The Polycrisis and the Centaur: Hegemony, Masculinity and Racialisation

Abstract

The multiplicity of crises that mark the contemporary era, the polycrisis, also constitutes a crisis of hegemony. This article explores the functions of gendered racialisation in elite management of this hegemonic crisis, with reference to Gramsci’s use of the figure of the Centaur, a hybrid of humanity and animality. It discusses the ways in which this hybrid evokes racialising tropes of human bestiality to express the dynamic interplay of consent and coercion through which hegemony is maintained. Moral panics in relation to the threat of the racialised male Other, variously figured as migrant, terrorist and/or criminal, draw on a bestialised humanisation of racialised masculinities in order to elicit consent to the exercise of coercive authority. Such authority in turn invokes a plasticity of excess/deficiency of the racialised male Other to sanction exclusionary and exterminatory violence. To seize the political opportunity of the current moment to reimagine gender justice and social justice together requires a deeper engagement with the deployment of racialised masculinities in securing consent to coercive authority amid the deepening polycrisis.