Abstract
In Postcolonial Masculinities: Emotions, Histories and Ethics, Amal Treacher Kabesh explores Egyptian and British masculinities through various shadows—including emotions, sociocultural narratives, and representations. The author exposes and deconstructs the commonplace assumptions about gender (men being rational, not expressing their feelings) and race. Being the daughter of an Egyptian father and an English mother, she relies on a psychosocial framework to make sense of the complex social–cultural–emotional webs. Through the issues of recognition and identification, she challenges the stereotypical and fix identities as well as the “talk of the enemy, of the threats from within and outside (mainly Muslim young men)” (p. 5).
The monograph addresses the conscious and unconscious messages that structure our lives through social institutions and practices. Treacher Kabesh uses secondary sources rather than interviews. She justifies this methodological choice by a necessity to maintain both closeness and distance in her project: “It is not that I mistrust men and what they will reveal about themselves or not . . . it is more I do not quite trust that I will be able to prise apart their narratives” (p. 9). Thus, the author focuses on negative emotions (anxiety, shame, humiliation, loss, and grief) to provide a deeply historical account of lived experiences in two societies. This account takes the form of “a bridge between dangerous brown patriarchal men and seemingly trouble-free white men” (p. 12).
Chapters two and three set a framework for understanding masculine subjectivity and the modalities of alterity. The main argument is that “male subjectivity is formed through and within love, dependency and intimacy” (p. 63). The recurrent use of the singular is somehow surprising—male subjectivities are described as diverse patterns of practice in the monograph itself.
The chapters four and five explore two groups of emotions: anxiety and fear; humiliation and shame. By interlinking these emotions, she also makes clear the differences: While anxiety is described as “prevalent and insidious” and the “centre of subjectivity” (p. 65), fear is a less generalized state, related to a specific object. Shame and humiliation operate distinctively: “shame involves a reflection upon the self by the self. . . . Humiliation, however, is felt when one is held in comtempt” (p. 85). This contempt has effects on both the person’s sense of self and the nation’s perception of itself. In this fifth chapter, the author uses the theoretical framework of postcolonial studies through which she explores the psychic effects of humiliation and shame: “there is the shame of wanting to be white” (p. 93) and the anxiety about who one is. Treacher Kabesh takes the example of her father, who was both proud to be Egyptian and longed to be European—he married an English woman and then a French woman. Treacher Kabesh investigates the shame of internalized racism but one might ask to what extent this internalized racism differs from the emotions conveyed through the discourses of colonized and/or nonwhite women. As Treacher Kabesh writes, “masculinity is not just bolstered through ethnicity and ‘race,’ but also, crucially, through class, sexuality and femininity” (p. 97).
Chapter six focuses on the dynamics within the family and the unequal power relations between nations. In relation to internalised racism, Treacher Kabesh explores the internalised privilege and the double process of subjectivation as subordination and formation of the subject. She brings together a Foucauldian and Freudian analysis that helps to understand the strength of the hierarchies and their impact on complex relations of powers. The following chapter is a historical account of the aftermaths of the 2011 Egyptian revolution in which the author analyzes the perpetuation of humiliation: “disappointment, loss and repetition.”
The last chapter—“Silences, Spectres and Shards”—is an interesting conceptualization of loss that interlinks the private and public spheres. Treacher Kabesh defines her understanding of ethics through the necessary confrontation with matters of obligation and responsibility. “Loss haunts” (p. 151), she writes. The shards of fathers remain. Following Arendt, she proposes that “political authority is gained through persistent thought and judgement” (p. 154). Unfortunately, this ethical reflection remains abstract and the material conditions of a more effective future are neglected in favor of metaphors.
In conclusion, this stimulating monograph about postcolonial masculinities critically highlights the shared and distinctive aspects of masculinities beyond the force of binary positions. This accessible book will indeed make an important contribution to courses in sociology, gender studies, postcolonial studies, psychoanalytic theory, and cultural studies.