"Public man" and the critique of masculinities

Political Theory

Volumn 24, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 673-686

  Carver, Terrell ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 21444461611     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591796024004004     Document Type: Article

References (67)

1. E. Said, "Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies and Community," in Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (London: Pluto, 1985), 135-59.
2. See, for example, D. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Free Association, 1991);
3. D. Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1992), chaps. 1-4.
4. For careful discussions, see K. Ferguson, The Feminist Case against Bureaucracy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984);
5. and K. B. Jones, "Citizenship in a WomanFriendly Polity," Signs 15 (1990): 781-812.
6. For this contextualization of feminist theory, see K. E. Ferguson, "Interpretation and Genealogy in Feminism," Signs 16 (1991): 322-39.
7. See, for example, G. Bottomley, M. de Lepervanche, and J. Martin, eds., Intersexions (Sydney: Alien & Unwin, 1991).
8. See, for example, K. B. Jones, Compassionate Authority (New York: Routledge, 1993).
9. J. Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Oxford, UK: Martin Robertson, 1981).
10. See S. M. Okin, Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979);
11. G. Lloyd, The Man of Reason: "Male" and "Female" in Western Philosophy (London: Methuen, 1984);
12. J. Grimshaw, Feminist Philosophers: Women's Perspectives on Philosophical Traditions (Brighton, UK: Wheatsheaf, 1986);
13. E. Kennedy and S. Mendus, Women in Western Political Philosophy (Brighton, UK: Wheatsheaf, 1987);
14. A. Nye, Feminist Theory and the Philosophies of Men (New York: Routledge, 1989);
15. M. Gatens, Feminism and Philosophy (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1991);
16. D. Coole, Women in Political Theory: From Ancient Misogyny to Contemporary Feminism, 2d ed. (Brighton, UK: Harvester/Wheatsheaf, 1992).
17. C. Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1988) provides a particularly clear summary of this position.
18. See D. Spender, Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them: FromAphra Benn toAdrienneRich (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982);
19. N. Hartsock, Money, SexandPower: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism (New York: Longman, 1983);
20. C. Cockbum, Brothers: Male Dominance and Technological Change (London: Pluto, 1983), and
21. In the Way of Women: Men's Resistance to Sex Equality in Organisations (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1991);
22. J. B. Elshtain, Meditations on Modem Political Thought: Masculine/Feminine Themes from Luther to Arendt (New York: Praeger, 1986);
23. C. MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987);
24. R. W. Connell, Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1987).
25. See, for example, J. Scott, "Women's History," in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. P. Burke (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1991), 42-66;
26. A. Phillips, "Universal Pretensions in Political Thought," in Destabilizing Theory, ed. M. Barrett and A. Phillips (Cambridge, UK: Polity. 1992), 10-30;
27. and S. Mendus, "Losing the Faith: Feminism and Democracy," in Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, ed. J. Dünn (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1992), 207-19.
28. See T. Edwards, Erotics and Politics: Gay Male Sexuality, Masculinity and Feminism (London: Routledge, 1994);
29. J. Heam and D. Collinson, "Unities and Differences between Men and between Masculinities," in Theorizing Masculinities: The New Men 's Studies, ed. H. Brod and M. Kaufmann (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1994), 97-118.
30. See H. Brod, ed., The Making of'Masculinities: The New Men's Studies (Boston: Alien & Unwin, 1987), 8-9; and
31. J. Heam, The Gender of Oppression: Men, Masculinity and the Critique of Marxism (Brighton, UK: Wheatsheaf, 1987), 13-5.
32. See, for example, R. \V. Connell, "A Bastard of a Life: Homosexual Desire and Practice among Men in Working-Class Milieux," Australia and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 29 (1993): 112-35;
33. J. Stevens, "Leviticus in America: The Politics of Sex Crimes," Journal of Political Philosophy 1 (1993): 105-36;
34. A. Cornwall and N. Lindisfame, eds., Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies (London: Routledge, 1994);
35. and R. Chapman and J. Rutherford, Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1988).
36. I distinguish sociology of masculinities and "men's studies" from the "men's movement" or "consciousness raising" for men; see below.
37. See T. Carrigan, B. Connell, and J. Lee, 'Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity," Theory and Society 14 (1985): 551-604;
38. M. S. Rimmel, "The Contemporary Crisis of 'Masculinity' in Historical Perspective," in Brod, The Making of Masculinities, 121-53;
39. A. Brittan, i Masculinity and Power (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1989);
40. C. di Stefano, Configurations of Masculinity: A Feminist Perspective on Modem Political Theory (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991);
41. D. Morgan, Discovering Men: Sociology and Masculinities (London: Routledge, 1992);
42. and R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1995).
43. This raises considerable political problems in a feminist and "women's studies" context, as arguably a focus on men of any kind centers them in effect; see, for example, T. Modleski, Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a Post-Feminist Age (New York: Routledge, 1991); R. Braidotti, "Envy: Or with Your Brains and My Looks," in Men in Feminism, ed. A. Jardine and P. Smith (New York: Methuen, 1987), 233-41. Yet a number of feminists address the "man question" in explicitly detailed though different formulations; see, for example, J. Stiehm, "The Man Question," in Women's Views of the Political World of Men, ed. J. Stiehm (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Transnational, 1984); W. Brown, Manhood and Politics: A Feminist Reading in Political Theory (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988); K. Ferguson, The Man Question: Visions of Subjectivity in Feminist Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). International Relations theory is a particular point of development for feminist theorizations of men and masculinity; see, for example, C. Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); V. S. Petersen, ed., Gendered States: Feminist (Ke)Vtsions of International Relations Theory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992); J. A. Tickner, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); and V. S. Petersen and A. S. Runyan, eds., Global Gender Issues (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993).
44. Phillips, "Universal Pretensions," 27; Mendus, "Losing the Faith," 214-5; and J. Hearn, Men in the Public Eye (London: Routledge, 1992), 3.
45. This is not to say that actual practice respects these theoretical boundary lines; see J. Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (London: Routledge, 1993).
46. G. Bock and S. James, eds., Beyond Equality and Difference: Citizenship, Feminist Politics and Fenuile Subjectivity (London: Routledge, 1992), 6.
47. See S. Walby, Theorising Patriarchy (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1990);
48. D. T. Evans, Sexual Citizenship (London: Routledge, 1993).
49. See, for example, the passage in which men "make themselves Masters of other mens persons, wives, children and cattell," in T. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. R. Tuck (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 88.
50. C. L. Bacchi notes the way that domestic roles are generally ignored in the theorization and treatment of men; see Same Difference: Feminism and Sexual Difference (Sydney: Alien & Unwin, 1991).
51. Carrigan et al., "Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity," 577.
52. A theory of liberation within the dominant subject-position is necessarily problematic in that the theoretical categories involved will always reinscribc the dualism oppressor/oppressed, and the strategic symbolisation of the oppressed category as emblematic for humanity as a whole could hardly work for the oppressors. Indeed, attempted universalizations of the categorial world of the oppressors has formed the basis from which emancipatory critique of such ideologies has developed; see D. West, Authenticity and Empowerment: A Theory of Liberation (Brighton, UK: Harvester/Wheatsheaf, 1989).
53. M. Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays (Kernel Hempstead, UK: Harvester/ Wheatsheaf, 1992).
54. See, for example, W. Brown, "Where Is the Sex in Political Theory?" Women and Politics 6 (1987): 3-23;
55. S. Phelan, Identity Politics: Lesbian Feminism and the Limits of Community (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989);
56. R. Pringle and S. Watson, " 'Women's Interests' and the Post-Structuralist State," in Barrett and Phillips, eds.. Destabilizing Theory, 55-73;
57. R. W. Connell, 'The Big Picture: Masculinities in Recent World History," Theory and Society 22 (1993): 597-623.
58. L. J. Nicholson, ed., Feminism/Postmodernism (London: Routledge, 1990);
59. D. Riley, "Am I That Name?": Feminism and the Category of "Women" in History (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1988);
60. J. Grant, Fundamental Feminism (New York and London: Routledge, 1993).
61. In a recent review article, for example, D. Coole locates Hearn's Men in the Public Eye and Morgan's Discovering Men in the context of feminist theory and comments that "men and masculinity are indeed... implicated in feminist studies of gender and patriarchy," but she does not explore the issues covered in the present article. She also notes that "by no means all feminists are sympathetic to the development of men's studies," but does not detail the political issues involved nor comment on those feminists who argue for this development; "Whither Feminisms?" Political Studies 42 (1994): 128-34.
62. See, for example, J. Locke, "Second Treatise," in Two Treatises of Government, ed. P. Laslett (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 330-49. esp. 342.
63. For a rare exception, see R. P. Wolff, "There's Nobody Here but Us Persons," in Women and Philosophy: Toward a Theory of Liberation, ed. C. C. Could and M. W. Wartofsky (New York: Putnam, 1978), 128-44. For a much less straightforward and practical view, see J. A. Boone and M. Cadden, eds., Engendering Men: The Question of Male Feminist Criticism (New York: Routledge, 1990).
64. See Brown, Manhood and Politics, 205; L. Segal, Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men (London: Virago, 1990). For (much criticized) attempts to theorize and create a "men's politics" along these lines, see V. J. Seidler, ed., The Achilles Heel Reader (London: Routledge, 1991); and V. J. Seidler, Recreating Sexual Politics (London: Routledge, 1991).
65. The current controversy in the United States and the United Kingdom concerning gays in the military makes visible the extent to which military discipline and dominant masculinity are interdefmed; once this conjuncture is exposed, both become problematic.
66. This claim concerning the way political theory treats feminist theory parallels the argument concerning the way political theory treats women that is made in C. Pateman and T. Brennan, "Mere Auxiliaries to the Commonwealth," Political Studies 27 (1979): 183-200.
67. Gender studies, which opens up a realm of nonheterosexual and nonreproductive sexualities, is particularly disruptive of foundational assumptions in political theory concerning individual identities and social relationships. Unsurprisingly, it has not yet even been "noticed" by the mainstream. See J. Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1990).