Subordinating hegemonic masculinity

Abstract

This article starts with a paradox, namely, the widespread talk of a ‘crisis of masculinity’ alongside the strong endorsement of Bob Connell’s concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’, a term which implies (following Gramsci’s use of hegemony) the opposite of crisis. This produces the article’s first objective, namely, a critical look at the origins of the term hegemonic masculinity and its subsequent usage. This finds it problematic on several grounds: its tendency to be used attributionally (despite Connell’s insistence on the relational nature of masculinity) and, within criminology, focused specifically on negative attributes; its use in the singular, implying it is not a contingent, context-specific notion; and its oversociological view of masculinity. This last problem produces the article’s second objective, namely, to begin to develop a more adequate, psychosocial view of masculinity. It does this in several stages. It starts with two attempts to produce more psychologically complex accounts of masculinity: one by Wetherell and Edley, which argues for the (Lacanian-inspired) idea of a psycho-discursive subject, but fails to produce an authentic inner world; another by MacInnes which distinguishes between sexual genesis (being born of a woman and a man) and sexual difference (being born as a woman or a man). This recognizes an inner world ‘beyond social construction’ (sexual genesis), but fails to address how this is related to particular investments in positions within gender relations (the social ideology of biological sexual difference). The final section attempts to put together the rudiments of a more adequate psychosocial understanding of masculinity, starting with the importance of sexual genesis and the early vulnerabilities and anxieties to which this gives rise, and the unconscious defences necessarily precipitated. Contrasting accounts of the unconscious follow: Freud’s Oedipal, repression-based account in which gender is inherently implicated versus Klein’s pre-Oedipal splitting/projection-based account in which gender is not implicated. The problems with Freud’s gendered account provide the basis for taking the Kleinian route. Thereafter, how to conceptualize the link between (psychic) anxiety and (social) gender is explored through the writings of Chodorow, Layton and (especially) Benjamin. It is on this terrain, I contend, where both fantasy and the social are co-present but irreducible, that a more adequate, psychosocial understanding of masculinity needs to be produced.