Posthumanism and the Man Question: Beyond Anthropocentric Masculinities (Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality)

This book brings together the emerging insights of what posthumanism, new materialism and affect theory mean for ‘the man question’. The contributors to this book interrogate the question of how ‘Man’ as a gendered being is entangled with nature, culture, materiality and corporeality, and they explore ways to unsettle men’s sense of sovereignty to decentre anthropocentric masculinity. Men have to move from the centre of privilege which grants them supremacy before they can open themselves to the decentred, embodied, affective, vulnerable and relational self that is necessary to embrace the posthuman. This book explores the extent to which this is possible. The book will be of interest to academics, students and scholars across a range of disciplines who are engaging with the intersections of feminist studies with posthumanism and new materialism, especially as they relate to critical studies of men and masculinities. Chapters on fathering, pornography, ageing, affect, embodiment, entanglements with technology and nature and the implications of these issues for changing men and masculinities and the politics of critical masculinity studies’ engagement with posthuman feminisms will interest students and academics across these diverse disciplines. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series 4 Title 6 Copyright 7 Table of Contents 8 List of Figures 11 Notes on the Contributors 12 1 Introduction: Posthumanism and the Man question 18 PART I Masculinities and Affect: Transgressing the Gendered Emotion Regime 36 2 The Affective Appeal of Nature for Masculinist Movements 38 3 Masculinities Taking Shape: Affect, Posthumanism, Forms 50 4 Around and Around: Affective Masculinity in Circulation 61 5 Unsettling Masculinities Through Affect: Philip Roth’s Everyman and the Nemesis of Old Age 73 PART II Anthropocentric Masculinities and Entanglements With Bodies, Nature and Technology 88 6 Boys’ Brains on Porn: Affect, Addiction and Cerebral Subjectivity 90 7 “Confront[ing] the Suspicion” and “Embodied Embedded”: New Materialism, Relational Ontologies, and Fathering Bodies 102 8 Challenging Patriarchal, Colonial Patronage in Anthropocentric Engagements With ‘Nature Conservation’: Narratives of White Male Game Rangers in Southern Africa 116 9 Emancipation, Connections and Vulnerabilities Among Bodaboda Men in Kampala: New Materialist Perspectives on the Effects of Infrastructural Limits 130 10 Destabilising Male Privilege: Explorations of the Posthuman in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Jeannette Winterson’s Frankissstein (2019) 142 PART III Conversations Between Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities and Feminist Engagements With Posthumanism 154 11 Embrace or Engagement? Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities and Feminist Posthumanism/New Materialism 156 12 Materialism, New Materialisms and Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities: Looking Back and Looking Forward, Relationally 171 13 Are Posthumanism and Relational Ontologies Necessarily Emancipatory for Masculinity Studies? 186 PART IV Posthuman and New Materialist Ontologies of Becoming for Men 198 14 Towards Non-Sovereign Masculinities: Complexity, Nature, and New Materialisms 200 15 Under Construction: Masculinities as a Continuous Process of Assembly and Renovation 212 16 Postgender Ecological Futures: From Ecological Feminisms and Ecological Masculinities to Queered Posthuman Subjectivities 224 17 Men Becoming Otherwise: Lines of Flight From ‘Man’ and Majoritarian Masculinity 239 Afterword 253 Index 257 This book interrogates the question of how ‘Man’ as a gendered being is entangled with nature, culture, materiality and corporeality and they explore ways to unsettle men’s sense of sovereignty to decentre anthropocentric masculinity.