Abstract
The book Manhood Acts: Gender and the Practices of Domination examines those social acts that make a man, even if “manhood acts” is, or perhaps not, a pun. It begins with the chapter “Gender theory after Auschwitz,” recalling Theodor Adorno’s 1967 essay, “After Auschwitz,” and discussion of the imperative of not repeating the Holocaust, causally linked by the author to men’s domination. However, while Schwalbe is, like Edward Saïd, inspired by Adorno, he is certainly no poststructuralist.
The second chapter, “The masculinities industry,” is perhaps of most interest for readers of this journal, and with limited space I focus on this rather than other chapters. Here, Schwalbe analyzes the alleged deradicalization of (US) “profeminist men’s studies” and (US) “critical studies on men and masculinities” (CSMM), along with critique of the concepts of masculinity/ies, multiple masculinities, as in Connell’s Masculinities, and hegemonic masculinity, and how they have been formulated in contemporary masculinities theory as part of broader theorizing of gender. Masculinity and hegemonic masculinity are seen as concepts often functioning more as description than explanation. In particular, he critiques Connell and Messerschmidt’s update and extension of the concept of hegemonic masculinity in Gender & Society 2005, especially their suggestion that these configurations can be “enacted by people with female bodies” (p. 39). The author argues that the concepts of masculinity and hegemonic masculinity are not necessary to analyze how “males construct and use a gender order to achieve dominance.… we could study men’s oppressive practices … without relying on the muddlesome concept of masculinity, whether construed as trait or practice.… But Connell and Messerschmidt can’t go down this road because it would mean losing the concept they have set out to rescue” (pp. 37–38). Instead, Schwalbe proposes treating “masculinity as an ideological illusion—a dominant-group myth to be deconstructed and dissolved” (p. 47), stating in summary “the concept of masculinity as a configuration of practice has turned out to be an analytic and political dead-end” (p. 47). While sympathizing with the focus on men and dominance, this stance is too absolutist and runs the risk of reproducing racism, homophobia, and other oppressions, not least as the masculinity approach has developed very differently in different parts of the world.
This following chapter has a unusual form, comprising 139 far-ranging theses on manhood acts. This emphasis on acts might fit well with those approaches to gender and sexuality that highlight doing or performativity. Schwalbe sees such orientations to gender as part of the picture, but on their own limited, even dangerous, in not attending to hidden workings of the gender order (p. 6). The next three chapters are more substantive examinations of and critiques against: “drone mentality” and imperialism, and presumably imperial(ism) acts (chapter 4); “capitalism and the compulsions of manhood,” including both the patriarchal dividend in capitalism and the claim that capitalism needs men (p. 106; chapter 5); and provocatively and somewhat against the grain what he calls “transgender liberalism” (chapter 6). The final chapter proposes the domination continuum, contrasting futures founded in feminism, and those based on “barbarism” leading to Armageddon. Throughout, exploitation, oppression, violence, militarism, and economic power are emphasized.
In trying to interpret the specific contributions of the concept of manhood acts, and its key differences from the masculinities/hegemonic masculinity framework, I see six elements: the link of manhood to males; prioritizing of man/men over masculinity; singularizing “manhood” and pluralizing acts, rather than pluralizing masculinities (which as noted is heavily critiqued); preference for “acts” over (configurations of) practice(s); highlighting direct dominance rather than dominance through hegemony; and basing manhood in the invention and affirmation of men. More generally, the author confronts five main sets of opponents: mainstream noncritical social science, advocates of postmodern performativity, masculinities theorists, intersectionality theorists, and transgender studies scholars. Sometimes representations of the objects of critique are oversimplified, as when characterizing performativist postmodernists as “treating gender as a matter of fun choices about how to express oneself … [that] disconnects gender from domination” (p. 15). He is not shy in taking on many targets. I don’t know whether to be relieved or insulted that I’m not given the treatment, beyond one kindly positive citation (p. 38) and an inadvertent misspelling of my name.
The book is very much orientated to the United States, referring to “America(n)” throughout. It shows less awareness of debates “elsewhere,” even if the author seeks to locate critique in time and place. CSMM look very different in different parts of the world, in their politics, conceptualizations, and variable presence and impact of feminist women’s research. In the Nordic region and Central and Eastern Europe feminist, women are at the forefront of CSMM.
Finally, while Schwalbe’s background is in pragmatism, social psychology, and microsociology, he seems to have moved a long way to a qualified structuralism. Seen thus, the engagement with both the deradicalization thesis, the corporeality of men (and indeed different masculinities), and the power of the economic, still oddly neglected in some “critical” texts, is welcome. Overall, this is an important book to read, even with its limitations of overstatement, and its guarantee to annoy quite a few.