In The Man Problem, Ross Honeywill posits that the potential for evil in all men is the social, political, and economic problem of our age. Drawing on the work of social critics and theorists including Zygmunt Bauman, Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Baudrillard, Slavoj Žižek, and others, the book traces destructive masculinity through cultural texts, social systems, and everyday life practices. Using the lens of social theory, social philosophy, feminist cultural studies, and sociology, The Man Problem explores the legacy of the Enlightenment as a context for a social world constructed by men (in modernity), deconstructed (in postmodernity) and reconstructed (in the liquid present). This book investigates the outlines of the patriarchy and why the men who legitimate it behave the way they do. Despite the troubled and troubling legacy of masculinity, Honeywill reveals an alternative path forward.
Table of Contents:
PART I: MODERNITY: ITS BIRTH AND DEATH
1:1 The Politics of Exclusion: Enlightenment Masculinity
1:2 God does not Play Dice: Modernity, a Masculine Enterprise
1:3 Tyrant or Hangman: The Evil of Ordinary Men
1:4 Two Genocides: The Sins of Modernity
1:5 End of Modernity: The Radical Dimension of Normality
PART II: OEDIPAL SCHISM: WHENCE DESTRUCTIVE MASCULINITY
2:1 Being Human: Biological Determinism
2:2 Gender: Sex and Gender… and the Psyche
2:3 Difference and Discrimination: Men Subjugating Women
2:4 Savage Torpor: Moral Blindness
2:5 Oedipal Schism: The Origin of Destructive Masculinity
2:6 Rape: Men Choosing Emptiness
PART III: POSTMODERNITY: ITS BIRTH AND DEATH
3:1 Certitude and Contingency: A Segue to Postmodernity
3:2 Denial of Legitimacy: The Destructive Beast in Postmodernity
3:3 Enabling Fictions: Postmodernism Thrives as Postmodernity Falters
3:4 End of Postmodernity: The Threat to Mother Earth
PART IV: THE LIQUID PRESENT
4:1 After Postmodernity: The Liquid Present
4:2 Knowledge Culture + Monoculture: A new Epistemology
4:3 The One-Gendered State: Women Reinventing Themselves
4:4 Masculinities: Beyond Men, Beyond Help?
4:5 The Moral Phene: Not the Selfish Gene
4:6 Now I am Become Death: Men as the Solution
Bibliography
About the Author :
Ross Honeywill is an internationally recognized social theorist and researcher. His books have been published on three continents. Associate Professor (adjunct) at the Tasmanian School of Business and Economics, Australia, he has a PhD from the University of Tasmania. Applying value theory to social research for more than twenty years, he is best known for his work in Desire Economics and the NEO population classification. His current research is on social intelligence, feminist cultural studies, and gender equity.
Review :
'This book explores the potential for evil in men and traces its various manifestations in cultural texts, social systems, and everyday life. Ross Honeywill provides an excellent analysis of theoretical concepts and social processes that have been crucial to the development of Western culture. His discussion of contemporary culture is both revealing and convincing, and fully supports the concluding claim that it is in the culture of knowledge that the potential for men to 'exercise true, fully agentic morality' should be located.' - Katarzyna Wi?ckowska, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland
