Global Masculinities and Manhood

Foreword

Foreword MOLEFI K. ASANTE Anytime someone says that we are living in a world of tremendous change we can readily say that such is the condition of human life. Yet in terms of intellectual critique, deconstruction, and critical inquiry we are truly undergoing monumental change in the discourse on masculinity. Ronald L. Jackson II and Murali Balaji have placed their new book, Global Masculinities and Manhood, at the center of this activity. The election of President Barack Obama in November 2008 stretched the discourse about masculinity even more in American society. Indeed, Andrew Card, who had served in the administration of President George W. Bush, said in February 2009 that Obama was not dignifying the office of the presidency because he was photographed working in his shirt sleeves, that is, without his suit jacket. Clearly, Card had an idea of what he thought was the proper image of a president. The construction of white masculinity has certainly been a long process. For more than five hundred years, the defining characteristics of masculinity have rested in the hands of European males, who essentially described masculinity in their own image. In tandem with the construction of a standard masculinity based on heterosexual white males was the disempowerment of African or Asian males in order to maintain control over the image and definition of the masculine. Through lack of discussion, omission, and distortion, this disempowerment made the masculinity of African and Asian men inaccessible. Political and economic conquest creates the opportunity for the conqueror to define the conquered. There is an African proverb, “Until the lion is able to write its own history the hunter will always win.” Definitions of masculinity by white males have dominated the interpretation of the discourse by referring to ideas of civility, protection, individuality, and assertiveness as characteristics of European society. While these men are just a small part of the human population, they have supplied the world’s dominant image of masculinity. In fact, the defining of white masculinity as the standard masculinity has cast other masculinities as erratic, off-center, or aberrations. The word had been given and all avenues for projecting symbols, meanings, and explanations were enlisted in the grand conspiracy to marginalize other forms of masculinity, while re-affirming white male masculinity as the definition of all masculinities. What was considered effeminate, undisciplined, or erotic had to be controlled by the established order. What this book does is to seize some of the territory by enlisting new and different voices in a general assertion about the plurality and diversity of masculinities. I see the work of these authors as genuinely revolutionary in its implication for other disciplines, concepts, and constructed realities. While it is true that one book can only play a role in a much larger process to deconstruct the language of conquest, Global Masculinities and Manhood has staked out one of the most important aspects of an aggressive interpretation of progress and civilization and through a series of poignant chapters has opened up the discourse on masculinities in a profound manner. It is cliché that American society is heterogeneous and multicultural, yet there remains a certain segment of our population, and indeed of the world, that has accepted as authoritative the European construction of reality as if that is the law. Thus, those who believe this doctrine have refused to engage in severe interrogations of comparative and distinct types of anything; they see any attempt to examine alternatives or other ways of seeing as disloyal, or maybe, anti-American. Obviously, in a world of nearly seven billion people there will be diverse interpretations and ways of doing masculinity based upon years of experiences and rituals of relationships; these will differ from region to region and from religion to religion. What the editors and authors of Global Masculinities and Manhood have shown us is that there are no static forms of masculinity, even in the Western world, where there has been an assertive strategy of imposing a model of masculinity. I do not hear anyone saying that this is only a Western way of approaching masculinity, because Muslims and other religious or cultural groups have their defining characteristics as well. It might be that because the West has been so successful in promoting its ideology of masculinity it is the most visible edge of the problem. 12 . FOREWORD Clearly, the media and related institutions have advanced the Western idea of masculinity...