De/Stabilizing Heterosexuality in the Pardoner’s Tale

The paper sets out to argue that the Pardoner’s atypical sexuality is subversive of the medieval gender matrix and that his challenge to heteronormativity is ultimately encompassed and disarmed. Chaucer presents the Pardoner as a genderly ambiguous Other who does not fit the compulsory pattern of the two biological sexes. In its pronounced otherness and difference, his queer body disrupts the medieval normative order. Paradoxically, however, his difference re-inscribes that very order and reinforces the institutional status quo. His transgressive potential is met by containment and heterosexual hegemony is eventually re-established and re-affirmed.

The Drama‐Free Performance of Authentic Friends: Exploring how New Zealand men make sense of their friendships

<p>In contemporary New Zealand, the cultural tropes surrounding the ‘good kiwi bloke’ and his ‘mates’ might seem as solid and steadfast as conceptions of kiwi mateship itself. However, the stability of masculinities and femininities is considered in this thesis as an illusion enabled by ongoing reflexive accomplishment, and I focus on how that illusion is achieved through the discursive construction of intimacies within friendships. A synthesis of ethnomethodological and poststructuralist theory informs the discourse analytic approach taken -­ critical discursive psychology. Drawing on insights from discursive psychological research, particularly Margaret Wetherell’s work, I apply the tools of this method to data collected from focus groups. Although my analysis is sociological, I engage with a wide range of theoretical claims from diverse disciplines in discussing my findings. I find that participant justifications for not engaging in some intimacies are constructed though interpretive repertoires that de‐value women’s friendship relating. However, I point to the re-­signification of intimacies relating to emotional self-­‐disclosing in men’s friendships; the task of aligning these ‘traditionally’ feminine intimacies with heteromasculine identity is achieved through an interpretive repertoire of authenticity. An authenticity repertoire is bolstered by the reproduction of understandings that uphold ideal friendships as being based on non-­obligatory interactions, which are carried out by rational, autonomous subjects. I suggest that these understandings of men’s friendships foster a sense of ontological security, but that they inhibit greater responsiveness between friends. The ways in which intimacy of friendships are mediated by discourses of sexism and heterosexism are also explored. The data indicates that mobilisation of sexist discourses functions to build shared masculine identity, with the subtleties of humour working to obscure prejudiced content. Elsewhere, humour is used to manage intimacies in friendships, via an ambiguous ‘homo-­play’ repertoire, where the contingent linking of sex and gender is exposed. I highlight the complex and context-­specific ways repertoires are used and question tendencies within studies of masculinities to map out typologies of masculinities, such as ‘softer’ or ‘orthodox’ masculinities, which are often attached to ‘types’ of men. Overall, I suggest that the careful management of talk about men’s friendships generally supports the ideological thrust of the current gender order, in line with Judith Butler’s conceptions of heterosexual hegemony. However, simultaneously, the relentless accounting in­‐talk around what constitutes men’s friendship is indicative of the need to continually perform (heterosexual) man‐friend, highlighting the intrinsic vulnerability of heterosexual hegemony.</p>

The Drama‐Free Performance of Authentic Friends: Exploring how New Zealand men make sense of their friendships

<p>In contemporary New Zealand, the cultural tropes surrounding the ‘good kiwi bloke’ and his ‘mates’ might seem as solid and steadfast as conceptions of kiwi mateship itself. However, the stability of masculinities and femininities is considered in this thesis as an illusion enabled by ongoing reflexive accomplishment, and I focus on how that illusion is achieved through the discursive construction of intimacies within friendships. A synthesis of ethnomethodological and poststructuralist theory informs the discourse analytic approach taken -­ critical discursive psychology. Drawing on insights from discursive psychological research, particularly Margaret Wetherell’s work, I apply the tools of this method to data collected from focus groups. Although my analysis is sociological, I engage with a wide range of theoretical claims from diverse disciplines in discussing my findings. I find that participant justifications for not engaging in some intimacies are constructed though interpretive repertoires that de‐value women’s friendship relating. However, I point to the re-­signification of intimacies relating to emotional self-­‐disclosing in men’s friendships; the task of aligning these ‘traditionally’ feminine intimacies with heteromasculine identity is achieved through an interpretive repertoire of authenticity. An authenticity repertoire is bolstered by the reproduction of understandings that uphold ideal friendships as being based on non-­obligatory interactions, which are carried out by rational, autonomous subjects. I suggest that these understandings of men’s friendships foster a sense of ontological security, but that they inhibit greater responsiveness between friends. The ways in which intimacy of friendships are mediated by discourses of sexism and heterosexism are also explored. The data indicates that mobilisation of sexist discourses functions to build shared masculine identity, with the subtleties of humour working to obscure prejudiced content. Elsewhere, humour is used to manage intimacies in friendships, via an ambiguous ‘homo-­play’ repertoire, where the contingent linking of sex and gender is exposed. I highlight the complex and context-­specific ways repertoires are used and question tendencies within studies of masculinities to map out typologies of masculinities, such as ‘softer’ or ‘orthodox’ masculinities, which are often attached to ‘types’ of men. Overall, I suggest that the careful management of talk about men’s friendships generally supports the ideological thrust of the current gender order, in line with Judith Butler’s conceptions of heterosexual hegemony. However, simultaneously, the relentless accounting in­‐talk around what constitutes men’s friendship is indicative of the need to continually perform (heterosexual) man‐friend, highlighting the intrinsic vulnerability of heterosexual hegemony.</p>

Assumption of the Myths of Romantic Love: Its Relationship With Sex, Type of Sex-Affective Relationship, and Sexual Orientation

Romantic love promotes and lays the foundation for the development of hegemonic affective sex relationships, guiding the normative ways of feeling and experiencing love. This way of conceiving love is an intrinsic part of women's subordination, and it entails a greater tolerance for situations of violence in sex-affective relationships in which the exercise of asymmetric power relations between men and women is legitimized. With the current advent of the postmodern stage, a wide variety of dissident (non-heterosexual) sexual orientations with heterosexual hegemony have been given greater visibility and legitimacy, and new ways of relating to sex affectively have emerged initially opposed to traditional romantic discourse, the fundamental pillar of monogamy. The aim of the present work was to study whether these different ways of linking us and understanding affective sex relations marked a significant difference with respect to the heterosexual monogamous hegemonic model in the assumption of the mythified ideas of romantic love. Therefore, we studied the relationship between sex, sexual orientation, and the type of sex-affective relationship (monogamous or non-monogamous by consensus) in the assumption of the myths of romantic love. For this purpose, an instrument that showed appropriate psychometric properties was created, and a cross-sectional study was carried out with a sample of 1,235 people who completed a self-administered online questionnaire. The results indicated that there were no significant differences according to sex, but there were differences in sexual orientation and type of relationship. It may be concluded that a person, regardless of sex, heterosexual or homosexual, monogamous or who has never had affective sex relations, will have a significantly greater probability of assuming the myths of romantic love than a person with a sexual orientation other than heterosexual or homosexual and who is in a non-monogamous consensual relationship.

The Rallying Call to Decolonize

When Okwui Enwezor gained world renown as artistic director of Documenta11 in 2002, his accomplishments as curator of contemporary African art were already well established. His In/Sight: African Photographers, 1940–Present, exhibition (1996) had the temerity to describe the intentional ways in which Africans shaped their own photographic representation in a medium whose history was as long and distinguished in Africa as in Europe. Enwezor’s 2001 exhibition The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994, was a revelatory journey through the long process of colonial resistance and independence no less revolutionary for its astonishing range of content far beyond that of art objects, including film, music, theater, literature, and literature. In helming Documenta11, Enwezor not only included a historic number of non-white, non-European artists but also redefined the exhibition, before its opening in Kassel, by conceiving it as a final installment of several “platforms” staged worldwide. His were strategic, paradigmatic interventions engineered to globalize the art world, and they effectively amounted to acts of art-historical decolonization. Enwezor’s legacy is instructive. Achieving an inclusive and equitable art history that is sustainable requires decentralizing white, Eurocentric, male, cisgender, and heterosexual hegemony. In two of his final projects, large-scale solo shows of Frank Bowling and El Anatsui, exhibiting these artists on their own terms did just that. It is through his curatorial practice of art-world decolonization that Enwezor has issued a rallying cry. He has shown us the way forward.

Barth and the Racial Imaginary

Karl Barth never wrote a treatise against racism or colonialism, but his theological vision offers important resources for addressing the racial imaginary. This is due in large measure to the shape of his educational experiences as a Swiss student—these were heavily influenced by the German educational system and its intellectual dynamics, which refined a masculinist vision of knowledge and power. Barth’s work formed in reaction to this dynamic. In effect, Barth offered an alternative (theological) subjectivity to counter the white male (hegemonic) subjectivity of Western modernity and theology. We could see this alternative construction of subjectivity as the unintended consequence of a theology that nevertheless often showed the sensibilities and intellectual reflexes of white masculine heterosexual hegemony.

MIND YOUR P(EDERAST)S AND Q(UEER)S: THE SCHOOL AS PHALLIC PARENT IN MARK BEHR’S EMBRACE

This study examines the role of the school in Mark Behr’s Embrace , and situates the institution’s location at the nexus of gender studies, children’s literature scholarship and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. The article argues that in the novel, the school is a phallic parent in loco and an agent of the apartheid state, eager to enforce white male and heterosexual hegemony in psychologically and physically violent ways. Behr focuses on the vicious abuse of queer boys particularly. The article applies contemporary scholarship in children’s literature to what is unquestionably a novel for and by an adult, precisely so because of the book’s bold grappling with the questions of what is a child, what constitutes sex, who or what is the phallus, and what constitutes violence; it also situates Behr’s thinly veiled autobiography in a (queer) school story tradition. Specific thinkers on whose work the article draws include Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault; gender theorists Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick; psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan; and children’s literature scholars Karen Coats, Kenneth Kidd and others.

A Mere Switch or a Fundamental Change? Theorizing Transgender Marriage

Focusing on the legal cases that have been litigated in the United States, and making references to popular culture, this article considers whether marriages in which one of the partners is transgendered necessarily challenge or necessarily reinforce heterosexual hegemony.