Masculinities and the nation in the modern world : between hegemony and marginalization

282 Pages·2015·3.98 MB·English

by  Dominguez Andersen

Global Masculinities
Edited by Michael Kimmel and Judith Kegan Gardiner
Michael Kimmel is Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at
Stony Brook. He is the author or editor of more than twenty books, including: M en’s
Lives , Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men , The Gendered Society , The
Politics of Manhood , and M anhood in America: A Cultural History. He edits M en and
Masculinities , an interdisciplinary scholarly journal, and edited the Encyclopedia of Men
and Masculinities and the Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities. He consults
with corporations, NGOs, and public sector organizations all over the world on gender
equity issues, including work-family balance, reducing workplace discrimination, and
promoting diversity.
Judith Kegan Gardiner is Professor of English and of Gender and Women’s Studies
at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her books are C raftsmanship in Context: The
Development of Ben Jonson’s Poetry and Rhys, Stead, Lessing, and the Politics of Empathy.
She is the editor of the volumes Provoking Agents: Gender and Agency in Theory and
Practice ; Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory; and a co-editor of the International
Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities . She is also a member of the editorial board for
the interdisciplinary journal Feminist Studies .
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Masculinities and the Nation in the Modern World: Between Hegemony and
Marginalization
Edited by Pablo Dominguez Andersen and Simon Wendt
M N
ASCULINITIES AND THE ATION IN
M W
THE ODERN ORLD
Between Hegemony and Marginalization
Edited by
Pablo Dominguez Andersen
and
Simon Wendt
MASCULINITIES AND THE NATION IN THE MODERN WORLD
Copyright © Pablo Dominguez Andersen and Simon Wendt, 2015.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-53609-9
All rights reserved.
Parts of chapter 10 have previously appeared in Maja Horn,
Masculinity after Trujillo: The Politics of Gender in Dominican Literature
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014).
First published in 2015 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-56598-6 ISBN 978-1-137-53610-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137536105
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Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: October 2015
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Contents
Introduction: Masculinities and the Nation 1
Pablo Dominguez Andersen and Simon Wendt
1 “The Crushing of Southern Manhood”: War,
Masculinity, and the Confederate Nation-State,
1861–1865 19
Craig Thompson Friend
2 Mormon Manhood and Its Critics: Polygamy and the
Construction of Hegemonic Masculinity in the
United States 39
Steve Estes
3 Eugenic Nationalism, Biopolitics, and the
Masculinization of Hysteria: Historical and
Theoretical Reflections 55
Anna Loutfi
4 Preserving the Family and the Nation: Eugenic
Masculinity Concepts, Expert Intervention, and the
American Family in the United States, 1900–1960 71
Isabel Heinemann
5 “Less than a Boot-Rag”: Procreation, Paternity, and the
Masculine Ideal in Fascist Italy 93
Martina Salvante
6 Martial Men in Virgin Lands? Nineteenth-Century
Filibustering, Nation-Building, and Competing Notions
of Masculinity in the United States and Nicaragua 113
Andreas Beer
7 Controlling L os Hombres : American State Power and the
Emasculation of the Mexican Community, 1845–1900 129
Brian D. Behnken
vi CONTENTS
8 “Failure to Provide”: Mexican Immigration,
Americanization, and Marginalized Masculinities in
the Interwar United States 149
Claudia Roesch
9 Marginal Centers: Martial Masculinities in Late
Meiji Japan 1 71
Denis Gainty
10 The Transnational Origins of Hegemonic Dominican
Masculinity 1 93
Maja Horn
11 Changing Heads and Hats: Nationalism and Modern
Masculinities in the Ottoman Empire and the Republic
of Turkey 217
Katja Jana
12 “Youth of Awo-Omama Will Boycott Their Girls”: Men,
Marriage, and Ethno-Cultural Nationalism in Southern
Nigeria, 1920–1956 243
Saheed Aderinto
Notes on Contributors 2 69
Index 273
Introduction: Masculinities
and the Nation
Pablo Dominguez Andersen
and
Simon Wendt
At the turn of the twenty-first century, feminist scholar Cynthia
Enloe made the oft-quoted observation that nationalist ideologies
tend to stem “from masculinized memory, masculinized humiliation
and masculinized hope.” 1 Focusing on male nationalists in colonial
Algeria, Enloe sought to convey how Algerian anticolonial national-
ists used women as passive symbols to affirm their masculine national
identity while denying them an active role in the country’s process of
nation-building. Her perceptive analysis is part of an ongoing effort
to better understand the intricate interrelationship between gen-
der and the nation. Scholars from various disciplines have studied
this interrelationship for more than three decades. Feminist schol-
ars in particular have demonstrated how male nationalists incorpo-
rated women as symbolic, cultural, and biological reproducers of the
nation into their “imagined communities.” Yet most studies on the
subject tend to focus solely on the tensions between women’s inclu-
sion in nationalist discourse and their exclusion from political deci-
sion making. Others have explored women’s active role in nationalist
movements. Masculinities have received surprisingly little attention in
these publications. 2
This volume provides fresh perspectives on the connections
between gender and the nation by focusing on the role of mascu-
linities in various processes of nation-building in the modern world
between the early nineteenth century and the 1960s. In particu-
lar, it seeks to shed new light on the interrelationship between heg-
emonic masculinities, marginalized masculinities, and nationalism.
2 PABLO DOMINGUEZ ANDERSEN AND SIMON WENDT
Reconsidering this interrelationship requires a more thorough under-
standing of dominant notions of masculinity and nationhood as well
as the role of elites in the process of their construction, but scholars
will also have to go beyond an analysis of such dominant models. As
Thembisa Waetjen has noted, the constructed character and function
of masculinity in people’s attempts to create “imagined national com-
munities” cannot be fully understood if the exclusive focus of analysis
is the subjugation of women or dominant patterns of masculinity. To
understand hegemonic notions of masculinity and the nation, Waetjen
argues, scholars need to explore the tensions and the interrelation-
ships between these dominant ideals and their margins. Studying the
history of gender and the nation from the perspective of marginalized
masculinities means focusing on the conflicts among competing con-
cepts of masculinity as well as on the differences between them. Men
are far from being one ideologically monolithic bloc, and their access
to and interest in nation-building power varies considerably accord-
ing to such factors as race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, or religion. 3 The
period between the early nineteenth century and World War II is of
particular significance for an analysis of these complexities because it
saw the simultaneous emergence of new forms of masculinity as well
as the emergence of modern nation-states. Similarly important, it was
during this period that exclusionary ideologies such as scientific rac-
ism, imperialism, and eugenics became part and parcel of these gen-
dered nation-building processes.
Studying the strained connections between hegemonic masculin-
ity, hegemonic nationalism, and their margins also requires a global
perspective that takes seriously non-Western marginalized masculini-
ties as well as the transnational dimensions of gendered nationalism.
Ronald L. Jackson II and Murali Balaji have rightly lamented “the
pervasiveness of a Western-centric concept of men and masculini-
ties” in studies on men and masculinities. According to Jackson and
Balaji, “Masculinity studies has generally become ghettoized by a
Eurocentric paradigm of whiteness and its Others, the latter most
closely associated with the representations and assumed practices of
black masculinity.” 4 When analyzed in a global context, the boundar-
ies between hegemonic and marginalized masculinities often become
blurred, as local, national, and globalized notions of masculinity
and the nation intersect and amalgamate. Similarly important, trans-
national processes of exchange, translation, and adaptation affect
nationalized masculinities in ways that can lead non-Western men
to adapt or to reject Western models in their attempts to make sense
of the role of manhood in their respective nation-building projects.
INTRODUCTION 3
This volume constitutes the first systematic attempt to study the com-
plex interdependencies between hegemonic and marginalized mas-
culinities in nation-building processes in the United States, Europe,
Latin America, Asia, and Africa between the 1830s and the 1960s. It
reconsiders the multiple ways in which hegemonic masculinities and
nationalisms are constructed, and sheds new light on the agency of
marginalized masculinities as well as the role of transnational dynam-
ics in processes of gendered nation-building.
When reconsidering the various dimensions of nationalized mas-
culinities and masculinized nationalisms, analytical terms and con-
cepts take on enormous significance. Australian sociologist Raewyn
Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity has become the most
influential analytical perspective in masculinity studies over the
past three decades. Hegemonic masculinity, as defined by Connell,
is “the configuration of gender practice which embodies the cur-
rently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriar-
chy, which guarantees (or is taken for granted) the dominant position
of men and the subordination of women.” As Michael Kimmel has
famously demonstrated in his pathbreaking historical study Manhood
in America , hegemonic masculinity typically emerges from the com-
petition between different masculine types and exerts a pervasive
influence on a given culture’s understanding of ideal male behavior.
This dominant notion of masculinity, which can be observed espe-
cially in Western national cultures and tends to be coded as white and
heterosexual, is not only grounded in patriarchal privilege but also
subordinates alternative forms of masculinity such as homosexual or
ethnic masculinities. 5
Critics of Connell’s concept have argued that marginalized mascu-
linities have a greater effect on hegemonic masculinity than Connell
has acknowledged. Demetrakis Demetriou, for instance, has criticized
the dualistic interpretation of hegemonic masculinity and marginal-
ized masculinities and has proposed that this binary can be over-
come by conceptualizing hegemonic masculinity as “a hybrid bloc”
that combines “heterosexual, homosexual, black and white elements
and practices to reproduce patriarchy.” Demetriou argues: “It is its
constant hybridization, its constant appropriation of diverse elements
from various masculinities that makes the hegemonic bloc capable of
reconfiguring itself and adapting to the specificities of new histor-
ical conjunctures.” 6 Another group of critics contend that Connell
neglects the agency of marginalized masculinities. These detractors
charge that she conceptualizes marginalized masculinities largely
as passive victims that are exploited by white heterosexual men.