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The Representation of Masculinity in Crisis: an Interrogation of Its Roots and Reasons

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The Representation of Masculinity in Crisis: an Interrogation of Its Roots and Reasons THE REPRESENTATION OF MASCULINITY IN CRISIS: AN INTERROGATION OF ITS ROOTS AND REASONS by Jason Stefan Lieblang A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures University of Toronto Copyright by Jason Stefan Lieblang 2015 The Representation of Masculinity in Crisis: An Interrogation of Its Roots and Reasons Jason Stefan Lieblang Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures University of Toronto 2015 Abstract This dissertation develops out of the disturbing realization that masculinity is pervasively represented as ‘in crisis.’ It argues that both ‘masculinity’ and ‘crisis’ are discursive constructs, which have been functioning in unison since the late nineteenth century to bolster male hegemony. My introductory chapter offers an explication of how discursive domination functions at the level of signification. It explains, and applies to numerous examples, the method of discourse analysis developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, and also engages with Reinhardt Koselleck’s critical history of the concept ‘crisis,’ which has recently been further developed in the work of Janet Roitman. In chapter two I examine the roots of the ‘masculinity in crisis’ discourse in the European fin de siècle. This search proceeds by way of readings of Rémy de Gourmont’s La Dissociation des Idées, Daniel Paul Schreber’s Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken, and Otto Weininger’s Geschlecht und Charakter. Chapter two also examines the crucial role that the representation of -ii- women played in defining masculinity as ‘in crisis’ during the period. My third and fourth chapters offer in-depth readings of several literary and cinematic works, these showing that while ‘masculinity’ being represented as ‘in crisis’ is a constant, the forms and tropes employed in this representation vary over time and are geographically contingent. I focus in chapter three on Arthur Schnitzler’s stories Leutnant Gustl and Andreas Thameyers letzter Brief, prose works within which contemporaneous psychological, gender and class discourses converge in protagonists representative of bourgeois Austrian masculinity ‘in crisis.’ Chapter four argues by way of analyses of the canonical Weimar era films Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari and Die Straße as well as Ernst Toller’s Heimkehrer drama Hinkemann that the sudden postwar domination of the discursive field by visual forms of media – what Martin Jay calls ‘a scopic regime’ – resulted in ‘masculinity in crisis’ becoming increasingly spectral – taking on ghostly and/or monstrous forms – and spectacular, namely as an event staged for the voyeuristic gaze. In my conclusion I pursue answers to why ‘masculinity’ has been for over a century, and more importantly continues to be, pervasively represented as ‘in crisis.’ -iii- Acknowledgements I would first and foremost like to thank my advisor, Dr. John Noyes, for his outstanding guidance, especially when it mattered most. Heartfelt thanks are likewise due to Dr. Gaby Pailer and Dr. Geoff Winthrop-Young for their patience and unflinching support; and also to Dr. John Zilcosky, Dr. Willi Goetschel and Dr. Michael Boehringer for the most helpful comments each provided. Matt Tomkinson lent his eyes to the final drafts and so saved me valuable time when time was of the essence. I am grateful, Matt. My wife Jessica England, a person much wiser than me, gave me invaluable advice, and loving support, throughout the very long process of writing this dissertation. She continues to offer such advice and support, even now that it is finally finished. For that I am blessed indeed. -iv- THE REPRESENTATION OF MASCULINITY IN CRISIS: AN INTERROGATION OF ITS ROOTS AND REASONS 0. Prologue: Behold ‘The Man’ 1 0.1. 2014 1 0.2. 1924 2 0.3. Thesis 6 1. A Critical Introduction to the Nature and Functioning of ‘Masculinity in Crisis’ 9 1.1. The Current Crisis of Masculinity? 10 1.2. The Deceptively Simple Biology of Men 18 1.3. The Biologization of Sexuality 21 1.4. ‘Crisis’ Becomes Historico-Philosophical Concept 29 1.5. From Language to the Performance of Male Identity 36 1.5.1. Laclau, Mouffe and a Sustainable Fishing Net 42 1.5.2. ‘Masculinity-Crisis’ As Nodal Point 48 2. The Stabilization of Masculinity as ‘in Crisis’ at the End of the Nineteenth Century 50 2.1. Le fin 50 2.2. The Fin de Siècle’s Eschatological Impulse 53 2.3. Rémy de Gourmont and “The Impossibility of Disassociating Certain Ideas” 55 2.4. An Important Etymological Observation Regarding the Emergence of ‘Crisis’ as ‘Instability’ 62 2.5. Beware die Aufschreibesystem: the Discursive Disciplining of Judge Schreber’s Memoirs 65 2.6. A Point of Pre-emptive Clarification 75 2.7. Sexual Anarchy! 78 -v- 2.8. The Role of Women in the ‘Crisis of Masculinity’ during the Fin de Siècle 87 2.9. Otto Weininger: ‘Masculinity in Crisis’ As Total Explanation 99 3. Honour’s Lost, All’s Lost! – Austrian Masculinity at the Fin de Siècle in Two Works by Arthur Schnitzler 108 3.1. The Anachronistic Habitus of the Austrian Officer and Its Consequences for Lieutenant Gustl (Or: Old Habitus Dies Hard) 110 3.2. “Ein Versehen ist leicht zu vergeben”… 131 4. Representing ‘Masculinity in Crisis’ in (the) Light of the Scopic Regime 149 4.1. What Does Not and What Does Change 151 4.2. The Scopic Regime and An Appropriate Form of Occularcentrism 153 4.3. Benjamin and Krakauer: A Prescient Social Constructivist Film Criticism 157 4.4. The Aporia of Impotency at the Heart of Karl Grune’s Die Straße 166 4.5. From Castration to Spectacle / from Der Sandmann to Dr. Caligari 175 4.6. A Note on the Broad Theoretical Applicability of the ‘Male Gaze’ 183 4.7. The Gaze and the Spectacle of Castration in Ernst Toller’s Hinkemann 185 5. Conclusion: Why Masculinity is Represented As in Crisis 195 5.1. The Perpetual Crisis of Masculinity: A Dubiously Dominant Discourse 195 -vi- 5.2. The ‘Crisis’ Discursive A Priori 198 5.3. The ‘Masculine’ Discursive A Priori 201 5.4. The First and Last Word 207 Works Cited 211 -vii- 1 0. Prologue: Behold ‘The Man’ 0.1. 2014 Two blocks west of where I sit hangs a large advertisement above the French Connection boutique—the image dominates one of the busiest shopping blocks in Canada’s largest city.1 "This is the woman," the poster’s left half proclaims in lower cased Helvetica font. A young female model, dressed all in white, dances, awash in light. Beautiful, normatively feminine, Caucasian, glamorous and mildly sexualized—her lips slightly open—she stares confidently, directly back at the viewer. She embodies common female fashion representational strategies since the 1970s—embodies the stereotype of young, sexy, confident femininity. But she isn't the point, at least not in and for herself. I would argue that the viewer is supposed to focus on the poster’s right half, which proclaims in bolded capital letters that: "This is the man." The identity of "the man," however, is explicitly unclear. There is a man there—he is bearded, this we can tell; and, perhaps he has broad shoulders. But posed against an undefined black background that blends fluidly into the darkness and that obscures his face almost completely, enveloped in a fur-lined parka that makes discerning his physical stature at best conjecture, we ultimately can say no more. A poster asserting so explicitly that "this is the man" ultimately asserts his lack of identity all the more forcefully. 1 Canada’s oldest and largest department store—the Hudson’s Bay—is directly opposite, situated at the epicentre of the city Canadians refer to as “the centre of the universe.” 2 0.2. 1924 A beautiful ‘New Woman,’ dressed in a dark purple silk summer dress, her blonde hair cropped in a pageboy bob, the fashion of the day, stands, smiling broadly, looking down through the viewfinder of what is likely a Kodak Brownie Model B. (Agfa, Germany’s photographic company, doesn’t produce cameras for a few years yet.) A slim, tanned man sits below and behind her; he wears a fashionable, olive green, belted swimsuit. With his arms crossed, he stares blankly off into the distance. 2 In this poster’s foreground sits a realistically-rendered rectangular box of Agfa Rollfilm, which our photographer has, presumably, loaded into her camera. The image's background is dominated by a large yellow sun umbrella. The only text, beyond that on the film box, is the company’s name rendered in its customary sans-serif font, in black, towards the top right corner of the poster. The days of the Sachplakat, the dominant style in German prewar poster 2 J.G. Engelhard, Werbeplakat für den Agfa-Rollfilm, 1988, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Web, 8 November 2014. 3 advertising and which featured a large, centered and stylized depiction of the product – and little else – are over.3 A transition in German advertising aesthetic is well underway; and this Julius Ussy Engelhardt poster, with its carefully rendered perspective, accurately realized shadows, and hair and dress ruffled by the breeze, clearly embodies it. The woman, and the man, matter here, then. They signify. On behalf of the product, certainly – but they signify much else besides. Tellingly, there is no sign of the wind's influence on the man. His pose is statuesque, and his general passivity contrasts strikingly with his active partner. That she is using the handheld camera implies her, and by association female, mobility. She can shoot when, and where, she likes. The contrast between her and his facial expression further emphasises this active-passive contrast: his physiognomy – blank. Hers, by contrast – she is laughing – expresses great pleasure.
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