“In Reality Every Reader Is, While He Is Reading, the Reader of His Own Self”: Reconsidering the Importance of Narrative and Savoir Littéraire for Masculinity Studies

Abstract

Given the strong emphasis on plurality, which is so characteristic of current masculinity studies, the relationship between masculinity as a concept and its plural forms has to be rethought. If we conceive of masculinity as having a largely discursive and narrative structure and accept that narrative is an ontological condition of social life which exemplarily manifests itself in literature and the arts, it is precisely here that a plethora of narratives of masculinity becomes ‘visible’, with the performative function of narrative allowing for a variety of new masculine gender identities and subject positions that only become available through their conception in literature/the arts.