This book charts the journey, in terms of both stasis and change, that masculinities and manhood have made in Irish drama, and by extension in the broader culture and society, from the 1960s to the present. Examining a diverse corpus of drama and theatre events, both mainstream and on the fringe, this study critically elaborates a seismic shift in Irish masculinities. This book argues, then, that Irish manhood has shifted from embodying and enacting post-colonial concerns of nationalism and national identity, to performing models of masculinity that are driven and moulded by the political and cultural practices of neoliberal capitalism. Masculinities and Manhood in Contemporary Irish Drama charts this shift through chapters on performing masculinity in plays set in both the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, and through several chapters that focus on Women’s and Queer drama. It thus takes its readers on a journey: a journey that begins with an overtly patriarchal, nationalist manhood that often made direct comment on the state of the nation, and ultimately arrives at several arguably regressive forms of globalised masculinity, which are couched in misaligned notions of individualism and free-choice and that frequently perceive themselves as being in crisis.
Author(s): Cormac O'Brien
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 301
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Contents
1 Introduction: Acting the Man
1 Contexts and Concepts of Masculinities
2 Hegemonic Masculinity and Performing the Nation
3 Patriarchy and Its Dividends
4 Irish Manhood and the Market
5 The ‘Crisis Ordinariness’ of Masculinity in Crisis
6 Irish Masculinities Onstage
Bibliography
2 The Fantasy of Manhood
1 Fantasies of Modernity: The Irish New Wave
2 Rural Homosociality and the Dynamics of Exclusion
The Men Who Stay Behind
3 Neoliberal Narratives
Nascent Neoliberalism
Tropes, Types, and Scripts of Manhood
Challenging Neoliberal Manhood
4 Conclusions
Bibliography
3 The Pathology of Patriarchy
1 Patriarchy, Patrilineage, and the Family Cell
Emulating the Father
Ousting the Father
Replacing the Father: Patrilineage in Performance
Future Mutations
2 Monologues, Misfits, and the Performance of Crisis
New Lads, Old Ways
Post-Tiger Monologues and ‘Exit Politics’
3 Neoliberalism, Post-feminism, and Hidden Patriarchy
Invisible Patriarchy
4 Conclusions
Bibliography
4 Men of the North
1 Performing the Tribe
Tropes, Types, and Stereotypes
Worthy Catholics and Hooligan Republicans
Subverting Tribal Stereotypes
2 Abject Heroes
Paradoxical Bodies
Constructing the Abject Hero
Abjecting the Law of the Heroic Father
3 Conclusions
Bibliography
5 Masculinity Without Men
1 Virgin Mother Ireland
Punishing the Virgin Mother
2 Patriarchy Without Men
Daughters of the Tiger
3 Phallic Irish Mothers
Subverting the Phallic Mother
4 The Gatekeepers of Patriarchy
God’s Gatekeepers
Gatekeepers of the Family Cell
5 Conclusions
Bibliography
6 Acting Queer
1 Shame, Sex, and Nation
Fear of a Queer Nation
Good Gays Versus Bad Queers
2 Performing POZ
The Punishment Paradox
Positively Irish
3 Towards a Queer Dramaturgy
4 Conclusions
Bibliography
7 Conclusion: Acting This Man
Index
