Representing Masculinity Male Citizenship in Modern Western Culture

by Dudink, Stefan; Hagemann, Karen; Clark, Anna

• ISBN13: 9780230340152
• ISBN10: 0230340156
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-07-17
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

The idea that citizenship was the right of all humanity emerged during the French Revolution. However, this right was limited by gender, class and race. Studying Europe and its colonies and the United States, this book analyzes images of masculine citizenship in political rhetoric, culture, and various political struggles from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Politicians manipulated the rhetoric of masculine citizenship, using images of paternity and fraternity. Art represented competing images of the masculine citizen, ranging from the black revolutionary to the neo-Greek white statue. Political subjects in empires and colonies appropriated and subverted these western ideals, revealing the exclusions in the rhetoric of masculine citizenship.

Author Biography

Stefan Dudink is Assistant Professor at the Institute for Gender Studies of Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He is co-editor, with Karen Hagemann and John Tosh, of Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History (2004).

Karen Hagemann is James G. Kenan Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She recently co-edited in English Home/Front: Military and Gender in 20th Century Germany (2002), Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History (2004), and Gendering Modern German History. Themes, Debates, Revisions (2007).

Anna Clark is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and holds the Samuel Russell Chair in the Humanities. She is the author of The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (1995), and Scandal: The Sexual Politics of the British Constitution, among other publications on working-class history and the history of sexuality.

 

Table of Contents

"This is a fascinating book.  In the end one begins to more fully appreciate how the concept of modern citizens, from its roots in Western political culture to its currency around the world, seems to be tied almost inexorably to a gendered language of manhood. . . . And in the end one realizes that today we are confronted with the estrangement of the very concept of masculinity itself."--John A. Dick, INTAMS

"On the first glance an exploration of the maleness of political culture seems to be redundant, because the representation of politics as a male sphere seems to be self-evident. This volume demonstrates that a focus on masculinity can produce a multiplicity of fascinating and new perspectives on political culture, which makes the book to an exciting, inspiring and provocative reading. The editors are especially interested in the shaping and reshaping of concepts of citizenship by constructions of masculinity."--Brigitta Bader-Zaar, L'Homme

“This stunning collection takes the historical study of masculinities—of gender—to a new level. Ranging over two centuries and three continents, the essays demonstrate the power of Western concepts of masculinity while at the same time revealing their multiplicity and instability as well as the resistances they often encountered. By de-coupling masculinity from men, the authors succeed in ‘provincializing’ it, thus opening up rich possibilities for further investigation. Representing Masculinity will serve scholars of gender as an important theoretical as well as historiographical touchstone for decades to come.” —Sonya Michel, University of Maryland, College Park

“In this volume gender history can be said to have completed a full circle: from its earlier beginnings as a history of women that critiqued the focus on the deeds of men in politics and war, through the history of the categories and discourses of gender and the more recent historiography of masculinity, back to the realm of politics, war and citizenship: enriched by the new perspectives of a generation of scholarship, these essays examine the variety of meanings and uses attached to masculinity in political discourse and practice. The contributions in this timely and valuable collection range widely across viewpoints, national contexts and disciplines; not least, including a welcome attention to visual representations.”—Dror Wahrman, Indiana University