Masculinities, Bodies, and Emotional Life

Abstract

This paper explores relationships between men, bodies, and emotional life and the ways emotions are shaped within postmodern masculinities. Exploring examples of ways men narrate their lives, the author questions prevailing notions of hegemonic masculinities that have tended to sustain rationalist traditions of modernity. Tending to treat the emotional and personal as “therapeutic”—in Connell's work framed in opposition to the “political”—makes it difficult to give adequate space to the exploration of cultures, bodies, emotions, and sexualities.

Masculine body ideologies as a non-gynocentric framework for the psychological study of the male body

“…Our bodies are but our temporary abode (Goldenberg, Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2000). This Cartesian equation underscores the supremacy of mind over body and constitutes the former as subject and the latter as a mechanical object (Seidler, 2007;Synnott, 1992).…”

“…A central metaphor underlying the functional body ideology is the body as machine (Murnen & Don, 2012;Seidler, 2007;Synnott, 1992). This male body machine is unfeeling and unyielding and has to be disciplined so that it is able to sustain the pressures of long work hours or punishing excesses of men who "work hard and play hard" (de Visser & McDonnell, 2013).…”

Untitled

“…These ideal types are expressed in cultural imaginaries given material form in, for example, print media (Dawson 1994). Furthermore, the approach strives to acknowledge the potential contradictions in the nexus of masculinities, power and war, recognizing layerings and complexities, thus incorporating recent reformulations of the theory on hegemonic masculinities (Connell 1995;Connell & Messerschmidt 2005;Seidler Jeleniewski 2007).…”

Full Issue

“…Si bien las emociones han sido aludidas en distintos momentos, contextos y por distintos autores (Bourdieu, 2000;Kimmel, 1997;Seidler, 2000Seidler, , 2007, es hasta inicios de los años 80 que parece identificarse un incremento en las investigaciones sobre las mismas (Bericat Alastuey, 2014;Galasinski, 2004). Reconocemos la existencia de una amplia literatura sobre emociones que proviene principalmente de la psicología en la que se hace referencia a los hombres y en muchas ocasiones se compara con las mujeres (Galasinski, 2004;Shields, Garner, Di Leone, & Hadley, 2007), no obstante, los acercamientos no plantean una discusión sobre los hombres en tanto sujetos genéricos.…”