Dreaming Exiles in Charlotte Brontë’s ‘The Midnight Song’

ABSTRACTDrawing on interviews conducted with young men residing in a hostel in a tertiary institution in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, in 2016, this article explores young black men’s construction of masculine sexuality, their approaches to romantic relationships, and responsibility within them. Through the use of semi-structured interviews conducted with young black men, the study investigated the relationship between the social construction of masculinities and the way in which these young men understood, talked about, and explained their views and actions regarding romance and sexuality. The study focuses on the voices of acceptance and resistance to traditional, patriarchal versions of manhood and the variations in men’s discourses and ways of being. It highlights through these voices that heterosexual masculinities are not inherently reckless, impassive, and uncaring, but are situationally and contextually constructed. The findings reveal that while the young men inhabited subject positions offered by traditional discourses of heterosexual masculinity, at the same time they also contested these dominant discourses in the complex and multifarious processes through which these young men constituted their identity.

Human-technology interaction research has benefited from the insights of cognitive psychology and, more recently, from research on human emotion and affect. Yet, there is a dearth of research that goes deeper into the human mind towards imprinting, instincts, and the collective unconscious. The goal of this study was to uncover the product archetype(s) of personal computer experiences. Young adult men and women were asked to recall their very first personal computer experiences. The narrative structure of these earliest recollections matched several of the stages of the archetypal hero's journey as described by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The personal computer appeared to be an alchemical tool or book for success on each person's journey, offering the magic and power of game play, communication, information, creativity, sensory interactions, and portability.

This chapter examines new male subjectivities, male anxiety and the recuperation of masculinity in contemporary China. Its focus is one of the most striking trends in youth culture in recent years, the popularity of an ‘androgynous’ look amongst young men, which has been especially visible in the music and entertainment industries since the mid-2000s (as has an androgynous look amongst young women). I look at the process by which the masculinity of young androgynous men is co-opted and regulated by the state, as well as being discursively recouped in masculinist ways, but which allows for the retention of the androgynous aesthetic. Through interviews with middle-class informants, both men and women, I explore responses to the discourse of androgyny, and examine how men, women and boys in family and educational settings enact their ambivalence, and sometimes outright hostility, to androgynous or ‘feminine’ men. In my approach, I take seriously Grewal and Kaplan’s (2001: 671) exhortation to develop ‘a mode of study that adopts a more complicated model of transnational relations in which power structures, asymmetries, and inequalities become the conditions of possibility of new subjects.’ I employ this kind of nuanced approach to help throw light on what often appears as the very contradictory and fragmented ideas, feelings and desires that constitute the subjectivities of people as they variously engage with, adapt, conform to and even reject subject positions effected through transnational and locally situated discourses.

Using a poststructural framework, this article critically examines how young men (13—15 years) actively fashion embodied masculine subjectivities by taking up available subject positions within discourse. The study employed semistructured focus groups and interviews with thirty-two participants from two locations in a large urban Canadian city. It is argued that young men are confronted with competing discourses of masculinity where they are simultaneously incited to work on and transform their bodies into culturally recognizable ideals, while at the same time remaining distant and aloof to the size, shape, and appearance of their bodies. Resolving this double-bind of masculinity, it is argued, remains a central task of reproducing the privileges of masculinity. This study demonstrated that young men take up, deploy, and perform discourses of normalcy, healthy active living, heterosexuality, and individualism as technologies of the self in negotiating the double-bind of masculinity. This study extends our knowledge base on the embodied experiences of young men.

O trabalho evidencia a estreita relação entre a noção de vazio e a temática do feminino teorizada pela psicanálise. Para tanto, aborda alguns textos de Clarice Lispector tendo como fio condutor as análises que o crítico literário Raúl Antelo faz de alguns de seus textos. Pretende-se evidenciar que, para Antelo, a obra de Clarice é uma escritura órfica, que salva seu objeto na medida em que renuncia a ele. Em Clarice, o texto é tomado como um fim em si mesmo, que surge a partir de uma potência criativa, uma posição subjetiva que ao invés de procurar suturar o vazio de sentido, busca tomá-lo como impulso para transfigurar o que na vida escapa ao sentido, celebrando uma ética de orientação trágica que a impele a criação de novos sentidos.

Elena Ferrante’s texts explore new notions of feminine identity and rethink fundamental aspects of gender relations and social constructs, most prominently of motherhood. However, whilst her narrative depicts specifically female-centered experiences, her protagonists remain profoundly affected by the patriarchal structures and spaces that they set out to expose and subvert. A particularly productive way of approaching this tension in Ferrante’s works is through an analysis of her complex depictions of maternity, which stand at the center of the author’s textual negotiation of the troubled and discontinuous emergence of the female subject. In a close reading of L’amore molesto (1992), La figlia oscura (2006) and the Neapolitan quartet (2011-2014), I will argue that Ferrante’s texts often filter the conflicts that afflict their female protagonists through the maternal body. My analysis will show that the latter is often affected by forms of dislocation or mutilation that synechdochically mirror the characters’ sense of existential unease. Ultimately, I will argue that Ferrante’s narrative does not simply reproduce the formlessness or subsumption that has dominated patriarchal appropriations of the female body, but it reframes and renegotiates the position of the feminine subject in patriarchal society from the perspective of a newly gained agency and creative power.

Grounded in everyday life, the practice of male same-sex relations is neither uncommon nor a dominant trend but rather a renegotiated space for many young men in Turkey today. This unnamed practice creates a “third space” that forms and transforms young men’s alternative sexual subject positions. My conversations with young men revealed that in this third space the male body comes to terms with a new form of masculinity and male sexual pleasure that destabilizes both heteronormativity and homosexuality. I conducted fieldwork in Ankara, Turkey, between 2003 and 2005 to study the rhetorical uses of language in the context of virginity examinations. My study was based on participatory action research methods, and my field sites included a squatter settlement, a village, and an upper-class neighborhood. While there is a large literature on homosexuality and same-sex relations in Iran and the Arab world, this essay adds to the emerging scholarship that focuses on Turkey through its identification of a “third space” masculinity and its examination of not only urban but also rural and semiurban areas.Young men who engage in same-sex practices often seek release from the material conditions of social norms governing premarital sexuality and virginity. Men who have sex with men do not have a language to name the sexual activities they engage in. They neither use terms such as homosexual or gay nor conflate their sexual encounters with homoerotic desire similar to what Huseyin Tapinc’s (1992) research revealed in Turkey. Rather, they perform their sexualities in a ritualized manner to prove their maleness or abilities at penetrating. Hence rather than ascribing to a sexual orientation or gender identity, men who have sex with men build an alternative sexual space where they reconfigure masculine sexual behavior.In the newly configured third space of male same-sex practices, where affection and romance mostly do not reside, roles and meanings associated with masculinity, heterosexuality, and homosexuality blur. Contained in spaces reserved for young men, men who have sex with men do not depart from heterosexuality toward homosexuality. Rather, the third spaces they create are sites of response to social codes that prohibit sexual encounters between men and women. Hence men who have sex with men are dissidents renegotiating their sexualities and redrawing the boundaries of what may be possible in a culture of compulsory virginity. The third space is a way to reinscribe sexual behavior and build solidarity in the spaces reserved for men where opposite sex partner relationships are not available. However, this is not to say that male same-sex sexuality is always a direct consequence of norms regarding virginity and women’s seclusion. As Afsaneh Najmabadi (2006) points out, it can be reductive and totalizing to always attribute same-sex sexuality to societal practices such as gender segregation and veiling.The third space masculinity in the Turkish context illuminates modes of sexuality that lack a linguistic space. Situated in a context that legitimates only marital heteronormative sexual behavior and pleasure, men who have sex with men live in a culture of secrecy and silence. Yet, in spite of the lack of a language, this third space masculinity speaks in other ways. First, third space is liberating in its attempt to create a medium through which entry into a sexual subjectivity is sought without privileging a sexual identity or sexual orientation. Second, it is a space of critique and empowerment that makes a potential argument for sexual freedom a possibility. In this nondiscursive space silence seeks to break away from repressed sexualities. Although an everyday language to name it does not exist, this space is a means of coming to terms with societal norms and men’s relationships to each other. Without female participation, it is a space where patriarchal economies are reproduced; it is a male-defined marginal space structured around the male body and the phallus.The presence of this male domain points to the need to develop a new discourse to theorize the unnamed third space and its implications. As an alternative space partly created in response to societal constraints, third space masculinities provide an opportunity to rethink male sexuality and masculinity in the heteronormative order. Instead of totalizing men’s and women’s experiences with patriarchy, the third space masculinity in Turkey can broaden the possibilities of using a new nuanced language to contextualize and theorize how patriarchal patterns in society shape masculinities and male sexualities as well. Finally, third space masculinities in Turkey have the potential to contribute to the feminist agenda by addressing unnamed but lived sexualities, so that individuals’ experiences with sexuality are not totalized but grounded in everyday stories to capture nuanced sexual subjectivities that move beyond the heterosexual versus homosexual dualism.

IntroductionThe aim of the study was to evaluate whether subject positioning would affect the measurement of raw body volume, thoracic gas volume, corrected body volume and the resulting percent body fat as assessed by air displacement plethysmography (ADP).MethodsTwenty-five young adult men (20.7±1.1y, BMI = 22.5±1.4 kg/m2) were measured using the BOD POD® system using a measured thoracic gas volume sitting in a ‘forward bent’ position and sitting up in a straight position in random order.ResultsRaw body volume was 58±124 ml (p<0.05) higher in the ‘straight’ position compared to the ‘bent’ position. The mean difference in measured thoracic gas volume (bent-straight = −71±211 ml) was not statistically significant. Corrected body volume and percent body fat in the bent position consequently were on average 86±122 ml (p<0.05) and 0.5±0.7% (p<0.05) lower than in the straight position respectively.ConclusionAlthough the differences reached statistical significance, absolute differences are rather small. Subject positioning should be viewed as a factor that may contribute to between-test variability and hence contribute to (in)precision in detecting small individual changes in body composition, rather than a potential source of systematic bias. It therefore may be advisable to pay attention to standardizing subject positioning when tracking small changes in PF are of interest.The cause of the differences is shown not to be related to changes in the volume of isothermal air in the lungs. It is hypothesized and calculated that the observed direction and magnitude of these differences may arise from the surface area artifact which does not take into account that a subject in the bent position exposes more skin to the air in the device therefore potentially creating a larger underestimation of the actual body volume due to the isothermal effect of air close to the skin.

Age is the predominant risk factor for developing prostate cancer, leading to its description as an “older man’s disease.” Changed sexual embodiment is a concern for men who develop prostate cancer, often compounding experiences of age-related sexual decline. Although research has examined heterosexual men’s experiences of aging in the context of sexual embodiment after prostate cancer, gay and bisexual men have received little attention. This qualitative study used a material-discursive analysis, drawing on positioning theory and intersectionality, to explore constructions of aging following prostate cancer in 46 gay or bisexual men. Thematic decomposition of one-to-one interviews identified three subject positions: “mastering youth,” involving maintaining an active sex life through biomedical interventions, accessing commercial sex venues, or having sex with younger men; “the lonely old recluse,” involving self-positioning as prematurely aged and withdrawal from a gay sexual scene; and “accepting embodied aging,” involving the incorporation of changed sexual function into intimate relationships and finding pleasure through nonsexual activities. These subject positions are conceptualized as the product of intersecting masculine and gay identities, interpreted in relation to broader cultural discourses of “new aging” and “sexual health,” in which sexual activity is conceptualized as a lifelong goal.

A key strand in the Western literature on working-class masculinities focuses on whether young men are capable of the feminized performances apparently required of them in new service economies. However, the wider literature on processes of neoliberalization - emphasizing the 'hollowing out' of labour markets, the cultural devaluation of lower-skilled forms of employment, and the pathologization of working-class lives - would suggest that it is as much a classed as a gendered transformation that is demanded of young men leaving school with few qualifications. This dimension of neoliberalization is highlighted by ethnographic data exploring the experiences and subjectivities of young workers in St Petersburg, Russia, where traditional forms of manual labour have not given way to 'feminized' work, but have become materially and symbolically impoverished, and are perceived as incapable of supporting the wider transition into adult independence. In this context, young workers attempt to emulate new forms of 'successful masculinity' connected with novel service sector professions and the emergent higher education system, despite the unlikelihood of overcoming a range of structural and cultural barriers. These acquiescent, individualized responses indicate that, while ways of being a man are apparently being liberated from old constraints amongst the more privileged, neoliberalization narrows the range of subject positions available to working-class young men.

This research focuses on the subjectification of young asylum-seeking men. By subjectification, we mean the effort an individual invests in detecting, negotiating, meeting and contesting the surrounding discursive expectations. The underlying question is: if someone wants to fulfil the position ascribed to them, that is be a ‘good asylum seeker’ and respond to the surrounding demands as much as possible, what would then, in fact, be a ‘good asylum seeker’? The data consists of interviews and ethnographic hanging out with nine young asylum-seeking men throughout their asylum process. Based on their reflections on the discourses of the surrounding society, a ‘good asylum seeker’ is patient, active, positive and grateful; he normalises racism he faces and accepts prejudice towards himself. A ‘good asylum seeker’ also accepts the position of a less worthy human being, acknowledging that in an ideal situation he would be entirely away, out of sight or in another subject position. Our findings showcase the sheer impossibility of successfully filling the asylum seeker subject position, as the requirements are contradictory and unrealistic. Paradoxically, it could be said that a ‘good asylum seeker’ is no longer an asylum seeker.

With and Without, Wise and Otherwise, José and <i>José</i>

In the article, the relationship “personality — environment” is considered from the standpoint of a subjective approach. Through habitation, appropriation, and personalization of the environment, a person realizes the desire to “extend himself in the world of things and territories”, thereby achieving consistency of internal and external, gaining a sense of authenticity of being and personal identity. By turning the environment into the spaces of his being, a person changes it for another person, and becomes an environmental circumstance for him. Home is one of the most personalized, private territories of a person, which she shares with loved ones, taking their subjective position. Another person becomes a factor in the organization of the object-spatial environment of the individual’s home. This reasoning creates opportunities for understanding and interpreting both the processes of communication, with its accompanying collisions of togetherness-disconnection, and for understanding the deep personal processes of gaining authenticity, personal identity, etc. The empirical study examined the features and differences of young spouses (40 couples) in the manifested psychological characteristics (the need for privacy, support for partner privacy, identification with a partner, satisfaction with marriage) due to cohabitation, the fact that the marital partner becomes a factor in the organization of a private object-spatial environment of the home. It was found out that young women have a wider repertoire of environmental behavior aimed at realizing the need for privacy and receive greater support for this need from their husbands, they also know how to build what is necessary in the organization of the subject-spatial environment. Young men are more likely to identify with their spouses, experience not only psychological fusion with them, but also less distanced from them spatially (this implies a decrease in the need for privacy, and less need for the privacy of things).

Artifacts from the Perspective of Effutu Masquerade Performance: An Aesthetic Album

We studied the effect of high and low NaCl diets in normotensive and borderline hypertensive subjects to determine if a high NaCl diet produces abnormal renal vasoconstriction during the stress of upright posture in borderline hypertensive subjects. We studied 13 normotensive young men with diastolic blood pressures below 85 mm Hg and nine borderline hypertensive young men defined by diastolic blood pressures intermittently above 90 mm Hg. The subjects achieved comparable sodium balance during 6 days of low NaCl (10 mEq Na, 40 mEq Cl, 100 mEq K) and high NaCl (400 mEq Na, 400 mEq Cl, 100 mEq K) diets. In the normotensive subjects, standing for 30 minutes resulted in a tendency for diastolic blood pressure to fall during both diets. In contrast, during standing borderline hypertensive subjects showed no change in diastolic blood pressure during the low salt diet and a tendency for diastolic blood pressure to increase after the high salt diet. Standing reduced renal plasma flow in both groups during both diets. However, only during the high NaCl diet did the absolute decrease and percent decrease in renal plasma flow during standing differ significantly (p less than 0.05 and p less than 0.01, respectively) between the borderline hypertensive (-151 +/- 24 ml/min/1.73m2; -29 +/- 4%) and normotensive subjects (-79 +/- 17 ml/min/1.73m2; -15 +/- 3%). The resultant increase in the renal vascular resistance index with standing did not differ between the two groups during the low NaCl diet.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)