Contradictory male/masculine/men's "I"s: the unwriting of men, and the concept of sex

May I start with two observations? First, men’s relations to feminism are problematic—there is always a gap, a gap between men and feminism; second, the gendering of men and masculinities is now recognised. There are several challenges here. The gender challenge concerns how to move from the presumed “genderlessness” of men towards the gender-consciousness of being a man/men. Another challenge concerns the “public/private,” the disruption of dominant narratives of “I” of men and the masculine “I.” There is also a temporal challenge, of moving away from simple linearity of the “I.” Together, these challenges can be seen as moving away from taken-for-granted “gender power-coherence” towards gender power-consciousness. To address these kinds of question means interrogating the uneven non-equivalences of what it means to be male, a man, masculine. This is not easily reduced to sex or gender. Rather gender/sex, or simply gex, helps to speak of such blurrings.

Negotiating a masculine bloc: Jonathan Franzen's The corrections

Contemporary research on masculinities has focused on demonstrating how these are multiple, hierarchical, collective as well as individual, complex and contingent. In this article, I read Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections in the light of such recent theorizations. I propose to focus on the negotiation of what Demetriou has termed a masculine bloc, which is a space in which hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinities coexist and, therefore, a strict duality between both categories is transcended. Next, I suggest focusing on the construction of masculinities as subject positions that are interwoven with different geographical levels. It is my contention that St. Jude, the fictional city for the Lamberts’ home in the Midwest, conforms the symbolic arena in which hegemonic masculinity is staged.

De nuevo sobre la apócope extrema. Observaciones a la hipótesis de Lema (1997)

[es] El objetivo de nuestro artículo es presentar y discutir la explicación que sobre la apócope, tanto normal como extrema, ofrece el romanista mexicano Lema (1997). Lema asume como punto de partida de su hipótesis la ruina del sistema declinativo del latín clásico y la consolidación románica de la íntima asociación entre la vocal final y el género gramatical (/–a/ = femenino, /–o/ = masculino). Él opina que la ausencia de valor morfemático, en lo que respecta a la categoría de género gramatical, de la /–e/ provocó necesariamente su pérdida en posición final absoluta de palabra. Intentaremos mostrar que el razonamiento de Lema no es aceptable por varias razones. Nuestra idea sigue siendo que la correcta explicación de la apócope medieval ha de partir de parámetros fonéticos, en la línea expositiva desarrollada por Lapesa, no morfológicos. [en] The aim of our article is to expose and discuss the explanation offered by Lema (1997) for vocalic apocope in Medieval Spanish. Lema assumes that the starting point is the loss of Classical Latin declension system, which gives rise to the strong Romance association between final vowel and grammatical gender (/-a/ = feminine, /-o/ = masculine). He thinks that /-e/, because of its lack of morphological function as regards to grammatical gender, dropped, in word final position, in all instances, with no exception. We’ll try to show that Lema’s theory is unacceptable for several reasons. On the contrary, we consider that the adequate understanding of Old Spanish apocope depends on phonetic -not morphological- criteria, according to Lapesa’s hypotheses.

Mística y seducción : el affaire Cadière-Girard y el triunfo de la racionalidad ilustrada en Thérèse philosophe

[en] This article aims at examining the theoretic and literary models of sexuality offered in the libertine novel Thérèse philosophe, focusing on its representation of the Cadière-Girard affair. During this scandalous trial that took place in the Parliament of Aix-en-Provence in 1731, Jean-Baptiste Girard (Jesuit priest) was accused by Marie-Catherine Cadière (penitent) of sorcery and sexual abuse, while he claimed these charges were calumnies. We seek to show the development of a rationalist, demystifying, scientific perspective on this affair, characteristic of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, which tended to neutralize and obliterate charismatic religiosity. [fr] Cet article a pour but d’examiner les modèles théoriques et littéraires de la sexualité offerts par le roman libertin Thérèse philosophe, en se concentrant sur la façon dont l’affaire Cadière-Girard y est représentée. Pendant ce procès judiciaire qui a eu lieu au Parlement d’Aix-en-Provence en 1731, Jean-Baptiste Girard (père jésuite) a été accusé par Marie-Catherine Cadière (pénitente) de sorcellerie et abus, ayant reçu elle-même une dénonciation pour calomnies. On cherche à montrer le développement, autour de cette affaire, d’une perspective rationaliste, démystifiante et scientifique, propre des Lumières au XVIIIe siècle, à partir de laquelle la religiosité charismatique se neutralise au point de l’oblitération.