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Summary Hegemonic masculinity
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Dominant form of masculinity in the 1980s Tobias Wolff "Bullet in the Brain"
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Gender les 8 Masculinity20/11/15
Hegemonic masculinity:
Dominant form of masculinity as a kind of ideal (not in reality): white
heterosexual man in power => in practice most men live in tension with
this idea of hegemonic masculinity and at the same time they are aware of
it: ideal they have to live up to.
Idea is spread through popular culture: sports is a very important domain
for masculinity in culture.
What is called masculinity in crisis? Men have a difficult time in society and
one of the reasons is also feminism because their position of poer has
been questioned + feminization of male professions (medicines, school
teachers): teachers are now predominantly female so boys don’t have role
models anymore.
Critique about masculine behaviour + presentations of male body in crisis
1980-90s:
emergence of masculinity: consecuence of gender: if you study gender as
a construct you can focus on masculinity which is as much constructed as
femininity => leads to a focus of combination of power, sexuality and
social action
origins: feminism; found in notion of hegemony => the dominant version
of society, related to dynamics of power: one idelogy will be dominant and
there will be a constant fighting between different ideologies to be in
power.
Pattern of practices; goal = maintain dominance => masculinity is not
required as normal. Generally there is some kind of force (cultural,
instituional or persuasion)
Optimist charge: possibility of change => same as Butler; we are not
determined, it is also possible to conceive of a repetition of other practices
that will result in change.
Expansion of concept
Field of research: SPORTS
Costs can be real costs when it comes to crime and agression but can also
be emotional costs
Idea: uncover the mechanisms behind it and to replace this hegemonic
ideal by more diversity in masculinity.
, Identities are always relational: in reality bodies and socia practices always
interact: interplay of male bodies among themselves + interplay among
gender.
Maculinity is a prcess and constantly changes in culture and with age.
Once you become a father you will look at things in a different way than
when you were younger.
Reshape the concept of hegemonic masculinity: talk in the plural:
masculinities: hierarchy based on force and content. If we would adopt
new strategies in gender realtionships that could have a social impact on
the definition of masculinity.
Tobias Wolff: Bullet in the brain
- 1995 in the New Yorker: instant classic
- Masculinty
- Irony: women are loud and noisy but ironic reversal: at the end he’s
the one who’s killed by this exact behaviour
- “they is”: what he does not remember has to do with women and
what he does remember has to do with boyhood experience and
sports
- ~ The Killers - Hemmingway
- Refers to Sylvia Plath
- Huga pause, gap where story splits int two parts: moment that he
dies and narrator tells him what he does not remember (what
happens in one or two seconds lasts a couple of pages)
- Zeus takes form of a bull in order to seduce Europe
- He doesn’t confirm to the idea of chivalry you would expect he
behaves like a weird coward in the beginning
- He laughs and criticizes the bank robbers: critical person and not
afraid
- Name; Andersen (scandinavian name): anders = other. Not your
typical Jack or Bill, he is a kind of everyman.
- Andersen has the agressiveness in the pen: critical language, racist
but has the same kind of hegemony that the killers have
- Ending of story: goes back to his childhood
- Masculintiy seems to be a kind of cause for his death
- Introduced through the women: impatience; critical, dismisiveness of
femininity, he reinforms his superiority: also annoyed but he shows
he can behave in public
- Seduction scene between Europe and the bull => after the long
description of how the bullet enters the brain; does it stretch the
story or can you use it as an interpretation of the story? Explicit
statement: you want to suck my dick: how the scene becomes
sexualised. => look at formal details and specific phrases and you
try to make sense of it: queer reading
- clash between intellectual masculinity and lower class masculinity?
Heroism of protagonist: keeps talking to ridicule the robbers.
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