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PART TWO

Failing Masculinity at the Club: A Poststructural Alternative to Intoxication Feminism

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Pages 759-767 | Published online: 18 Jun 2015
 

Abstract

With a starting point in women's studies, this article moves on to approach the nightclub as a place of embodiment for both genders by introducing neo-Lacanian insights combined with Baudrillardian concepts. We look at three young drug-experienced men interviewed for a Danish club study (2008–09). The article examines how the risks of losing masculinity, losing sexual opportunities, and losing friends are managed in nightlife. Since masculinity becomes invested in the fantasy of the drug and the utopian party, these young men can be perceived as risking their male position when the party does not work out as planned.

THE AUTHORS

Sidsel Kirstine Harder is currently employed in the field of criminology and social work. Her degree in sociology has centered around youth, gender, and qualitative methods. Her publications have focused on combining neo-Lancanian theory with the empirical field of drugs and sexuality in nightlife.

Jakob Demant holds a PhD in Sociology from University of Copenhagen and is associate professor at Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen. He has published theoretical and empirical papers on the subject of sexualities, alcohol, age, drugs and gender, and he has worked with various theoretical perspectives from Actor-Network Theory, relational space, symbolic interactionism and poststructuralism. His recent works is most related to young adults and drug use in the perspective of social space.

GLOSSARY

Addiction science: The scientific study of addiction. While the notion of addiction refer to a specific psychical-psychological-social drug and/or behavioral dependence, addiction sciences is mostly related to the study of Alcohol and Other Drugs.

Embodiment: Embodiment may be defined as the ways in which cultural ideals of gender in a given society create expectations for and influence the form of our bodies.

Foucoultdian perspective: A focus on power and discourse that inhabit a certain form of subjectivity and with a strong foundation within Michel Foucault's theories. In one way, a rather structural perspective to sociology that described the workings of power on the body and mind. The Foucaultian perspective is another direction in poststructural theory than identified within the neo- Lacanian (see below).

Intoxication feminism: Intoxication feminism (a term developed within this article) has been groundbreaking in the way that it has opened the field of club studies to a gender perspective and further started to discuss the (female) gendered aspects of the club space. This line of research further argues that women have been an undeveloped part of the scientific description of the drug economy. Those identified with this position may not themselves identify with it.

Neo-Lacanian perspective: A perspective that is especially related to the philosopher Slavoj Žižek that points out that, nothing is ever it, which is why we keep consuming. Also Judith Butler is associated with a neo-Lancanian perspective. This perspective will often also be described as a poststructural perspective because of its shared roots in Lacans structural analysis of gender. This perspective has specifically accepted Lacan's notion of the phantasmatic. This concept describes the imaginary process as very central and as such introduces the symbolic as the central level of analysis.

Night-time economy: A sociological–political–econo- mic perspective to examine how night clubs and inner urban drinking zones are constructed. The Night-time-economy has been in the forefront of discussing the impacts of industry and policy in urban developments and has as such added a (much needed) focus on geographical issues within addiction sciences.

Queering: Originates from the term ‘Queer.’ Used as a verb, ‘Queering’ means to reinterpret a work with an focus on sexual orientation and/or to gender, by applying queer theory.

Socio-nautic approach: A concept used to describe a study of drug use where (a) the perceptions and meanings of the drug use is in the foreground, but (b) without using an introspective method. While this concept has been developed recently (Demant et al., Citation2010), a number of central qualitative studies have the same focus on including the social setting as part of understanding the meanings and perceptions of alcohol.

Notes

2 For further development see CitationLacan (2007 [1969-1970], p. 55).

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