Defining postmodern masculinities: a symptomatic approach to understanding French masculinities
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation examines how the postmodern climate of the late eighties to nineties affords masculinity a new space to confront social and gender hierarchies while questioning dominant narratives and moving them to the periphery. Throughout each chapter, I am examining the discourse of crisis as it appears in the texts of French authors Michel Houellebecq, Erik Rémès, Guillaume Dustan, and Maghrebi author Abdellah Taïa. Each chapter offers a unique perspective into how postmodernism intersects with the supposed “crisis of masculinity” while underlining how these authors propose new performances of masculinity that sublimate classical interpretations and representations. In my first chapter, I highlight a breakdown in socio-cultural transmission and the weakening of the patriarchy by analyzing the representation of paternity in the texts of Michel Houellebecq and Erik Rémès. My analysis shows how the construction of masculinity in these texts is directly linked to the absence of a paternal figure. This absence in turn then questions the dominance and power of the patriarchy as it configures its authoritative power on the transmission of norms from father to son. In the second chapter, I analyze how the HIV/AIDS narratives of Guillaume Dustan and Erik Rémès queer the reproductive model. Their novels predicate existence with seropositivity and therefore to exist in the novel, one must be HIV+. These authors work to shift the center of discourse away from heterosexual reproduction to a queer model that necessitates the seroconversion of other queer men. Their texts work in two contradicting fashions: on one hand seroconversion replaces reproduction because in their literary universe only queer HIV+ men can exist and therefore erases heteronormativity from the novel; however, this model is still a reproductive model, albeit queer, that is mimicking its heterosexual biological counterpart. ii The third and final chapter examines both the textual and digitextual works o…
abstract: This dissertation examines how the postmodern climate of the late eighties to nineties affords masculinity a new space to confront social and gender hierarchies while questioning dominant narratives and moving them to the periphery. Throughout each chapter, I am examining the discourse of crisis as it appears in the texts of French authors Michel Houellebecq, Erik Rémès, Guillaume Dustan, and Maghrebi author Abdellah Taïa. Each chapter offers a unique perspective into how postmodernism intersects with the supposed “crisis of masculinity” while underlining how these authors propose new performances of masculinity that sublimate classical interpretations and representations. In my first chapter, I highlight a breakdown in socio-cultural transmission and the weakening of the patriarchy by analyzing the representation of paternity in the texts of Michel Houellebecq and Erik Rémès. My analysis shows how the construction of masculinity in these texts is directly linked to the absence of a paternal figure. This absence in turn then questions the dominance and power of the patriarchy as it configures its authoritative power on the transmission of norms from father to son. In the second chapter, I analyze how the HIV/AIDS narratives of Guillaume Dustan and Erik Rémès queer the reproductive model. Their novels predicate existence with seropositivity and therefore to exist in the novel, one must be HIV+. These authors work to shift the center of discourse away from heterosexual reproduction to a queer model that necessitates the seroconversion of other queer men. Their texts work in two contradicting fashions: on one hand seroconversion replaces reproduction because in their literary universe only queer HIV+ men can exist and therefore erases heteronormativity from the novel; however, this model is still a reproductive model, albeit queer, that is mimicking its heterosexual biological counterpart. ii The third and final chapter examines both the textual and digitextual works o…
author: Maroun, Daniel Nabil
language: en
keywords: French, Masculinity, Queer, Rémès, Dustan, Taïa, Houellebecq, Digital Media, Media
date published: 2015-09-29T20:38:25Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:26:31Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/88041