Representations of Internarrative Identity

L. Way

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781137462527
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137462534
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mind & Body in Philosophy
• Index: Psychology

Based upon Ajit Maan's groundbreaking theory of Internarrative Identity, this collection focuses upon redefining self, slave narrative, the black Caribbean diaspora, and cyberspace to explore the interconnection between identity and life experience as expressed through personal narrative.

Part I

Internarrative Identity as Redefining Self

1

Hegemonic Masculinity and Profeminism: Using Internarrative Identity and Intersectionality to Move Beyond Neoliberal Imperialism

Paula Ashe

Amy Kaplan’s The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of US Culture argues that the United States has long fostered a reciprocal, reflexive, and regenerative relationship between imperialism and hegemonic masculinity. She explains: “Nationhood and manhood have long been intimately related in the representation of the dynamic of territorial expansion” (95). This expansion is primarily undertaken by American men, whether as colonial settlers or contemporary soldiers. For example, Robert D. Dean’s Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy suggests that the development of the US Cold War leaders did not take place in military training facilities, but instead was coaxed and created in the sex-segregated spaces of the white male elite such as boarding schools, Ivy League fraternities, and “metropolitan men’s clubs” (13). Within these highly exclusive areas, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and other power players learned to emphasize the embedded imperialist ideologies of hegemonic masculinity. These ideologies shape all levels of the American political landscape.

The interconnected themes of masculinity and imperialism have become modern cornerstones for scholars within the field of American studies. Transnational feminist scholars, activists, and theorists have also scrutinized the ideological and material processes through which masculinity, patriarchy, and heterosexism (among other constructions and categories) reflexively perpetuate imperialism and neoliberalism (see Mohanty et al., Feminism and War: Confronting US Imperialism). While such analyses are integral to understanding the breadth and depth of the unstable categories of nationhood, masculinity, and masculine expression, there is a decided lack of analysis in regards to how individual, non-military men uniquely construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct their identities in relation to imperialist masculinity. In the United States, most scholarship, research, and policy analysis has focused on articulating the macrocosmic expressions of masculinity in relation to imperialism by looking at the large-scale effects of hegemonic masculinist foreign policy.¹ One must also consider, however, the individualized narrative processes that construct gender expression and social identity in relation to state interests. Doing so reveals the covert and tacit methods through which the neoliberal-imperial project is deeply embedded in citizens, even if they do not consciously recognize their complicity in such a project.

My goal in this chapter is to engage Ajit Maan’s internarrative identity theory with a feminist concern for intersectionality in developing an inclusive, anti-imperial, and transnational approach to the profeminist project of interrogating and destabilizing hegemonic masculinity. I define profeminism as an antipatriarchal identity adopted by those whose gender identity/expression is described as male, masculine, or otherwise provides them access to male privilege. I will first provide examples of profeminist groups whose unfamiliarity with the concepts of hegemonic masculinity and intersectionality resulted in the reinforcement of the same hierarchies and disparities that the groups had intended to undermine. Next, I will describe the neoliberal and imperialist concerns embedded in the construction of hegemonic masculinity as observed by Western profeminist scholars. I will also articulate the steps by which narrative and narrativity are vital in the construction of identity with particular regards to gender. Finally, I will utilize internarrative identity theory and intersectionality to illustrate the enormous ontological and epistemological potential embedded within the seemingly contradictory and incongruous nature of the profeminist subject. The occupation of this hybrid space is carefully examined by Ajit Maan in “Post-Colonial Practices and Narrative Nomads: Thinking Sikhism Beyond Metaphysics.” Arguing from the perspective of a Sikh scholar attacking the ever-expanding sense of cultural, social, spiritual, linguistic, and ontological (imagined) dislocation experienced by second- and third-generation children of immigrants, Maan’s internarrative identity theory offers a powerful theoretical tool for profeminist men to dislodge themselves from the web of nationalistic heteronormativity. As Maan states: “One may have multiple selves, roles, ways of being, which differ from place to place, but they are all housed in one body and its memories” (226).

Profeminist founding father Michael A. Messner defines hegemonic masculinity as “a symbolically displayed ‘exemplar’ of manhood around which power coalesces – not just men’s power over women, but power in terms of race, class, and nation” (“The Masculinity of the Governator” 463). Within this universe of symbols, hegemonic masculinity is male, white (usually, though not always), young, able-bodied, heterosexual, and unquestionably dominant over non-Western nations. We have seen examples of this imperialist hegemonic masculinity on display in the wide variety of military conflicts in the Global South where US soldiers are presented as liberators and freedom fighters reluctant to engage in combat. However, leaked documentation regarding the Vietnam War and conflicts in the Middle East by Daniel Ellsberg and Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, respectively, have shown that the US military’s presence is often inspired by neoliberal designs and desires, rarely by the oft-cited rationale of democratization. In “Neoliberalism by Other Means: The War on Terror at Home and Abroad,” Gordon Lafer succinctly describes the dynamic between US military foreign policy and the strategies to establish a transnational free market economy: “War must be understood as a means of advancing the neoliberal agenda of global economic transformation” (2).

Messner documents the development of the profeminist movement in “The Male Sex Role: An Analysis of the Men’s Rights Movement and the Men’s Liberation Movements’ Discourse.” Messner argues that sex role theory was the sociological and psychological perspective utilized to understand sex and gender beyond the essentializing constraints of functionalism, and in doing so, revealed the limitations and impossible standards of 20th-century conceptions of masculinity. Messner writes, “socially symmetrical (but unequal) sex roles trapped men into alienating, unhealthy, and unfulfilling lives” that required men and boys to denigrate women and girls as a primary expression of masculinity (“The Male Sex Role” 260). While theories about gender, sex, and sexuality continued to evolve both inside and outside of the academy, the ontological and epistemological revelations provided by sex role theory acted as a catalyst for the men and women who recognized that, according to Ruth Hartley, “the outward semblance of non-femininity is achieved at a tremendous cost of anxiety and self-alienation” (qtd. in Messner, “The Male Sex Role” 258).

As the feminist movement blossomed into its fullness of the Second Wave, so too did the men’s liberation movement. The first Men and Masculinities Conference was held in 1975, as organized by a group of male University of Tennessee students enrolled in a women’s studies course (“A Brief History of NOMAS”). The Men and Masculinities Conference, or “M&M” as it is called colloquially, was held annually; its attendees were male and female, academics and activists, with the shared goal of developing a national collective that was “[profeminist] and gay-affirmative, while also emphasizing traditional male sex role restrictions, and the need to enhance men’s personal and emotional lives” (“A Brief History of NOMAS”).

The development of this collective was not without its difficulties. According to James Doyle and Sam Femiando’s “The Early History of the American Men’s Studies Association and the Evolution of Men’s Studies,” the Men and Masculinities Conference was held during the summer months, which conflicted with the schedules of academics seeking department funding to attend. This logistical concern embodied an expanding philosophical chasm within the organization: one group wanted to focus on building a stronger, interdisciplinary field of scholarship known as men’s studies, while another group wanted a continued focus on a more grassroots-based, community-oriented type of activism. What happened next depends on who is telling the story.

According to the National Organization of Men Against Sexism (NOMAS), the splitting of the group into two organizations was fairly amicable and NOMAS still “co-sponsors” the Men and Masculinities Conference with the American Men’s Studies Association (AMSA). According to AMSA, “NOMAS’s leadership did not approve of the creation of an independent men’s studies organization nor a separate men’s studies conference,” and what was initially two connected task forces with distinct yet interconnected goals became the current incarnations of AMSA and NOMAS (Doyle and Femiando).

Another distinction between the two groups is their relationship to the concept of profeminism. AMSA declares that, “men’s studies itself, once a strictly [profeminist] discipline, has become more diversified” (Doyle and Femiando). Essentially, while profeminism paved the way for AMSA’s development, AMSA (rightly) encourages scholarship that goes beyond a profeminist framework to examine the lived experiences of various men and their masculinity. In contrast, NOMAS is explicitly profeminist in its commitment to ending sexism, racism, homophobia, and destructive expressions of masculinity (“Statement of Principles”). Both organizations represent (to a somewhat simplified degree) the two approaches to disseminating critiques of masculinity and call for divergent and multiple masculinities: NOMAS engages in community activism and public health issues, while AMSA’s focus is on men’s/masculinities studies in the academy and it provides numerous theoretical considerations to be applied by scholars and activists alike.

Jennifer J. Nelson’s examination of a variety of similar profeminist groups in Canada provides significant, if not surprising, revelations regarding the nature and function of masculinity and subjectivity. As stated in “In or Out of the Men’s Movement: Subjectivity, Otherness, and Antisexist Work,” Nelson found that white privilege, heterosexism, pandering, and disinterest in critiquing socioeconomic privilege resulted in profeminist groups that “exclude[d] or include[d] different groups of men depending on the particular function those groups are imagined to perform” (126). These “functions” were twofold: first, that the values and concerns of hegemonically normative men (heterosexual, white, middle- to upper-class, educated, cisgender, and able-bodied) determined the purpose and goals of the groups’ profeminist organizing, and second, that non-white and/or non-heterosexual men were positioned as Other. Echoing concerns posited by post-colonial theorists, Nelson frames “Othering” as a process used to reinforce an ontological hierarchy while superficially appearing to challenge it. Relegating non-normative men to the position of Other allows normative profeminists

the denial of complicity in practices of domination and the profession of antiracist, antisexist sentiments. Even where forms of complicity are acknowledged, there remains a resistance to examining how one’s very identity rests on notions of Otherness that would be impossible in the absence of a web of systems of domination.

(Nelson 127)

Nelson compares the acts of these men’s groups as repeating the same errors in theory and practice as those normative feminists who consider the concerns of poor women, brown and black women, indigenous women, trans-women, lesbian and queer women, and women with a disability as secondary to “real” issues (130). By not recognizing privilege and the interdependency of one type of oppression to another, attempts to raise awareness become over-simplified gestures that bolster superficial solutions to systemic problems. For example, a group of profeminists in Nelson’s study presented information to young children about violence toward women without mentioning the influences of race and/or class (127). While such interventions appear antisexist, they present a heteronormative and patriarchal narrative of violence (i.e., men do violence to women), isolated from multiple factors that contextualize violence as both local and institutional. Such an explanation of intimate partner violence also glosses over the complicity of law enforcement officials, judges, and other agents of the state in the continuance of physical, mental, emotional, social, sexual, and financial abuse.

Certainly, it would be a challenge for any educator or facilitator to present such complicated concepts clearly to a group of young children. However well-meaning an idea, one decontextualized presentation about violence against women (it is not stated if the group members followed up with the children) indicates several uncritical assumptions. Nelson explains: “Violence in different communities was not considered, and seemingly generic acts of violence were not considered enactments of a particular kind of masculinity to which [w]hiteness, dominance over men of other races, is central” (127). For profeminist organizing and activism to provide transformative spaces that critique institutionalized oppression, an intersectional and self-reflective perspective is crucial. Such an approach would result in more productive and engaging activism, as normative constructions of identity would be thoroughly interrogated.

For social justice activists and scholars, the dichotomy of hegemonic masculinity and neoliberal imperialism can seem to be an immovable juggernaut – one with endless resources, capital, and agents. Those subjects whose identities embody, complicate, and proliferate the rubrics of hegemonic masculinity and neoliberal imperialism are certainly shaped by external social institutions that support and reward such constructions of the self. There is an internal narrative dimension to identity formation that must be considered as well. In “The Constitution of Narrative Identity: A Network and Relational Approach,” Margaret D. Somers further describes how “ontological narratives” enable social actors to “define” themselves and concomitantly “know what to do” (618). Or, in other words, the process of ontology (of “being” or “becoming”) creates an epistemology or way of knowing. Profeminist men embody the tenets of “profeminism” not only in their behavior and speech, but also in their ways of thinking and interpreting the world. However, that interpretation is limited by the nationalist, patriarchal structure of contemporary American life. There is no way to escape this structure, but one can simultaneously occupy locations of privilege (imperialist, heteronormative, masculinity) and marginalization (profeminist, anti-imperialism).

In “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept,” R.W. O’Connell and James Messerschmidt provide an in-depth description of hegemonic masculinity as an influence on individual experiences as well as institutional norms:

Hegemonic masculinity was not presumed to be normal in the statistical sense; only a minority of men might enact it. But it was certainly normative. It embodied the currently most honored way of being a man, it required all other men to position themselves in relation to it, and it ideologically legitimated the global subordination of women to men. Men who received the benefits of patriarchy without enacting a strong version of masculine dominance could be regarded as showing complicit masculinity. It was in relation to this group, and to compliance among heterosexual women, that t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Contributors
• Part I: Internarrative Identity as Redefining Self
• Part II: Internarrative Identity and Slave Narrative
• Part III: Internarrative Identity and Black Caribbean Diaspora
• Part IV: Internarrative Identity in Cyberspace
• Index