ABSTRACT

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.

chapter 1|18 pages

Introduction

Posthumanism and the Man question

part I|51 pages

Masculinities and Affect

chapter 3|11 pages

Masculinities Taking Shape

Affect, Posthumanism, Forms

chapter 4|12 pages

Around and Around

Affective Masculinity in Circulation

chapter 5|14 pages

Unsettling Masculinities Through Affect

Philip Roth's Everyman and the Nemesis of Old Age

part II|66 pages

Anthropocentric Masculinities and Entanglements With Bodies, Nature and Technology

chapter 6|12 pages

Boys' Brains on Porn

Affect, Addiction and Cerebral Subjectivity

chapter 7|14 pages

"Confront[ing] the Suspicion" and "Embodied Embedded"

New Materialism, Relational Ontologies, and Fathering Bodies

chapter 8|14 pages

Challenging Patriarchal, Colonial Patronage in Anthropocentric Engagements with 'Nature Conservation'

Narratives of White Male Game Rangers in Southern Africa

chapter 9|12 pages

Emancipation, Connections and Vulnerabilities Among Bodaboda Men in Kampala

New Materialist Perspectives on the Effects of Infrastructural Limits

chapter 10|12 pages

Destabilising Male Privilege

Explorations of the Posthuman in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and Jeannette Winterson's Frankissstein (2019)

part III|44 pages

Conversations Between Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities and Feminist Engagements With Posthumanism

chapter 11|15 pages

Embrace or Engagement?

Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities and Feminist Posthumanism/New Materialism

chapter 12|15 pages

Materialism, New Materialisms and Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities

Looking Back and Looking Forward, Relationally

part IV|55 pages

Posthuman and New Materialist Ontologies of Becoming for Men

chapter 14|12 pages

Towards Non-Sovereign Masculinities

Complexity, Nature, and New Materialisms

chapter 15|12 pages

Under Construction

Masculinities as a Continuous Process of Assembly and Renovation

chapter 16|15 pages

Postgender Ecological Futures

From Ecological Feminisms and Ecological Masculinities to Queered Posthuman Subjectivities

chapter 17|14 pages

Men Becoming Otherwise

Lines of Flight From 'Man' and Majoritarian Masculinity