This international and multidisciplinary volume focuses on the male body and constructions of gender in a variety of cultural productions and formats. Locating the subject matter in relevant theoretical fields, it looks at representations of male bodies in various contexts through paranoid and reparative lenses. Organized into four major sections, the contributions assembled in this book feature engaging readings of ‘non/conforming bodies’, ‘fashionable bodies’, ‘passing bodies’, and ‘pioneering bodies’ that to different degrees foreground their critical and creative potentials. In its full scope, the book acknowledges the plurality of gendered experiences and the diversity of male bodies. The Male Body in Representation: Returning to Matter adds to Cultural Studies scholarship interested in the body and gender in general and contributes to the fields of Masculinity and Body Studies in particular.
Author(s): Carmen Dexl, Silvia Gerlsbeck
Series: Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 329
City: Cham
Preface
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
1 Returning to Matter: New Perspectives on the Male Body in Representation
Why Bodies Matter
Locating the ‘Male Body’
Representing and Reading Bodies
References
Part I Non/Conforming Bodies
2 Brother to Brother: A Rereading of Black Masculinities in Embodied Performance
“It Looks to Me Like You the Envy of the World”
Diasporic Black Bodies
Brother to Brother—An Autoethnographic Return
Towards Performing Alternative Embodied Selves: Brother to Brother’s Workshop Performance Practice
“Nothing in the World Loves a Black Man More Than Another Black Man”
References
3 ‘You’re a Real Man After All’: Fashioning the Male Physique in Twentieth-Century Boxing and Wrestling Magazines
Introduction
‘Muscular Christianity’, the Ideal ‘Manly’ Physique, and the US-American Body Politic
Advertising the ‘Manly Body’ in Boxing and Wrestling Magazines
Restoring the ‘Most Perfectly Developed Man’
Fashioning Male Violence in the Public Sphere
Fashioning the Sexually Attractive Male Body
Conclusion
References
4 Basil Dearden’s Violent Playground (1958): Masculinity, Class, and Sentimental Politics
Social Problem Films of the 1950s, Questions of Class, and the ‘Problem’ of Juvenile Delinquency
Symbolic Blockages and the Heroics of Masculinity
The Sentimental Politics of Feeling (Just) Right
Masculinities and Masculinity
References
Part II Fashionable Bodies
5 Refashioning the Male Body: Contemporary Media Representations of the Spornosexual and the Waif
Introduction
Spornosexual Masculinities
The High-Fashion Waif
New Tendencies in Fashioning the Male Body
References
6 English Dandies and French Lions: Policing the Male Body in Popular Print and Visual Culture Between 1815 and 1848
Introduction: Dandiacal Paranoia and Popular Culture
English Dandies and French Ridicules
The Victorian ‘Lady-Like’ Gentleman
‘Gentlemen of Taste’ and the July Monarchy
Epilogue: Reading the Dandy as an Emancipatory Figure
References
7 Stiliagi Masculinity and the Re-Fashioning of the Male Body in the Soviet Union (1948–1958)
Introduction
The Stiliagi: More than a Fashion Movement
Fashioning Post-War Soviet Masculinities
The Stiliagi in the Soviet Media
Representations of the Stiliagi’s Body in Life Writing and Interviews
Critical Reflections: The Stiliagi Body Between Politics and Pleasure
References
Part III Passing Bodies
8 Claiming the Flâneur’s Body: Cross-Dressing Women, Autobiographical Self-Fashioning, and the Pleasures of Passing and Not Passing as a Man on the Street
Introduction
On Cross-Dressing and Passing
Flora Tristan: Failed Passing as a Spectacle of Female Disobedience
George Sand: Claiming the Male Body for Artistic Freedom
Vita Sackville-West: The Self-Condemning Flâneuse
Conclusion: Reparative Walking and Writing
References
9 Jake and Ellen in Transition: On Clarissa Sligh’s Mutable Bodies
Wrongly Bodied: Two Forms of Transition
Archive and Repertoire: On Racial and Gendered Passing
Commencement: The Archive as Body
Commandment: The Body as Archive
References
10 “A Most Unlikely Hero”: Disability, Masculinity, and Sexuality in Harlequin Superromance Novels
Introduction: The Popular Romance and Discourses of Disability
Representing the Disabled Hero, Engaging the Trope of the Supercrip
Reassessing the Supercrip: Paranoid and Reparative Perspectives
Conclusion
References
Part IV Pioneering Bodies?
11 Of Cyborgs, Aliens, and Tricksters: Posthumanist Perspectives on the Male Body in Caribbean Speculative Literature
Introduction: Body Matters in Caribbean Speculative Fiction
Masculinizing Outer Space: Tobias Buckell’s Xenowealth Stories
Category Purism in Xenowealth
Hypermasculine Warriors in Xenowealth
Breaking with Masculine Imperatives: Nalo Hopkinson’s Skin Folk
Disciplined Bodies and Criticisms of Transhumanism in Skin Folk
Trickster and Cyborg Potentials in Skin Folk
Back to the Future? Contemplating the Body of the Text
References
12 Fashionable Men in Skin-Tight Pants: Shifts in Body Images and Concepts of Masculinity in the History of Men’s Legwear
Introduction
Historical Perspective I: Power, Hegemony, and Male Legs
Historical Perspective II: Accentuated Legs and Exposed Sexuality
The Meggings—Advancing New Body Images and Reimagining Masculinity?
References
13 “Isn’t It Pretty to Think So?”—Disability and the Queering of Masculinity in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Experiencing Surprise
Narrating Disability
Potency and Impotence
Queering Disabled Masculinity
Disability as a Creative Alternative Corporeality
References
14 Coda: Rereading the Male Body—The Cultural Power of Representation
References
Index
