Syftet med denna uppsats har varit att undersöka hur debatten kring maskuliniteten har sett ut i kinesiska media, om de maskulina och feminina männen presenterades olika samt om maskulinitetsdebatten reflekterar Kinas utmaningar. Det har främst diskuterats fem olika teman med ämnena: Jämställdhet, hälsa, nationalism, utbildning och populärkultur. De olika medierna som diskuterats är Xinhua: New China News Agency, Xinhua tongxunshe 新华通讯社 och Tencent: Tengxun 腾讯. Det finns några skillnader mellan de olika medierna men framförallt finns det många likheter. Slutsatserna är att maskulinitet är något som är befäst i samhället, där det maskulina kan förklaras vara positivt för hälsan, utbildningen och även jämställdheten. Maskulinitet är inte nödvändigtvis bara applicerbar på män, utan maskulinitet är tillämpad för ens individuella personlighet. De maskulina och feminina männen har därför en tydlig hierarkisk ordning där den maskuline är att föredra framför den feminine, vilket tydligt kan ses i debatten angående populärkulturen. Slutligen så är denna debatt väldigt kopplad till en debatt om nationens framtid där maskuliniteten anses vara det som ska lägga grunden till att förverkliga Kinas stora ambitioner. / The purpose of this essay has been to see how the debate about masculinity has taken place in Chinese media, if the masculine and feminine men were represented differently and if you could see Chinas different struggles discussed in the masculinity debate. There have been primarily five different themes that has been discussed: Equality, health, nationalism, education, and popular culture. The different media outlets discussed are Xinhua: New China News Agency, Xinhua tongxunshe 新华通讯社 and Tencent: Tengxun 腾讯. There has been found to be some differences between the two outlets but there are even more similarities. The results show masculinity is something that is woven into society and it is shown that it is positive for many different subjects such as health, education and even equality. It does not have to be applied on men to work; masculinity is mainly part of one’s personality. Therefore, the masculine man is preferred over the feminine since the masculine man have more positive traits, which is clearly shown in the debate about popular culture. Lastly this debate is closely tied to the nation’s future, where masculinity is seen as the driving force to achieve Chinas great ambitions.

This paper sets out to evaluate the influence of Russia’s increasing levels of hegemonic masculinity upon the erosion of the nuclear taboo in relation to increased threatening rhetoric, military preparedness, targeting of nuclear facilities, and withdrawal from existing arms control legislation which indicates potential first-use employment of nuclear weapons against Ukraine. Utilizing a dual research methodology of comparative process tracing and critical discourse analysis, gender theory is applied to assess various critical junctures and political focal points that contributed to a dual-partite path dependency of increasing hegemonic masculinity, coupled with the feminized securitization of Ukraine, and retaliatory masculinity as performed via state-sponsored employment of conflict-related sexual violence and nuclear posturing against Ukraine. The alternative explanation of “Escalate to De-escalate” is critically investigated; however, the empirical analysis provided by this paper suggests that the lack of gender-sensitive evaluation within this explanation fails to adequately account for the effect of increasing domestic hegemonic masculinity within Russia. Increased perception of an existential threat against Russian masculinity was found to contribute to an increased dependency on nuclear weapons. Ultimately, this paper forwards a novel explanatory causal mechanism, providing one of the first analyses of the nuclear taboo in relation to a gender-sensitive lens.

This thesis analyzes the major theme of ‘postcolonial genealogy’ in portraying the African bending under the weight of colonial history in Le vieux nègre et la médaille, Une vie de boy of Ferdinand Oyono and Le Chercheur d’Afriques of Henri Lopes. Being a product of a colonial Genesis, the African character runs behind the colonizer’s mirror through his Civilizing Mission. René Girard’s ‘double bind’ theory explains how this cultural assimilation is, in Le vieux nègre et la médaille and Une vie de boy, a dead end because the colonizer needs a subordinate and not an equal. The cohabitation of a black housewife with the French Commander in Le Chercheur d’Afriques should be seen as simply an allegory of postcolonial Africa’s dependency on the West. The consequences of the feminization of the African continent are enormous in the post-colonial imaginary. While the colonizer had conquered Africa with his Herculean body, in Oyono’s novels, his Fall is obtained through the aesthetics of Bakhtinian ‘rabaissement’ which degrades his ‘grotesque body’ to that of the colonized. The colonizer and the colonized are neutralized and leveled in their perishable bodies, thus, making futile the Civilizing Mission that operated by ranking races. Power is never total. It is always imperfect, and can never destroy a subjectivity that resists it. In Oyono’s novels, the Fall of the colonial Father is also obtained through the inquisitive gaze that the colonized return back to the colonizer, and through their ‘subversive mimicry’ that parodies his codes. In Une vie de boy and Le Chercheur d’Afriques, the ‘son-Father’ relationship between the hero and the colonial Father, is also symbolic of the ‘Africa-West’ rapports. Living under the specter of the Father, the son has to negotiate his survival between weaning and parricide. The biological miscegenation in Le Chercheur d’Afriques is a metaphor of the ‘rhizome identity’ of the postcolonial African who renounces both the Fathers of Negritude and those of the Civilizing Mission. / Thesis (Ph.D, French) -- Queen's University, 2011-06-24 12:43:30.006