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Title: Male Matters: Masculinity, Anxiety, and the Male Body on the Line by Calvin Thomas ISBN: 0-252-06500-X Publisher: University of Illinois Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (2 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Another postmodern hoax?
Comment: Not my review, but FYI, Barbara Epstein writes in New Politic: Now tha tpostmodernism has lost its aura of invincibility people have begun to laugh, and it does not seem likely that the laughter will stop anytime soon. For instance, in a review of a book entitled Male Matters: Masculinity, Anxiety, and the Male Body on the Line, by Calvin Thomas (University of Illinois Press), reviewer Daniel Harris writes, ``In the fast-paced intellectual environment of postmodern cultural studies, the line between ostensibly serious scholarship and outright parody is not just thin but, in many instances, nonexistent, as became embarrassingly evident last month to the editors of one of the house organs of contemporary theoretical discourse, Social Text....One can only hope that Sokal's brilliant act of intellectual terrorism...will be the first of many similar practical jokes. If even a handful of the numerous critics of cultural theory did their part, postmodern journals and academic presses would be swamped with fraudulent manuscripts that would shatter the self-confidence of the entire field. This vast industry would collapse into a state of total disarray were its tightly-knit ranks to become infiltrated by jargon-spewing moles posing as the real McCoy, double agents cloaked in the uniform of the American university's elitist new brand of paper radicals.'' Harris goes on to speculate that the book under review must be another hoax. How else, he asks, can one explain the bewildering statements that appear in this book, such as: ``The excrementalization of alterity as the site/sight of homelessness, of utter outsideness and unsubiatable dispossession figure(s) in...Hegel's metanarrational conception of Enlightenment modernity as the teleological process of totalization leading to absolute knowing.'' ... ``The anal penis...function(s) within a devalued metonmymic continuity, whereas the notion of the phallomorphic turd functions within the realm of metaphorical substitution.'' ... ``If the bodily in masculinity is encountered in all its rectal gravity, the specular mode by which others become shit is disrupted.'' Harris suggests that if Thomas wants to become an academic success he should follow Sokal's example and proclaim his book to be a prank. Only slightly less tongue in cheek, he speculates that what he describes as the central metaphor of this book, the comparison of writing to "productions" of the body, may be apt in a field in which jargon is used as an offensive weapon, to score points against competitors in the battle for tenure and prestige.
Rating: 5
Summary: Thomas Cuts Open the Masculine Constitution
Comment: Calvin Thomas doesn't gloss over the anxieties of men at the end of the 20th century, rather, I think he gets to the roots of those anxieties and even suggests them as an identity for men. His introspection digs to the heart of what it is that is troubling: what are men, and what have men constructed?
Thomas' book is a thrilling trip into the sometimes silly, often destructive and dangerous masculine mindset. I strongly recommend this text for men who are willing to explore their own discomfort with honesty and confront the fears and fictions they've created for themselves.
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Title: The Good News of the Body: Sexual Theology and Feminism by Lisa Isherwood ISBN: 0814737684 Publisher: New York University Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 2000 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: Body Culture and Society: An Introduction by Philip Hancock, Bill Hughes, Elizabeth Jagger, Kevin Paterson, Rachel Russell, Emmanuelle Tulle-Winton, Melissa Tyler ISBN: 0335204139 Publisher: Open University Press Pub. Date: 29 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African American Health Issues and a Womanist Ethic of Care by Emilie Townes ISBN: 0826413684 Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group Pub. Date: 01 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Honoring the Body: Meditations on a Christian Practice by Stephanie Paulsell, Dorothy C. Bass ISBN: 078794856X Publisher: Jossey-Bass Pub. Date: 07 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Anchoring Your Well Being: Christian Wholeness in a Fractured World by Howard Clinebell ISBN: 0835808211 Publisher: Upper Room Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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