Masculinity as cruel optimism

ABSTRACT

Lauren Berlant has argued, ‘cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing’ [2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, p. 1]. In this paper, I draw on Berlant’s notion of ‘cruel optimism’ and position it alongside the idea of the ‘angry white male’ [Kimmel, 2013. Angry white men: American masculinity at the end of an era. New York, NY: Nation Books]. My contention is to work through the governing opinion of masculinities studies that masculinity itself is seldom achievable; that is, if we believe the writings of masculinity theorists – popular and academic – we always seem to fail at masculinity. One can never be masculine enough. We are told to ‘man up’ and yet the very command does not explain the conditions by which one can ‘man up.’ I understand masculinity as a gendered and affective space in which we can begin to think about cruel optimism. In this paper, I draw on the work of Eve Sedgwick, Michael Kimmel, and Lauren Berlant to argue that masculinity is a kind of cruel optimism insofar as we continue to believe in its possibility, and that this cruel optimism is caught amongst ‘shame,’ ‘fear,’ and ‘dread.’

KEYWORDS:

• Affect
• cruel optimism
• dread
• fear masculinity
• shame
• Lauren Berlant
• Michael Kimmel

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Correction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Jonathan A. Allan is the Canada Research Chair in Queer Theory at Brandon University. He is the author Reading from Behind: A Cultural Analysis of the Anus (University of Regina Press, 2016)

Notes

1. Throughout this article, I am referring to the 1994 version of ‘Masculinity as Homophobia’ published in Theorizing Masculinities, edited by Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman.

2. To be certain, other theoretical models have been used to study men and masculinities, for instance, psychology has played a role in these debates. R. W. Connell, for instance, admits, if not laments, that,

the current popular literature ‘about men’ has an unrelenting psychological focus. Authors speak of archetypes and ‘father wounds,’ of men’s pain and healing; they offer therapeutic programs to resolve crises of emotion and personal meaning. They have little to say about the social dimensions of these issues, and most are startling ethnocentric and class-bound in outlook (1992, 735).

In many ways, it seems true that the Jungian, archetype-bound model has been central to many conceptions of masculinities, both in the popular sphere and the academic. Anthropology has also offered much to the study of masculinities, for instance, Cornwall and Lindisfarne’s Dislocating Masculinity (1994) and more recently sequel volume Masculinities Under Neoliberalism (Cornwall, Karioris, and Lindisfarne, 2016); however, both of these volumes are situated in feminist approaches to anthropological research on men and masculinities.

3. For a valuable critique of ‘inclusive masculinity theory,’ see O’Neill (2015), which has elicited a critical, if confusing, response from Borkowska (2016).

4. A curiosity that remains unconsidered in the work of Anderson is the publication of Freud and Breuer’s work on hysteria, which like Oscar Wilde’s conviction, takes place in 1895. I note this here because Anderson is so fascinated by the rise of homosexuality, by way of Wilde, but seemingly less interested in the rise of hysteria in psychoanalysis, both of which take place alongside one another.

5. In Sex Roles (2014), Mark McCormack and Eric Anderson published, ‘The Influence of Declining Homophobia on Men’s Gender in the United States: An Argument for the Study of Homohysteria,’ which received responses by Meredith G. F. Worthen; Charles Negy; David Plummer; Mike C. Parent, Amber Batura, and Kiyra Crooks. Additionally, McCormack and Anderson published their own rebuttal to, and at times rejections of, the critiques.

6. Rachel O’Neill has questioned the erasure of sexual politics in Anderson’s work, for example, compulsory heterosexuality has seemingly lost its original intent and purpose. O’Neill explains,

For example, Anderson (2009, 36) describes Adrienne Rich’s (1980) influential essay, ‘Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence,’ as an analysis of the regulation of ‘homosexuality.’ In doing so, Anderson effectively reproduces the erasure of lesbianism so carefully documented by Rich; indeed, Rich (1980, 637) specifically objects to the conflation of lesbianism and male homosexuality, stating that lesbian sexuality is ‘usually, and, incorrectly, “included” under male homosexuality’ (2015, p. 108).

7. All quotations from Freud are taken from The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (1953–1974), documented by volume and page number.

8. This point, which is beyond the scope of this paper and merits further study, is important when we consider the work of someone like Jane Ward, who has recently written, Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men (2015), which very much draws on notions of phantasies, if not for the men themselves, then for those studying homosociality as repressed homosexuality.