Epilogue: ‘What Man has made of Man' 1

In her recent novel Manly Pursuits, in part about ‘Darwinism … imperialism and “the white man's burden”, and sexual ambivalence in a repressive era’, ² Ann Harris has drawn portraits of fin de siècle male characters depicting a range of European masculinities: Cecil Rhodes, ruthless Africa-obsessed homosexual; Alfred Milner, heterosexual ethnocentric-driven imperialist, and Francis Wills, gentle nature-enthralled paedophile. Masculinity comes in all shapes, sizes and forms! Nowhere is this point made more explicitly, incidentally, than in Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies, a collection by A. Cornwall and N. Lindisfarne. These sample chapter titles give a flavour of the collection as a whole, ‘Gendered Identities and Gender Ambiguity among Trevestis in Salvador, Bahia’, ‘Variant Masculinities, Variant Virginities: Rethinking “Honour and Shame”’ and ‘Missing Masculinity? Prostitutes’ clients in Alicante, Spain’. ³