A Right to Hate?
In August, French blogger Pauline Harmange published a booklet titled Moi les hommes, je les dΓ©teste (Me, men, I loathe them), which caused quite a stir in France (and a little bit outside France as well). The book β supposedly β is a protest against misogyny (hatred of women), by taking up the opposite point of view of misandry (hatred of men). βSupposedlyβ, because Iβm not sure exactly about the bookβs arguments as it is no longer available and I have thus been unable to read it. In any case, it is not this book itself that is the topic...
Death, Masculinity, and Hegemony
βAt the center of the symbolic order is the abhorrence of death,β writes Odile Strik in the conclusion of her short essay The Symbolic Order of Life and Manhood. The βsymbolic orderβ of the title connects death and masculinity, and (supposedly) structures the way most people understand reality. The essay is terse and almost poetic, and only presents a rough sketch of this symbolic order, but it deals with a number of important themes β such as masculinity, life and death, and cultural hegemony β and it deserves credit for bringing those themes together. This article is a (long) commentary...