The Construction of the Construction of Masculinities

Abstract

I believe this is a propitious moment in which to undertake a theoretically oriented look back at what I shall call the construction of the construction of masculinities. Were this a research anthology on history rather than literature, I would have a more readily understandable rather than potentially mystifying vocabulary available to me to make the point I am trying to make in putting it this way. I would then say that I shall be talking about the historiography rather than the history of the construction of masculinities, intending thereby to signify that I shall be discussing not the history of masculinities, but the history of the history of masculinities, that is to say, the history of how we have written about and conceptualized masculinities. So here I shall be talking not about the construction of masculinities per se, but rather about how we have constructed our discourses about the constructions of masculinities. To further restrict my subject matter, I should say that I shall be looking at theorizations of masculinities in the English-speaking world, primarily in the United States, within a field that originally called itself ‘men’s studies,’ but then also came to be called ‘masculinity studies,’ and more recently ‘critical studies of men and masculinities.’ There are significant reasons for the shift in nomenclature, some of which I shall address later, but I shall not here be concerned to privilege one term over the other, but rather to talk about the field, regardless of how one designates it.KeywordsMasculinity StudyMale ViolenceGender ViolencePropitious MomentCritical Race StudyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.