Masculinity? In The End of Man, Jean-Paul Martinon attempts to answer this one-word question by revisiting key philosophical concepts in the construction of masculinity, not in order to re-write or debunk them again, but in order to provide a radically new departure to what masculinity means today. This new departure focuses on an understanding of sexuality and gender that is neither structured in oppositional terms (masculine–feminine, male–female, man–woman) nor in performative terms (for which the opposition remains always secretly in play), but in a perpendicular relation akin to that which brings space and time together.
In doing so, The End of Man doesn’t aim to establish yet another theory within the field of masculism or men’s studies, but to put forward a personal account of how a revised understanding of the relationship between space, time, and gender can thoroughly alter concepts of masculinity.
Jean-Paul Martinon was born in Chicago, brought up in Paris, and has been living in London for too many years. He teaches in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has written monographs on a Victorian workhouse, the idea of the future in the work of Derrida, Malabou and Nancy, and the concept of peace after the Rwandan genocide. He has also edited a collection of essays on curating. In each case, he writes in an attempt to make sense of time: its staging in museums, its advent, its gender, its neglect, and the way it is used and abused to structure human life.
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