Debates about masculinity have frequently been concerned with its origins. In Masculinity After Deleuze, Hickey-Moody and Laurie argue that we urgently need to re-orient ourselves to what masculinity can become.
Thinking through the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, as well as his collaborations with Felix Guattari, as a method for re-framing questions of gender, the volume explores new directions in the articulation of masculine identities by considering work on feminism and pro-feminist men, performativity and affect, humour as a technology of gender re-production, masculinity as a learnt practice, disability as a terrain for the re-production of gender, and gendered economies of carbon production. Throughout, Masculinity After Deleuze weaves together a thread of Deleuzian concepts - including assemblage, affect, territorialisation, actual/virtual, surface/depth and surfaces of striation, capitalism and minoritarianism - to provide a dynamic model of how masculinities are materialized and changing in different social worlds. In doing so, Hickey-Moody and Laurie track important trends in the political terrain around masculinity, including the creation of gendered practices that actively reflect on - and in some cases undermine - the gains of feminist political activism.
Masculinity After Deleuze calls for a future-oriented masculinity studies, one concerned as much with the precarity of new practices, desires, and social frictions as with older, familiar patterns of socialized masculinity.