Paper short abstract:

Thinking through the fieldwork conducted among men involved in antisexist and gender-aware activism in Italy and Spain, this article explores the possibilities and potentialities for men to follow Deleuzo-Guattarian becoming-woman keeping in mind Braidotti's feminist nomadization of the concept.

Paper long abstract:

The humanist subject, crafted in the modernist European colonial context of the scientific revolution, holds specific features: wealth, freedom, rationality, masculinity, whiteness, self-presence, disembodiment. Epistemological as well as political agency and subjectivity in the modern western context have been shaped according to these co-constitutive feature of the human, on the basis of the body/mind dichotomy and by excluding from the human realm all the differing less-than-human Others: children, women, people of color, animals, the earth, etc (Haraway, 1988). This modernist onto-epistemology gave rise to unequal power relations on a material and discursive level. This paper starts from questioning masculinity's dominant historical features: gender-neutrality, rationalist universalism and disembodiment. The point of departure is thus a critique of the universalistic discourse of politics and/or philosophy and the universalizing posture assumed by what Hartsock (1987) called Abstract Masculinity. Accordingly, thinking through the fieldwork experience of the author conducted among men involved in antisexist and gender-aware activism in Italy and Spain, this article explores the possibilities and potentialities for men to follow Deleuzo-Guattarian becoming-woman (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987), keeping in mind Braidotti's (2002) feminist nomadization of the concept.

Paper short abstract:

In Sweden many white men feel impelled to tell what they believe is the truth about society. This affective strategy might be a response to a threat of losing a more self-evident position as i.e. protector that the nation formerly offered them. Truth-telling has become a way of crafting masculinity.

Paper long abstract:

In my paper, I will explore the concept of parrhesia, as addressed by Foucault in his late works, to understand certain strategies employed by white men in contemporary Sweden. Parrhesia is, in his sense, a special form of public truth-telling that, at the risk of one´s own person and position, had the goal to change the ethos. To change the ethics by telling it like it is. The whistle blower´s activity is an example of parrhesiastic speech.

Some white men, often with sympathies for far right parties, engage in this kind of truth-telling, or at least so it seems. The label "offended white men" (vita kränkta män) has been used to describe those men whose activities consists in i.e. trolling on social media - threatening and abusing women and non-whites/non-Swedes. Their arguments often form a disbelief in the democratic system, and critique of the feminist or multi-cultural versions of society that seems to offer them and their kind of masculinity no space.

Directed at changing society, often with an image of a glorious past in mind, they act in indignation over the "politically corrects" incapacity to accept their world views. They recurrently state that their views cannot be expressed "in this country", although the anonymity on the Internet seem to offer them an arena to do so.

In what ways can these practices of truth-telling be understood as a way of crafting masculinity? And could this way of crafting masculinity be perceived as "active citizenship"?

Paper short abstract:

Masculine subjectivities are embodied and embodiment permeates social presentation and categorization. Through the analysis of the Pride Parades held in the USA in the 70s and now in Spain we will see how masculine embodiment relates to politics, gender meanings and consumption practices.

Paper long abstract:

This proposal analyzes how masculine subjectivities are embodied in complex assemblages that can be better understood through the lens of the posthumanist paradigms. Masculinities can be considered as fictional constructions where bodies play a central (but not exclusive) role. Gendered practices in/through the body are so significant that, as Henwood affirms

"there have been suggestions that males may increasingly be defining themselves through their bodies, in the wake of social and economic changes which have eroded or displaced work as a source of identity, particularly for working-class men" (in Gill 2005: 39).

This work aims at exploring how the posthuman notions of assemblage, embodiment and embeddedness can help us understand the complex relationship between bodies, genders and politics. It also tries to trace continuities and discontinuities in this relationship through the analysis of Pride Parades.

Embodied and embedded masculinities (genders) are related to and constructed by (and for) social visibility, social presentation and social categorization. Through the analysis of the masculine 'styles' of embodiment used in the historial pride parades held in the USA in the 70s and those held now in Spain, we will see if and how embodiment and public visibility can become (expressive) political strategies. Based on visual analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, we will analyse how bodies, genders and sexualities are closely connected to politics, protest and neoliberalism and how this is expressed through the masculine dwellings in public protest.

Paper short abstract:

Finnish hardware store chain sped up its sales in Sweden with a television advertisement campaign, based on clichés of Finland. Swedish comedy series made fun of the original advertisement by picturing Finns as the Swedish other.

Paper long abstract:

Finnish hardware store K-rauta sped up its sales in Sweden with a television advertisement campaign in 2013 that starred Finnish male actor Jarmo Mäkinen. In the opening of the television advertisement campaign half-naked, Mäkinen starts his journey from rustic Finnish sauna in the middle of forest. He talks and walks through the rural landscape of Finland pictured bylakes, rally drivers, heavy music artists and other clichés of Finnish national identity. Finally he makes his way to the Swedish coast by swimming.

In Sweden, the K-rauta ads were popular. They led to sketches in award-winning tv-comedy series Partaj where actor Johan Petterson played the role of imaginary Jarmo, a brutal Finnish man who complains how soft and feminine Swedish men are. The character was so popular that it got later its own tv-series Bastuklubben.

The popularity of the Jarmo figure in Swedish comedy scene tells about two things. First of all it tells that there are strong prejudices of Finns in Sweden that the Jarmo character was able to evoke in Swedish watchers and make fun of. Otherwise the Swedish response would have been less strong. The popularity of the character also tells about the shared history and identity politics of the countries. Finland was part of Sweden more than 600 years and the Finns were the internal other of the Swedish kingdom. By picturing the Finnish men as half-naked, smut talking savages, the Finnish otherness was reproduced and made corporeal to the Swedish watchers in the 21st century.

Paper short abstract:

Based on the first-person narratives collected by Gedik and Birkalan-Gedik with the first generation Turkish guest-workers, we focus on migration, masculinity, and fatherhood, and analyze the subjective accounts of “being” and “dwelling” as men and as fathers in the time of neo-liberalization.

Paper long abstract:

This paper relies on the first-person narratives collected by Gedik and Birkalan-Gedik from the first generation Turkish guest workers, as they "now" remember being a father "then." Focusing on the intersectionality of migration, masculinity, and fatherhood, we analyze accounts of "being" and "dwelling"—as men and as fathers in the time of neo-liberalization. In the "manly habitus" of the narrators, we aim to understand different and creative ways of inhabiting in neoliberal times, especially considering the men and manhood on the "making." We look at how fathers responded to work and family as place as well as issues of time and practices in these places. Yesterday's guest workers are today's aging narrators. How do they remember their ways of being a father, then? How did they dwell at home and at work—as men, as migrants, as workers, and as guests? For example, how father corporality affected their masculinity or vice versa? The first generation guest workers and their way of fatherhood should be analyzed in a greater context—that also includes aspects of displacement and as members of larger communities in Turkey and in Germany. We will share our findings on how first-generation Turkish fathers narrate their experiences in a place home away from home—now and here, and then and there.