Sexing the Citizen: Morality and Masculinity in France, 1870–1920 (review)

In this excellent study, Judith Surkis examines the ways in which French educators, moralists, social reformers, and theorists shaped public debates and policies on acceptable forms of male citizenship in France from the beginning of the Third Republic through World War I. In contrast to previous research on this period in which scholars have examined gender norms and their deleterious effects for women, Jews, and homosexuals for example, Surkis provides a fresh perspective by analyzing the policies and pedagogies that specifically targeted men. Indeed, her book is indicative of a recent turn in gender studies in which scholars have begun to examine the social construction of masculinity in its own right.

In Part I, Surkis illustrates how primary school reformers "sought to balance affect and reason in the moral education of the nation's popular classes" (71). She examines the role of figures like Ferdinand Buisson and Jules Ferry in shaping debates and policies on the education of male children as future public citizens. For this scholar, primary education, which was free, mandatory, and secular as of the mid 1880s, served as the mill of citizenship and masculinity for its male school-aged attendees. This moral pedagogy specifically targeted the male adolescent as a liminal figure who was ostensibly "torn between passion and will and on the threshold between the family and civil society, dependence and independence" (29). This moral pedagogy put forth a delicate balance between emancipation and self government and included both feminine and masculine role models. The republican mother served as an initial affective resource who cultivated the male child's early potential whereas the instituteur, who had replaced the père de famille, provided moral lessons that were distinct from the authoritarian and clerical schooling of previous decades. Surkis also examines the concept of "liberal discipline" in the writings of philosophers, pedagogues and sociologists like Henri Marion who viewed adolescence as "the crucible of morality, the moment when either good moral habits or bad dissolute ones established their foothold in the subject" (44). Marion supported liberal discipline, as well as the model of the "monogamous and reproductive 'conjugal' family" (54) as part of the republican education program that taught the male citizen how to best balance his passions and potential. This model became central to France's civilizing mission both in France and its colonies, and masculine autonomy, emancipation, sexual regulation, heterosexuality, and "companionate marriage" all contributed to this core set of republican values.

In Part II, Surkis provides a similar analysis in the context of the secondary educational system and its related discourses on the "bachelor" and his vices. The author examines the tension between the autonomous male citizen who assumes his role in the modern society after receiving his baccalauréat, and his traditional role as male figure who participates in conjugal love and the family. For example, Surkis examines the writings of conservative figures like Hippolyte Taine and Maurice Barrès who critiqued the republican system based on Kantian-inspired reason and individualism as separating the young male citizen from the natural affective environment where he is exposed to traditional gender roles. For these critics, this contributed to the moral decline of the young bachelor who remained unanchored" ("déraciné") from his social peers, and disrupted the "natural continuity of 'filiation' and hence social reproduction tout court" (85).

Indeed, Surkis provides similar analyses in later parts of her study. In Part III, the author examines the writings of sociologist and republican academic Émile Durkheim on male citizenship. She maintains that Durkheim defended a model of the virile male citizen who was "desiring" but who must also remain socially contained within the confines of heterosexual marriage. Consequently, for Durkeim and others, the "bachelor" and the "divorcé" embodied a "failed masculinity" (182). Finally, in Part IV, Surkis examines the discourses on venereal disease (syphilis) and the dangers it posed for individuals and the social body. She illustrates how sexual experts...