Timothy Laurie

GEOPHILOSOPHIES OF MASCULINITY

Abstract: Geophilosophy is a placeholder for things we cannot yet do, things we hope to do, and things that we have failed to do so far. This issue of Angelaki aspires towards ways of doing philosophy, geography and gender studies that stray from the analytical comforts of philosophical reasoning, and from the sociological certainties that dominate the study of masculinity. In particular, it brings a sexed and gendered body to extant Deleuze-Guattarian scholarship, while prompting a thirst for creativity and ambivalence to masculinity research. Each article explores the ways in which lived cultures of masculinity might be read across uneven political formations and aesthetic practices, while calling into question tacit understandings of where “masculinity” begins and ends. In doing so, the collection teases out the ethical and methodological implications of poststructuralist approaches to gender in a range of disciplines, including cultural geography, art criticism, sociology, and disability studies.

The concept of minority for the study of culture

Abstract Critical tools are needed for navigating the concept of minority and its usefulness for the study of culture. This article reflects on the cultural and political purposes that are served when distinguishing between majorities and minorities, and the various historical and intellectual agendas that have shaped these social practices of classification. It begins by examining Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of ‘minor literature’ as an anti-sociological reworking of minor and minority, then turns its attention toward the policy-driven sociological traditions of the Chicago School, and how this has informed the contemporary construction of ‘minorities’ reflected in Australian immigration debates. As a third key paradigm in the study of the ‘minor’, the article revisits cultural studies’ own embrace of the Popular as a site for political struggles over the meanings attached to ‘major’ and ‘minor’ social identities. Finally, we consider the range of transformative cultural practices addressed in this Minor Culture special issue, and reflect on the utility of the minor in holding together disparate political projects. There are a range of ways in which the minor might productively imagine or construct collective identities, in ways that do not anticipate, or even desire, majoritarian endings. It is argued that minoritised social categories do substantive political and cultural work, while acknowledging that numerical descriptions of minorities can hide as much as they reveal.

MASCULINITY STUDIES AND THE JARGON OF STRATEGY: hegemony, tautology, sense

Abstract: This article interrogates “masculinity” as a named object of study for the social sciences, and sociology in particular, by drawing on the analysis of sense and language in Gilles Deleuzes The Logic of Sense (1969). While rejecting essentialist definitions of masculine attributes, sociologists have long insisted that masculinity can be defined as a strategic articulation in the pursuit of social goals. Developing Deleuzes notion of the “singularity” within signifying series, this article argues that sociological emphases on goal-oriented practices have elided important problems around the individuation of social relations, as well as neglecting the subsequent textual work of naming such relations as masculine. To develop this argument, the article begins with R.W. Connells concept of “hegemonic masculinity” as one example of empirical investigation that proceeds by way of specialised metaphors – strategies, positions, goals – that make masculinity appear self-evident as an innate communication between men. In scrutinising the efficacy of such metaphors, the article questions the paradigm of homosociality as a methodological a priori in social scientific research. Finally, the article asks how masculinity studies might engage a more critical relationship to observation and description, a question that remains urgent for developing the ethical vision of gender studies more broadly.

Higher degree research by numbers: beyond the critiques of neo-liberalism

ABSTRACT This article argues that strong theories of neo-liberalism do not provide an adequate frame for understanding the ways that measurement practices come to be embedded in the life-worlds of those working in higher education. We argue that neo-liberal metrics need to be understood from the viewpoint of their social usage, alongside other practices of qualification and quantification. In particular, this article maps the specific variables attending measurement in higher degree research programmes, as the key sites that familiarize students with measurement practices around research and teaching. With regard to the incremental reframing of doctoral study as a utilitarian pursuit, we suggest a need to better identify the singular and immeasurable features of long-term research projects, and argue for a revitalized notion of failure. In this context, this article suggests that many critiques of neo-liberalism do not sufficiently advance alternative ways to think about the purposes and limitations of higher education.

Love’s Lessons: intimacy, pedagogy, and political community

Abstract This article provides a philosophical account of love in relation to contemporary Marxist and post-structuralist conceptions of politics. Shifting the emphasis away from both the ontological question, “what is love?,” and the epistemological question, “how do we acquire certainty about love?,” this article advances a pedagogical question: how might love enable us to learn? To answer this question we turn to the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. After examining the tensions between ontological and ideological conceptions of love, we explore Hardt and Negri’s work on love as part of the affective labour of the “multitude.” We then trace the development of Deleuze’s early work on love as an apprenticeship to signs to his later exploration (with Guattari) of love in relation to multiplicity. In doing so, this article seeks to renovate the concept of love itself, framing it in terms of difference rather than merging and unity, and locating it outside the confines of the heterosexual couple and nuclear family.

Becoming-Animal Is a Trap for Humans: Deleuze and Guattari in Madagascar

If you were introducing Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus (1980) to a seven-year-old who found Anti-Oedipus (1972) boring, you might say that the sequel has more animals. Deleuze and Guattari make only few, scathing references to pets, but they do make frequent mention of horses (81 times, to be exact), as well as ticks, birds, rats, Moby Dick and groups marked by animal names: leopard-men, crocodile-men, and — borrowing from Sigmund Freud — the Wolf Man and his wolf packs. Unlike Guattari’s later publication, The Three Ecologies (Guattari 2005 [1989]), A Thousand Plateaus does not advance any arguments about contemporary environmental issues or the treatment of nonhuman animals. There are no demands for the recognition, recovery, or recuperation of Nature, and the book continues to extend the formulas outlined in Anti-Oedipus: ‘Nature=Industry, Nature=History’ (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 [1972]: 26).

The ethics of nobody I know: gender and the politics of description

Purpose – This paper aims to bring together feminist philosophy, phenomenology, and masculinity studies to consider the gendered formation of ethical practices, focusing on the construction of “male” and “female” identities in quotidian social encounters. While scholarship on masculinity has frequently focused on hegemonic modes of behaviour or normative gender relations, less attention has been paid to the “ethics of people I know” as informal political resources, ones that shapes not only conversations about how one should act (“people I know don’t do that”), but also about the diversity of situations that friends, acquaintances or strangers could plausibly have encountered (“that hasn’t happened to anyone I know”). Design/methodology/approach – The paper rethinks mundane social securities drawing on Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, and Sara Ahmed to consider anecdotal case studies around gender recognition and political practice, and in doing so also develops the notion of interpellation in relati...

Come get these memories: gender, history and racial uplift in Bill Condon's Dreamgirls

On the release of the screen adaptation of Dreamgirls (2006), ex-Motown songwriter William ‘Smokey’ Robinson fielded speculations about corruption at Americas most successful black-owned business. In the broader context of racial inequalities in media ownership and distribution, this article asks how spectacles of hard-won individual success, juxtaposed sharply against sexually and financially corrupt ‘music moguls’, continue to shape popular mythologies of the US music industry. In particular, the article focuses on the ways that sexual combat, corrupt masculinities and the politics of respectability inform Dreamgirls’ dramatization of the shift from pre-integration to post-Civil Rights America. Finally, the notion of post-racial discourse is used to make sense of the competing historical interpretations at work in the film and its critical reception, especially with regard to the use of past entertainment icons to make sense of Beyoncé Knowles’ and Jennifer Hudsons own success stories. Throughout, the article argues that myths of meritocracy cannot be separated from the racialized and gendered cultures of production that continue to shape the contemporary repackaging of popular histories and musical genres.