Drawing on Saint-Amour’s reinterpretation of modernism through the lens of Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo’s “weak thought” (Saint-Amour, 2018; Vattimo and Rovatti, 2012), this panel aims to rethink the history of modernist masculinities—not through a dominant, “strong” narrative but through a “weak” one. In particular, it will examine literary representations of masculinity that highlight inactivity, inertia, impotentiality, lethargy, vulnerability and negation as forms of resistance to conforming to societal norms and roles. This panel not only challenges the hegemonic masculinities of the first half of the 20th century in the American, European, and Chinese contexts, underscoring the culturally constructed nature of masculinity (as discussed by R. W. Connell and E. K. Sedgwick), but also aligns with feminist theory (Honig, Ziarek, Hamilton et al.) to reevaluate refusal, withdrawal, and desertion as positive acts of resistance against nationalism, capitalism, and rigid gender constructs.
By depicting protagonists characterized by impotentiality, the choice not to act, work, or behave according to the bourgeois and patriarchal norms of society, Teresa Valentini’s “Weakening Masculinity and the Gendered Ambiguity of Impotentiality in European Modernist Literature” shows how even canonical modernist European male writers such as Joyce, Svevo, and Kafka proposed an alternative model of masculinity based on what one cannot do: the choice not to act, thus resisting capitalist production, the ideology of nationalism and imperialism, and conventional understandings of masculinity. The panel will also discuss how the apparent absence of women as interlocutors of theories of impotentiality speaks to the ambiguity that veils a gendered history of “impotentiality” up to the present day (Agamben, Berardi, Virno). Indeed, alongside their transformative nature, weak masculinities also recall a history of marginalization and discrimination, which emerges in the ambiguity that, at times, surrounds the representation of alternative masculinities.
This panel will also seek to complicate the revolutionary role of weak masculinities by considering the nationalistic and imperialistic contexts in which they emerge, as well as the global entanglements of these dynamics. Ying-Hsiu Chou’s “The Romantic Male: An Alternative Masculinity as an Aesthetic Mode of Resistance in Chinese Modern Literature” reinvestigates the alternative masculinity refracted through Chinese novelist Zhang Ziping’s male protagonists and public persona—the “weak” Romantic Male, characterized by sensitivity, fragility, and vulnerability. Zhang’s Romantic male deviates from the “great” intellectual elite masculinity, which mobilizes gender discourse in the service of national salvation, state-building, and the restoration of Chinese masculinity. In contrast, he insists on prioritizing the “trivial,” focusing on everyday experiences, personal feelings, intimate relationships, and romantic love.
The depiction of hegemonic masculinity as a form of social and political domination is also closely tied to the representation of environmental exploitation. The forms of “weakness” considered in this panel, on the other hand, seek to provide the foundation for a society that is less individualistic, less anthropocentric, and ultimately more inclusive. This is the second part in which the panel will develop, with Ruoshui Zhang’s paper “Lethargic Existence as Weak Masculinity: Wuwei, Post-Metaphysics, and Wallace Stevens’ Modernism” and André Furlani’s “Old Trails and New Masculinities in the Modernist Wilderness”. Drawing on Daoist concepts of wuwei (non-action or effortless accomplishment), Zhang’s paper argues that Wallace Stevens presents a “lethargic existence” characterized by a masculinity grounded in surrender, passivity, and attunement to the auto-movement of the cosmos, which contributes to critiquing and dissolving masculinist ideals of intellectual domination over nature and self. Furlani, along the same lines, contends that alternative masculinities suggest a less exploitative relationship with nature and a contingent personhood intertwined with the external world, embodying a relational subjectivity shaped by natural and social forces. Ultimately, the panel seeks to reflect on how “weak” masculinities open new possibilities of existence in our contemporary world, one that does not imply exploitation or domination.
To allow time for discussion, the speakers will be limited to 13-minute presentations. Speakers at different career stages and engaging with diverse literary and cultural traditions highlight the panel's diversity of voices.