity. Thus, Sentimental Men is focused on the realization that masculinity and emotions are mutually constitutive discursive practices, which changes our understanding of both, as well as of, concepts such as domesticity, the public sphere, and canonicity (Chapman and Hendler, 1999, 9). Following Chapman and Hendler, other scholars (River and Flood, 2021; Armengol et al., 2017) have started to explore the links between masculinity and emotion. For example, in the introduction to their recent edition of Boys Don’t Cry? (2002), Milette Shamir and Jennifer Travis argue that we tend to stick to some of the most traditional notions of masculinity: “that it connotes total control of emotions, that it mandates emotional inexpressivity, that it entraps in emotional isolation, that boys, in short, don’t cry” (2002, 1). According to Shamir and Travis (2), feminist and gender studies have tended to divide cultural products into two traditions along the line of emotional expressivity: a feminine mode marked by effusion of sentiment and its representational conventions and a masculine code, where affect is described negatively, “in terms of disavowal and repression or—in such instances where men ‘betray’ emotions—in terms of parody or ‘feminization.’” Challenging most of these conceptions of masculinity as unemotional, Shamir and Travis’s collection attempts to demonstrate how the division of sentiment along gender lines—or what Cathy Davidson has defined as the “affective geography of gender” (1998, 444)—proves to be an oversimplification. In this sense, the book analyzes the alignment of masculinity with emotion in numerous literary narratives. It also offers a cartography of twentieth-century affect by exploring emotions in other kinds of narratives, including political theory, legal history, film melodramas, popular men’s studies texts, academic discourse, and oral interviews. As Shamir and Travis explain, their work attempts to contribute to the “emotional history of American masculinity” (2002, 3). In conclusion, this recent study attempts to challenge the dominant view of masculinity as unemotional, a view that recurs in literary, cultural, and gender studies (River and Flood, 2021). In its editors’ own words, the collection tries to analyze “what happens when boys, indeed, do cry” (Shamir and Travis, 2002, 19).

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The “Soft Male” as a Social Phenomenon Much of the recent theoretical work on men’s emotions has resulted from what Elisabeth Badinter has described as the social phenomenon of the “soft male” (1995, 183–5). To be liked by (feminist) women, who began to question the macho role in the 1960s, some men have since started to reject their virility and adopt traditional feminine values and behaviors. As Badinter (183–5) elaborates, the “soft male” is one who, of his own accord, renounces male privileges, abandons all virility, has few, if any, male friends, and exploits his feminine side. The soft male was born in the Nordic countries in the 1970s, although he subsequently appeared in many other countries. He has come to exert special influence in those countries where his opponent, the “tough guy”, has flourished the most and thus where feminism has been the most militant: in the U.S., Germany, and the Anglo-Saxon countries, much more than in France (183–5). In the last two decades of the twentieth century, soft males have become an increasingly popular social phenomenon on both sides of the Atlantic. For example, the American magazine Psychology Today conducted a survey on masculinity among 28,000 readers. Most of the men who were interviewed answered that they wanted to be more expressive, sweeter, and lovely and that they hated violence, competition, and sexual “conquests”. In France, a questionnaire addressed to men about the qualities they deemed more important in a man received the following answers: honesty (66%), determination (40%), and tenderness (37%). After these, men valued intelligence, good manners, seduction, and, ultimately, virility, which only received 8% of the votes. As Badinter concludes, “the dream of equality dismantled traditional masculinity. This was expressed by a rejection of masculine values and an idealization of feminine values” (1995, 144). Consequently, since the late 1970s, many profeminist men, especially in AngloSaxon countries, have begun to enroll in “men’s groups”, where they hope to learn new, gentler, and more sensitive ways of being men. As Lynne Segal (1997, 282– 4) explains, the members of these groups recurrently describe their happiness and satisfaction as they learn to be more open to and expressive about their emotions, closer to their families and closer to their friends as they look for new ways of loving, caring, and sharing. These men, like many women describing their experiences in the early days of the feminist movement, seem glad to be more in touch with and supportive of each other. As a member of a group explained, “I can remember there being a whole period when there was a big high getting to know one another, sharing all these things” (qtd. in Segal, 1997, 283). From trying to “feminize” themselves, express their feelings, and become more caring and loving with women and each other, many men, as Segal (1997, 283) elaborates, have moved on into therapy groups and co-counseling. Many psychotherapists assume that emotional energies can accumulate to dangerous levels and, therefore, need bodily release in the form of crying, vigorous physical activity, trembling, or

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even laughter. Thus, men in these groups are often encouraged to do these things.10 Many of them go to therapy to try to explore their own “feminine” nature. They like displaying and developing what they see as “the gentler parts of ourselves, our spiritual and nurturing capacities, our ability to love” (qtd. in Segal, 1997, 283). Members describe their own sense of gender oppression and, above all else, denounce the ways in which masculinity inhibits their emotional “feminine” side. As a member of the South London Men Against Sexism group explained, It’s not all roses being dominant, taking the initiative, being the breadwinner, having to be a wage slave for forty years […] [and] it’s lonely because the other half of the conditioning is to separate us not only from women but also from men […] As men in the “Men’s Movement”, we recognise that we have to retrace our steps and rediscover in ourselves those traits which have been called “feminine” […] passivity, warmth, intuition, tenderness, love, EMOTION. We have to discover in ourselves that which has lain dormant for hundreds of years, that society has obscured and hidden until we act as robots—stiffly, automatically, coldly. (qtd. in Segal, 1997, 282)

Men seem to have been increasingly attracted to these groups, where they can express their emotions openly and without shame. In Britain, for example, there were between twenty and thirty groups of profeminist men in 1975 who were predominantly heterosexual and involved in relationships with feminists. Ten years later, as Lynne Segal (1997, 284) explains, almost all towns in Britain, and even rural areas, had a men’s group, with towns such as Bradford and Leeds counting three or four such groups. Today, most Western cities have (at least) one men’s group. Despite their growing number and their key role in promoting masculine emotional expressivity, men’s groups seem to remain problematic in several ways. Recurrently, some feminist women have denounced their apolitical nature.11 Many men in these groups focus on exploring the emotional side of their personalities and their “feminine” side. Thus, these groups tend to remain personal and individual, neglecting the need for political change. In this sense, Keith Motherson, a prominent anti-sexist, complained that his group was “too much of a men’s club”, promoted more male bonding and was not doing enough to “hassle [other] men to change” (qtd. in Segal, 1997, 287). It would appear, then, that changing men and masculinities is a complex process that requires much more than men trying to contact other men and their emotional or “feminine” side. After all, “feminizing” men may be contradictory in itself, for, as Segal elaborates, it 10

Although these catharsis theories focus on a significant area of emotional function neglected by much mainstream theorizing, there are several problems with them (Middleton, 1990, 182–3). First, there is rarely some clear inner feeling waiting for release. The process of healing is a long unraveling of memories, thoughts, and emotions in which catharsis plays a role, which is partly why psychoanalysis acknowledges catharsis only as an incidental aspect of the working through of factors in the transference. Moreover, catharsis theories often neglect the potential that emotions have for rationality, communication, and sociality. 11 Predominantly heterosexual, these anti-sexist men have also been confronted at their national Men Against Sexism conferences by gay men accusing them of being heterosexist and of doing little to fight LGTBIQ+ oppression (Segal, 1997, 286).

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Therefore, in trying to build caring and loving relationships with women and each other, men should avoid separating the public and private worlds. Despite the allure of the “New Man”—a softer, more emotional and conscious sex object—anti-sexist men need to ponder the social changes that are taking place in the commercial face of hegemonic masculinity since the “New Man” may retain, however ambiguously, his hegemony over women and other subordinated groups of men (Segal, 1997, 294),13 or, as Antonio J. Rodríguez (2020) defined, “new masculinities as they have always been”. Redefining the power relations between men and women and questioning hegemonic masculinity entails both personal and social strategies. Although essential, personal change cannot alone serve to overthrow patriarchal gender relations. As Lynne Segal elaborates, challenging patriarchal masculinity cannot [...] simply be a process of men individually expressing their doubts and hesitations over, and their refusals to conform to, what they see as masculine ideals in favor of developing their ‘feminine’ side. Personal change is important. But beneath and beyond the possibilities for personal change lies the whole web of interconnecting social, economic and political practices; public policies; welfare resources; and understandings of sexuality, which actually confer power upon men. (1997, 294)

In this manner, despite their joyful descriptions of change, men’s groups, again like some early feminist women, often reduce politics to individual struggles for personal life. With their personal/therapeutic focus, men’s groups do not always pay enough attention to the public side of masculinity. However, masculinity is as much a social as a psychological and individual reality. As Lynne Segal (1997, 284) elaborates, masculinity gains its force and appeal not only from internalized psychological aspects or roles but also from all the wider social networks that simply take for granted men’s authority and privileges in relation to women. Although men tend to focus on the emotional and individual sides of masculinity, often neglecting its larger social and political aspects (Rodríguez, 2020), experts such as Lynne Segal seem to set emotions and politics in an irreducible binary opposition, which Shamir and Travis (2002, 6–7) have identified as one of the major fallacies of much scholarship on the politics of masculinity and emotions. This fallacy is described by Catharine Lutz as the “essentializing” approach to emotion, that is, 12

Similarly, Christopher Newfield argues that «hegemonic patriarchy can survive without male assertion» and thrives with male «feminization» also in the form of demands for masculine emotional exploration (1989, 66). 13 Clearly, the «feminization» of men has an economic and commercial component. For example, the fact that men are increasingly encouraged to take care of themselves (by buying clothes and male cosmetics, going to the gym, etc.) is (at least partly), the result of late capitalism trying to widen its markets and number of consumers. By becoming not only producers but consumers themselves, men contribute to widening the scope of the late capitalist market, which has traditionally associated men with production and women with consumption. However, the fact of men becoming consumers does not guarantee, of course, greater gender equality.

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the assumption that emotions are internal psychic or psychobiological energies radically separated from society and language. In their landmark work Inventing the Psychological (1997), Joel Pfister and Nancy Schnog analyzed some of the main problems of this approach, showing how seemingly “internal” emotions are, in fact, constructed and naturalized by the mechanisms of power that seem to be “external” or alien to them. Moving beyond the traditional schism between emotions and society/ politics, the next sections will attempt to demonstrate how emotions and sociopolitical change may and should be seen as complementary rather than opposed. After all, the personal, as feminism has shown, is also political. Thus, I argue that profeminist men’s personal/emotional experiences might also enhance the political transformation of masculinities and gender relations (Armengol, 2021, 2019, 2013; Armengol et al., 2017).

Emotions as a Driving Force of Social Change The view of emotions as socially and politically transformative has been the subject of a long and ongoing debate. Several scholars appear to be deeply suspicious of associating emotion with sociopolitical transformation. Many have indeed called into question the political use of emotions and resistance, claiming that emotions often promote conservatism and containment rather than subvert the hegemonic social order. According to several scholars, the view of emotions as leading to social transformation and political change remains open to questioning. For example, Lauren Berlant’s influential work on pain and political identity has problematized, as Shamir and Travis (2002, 9) remind us that the political use of emotion is a challenge to prevalent social structures. Berlant has explored the emergence of a politics rooted in universalized pain and suffering in the U.S. that is used to promote identification through empathy. In Berlant’s view, sentimental politics restricts examples of social disempowerment to a supposedly preideological realm of feeling, assuming that the preideological can challenge existing institutions. Indeed, sentimental politics thwarts its own political goals since the emphasis on a universal, preideological feeling allows a “civic-minded but passive ideal of empathy” to substitute for the “ethical imperative toward social transformation” (Berlant, 1998, 641). Thus, the privatized narrative of suffering, pain, and survival—or ressentiment—to borrow from Nietzche’s terminology—comes to replace public action and policies toward social freedom (641). As Shamir and Travis conclude from all this, Berlant is “concerned that a politics based on the recovery and articulation of feeling can […] result in stasis rather than promote social transformation” (2002, 9). Even though we should not forget all these arguments, many other feminist and queer thinkers have questioned them from several angles, insisting on the potential of emotions for political action and social progress. For example, Miranda Fricker stressed the importance of feelings in women’s movements, insisting that feminism is centrally concerned with recovering women’s emotions and subjective experiences, which had long been silenced by patriarchy. Fricker has also argued that

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anger is a highly political emotion that contributed, for example, to the emergence and consolidation of the feminist struggle against patriarchal oppression in the U.S. According to Fricker, emotions “are not only an expression of the world but also active participants in how the world is shaped” (1991, 18). Like Fricker, who made sure to include emotion in the feminist political agenda, American queer scholars such as Carolyn Dinshaw and the late José Esteban Muñoz, among many others, have underlined the centrality of emotion to queer collective history, as well as its potential for sociopolitical action and community building. For example, in Getting Medieval (1999), Dinshaw posited the existence of transhistorical emotions linking, in part, pre- and postmodern queer communities. While Dinshaw admits that it is impossible to establish a direct correspondence between past and present queer communities,14 she argues that it is possible to talk about partial connections between them, namely, “between incommensurate lives and phenomena—relations that collapse the critical and theoretical oppositions between transhistorical and alterist accounts, between truth and pleasure, between past and present” (1999, 35). In Dinshaw’s view, such partial connections between past and present-day queer communities are formed thanks to shared emotions and affects and, above all, to transhistorical aspects of affection and same-sex desire (see also Dinshaw, 2008). Old and new queer communities are thus linked by the transhistorical aspects of same-sex desire and affect. As Dinshaw concludes, “queer histories […] are constituted by such affective relations across time” (1999, 2). Like Dinshaw, Audre Lorde, who described herself as a black lesbian feminist woman writer (and, later, as a victim of cancer), always defended the political potential of emotions, especially to fight sexism, racism, homophobia, and other types of social oppression. For example, in Sister Outsider, Lorde defended the view of anger as a highly political emotion. Distinguishing between different types of emotions, Lorde claims that hatred is the fury of those who oppose progress and change and that its object is death and destruction; anger, on the other hand, is a grief of distortions between peers, and its object is change. In Lorde’s words, hatred is “an emotional habit or attitude of mind in which aversion is coupled with ill will”, while anger is best described as “a passion of displeasure that may be excessive or misplaced but not necessarily harmful” (1998 58). While the former has a negative level (it destroys), the latter builds, showing how individuals are brought together as a group. In Lorde’s own words, “my response to racism is anger […] women responding to racism means women responding to anger […] I have used learning to express anger for my growth. But for corrective surgery, not guilt” (44). As Lorde concludes: The angers of women can transform difference through insight into power. For anger between peers, births change, not destruction, and the discomfort and sense of loss it often causes is not fatal, but a sign of growth […] My anger has meant pain to me but it has also meant survival. (1998, 48)

14

After all, concepts such as queer and community are themselves multifaceted and indeterminate, as they have always been culture-specific and context-bound. In Dinshaw’s own words, “these terms that queer theory as highlighted all point to the alterity within mimesis itself, the never-perfect aspect of identification” (1999, 35).

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It would appear, therefore, that emotions have significant political potential. Little wonder, then, that Raymond Williams has described “structures of feeling” as sites of social change. Williams uses the term to describe what happens when a new group emerges to question the existing social order. The group comes together thanks to “the deep community […] that makes communication possible”, and its structure of feeling is formed by that deep community, even if it is not aware of itself, because it “is actually what is being lived, and not only what is thought is being lived”. Williams’s “structure of feeling” is thus a state of unfinished and open social relations still incapable of reflexive self-comprehension and self-assessment. It is “a structural formation and the very edge of semantic availability” due to its difference from the “official or received thought of a time” (Williams, 1977, 134). Therefore, the structure of feeling becomes the area of incomplete articulation and a form of mediation between experience/subjectivity and language. In his words, “the peculiar location of a structure of feeling is the endless comparison that must occur in the process of consciousness between the articulated and the lived”. The zone consists of “what is not fully articulated, all that comes through a disturbance, tension, blockage, emotional trouble” (Williams, 1977, 167–8). Williams insists that emotion occupies a temporal present and emergent moment before the processes of classification and definition of cultural products become dominant and fixed. Thus, this theorist is particularly interested in feeling in the “embryonic phase before it can become fully articulate and defined exchange”, a phase in which it is still a process and thus able to show change. However, emotion need not be unspeakable or private—it can slowly emerge from the “zone of incomplete articulation” through the construction of new social movements and their initial phases of self-comprehension and self-assessment in new artistic movements. William’s concept of “structures” of feeling suggests that emotion is an intersubjective feeling that transcends individuals. For him, social and political changes are “changes in structures of feelings” (Williams, 1977, 128–35). Williams, as Peter Middleton (1990, 205) reminds us, thus does not define emotion in opposition to thought but rather as thought, not as prior to the social but as something intrinsically social.

The Political Potential of Emotions After exploring the different views on the potential of emotions to transform social relations, it should come as no surprise that their potential to transform masculinity and gender relations has also become the subject of a much-heated debate. While some insist that emotions can promote radical social change in the traditional understanding of masculinity, others are deeply suspicious of their capacity to change men’s lives and gender relations in any significant way. In this latter respect, much contemporary scholarship (e.g., Rodríguez, 2020; Shamir and Travis, 2002, 5–7; Robinson, 2000, 1–15; Savran, 1998; Segal, 1997) has warned against the widespread belief that every oppositional stance is necessarily a liberating one and that every “liberation” of masculine emotion would produce the desired political effect. In this

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sense, many conservative texts on masculinities ask men to acknowledge and get in touch with their emotions. From Warren Farrell’s The Liberated Man (1974) to Robert Bly’s Iron John (1990), many masculinity scholars advocate the release of men’s emotional experiences, whether by asking men to embrace the “feminine” side of their selves, as Farrell advised, or by creating a space for sharing feelings with other men, as in Bly’s mythopoetic movement. Very often, then, the narrative of masculinity as emotional control functions as a way to recover the threatened position of hegemonic masculinity through self-proclaimed victimization. That is, indeed, the view held by both David Savran (1998) and Sally Robinson (2000), who have shown how for some (white, heterosexual, and middle-class) men a metaphorical emotional wound has come to represent the “loss” of social privilege. Thus, masculinity can once again be described as threatened and beset. It seems that the direct equation of masculine emotional release with greater gender equality is anything but unproblematic (Rodríguez, 2020). Since the 1970s, a U.S. movement for “male liberation”, indirectly inspired by feminism, has gained momentum among white men. Influenced by texts such as Warren Farrell’s The Liberated Man (1974) or Herb Goldberg’s The Hazards of Being Male (1976), this movement represents men as victims, not of women or feminism but of their power and of patriarchy itself. Central to this self-proclaimed male victimization is the idea that men are denied emotional expressiveness, which therefore encourages the release of masculine blocked emotions. However, the therapeutic value of male release, as Sally Robinson (2000, 1–15) indicates, aims at promoting individual growth and is not usually translated into the social or political spheres. In other words, “unblocking” tears and men’s emotions tend to result in psychologically therapeutic “standing in for” political change. Thus, the release of emotions leaves an empty and ultimately depoliticized “liberated man” who ultimately blocks the pursuit of social equality between men and women (Robinson, 2000).15 By focusing on the exploration and expression of their emotional inner selves, men can forget about larger/exterior social issues, including gender equality. Obsessed with their intrapsychic emotional lives, men can thus avoid hearing women’s needs and pressing demands for greater social equality. While critics of sentimentality such as Robinson continue to criticize masculine emotion liberation for not fulfilling its social and political responsibilities, other works, perhaps most notably those of Victor J. Seidler (1994) and Peter Middleton (1990), have emphasized its relevance for profeminist men. These studies have argued that men hide their feelings of dependence and vulnerability as a strategy to withhold information, which might threaten their power. Thus, by expressing their feelings of vulnerability, men might give some advantage, for example, to a potential competitor in the marketplace. As Middleton explains, “to know yourself as a man is to know that 15

Although in the United States «male liberation» remains a powerful social movement, the emotional «soft» male has proved a failure in many countries. Several Nordic feminists, such as Merete Gerlach-Nielsen, have already voiced their Deep dissatisfaction with what they see as a passive and fragmented male. As Badinter explains, “even the most responsive to gentleness on the part of men want nothing more to do with these men, who are ersatz traditional women” (1995, 184).

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other men may enslave or destroy you. Masculinity does need to deny emotion. Otherwise, it would have to confront the fear it wants to forget” (1990, 215). Therefore, by releasing their emotions, profeminist men might undermine one of the main rules of patriarchal masculinity, which associates manhood with power and rationality and inhibits men’s expression of their inner feelings of dependence and vulnerability. Male emotional release might contribute not only to challenging patriarchal masculinity but also to traditional gender relations. In this sense, one should bear in mind that men’s presumably unemotional/rational masculinity has often proven oppressive to women. For example, women were repeatedly denied fundamental rights such as voting or access to university education because of their supposedly emotional/irrational nature. Since rationality, associated with masculinity, has traditionally been considered superior to emotions; related to women and femininity, women have long been considered emotional, irrational, and, as a result, inferior beings (Seidler, 1994). Questioning the gendered stereotype of women as intrinsically emotional and of men as unemotional might thus help challenge the old sexist view of the two sexes as “complementary”. Such a (di)vision has a detrimental effect on both sexes, as it not only keeps estranging men from the “feminine” world of emotions and the domestic sphere but also precludes women’s access to the “masculine” world of rationality and the public sphere of power (River and Flood, 2021; Armengol, 2013; Kimmel, 2000, 211; Schmitt, 1998, 95). Acknowledging the emotional component of masculinity might thus contribute to gender equality. Moreover, the available scientific evidence seems to suggest that emotional repression and lack of empathy can be preconditions for male violence. Men’s estrangement from the sphere of emotions often diminishes their capacity for empathy. As a result, men tend to be violent more frequently.16 In an article about the work of a men’s group dealing with male violence in England, Steve Mason, for example, insists that men need to recover the lost language of feelings since emotion might help them discover a new facet of themselves and diminish their violent instincts. In his words: As men, we are very out of touch with our feelings; we have had the language of feeling beaten out of us, often literally, during childhood. Those feelings we are left with have acquired connotations which make us shun or misapply them. So, love and warmth imply shame, joy and delight imply immaturity; anger and frustration imply physical violence. We need to reclaim our feelings and shed the connotations to learn that feeling is good for us. Our dissociation from feeling allows us to be violent more easily, as it dissociates us from consequences. Anger and violence need not be synonymous, and learning to feel more deeply will help us find a path away from violence. (qtd. in Middleton, 1990, 119–20)

In fact, many profeminist men became involved in anti-sexist initiatives after they became acquainted about gender inequality. As Michael Kaufman suggested, emotion becomes one of the main reasons for men’s engagement in feminist political practices. A man’s personal experience of feelings such as anger, oppression, and guilt often plays a fundamental role in his decision to embrace feminism. As Kaufman himself explains, 16

For a more detailed analysis of the issue of male violence, see Chapter 6.

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5 Boys Don’t Cry? Masculinity and the Politics of Emotion If [the reason for a man’s involvement in feminism] outrage at inequality; […] it might be his own sense of shared oppression, say because of his sexual orientation; it might be his own guilt about the privileges he enjoys as a man; it might be horror at men’s violence. (1994, 153; emphasis added)

It seems reasonable to conclude, then, that a man’s feelings of empathy for women’s oppression (his “outrage at inequality”, his “own guilt about the privileges he enjoys as a man”, “his horror at men’s violence”, etc.) could lead him to embrace feminist political practices. This is also the view held by masculinity scholar Harry Brod (1998), who emphasizes the relevance of men’s emotional empathy to their involvement in anti-sexist initiatives. Brod’s date rape prevention education workshops, for example, are centrally concerned with trying to make men imagine and feel the constraints on women’s lives that come from living in permanent fear of sexual violence. In his view, men will only become truly conscious of the need to stop abuse if they learn a new type of sensitivity. After his workshops, several men, as Brod himself (203) elaborates, acknowledged themselves to be emotionally unsettled, expressing their interest and sympathy for anti-sexist men’s activities and campaigns. As Brod himself commented, I started to tell them much of what I’ve learned from women about the fears they live with […] I went on at some length in this vein and then asked for their responses. “I never knew” said one. “I feel like I’ve been hit in the face with a brick,” said another. I think positive changes happened that night. They began to learn a new [feminist] kind of accountability and sensitivity. (203–4; emphasis added)

If, as it seems, a man’s feelings of empathy toward women’s oppression might contribute to his involvement in feminism, male feminism could also be enhanced by making men realize the [emotionally] oppressive influence of masculinity on their own lives. After all, men often come to feel the burden of emotional repression, which not only prevents them from exploring their emotional inner selves but also keeps separating them from women, children, and other men. Men’s realization of the emotional restrictions imposed by patriarchy on their own lives could thus also contribute to their increasing involvement in the feminist struggle against patriarchal gender relations (Salazar, 2018). As Harry Brod has argued, the ability to explore the pain men suffer provides “the surest foundation for the ability to oppose the pain men inflict” (1998, 205). In conclusion, discovering men’s emotions would not only enrich their own personal lives but also might enhance feminism. Exploring their emotions, profeminist men could ultimately help undermine the conventional patriarchal opposition between rationality (masculinity) and emotions (femininity), which has traditionally prevented men from entering the private sphere as emotionally committed fathers and carers and which has also precluded women’s access to the male world of “rationality” and the public sphere to achieve greater amounts of power.

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New Fatherhood(s) While men have long remained estranged from the traditional “feminine” sphere of childcare, much masculinity scholarship (see, e.g., Solano and Bacete, 2021; Armengol, 2009; Hobson, 2002; Kimmel, 2000, 149; Badinter, 1995; Chodorow, 1979) has shown how their active involvement in the personal/emotional experience of fatherhood could also lead to important social/political changes in masculinities and gender relations. Men’s entry into the domestic sphere as fathers and carers (along with the increasing access of women to the paid labor force) might indeed contribute to questioning the traditional division of spheres. As we have already noted, the development of capitalism and industrialization in the early nineteenth century brought about a radical separation between the public (masculine) and private (feminine) spheres. As a result, women were relegated to the domestic sphere and became increasingly responsible for caring for girls. Today, women have massively entered the paid labor force, but they often continue to perform most of the parenting in the family. This has two main implications. First, unlike most men, women work both outside and inside the home, which causes sexual inequality and asymmetrical (heterosexual) relationships. Second, men tend to be less involved in interpersonal, affective, and emotional relationships (with their daughters) than women are. Both implications are indissolubly linked, as men’s gradual involvement in the personal/affective experience of fatherhood could help not only to enrich men’s emotional lives but also, above all, to reduce sexual inequality on a social/political level. This thesis does indeed seem to be supported by feminist sociologist and psychoanalyst Nancy Chodorow, who, in her classic work The Reproduction of Mothering, sees paternal absence from early childcare as leading to women’s oppression. Chodorow claims that, in fact, the father’s dissociation from childrearing leads to the creation and perpetuation of male dominance and binary “masculine” and “feminine” identities. In her view, the infant’s early psychic development consists mainly in the construction of a social and emotional relationship with the mother. The child, being totally dependent on the mother, establishes a symbiotic unity with her, a unity reaching her height during the fourth or fifth month and spanning roughly the first year. During this period, the child remains psychologically fused with the mother. While girls can become women and still maintain this feeling of oneness with their mothers, boys define masculinity in terms of separating themselves from their mothers. By retaining their preoedipal attachments to their mothers, growing girls tend to remain continuous with others, and their subjectivity tends to increase flexibility and porosity. On the other hand, the boy—internalizing traditional sociocultural ideas about gender that identify masculinity with autonomy, individualism, and independence—develops his “masculine” identity through the repression of his early identification with the mother. For him, the mother symbolizes emotional and physical dependence, overwhelming love and attachment, and fear of merging. Thus, the boy rejects everything he sees as “feminine”, including nurturing, caring, and interpersonal affect. As a result, men tend to remain “emotionally secondary”. As Chodorow herself insists,

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5 Boys Don’t Cry? Masculinity and the Politics of Emotion Denial of sense of connectedness and isolation of affect may be more characteristic of masculine development and may produce a more rigid and punitive superego, whereas feminine development, in which internal and external object relations and affects connected to these are not so repressed, may lead to a superego more open to persuasion and the judgements of others, that is, not so independent of its emotional origins. (1979, 169)

Exclusive mothering by women, then, seems to produce differences in the relational experiences of girls and boys as they grow up. Moreover, the common absence of fathers from childcare leads to negative and hierarchical definitions of masculinity. Although fathers are not usually as available as mothers in daily life, children tend to idealize their fathers and give them ideological primacy and superior authority “precisely because of their absence and seeming inaccessibility” (Chodorow, 1979, 181). Thus, children in absent-father or remote-father households often end up idealizing masculinity as superior to women and femininity. Nevertheless, this situation can, and is beginning to, change. In response to, among other reasons, their sense of alienation and impersonality in the paid workforce, many men seem to begin to regret their lack of continued connection with their daughters and sons. They feel that they are missing one of the deepest (and few) emotional (inter)personal experiences in our society. By becoming fathers, these men thus show that “mothering” qualities are not truly instinctual or biological but could also be learned and embodied by men if men and women parent equally (Solano and Bacete, 2021). By displaying all their capacity for love and nurturing, these fathers seem to be able to recover the lost language of (male) emotions. Even more important is the fact that the affective experience of fatherhood could also contribute to promoting gender equality. In line with Nancy Chodorow’s arguments, I will in effect be arguing that men’s (increasingly active) involvement in early parenting could, over time, undermine the oppressive nature of “masculinity” and the denial of “femininity”, thus challenging male dominance. As noted above, the traditional sexual division of labor and women’s total responsibility for childcare usually cause patriarchal domination. While psychologists have shown how the absence of fathers from childcare often triggers male dominance and the need to be superior to women, anthropologists have argued that women’s childcare duties demanded that the earliest men hunt, giving them, and not women, access to the power of the extradomestic sphere. If, as seems, the traditional social organization of parenting has long produced inequality, shared parenting should be considered one of the main priorities of the feminist struggle for gender equality. As Chodorow herself elaborates, we need to assist in a “fundamental reorganization of parenting, so that primary parenting is shared between men and women” (1979, 215). The available data suggest that men’s growing involvement in the affective, interpersonal, traditional “feminine” sphere of nurturing and childcare could indeed help break down the polarity between “masculine” and “feminine”, whereby all that is nurturing, tender, and gentle is diminished by men as not “masculine”. As has been argued, girls and boys need to break their primary identification with their mother to achieve their masculine identity, which often proves a traumatic experience. Nevertheless, this symbiotic identification is not created in the first place if men assume primary caring responsibilities. Children are dependent from the beginning on people

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of both sexes and establish their individual identity in relation to both. In this way, masculinity is not synonymous with the denial or rejection of women. This would, in turn, diminish men’s need to protect their masculinity and patriarchal structures and would also be conducive to women’s sense of independence. Emotional connection with both parents would not diminish the child’s primary sense of gendered self and would allow any person to choose the activities that she or he preferred without feeling that such choices threatened their gender identity. Since unequal parenting forms a basis for the radical division of the social world into completely different (and unequally valued) domestic and public spheres, shared parenting is a crucial social advance: Anyone who has good primary relationships has the foundation for nurturance and love, and women would retain these even as men would gain them. Men would be able to retain autonomy, which comes from differentiation, without differentiation being rigid and reactive, and women have more opportunity to gain it. (Chodorow, 1979, 219)

It seems reasonable to conclude, then, that men’s active involvement in the domestic sphere as nurturing and affectionate fathers should become a central component of profeminist men’s struggle for gender equality (Solano and Bacete, 2021; Bacete, 2017). To stop the patriarchal reproduction of mothering, we need to assist a new feminist future in fathering. For example, anthropological research has shown that women’s economic and political status is highest in those cultures where men perform domestic work and act as responsible, nurturing, and emotionally committed fathers. It has also been proven that fathers who are positively involved with their children when they are young are more likely to become invested in their communities when they reach midlife. Moreover, a society where men and women also share parenting, as Michael Kimmel (2000, 149) explains, will be a society where they are also equally active in the labor force. Relying on love and emotion as fundamental educational tools, (profeminist) fathers thus seem to have the potential not only to transform emotional and nurturing styles in the domestic sphere but also to foster social and gender relations in the public sphere. As Kimmel himself concludes, “a change in the private sphere will bring about dramatic changes in the public sphere” (149). It is true that, through fatherhood, many men seek personal or emotional enrichment, not the overthrow of patriarchy. However, it is equally true that shared parenting is still likely to be good for women and children. In addition to helping women enter the paid workforce and reducing their amount of domestic work, shared parenting may help children (and thus future men and prospective fathers) move away from negative definitions of masculinity as the rejection of women and femininity. Hopefully, the example set by profeminist fathers will inspire other men to recover the lost language of emotion, which might contribute to diminishing the patriarchal oppression of women (Solano and Bacete, 2021). After all, men fear emotions because emotions have long been defined as feminine, and masculinity has been traditionally defined as the opposite of femininity. Thus, men’s fear and hatred of emotions are nothing but the result of their fear and hatred of femininity. It seems reasonable to conclude, therefore, that men’s investment in personal and affective spheres such as

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fatherhood and childcare may help reduce their fear and hatred of femininity, which has been usually stereotyped as the sole recipient of emotion. Profeminist men should be particularly active in encouraging equal parenting because such social advances are now historically feasible but far from inevitable. As Chodorow has argued, “they depend on the conscious organization and activity of all women and men who recognize that their interests lie in transforming the social organization of gender and eliminating sexual inequality” (1979, 219; emphasis added). From all this, one can conclude that (profeminist) men’s emotional experiences, for example, as nurturing fathers, might also contribute to the feminist struggle for gender equality, thereby promoting social and political change. It is true, as has been seen, that men’s focus on their emotional inner selves often leads to conservatism, preventing them from engaging in larger social and political issues, including gender equality. Since politics is itself a plural and contradictory practice, emotions, as political artifacts, may inevitably produce both conservative and progressive results. While acknowledging, then, the conservative component of emotions, this chapter has tried to demonstrate and emphasize the political potential of emotions for transforming patriarchal masculinities and gender relations. Like feminist women, profeminist men can become “emotional” about gender inequality, as evidenced by their increasing—although still insufficient—participation in housework and childcare, as well as their numerous campaigns against domestic violence (Salazar, 2018). Ultimately, this chapter also seems to confirm and illustrate the main argument put forward in Chapter 3—namely, that (white heterosexual) masculinity is far from uniform. The fact that some men are actively and emotionally involved in feminism does indeed appear to question, once again, the reductive conception of masculinity as the embodiment of patriarchy.

Literary Revisions of the Father Figure Traditionally, fatherhood, in both Western culture and society, has been portrayed as synonymous with patriarchy (Solano and Bacete, 2021; Samuel, 2015; Armengol, 2009; Leverenz, 2003). In her well-known poem “Daddy”, the famous American poet Sylvia Plath, for example, even uses war imagery and metaphors from the Holocaust to denounce her dictatorial father. As the poem reads in its most famous lines, “Every woman adores a Fascist,/the boot in the face, the brute/Brute heart of a brute like you” (1966, 82). Similar images seem to dominate the other side of the Atlantic. If, in American writer F. S. Fitzgerald’s novel Tender Is the Night (1995) Nicole Warren is described as a victim of incest, who still requires therapy to try to overcome her traumatic childhood experience, Death of a Salesman (1949), the pinnacle work of US playwright Arthur Miller, concerns itself with Willy Loman’s (unsuccessful) efforts to impose his materialistic worldview on his son Biff. However, John Cheever’s fiction most harshly and recurrently portrays father characters as despotic and authoritarian figures. During a publishing career that spanned more than fifty years, from 1930 until 1982, Cheever constantly portrayed fathers who prove

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unable to communicate love, moral values, and even practical knowledge to their children. In Linda Simon’s words, “they recognize or have constructed an emotional barrier between themselves and their children that makes intimacy impossible” (2000, 225). No wonder, of course, if we take into account that Cheever himself was the victim of an alcoholic and abusive father. As a channel for his ruthless revenge, the author used almost all his work to denounce fathers who were alcoholic, adulterers, or shackled to the usually claustrophobic atmosphere of their homes. Cheever’s fiction thus seems particularly “inhospitable to the enterprise of fathering” (Simon, 2000, 228). For example, in the “Sutton Place Story”, Deborah Tennyson’s parents work all day long and go off to parties each night. After being overseen by a large number of inadequate caretakers, Ella feels so sad that she runs away from her home. Similarly, “The Hartleys” depicts a couple on the verge of their divorce and explores the consequences of the separation for their seven-year-old daughter, Anne. As Simon (2000) noted, Anne’s father “cannot give her a secure family life” (233). In “The Country Husband”, Francis Weed also fails to connect with his wife and his children, who are looked after by a babysitter. Moreover, the babysitter’s father is a notorious alcoholic; a neighbor’s child is so alienated from her apparently caring parents that she spends all of her time in other people’s houses, while another family sends all of her children to a boarding school. Moreover, Francis feels sexually attracted to the babysitter, which threatens the integrity of his family. Therefore, Francis seeks the help of a psychiatrist who simply recommends “woodwork as therapy” (Cheever, 1980, 351). This recommendation thus gives Francis permission, if not a mandate, to separate himself even more from his children and for their own good. As Simon has concluded, both in his fiction and his own life, Cheever “bore witness, again and again, to the consequences of his own abandonment” (237). While most African American playwright August Wilson’s works usually ignore the father figure altogether, when the father is present, Wilson tends to examine “the burden of frustration” (Brewer, 2000, 125). For example, Troy Maxon, the central character of Fences (1986), made into a film with the same title by actor and director Denzel Washington in 2016, explains that when his father was at home, he did not get on well with any members of his family. As Troy himself puts it, “he was just as evil as he could be […] He wasn’t good for anybody”. Remembering a violent argument leading to a fourteen-year-old Troy’s expulsion from the household, he calls his father “the devil himself” (Wilson, 51, 52). Examples of distant and authoritarian fathers abound in contemporary Latino/ Latina fiction as well. What Alonso and Domínguez (2000, 77–78, 80) label “el rey de la casa”, literally “the king of the house”, refers to the traditional Chicano macho role, which equates masculinity with violence and patriarchal control over wife and children. For instance, in the popular novel The House on Mango Street (1991) by the Chicana writer Sandra Cisneros, there are several fathers who perfectly exemplify this role. This is indeed the case for Minerva’s husband, in the chapter titled “Minerva writes poems”. Minerva and her husband have two children, but he “left and keeps leaving”, causing familial dissolution and making Minerva “sad like a house on fire” (Cisneros, 1991, 40). Similarly, in Denise Chávez’s Face of an Angel (1994), we find several, often alcoholic, deserting fathers and womanizing males who

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only ruin the lives of their families. A wife of one such man explains, for example, how her husband would “leave the house early and would come back later, smelling of another woman or his own vomit. His absences got longer, and my tears got harder until one day they just dried up” (Chávez, 1994, 22). In the novel The Rain God, by gay Chicano author Arturo Islas, the head of the family, Miguel Grande, is also represented as a clearly distant patriarch. The protagonist of the novel, symbolically belittled by the name Miguel “Chico”, repeatedly rages against his father, Miguel “Grande”, who embodies an outmoded, unemotional patriarchal code to which the son is expected to conform: Traditionally, the talk between him and his father had never gone beyond Miguel Grande’s questioning and his replies. Their physical contact had been limited to a slap in the face or a bone-crushing hug that lacked affection, and had been his father’s way of showing that, at middle age, he was still physically fit. (97–97)17

While it is true that (literary) fathers have long exerted and sometimes keep exercising their patriarchal authority over their offspring, both sons and daughters, it is equally true that the equation of fatherhood with patriarchal control and repression could prove simplistic and reductive. As Bueno et al. (2000) noted, “while we are very conscious of not wanting to react against important feminist investigations of fatherhood, we nevertheless believe that […] fatherhood cannot be fully comprehended within the discourse of patriarchy” (7). In line with this argument, the rest of this chapter will try to illustrate the plurality as well as the irreducible complexity of literary images of fatherhood(s) (Solano and Bacete, 2021; Samuel, 2015; Armengol, 2009; Leverenz, 2003), showing how the father may represent a more contradictory and plural figure at once. In fact, there are numerous texts in the universal literature that may help illustrate the diverse constructions of fatherhood(s) in contemporary culture and fiction. For example, in much of Bread Givers (1975), the Jewish-American novelist Anzia Yezierska focuses on Sara’s rebellion against her father, the authoritarian and conservative rabbi Reb Smolinsky. Despite this, the novel also shows how Sara takes after her father in many respects and, after a long time apart, finally reconciles with him. After his wife dies, Smolinsky makes a second and catastrophic marriage. Seeing that this second marriage completely destroyed and ruined him, Sara decides to take care of her father by taking him into her home to live his last days with her and her husband. Just as Sara makes an effort to respect her father’s old habits, the rabbi finally acknowledges respect for his daughter’s secularism. “I must keep my Sabbath holy. I cannot have my eating contaminated with your carelessness […] But if you’ll promise to keep sacred all that is sacred to me […] then maybe, I’ll see” (1975, 295). In the same way her father accepts his daughter’s new (secular) values in the U.S., Sara learns how to respect her father’s traditional Jewish values, which he decides to retain after emigrating to America from Eastern Europe. Of this, Kathryn Reisdorfer (2000) argues that “[Sara] refuses to submit to paternal authority. Instead, she defeats it by consuming it, acknowledging its blood, and becoming it” (182). 17

These and other examples for distant fathers in contemporary Chicano/a literature have been analyzed at length and in depth by Alonso and Domínguez (2000, 67–95).

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In the African American writer Zora Neale Hurston’s story titled “The Gilded Six Bits” (1995), which was transformed into film by director Booker T. Mattison in 2001, fatherhood proves to be an equally powerful antidote to resentment and pain. When the protagonist of the story, Joe Banks, discovers his wife Missie May in bed with another man, he does not divorce her but simply distances himself from her, trying to deal with his mixed feelings of confusion and grief. However, when Missie gives birth to a son several months after her adultery, Joe begins to rethink his attitude and, finally, decides to forgive his wife and accept her as an imperfect human being. After his generous forgiveness, he publicly proclaims the child as his and returns to his previously happy life with her. As Patricia Daly has argued, “he [Joe] has clearly experienced a rewarding transformation that involves forging close bonds with his less than perfect Eve and the new child” (64). Like Hurston, several contemporary writers have started to explore the variety and complexity of the father figure through their fiction. For instance, in “A Tender Man”, a short story by the African American writer Toni Cade Bambara, the protagonist Cliff Hemphill, is trying to start a relationship with Aisha, a caring African American woman who loves him for being one of the “good guys” on campus. However, Aisha confronts Cliff with the fact that he is not parenting the daughter he had with his former wife, a white woman. As Cliff begins to meditate on his irresponsible attitude toward his daughter, Aisha asks what he wanted to be when he grew up. Remembering how much he did not want to imitate the father who abandoned him, he answers, “a tender man”. In this way, Cliff Hemphill begins to realize his failures as a father and “painfully journeys to a state of greater unselfishness” (Daly, 1995, 65). Finally, he decides to start caring for his daughter and become a better father and human being, which makes him “feel good again” (Bambara, 1995, 105). Other writers have also begun to revisit the role of fathers in contemporary culture and fiction. In contemporary Chicana literature, for example, it is possible to distinguish between two different stages concerning the representation of fatherhood. When Chicana writers began to write, father figures were either ignored or depicted as dominant and sometimes violent patriarchs. As we have already noted, novels such as Denise Chávez’s The Face of an Angel or The Rain God by Arturo Islas render an account of this. These writers’ aim, as we have also seen, was clearly to undermine the father as representative of a repressive ideology that perpetuated traditional gender roles. In this first stage, Chicana writers, such as Alonso and Domínguez (2000), explain, “tried to deconstruct the heroic figure of the father through disoriented or unbalanced characters, challenging traditional assumptions about their deserved authority” (88). Nevertheless, this fiction has now entered a new second stage, which focuses on the need to recover male relationships in Chicana writers’ lives and engage in a “thorough exploration of the father figure and his circumstances” (Alonso and Domínguez, 2000, 90). For example, in her best-selling text The House on Mango Street, as we have mentioned, Sandra Cisneros represents the irreducible complexity of the father of her heroine, Esperanza. While it is true that the heroine’s progenitor is largely absent from home, we also learn that he works long hours to provide for his family, which he adores. Moreover, he proves to be a sensitive and emotional man. When he learns about his own father’s death (Esperanza’s grandfather) in Mexico,

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for example, Esperanza recalls that her father “crumples like a coat and cries, my brave Papa cries. I have never seen my Papa cry and don’t know what to do” (28). In this way, Cisneros underlines the positive aspects of fatherhood in her community. However, another example of positive fatherhood is provided by the novelist Julia Alvarez in ¡Yo!, where Yolanda’s father finally accepts his daughter’s worth as a woman and as a writer endowed with the gits of keeping memories alive: And I say, “My daughter, the future has come, and we were in such a rush to get here! We left everything behind and forgot so much. Ours is now an orphan family. My grandchildren and great-grandchildren will not know the way back unless they have a story. Tell them of our journey. Tell them the secret heart of your father and undo the old wrong. My Yo, embrace your destino. You have my blessing, pass it on”. (205)

The father is thus depicted as the embodiment of cultural memories of struggle and pride that need to be passed on from one generation to the next. He is ready to reveal the secrets of his heart and try to compensate for the wrongs that he committed as a patriarch. The father finally confesses his love and admiration for his daughter while she reconciles with the dearest man in her life. As Alonso and Domínguez (2000) have concluded from these examples: A new challenging concept of fatherhood is being proposed by Latino/a writers, and their works will surely gather some of the most interesting reflections by contemporary ethnic men. New Latino fatherhood emerging is a transfrontera contact zone where relationships are examined and new possibilities are born. (93)

While fatherhood has been traditionally associated with patriarchal authority (Solano and Bacete, 2021; Samuel, 2015), one should thus begin to acknowledge the plurality as well as the irreducible complexity of fathers in contemporary culture and literature. Although literature has usually proven either evasive or conservative in its treatment of fatherhood, it is equally true that several contemporary authors have set out to revisit its conventional conceptions. As David Leverenz noted, the traditional image of the family patriarch has taken on “dated, Old Testament connotations” (2003, 20). In challenging traditional paternal images, writers have not only started to question the often unproblematized equation of fatherhood with patriarchy but also begun to represent fathers as more multifaceted characters. Such reconceptualizations of the father figure in literature might ultimately contribute to rethinking fatherhood in contemporary culture, which is certainly more complex and varied than generally acknowledged (Solano and Bacete, 2021; Samuel, 2015; Armengol, 2009). Despite the remarkable critical attention given to motherhood in literature— and despite the late-twentieth-century focus on patriarchy—there is surprisingly no comparable in-depth analysis of fatherhood. As Bueno et al. (2000) have argued, “we may have comprehended fatherhood too little for presuming to comprehend patriarchy so much” (8).

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Douglas, Ann. The Feminization of American Culture [1977]. New York: Noonday, 1998. Farrell, Warren. The Liberated Man. New York: Random House, 1974. Fiedler, Leslie A. Love and Death in the American Novel [1960]. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1998. Fitzgerald, Francis Scott. Tender Is the Night. 1934. New York: Scribner, 1995. Fisher, Philip. Hard Facts. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Fricker, Miranda. “Reason and Emotion.” Radical Philosophy 57 (1991): 14–7. Goldberg, Herb. The Hazards of Being Male: Surviving the Myth of Masculine Privilege. New York: Nash, 1976. Hartman, Saidiya V. Scenes of Subjection. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Hurston, Zora Neale. “The Gilded Six Bits.” In Envisioning the New Adam. Ed. P.E.M. Daly. Westport. CT: Greenwood, 1995. 81–89. Hobson, Barbara. Making Men Into Fathers: Men, Masculinities and the Social Politics of Fatherhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Kaufman, Michael. “Men, Feminism, and Men’s Contradictory Experiences of Power.” Theorizing Masculinities. Ed. Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994. 142–63. Kimmel, Michael. The Gendered Society. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. ———. Manhood in America: A Cultural History [1996]. New York: The Free Press, 1997. Leverenz, David. Manhood and the American Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. ———. Paternalism Incorporated: Fables of American Fatherhood, 1865-1940. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. Lasch, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissism. New York: Norton, 1979. Lewis, R. W. B. The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century [1955]. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975. Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider. 1984. Freedom, CA: Crossing, 1998. Mackenzie, Henry. The Man of Feeling [1771]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Middleton, Peter. The Inward Gaze. Masculinity and Subjectivity in Modern Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1990. Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman [1949]. New York: Viking, 1996. Newfield, Christopher. “The Politics of Male Suffering: Masochism and Hegemony in the American Renaissance.” Differences 1.3 (fall 1989): 55–87. Pfister, Joel and Nancy Schnog (eds.). Inventing the Psychological: Toward a Cultural History of Emotional Life in America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Plath, Sylvia. Ariel. New York: Harper and Row, 1966. Pleck, Joseph and Jack Sawyer (eds.). Men and Masculinity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974. Reisdorfer, Kathryn. “Generating Alternative Representations of Fatherhood: Anzia Yezierska and Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s Narrative Spaces for Male Others.” Naming the Father: Legacies, Genealogies, and Explorations of Fatherhood in Modern and Contemporary Literature. Ed. E. Bueno, T. Caesar, and W. Hummel. New York: Lexington Books, 2000. 169–89. River, Jo, and Michael Flood. “Masculinities, Emotions and Men’s Suicide.” Sociology of Health and Illness 43.4 (2021): 910–27. Robinson, Sally. Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Rodríguez, Antonio J. La nueva masculinidad de siempre: Capitalismo, deseo y falofobias. Barcelona: Anagrama, 2020. Salazar, Octavio. El hombre que (no) deberíamos ser: La revolución masculina que tantas mujeres llevan siglos esperando. Barcelona: Planeta, 2018. Samuel, Lawrence R. American Fatherhood: A Cultural History. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015. Savran, David. Taking It Like a Man: White Masculinity, Masochism, and Contemporary American Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.

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Chapter 6

Dangerous Liaisons? Friendships Between Men in Western History and Culture

And if as the virtuous man is to himself, he is to his friend also (for his friend is another self); if all this be true, as his own being is desirable for each man, so, or almost so, is that of his friend. —Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I would like to hug him now... But I can’t. He would get the wrong idea and everything between us would be ruined just when it’s started so well. —Richard Ford, The Sportswriter

As we have already noted in previous chapters, several studies have defined masculinity as the opposite of emotions. Moreover, as we have also shown, emotional expressivity by men, when acknowledged, has usually been considered either apolitical or even politically conservative. Despite this, since the 1990s, the theme of emotional bonds between men has become the object of a number of critical studies.1 Many of them have set out to explore male romantic friendships, that is, “strong attachments between men in works ranging from ancient epics and medieval romances to Renaissance plays, Gothic novels, westerns, and war movies” (Watkins, 2008). In line with these recent critical trends, this chapter begins with an overview of cultural and literary celebrations of friendship, focusing on “idyllic” friendships between men in Western culture. While Western culture and literature, from classical Greece to our day, have given us numerous representations of idyllic male friendships, such historical and cultural representations seem to contrast with the available empirical evidence on homosocial relationships between males, which seems to have demonstrated how these relationships tend to be lacking and fragile. Today, men’s friendships, as contemporary sociologist Peter M. Nardi reminds us, are usually characterized by emotionally neutral and mostly instrumental interactions (2004, 322). While women’s friendships often show emotionally close and expressive intimacy, (heterosexual) men’s friendships tend to be less intimate, self-disclosing, and physically affectionate, focusing on activities such as sports rather than on exchanges or dialog about more intimate, 1

See, for example, Sedgwick (1992); Hammond and Jablow (1987); Dellamora (1990); Watkins (2008).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. M. Armengol, Rewriting White Masculinities in Contemporary Fiction and Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53349-5_6

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profound, or personal issues. Moreover, men tend to have fewer supportive relationships than women do, generally receiving less support from their peers. No wonder, then, that they regard the meaningfulness of, and satisfaction with, their same-sex friendships lower than women do. Furthermore, men themselves, as Nardi insists, seem to recognize cross-gender friendships as more intimate than their same-gender friendships are, whereas women see their same-gender friendships as closer. Nevertheless, the emotional distance between men is not universal and has not always been universal. Historically, the birth of the “homosexual” as a specific identity category seems to have had enormous implications, as Foucault reminds us (1984, 173–4), as regards the construction of male friendship as we understand it today. Indeed, within the current social structure, there seems to be a clear distinction between homosexuality and homosociality; that is, there are social bonds between persons of the same sex. Indeed, the term “homosocial” is often used to describe a wide range of bonds and associations between men, which may, in our society, be characterized by intense homophobia. However, friendships between men were once more intense and intimate. In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British culture, for example, there seems to have existed a “continuum”, as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick elaborates, between male homosocial and homosexual relations, “a continuum whose visibility, for men, in our society, is radically disrupted” (1992, 2). Sedgwick contends that the separation between friendship and homosexuality is gender-specific and context-bound. On the one hand, the opposition between the homosocial and the homosexual seems to be less dichotomous for women. As Sedgwick herself explains, “women in our society who love women, women who teach, study, nurture, suckle, write about, march for, vote for, give jobs to, or otherwise promote the interests of other women, are pursuing congruent and closely related activities” (1992, 2–3). Moreover, the current disjunction between male friendship and homosociality seems to be historically specific. For the classical Greeks, for example, the continuum between men loving men and men promoting the interests of men seems to have been completely natural (Sedgwick, 1992, 4). Nevertheless, the increasing homophobia at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries seemed to put an end to much of the closeness and intensity of male same-sex friendships (Armengol, 2010; Foucault, 1984, 173–92; Nardi, 2004, 321– 2; Kimmel, 2000, 214–5; Segal, 1997, 129; Bem, 1993, 81). Before the twentieth century, the word “homosexual” described a type of sexual behavior, not identity. However, as soon as the word changed from an adjective to a noun, homophobia came to play an increasingly central role in men’s lives. The disappearance of friendship as a social institution thus seemed to result from the declaration of homosexuality as a social/religious/medical problem (Foucault, 1984, 175). While the traditional literary depiction of male friendship and the empirical evidence thus seem totally opposed, this chapter attempts to move beyond the traditional binary between the “reality” and the “fiction” of male friendship, analyzing Richard Ford’s novel The Sportswriter as a literary deconstruction of the myth of indissoluble friendships between men. In particular, the novel has been selected to prove and exemplify the influence of hegemonic masculinity on the construction of friendship. This hegemonic model contributes to emotionally separating men from

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one another, as we shall see, by pitting masculinity against emotions and, especially, by promoting homophobia and the fear of homosexuality. Although most of the following pages will thus aim to deconstruct the myth of indissoluble friendships between men, it will conclude by underlining both the feasibility and the desirability of recuperating the emotional attachments between (heterosexual) men, which would necessarily entail, as will be argued, fighting homophobia as well as other forms of social discrimination. We will specifically show how recuperating emotional attachments between men, such as friendships, could not only contribute to enriching their emotional lives but also, above all, reducing sexism, racism, and homophobia in our societies. On the one hand, we will see how the current disjunction between emotions and male friendships was the product of a concrete cultural and historical construction that can thus be deconstructed again. On the other hand, we argue that friendships between men are not (always) reactionary or conservative but also (at least potentially) have a political subversive element, thereby contributing to greater social equality, which will be illustrated, once again, by means of literary and cultural examples.

The Cultural and Literary History of Male Friendship: An Introduction Since ancient times, there has been a cultural and literary tradition that explores and celebrates the emotional closeness between males (Watkins, 2008; Nardi, 2004; May and Strikwerda, 1992; Hammond and Jablow, 1987). Writers in Palestine, Greece, and Rome placed high value on a man’s affection for another man, which was considered even more important than heterosexual love. For example, in the Old Testament, David proclaimed that Jonathan’s love for him “was wonderful, passing the love of women” (II Samuel, 1:26). The classical Greeks also make a classic example of the value of friendship over kin in ancient times. For them, male friendship was more noble and transcendental than marital love was. In The Symposium (ca. 380 BCE), for example, Plato praises Alcibiades’s love for Socrates as more sublime than any other kind of (heterosexual) attachment. Similarly, Aristotle devotes much of his Nicomachean Ethics (350 BCE) to celebrating male friendship. In this work, Aristotle distinguishes between three different types of friendship between men: friendship based on utility, friendship based on pleasure, and what he calls a complete friendship.2 In the first two cases, friendship is based not on a love of the friend but on the usefulness or pleasure provided by the friend. Aristotle describes friendship among the young as usually based on pleasure. He explains that true and complete friendship takes time to develop, and for it to occur, genuine knowledge of the other is needed. Moreover, he insists that complete friendship can exist only between peers, 2

Although Aristotle exclusively focused on friendships between aristocratic Athenian males, May and Strikwerda (1992, 105) conclude (and I agree) that many of his ideas, including his threefold classification of friendship, remain applicable to contemporary society.

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necessarily men, and is far more important for happiness than success. “As when we wish to see our face, we do so by looking into the mirror, in the same way”, Aristotle (1925) insists, “when we wish to know ourselves we can obtain that knowledge by looking at our friend. For the friend is… a second self” (1213a). Moreover, male friendship and homoeroticism in classical Greek culture usually appear nobler and less threatening than heterosexual love, which in Greek literature often leads to tragedy and social unrest. As Homer explains in The Iliad (ca 750 BCE), Paris’s mythic abduction of Helen, for instance, results in the Trojan War. According to Greek mythology, Achilles’ love for a woman, the Maiden Briseis, was equally dangerous, posing a threat to the Greek army. When Agamemnon steals the Maiden Briseis from Achilles, the latter avenges himself simply by withdrawing from battle and letting the Trojans get closer to the Greek camp. However, when Achilles learns that Hector has killed his beloved friend Patroclus, he forgets Briseis and resumes his fight against Troy. Lamenting that “my dear companion has perished, Patroclus, whom I loved beyond all other companions, as well as my own life” (Homer, 1951, 319). Achilles decides to keep fighting against Troy to avenge the memory of his late friend. As Watkins (2008) concludes, “whereas Achille’s love for a woman led to dangerous divisions among the Greek soldiers, his love for a man inspired decisive military action” (1).3 The Greek idealization of male friendship also had a strong influence on Roman society. Admittedly, some scholars have argued that, unlike classical Greece, imperial Rome did not place high value on friendship. As Hammond and Jablow (1987) note, “the Roman ideal of loyalty was patriotism, not friendship” (250). Nevertheless, it seems possible to find numerous examples of male same-sex friendship in Roman culture and in literature. Cicero’s essay “Of Friendship” (44 BCE), for instance, allowed for the possibility of the (erotic) union of two friends’ souls in a single consciousness. Moreover, one must bear in mind that in Virgil’s Aeneid, Aeneas must move away from the Carthaginian Queen Dido as a distraction from his heroic destiny. However, his devotion to a male friend inspires, as Watkins also reminds us, his last noble act, just like Achilles kills Hector to avenge Patroclus, Aeneas kills Turnus to avenge the death of his friend Pallas. In the ninth book of the Aeneid, Virgil offers another of the most famous images of romantic friendship between men. In his book, the Roman poet tells a story clearly inspired by Achilles and Patroclus, the episode of Nisus and his beloved Euryalus. When Nisus volunteers for the dangerous mission of crossing the enemy camp at night, his friend Euryalus insists on accompanying him. However, Euryalus is captured, and Nisus dies while trying to rescue him from his enemies. “By testifying to their commitment both to each other and to their country”, as Watkins (2008) argues, “their tragic death establishes same-sex love as a basis for Roman patriotism” (1). 3

Although in Homer’s The Iliad there is no overt evidence of sexual attraction between Achilles and Patroclus, Aeschylus made the relationship explicitly sexual in a famous tragedy entitled The Myrmidons, known to us only through fragments (Crompton, 1987, 326). This would then seem to highlight the recurrent ambiguity between homosociality and homosexuality in classical Greece.

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In the Middle Ages, the classical ideal of male friendship merged with two other traditions of same-sex bonding: the Germanic comiatus, or the bond of reciprocal obligations between the king and his knights, and Cristian monasticism (Watkins, 2008). In the medieval period, Jesus Christ’s love for the Apostle John inspired close friendships between bishops, priests, and monks. As Boswell (1980) has argued, Saint Paulinus wrote passionate poetry to Ausonius, while St. Anselm praised Lanfranc and Gilbert in the most affectionate terms. Moving beyond the clerical context, medieval literary works often describe how the ideal of same-sex friendship competes with familial bonds. For instance, the thirteenth-century tale of Amis and Amile explains how Amile beheaded his own children and used their blood to restore the health of his friend, which, as Hammond and Jablow indicate, is “probably the most drastic expression of rejection of kin to reaffirm the intensity of the bond between friends” (248). Similarly, in his Decameron (ca 1351), Boccaccio tells the story of Titus and Gisuppus, which, as Watkins reminds us again (2008), represents one of the most popular tales of male same-sex friendship in the Middle Ages. The close friendship between Titus and Gisuppus is challenged when Titus falls in love with Gisuppus’s girlfriend. However, when Gisuppus offers the girl to Titus, male friendship triumphs to prevent him from dying of unrequited love. Later, Gisuppus is condemned for a murder that he did not commit, and Titus offers to die in this place. This display of ideal friendship causes the real killer to confess his crime. The Emperor Octavius then pardons all three men, and Titus returns Gisuppus’s earlier favor by offering him his sister in marriage. In the Renaissance, the revival of classical antiquity also implied a resurrection of interest in classical conceptions of male friendship. For instance, Michel de Montaigne’s well-known essay “Of Friendship” (1580) praised male friendship above all other forms of human relationships. While women’s friendships were considered inferior, men’s friendships were, in Montaigne’s own words, like “souls mingling and blending with each other so completely that they efface the seam that joined them” (2007, 227). On the other hand, scholars, such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1992), Louis Crompton (1987) and John Crowley (1987), among others, have investigated the dynamics of male same-sex intimacy from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Using the (male–female) erotic triangles in Shakespeare’s sonnets as well as other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English literary texts, Sedgwick, for example, explored different instances of male homoeroticism and homosociality in classic British fiction, just as Crompton studied Lord Byron’s numerous verses celebrating his romantic friendships with his schoolmates. Scholars such as Crowley moved from the British to the American context, analyzing close emotional attachments between men in Victorian America. From a literary perspective, Crowley has indeed provided a number of particularly valuable insights into the nature of the homosocial attachment between W. D. Howells and Charles Warren Stoddard. In fact, American fiction, like its British counterpart, spills with images of strongly affectionate friendships between men. Through the figure of Natty Bumppo in novels such as The Last of the Mohicans (1826), brought to film with the same title by director

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Michael Mann in 1992, Fenimore Cooper introduced, in fact, a recurrent male prototype, the white male who rejects women and domesticity and embraces friendship with another man, who embodies the freedom of uncivilized nature. While Coopers’ Natty Bumppo forges an indissoluble friendship with the Indian Chingachgook, Herman Melville’s Ishmael bonds with Queequeg, a Polynesian harpooner, just as Mark Twain’s Huck Finn becomes inseparable from Jim, the black runaway slave. In Moby-Dick (1851), for example, Ismael and Queequeg are so fond of each other that, in the tenth chapter of the novel, they even decide to get “married”. As Ishmael himself explains, “he [Queequeg] pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me around the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country’s phrase, that we were bosom friends” (2007, 94). After marrying, Ishmael and his friend, like any other loving couple, embark on a honeymoon, over which they share confidences and even the same bed. As Ishmael elaborates, How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other, and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair. (95)

Like Moby-Dick, much of Walt Whitman’s poetry, for example, is also centrally concerned with celebrating male same-sex friendships. In Democratic Vistas (1871), Whitman differentiates between a spiritual bond between men, “adhesiveness”, and a more carnal attraction between men and women, “amativeness”.4 In Whitman’s view, “adhesiveness”, which he sees as exclusively male, is far deeper and more transcendental than marital love. In fact, in Whitman’s poetry, love between men is represented, as we shall see, as being capable of erasing all social differences between men and, therefore, as the basis for a new democracy (Armengol, 2013).5 Twentieth-century American literature is also centrally concerned with representations of friendships between men. For instance, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (1937), set in the context of the Great Depression of the 1930s in America, remains one of the most poignant descriptions of male friendship in American letters. Indeed, the deep love between George and Lennie offers them the only respite from the pain of economic marginality. Rather than women, George and Lennie have each other. As Lennie tells his friend, “guys like us […] got no family”, although “we got each other, that’s what, that gives a hoot in hell […] about us” (53). Like Steinbeck’s novel, much of Ernest Hemingway’s fiction provides another classic example of strong attachments between (heterosexual) men in twentieth-century American literature. Hemingway’s novels do indeed appear to celebrate male samesex friendships as more transcendental than any other affective relationships. Only men’s emotional attachments to other men, as Fiedler (1998, 316–7) noted, seem 4

As Michael Lynch (1985) has explained, Whitman seems to anticipate the modern distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality by setting the terms in gendered opposition. For Whitman, amativeness refers only to opposite-sex attraction, while adhesiveness only to same-sex attraction. 5 The potential of male friendship for social equality will be explored and exemplified later in this chapter.

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to “move him to simplicity and truth”. From The Sun Also Rises (1926) through A Farewell to Arms (1929) to Green Hills of Africa (1936) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1939), most of Hemingway’s literary texts focus on battle companions, friends on a fishing trip, fellow patients in a hospital, a bullfighter and his manager, and so forth. In Hemingway’s works, male homosociality becomes much more central and stronger than (hetero)sexuality and women, who are either absent or secondary characters. It is true that women in Hemingway’s works, when present, appear to pose a threat to the “purer” relationships between men. In The Sun Also Rises (1926), for example, Brett Ashley’s assertive sexuality seems to stand in between Jake Barnes and Bill Gorton’s homoerotic relationship. Nevertheless, Brett’s sexuality is far less threatening than it seems. First, Jake is sexually impotent. In addition, Brett is much fonder of Romero, the bullfighter, than of either Jake or Bill, although his affair with Romero is also short-lived. As Fiedler argues, Brett seems “incapable of love except as a moment in bed” (1998, 320).6 Since women in Hemingway’s fiction seem to be portrayed as sexual objects, they pose no real threat to the deeper, more idyllic love between men. Indeed, the affective relationship between Jake and Bill, rather than being thwarted by Brett’s sexuality, appears to become increasingly strong as the novel advances. As Sibbie O’Sullivan (1988) noted, once Bill and Jake leave Paris for Spain, they become more intimate. The pastoral Spanish setting, with its idyllic mountains and trout streams, seems to facilitate a more private speech that allows them to discuss religion, literature, and even personal problems such as Jake’s impotency.7 Jake’s relationship with Bill Gorton thus seems to exemplify an ideal friendship between two men and perhaps even a source of sublimated homosexuality. During their fishing trip to the Irati River, Bill Gorton even appears to disclose his homoerotic attraction to Jake. As Bill confesses to his friend, “Listen. You’re a hell of a good guy, and I’m fonder of you than anybody on earth. I couldn’t tell you that in New York. It’d mean I was a faggot” (Hemingway, 1954, 116). Like the wilderness, the womanless world of War has also been recurrently portrayed as one of the main settings for male bonding, which, as the masculinity scholar Lynne Segal (1997, 142) indicates, reached its “unselfconscious apotheosis” in the literature of World War I. For example, if Hemingway’s best-known war novel, A Farewell to Arms (1929), focuses on the intimate friendship between two American soldiers in Italy during World War I, Martin Taylor’s collection of love poetry from the trenches reveals homoeroticism as a recurrent theme of many of the poems of World War I. As G. A. Studdert Kennedy, one of the poets in the collection 6

Although Brett has been subject to numerous misogynist attacks, including Fiedler’s characterization of her as an unemotional female character, she seems to be much more complex than has been generally acknowledged. In fact, Brett appears to represent the flapper, the «New Woman» of the 1920s. One way in which she asserts her new identity is by exploring her sexuality and by moving away from the traditional female roles of mother and wife. However, Hemingway seems unable to avoid patriarchal representations of women and bitches as sexual objects. I am grateful to Dr. Àngels Carabí (personal communication) for these reflections. 7 «Although Jake’s problems are not discussed at length, and though his answers are frequently evasive» the subject, as O’Sullivan (1988, 71) has concluded, is mentioned often enough in a number of conversations to deserve to be considered «a topic of conversation».

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proclaims, “Aye, the love of women draws ye, lad,/It’s the oldest, sweetest spell,/But your comrade Love is stronger love,/’Cause it draws you back to’ell» (1989, 148). Given the recurrent celebration of male same-sex friendship in culture and literature of the twentieth century, it is little wonder, then, that contemporary fiction, both in novels and cinema, remains centrally concerned with depicting male same-sex intimacy. For example, a number of recent American epic films, such as Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy (2004) and Oliver Stone’s Alexander (2004), have recovered mythical intimacies between male warriors. In Troy, for instance, Petersen represents the classical friendship between Achilles (Brad Pitt) and Patroclus (Garrett Hedlund), which Homer celebrated in his epic poems. The film centers on the Trojan War and, therefore, on the love affair between Prince Paris of Troy (Orlando Bloom) and Queen Helen of Sparta (Diane Kruger), which Greek mythology describes as the cause of the war between Troy and the united tribes of Greece. Despite its focus on Paris and Helen, the film depicts the mythical friendship between two men as well, Achilles and Patroclus, who follow Achilles to Troy as his brother-in-arms. The strong affection between the two men becomes nowhere clearer than in the episode in which Patroclus dies for his friend. When Achilles refuses to fight to annoy Agamemnon, Patroclus appears in Achille’s armor at the head of the myrmidons and is killed by Prince Hector of Troy (Eric Bana). Immediately after Achilles learns about the death of his best friend, Patroclus, Achilles, as noted above, begins fighting again, killing Hector and honoring his friend’s death by solemn burial rites. As Hammond and Jablow argued, “the death of one friend and the overwhelming grief of the survivor is a theme that occurs frequently in the heroic tales […] it is here that the spiritual bond achieves its most poignant expression” (248). Despite the romanticism that seems to dominate the cultural and literary representation of male friendships in Western culture, increasing homophobia at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries seemed to put an end to much of the closeness and intensity of male same-sex friendships. Indeed, the disappearance of friendship as a social institution thus seemed to result from the declaration of homosexuality as a social/religious/medical problem, which was itself the result of a number of specific historical factors. As feminist historian Sandra Bem has argued, the increased stigmatization of homosexuality at the end of the nineteenth century was mainly a reaction to an epoch of social disruption in England and other parts of Europe, as well as in the U.S. At the heart of this social disruption was a radical change in the models of sexual behavior, which was seen as a threat to the hegemonic sexual and political order. Bem explains that while sexuality has often been limited to marriage according to the rules of closely knit rural societies, nineteenth-century American and European urban areas were characterized by a dramatic increase in the prostitution business as well as by a growing, predominantly male homosexual culture. (1993, 81). In conclusion, the culture of the turn of the century was marked by ferocious religious, medical, and legal persecution and repression of homosexuality. While religious sermons often celebrate the sanctity of heterosexual families and warn against the “abominable” sin of homosexuality (Foucault, 1984, 173– 92), Freudian psychoanalysis describes homosexuality as a deviation and a mental

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illness.8 Moreover, the three infamous trials and subsequent imprisonment of Oscar Wilde served to remind men that homosexual behavior was socially and legally punishable. As Lynne Segal has argued in this respect, “the possible imputation of homosexual interest to any bonds between men ensured that men had constantly to be aware of and assert their difference from both women and homosexuals” (1997, 139). While the concept of amicitias between men once included a wide range of erotic and sexual possibilities, men’s homosocial relationships became more limited in scope, as issues related to (homo)sexuality became part of the public discourse in the post-Freudian era. According to Nardi, Romantic friendships, especially for men, were less visible and less of a topic to be discussed in poems and literature. True friendship, in the early twentieth century and continuing to this day, would be seen as something only women were more capable of experiencing. The ideal form of friendship is now typically described with more “female” language: intimacy, trust, caring, disclosing, and nurturing. (2004, 321–2)

Homophobia as an Obstacle to Intimacy Between Men: The Sportswriter by Richard Ford From what has been argued here, one could conclude, then, that the literary and empirical approaches to male friendship are totally opposed. While idyllic friendships between men have pervaded Western literature and culture from their beginnings to our day, sociologists such as Peter Nardi have defended the scarcity and precariousness of such attachments, which they have historically linked to the birth of homosexuality as an identity at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. Thus, work on this subject seems divided between the social sciences and the humanities, “truth” and “myth”, the world and the text. However, with the purpose of questioning and moving beyond this traditional binary, in this section, we will concentrate on revisiting the myth of male friendship from a specifically literary and contemporary perspective. For this purpose, focus will be given, as has been pointed out, to the novel The Sportswriter by contemporary American novelist and raconteur Richard Ford. The Sportswriter (1986) is the first novel of the Frank Bascombe trilogy, completed by Independence Day (1995, Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Prize), The Lay of the Land (2006), and Let Me Be Frank With You (2014). We selected this specific novel for two different, albeit complementary, reasons. On the one hand, it rewrites traditional narratives of idyllic male friendships by underlying the male protagonist’s fear of friendship and intimacy. On the other, Ford illustrates the specific influence of masculinity ideals, especially homophobia, on the gendered construction of male friendships. In addition to considering his former personal experiences of trauma, the novel does indeed connect its protagonist’s fear of intimacy with his ideas about masculinity as the denial of emotions, including affection between males. In so doing, The Sportswriter will not only help us question the traditional depiction of idyllic 8

See, for example, Freud’s pathologization of homosexuality in books such as Totem y taboo (1912–1913).

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friendships between men in Western culture and in literature but also contribute to illustrating and exemplifying, as we shall see, the existing empirical work on homophobia and/or male friendships from a specifically literary perspective. As its title indicates, Ford’s novel, which is set in the early 1980s, focuses on the life of an American sportswriter, Frank Bascombe, who lives in New Jersey and works in New York City. While Bascombe has an interesting and gratifying professional life, his personal life is marked by a number of painful events. On the one hand, the unexpected death of his son Ralph from so-called Reye’s syndrome was followed by his divorce. Moreover, Frank feels frustrated as a result of his failed attempts to win back his ex-wife, X’s love, who has decided to move to Connecticut with their two remaining sons, Paul and Clarissa. All these difficult experiences seem to have rendered Frank incapable of emotional commitment, failing in his new heterosexual relationships with women but also, as we shall see, in his homosocial contacts with other men. In fact, since he started to live alone, Ford’s character seems to be undergoing what he describes as the “Existence Period”, a time of emotional isolation that entails the denial of affection for others. Ford’s protagonist has come to realize that emotional commitment and love are linked to pain and suffering because loved ones can suddenly disappear. Embittered by personal losses, Frank thus rejects the possibility of living a life in relation to others and instead chooses a solitary life. Even though he has some girlfriends, he always avoids commitment to any of them, believing that emotion might make him vulnerable to other people. The same happens with his friendships with other men. As Elinor A. Walker has argued, “most disclosure between friends, full or not, scares the ‘bejesus’ out of him” (2000, 83). Despite his attempts to avoid any kind of intimacy, whether masculine or feminine, Frank establishes a few contacts with other men throughout the novel, perhaps most notably Walter Luckett, a friend from the Divorced Men’s Club, to which they both belong. However, in his different encounters and conversations with Walter, Frank becomes more of a listener than a counselor, interpreting the role of the “reluctant confidant” (Walker, 2000, 83). Frank’s emotional estrangement from his friend derives mostly, as we have said, from former personal and individual traumas but also from his traditional and, as we will see, intrinsically homophobic conception of masculinity as the denial of emotions. Bascombe’s relationship with Walter, in fact, seems to be marked from the start by an evident lack of intimacy and emotional distance. As the novel begins, Frank is told by Carter Knott, another member of the Divorced Men’s Club, that Walter’s wife, Yolanda, left him for a water ski instructor and that “it’s been a big shock” (1995, 95). However, Bascombe himself acknowledges that he knows little more about his friend. Although they had coincided in the same bars and cafes on several occasions, they had always felt somewhat uncomfortable in each other’s presence. For example, Frank remembers one occasion when they sat in a café and stared at each other for a few minutes (95) until Walter just “got up and walked out without ordering anything or saying another word” (95). Since then, their (always sporadic) encounters seem to have proven dispensable and impersonal. For, although the members of the Divorced Men’s Club go fishing together, one of the Club’s basic rules, as Frank himself explains, is that “we’re none of us much interested in self-expression” (1995, 97).

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In Unreasonable Men: Masculinity and Social Theory (1994), Victor Seidler has shown how, due to the works of Enlightenment philosophers such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant, among others, reason has come to be defined in opposition to emotions, just as the mind has been set against the body and culture has been opposed to nature. Thus, emotions and feelings have been dismissed as forms of knowledge since they are considered to be “personal” and “subjective” compared to the supposed “objectivity” and “impartiality” of Reason (Seidler, 1994, 11–12). In addition, Seidler contends that the identification of reason with masculinity, which remains a defining feature of contemporary Western culture, has led to men’s emotional distance from one another. Moreover, this identification had important consequences for both women and ethnic minorities. As men were associated with reason and the mind, women and ethnic groups were stereotyped as being closer to nature, the body, and the sphere of emotions. Since they were seen as irrational beings, both of these groups were systematically silenced and excluded from the manly spheres of power and rationality, having to prove themselves rational to be given access to mankind. Even though women and ethnic groups suffered more disadvantage due to this Cartesiandriven thought system, rationalism also turned against men themselves, who have also not been allowed to explore or express their emotions since then. As “rational” beings, we learn to “silence” our nature, and we become “deaf” to the emotional needs of others, treating them as “emotional” or “subjective” (Seidler, 1994, 11–12). Disclosing one’s feelings for a man entails acknowledging his emotional dependence and vulnerability. Since emotional self-disclosure has been traditionally associated with women and effeminacy, it is no wonder, then, that there were limits to the degree of intimacy allowed between the male members of the Divorced Men’s Club in Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter, with the implicit prohibition of interaction on personal questions. Formed exclusively by heterosexual men, the members of the Club try to stay “rational” and “objective”, always avoiding any kind of intimacy or emotional closeness that might be deemed “effete” or “homosexual”. Even though one could argue that Frank avoids any kind of intimacy not only with men but also with women, Ford’s protagonist certainly shares his feelings of loss and pain, for example, with his ex-wife, due to the untimely death of his son as they visit his grave together at the beginning of the novel. Nevertheless, an underlying homophobia, understood as the fear of being considered not only “feminine” but also homosexual, seems to stop any sort of emotional closeness between Frank and his friends from the Divorced Men’s Club. As Elinor A. Walker noted, “confessions of feelings are of course off limits between men such as Frank and Walter, who should be instead talking about the weather, sports, politics, anything but emotion” (2000, 87). Despite the strict (unwritten) rules of the Club, Walker Luckett seems to risk breaking them by confessing to his friend that he has recently had a homosexual affair. As Walter himself explains to Frank, “I went to a bar in New York two nights ago, and I let a man pick me up. Then, I went to a hotel, the Americana, and I slept with him” (1995, 103). Walter, who had always been heterosexual, insists that he feels pretty confused as a result and that he truly needs to talk about this with a friend. Nevertheless, Frank is not interested in his friend’s story. Since he is utterly afraid of (masculine) self-disclosure or intimacy, he believes that “things are better if you

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just let them be lonely facts” (104). While Walter explains that he needed to tell his secret simply because he does not like secrets and telling them makes him feel better—“Frank, I needed a context. I think that’s what friends are for” (1995, 04)— Bascombe is cold and distant the entire time, making it clear that he does not “like confessions” (104). If Walter describes Frank as his “best friend” (105), the latter simply accuses Walter of telling an intimacy he absolutely did not have to disclose (108–109). Taking into account Frank’s hostile reaction, it is no wonder, then, that his friend concludes that women are better friends: “women are better at this kind of thing […] I think women sleep together all the time and don’t really bother with it. I believe Yolanda did. They understand friendship better in the long run” (105). In fact, Frank seems to remain equally distant from Walter over the course of their reunion in the eighth chapter of the novel. When Bascombe arrives at home from work late at night, Walter Luckett is waiting for him. Even though Frank acknowledges that Walter looks truly worried and scared, the protagonist keeps relying on his manly code of emotional restraint, noting that Walter’s private life is an absolutely private matter and that he does not wish to know anything about it (202). Frank justifies his lack of interest in listening to his friend with his little experience in this respect while recognizing that he was not interested in men’s “private” lives, only their “public” lives (1995, 205). When Walter insists on asking Frank about his inner life and about his reactions when something worries him and cannot make it stop, he simply suggests different strategies, such as taking a walk, getting drunk, or thinking about “dirty thoughts about women” (199). It seems particularly striking, however, that he does not mention the possibility of talking to friends at all. Unlike Walter, then, Bascombe seems unable to ask for help and advice from a friend, confessing that he has no real friend to confide in. Although Walter recognizes that he has not slept for “three” nights (196) due to his first homosexual experience, Frank shows no interest whatsoever in continuing to listen to him, recognizing that maybe he is simply “performing a Samaritan’s duty I would perform for anyone (preferably a woman)” (201). This confession from Frank thus highlights not only his unwillingness to cultivate friendships with another male but also seems to confirm the traditional idea that (heterosexual) men often associate emotional connection and intimacy with women and femininity. As Shamir and Travis have argued, gender seems to have been divided into two different traditions along the line of emotional expressivity: a feminine mode marked by effusion of sentiment and its representational conventions and a masculine code, where affect is described negatively, “in terms of disavowal and repression or—in such instances where emotions ‘betray’ men—in terms of parody or ‘femininization’” (2002, 2). Despite the opposition from Frank, Walter manages to proceed to describe his brief affair with Warren, whom he defines, nevertheless, as a close friend: “It was like a friendship, Frank[…] I was never closer to anyone in my life. Not Yolanda. Note even my mom and dad, which is pretty scary for a farm kid from Ohio” (206). Walter’s experience with his male lover seems to confirm, therefore, that friendship and homosexuality may prove confusingly proximate terms, although the continuum between them in our contemporary society has, as Sedgwick (1992, 3–4) has argued, been generally disrupted. Indeed, the only close friendship between two men in

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Ford’s novel seems to revolve around a homosexual relationship between Walter and Warren. Even as Frank shows little interest in Walter during his entire confession, Walter eventually claims to feel much better after talking to Frank, giving Frank an extra key to his place in gratitude and kissing him. However, when Walter kisses Frank on the cheek in a display of affection, his homophobia re-emerges, rejecting Walter’s affection. “Quit it, Walter, I don’t want to be kissed!” (208). Walter seems to (con)fuse friendship with tenderness, and Frank is determined to maintain a clear-cut distinction between the two concepts. Actually, upon Walter’s departure, Bascombe decides to unplug the phone “Don’t call, my silent message says […] Friendship is a lie of life. Don’t call” (1995, 209). Unfortunately, Walter will not call again. Unbeknownst to Frank, his friend decides to end his life. In addition to not being able to overcome his divorce from Yolanda, his relationship with Warren is as short-lived as it is intense, which only adds to his depressive state. Of course, Frank is incapable of detecting Walter’s profound depression. As he confesses to his ex-wife X, “I have no friends”, insisting that “men simply feel things women do not” (1995, 346–347). Although Frank here seems to show off individualism and self-sufficiency, we know that he is just pretending. After all, it is Frank who invites his ex-wife to accompany him to Walter’s home after suicide, as he is scared to go alone. As Nardi (2004, 321–2) himself puts it, many (heterosexual) men identify their emotional companions as their only and most intimate friendships. Furthermore, when visiting Walter’s house with his exwife after his death, Frank realizes that he did not know his friend at all. While Frank had assumed that Walter was not interested in him at all, Ford’s protagonist feels surprised to find a photo of the Divorced Men’s Club in Walter’s house, as well as a copy of Blue Autumn, Frank’s only novel, with the author’s picture face-up, “looking remarkably lean and ironic” (1995, 352). On visiting Walter’s home, Frank cannot help reflecting on the possible reasons for Walter’s suicide. Unable to look for a better reason, he concludes that Walter killed himself because he liked to “sentimentalize” his life, which made him “regret everything” (1995, 353). Even after the death of his companion, Frank seems to continue to demonstrate emotions and feelings as the origin of all evil, including suicide. In this way, he declines and shields himself before any responsibility for Walter’s death. “Do you think you were supposed to help him?”, X asks Frank, who tersely answers that “He should’ve helped himself” is my answer, and in fact, it is what I believe” (1995, 353). While Frank clearly fails to help Walter in life, it seems that he attempts to help him after his death, probably with the purpose of trying to redeem his deeper and unacknowledged feelings of guilt. In fact, Walter leaves a suicide note for Frank, where he asks Frank to look up his long-lost daughter. Frank looks her up, only to determine she does not, in fact, exist. In some way, Walter’s story about his illegitimate daughter shows how he knew about Frank better than anyone. Since he knew that Frank disliked confessions and intimacy, Walter tells his friend one final “secret”, sending him off to look for a truth, which, ironically, does not exist at all. As Frank himself admits,

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The whole goose chase was just his one last attempt at withholding full disclosure. A novelistic red herrin And I admire Walter for it, since for me such a gesture has the feel of secrecies, a quality Walter’s own life lacked, though he tried for it. (1995, 388)

While Walter ultimately reveals in this way his deep knowledge of his friend, the sportswriter thus remains contemptuous of full disclosure, emphasizing the value of “secrecies” in our lives. In his avoidance of self-disclosure, however, Bascombe remains emotionally alienated from his, above all, masculine friendships, which are as scarce as they are superficial. As a result, it is his own ex-wife, X, who is the only person whom he seems to open up to, that accuses him of having some very strange relationships (346). These “weird” and “awkward” relationships stem mostly from their concept of affection as something exclusively “feminine” or “effeminate” and, therefore, connected to women and/or to stereotypical images of homosexuals. Ultimately, then, it is homophobia that stands in Frank’s way, as a victim of hegemonic masculinity, to establish closer and long-lasting intimacy with another man, thereby missing out on the opportunity to discover and share other emotional masculine realms. As The Sportswriter illustrates, men often associate same-sex intimacy with the world of emotions, which, in turn, are associated with femininity and, therefore, with the fear of their “feminization” and, ultimately, with homosexuality. From this, we can deduce that homophobia plays a central role in men’s emotional distance from each other. Thus, promoting intimacy and breaking emotional barriers between individuals also imply challenging traditional notions of masculinity (and femininity). Specifically, we should revise the dominant equation of emotions with the “feminine” and, in the case of men, the fear of “feminization” and emasculation. If, as seems, male homophobia can prevent men from engaging in closer and richer friendships with other men, then changing traditional conceptions of masculinities and men’s friendships will also necessarily entail undermining homophobia itself. On the one hand, dispensing with homophobia will allow men to enrich their own emotional lives, which are often maimed and limited by their fear and hatred of homosexuality. Even Frank Bascombe himself acknowledges, at one point in The Sportswriter, the limitations of the masculine code of emotional restraint, which keeps estranging him from other men. For example, while talking with his (heterosexual) friend Wade Arcenault, Bascombe realizes the emotional distance that male homophobia establishes between them: “I would like to hug him now […] But I can’t. He would get the wrong idea, and everything between us would be ruined just when it’s started so well” (1995, 291). Once again, Frank resorts to general and impersonal topics such as sports to avoid any type of emotion (282). Since fighting homophobia seems vital for contributing to male intimacy, promoting such intimacy should contribute to undermining homophobia and other associated forms of sexual but also racial discrimination, as we shall see in the following section.

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The Political Potential of Male Friendships to Transform Masculinities and Gender Relations In view of the example offered by Frank Bascombe in The Sportswriter, we have seen how, from a historical and cultural point of view, masculinity and emotions have not always been considered intrinsically opposed. In other times and in other literatures and cultures, male emotionality was, in fact, widely and openly celebrated. Another more controversial issue, however, is the political value of men’s emotions and of men’s friendships in particular, which will be the focus of the last part of this chapter. The potential of men’s friendships to question the hegemonic gender order is, I will argue, of great relevance, despite having been recurrently called into question. It has been suggested, for example, that men’s friendships often result in comradely groups—sports clubs, trade unions, scientific collaboration, expeditions, etc.—which exclude women. Even (profeminist) men have often been accused of excluding or ignoring women, thereby promoting more male bonding and sexism. As the feminist writer Barbara Ehrenreich argued, “men in men’s groups are men in bad company” (quoted in Segal, 1997, 281).9 Predominantly heterosexual, anti-sexist men’s groups have also been confronted at their national men against sexism conferences by gay men accusing them of heterosexism and of doing little to undermine gay oppression. Above all, men’s groups have been criticized for remaining too personal and local and for neglecting the public and political sides of masculinity. Since masculinity includes both a psychological/internal and social/external component, encouraging men to change their personal life and to be more expressive about their emotions, as most men’s groups do, might ultimately prove insufficient, or irrelevant, to undermine patriarchal masculinity and gender relations at a larger structural level. “The problem for anti-sexist men”, as Segal insists (1997), is “the worry as to whether changing themselves” can “actually help to destroy male dominance more generally” (284– 285).10 9

Formed mostly by heterosexual men who were involved in relationships with feminists, the first men’s groups were founded in England and America in the 1970s with a view to stimulating men’s own reflections on the construction, and possible deconstruction, of traditional masculinity. These groups have since contributed to making men self-aware of the detrimental repercussions of patriarchal masculinity on their own lives. Men in men’s groups often talk about their own sense of oppression as men, since masculinity mandates, for example, the repression of their emotional inner selves, thus separating them from women, children, and each other. Men’s groups have proved particularly helpful, therefore, in encouraging men to be more open to, and expressive about, their emotions. As Lynne Segal elaborates (1997), “above all they celebrate […] being more in touch with and supportive of each other” (283). 10 Clearly, Lynne Segal sets emotions and politics in an irreducible binary opposition, which Shamir and Travis (2002, 6–7) have identified as one of the major fallacies of much scholarship on the politics of masculinity and emotions. This fallacy is described by Catharine Lutz (1990) as the “essentializing” approach to emotion, that is, the assumption that emotions are internal psychic or psychobiological energies, radically separated from society and language. In their landmark work Inventing the Psychological, Joel Pfister and Nancy Schnog (1997) have analyzed some of the main problems of this approach, showing how seemingly “internal” emotions are, in fact, constructed and naturalized by the mechanisms of power that seem to be “external” or alien to them.

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Even if, as seems, masculinity scholarship has traditionally identified sexism, homophobia, and depoliticization as three major risks of men’s groups and relations, the rest of this chapter will try to illustrate, however, not only that men’s friendships with other men need not be sexist or homophobic but also that such friendships could actually help undermine sexism and homophobia—as well as other racist and classist distinctions—in our societies. In what follows, we argue, therefore, that men’s friendships with other men are not purely personal and “apolitical” but also might play a key role, as will be shown, in the political struggle for gender, sexual, and social equality, as different literary examples will help illustrate again. Traditionally, masculinity and friendship scholarships have distinguished between the concepts of homosexuality and homosociality, that is, the social bonds between persons of the same sex. Whereas homosexuality/homoeroticism refers to the subject of same-sex attraction and desire, the term homosociality has usually been used, as we have pointed out, to describe such activities as male bonding, which may, in contemporary Western societies, be characterized by intense homophobia. Questioning the traditional opposition between homoeroticism and homosociality, however, queer texts such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1992) have posited the interdependence between homoerotic and homosocial relations, which she sees as ambiguously proximate. Between Men thus attempts to draw the “homosocial” back into the sphere of “desire” of the potentially (homo)erotic, defending “the potential unbrokenness of a continuum between homosocial and homosexual” (1). While the visibility of this continuum for men in our society appears to have been radically broken, Sedgwick illustrates the historical links between homosociality and homosexuality in classical Greece and, especially, in classic British literature, where most (male–male–female) erotic triangles reveal an intense homoerotic attraction between two men. In Sedgwick’s own words, “in any erotic rivalry, the bond that links the two rivals is as intense and potent as the bond that links either of the rivals to the beloved” (1992, 21). It follows, therefore, that homosocial relations, though seemingly focused on the (heterosexual) rivalry between two men over a woman, may conceal a deeper homoerotic attraction between the two males. Many of Shakespeare’s Sonnets thus exemplify this (con)fusion between male same-sex attraction and heterosexual desire. Shakespeare describes two main erotic triangles in his sonnets. One, as exemplified by sonnet 86, is formed by Shakespeare and the rival poet, who compete for the love of the young man. The other, as exemplified by sonnet 144, is formed by Shakespeare and the young man, who compete for the love of the Dark Lady. While the former erotic triangle, formed by three men, is clearly grounded in homosexual desire, the latter includes a homoerotic component. In fact, in Shakespeare’s sonnets, as Sedgwick (1992, 28–48) has argued, the Dark Lady may be said to act as the vehicle for the two male rivals’ displaced homoerotic desire. Given the growing influence of the nuclear heterosexual family and the parallel stigmatization of homoeroticism in modern England, close male same-sex friendships in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were increasingly mediated through a female third party. Thus, one of the Shakespearean erotic triangles, formed by

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three homosexual men, was replaced by the other, formed by two men competing for a woman. Homophobia, as Sedgwick noted, demands that affective relationships between men be increasingly concealed under the veil of male homosocial relations and heterosexual desire. Using texts such as William Wycherley’s Restoration comedy The Country Wife (1675) and James Hogg’s Gothic novel Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), among other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literary works, Sedgwick’s Between Men thus concentrates on the analysis of a “social situation in which the routing of homosocial desire through women is clearly presented as compulsory” (Sedgwick, 1992, 49). Sedgwick’s redefinition of the terms “homosocial” and “homosexual” as mutually dependent might thus help illustrate the subversive potential of men’s friendships. While (heterosexual) men’s friendships and groups have traditionally been accused of homophobia, Sedgwick has revealed homosociality/friendship and homosexuality/homoeroticism to be two confusingly proximate terms. In so doing, she has emphasized the homoerotic, not (just) homophobic, component of all friendships and homosocial relations between men. Ultimately, the historical continuity between homosocial and homosexual individuals seems to suggest that homophobia need not be an essential component of friendships between men. In Sedgwick’s own words, “homophobia […] against males […] is not [necessary for the maintenance of men’s homosocial relations]” (Sedgwick, 1992, 4). In defining the interconnection between homosocial and homosexual relations, Between Men has thus shown the intense homoeroticism that underlies most men’s friendships and that has outweighed homophobia among men in different cultures and historical periods. More recently, Jane Ward’s popular book Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men (2015) went even further, showing the existence of numerous and diverse homoerotic sexual practices between (white) “heterosexual” men. Such practices include, for example, initiation rituals to which thousands of American students are submitted to each year to be accepted into male fraternities at the universities in their country. Even though the majority of these new students do not (self)identify as gay, their acceptance of these homosocial environments greatly depends upon, as Ward argues (2015), their participation in the erotic and sexual games proposed by senior members. Works such as this one have demonstrated, therefore, how homoerotic and even homosexual practices can occur not only between homosexual but also heterosexual men, especially in homosocial environments that, as is the case for American fraternities, can also be marked by strong homophobia (Ward, 2015). Nevertheless, if one coincides with Sedgwick (1992) that “homophobia directed by men against men is misogynistic and perhaps transhistorically so” (20), then one could argue that men’s emotional relationships, whether sexual or not, might also contribute to undermining sexism and misogyny. It is certain, as Ward argues, that not only male homoeroticism but also male homosexuality occur in homosocial spaces and can frequently turn out to be homophobic and misogynistic. Therefore, homoeroticism can also act as—and has, actually, frequently done so—a powerful antidote not only for homophobia but also for sexism. In fact, homophobia is misogynistic not only because it is oppressive of the so-called feminine in men but also because it is oppressive of women. In addition to repressing men’s “feminine” side, homophobia seems to

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have worked to diminish women themselves. As is known, homosexual men have often been stereotyped as “feminine” or “effete” by heterosexual men. Of course, the main aim of this feminization process has been to annihilate homosexuals, although indirectly, it has also been demeaning of women. To assert their superior masculinity, heterosexual men have recurrently tried to diminish homosexual men by associating them with femininity as a mark of inferiority (Segal, 1997). Ultimately, this has reinforced the connections between homophobia and misogyny. Since homophobia, often revealed as discrimination against “effeminate” men, points to men’s fear and hatred of “feminine”, promoting male homoeroticism could eventually contribute to erasing sexism and misogyny. For example, there are numerous political alliances drawn up throughout history between feminist and LGTBQ+ collectives, which, although their interests do not always coincide, have long denounced several convergencies between sexism and homophobia (but also racism) as mechanisms of oppression of the Other. If, as has been argued (Segal, 1997), hegemonic (white and heterosexual) masculinity is defined by opposition (not only to women but also to homosexual and racialized collectives), then it seems evident that achieving full gender equality undoubtedly implies ending other forms of associated discrimination. Promoting intimacy between men could help undermine both sexism and homophobia but also, as we shall see, other prejudices on race and class, thereby promoting social equality. In Love and Death in the American Novel (1960), Leslie Fiedler argues that canonical American fiction is centrally concerned with the depiction of homoerotic attachments between two men. Furthermore, Fiedler noted that most of these friendships are formed by interracial couples. In the same way as in great classics such as Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn or Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, many other American works represent friendship between a white man and another racialized man, such as in William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust, as well as several stories by Stephen Crane and Sherwood Anderson, just to mention some examples. “In these works”, as Fiedler elaborates, A small boy is represented as turning to a colored foster-father in revulsion from a real father, felt as brutal or ineffectual or effete; or he is portrayed as seeking out the darkskinned, outcast male in an attempt to escape the mothers of his world, who are wholly committed to respectable codes of piety and success. (1998, 352)

Even though several canonical American works thus seem to provide drawings of men’s interracial friendships, it is far less obvious whether such friendships truly question and subvert the hegemonic racial order. After all, white men’s friendships with black men in American literature are not always free of racial hierarchies. One should not forget, in this respect, that in Huckleberry Finn, for example, Huck is a free white boy, whereas Jim is an African American runaway slave. Moreover, the American literary tradition of the “vulgarized juvenile”, which Fiedler (1998, 352) sees as descending by way of Stephen Crane’s Whilomville Stories to Booth Tarkington’s Penrod, has recurrently transformed the friendship of the boy and African American into a stereotype whereby little children and big Africans always make ideal companions since the latter have the patience, forbearance, and unfailing good humor necessary for such a relationship. Even though interracial attachments between two

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men can thus prove both stereotypical and unequal, the depiction of male friendship in literature is much more complex and varied than it may seem. Fiedler acknowledges that Twain’s treatment of Jim in Huckleberry Finn, for instance, does not correspond to that of a stereotypical black man. Whereas Black characters in American fiction are often represented as condescending and paternalistic, acting as surrogate fathers to their white “sons”, Fiedler insists that Twain’s portrait of Jim is complex enough to prevent him from becoming a “stereotypical darkie”, and that very complexity makes it impossible to describe him simply as a substitute father. According to Fiedler, Huck’s relationship with Jim is to be seen not against the later sentimental tradition of “little children and big Africans” but against an earlier tradition of “more nearly coeval” loving couples such as Natty and Chingachgook or Ishmael and Queequeg. Elaborating on that, Fiedler comments: Sometimes [Jim] seems more servant than father, sometimes more lover than servant, sometimes more mother than either [...] Jim is all things to him [Huck]: father and mother and playmate and beloved, appearing naked and begowned and bewhiskered and painted blue. (1998, 352–3)

From this, it seems possible to conclude that (at least some) classic Western literature, as exemplified in Huckleberry Finn, represents male friendship in ways that are far from conventional. In this novel, Twain portrays Huck’s relationship with Jim as multifaceted and changing rather than monolithic and fixed; in so doing, this relationship helps us question traditional (racial) hierarchies and power relations. After all, Jim calls Huck by the names appropriate for their multiform relationship. “Huck”, “honey”, “chile”, or “boss”, and just one “white genl’man”. Forming a (fictional) society in which the radical division between black and white seems, momentarily at least, “healed by love” (Fiedler, 1998, 353), the bonding between Huck and Jim, a runaway slave, thus seems to illustrate the political potential of men’s friendships to overcome racial and social hierarchies. A similar example is offered by Melville in Moby-Dick, which portrays an equally affectionate friendship between two men, Ishmael and Queequeg. Melville’s innovative representation of race relations in his work seems to have resulted from his own biography. In this sense, it must be remembered that the author embarked on numerous voyages to many different places around the globe, including French Polynesia, and that this knowledge of “Other” cultures and peoples, as most Melville scholarship has shown, led him to question racist stereotypes as well as the dominant belief in white supremacy. Considering that his fiction draws heavily on his own experiences as seaman and explorer, it is little wonder, then, that his works reflect his own progressive views on the subject of race. The author, who sank into oblivion after his death, began to be vindicated in the 1920s thanks precisely to the writers of the Harlem Renaissance, who started to celebrate the representations of blackness in his works. Most of Moby-Dick, for instance, reveals Ishmael’s deep and sincere love and admiration for the Polynesian harpooner. In Chapter 10, for example, which ends with the “holy marriage” between two friends, he keeps praising his pagan companion Queequeg for his kindness and

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honesty, which he considers to be in stark contrast to the hypocrisy of Christianity and the “civilized” white world. As Ishmael explains, There, he sat, speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits. Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards him. And those same things that would have repelled most others, they were the very magnets that thus drew me. “I’ll try a pagan friend,” thought I, “since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy”. (1996, 93)

It would appear, then, that in Melville’s work, men’s friendships can also undermine racial and cultural barriers. This is confirmed, once again, in “A Squeeze of the Hand”, chapter 94 of Moby-Dick, where Ishmael is with other sailors squeezing the “sperm” (blubber) of a whale. By depicting a group of men bathing together in a bath of “sperm”,11 the scene does indeed appear to celebrate male homoeroticism as having the potential to bring about individual and interpersonal change. As he is squeezing the sperm with his fellow sailors, Ishmael becomes increasingly attracted to them, realizing the possibility and desirability of diminishing their enmities and social differences. According to Ishmael, friendship and homoeroticsm seem to have the potential to bring all men together, regardless of their different sociocultural and national origins, imbuing them with the “milk” or “sperm of kindness”: Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze! All the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this evocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say: “Oh! My dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay; let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness”. (1996, 574)12

Alongside Melville’s fiction, the political subversive potential of men’s friendships is perhaps nowhere better expressed than the poetry of Walt Whitman (Armengol, 2013). Most of Whitman’s poetry is, in effect, centrally concerned with celebrating male friendship and homoeroticism, which he depicts as the basis for a renewed American democracy. In Democratic Vistas (1871), for example, Whitman distinguishes, as has been pointed out, between spiritualized bonding between men, “adhesiveness”, and a “purer” physical attraction between men and women, “amativeness”. In Whitman’s view, “adhesiveness”, which he sees as exclusively male, has the potential to transform America into a more egalitarian and progressive society. His vision is nowhere clearer than in Leaves of Grass (1891–1892), one of his best-known poetry collections. For example, in “This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful”, Whitman, 11

Fiedler (1998) shows how Melville was fully aware of, and deliberately playing with, the double meaning of «sperm». As this critic argues, Melville “comments on how ‘in old times sperm was such a favorite cosmetic’, knowing well enough that it was semen not blubber which the medieval cosmeticians prized” (371). 12 I remain indebted to Dr. Rodrigo Andrés (personal communication), a prominent Melville scholar, for these examples of democratic friendships in Herman Melville’s fiction.

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sitting alone and thinking, looks forward to meeting and knowing men from other cultures and nationalities, who might become his friends and lovers. In Whitman’s poetry, friendships between men thus seem to cross and undermine traditional racial, cultural, and national boundaries. As he himself explains, “if I could know those men I should become attached/to them as I do to men in my own lands,/O I know we should be brethren and lovers,/I know I should be happy with them” (208). Trying to establish the “institution of the dear love of comrades”, the poet portrays friendship between men as a means of undermining cultural and social distinctions and, therefore, as a way of promoting social equality. For instance, in “A Leaf for Hand in Hand”, Whitman envisions a brotherhood of men from different ages, regions, and social classes. Once again, Whitman represents male friendship as having the potential to bring about greater social equality. In his own words, “You natural persons old and young!/You on the Mississippi and on all the branches and bayous of the Mississippi!/You friendly boatmen and mechanics! You roughs!/You twain! And all processions moving along the streets!/I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for you to walk/hand in hand” (233). Dreaming, as another of his poems, says, about a “new city of Friends”, which would remain “invincible to the attacks of the whole/of the rest of the earth” (236), Whitman saw as the main purpose of the U.S. to fund “a superb friendship”, which, in his view, has always been “waiting, latent in all men” (239). The institution a brotherhood of men, which Whitman defined as the very foundation of a more egalitarian society, thus seems to become the central concern of most of his poems. «For You Democracy», one of his best-known songs, summarizes the poet’s vision very clearly, celebrating, once again, “the manly love of comrades” as a unifying force, which Whitman identifies as the basis for a renewed democracy: Come, I will make the continent indissoluble, I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon, I will make divine magnetic lands, With the love of comrades, With the life-long love of comrades. I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the Prairies, I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks, By the love of comrades, By the manly love of comrades, For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme! For you, for you, I am trilling these songs. (Whitman 1982, 209) From what has been argued, it would appear, then, that love and friendship between men might, eventually, contribute to the promotion of more egalitarian societies. It is true, as has been argued, that men’s focus on their emotional inner selves might sometimes prove conservative, preventing them from engaging in larger social and political issues, including the struggle for social and gender equality. While acknowledging

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the conservative component of male bonding (Ward, 2015), it is equally important to try to demonstrate and emphasize the political potential of men’s friendships for bringing about greater social and political equality. Certainly, (re)establishing the institution of male friendship will not be easy and will require important social policies, for example, to undermine homophobia and racism, both of which help perpetuate the current separation between men. Within our increasingly globalized and capitalist societies, reconstructing men’s friendships will also entail the redefinition of work relations to make them less competitive. While it seems clear, then, that the transformation of men’s friendships will require other important social and political transformations, one should not forget that intimacy between men has itself political potential, which might contribute, as has also been noted, to undermining sexism, homophobia or racism, as well as other social and class hierarchies. If, as feminism has taught us, “the personal is political”, then rethinking men’s friendships and personal relations with other men might also have important political benefits. It is high time, therefore, that we engaged in a complete redefinition of men’s friendships, which, though difficult, is far from impossible. It is high time, therefore, that we engaged in a complete redefinition of men’s friendships, which, though difficult, is far from impossible. As friendship scholar Drury Sherrod (1987) concluded: By acknowledging their need for intimacy and risking the pursuit of friendship, men can begin to achieve the kind of closeness that males have known in other times and other cultures [...] With commitment and persistence, men can learn to break through the bonds that confine them and rebuild the bonds that unite them. (238–9)

References Aristotle. Magna Moralia. In The Works of Aristotle. Vol. 9. Trans. George Stock. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925. Armengol, Josep M. Richard Ford and the Fiction of Masculinities. New York: Peter Lang, 2010. ———. The Politics of Masculinity and/as Emotion: Walt Whitman’s Celebration of Male Intimacy in the First Person. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 66 (2013): 73–86. Baym, Nina. “Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How Theories of American Fiction Exclude Women Authors.” The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory. Ed. Elaine Showalter New York: Pantheon, 1985. 62–80. Bem, Sandra Lipsitz. The Lenses of Gender. Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993. Boswell, John. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century [1980]. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Crompton, Louis. Byron and Male Love: The Classical Tradition. The Making of Masculinities: The New Men’s Studies. Ed. Harry Brod. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987. 325–2. Crowley, John. Howells, Stoddard, and Male Homosocial Attachment in Victorian America. The Making of Masculinities: The New Men’s Studies. Ed. Harry Brod. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987. 301–24. Dellamora, Richard. Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism. Chapel Hill, NC: North Carolina University Press, 1990.

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Fiedler, Leslie A. Love and Death in the American Novel [1960]. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1998. Ford, Richard. The Sportswriter. 1986. New York: Vintage, 1995. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. I. 1976. Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1984. Hammond, Dorothy and Alta Jablow. Gilgamesh and the Sundance Kid: The Myth of Male Friendship. The Making of Masculinities: The New Men’s Studies. Ed. Harry Brod. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987. 241–58. Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. 1926. New York: Scribner, 1954. Homer. The Iliad. Trans. R. Lattimore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951. Kimmel, Michael. The Gendered Society. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Lutz, Catherine A. Engendered Emotion: Gender, Power, and the Rhetoric of Emotional Control in American Discourse. Language and the Politics of Emotion. Ed. Lila Abu-Lughod and Catherine A. Lutz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 69–91. Lynch, M. “Here is adhesiveness”: From Friendship to Homosexuality. Victorian Studies 29 (1985): 67–-96. May, Larry, and Robert Strikwerda. Introduction. Rethinking Masculinity: Philosophical Explorations in Light of Feminism. Ed. Larry May and Robert Strikwerda. Lanham: Littlefield Adams Quality Papers, 1992. xi–xx. Montaigne, Michel de. Of Friendship. Essays [1580]. Trans. J. M. Cohen, Baltimore: Penguin, 1958. Nardi, Peter M. Friendship. In Michael Kimmel and Amy Aronson (eds.). Men and Masculinities: A Social, Cultural, and Historical Encyclopaedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio Press, 2004. 321–4. O’Sullivan, Sibbie. Love and Friendship/Man and Woman in The Sun Also Rises. Arizona Quarterly 44.2 (1988): 76–97. Petersen, Wolfgang, dir. Troy. Shepperton Studios, 2004. Pfister, Joel, and Nancy Schnog (eds.). Inventing the Psychological: Toward a Cultural History of Emotional Life in America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire [1985]. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Segal, Lynne. Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men [1990]. London: Virago, 1997. Seidler, Victor J. Unreasonable Men: Masculinity and Social Theory. New York: Routledge, 1994. Shamir, Milette, and Jennifer Travis (eds.). Boys Don’t Cry? Rethinking Narratives of Masculinity and Emotion in the U.S. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Sherrod, Drury. The Bonds of Men. Problems and Possibilities in Close Male Relationships. The Making of Masculinities: The New Men’s Studies. Ed. Harry Brod. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987. 212–39. Stone, Oliver, dir. Alexander. Warner, 2004. Taylor, Martin (ed.). Lads: Love Poetry of the Trenches. London: Constable, 1989. Walker, Elinor Ann. Richard Ford. New York: Twayne, 2000. Ward, Jane. Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men. New York: New York University Press, 2015. Watkins, John. Romantic Friendship: Male. Ed. Claude J. Summers. GLBTQ: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture (consulted 19 March 2008). Whitman, Walt. Complete Poetry and Collected Prose. 1871. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1982.

Chapter 7

Masculinity as Violence? Cultural and Literary Revisions

What gender comes to mind when we invoke the following current problems in society […]: teen violence, gang violence, […] drug violence, violence in the schools? […] Of course, you’ve imagined men. And not just any men, but younger men, in their teens and twenties, and relatively poorer men, from the working class or lower middle class. But how do our social commentators discuss these problems? Do they note that the problems of youth and violence is really a problem of young men and violence? Do they ever mention that everywhere ethnic nationalism sets up shop, it is young men who are the shopkeepers? Do they ever mention masculinity at all? No. —Michael Kimmel, The Gendered Society. (2000)

Male violence still constitutes a major social problem in most contemporary cultures worldwide. According to transcultural anthropology (see, e.g., Gutmann, 2014; Cornwall and Lindisfarne, 1994; Gilmore, 1990), men tend to be more aggressive than women are, frequently becoming victims of male violence as well. In the U.S., for example, which is one of the most violent industrialized countries in the world, men, in addition to being one of the main instigators of gender violence, constitute 92% of all persons arrested for robbery, 87% for aggravated assault, 85% for other assaults, and 82% for disorderly conduct (Kimmel, 2000, 243). Paradoxically enough, the close relationship between masculinity and violence remains largely unexplored. As Kimmel points out, the fact that a large majority of violent people are men seems so natural that it does not often raise any questions or discussions (2000, 243). Borrowing from the work on male violence carried out by several masculinity scholars (e.g., see Flood, 2014a, 2019; Pease, 2019; Armengol, 2015; Kimmel, 2000, 2003) this chapter explores the recurrent association between masculinity and violence, which will be discussed as the result of different social and historical factors rather than natural or essentialist factors. While most psychoanalytic and anthropological explanations for male violence describe it as inevitable and universal, such views may be challenged by the very existence of a number of pacifistic cultures where men, as we will see, clearly reject violence. To complement such psychoanalytic and anthropological theoretical explanations, the chapter will therefore also use sociological and historical explanations, which are more culture-specific and context-bound.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. M. Armengol, Rewriting White Masculinities in Contemporary Fiction and Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53349-5_7

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In fact, analyzing the connections between masculinity and violence from a sociohistorical perspective involves different aspects (Kimmel, 2003, 810). First, we must study male violence in contemporary cultures and compare it with that of other cultures. Second, we must explore the origins and evolution of the association between masculinity and violence throughout history. Although male violence has traditionally played a central role, throughout the cultural history of Western civilization, as we will see, this chapter will set out to illustrate, once again, that what has been constructed by society can also be culturally and socially deconstructed and that literature and culture can play, once again, a fundamental role in this sociocultural deconstruction. Focusing on some contemporary literary revisions of male violence, this chapter will therefore draw on a selection of contemporary literary works that seem to have questioned and rewritten from particularly innovative perspectives the traditional cultural conception of violence as a symbol of virility. Using several stories from Rock Springs and A Multitude of Sins, two short-story collections by the contemporary U.S. writer Richard Ford, we will see how this author, whom we have already introduced in previous chapters, seems to reread male violence, which is often shown to derive from economic hardship, as a (self-)destructive force for women as well as men. In highlighting the invariable detrimental effects of violence on both genders, these works thus seem to provide both hope and inspiration for moving beyond the traditional view of violence as proof of virility. In addition to questioning traditional representations of violence as a symbol of male heroism, Ford’s fiction also portrays, as we shall see, boys and men who decide to move away from the influence of violence, often rejecting their violent fathers or male friends. Therefore, Ford’s literature will receive special critical attention here, as he not only challenges and undermines violent masculinities but also appears to offer new, alternative, and nonviolent constructions of masculinity in contemporary culture and literature. Although the chapter will focus on the subversive images of male violence in Ford’s fiction, such revisionary depictions will be preceded by and contrasted with more traditional fictional approaches to the subject, which, in this chapter, will be exemplified, as we will see, not only through literature but also through cinema, from Ernest Hemingway to Russell Bank’s fiction to contemporary films as popular as Fight Club (2003), directed by David Fincher and based on Chuck Palahniuk’s homonymous novel, among others. Even though the association of masculinity with violence is, as we will see, particularly recurrent in most contemporary literature and cinema, the chapter will also make use of other films, such as In a Better World (2010) by Danish director Susanne Bier, besides some stories by Hemingway himself, as examples of the deconstruction of the said relationship. In analyzing these subversive rewritings vis-à-vis more conventional representations, the chapter tries, on the one hand, to provide examples not only of traditional constructions but also of the possible deconstruction of male violence in contemporary fiction and cinema. Ultimately, the chapter aims to provide alternative images of being a man with a view to visibilizing alternative, less violent, and more gender-equal societies.

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Gendering Violence: Theoretical Explanations for the Relationship Between Masculinity and Violence In the contemporary Western context, the U.S. is known to be one of the most violent countries in the world, which has frequently been associated with, among other reasons, greater access to firearms. However, less well-known is, perhaps, the fact that American men account for 99% of persons arrested for rape, 88% of those arrested for murder, and 83% of perpetrators of all family violence (Kimmel, 2000, 243). In most industrialized countries worldwide, masculinity is also a risk factor for driving accidents, especially in those that are a consequence of drunk driving. In general, men tend to be much more violent than women are (Kimmel, 2003, 809).1 Nevertheless, most experts and social commentators, as Kimmel (2003, 809), has noted, continue to ignore the close links between masculinity and violence. For example, when discussing youth and violence, sociologists attribute rising rates of violence among young boys to access to guns, mass media violence, parental neglect, drug consumption, poverty, and several other factors. Seldom, however, is the word “masculinity” explicitly mentioned. As Kimmel himself explained, Imagine, though, if the phalanxes of violence were composed entirely by women. Would that not be the story, the only issue to be explained? Would not a gender analysis occupy the center of every single story? The fact that these are men seems so natural as to raise no questions, no analysis. (Kimmel, 2000, 243)

Although the links between masculinity and violence remain largely unanalyzed, several masculinity scholars have proposed different theoretical explanations that attempt to account for the close relationship between maleness and violent behavior (Flood, 2019; Pease; 2019; Salazar, 2018; Kimmel, 2000; Beneke, 1997, 1982).2 From a psychoanalytic perspective, Nancy Chodorow, for example, has 1

It is true that women are also violent. Some scholars (see, e.g., Segal, 1997, 261–71) argue that there has been a dramatic increase in women’s criminality. However, Kimmel (2000, 248) insists that court records show a gradual decline in women’s arrests since the eighteenth century due, at least in part, to changes in the definition of femininity and the “cult of domesticity”. By the end of the nineteenth century, there was a clear separation between the public and private spheres. Women were thus confined to reproductive and domestic work in the home, which was followed by a parallel decline in female court involvement. Clearly, women could not become criminals if they were excluded from the public sphere and the outside world. Despite the increase in women’s criminality over the last years, Kimmel (2000, 248) elaborates, the base numbers were so small to start with that “any modest increase would appear to be a larger percentage increase than among men”. Moreover, it must be remembered that women’s violence tends to be defensive, while men are often the initiators of violent acts. Furthermore, we must remember that “while men’s violence may be instrumental—designed to accomplish some goal—or expressive of emotion, women’s violence often is the outcome of feeling trapped and helpless” (2000, 249). If follows, then, that violence remains a clearly gendered behavior. 2 Some highlight biological differences between men and women, arguing, for example, that male hormones, especially testosterone, trigger male aggression. While it is true that testosterone is associated with aggression, it does not provoke the aggression, but simply facilitates an aggression already present. It does nothing for nonviolent males, for instance (Kimmel, 2000, 243–6). Nor is there a casual relation from hormone to behavior. For example, athletic winners, as Kimmel

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explained that individuation and separation from one’s mother are central components of masculinity. While girls can achieve femininity without separating from their mothers, boys can only become men by separating themselves from them. However, men’s separation from their mothers is both arduous and precarious because, according to Chodorow, most men experience an unconscious desire to regress throughout their lives—that is, to recover a sense of primary fusion with their mother. In Chodorow’s words, “underlying, or built into, core male gender identity is an early, nonverbal, unconscious, almost somatic sense of primary oneness with the mother, an underlying sense of femaleness that continually, usually unnoticeably, but sometimes insistently, challenges and undermines the sense of maleness” (1979, 13). Because boys must separate from mothers to become “real” men, masculinity comes to be defined as the opposite of women and femininity. Therefore, men must constantly prove that they are not like women, that they are not feminine. Men defend against their (unconscious) desire to regress and identify with their mother by validating a compulsion to prove their masculinity. In this context, violence becomes one of the central mechanisms through which men can prove their masculinity (Chodorow, 2002). Therefore, men come to embody an inherently violent or compulsive masculinity, which Timothy Beneke defines as “the compulsion or need to relate to, and at times create, stress or distress as a means of both proving manhood and conferring on boys and men superiority over women and other men” (1997, 36). Failure to do so often results in the social or individual perception that one is not a man. One must take distress and act “like a man” or run the risk of being considered feminine—a “sissy” or “mama’s boy”. Masculinity, as Beneke (1997, 36) concludes, thus becomes a relentless violent test. Several masculinity anthropologists, perhaps most notably David Gilmore, have also tried to explain the close relationship between masculinity and violence, which he sees as a universal cultural phenomenon. Gilmore’s cross-cultural anthropological research (1990) has shown that most cultures worldwide include social codes of masculinity that require the endurance of violent tests, irrespective of the degree of industrialization or the form of social organization. A key difference between masculinity and femininity in most cultures is that the former has to be proven through violent tests or actions, while the latter may be demonstrated without resorting to violence. In most cultures worldwide, menstruation, a purely biological or bodily process, signals a girl’s entry into womanhood. Manhood, on the contrary, is, primarily, a cultural ideal that must be achieved and constantly proven and reasserted on the public stage. Although proving femininity usually involves questions of bodily ornament or sexual allure, an “authentic” femininity, as Gilmore (1990, 12) explains, usually entails using violence. When a girl menstruates for the first time, she comes to be considered a woman by her community. Although femininity must reassert itself throughout the years, violence becomes the primary means of demonstrating masculinity, not femininity. Indeed, a girl who likes playing rough or noisy games is often regarded as unfeminine and as a “tomboy” (12). (2000, 243–6) elaborates, experience increased testosterone levels after their win. Violence causes increased testosterone levels as much as hormonal increases lead to violence.

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There are numerous examples of violent masculinity in many cultures around the globe (Gilmore, 1990, 12–20). For example, Gilmore’s anthropological work has shown how, on Truk Island, a little atoll in the South Pacific, men are expected to prove their manhood by going on deep-sea fishing expeditions in tiny dugouts and spear-fishing in shark-infested waters. If any men avoid such challenges, their fellows, male and female, ridicule them and call them effeminate and childlike. In East Africa, on the other hand, young boys from a number of cattle-herding tribes— including the Masai, Rendille, Jie, and Samburu—are taken away from their mothers and subjected at the outset of adolescence to bloody circumcision rites by which they become “true” men. If a boy cries while his penis is being cut, he is shamed for life as unworthy of manhood, and his whole family is shamed. After this public demonstration of manhood, the young boys are isolated in the desert. There, all alone, they learn the tasks of responsible manhood: cattle rustling, raiding, killing, etc. If this period proves successful, they return to society; only then are they allowed to marry (12–20). In Ethiopia, the Amhara, a Semitic-speaking tribe of rural cultivators, also holds a deep belief in masculinity called wand-nat (15). To show their wand-nats, the Amhara boys are obliged to engage in whipping contests called buhe. During these whipping ceremonies, faces are lacerated, ears are torn open, and red and bleeding welts appear. Moreover, Amhara youths are made to prove their virility by scarring their arms with red-hot embers. Any sign of weakness is mocked (Gilmore, 1990, 15). In the New Guinea Highlands, boys must also undergo a number of brutal manhood rituals, which include whipping and beating by other men. If they avoid such rituals, boys are singled out and shamed for life (15–6). Other examples of stressed manhood include the !Kung Bushman of southwest Africa, who must alone track and kill a large adult antelope. Only after his first kill of such a buck is he regarded as fully masculine and allowed to take a wife. As Gilmore (16) elaborates, masculinity must also be proven in aboriginal North America. For example, between the ages of twelve and fifteen, the Tewa boys of New Mexico, also known as the Pueblo Indians, are taken away from their homes, purified by ritual celebrations, and then whipped mercilessly by the Kachina spirits (their fathers in disguise). Each boy is stripped naked and lashed on the back four times with a crude yucca whip that draws blood and leaves permanent scars. After these initiation rituals, which Tewa boys are expected to undergo stoically, they are considered men (16). The compulsion to prove manhood, as Gilmore (16–8) elaborates, is not limited to nonindustrialized cultures. In urban Mexico, for example, a man is generally expected to prove his manhood by standing up to challenges and insults. In addition to being tough and brave, he must always be ready to defend his family’s honor (16–8). In most eastern European countries, masculinity must also be demonstrated. In the Balkans, for example, a real man is one who drinks heavily and fights bravely, while in Christian Crete, men demonstrate their masculinity by stealing sheep and besting other men in games of chance and skill (16–8). Anglophone cultures have always had their own manhood tests. As David Gilmore indicates, “We too have our manly traditions […] Although we may choose less flamboyant modes of expression than the Amhara or Trukese, we too have regarded manhood as an artificial state, a

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challenge to be overcome, a prize to be won by fierce struggle” (17). For example, boys belonging to the gentry of modern England were submitted to hard trials on the road to their majority. They were removed at a tender age from a mother and home, as in East Africa or New Guinea, and sent to public boarding schools, where a cruel “trial by ordeal”, including physical violence and terrorization by elder males, provided access to manhood (Gilmore, 1990, 17). U.S. American culture has always encouraged men to prove their manhood through violence. For example, in the antebellum South, southerners of all social classes placed great emphasis on manly honor as a defining characteristic of the southern character. As Gilmore elaborates, “a defense of southern “manliness” was in fact offered by Confederate writers of the time […] as one justification for regional defiance, political separation and, finally, war” (20). The need to prove manhood also figures prominently in the agenda of the American Boy Scouts, who set out to “make big men of little boys” by promoting “an independent manhood”, as it does in the frontier folklore of the American West, past and present, as seen in numerous cowboy films (20). In addition, in Spain, until the 1990s, boys became “men” only after mandatory military service at eighteen. Gilmore’s anthropological accounts (1990), alongside Chodorow’s psychoanalytic arguments described earlier, have provided a number of valuable insights into the relationship between masculinity and violence. However, both of these theories about male violence can be and indeed have been contested in a number of ways.3 While psychoanalysis generally describes (male) violence as an intrinsic component of the human psyche,4 anthropological explanations for male violence tend to describe it as a transcultural reality. Thus, both psychoanalysis and anthropology tend to describe male violence as inevitable and universal. There are, however, some cultures where men are not violent against each other, which questions the alleged inevitability and universality of masculine violence. For instance, the people of Tahiti in French Polynesia and the Semai of Malaysia hate violence and confrontation (Gilmore, 1990, 202–19).5 As Gilmore explains, there is no stress associated with proving manhood among the men of Tahiti; Tahitians make no effort to protect their women or to feign 3

Chodorow herself, in her later work (1994), warns against the somewhat simplistic psychoanalytic accounts of gender that characterized her earlier work (particularly Reproduction) and that have been described in this chapter. 4 In general terms, psychoanalysis sees (male) violence as inevitable. According to Freud, human nature is always divided between the Eros drive or instinct, which strives for communion with other and tries to preserve life, and Thanatos (death) drive or instinct, which works for the violent dissolution of everything united. In Freud’s view, both forces are equally strong and intrinsic to mankind. Inevitably, then, violence and death are part of human nature. For this idea, Freud, as Gray (1992, 37) reminds us, is himself indebted to the early Greek philosopher Empedocles, who insisted that the universe is in eternal change, in generation and decay, because Love and Strife are always at work in the animate and the inanimate. 5 As has been suggested, Gilmore sees male violence as universal. Although he includes the Tahitians and the Semai in his anthropological work on men and masculinities, he insists that these isolated cases are simply two “exceptions” that confirm the general rule of men as violent. Instead of analyzing these two cultures as examples for the cultural relativity, and specificity, of male violence, as I attempt to do, Gilmore thus diminishes their importance by defining them as “exceptional”. In so

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off foreign intruders. Tahitian men do not hunt. There are no dangerous or strenuous occupations that are considered masculine. There is no warfare or feuding. There is no concept of male honor to be defended, no “getting even”. As Gilmore elaborates, men share the cultural value of “timidity”, which forbids retaliation, even when provoked men rarely come to blows. “Prohibitions against aggression”, as Gilmore concludes (206), “go far to exclude thoughts of revenge even when cheated”. Similarly, the Semai people of central Malaysia are among the most unaggressive and retiring people on the face of the earth. The Semai believe that resisting advances from another person, sexual or otherwise, is equivalent to aggression against that person. As Gilmore explains (211), “they call such aggressiveness punan—a very important concept in their culture, meaning roughly “taboo.” Punan is a Semai word for any act, no matter how mild, that denies or frustrates another person”. Elaborating on that, Gilmore comments that if you punan someone, his or her heart “becomes heavy”. Thus, the affected person might hurt himself or become disoriented and do something wrong or even violent. The whole village could thus be punished since the spirits forbid untoward behavior. To avoid such tragedy, the Semai always accede mildly to requests and importuning. Adopting punan as an ideal, the Semai thus rely on a pervasive and strict nonviolent image. This extreme pacifistic self-image is incorporated into personality structure as an unconscious element of the ego-ideal. Thus, the Semai do not say “anger is bad”; they claim “we never get angry”, and an angry man will hide his real feelings. As Gilmore himself concludes, Semai children may also not be disciplined or punished, and “they never hit each other or fight, and even noisy arguments are forbidden because noise ‘frightens people’” (1990, 212–3). Although exceptional, the existence of unaggressive men, such as the Tahitians of the French Polynesia and the Semai of Malaysia, appears to undermine most psychoanalytic and anthropological accounts of male violence, which tend to describe it as inevitable and universal. If, as seems, neither psychoanalysis nor anthropology can fully account for the relationship between masculinity and violence, it may now be helpful to turn to sociological and historical explanations, which are culturespecific and context-bound. In effect, analyzing the links between masculinity and violence from a sociohistorical perspective implies, as has already been advanced, two different things (Kimmel, 2003, 810). First, we discuss male violence in contemporary Western societies, contrasting it with that in other industrialized countries. Second, we must explore the origins and evolution of the association between masculinity and violence as context specific and culture bound. The analysis of male violence as a specific cultural and historical product, rather than as a universal and eternal phenomenon, not only helps undermine essentialist notions of masculinity as intrinsically violent but also, more importantly, offers some hope for change. For, if the links between masculinity and violence have, as it seems, been culturally and historically constructed, they might also be culturally and historically deconstructed in social, political, and cultural terms.

doing, then, he, like most anthropologists, simply emphasizes the cultural universality of masculine violence, ignoring its cultural variability and specificity.

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Male Violence(s) in Contemporary Western Cultures If we think of images of violence in contemporary Western culture, several action films from contemporary Hollywood cinema will most likely come to mind, with most of them featuring, indeed, male protagonists. Thinm, for example, of box-office hits such as those of Sylvester Stallone in the Rambo Trilogy (2019, 2008, 1988, 1985, 1982) and Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones (1989 et seq.), Sean Connery in The Rock (1996), or Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator (1984 et seq.), the many episodes led by Bruce Willis in Die Hard (1988 et seq.), among many others. This, of course, is no coincidence. U.S. men, as Kimmel indicates (2003, 810), are the most violent group of people in the industrialized world. The U.S. American homicide rate is between 5 and 20 times greater than that of any other industrial democracy, although the U.S. imprisons 5–20 times more than any other country in the world except Russia. In 1992, young men aged between 15 and 24 years had a homicide rate of 37.2 per 100,000. This figure is approximately 10 times greater than that in the next closest industrialized country, Italy, and more than 60 times greater than that in the same age group in England. In addition, this seems to only be getting worse. Between 1985 and 1994, homicides by 14- to 17-year-old males more than tripled, as did the number of men in prison. Elaborating on this, Michael Kimmel explains: Male socialization is a socialization to the legitimacy of violence—from infantile circumcision (the U.S. is the only nation to routinely practice male genital mutilation for non-religious reasons), to being hit by parents and siblings, to routine flights with other boys, to the socially approved forms of violence in the military, sports, and prison (the U.S. is the only industrialized country that still employs capital punishment), to epigrams that remind us not to get mad, but rather to get even, that the working-world is the Hobbesian war of each against all, a jungle where dogs eat dogs. (2003, 811–2)

Very often, male violence equals gender-based violence; that is, men’s violence against women as women. The U.S. has among the highest rates of rape, domestic violence, and spousal murder in the industrial world. As Kimmel (2000, 254) elaborates in this respect, nearly 40% of all women who are murdered are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends; every six minutes, a woman in the U.S. is raped; every 18 seconds, a woman is beaten; and every day, four women are killed by their batterers. Violence against women occurs in all class, ethnic, and cultural contexts. Educated, successful, sophisticated men—lawyers, doctors, politicians, and business executives—beat their wives as much as uneducated, working-class men (Kimmel, 2000, 262). However, it is true that there are some differences (Segal, 1997, 256). For example, one of the best predictors of the emergence of domestic violence is unemployment and poverty. Moreover, rates of domestic violence tend to be greater in African American families than in white families. However, it must be stressed that (lowclass) African American men tend to be more violent than white (middle-class) men not because of their race or ethnicity (although some racist arguments have been put forward in this sense) but because of their particularly complicated economic situation and social vulnerability, which are clearly linked to the effects of racism

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itself. Since masculinity has been traditionally associated with power and success, African American men, who generally lack access to any of these masculine ideals, often feel humiliated and symbolically emasculated. Thus, African American men, like working-class white men, may use violence as the only form of power they have to reclaim and reaffirm their masculinity. As Lynne Segal elaborates in this respect: In a culture which constructs masculinity around ideas of dominance, social power and control over others but then denies to some men any access to such prerogatives, it is not surprising that subordinated men may be more likely to resort to violence as the only form of power they can assert over others. (256)

Unlike many other masculinity scholars (see, e.g., Beneke, 1997), who describe male violence as a form of male power, a number of writers, such as Faludi (2000), Kimmel (2000, 257) and Segal (1997, 256), have recently shown that male violence does not occur when men feel most powerful but rather when they feel (not necessarily are) relatively powerless. More often than not, it occurs when men experience low levels of self-esteem and feel that they are losing power. For example, rape does not usually result from a masculine feeling of power but from a feeling of relative powerlessness. “These feelings of powerlessness”, as Kimmel (2000, 257) elaborates, “coupled with the sense of entitlement to women’s bodies expressed by the rapists […] combine in a potent mix”. Therefore, gender violence often derives from men’s contradictory feelings of powerlessness and entitlement, impotence, and a right to feel in control. In this sense, experts in interfamily violence, such as Kersti Yllo, have argued that men use violence to exert power and control over their wives. According to Yllo, men use violence to frighten their wives or to ensure submission to the husband’s rule in the home (1993). Nevertheless, gender-based violence may, as has been suggested, be related to a man’s feeling of powerlessness rather than omnipotence. As Kimmel insists, “violence is restorative, a means to reclaim the power that he believes is rightfully his” (2000, 262). Therefore, abusive men often batter their wives when they feel that they are losing power or control over their lives, not (always) as a display of masculine self-assurance but rather as a (desperate) way to try to reaffirm their deeply eroded sense of manhood. In Spain, for example, where I am currently based and where male violence against women is one of the main current social problems, there have recently been several efforts to try to understand the causes (and consequences) of this type of violent behavior. The Spanish woman director Icíar Bollaín did indeed produce a highly acclaimed film, Te doy mis ojos (2003), which seems to lend further support to the idea that gender-based violence usually derives from a man’s feeling of powerlessness, even if veiled as omnipotence. Midway through the film, Pilar (Laia Marull) tells her husband Antonio (Luis Tosar) that she wants to obtain a job as a tourist guide. When Antonio learns about his wife’s desire for self-realization, he feels that he is losing power and control over her life. Antonio fears that her job outside the domestic sphere will give her more freedom and autonomy and perhaps the chance to meet another man. Antonio is afraid that she will eventually abandon him. Thus, he disapproves of his wife’s desire for autonomy and resorts to violence to try to keep her in the home under his control. Fortunately, however, he does not succeed. Violence always has

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disastrous effects not only on women but also, as Bollaín demonstrates, on men’s lives. In Te doy mis ojos, Antonio’s aggressiveness and obsessive jealousy make him wretched and unhappy. When his therapist (Sergi Calleja) asks him to describe a moment of happiness on a blank sheet of paper, Antonio has nothing to write about.6 This male character is unhappy because he does not know how to express his feelings without resorting to violence. In traditional patriarchal discourse, violence is the only legitimate way in which men can express their emotions. However, Bollaín shows how violence ends up destroying and isolating men themselves. By the end of the film, Antonio, who embodies patriarchy itself, is abandoned. Through films such as Bollaín’s, boys and men are instructed on the detrimental effects of violence on their own lives, which is essential for promoting changes in men’s attitudes toward violence. Some profeminist men, such as Michael Kaufman in Canada or Michael Kimmel in the U.S., also work in men’s organizations against gender-based violence. Kaufman was the father of the successful White Ribbon campaign, which mobilized both women and men against gender-based violence in Canada and has since expanded worldwide, while Kimmel led the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS) in the U.S. These organizations defend women who are victims of male violence; at the same time, they work to dissociate masculinity from violence, teaching men about the disastrous effects of violence on their own lives. As Kimmel has explained, men are also victims of violence, just as they are overwhelmingly perpetrators (2000, 263). In Martin Scorsese’s film Raging Bull, middleweight champion Jake La Motta is portrayed as a man whose possessive aggressiveness toward his wife ends up destroying his friendships, his career, and his marriage. As Segal has commented in this respect, “throughout the film La Motta’s acts of violence are inseparable from his pent-up frustration and his actual powerlessness to express how he feels and to get what he wants” (1997, 259). If, as seems, domestic violence has disastrous consequences for both women and men, then it becomes absolutely essential to look for strategies that may contribute to putting male violence to an end. In this sense, it becomes fundamental, as Segal (260) indicates, to make a truly serious effort to reduce gender inequalities and to protect women from a culture of violence that often targets them. In addition to supporting battered women and working to dissociate definitions of masculinity from violence, the eradication of male violence entails, as Segal insists (1997, 270–1), working to reduce the detrimental effects of late capitalism on the working class, both women and men. On the one hand, it is crucial to fight for social policies and socioeconomic 6

In Spain, there are several therapy groups, such as the one directed by Toni Vives from the IRES Institute in Girona (Catalonia), devoted to the treatment, and social reintegration, of male abusers. Such groups exist as well in South America. At the University of Puerto Rico, there is a therapy group called “El colectivo”, formed by several psychologists who work to change and reintegrate violent men. Understandably enough, these groups have been subject to harsh criticism, particularly from feminist women, who want all economic and human resources to be addressed to the victims, rather than the perpetrators, of domestic violence. However, these therapy groups seem to prove particularly helpful, since very few of its members resort to violence again after leaving prison (Vives, p.c.) For further information on these therapy groups, see www.hombresigualdad. com www.hombresigualdad.com.

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changes that enable women to leave violent relationships. Second, focus should be given to the distorting effects of neoliberal policies on men themselves. Because many men feel exploited and emasculated at work, they often use violence against women as the only form they have left for demonstrating their power and masculinity. Thus, gender-based violence seems to reflect the increased barbarism and aggressiveness of public life, as late capitalism continues to discriminate according to one’s class, race, and gender. In Lynne Segal, Who or what, then, do we identify as the epitome of “violence”, “abuse” and “aggression” in our [capitalist] society? Those who are brutalised within an underworld of fear and exploitation? Or those who may never directly engage in acts of violence or physical force but orchestrate the degradation and brutalisation of others? The entrenchment of poverty and inequality in the world’s richest nation has occurred precisely to enable the US to spend ever-greater sums on “defence” and to conduct aggressive interventions in Central America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. (270–1)

Contemporary fiction and cinema have also, of course, accounted for neoliberalism and masculinities. While feminist literature has long denounced the terrible effects of patriarchal violence on women, Russell Banks’s novel Affliction, for instance, which was transformed into film by Paul Schrader in 1999, provides an interesting view of male violence, which he shows to be indissolubly linked to economic hardship and that ends up destroying the lives of women and men alike. Triggered by both poverty and childhood abuse at the hands of an alcoholic father, adult male violence in Bank’s novel is, in effect, described as a self-alienating force. The protagonist of the novel is Wade Whitehouse, a 41-year-old snowplow operator and policeman who has lived in Lawford, New Hampshire. While his brother, Rolfe, the narrator of the story, has left town and become a high school teacher in Boston, Wade, like his parents, has stayed in Lawford, which is described as a working-class area. Lawford seems to, in fact, have suffered the worst consequences of the Great Depression of the thirties of the twentieth century, when “the mills got taken over by the banks, were shut down and written off, the money and machinery invested farther south in the manufacture of shoes” (Banks, 1989, 8). Since then, Lawford has been seen mainly as a place between two places: “a town people sometimes admit to having come from where almost no one ever goes” (8). Thus, Wade is languishing “in the region’s dead economy” (9). He lives in a decadent trailer park built “on a brushcovered rocky spit of land” in a barren glacial valley, a hostile area “enclosed by a fierce geometry of need, placement, materials, and cold”. Moreover, Wade suffers daily humiliations in his working life and feels metaphorically “castrated” as a result. As Lawford’s part-time policeman, he is little more than “a private security guard hired by the town, a human alarm system whose main functions are to call for the emergency vehicle at the fire station or the ambulance service in Littleton” (83). In addition to being a well driller and a snowplow driver, Wade works for Gordon La Riviere, Lawford’s only successful businessman, a tyrannical boss who despises Wade as a failure. Wade has also been bitterly disappointed by marriage and is feeling emasculated by noncustodial fatherhood. Moreover, he suffered childhood abuse in the hands of an alcoholic father. Glenn, Wade’s father, himself a victim of poverty,

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is described as “a turbulent man who drank heavily”, and though Glenn loved Sally [his wife], “he beat her from time to time and had beaten the boys” (1989, 96). Thus, Affliction describes Wade’s childhood trauma in family poverty. As Robert Niemi has concluded, the novel offers “a chilling depiction of the kinds of psychological and emotional traumas that children and youth are apt to suffer growing up in families situated near the bottom of the socioeconomic heap” (1997, 149). Unable to come to terms with all these socioeconomic and personal problems, Wade, rather than surpassing his father, begins to become him: “A sadistic, self-pitying narcissist who approaches everything in life with fear and loathing” (154). Gradually, then, Wade becomes immersed in a fatal spiral of violence and death. Appropriately, most of the action of Affliction, as Niemi has argued, is set during New Hampshire’s deer hunting season, “a grisly autumn festival of macho brutality and death” (Niemi, 156). Indeed, the event that shapes the novel’s main plot is a mysterious hunting accident. On the first day of the season, Evan Twombley, a wealthy union official, dies, apparently by losing his footing and shooting himself (99). However, it is not clear whether Twombley’s death has been accidental. As president of the New England Plumbers and Pipefitters Union, Twombley was due to testify in Washington concerning presumed connections between his union and organized crime. Therefore, Wade begins to speculate that Twombley’s death was arranged by his sonin-law, Mel Gordon, the union’s vice-president treasurer, probably to cover his own criminal actions and to be able to gain access to the union presidency (Banks, 1989, 258). Thus, Wade, obsessed with unlikely conspiracy theories, sets out to uncover the “truth” behind Twombley’s killing. Nevertheless, Wade’s actions seem to be driven by deeper motives. As Robert Niemi elaborates, Wade’s actions cover a deeper urge to strike back at Mel Gordon, a la Riviere crony who has humiliated him in the past; a desire to prove himself stronger than the young Turk, Jack Hewitt; and a need to vindicate and redeem himself through moral one-upmanship. However, and most of all, Wade’s growing obsession with the Twombley case is fueled by displaced rage—rage at his father, his former wife, himself, and his life in general (1997, 157). Wade’s obsessions ultimately turn into violence. Unable to make sense of the Twombley case—and, in a deeper sense, of his own life—Wade shows nothing but frustration and despair, which is translated into violence and rage. At novel’s end, several people in Lawford, such as the waiter Wickham or the mechanic Chick Ward, report having had serious arguments with Wade over the last few days. As Wade becomes increasingly aggressive, his girlfriend, Margie Fogg, has become afraid of him and is planning to leave town. When Wade tries, albeit unsuccessfully, to persuade Margie to stay, he strikes his daughter Jill, “half by chance and half through the internal force of his programmed and terrible destiny” (Larsen, 10), losing her forever. Violence reaches its climax when Wade murders his hated father and burns the old man’s corpse (1989, 363–4). Afterward, he seeks out Jack Hewitt and murders him as well. Despite these violence scenes—or, rather, because of them—Affliction remains a sweeping indictment against the propensity for male violence that is passed from one generation to the next. The novel emphasizes the detrimental effects of violence

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both on victims and on perpetrators. At the novel’s end, Bank’s violent protagonist banishes from life altogether, thus receiving one of the worst punishments of all—namely, complete disappearance, loneliness, and forgetfulness. Following the killings, Banks could have had Wade commit suicide or be captured or killed by law enforcement. However, the writer chose to have his protagonist fade into oblivion, a fate that is even more tragic, for, as Robert Niemi has concluded, it “describes a kind of posthumous existence, a twilight life of extreme loneliness, isolation, and anonymity that knows no closure” (1997, 160). While Bank’s novel thus offers a bleak portrait of poverty and social vulnerability as causes of frustration and, finally, of masculine violence, other works have denounced the detrimental effects of late capitalism on working-class men. In this sense, a masculinity rereading of Chuck Palahniuk’s best-selling novel Fight Club (2003), which David Fincher’s film adaptation also turned into a box-office hit (1999), might help illustrate the aggressive influence of capitalism on contemporary masculinities. Our rereading of Fight Club will focus, more specifically, on exploring and illustrating the textual connection between masculinity and violence, which seems to be represented, as we shall see, as an anxiety-relieving mechanism for the alienated (white, middle-class, heterosexual) male in contemporary consumer culture. While much criticism has focused on the analysis of violence in the novel, the specific relationship between masculinity and violence has generally been overlooked, which seems to confirm Michael Kimmel’s contention that male violence is often considered so natural as to raise no questions or discussion (2000, 243). In this sense, capitalism will act as a bridge, as we will see, to understand the relationship between the two concepts. At the beginning of the novel, the nameless narrator of Fight Club, who lacks family and close friends, pretends to be ill to gain access to cancer and disease support groups, where he desperately looks for emotional bonding and affection.7 Tired of his impersonal white-collar job and fed up with the empty consumer culture that his generation has inherited, Palahniuk’s narrator resorts to these support groups to give some interpersonal and spiritual meaning to his life. In these groups, he can cry with his partners and express his emotions openly, and as a result, he feels better and is able to sleep.8 As he says, “walking home after a support group, I felt more alive than I’ve ever felt. I wasn’t host to cancer or blood parasites; I was the little warm center that the life of the world crowded around” (Palahniuk, 2003, 22). However, these support groups offer him only a temporary respite. He soon suffers from insomnia again. Thus, the narrator and his friend Tyler Durden create a new club 7

While the narrator in Fincher’s film is called Jack, the narrator’s identity in Palahniuk’s novel remains masked. As Boon has argued, “by intentionally masking the narrator’s identity in the novel, Palahniuk engenders him with the representational qualities of an everyman. Hi is the American male at the end of the twentieth century” (2003, 267). Although Boone’s description of Palahniuk’s narrator as “an everyman” remains open to questioning, he does certainly seem to embody the anxieties undergone by many (white, middle-class, heterosexual) men in late capitalist U.S. American/ Western culture. 8 These support groups, in which people can cry and openly express their emotions, might be read as Palahniuk’s parody of some men’s groups. See Chapter 5.

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where young American men come to relieve their sense of alienation by beating each other to death. In Palahniuk’s novel, the narrator and Tyler feel very much alienated by the consumer society. As the narrator himself explains, “you buy furniture […] then the right set of dishes. Then, the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then, you’re trapped in your lovely nest and the things you used to own; now, they own you” (44). Moreover, men in Palahniuk’s work feel “feminized” by a late capitalist system that demands that they fulfill passive jobs over which they have no control. As Michael Kimmel (1997, 264) has argued, the experience of powerlessness (having no control over one’s actions on the job), meaninglessness (performing specialized tasks that one cannot relate to the whole), and isolation (inability to identify with the firm and its goals) has often led American men to feel alienated and feminized. Little wonder, then, that Palahniuk’s narrator keeps complaining about his passive white-collar job, which he feels threatens and diminishes his masculinity. Furthermore, men in Fight Club appear to feel feminized by the lack of masculine referents, as most of them were brought up only by their mothers. As the narrator himself comments, “I knew my dad for about six years, but I don’t remember anything. My dad, he starts a new family in a new town about every six years […] What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women” (Palahniuk, 2003, 50). By feeling doubly feminized by their passive white-collar jobs and by their femaledominated families, men in Palahniuk’s novel thus resort to violence and all-male fight clubs to try to relieve their feelings of feminization. Therefore, when they leave their offices in the evening, men engage in bloody fights with other men to test and reaffirm their masculinity and to try to overcome the feminizing and alienating influence of contemporary (capitalist) culture. Commenting on his bloody fight with Tyler, the narrator thus explains that, “instead of Tyler, I felt finally I could get my hands on everything in the world that didn’t work […] the bank that says I’m hundreds of dollars overdrawn. My job where my boss got on my computer and fiddled with my DOS execute commands” (2003, 53). Admittedly, Fight Club can be, and has been, praised for several reasons, especially for its interesting portrayal of the alienated condition of the white male in late capitalism. In commenting on David Fincher’s popular adaptation of Palahniuk’s novel to cinema, Boyd Petrie, for instance, argued that the film offers “an unflinching look at what society has done to men […] Fight Club […] is a film that we […] should see for perhaps a better understanding of what can happen to us men in this crazed, capitalist world” (1999, 2–3). Nevertheless, the novel/film’s depiction of violence as a way of proving masculinity and diminishing the “feminizing” influence of capitalism remains largely controversial. As Petrie himself acknowledges, the film, which has been rated R for “disturbing and graphic depiction of violent antisocial behavior”, ends up glorifying male violence (2005, 2). Much of Fight Club does indeed celebrate the traditional image of violence as a test of manhood, emphasizing the soothing effects of violence on the alienated (male) victims of the capitalist market. As the narrator himself explains, “nothing was solved when the fight was over, but nothing mattered” (Palahniuk, 2003, 53). Even though Fight Club provides no real escape from capitalism, the novel thus depicts fighting as an anxiety-relieving

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mechanism. In so doing, then, Palahniuk’s text seems to end up reinstating the traditional conception of violence as an expression of (beset) masculinity. It should thus come as no surprise that many American men, feeling the pressure of capitalism and consumer society on their daily lives, have been attracted to the novel/film and that some of them, as Duge (2004, 302) has noted, have even created their own webpages offering advice on starting one’s own fight club. Nevertheless, the novel lends itself to more subversive readings. In the end, the fight club ends up degenerating into Project Mayhem, a terrorist group (consisting entirely of men) that focuses on destroying symbols of American capitalism, such as credit card companies. Project Mayhem becomes a totalitarian and sectarian terrorist group that erases individual will and personhood, threatening dissident members through, ironically enough, castration. The novel, as Duge has argued (2004, 302), therefore shows how Fight Club/Project Mayhem ends up reinforcing the type of social control that the men had originally been fighting against. Even though capitalism is represented as an intrinsically violent force, the use of violence ultimately fails, not only in relieving male feelings of alienation produced by that same capitalism but also by degenerating into equally totalitarian regimes and, finally, into more violence. Finally, the protagonist himself ends up realizing the dangers of his project and decides to abandon it. It seems clear that eradicating male violence will require significant individual, social, and economic changes. Although it seems both possible and necessary to dissociate masculinity from violence, this is no easy task. On the one hand, this will entail diminishing the violence and alienation undergone by working-class men (but sometimes also middle-class men) under late capitalism. On the other hand, alternatives to such traditional masculine models must be utilized to promote nonviolent men and masculinities. However, while literary works and films such as Affliction and Fight Club offer explicit criticisms of masculine violence, none provide clear alternatives to capitalism and social inequalities as sources of masculine frustration, alienation, and ultimately violence. Furthermore, the equation of masculinity with violence remains deeply ingrained in Western history and culture, which is, as we shall see, fundamentally a history of (male) violence.

Images of Violence as a Test of Manhood in Cultural and Literary History If, as seems, the U.S. remains the most violent country among contemporary industrialized nations and if its cultural values (including literature and cinema) play a key global influence, then it seems logical to look for the roots of the problem in U.S. American cultural history itself. In this sense, most masculinity scholars seem to agree that the origins of the cultural association between masculinity and violence in the U.S. may be traced back to the eighteenth century. At that time, Scottish and Irish immigrants began to settle in the American South, where brawling, dueling,

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fighting, hunting, and drinking became the means to express masculinity and virility. As Michael Kimmel (2000, 252–3) elaborates, violence has always been the highest where (young) men gather, especially away from the “civilizing” influence of women. No wonder, then, that the American frontier, the stage for one of the largest concentrations of young males in the history of the industrialized world, also provided a legacy of violence in the country (Kimmel, 2000, 253).9 American cowboys, as seen in endless westerns, proved their manhood by standing up to challenges, fighting with each other, and, above all, killing “Indians”. In this sense, Michael Paul Rogin’s seminal work Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian explains how the massacre at the time of Andrew Jackson’s Presidency helped to reinforce white masculinity. During Jackson’s presidency, particularly between 1824 and 1852, expansion across the continent became the central element of American politics. Prior to that, in 1790, two-thirds of the 3.9 million people who made up the entirety of the population lived within 50 miles of the Atlantic. In the following 50 years, 4.5 million Americans crossed the Appalachians, one of the greatest migrations in the history of the country. The western states formed less than three percent of the U.S. population in 1790, yet they amounted to 28% in 1830. In two decades, the west became the most crowded region in North America. Native Americans inhabited almost all the territory west of the original thirteen states in 1790. If Americans were to expand and take possession of the continent, Indians would have to be dispossessed. Indian removal thus became Andrew Jackson’s major political aim during his Presidency (Rogin 3–4). To reconcile the subjugation of Native Americans with American self-image as a democratic country, white Americans, as Rogin (6) elaborates, often resorted to imperialistic discourses, which described Native American people as “childish” creatures who needed to be looked after by their white “fathers”. “Indians” were said to remain in the childhood of the human race. They were seen as part of the human family as children, but children who could not mature. Therefore, their replacement by whites, as Rogin (6) himself explains, came to symbolize “America’s growing up from childhood to maturity”. While childhood is associated with boyhood, the concepts of adulthood and maturity remain culturally inseparable from manhood. By subjugating Native Americans, who were regarded as childish or boyish, white males could reaffirm their maturity and manhood—and hence their superiority. In conclusion, the violent subjugation of Native Americans helped reinforce the hegemony of white masculinity (Rogin).10 It seems clear, therefore, that violence in America has long been used as a means of proving and reinforcing masculinity. At the beginning of the twentieth century, for example, fighting was recurrently prescribed for boys, who, it was argued, often needed to prove their masculinity through violent behavior. In one of the best-selling advice manuals of the early twentieth century, parents were told, for instance, that: 9

For an in-depth analysis of the specific relationship between (male) violence and the American frontier, see historian Richard Slotkin’s seminal trilogy (1973, 1985, 1992), which has also shown the continued influence of the myth of the frontier on twentieth-century U.S. American culture. 10 Similarly, white masculinity was also reasserted through the U.S. American institution of slavery, which also diminished African Americans as childish and immature.

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There are times when everybody must defend his own rights if he is not to become a coward and lose the road to independence and true manhood […] The strong-willed boy needs no inspiration to combat, but often a good deal of guidance and restraint. If he fights more than, let us say, a half dozen times a week—except, of course, during his first week at a new school—he is probably overquarrelsome and needs to curb. The sensitive, retiring boy, on the other hand, needs encouragement to stand his ground and fight. (Puffer qtd. in Kimmel, 2000, 253)

Lurking behind this piece of advice was the fear, as Kimmel (2000, 253) comments, that nonviolent boys would not become real men. Men’s fears of emasculation, humiliation, feminization, and homosexuality account for a significant amount of masculine violence. Contemporary American conceptions of masculinity as violence also derive from old southern notions of “honor”, which asked men to be constantly ready to fight to prove their masculinity before other men. While southern whites called it “honor”, by the turn of the century, it was called “reputation”.11 In the 1950s, northern ghetto blacks referred to “respect”, which has now been transformed again into not showing “disrespect” or “dissing”. As Kimmel concludes, “it’s the same code of violence, the same daring” (2000, 253). Similarly, culture and literature have long reinforced the connection between masculinity and violence, usually through adventure fiction. Significantly, the adventure story has generally been addressed to men, who have used it to learn to run risks, fight, defeat, and dominate others. In American culture and letters, adventure, masculinity, and violence do in effect seem to be three inseparable terms. Most adventure stories raise the question of violence, which, more often than not, is enjoyed by men as a “corrupt excitement” (Green, 6). That is, indeed, the view held by Martin Green in his influential work The Great American Adventure (1984), which analyzes adventure stories from, among others, James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers (1823), to Roughing It by Mark Twain (1872), to Theodore Roosevelt’s autobiography (1913), through Green Hills of Africa by Ernest Hemingway (1935), to “The Bear” by William Faulkner (1942), or Why Are We in Vietnam? by Norman Mailer (1967). Green’s study has shown how, in most American adventure stories, masculinity remains inseparable from violence. Despite their formal and historical changes, most American adventure tales share a number of themes and motifs, such as male protagonists, guns, nature, and the hunt. For instance, the hunter’s passion and his great animal opponents appear in Parkman and again in Faulkner and Hemingway. Sometimes, as in Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, the white male protagonist does not have to deal with wild animals but with aboriginal people. However, wild animals and aborigines are considered equally threatening. Invariably, aborigines, like wild animals, represent the threatening “Other” that white males must master and subdue at all costs (Green, 18). To do so, white heroes resort to adventure. Risky and violent adventure thus afford white men the unique possibility of measuring up to their aboriginal counterparts and providing their manhood. As Green elaborates: Adventure (the experience) has been the great rite of passage from boyhood to manhood, as in the Boy Scout movement; and […] adventure (in books) has been the ritual of the 11

In southern Spain, it is also referred to as “hombría”. See Gilmore’s anthropological work on Andalusian culture (1990, 32–55 passim).

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religion of manliness, which was the unofficial religion of the nineteenth century, if not of the twentieth. In mainstream books, it quite displaced Christian values. Adventure experience was the sacramental ceremony of the cult of manhood. (6)

The image of violent adventure as a test of manhood has thus influenced U.S. literature since (at least) the nineteenth century. In twentieth-century fiction, the image may be traced back to Owen Wister’s The Virginian (1902), which celebrated and made the literature about bloody battles increasingly popular between American cowboys and “Indians”,12 and has since continued to pervade, as Martin Green (6) has shown, the fiction of twentieth-century U.S. writers such as Hemingway, Faulkner, or Mailer, among many others. Even though the combination of violent adventure and masculinity recurs in the fiction of uncountable (canonical) U.S. writers, the present chapter will use Ernest Hemingway as an example of the traditional conception of violence as a test of manhood in twentieth-century literature. Hemingway’s obsession with violent adventure as a test of manhood seems to derive from his own biography (Minter, 1996, 138–41). Hemingway’s father was a violent and abusive man who insisted that his sons learn to hunt and then eat what they killed, even if it was muskrat. Violations of his code meant punishment, often with a razor strop, after which his children had to kneel and ask God for His forgiveness. In addition to hunting, Hemingway’s father also asked his son to prove his masculinity through boxing. In both the music room at home and at a friend’s house, Hemingway set up boxing rings in which he practiced the manly are of self-defense (Minter, 139). As he grew up, he became increasingly attracted to violent contexts and activities. During World War I, for example, he volunteered for the Italian front. Although Hemingway was invalided at home after having been seriously wounded while serving with the infantry, this experience inspired his novel of the Italian front, A Farewell to Arms (1929). Moreover, Hemingway seemed to use World War I to display and reaffirm his masculinity and virility. After World War I, as David Minter explained, he “exaggerated his war experiences, including the combat he had seen, the wounds he had suffered, and the heroism he had displayed” (141). In addition to the Great War, the writer was also attracted to other violent spheres, such as Spanish bullfighting—which recurs in novels such as Fiesta (1926) or Death in the Afternoon (1932)—and big-game hunting in Africa—which he represents, for example, in novels such as Green Hills of Africa (1935) and in many of his short stories.13

12

The western, which includes numerous scenes of violence and manly daring, has since become one of American men’s favorite literary and film genres. In this sense, one should mention, for example, the mythic westerns with John Wayne and Cary Grant. Significantly, many of these films were released in the 1950s, after the end of World War II, to keep alive the figure of the male hero in the imagination of the returning American soldiers. Unencumbered by the responsibilities of family and domesticity, the cowboy image in novels and films tended to idealize the world of male violence and homosociality, and thus provided the returning soldiers with fantasies of evasion from their new real situation as “victims” of domesticity and of their wives’ feminizing influence. See Segal (1997, 1–25) in this respect. 13 On Hemingway’s biography, see Lynn (1987) and Minter (1996, 138–41).

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Hemingway’s lifelong involvement in violent conflicts and activities such as war, hunting, boxing, and bullfighting seemed, therefore, to serve two main and complementary purposes. On the one hand, he used violence to test his own masculinity and manly daring. As David Minter has argued, Hemingway seemed to see the world as an eminently hostile place: “he had been put on earth to test himself against and overcome” (1996, 138–9).14 Moreover, the author’s personal obsession with violence as a test of manhood was transformed into one of his main fictional subjects. His works dealt once and again with the issue of male violence, which he often idealized as a symbol of virility. Hemingway did in effect write numerous novels and stories where male violent behavior—manifests itself in descriptions of bullfighting, fishing, hunting, and war—proved as dangerous and heroic. For example, in The Sun Also Rises (1926), the beautiful Brett Ashley cannot escape the attraction of the manly Romero, a nineteen-year-old Spanish bullfighter, who is represented as the epitome of male bravery and heroism. Several of his stories describe fishing excursions into nature that result in male violence. Whereas stories such as “Big Two-Hearted River”, originally published in In Our Time (1925), focus on aggressive fishing expeditions that pit the heroic male protagonists against nature, violence in Hemingway’s fiction is commonly associated with heroic males engaged in bloody hunting expeditions. Inspired by his own safaris in Africa, short stories such as “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (1935), “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” (1936), and “An African Story” (1972), to name but a few of Hemingway’s best-known stories about hunting, concentrate on adventurous heroes who test their masculinity by killing wild and powerful animals such as African lions, buffaloes, and elephants. In these stories, as in most of Hemingway’s fiction, violence is often synonymous with masculinity. Although women may occasionally be associated with violence, as is the case for Mrs. Macomber in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” (1936), they are then demonized as killers and destroyers of men. As will be recalled, Mrs. Macomber, feeling the erosion of her power and influence over her own husband, finally kills Mr. Macomber, whose “blood sank into the dry, loose earth” (Hemingway, 1987, 41). Whereas male violence in Hemingway’s works is associated with bravery and heroism, female violence is thus related to murder. In Hemingway’s (masculine) literary universe, violence seems to have completely different connotations in male and female contexts. In any case, violence in Hemingway’s fiction is masculine, simply because, as Leslie Fiedler famously proclaimed, “there are no women in his books! […] he 14

The pervasive influence of violence on Ernest Hemingway and, indeed, his whole family—finally had disastrous effects. On July 2, 1961, Ernest Hemingway shot himself. Of course, his death, like his childhood and his entire life, was a violent one. As Hemingway insisted, he was interested in the “simple things” because they were fundamental; and in a violent world “one of the simplest things of all and the most fundamental” he argued, “is violent death” (qtd. in Minter, 1996, 142). In December 1928, Hemingway’s father had also shot himself with a revolver that he had himself inherited from his father. In the fall of 1966, Ursula, Hemingway’s favorite sister, poisoned herself, and in 1982, his only brother, Leicester, killed himself with a single shot to the head. It seems clear, then, that the Hemingways, as David Minter (1996, 140–1) concludes, could never get rid of a paternal legacy of violence. See also Lynn (1987) in this respect.

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returns again and again to the fishing trip and the journey to the war—those two traditional evasions of domesticity and civil life” (316–7). In effect, the protagonists of violent hunting and fishing expeditions, such as those described in “An African Story” (1972) or “Big Two-Hearted River” (1925), are always men, David and Nick Adams, respectively, and the same is true of Hemingway’s war fiction. The narrator and protagonist of A Farewell to Arms is Frederic Henry, an American student of architecture who has enlisted himself as a lieutenant in the Italian army’s ambulance corps. Similarly, the main character of For Whom the Bell Tolls is Robert Jordan, a university instructor of Spanish from Montana who has come to fight for the Spanish Republic in the mountains north of Madrid.15 As Ray B. West has argued, Hemingway’s novels recurrently explore “the condition of a man in a society upset by the violence of war” (15; emphasis added). Moreover, male violence in Hemingway’s fiction is often described as heroic, as has been suggested. While war-castrated Jake Barnes in Fiesta seems notably passive and nonheroic,16 men in much of Hemingway’s fiction do indeed seem to be irremediably attracted to prove their masculinity, bravery, and heroism. As Robert Jordan tells one of his fellow soldiers in For Whom the Bell Tolls, stop making “dubious literature about the Berbers and the old Iberians and admit that you have liked to kill as all who are soldiers by choice have enjoyed it at some time whether they lie about it or not” (qtd. in Gray, 1992a, 37).17 Although the constant need to prove and reaffirm masculinity through violent behavior has been radically questioned from different perspectives, as we shall see in the following sections, contemporary U.S. culture keeps transmitting and reinforcing the image of masculinity as a violent test. Influenced by Ernest Hemingway’s fiction, the “virility school” (Schwenger, 13) in American letters—formed by such renowned writers as Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, or James Dickey, to name but a few—keeps promoting traditional masculine fiction whereby boys become men through stressful tests. As Norman Mailer himself commented, “nobody was born a man; you earned manhood provided you were good enough, bold enough” (25). In U.S. American literature, as in Western culture in general, the heroic image of violently achieved manhood thus remains widely legitimized. As anthropologist David Gilmore has concluded, the image is pervasive, “ranging from Italian-American gangster culture to Hollywood Westerns, private-eye tales, the current Rambo imagoes, and children’s 15

Both characters seem to have been shaped on Hemingway’s first-hand experiences of violence and war, who volunteers as an ambulance driver in World War I Italy and became America’s bestknown international correspondent during the Spanish Civil War. Despite (or because of) his real war experiences, Hemingway, as David Minter (1996, 139) has argued, always felt driven to improve on his literary adventures. 16 Nevertheless, Jake also engages in violent trout fishing expeditions with his friend Bill in the Spanish mountains. 17 Hemingway never gave up exploring the figure of the soldier-killer, who resurfaces in later, less successful novels such as Across the River and Into the Trees (1950). Unlike For Whom the Bell Tolls, however, this novel, as Svoboda (2000, 166) reminds us, is not set in the midst of war, but in the recollection of war by an embittered and aging American infantry colonel, veteran of the violent Hurtgen Forest battles that Hemingway covered as a war correspondent in 1944.

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He-Man dolls and games; it is therefore deeply ingrained in the American male psyche” (1990, 20).

Revisions of Male Violence in Contemporary U.S. Literature Despite the popularity of texts/films such as Fight Club or Rambo, the traditional construction of violence as a test and a reaffirmation of manhood can be, and has been, radically challenged. An example of this is the fiction of contemporary U.S. writer Richard Ford, who, as we shall see next, has questioned the traditional links between masculinity and violence from particularly innovative and subversive perspectives. Ford has been recurrently compared to Ernest Hemingway (see Paul, 2001). Like Hemingway’s fiction, Richard Ford’s stories are peopled with characters who engage in fishing, hunting, and boxing. Thus, violence is also a central theme of his stories. As the critic Ned Stuckey-French comments on Rock Springs, one of Ford’s bestknown collections of short stories, the “allusion to violence, or the threat of violence […] is often there and then the story unfolds” (2001, 106). Moreover, violence in Richard Ford’s stories is always masculine since Ford, like Hemingway, tends to focus on the lives of male characters and protagonists. However, Ford himself has always insisted that he is not very familiar with Hemingway’s work. In his own words, “I never think about Hemingway […] I never read Hemingway” (Paul, 2001, vii). Although there may be some similarities between Hemingway and Ford—such as their common description of fishing, hunting, and boxing as activities in which masculine violence is likely to occur—there are significant differences between the two authors as well, particularly regarding their radically opposed depictions of male violence. Even though Ford’s literary men are undoubtedly attracted to “sex, violence, crime and sports” (Wideman, 4), their behavior seldom reaffirms their masculinity. Unlike Hemingway’s fiction, which frequently associates violence with notions such as masculinity, virility, and heroism, Ford’s stories show, as we shall see, the gradual demise of his archaic association.18 In most of the stories in Rock Springs (1987), for example, male violence has disastrous effects, often bringing about familial dissolution. In “Optimists”, Roy Brinson’s murder of Boyd Mitchell leads to the disintegration of his family. In “Empire”, Vic Sims is caught up in risky actions and, meanwhile, loses the opportunity for love and affection: “other people fade in the light of the flame of danger” (Leder, 2000, 112). Similarly, “Sweethearts” shows how Bobby’s violent behavior takes him to prison, distancing him for his ex-girlfriend Arlene. And, in “Under the Radar”, one of the tales in Ford’s latest collection of short stories, A Multitude of Sins (2001), Steven Reeves’ decision to batter his wife leads to their final separation: —I’m sorry I hit you—Steven Reeves said and opened the car door onto the silent road 18

Elinor Ann Walker (2000) has a similar opinion.

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—I know—Marjorie said in an emotionless voice—. And you’ll be sorrier. (Ford, 2003, 121) Ford’s stories do indeed appear to condemn all forms of violence. In Ford’s fiction, as Priscilla Leder (100) notes, violent sports such as hunting, fishing, and boxing always go wrong and/or result in mindless slaughter. In “Calling”, one of the stories in A Multitude of Sins, the protagonist goes duck hunting with his father, which causes him to realize the latter’s violent instincts. After the hunt, father and son separate, and they never meet each other again. Nor do violent sports thrive in Rock Springs. For example, in “Children”, Claude’s aggressive fishing fails to impress Lucy, who is much better at fishing than Claude himself is. In what has been regarded as a “typical Ford twist on male adventure” (Leder, 111), the big fish in “Winterkill” turns out to be a dead deer. Finally, in “Communist”, Glen Baxter’s cruel decision to let a wounded goose perish on a freezing lake triggered his girlfriend Aileen’s separation from him. Even though most stories in Rock Springs are from the American West, which has traditionally been associated with the cowboy myth and the idealized vision of male violence as heroic, aggressive behavior in Ford’s fiction always fails to reaffirm masculinity. As Michiko Kakutani indicates, Mr. Ford’s fictional world is hardly a brave frontier where heroes can test their mettle against nature. Rather, it is another contemporary outpost of rootlessness and alienation, a place where families come apart and love drifts away. (C28)

Many of the stories in Richard Ford’s Rock Springs and A Multitude of Sins do indeed seem to challenge, as we shall see, traditional Hemingwayesque conceptions of masculine violence as heroic. Moreover, several of these short stories represent, as we shall also see, boys and men who decide to move away from violence, usually by rejecting their aggressive fathers or (male) friends. In this sense, Ford’s fiction not only challenges violent masculinities but also seems to represent new, alternative, nonviolent patterns of masculinities in contemporary culture and literature. If, as we have seen, novels and films such as Fight Club and Affliction question male violence without proposing, however, any alternative, Ford’s literature goes further, promoting alternative and nonviolent patterns of masculinity. To illustrate this, we will focus on two hunting stories by Ford: “Communist”, one of the accounts in Rock Springs, and “Calling”, included in A Multitude of Sins. On the one hand, these hunting stories question traditional concepts of hunting and violent adventure as proofs of manliness, while presenting masculine violence as a (self)destructive force not only for women but also for men themselves. Maybe more importantly, however, is the fact that the writer recurrently portrays males, boys, and men of different ages who decide to move away from the influence of male violence, in general through the rejection of their violent fathers. Therefore, his literary work, once again, reveals itself to be especially innovative from the perspective of masculinity, as it not only questions violent masculinities but also, as we will see, alternative, nondominant, and nonviolent ways of being a man in contemporary culture and literature. “Communist” is set in Great Falls, Montana, in 1961. The narrator, Les(ter) Snow, who is 41 years old, recounts a moment in his life when he was just sixteen and was

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pushed out into the world, “into the real life then, the one I hadn’t lived yet” (Ford, 1988, 258). Les enters “real life” the day he goes hunting with Glen Baxter, a Cold War communist and Vietnam veteran (as well as a drunkard), who invites him to go hunting on a Saturday in November of 1961, when he pays a visit to Aileen Snow, Les’ mother. As in most of Ford’s novels, the protagonists of this story live a secluded life in the rural Midwest, which often leads them to spend time outdoors, practicing sports such as fishing or hunting. As in many other of Ford’s accounts, here, hunting, as the most violent sport, is associated with masculinity. Les is taught about hunting by his father first and Baxter afterward. Both are described as violent men. Aileen herself describes her husband as a man who used to “hunt, kill, maim” (242). In fact, Les’s father also encouraged him to practice boxing, an equally violent sport. In “Communist”, hunting does indeed seem to reiterate boxing. While hunting with Baxter, for example, Les cannot avoid remembering his father’s former boxing lessons: Then, I thought about boxing and what my father had taught me about it […] To strike out straight from the shoulder and never punch backing up. How […] to step toward a man when he is falling so you can hit him again? And most important, to keep your eyes open when you are hitting in the face and causing damage, because you need to see what you’re doing to encourage yourself. (1988, 251)

For his part, Glen Baxter, Les’s surrogate father, is also a violent man who believes that “most hunting isn’t even hunting. It’s only shooting” (247). Given Baxter’s violent attitude, it is hardly surprising that in “Communist”, as in most of Ford’s stories, hunting goes wrong. For several reasons, Les’ hunting expedition with Glen seems doomed from the beginning. First, Baxter is described as a wicked man who used to shoot monkeys and beautiful parrots in Vietnam using military guns just for sport. Moreover, Baxter, as Aileen warns her son, is keen on poaching and always hiding a gun under his shirt, willing to kill a political enemy at any time. As Les himself explains, He said that Communists were always in danger and that he had to protect himself all the time. And […] he pulled back his VFW jacket and showed me […] a pistol he had stuck under his shirt against his bare skin. “There are people who want to kill me right now”, he said, “and I would kill a man myself if I thought I had to”. (1988, 246–7)

Given his profile, it is little wonder, then, that Baxter proves totally unable to control his violent drives while hunting, shooting at the geese as though he “seemed to want them all” (252). Glen Baxter’s cruelty reaches its climax when he leaves a wounded goose to die on a freezing lake and laughs at Aileen because she believes that birds are something special. Furthermore, Glen does not want to let Les go on and get the wounded goose when his mother asks him to do so: —Then, you go on and get it, Les—my mother said. You weren’t raised by crazy people. I started to go, but Glen Baxter suddenly grabbed me by my shoulder and pulled me back hard, so hard his fingers made bruises in my skin that I saw later. (256)

Finally, Glen pulls the trigger and kills the wounded goose, shooting it repeatedly like a man gone man. The bird thus becomes the target of Baxter’s anger and violence:

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He took his big pistol […] and shot and missed. And then he shot and missed again. The goose made its noise once […] then he hit it dead, because there was no splash […] he shot it three more times until the gun was empty and the goose’s head was down, and it was floating toward the middle of the lake where it was empty and dark blue. (257)

Nevertheless, displays such as male violence, as Priscilla Leder notes (2000, 101), tend to be severely punished in Ford’s fiction, which thus challenges traditional celebrations of violence as something heroic. In fact, after this episode, Aileen abandons Baxter and, claiming that “a light can go out in the heart” (Ford, 1988, 256). In other words, Aileen realizes that there’s nothing to love in Baxter, whom she describes as “just a son of a bitch, that’s all” (255). In light of what Glen does, Les begins to question the traditional association between male power and violence. Although he would like to see Glen on the ground, “bleeding and crying”, Les decides not to hit him, as he feels sorry for him, “as though he was already a dead man”. Les comes to understand that Glen’s reaction is exactly that of a grown man scared of something he had never seen before, “something soft in himself” (257), and warns that Baxter’s violent reaction was, in fact, provoked by a sensation of impotence, more than by his power or inner mainly strength. Baxter uses the gun—without a doubt, a classic phallic symbol—to disguise his own fragility, his “softness”, and his fear of not being man enough. This is because a “real” man is not supposed to show any kind of emotional vulnerability, not even compassion. Glen, terrified of his own “softness”, decides to kill the bird to show his masculinity before Les. Of this, Leder argues, “violence destroys but compassion risks vulnerability” (2000, 107). Les, however, manages to move away from violence. Although he wants to hit Baxter for what he did to the bird, he resists his own anger. In doing so, he calls the masculine ideal into question, especially regarding the limits of compassion, which not only his father but also Baxter had tried to pass on to him. In addition to identifying Baxter’s violent reaction as a weakness and not as a heroic act, Les sees that Aileen abandons Glen precisely after the hunt. In this way, he learns how to distrust the aggressiveness and stubbornness of the traditional masculine role, which, as he sees it, leads to only cruelty and, in the end, to the separation and dissolution of the family. In conclusion, Ford’s account poses a radical challenge to the conventional ideas of violence as a form of masculine domination and heroism and ends up presenting its protagonist as the representative of an alternative, nonconforming, and nonviolent model of manhood. Les himself states the following: What I wanted to do was to hit [Baxter], hit him as hard in the face as I could, and see him on the ground bleeding and crying and pleading for me to stop. Only at that moment he looked scared to me, and I had never seen a grown man scared before […] and I felt sorry for him, as though he was already a dead man. And I did not end up hitting him at all. (Ford, 1988, 257)

“Calling”, a story that belongs to a later collection by Ford, A Multitude of Sins, also focuses on a violent man who goes duck hunting with his son, Buck, near New Orleans. The father had abandoned his family for a (male) lover but later calls his son to invite him to a hunting excursion together. Predictably, their excursion, like most hunting narratives in Ford’s fiction, goes wrong. From the beginning, the father

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is described as a violent man, “a man for abrupt moves and changes of attitude, unexpected laughter, and strong emotion” (2003, 56). Buck himself, the narrator, explains that he had not always liked his father’s violent behavior but decided “that was what men did and accepted it”. Without a doubt, Buck himself, we are told, had been taught to fire a rifle at school (38). Nevertheless, Buck, unlike his father, ultimately comes to realize the absurdity of violence and hunting. When Buck decides not to shoot one duck (“What’s the good of one duck shot down?” [61], Buck wonders), his father, who had been drinking all over the excursion, becomes suddenly angry and violent. As Buck himself explains, “his mouth took an odd expression […] and represented his view that I had balked at a crucial moment, made a mistake, and therefore didn’t have to be treated seriously” (1988, 62–3). Relying on a traditional conception of violence as an expression of male prowess, Buck’s father thus seems unable to tolerate what he interprets as a sign of cowardice and effeminacy from his son, reacting violently against him. Buck, on the other hand, realizes the absurdity of killing an animal just for fun and refuses to do so. Finally, the protagonist of the story just hopes not to see his father again. Once again, a violent episode in Ford’s fiction ends up causing familial dissolution. As Buck himself comments, “in time, my father came and went in and out of New Orleans, just as if neither of us had never known each other” (65). In Ford’s fiction, then, violence, more than a symbol of masculinity, presents itself as a (self)destructive force that separates men from their partners, from their children, and from each other. When he moved away from violence, Buck, like other male characters in Ford’s work, ends up opting for a nondominant and nonaggressive model of manhood, according to which violence is revealed, as Ford himself defined it as “that imposter, [which] foreshortens our expectancies, our logics, our next days, our afternoons, our sweet evenings, our whole story” (2006, 469).

“Old” and “New” Representations in Literature and Cinema: Ernest Hemingway’s “An African Story” and Susanne Bier’s In a Better World I would like to conclude this chapter by contrasting and comparing Ford’s tales with “An African Story”, a posthumous story by Ernest Hemingway, as well as with the Oscar-winning Danish film In a Better World (2010), directed by Susanne Bier. Both works provide, as we shall see, a very eye-opening reflection on male violence and an alternative model of peaceful manhood. Even though Hemingway is still largely analyzed as the “macho” author per excellence in U.S. fiction, this view has been particularly demystified since the publication in May 1986 of his unfinished work The Garden of Eden, which revealed the writer’s (hidden) fascination with androgyny and gender crossing. This posthumous text not only sparked a series of reinterpretations of the traditional macho image of Hemingway and his work but also led to a reappreciation of Hemingway as a writer who dealt with gender

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issues “in their full diversity and complexity” (Sanderson 1996, 171). Nevertheless, while the majority of studies on The Garden of Eden, such as those by J. Gerald Kennedy (1991) and Nancy McCampbell Grace (1995), have emphasized the sexual and gender transgressions of the text, much less has been written on Hemingway’s change in attitude toward hunting in this book, and even less so on the relationship between his new opinions on gender and the animal world. Therefore, I would like to conclude this chapter by briefly referring to “An African Story”, which appears as a story within a story in The Garden of Eden, to illustrate Hemingway’s change in attitude toward masculinity and hunting and their interrelations, which was also included in his last work of fiction. Apparently, “An African Story” is another traditional representation of the killing of animals as proof of virility and focuses on three men—David, the protagonist, as well as his father and their African guide, Juma—on an elephant hunting expedition in Africa. As Hemingway describes, hunting “made the difference between a boy and men” (1987, 143). In fact, the story begins by emphasizing the strength and majesty of the old elephant, whose shadow was so long that it “covered” the men and whose left tusk was so long that “it seemed to reach the ground” (Hemingway, 1987, 133). According to Juma, the native guide, who had already wounded the elephant but had failed to kill him five years ago, the animal was “bigger than anything” (144). By celebrating the extraordinary qualities of the animal, Hemingway depicts the elephant as a worthy adversary that can be defeated by only equally worthy, heroic men. Although the hunt seems to have been successful and ultimately results in the death of the elephant, the entire story is marked by David’s negative attitude toward hunting, as he clearly sympathizes for the animal, which he describes as “his friend” (150). As David himself reflects, “my father doesn’t need to kill elephants to live” (150). David’s identification with the animal intensifies after the hunters manage to track the elephant when he visits the site where another elephant was killed. Thus, David feels he is betraying the elephant. “The bull wasn’t doing any harm, and now we’ve tracked him to where he came to see his dead friend and now we’re going to kill him” (150). Furthermore, Hemingway’s protagonist, even though younger, sympathizes with the old elephant, establishing not only a human connection with a nonhuman animal but also a sort of intergenerational solidarity, as “his own tiredness […] had brought an understanding of age. Through being too young, he had learned how it must be too old” (164). David takes a stand before his father when the latter accuses the elephant of being an assassin: —He was a murderer you know, Davey? —he had said—. Juma says nobody knows how many people he has killed. —They were all trying to kill him, weren’t they? Naturally, his father had said, with that pair of tusks. —How could he be a murderer then? (Hemingway, 1987, 167) Thus, while David’s father celebrates his killing of elephants as a “hero”, drinking beer close to the tusks “against the wall of the hut” (167), David starts to feel increasingly distant and estranged from his father, realizing that “this was the start of the never telling that he had decided on” (167). Even though the father sees himself as

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a hero, David starts distrusting his parent and seeing him as a brutal murderer since Hemingway, as Spilka correctly argues, encourages his young protagonist to find in the elephant “a hero and brother, to resist and resent his killing […] and to react to the elephant’s feelings as to human feelings” (1990, 301). If, as seems, Hemingway himself questioned the image of violence as an affirmation of masculinity in his later years, portraying a young narrator who criticizes his father’s archaic ideals of virility, In a Better World, the film directed by Susanne Bier, possibly offers an even more critical and subversive vision of such ideals. The film revolves around three violent men: Sofus (a playground bully), “Big Man” (a sadistic warlord in Africa), and Lars (a brutish auto mechanic). Although the three stories play out in different places (Denmark and Africa) and, apparently, have nothing to do with each other, they are closely intertwined, as they all basically deal with violence, which is thus described as an intercultural problem to which different people react differently. The first story is about Elias, who becomes the victim of abuser Sofus and his gang due to his physical appearance (they call him “rat face” Elias because he wears braces). Even though his friend Christian convinces him to solve the harassment problem through revenge, Christian’s father makes it known to his son how dangerous it is to use violence against violence. Actually, when Christian decides to help Elias by giving Sofus a lesson (“If I hadn’t hit back, everyone would have thought they could hit me, too, it’s the same at all schools”, Christian explains), Christian’s father berates his son for his violent reaction and insists that “if you hit him, he’ll hit you. Then, you will hit him back. That’s how wars start”. The second part of the story concerns Anton, Elias’s father, who also has to face violence. In reality, while Elias is the victim of harassment in Denmark, Anton, who is a doctor and dedicates most of his time to working in a clinic in a Sudanese refugee camp, has to stitch up the wounds of several pregnant women who have been stabbed by a sadistic warlord, “Big Man”. To terrorize the region, “Big Man” dedicates himself to betting on the sex of the babies before they are cut out of their mothers’ bellies. Like his son Elias, Anton also faces an ethical dilemma, as he must reconcile his medical ethics with the evil warlord. Because of this, when the warlord himself is seriously wounded, Anton, despite the distaste he has for “Big Man”, feels the moral duty to provide him with medical care and to cure his leg. While the locals ask him not to help the evil “Big Man” heal, the doctor insists that he has the ethical obligation to help him. Only at the end of the film does the warlord receive his punishment when Anton, after seeing “Big Man” showing a sadistic contempt for one of his victims, expels him from the clinic, which is a safe space, and allows him to be beaten to death by the African community he had terrorized. To make things worse, when Anton goes to his house to see his family, some thug called Lars (whom Bier herself describes as “the Danish version of Big Man”) humiliates him in front of Elias and Christian. While the boys encourage him to trach the man a lesson, Anton is undecided on the best way to solve the situation, not only for the sake of his own dignity and principles but also to seize the occasion to teach the boys something. While the violent mechanic continues to strike him in front of both of them, Anton decides to limit himself to stoically receiving the slaps without

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hitting back. When the boys urge Elias’s father to “go beat him up” and accuse him of being a “wimp”, Anton responds: “You just don’t go around hitting people. No good can come of it. He’s an idiot. If I hit him, I’m just as big an idiot. Or maybe I’ll wind up in prison, and then you won’t have a father, and he wins anyway”. Curiously, Anton’s decision to not violently retaliate—“I am not afraid of you, you can’t hurt me”, the father says to the mechanic as a demonstration of his interior moral strength—is the most edifying aspect of the film. In fact, Bier clearly dissociates violence from virility and portrays the mechanic as a brute and Anton as an alternative model for boys with nonviolent manhood. Although Anton seems to be a strong and masculine man who could easily hit the mechanic, he decides to resist the violence and to adopt a pacifistic stance, even with the risk of being humiliated before the boys, who, at the outset, interpret the lack of violence as cowardice. However, as Bier herself commented, Elias seems to want to “educate his father to be a man”,19 and Anton is determined to not fend off an aggression with another aggression. When the mechanic accuses him of being a “poof”, he merely responds that he does not have “power over people” and that his physical violence “doesn’t hurt”, as he is nothing more than “an idiot”, who has already “lost” because he cannot even apologize. In the end, Anton’s pacifistic attitude is the most intelligent because as problems become more complex, it seems that violent retaliation is useless. Thus, Christian’s decision to avenge Anthon by fabricating a bomb and making it explode in the mechanic’s car will involve unexpected risks and collateral damage to innocent victims. Christian’s challenge to Elias’s masculine pride (“You’re a chicken again? You can’t back out”) will be at the point of provoking Elias’s death, with Christian’s consequent remorse, who will then try to kill himself. Even though it is true, as Bier herself admitted, that the film does not offer a clear solution or alternative to violence to “reestablish justice”, it makes the viewer question the “Revenge” (which was, in fact, the original title in Danish) as a solution and provides a powerful reminder that violence begets more violence. Even though the movie, defined by Bier herself more as a “question” than a “message”, does not propose definitive solutions or answers, it undoubtedly opens an interesting debate and makes people reflect on the(in)appropriateness of responding to violence with violence. In this sense, the film should basically be considered hopeful and represents, in Bier’s words, the “attempts” of a man to do the “right thing” to be “a decent human being”. In addition to being an amazingly inspiring work to promote alternative and profeminist models of masculinity, the movie offers an interesting contrast to the fiction of Hemingway and Ford. While the former portray boys who drift apart from violent paternal role models, Bier depicts a father who is a pacifist and who fights like a hero to pass an “alternative” and nonviolent model of manhood on to a new generation. In adopting this attitude, even risking being humiliated before his son, Anton thus seems to become one of those “few good men” that Ritxar Bacete talked about (2017), also showing, as bell hooks argued (2004), that men want to and can change, even though they are often afraid to do so. In the end, it is not easy to resist violence, and as Bier 19

All of Susanne Bier’s comments on the film which are quoted here have been extracted from the interview with the director, which is included in the DVD of the movie.

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herself noted, “it takes a lot of courage to do so”. Yet this might be, after all, the only way to “a better world”.

References Armengol, Josep M. “Masculinidades alternativas en las novelas de Richard Ford y/frente a En un mundo mejor de Susanne Bier.” Masculinidades alternativas en el mundo de hoy. Ed. Àngels Carabí and Josep M. Armengol. Barcelona: Icaria, 2015. 165–82. Bacete, Ritxar. Nuevos hombres buenos: La masculinidad en la era del feminismo. Barcelona: Planeta, 2017. Banks, Russell. Affliction. New York: Harper and Row, 1989. Beneke, Timothy. Men on Rape. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982. ———. Proving Manhood: Reflections on Men and Sexism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Chodorow, Nancy. “The Enemy Outside: Thoughts on the Psychodynamics of Extreme Violence with Special Attention to Men and Masculinity.” Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions. Ed. Judith Kegan Gardiner. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 210–34. Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering. 1978. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. Chodorow, Nancy. Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities. Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1994. Cornwall, Andrea and Nancy Lindisfarne (eds.). Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Duge, Brenda J. “Fight Club.” Men and Masculinities: A Social, Cultural, and Historical Encyclopedia. 2 vols. Ed. Michael Kimmel and Amy Aronson. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio Press, 2004. 300–2. Faludi, Susan. Stiffed: The Betrayal of Modern Man. 1999. New York: Vintage, 2000. Fincher, David, dir. Fight Club. Linsen Films, 1999. Flood, Michael. Engaging Men and Boys in Violence Prevention. New York: Springer, 2019. ———. “Men’s Antiviolence Activism and the Construction of Gender-Equitable Masculinities.” Alternative Masculinities for a Changing World. Ed. Àngels Carabí and Josep M. Armengol. New York: Palgrave, 2014a. 35–50. ———. “Preventing Violence Against Women and Girls.” Gender in Organizations: Are Men Allies or Adversaries to Women’s Career Advancement? Ed. R. J. Burke and D. J. Major. New York: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2014b. 405–27. Ford, Richard. A Multitude of Sins [2001]. New York: Vintage, 2003. Ford, Richard. The Lay of the Land. New York: Knopf, 2006. ———. Rock Springs [1987]. New York: Vintage, 1988. Gilmore, David. Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Gray, J. Glenn. “The Enduring Appeals of Battle.” Rethinking Masculinity: Philosophical Explorations in Light of Feminism. Ed. Larry May and Robert Strikwerda. Lanham: Littlefield Adams Quality Papers, 1992a. 23–40. Gray, John. Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. New York: HarperCollins, 1992b. Green, Martin. The Great American Adventure. Boston: Beacon, 1984. Gutmann, Matthew. “Alternative Cultures of Masculinity: An Anthropological Approach.” Alternative Masculinities for a Changing World. Ed. Àngels Carabí and Josep M. Armengol. New York: Palgrave, 2014. 51–62. Hemingway, Ernest. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. New York: Scribner, 1987. Hemingway, Ernest. In Our Time. New York: Scribner, 1925.

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———. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Scribner, 1926. Hooks, bell. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. 2001. New York: Washington Square Press, 2004. Kimmel, Michael. The Gendered Society. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. ———. Manhood in America: A Cultural History [1996]. New York: The Free Press, 1997. ———. “Violence.” Men and Masculinities: A Social, Cultural, and Historical Encyclopedia. 2 vols. Ed. Michael Kimmel and Amy Aronson. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio Press, 2003. 809–12. Leder, Priscilla. “Men with Women: Gender Relations in Richard Ford’s Rock Springs". Perspectives on Richard Ford. Ed. Huey Guagliardo. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. 97–120. Lynn, Kenneth. Hemingway. London: Simon and Schuster, 1987. Minter, David. A Cultural History of the American Novel: Henry James to William Faulkner [1994]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Niemi, Robert. Russell Banks. New York: Twayne, 1997. Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club [1996]. London: Vintage, 2003. Paul, Steve. “Forget the Hemingway Comparisons: Richard Ford Is an American, Yes, However, He Has His Own Voice.” Conversations with Richard Ford. Ed. Huey Guagliardo. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001. vii–xii. Pease, Bob. Facing Patriarchy: From a Violent Gender Order to a Culture of Peace. Londres: Zed Books, 2019. Petrie, Boyd. “Darkly Funny and Powerful, Fight Club Is a Unique Masterpiece.” News and Entertainment, 25 April 2005. http://www.newsandentertainment.com/zmfight.html. Sanderson, Rena. “Hemingway and Gender History.” In The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway. Ed. Scott Donaldson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 170-196. Salazar, Octavio. El hombre que (no) deberíamos ser: La revolución masculina que tantas mujeres llevan siglos esperando. Barcelona: Planeta, 2018. Segal, Lynne. Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men [1990]. London: Virago, 1997. Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration Through Violence. New York: Atheneum, 1973. ———. The Fatal Environment. New York: Atheneum, 1985. ———. Gunfighter Nation. New York: Atheneum, 1992. Spilka, Mark. Hemingway’s Quarrel with Androgyny. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Svoboda, Frederic J. “The Great Themes in Hemingway: Love, War, Wilderness, and Loss.” In A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway. Ed. Linda Wagner-Martin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 155–172. Walker, Elinor Ann. Richard Ford. New York: Twayne, 2000. Yllo, Kersti. “Through a Feminist Lens: Gender, Power, and Violence.” Current Controversies on Family Violence. Ed. R. J. Gelles and D. Loseke. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1993. 47–62.

Chapter 8

Conclusions

Masculinity, as the present study has tried to show, is a plural, complex, and often contradictory gender construct. Therefore, drawing final conclusions on men and masculinities might be intrinsically opposed to the nature of masculinity itself. As Catharine Stimpson noted, “the more anthropologists, sociologists, and historians explore the meanings of “being a man,” the more inconsistent, contradictory, and varied they become” (xi). While acknowledging, then, the intrinsic difficulty of writing any final or definitive conclusions on men and masculinities, it seems both possible and desirable to draw a number of provisional or tentative concluding remarks, which will hopefully provide some suggestions for future research in the field of masculinity studies. The present study has attempted to demonstrate the thesis that (white heterosexual) men, like women, are also gendered beings; that they have, therefore, undergone specific social, cultural, and historical gendering processes; and that, in contemporary culture, such gendering processes play a key role in men’s lives as well as their cultural, especially literary and film, representations. By analyzing the construction and representation of white (straight) masculinity, the present study has ultimately tried to question and rethink the cultural meanings on which dominant or hegemonic masculinity has traditionally been built. In approaching hegemonic masculinity as a specific sociohistorical and political construction rather than a universal and immutable inner essence, the present study has shown that what was socially and culturally constructed can also be socially and culturally constructed. These main theses have been developed and expanded throughout a general introduction and several chapters. In the introduction, it has been argued that the concept of gender is usually associated with women, not men, and that, rather than gendered, men have been repeatedly degendered and universalized. The association of masculinity with universality has had a particularly detrimental effect on women, whose specific experiences have long been silenced by an eminently androcentric and patriarchal society. Nevertheless, the universalizing conception of masculinity has also had a negative impact on

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. M. Armengol, Rewriting White Masculinities in Contemporary Fiction and Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53349-5_8

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the analysis of men and masculinities since such a conception excludes from consideration what is unique to men qua men. Hence, masculinity studies have emerged that analyze men as men, that is, men as gendered beings. These studies transform supposedly universal experiences into ones that are distinctly masculine, analyzing masculinity as socially constructed, context specific, and culture bound. Analyzing gender as a social construct shows how gender, like all human constructs, can change. After describing masculinity studies and their main aims, chapter 2 explored their development and major contributions, which constitute a relatively recent addition to academia, especially compared to more established fields such as women’s studies. However, its influence seems to be growing, as has been seen from the fact that many former women’s studies departments have been renamed gender studies departments to be able to incorporate both gay and queer studies into their curricula, as well as the study of masculinities. As Carolyn Dinshaw has argued, “it will be a mark of success if it is understood by everybody that gender studies include the study of masculinity” (2009, 74). Finally, considering the “new directions” of masculinity studies, chapter 2 has pointed to one of the (apparently) major contradictions of contemporary research on men and masculinities. As has been suggested, many contemporary studies of masculinities seem to place a growing emphasis on how masculinity is inflected by sexuality, age, racialization, nationality, etc. Thus, increasing attention is being given, for example, to gay and nonwhite men and masculinities. Nevertheless, since the 1980s, poststructuralist theories have been warning against the danger of any essentialist identity construction. Questioning stable notions of sexual (and racialized) identities, these theories have thus offered a radical critique of identity as coherent and fixed. As has been shown, the ongoing debate between poststructuralist and identity-based approaches to gender and sexuality seems to be relevant to this study as well. After all, the subject of this study is (white heterosexual) masculine identity, but poststructuralist thinkers such as Alan Petersen (2003) have set out to question the internal consistency, as well as the very existence, of identity concepts such as whiteness, heterosexuality, and masculinity/maleness. Given this apparent contradiction, chapter 3 insisted on the repercussions of poststructuralist thinking on the analysis of hegemonic masculinity, the focus of this study. While poststructuralist theories have shown white and heterosexual masculinity to be a changing, unstable, and often contradictory sociohistorical construct, some feminist scholarship has stressed that poststructuralism tends to neglect issues of power and gender inequality. The feminist scholar Lynne Segal (1997), for example, has argued that much poststructuralist work on men and masculinities emphasizes the instability, precariousness, and internal inconsistencies of masculinity while neglecting its political and often oppressive aspects. Nevertheless, I have tried to demonstrate how it is possible to reconcile feminist politics with the analysis of masculinity’s internal contradictions. As Judith Butler has argued, “the deconstruction of identity is not the deconstruction of politics; rather, it establishes as political the very terms through which identity is articulated” (1993, 288). To claim a poststructuralist approach to subjectivity and identity is not to place politics in the context of disintegration. Equally important, it is not to pit politics against poststructuralist thinking. Rather, it is to think of the two fields in a dialectic tension (Eng and Hom, 1998, 17). Moreover,

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we have tried to illustrate the new political possibilities that this knowledge opens up for masculinity studies since a full understanding of the male subject as incoherent allows us to question the exclusionary and discriminatory aspects of our own identitarian or gendered claims. After all, a monolithic vision of masculine identity tends to neglect, for example, the existing social, racialized, and sexual differences among men. Moreover, it reinforces the view of masculinity as natural, coherent, eternal, and immutable. In this way, masculinity can go unanalyzed and, therefore, unchallenged. Following Butler (1993), we have concluded that it is no longer clear that feminist theory should rely on notions of primary identity to address the task of politics. Instead, we should wonder about the new political possibilities that might emerge from a radical critique of the subject (including the white heterosexual man). Due to the growing relevance of cultural and literary representations for studies on masculinity, chapter 4 has offered an eminently theoretical introduction to studies of literary masculinities. As we have tried to illustrate, “gender is (a) representation”, and “the representation of gender is its construction” (De Lauretis, 3). It follows, therefore, that studies of cultural and literary representations of masculinity are particularly relevant to the analysis of its social and political constructions. Unlike the study of literary representations of women, however, which has already become a fundamental part of academic curricula, the study of literary representations of masculinity remains relatively underexplored. Nevertheless, it constitutes a rapidly growing field of research that counts, as has been shown, an increasing number of publications. This approach might, as has been argued, prove beneficial for several reasons. For example, just as the misconception that male experience equals human experience affected literary criticism of women as characters and authors, our approach to men has been restricted in literature. Traditionally, literary criticism by males has approached the dilemmas of male characters in abstract, philosophical, and universal terms. However, a masculinity studies approach to literature moves the focus of criticism from the manner in which men’s lives reflect universal dilemmas to a more intimate, personal concern with how cultural values, particularly those related to manhood ideals, affect men’s lives on a personal level (Riemer, 1987, 293–5). Rereading supposedly universal, genderless issues such as emotions or violence from this new perspective thus helps illustrate how masculinity ideals affect and often restrict and complicate not only women’s but also men’s lives. Moreover, such rereading not only questions patriarchal notions of masculinities but also is centrally concerned with analyzing new, alternative, and gender-equitable patterns of manhood, demonstrating that some men embrace change even with the fears that it may generate (hooks, 2004). In conclusion, the present study has shown how the ultimate aim of such an approach to literature is “Re-vision”, which Adrienne Rich described as “the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction” (90–1). While Part I established the general theoretical background for this study, Part II focused on the analysis of the influence of masculinity on three main themes: emotions, (with a special focus on fatherhood) homosocial relationships of friendship between men, and violence. To illustrate such an influence, the study applied an interdisciplinary corpus of masculinity studies—formed by sociology, psychology and

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psychoanalysis, anthropology, philosophy, history, as well as literary and film studies, among other disciplines—to the analysis of each of these two issues. Informed by some of the latest contributions to masculinity studies from different disciplines, above all from literary and film studies, this section has thus tried to demonstrate the social and political relevance of masculinity to the analysis of these fundamental social and political issues in contemporary Western culture. Thus, using an interdisciplinary methodology, chapter 5 set out to explore the relationship between masculinity and emotions. Although sentimentality and the display of emotions have usually been considered feminine in Western culture and thinking, we have seen how the exclusive comparison between emotions and femininity is a specific cultural and historical construction. As has been argued, this has two main implications. First, masculinity and emotions have not always been mutually exclusive. Second, what has been socially and historically shaped can also be socially reshaped. In this sense, attention has been given to the specific links between masculinity and emotion to analyze the political potential of profeminist men’s emotions to transform masculinities and gender relations. It is true that some men’s studies and groups have focused almost exclusively on helping men explore and express their emotional inner selves, thus ignoring other sociopolitical aspects of masculinity. No wonder, then, that much masculinity scholarship has defined emotions as intrinsically opposed to social change in masculinities and gender relations. Nevertheless, drawing on some of the latest studies on masculinities and emotions, this chapter has attempted to challenge this binary, defining emotion not against thought but rather as thought, not as preceding the social but as social. In so doing, it has defended the political potential of profeminist men’s emotions as part of the feminist struggle for social and gender equality. Like feminist women, whose reassessment of their gender-ed experiences and feelings has helped challenge patriarchy, profeminist men are beginning to use their emotions not only to explore their “feminine” side but also, more importantly, to contribute to promoting gender equality. As we have tried to demonstrate, emotions need not be limited to individual, local, or therapeutic contexts. They can also become highly social and political. Thus, the individual/inner and social/political components of emotions might, and probably should, be reconciled. Like feminist women, anti-sexist men can also become involved in struggles against gender inequality if they want, as their numerous campaigns against gender-based violence, for example, are showing. As we have seen, this translates into a growing involvement of fathers in caring for their daughters and sons, too, which could have, according to what we argued, important political implications for reaching greater equality. In emphasizing men’s (emotional) involvement in feminism and in taking care of their offspring, which has also been exemplified through cultural and literary representations, this chapter has also worked to illustrate the main thesis that was put forward in the previous chapters, namely, that (white heterosexual) masculinity is far from static or monolithic. This idea is also reflected in chapter 6, which is dedicated to the analysis of homosocial relationships and friendships between men. Questioning the emotional distance that often separates (heterosexual) men today, this chapter has demonstrated the political potential of men’s friendships to fight not only homophobia but also,

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as we will see, sexism and racism in our societies. This has also been exemplified through several cultural products, both literary and cinematic, which represent and/ or deconstruct the emotional bonds between men from perspectives that are as varied as they are subversive. Even though male violence constitutes a major social problem for most contemporary societies worldwide, the close relationship between masculinity and violence has often been naturalized and thus remains, paradoxically enough, largely unexplored. The last chapter has thus tried to explore the recurrent association between masculinity and violence, which seems to have resulted from different social and historical factors rather than from natural or essentialist factors. While most psychoanalytic and anthropological explanations for male violence describe it as inevitable and universal, such views may be challenged by the very existence of a number of pacifistic cultures where men, as has been argued, are extremely gentle and nonviolent. To complement the psychoanalytic and anthropological theoretical explanations for the relationship between masculinity and violence, this chapter has focused on sociological and historical explanations as well. While the connection between masculinity and violence seems to be deeply ingrained in the cultural and literary history of the West, the chapter has paid special attention to its possible deconstruction, making use of contemporary fiction and cinema for this purpose once again. Using a number of literary texts and movies, focus has been given to several cultural products that not only challenge but also demythologize traditional conceptions of violence as proof of masculinity, thus providing innovative depictions of alternative, relational, nonviolent patterns of manhood (hooks, 2004) in culture and literature. As this study has tried to demonstrate throughout its different chapters, the relationship between studies of literary and film representations of masculinity and the larger field of masculinity studies might be reciprocal. Just as representations of masculinity help us understand its social construction, sociological and behavioral studies become absolutely essential for a better understanding and analysis of gender representations. In contemporary culture, as we have argued, social and cultural concepts of masculinity are mutually informative. Thus, by applying studies of masculinity to the analysis of its representations, we have tried to question the classical distinctions between different disciplines (such as sociology and psychology, on the one hand, and cultural, literary, and film studies, on the other) and critical theories (such as masculinity studies and literary criticism), as well as the boundaries between politics and representation, “reality” and “fiction”, the social world and its cultural (con)text. Clearly, the present work does not attempt to provide an exhaustive or conclusive analysis of men and masculinities. First, the study concentrated on a select number of topics that, despite their relevance, necessarily imply the consequent exclusion of others. On the other hand, the selected corpus of writers and literary texts is also limited. This work, as has been suggested, has simply attempted to contribute to generating more discussion and debate and, hopefully, raising new questions on masculinities and their representations. These questions should hopefully encourage other scholars to carry out further research in the field. If, as we have seen, the

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construction of gender is mainly representational, then it follows that cultural representations might play a fundamental role in the (de)construction of gender, including masculinities. Clearly, literature or cinema cannot be expected to change the world and solve all its conflicts since fiction, as the late Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison argued, “is not a case study, it is not a recipe”. Nevertheless, fiction, as Morrison herself elaborated, usually has “something in it that enlightens; something in it that opens the door and points the way. Something in it that suggests what the conflicts are, what the problems are” (Evans, 1984, 341). Following Morrison’s definition, it might not be too fanciful to conclude by suggesting, once again, that analyzing representations of masculinity might enrich the study of its social construction, dynamics, and conflicts, providing more food for thought. After all, a “real” man, as this study has tried to demonstrate, is nothing but a fiction.

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Index

A Aeneid, 110 Affliction, 141, 142, 145, 152 Alexander, 114 Allen, Theodore W., 29, 30 Alvarez, Julia, 102 American Men’s Studies Association, 14 A Multitude of Sins, 132, 151, 152, 154 “An African Story”, 149, 150, 155, 156 Angry White Men (Kimmel), 36 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 64, 65 Aristotle, 109, 110 Aronson, Amy, 14 “A Tender Man”, 101

B Badinter, Elisabeth, 76–78, 83, 86, 92 Bambara, Toni Cade, 101 Banks, Russell, 141, 143 Barthes, Roland, 66 Baym, Nina, 75 Bem, Sandra, 114 Beneke, Timothy, 134 Between Men (Sedgwick), 55, 61 Bier, Susanne, 132, 155, 157, 158 Bloom, Harold, 53 Bly, Robert, 92 Boccaccio, 111 Boker, Pamela A., 83 Bollaín, Icíar, 139, 140 Boone, Joseph A., 55, 65 Boswell, John, 111 Bourdieu, Pierre, 22, 34, 36 Boys Don’t Cry?, 85 Bread Givers, 100

Brod, Harry, 11–14 Butler, Judith, 21, 22, 25–27, 35, 44, 45, 162, 163 C Cadden, Michael, 55 Ceremony, 59 Chapman, Mary, 80, 82, 84, 85 Chauncey, George, 27 Chávez, Denise, 99, 101 Cheever, John, 98, 99 Chodorow, Nancy, 95, 96, 98 Cicero, 110 Cisneros, Sandra, 99, 101, 102 Cixous, Hélène, 67 Claridge, Laura, 55, 56, 68, 70 Collin, Françoise, 38, 39, 41 D “Daddy”, 98 Davidson, Cathy, 85 Death in the Afternoon, 148 Death of a Salesman, 98 “Death of the Author” (Barthes), 66, 68 Decameron, 111 De Lauretis, Teresa, 48, 163 Democratic Vistas, 112, 126 Derrida, Jacques, 19, 20, 39, 40, 42 Dinshaw, Carolyn, 21, 26, 42, 90 DiPiero, Thomas, 24, 28, 29, 31, 32, 37 Douglas, Ann, 81, 82 E Eagleton, Terry, 53, 69

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. M. Armengol, Rewriting White Masculinities in Contemporary Fiction and Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53349-5

179

180 Écrits, 24 Eng, David L., 43, 44 F Farrell, Warren, 92 Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian, 146 Female Masculinity, 1 Fences, 99 Fetterley, Judith, 62, 69 Fiedler, Leslie A., 75, 82, 84 Fight Club, 132, 143–145, 151, 152 Fincher, David, 132, 143, 144 Fitzgerald, F.S., 98 Flood, Michael, 14 Ford, Richard, 108, 115–117, 119, 132, 151–155, 158 For Whom the Bell Tolls, 150 Foucault, Michel, 4, 19, 21, 27, 28, 42, 43, 108 Fricker, Miranda, 89, 90 G Gay New York, 27 Gilligan, Carol, 47 Gilmore, David, 46, 134–137, 150 Goldberg, Herb, 92 Gottzén, Lucas, 15 Green Hills of Africa, 147, 148 Green, Martin, 147, 148 H Habegger, Alfred, 55 Halberstam, Jack, 1, 2, 21, 22, 25, 35, 37, 45, 48, 61 Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities, 15 Hegemonic masculinity, 1, 2, 4, 6 Hemingway, Ernest, 112, 113, 132, 147–151, 155–158 Hendler, Glenn, 80, 82, 84, 85 Homer, 110, 114 hooks, bell, 163, 165 Horlacher, Stefan, 56 Huckleberry Finn, 124, 125 Hume, David, 79 Hurston, Zora Neale, 101 I In a Better World, 132, 155, 157

Index In Our Time, 149 Inventing the Psychological, 89 Iron John, 92 Islas, Arturo, 100, 101

J Jameson, Fredric, 53 Journal of Men’s Studies, 14

K Keating, Analouise, 64 Kiernan, James G., 27 Kimmel, Michael, 2, 3, 5, 12, 14, 15, 23–25, 32, 36, 40, 41, 46, 47, 80, 84, 97, 131, 133, 138–140, 143, 144, 146, 147 Knights, Ben, 56, 59, 62, 63, 66, 67, 69 Koestenbaum, Wayne, 55 Krafft-Ebing, Richard von, 27

L Lacan, Jacques, 19, 23, 24 Langland, Elizabeth, 55, 56, 68, 70 Leverenz, David, 55, 57 Lewis, R.W.B., 82, 84 Lorde, Audre, 90 Love and Death in the American Novel, 82

M Macherey, Pierre, 53 Mackenzie, Henry, 79 Manhood in America: A Cultural History, 80 Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity, 46 Marked Men, 35 Masculinidades and cambio social, 14 Mead, Margaret, 21, 46 Melville, Herman, 112, 124–126 Men and Masculinities: A Social, Cultural and Historical Encyclopaedia, 14 Messner, Michael, 46, 47 Middleton, Peter, 91, 92 Miller, Arthur, 98 Minter, David, 148–150 Moby-Dick, 112, 124–126 Moi, Toril, 62, 65, 66, 68 Moraga, Cherríe, 64 Morrison, Toni, 58, 59, 166 Murphy, Peter F., 56, 57

Index

181

N Nardi, Peter M., 107, 108, 115, 119 Nicomachean Ethics, 109 Noble, Jean Bobby, 61 NORMA (Nordic Journal for Masculinity Studies), 14

Song of Solomon, 59 Steinbeck, John, 58, 59 Stimpson, Catharine, 161 Stoltenberg, John, 34, 39 Stone, Oliver, 114 Structures of feeling, 91

O “Of Friendship”, 111, 111 Of Mice and Men, 58, 59

T Te doy mis ojos, 139, 140 The American Adam, 82 The Face of an Angel, 101 The Feminization of American Culture, 81 The Garden of Eden, 155, 156 The Gendered Society, 131 “The Gilded Six Bits”, 101 The Great American Adventure, 147 The Hazards of Being Male, 92 The House on Mango Street, 99, 101 The Iliad, 110 The Invention of the White Race, 29 The Liberated Man, 92 The Man of Feeling, 79 The Rain God, 100, 101 The Reproduction of Mothering, 95 “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”, 149 “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”, 149 The Sportswriter, 108, 115, 117, 120, 121 The Symposium, 109 The Virginian, 148 Travis, Jennifer, 75, 85, 88, 89 Troy, 114 Twain, Mark, 112, 124, 125

P Palahniuk, Chuck, 132, 143–145 Petersen, Alan, 15, 16 Petersen, Wolfgang, 114 Pfister, Joel, 89 Plath, Sylvia, 98 Plato, 109 Preciado, Paul B., 24, 25, 27, 47 Proving manhood, 134, 136 Psychopathia Sexualis, 27

R Refusing to Be a Man, 34 Riemer, James D., 57–60 Robinson, Sally, 35, 92 Rock Springs, 132, 151, 152 Rogin, Michael Paul, 146 Rosen, David, 55 Routledge International Handbook of Masculinity Studies, 15

S Schnog, Nancy, 89 Schwenger, Peter, 55, 67, 68 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 26, 44, 108, 111, 118, 122, 123 Segal, Lynne, 86–88, 113, 115, 121, 139–141, 162 Seidler, Victor J., 92 Sentimental Men: Masculinity and the Politics of Affect in American Culture, 84 Shamir, Milette, 75, 85, 88, 89 Silko, Leslie, 59 Sister Outsider, 90 Smith, Adam, 78, 79

V Virgil, 110

W Whitman, Walt, 112, 126, 127 Williams, Raymond, 91 Wilson, August, 99 Wister, Owen, 148

Y Yezierska, Anzia, 100 ¡Yo!, 102