This dissertation explores the role of masculinity as a component of social
formation. Although research on masculinity has increased considerably since the early
1990s, the topic remains ill-defined and poorly explored. Scholars from a variety of
disciplines have only been able to offer a limited amount of theoretical and practical
insight on the subject primarily because masculinity has too often been conceptualized as
a homogenous foundation that undergirds all social formation.
Contrary to these perspectives, I suggest that masculine identities do not emerge from any single category, but rather, are constituted and reflected through a complex
coherence of cultural and historical markers coming together to produce particular
meanings. More specifically, I feature style as the most theoretically and politically
useful grounding category capable of explaining these complex configurations. Style uses all the aesthetic dimensions of public presentation including dress, trappings,
grooming, posture, body shape, stance, and voice and vocabulary to offer a clearer and
more accurate answer to how identities come together in a struggled over, contested, and
dynamic way and a more clear and accurate explanation for why reductive and overly
homogeneous characterizations of identity are inaccurate and untenable. Utilizing style
as a rhetoric, theory, and method, I analyze two case studies – the evangelical men’s
movement Promise Keepers and the Presidential Style – to demonstrate how identity
functions as a form of social style with important theoretical and political implications.
Thus, this dissertation maps intersecting territories of masculinity, but also femininity,
class, sexual orientation, and ethnic and racial identities in a way that illuminates how identity reinforces and coheres around particular stylistic markers. / text
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/6642 |
| Date | 23 October 2009 |
| Creators | Winslow, Luke A. |
| Source Sets | University of Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | electronic |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works. |
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