Masculinities and Desire considers the question of male subjectivity in relation to Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of desire. Western tradition has thought of desire from the vantage point of masculine subjectivity; what happens when the order is reversed, and desire speaks through masculinity? Can masculinity can be conceived beyond the gender binary and thus affirm its potential to transcend the patriarchal order? In answer, Masculinities and Desire calls for a radically new approach to traditional cultural criticism. Contributing a critical male perspective, the book sheds new light on the conceptual and ethical limits of established, representational (gender) criticism. Reflecting on masculinity with Deleuze, the book explores what happens to the masculine subject in his becoming-minoritarian and thus emerging as a work of desire. Wojtaszek examines the confining representations of masculinity in realms long associated with men, such as violence, virulent psychosis, metaphysical cannibalism and virtualization. Inspired by Deleuze’s appeal for immanence, Wojtaszek argues that films including American Psycho, Fight Club, Becoming John Malkovich and The Matrix are adventures of deterritorialization that imaginatively tackle various masculinities, affirming their creative resistance and reinvention of subjectivity. Desire is revealed to be a powerful catalyst for escaping the regime of patriarchal representation.

Here, one of the world's pioneers in the field of masculinity studies explores the construction of male sexuality, pornography, and sexual violence. Michael S. Kimmel analyzes what male sexuality is, where it comes from, how it works, what affects it, pornography's impact on it, what fantasies men have about sex, what people think about sex, and how male ideas about sex affect what men actually do. Provocative and wide-ranging, these essays make important contributions to sociology, queer theory, American studies, history, and studies of gender, sexuality, and gay and lesbian issues.

Social commentators, psychologists, and journalists all point to the idea that in the new millennium, traditional masculinity is in crisis. In contemporary film and literature, this predicament is often portrayed as a problem of desire—particularly, heterosexual desire. Male libido, it appears, is especially vicious when it is misguided. Yet the genesis of this problem is not consistently diagnosed. While some texts may situate it in the unbridled expression of human sexuality and its associated discourses, others contend it is the perverse result of popular constructions of sex and gender. Addressing this conundrum, Errancies of Desire focuses on the intersections of phallocratic violence and masculine identity in contemporary works of fiction across three subcontinents: North America, Western Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa. In doing so, Messier details the ways in which male desire is predicated on mediated forms of predatory and misogynistic sexuality that cross national and cultural divides. Employing a comparative methodology, he interrogates common perceptions of national differences and masculine identities grounded in historical specificity. Errancies of Desire effectively argues that when associated symptoms of violent and sexist behavior are institutionalized and misguidedly construed as a masculine norm, all men can become monsters.

This book provides a fresh and contemporary take on the study of men and masculinity. It highlights new and exciting approaches to sexuality, desire, men and masculinity in East Asian contexts, focusing on the interconnections between them. In doing so, it re-examines the key concepts that underpin studies of masculinity, such as homophobia, homosociality and heteronormativity. Developing new ways of thinking about masculinity in local contexts, it fills a significant lacuna in contemporary scholarship. This thought-provoking work will appeal to students and scholars of gender studies, cultural studies and the wider social sciences.

This book offers the most up to the minute snapshot of scholarship on queer/gay historiographies in a number of geographical regions in western Europe, Asia and the US. It features the work of the most established scholars in the field of the history of same-sex desire and promises to take the study of same-sex relations in the early modern period in radical new directions.

This captivating ethnography explores Vietnam’s sex industry as the country ascends the global and regional stage. Over the course of five years, author Kimberly Kay Hoang worked at four exclusive Saigon hostess bars catering to diverse clientele: wealthy local Vietnamese and Asian businessmen, Viet Kieus (ethnic Vietnamese living abroad), Western businessmen, and Western budget-tourists. Dealing in Desire takes an in-depth and often personal look at both the sex workers and their clients to show how Vietnamese high finance and benevolent giving are connected to the intimate spheres of the informal economy. For the domestic super-elite who use the levers of political power to channel foreign capital into real estate and manufacturing projects, conspicuous consumption is a means of projecting an image of Asian ascendancy to potential investors. For Viet Kieus and Westerners who bring remittances into the local economy, personal relationships with local sex workers reinforce their ideas of Asia’s rise and Western decline, while simultaneously bolstering their diminished masculinity. Dealing in Desire illuminates Ho Chi Minh City’s sex industry as not just a microcosm of the global economy, but a critical space where dreams and deals are traded.

Without question, the East German National People’s Army was a profoundly masculine institution that emphasized traditional ideals of stoicism, sacrifice, and physical courage. Nonetheless, as this innovative study demonstrates, depictions of the military in the film and literature of the GDR were far more nuanced and ambivalent. Departing from past studies that have found in such portrayals an unchanging, idealized masculinity, Comrades in Arms shows how cultural works both before and after reunification place violence, physical vulnerability, and military theatricality, as well as conscripts’ powerful emotions and desires, at the center of soldiers’ lives and the military institution itself.