Vanke A. V. Masculine Bodies, Sexualities and Subjectivities. Logos, 2018, Vol. 28, Issue 4, pp. 85-108.

Abstract

Intensification of social inequality in the context of spreading neoliberalism around the world complicates a system of power relations between men, their bodies and sexualities. This leads to differentiation of masculinitties. The article analyzes forty three biographical interviews with male blue-collar and white-collar workers and aims at critical rethinking the configuration of power relations. The author concludes that labour sphere manages sphere of emotional relationships through the aspect of corporeality and regulates sexual life of men from both social environments. Alongside with, the regimes of industrial and office labour generate different logics of corporeal management, which are transferred into the private sphere and used for production of masculine subjectivity. Physical strength and skills are the main resources for workers in constituting their masculinity, while bodily representations and performance serve as the recourse for masculinity of office clerks. Social differentiation in labour results in inequality of chances to create a “successful” masculine subject. Male workers call themselves “losers”, while clerks perceive themselves as “successful” men, in spite men from both environments are exploited. Bodily labour of a worker alienated in the process of corporeal managing at work, while the body of an office clerk is commoditized and becomes a sign in the system of symbolic exchange. At the same time, the research shows that the borders between social environments are blurred and class consciousness weakens. Male workers and office clerks realize similar sexual strategies which are distinct in forms and styles. Masculine subjectivities of blue-collar and white-collar workers comprise the same structural elements of traditional, liberal and new manliness, which are distinct in ways of their expression.