| Abstrakt: |
This article questions the way in which the recent historiography of masculinity has taken 'masculinity' as its logical focal point of research. Although the focus on masculinity can be justified as part of a necessary attempt to mark a category that is characterized by its ability to go unmarked, the stress on bringing out the masculine in the apparently universal can pose problems for a radical historicization of masculinity. To write a history of masculinity through an attempt to mark masculinity easily results in an obliteration of the changing and contradictory nature of the category masculinity, and of the historical character of the category itself. In order to avoid this, the author argues for an 'indirect' history of masculinity that approaches this history by making an outflanking movement. Rather than trying to deconstruct masculinity head on, masculinity's history should be written by detecting the constitution and subsequent transformations of this category in histories that - paradoxically - are not masculinity. |
