“Fathers” and “Daughters”

In trying to position this work on fathers and daughters into the context of Reis and Grossmark’s creative and bold reconsideration of masculinities, fathering, and heterosexual masculinities in particular, I Šnd I have some new terms to set into quotation marks, to interrogate, and to consider. ‡ese terms, once signifying stable, essential, deŠnable experiences and traits are now considerably less clear-cut and reliable. Yet, I would argue, and this book clearly makes this argument, these terms can still be useful and important work in or understanding of human subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Gender and parenting terms within psychoanalysis occupy what Janine Puget has termed “radioactive” space. Masculinity, fathering, and heterosexuality are category terms and they come to constitute psychic, interpersonal, and intersubjective experiences that draw in and magnetize profound forces of culture, ideology, and personal meaning. We cannot step fully outside these categories and yet, mercifully, they are always under revision and reconstruction.