ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on power dynamics within the family, the power relations between men, and the power exerted by the State, and provides an exploration of the unequal power relations between various nations. It outlines psychoanalytic framework, and especially a Freudian-Lacanian one, the phallus is an illusion. It is, moreover, a necessary fiction required to enter the symbolic order of the masculine. The socio-political edifices are perhaps more vulnerable than before and it has socio-political consequences. Hegemonic masculinity is implicated and invested in gaining and maintaining power. Whatever variations exist in relation to identity, power is the driving force at the centre of masculinities. The issue is that the attempt to gain power takes place within unequal power relations, and within unequal definitions and understandings of what constitutes hegemonic masculinity. Silverman elaborates a profoundly Lacanian framework in her analysis of male subjectivity and argues throughout her monograph that desire and fantasy bind and are 'the essence of the ego function'.