Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online 2019-4
“In Reality Every Reader Is,While He Is Reading,the Reader of His Own Self”: Reconsidering the Importance of Narrative and Savoir Littéraire for Masculinity Studies
Given the strong emphasis on plurality, which is so characteristic of current masculinity studies, the relationship between masculinity as a concept and its plural forms has to be rethought. If we conceive of masculinity as having a largely discursive and narrative structure and accept that narrative is an ontological condition of social life which exemplarily manifests itself in literature and the arts, it is precisely here that a plethora of narratives of masculinity becomes ‘visible’, with the performative function of narrative allowing for a variety of new masculine gender identities and subject positions that only become available through their conception in literature/the arts.
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