Saikiran D

12HEMA21

Instructor: Professor Sachidananda Mohanty

Course : HE702

22 August 2014

Assignment : Annotated Bibliography

Buchbinder, David. Studying Men and Masculinities. Routledge, 2012.

Buchbinder's book is a good introduction to the study of men and masculinities. His exploration

of the 'crisis of masculinity' or the anxiety associated with the changing role of boys and men in

society is related to my research. The first chapter "The end of masculinity?" delves into the

question of the demise of masculinity as perceived by contemporary culture and the ways in

which it shows itself in literature and other cultural production. Likewise the seventh chapter

"Postapocalyptic masculinities" the author establishes that the apocalyptic literature is more

about what comes after the destruction of the world, the new era that is to come. The demise of

masculinity is associated with the impending demise of the world itself by consevatism. This

anxiety is laden with a very nostalgic desire to idealize the past and reurnign the old gender

order. The focus on this element is helpful in my research in exploring the link between

apocalyptic element and the masculinities in fiction.

Connell, Raewyn. Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

This book is an introduction to the study of research and theory of masculinities. The title of

book itself points to the concept of plurality and a rejection of the idea of a universal and unitary

'masculinity' and an exploration of different masculinities that are deployed and practiced in

various social settings. It examines the attempts of understanding masculinities and developing a

science of masculinities in the modern west in the fields of social sciences and psychoanalysis. It

also contains life-history interviews of different groups of men who have grappled with changes

in gender relations in different circumstances. This gives me an insight into not just the basic

knowledge into this subject but also masculinities in transition according to the socio-economic

environment. The last part of the book deals with the politics associated with the knowledge

about masculinity and it's relation to gender equality in contemporary times.

Dudley, John, and Steven Frye. "McCarthy's Heroes: Revisiting Masculinity." The Cambridge

Companion to Cormac McCarthy. : Cambridge University Press, 2013.

This essay is an exploration of the abject violence in the works of Cormac McCarthy and how it

undermines the heroic narratives in these works. It uses the concept of abjection by Kristeva and

how the recurrence of abjection disrupts male subjectivity in McCarthy's protagonists and the

way in which the epistemological crises is the heart of his narrative journeys are uncovered in

this essay. These epistemological crises help us to understand the critique of traditional

masculinity present in his works. The is the feminine when female characters are sparely given

any space in his narratives and codes of masculinity and bonding through ritual, initiation and

sacrifice etc. The flawed codes of manhood are brought to the forefront and their failure is
highlighted. The homosocial bonding through violence and the faliure of such in these narratives

is highlighted and the effect of the abject feminine and how they seem to affect the lives of the

male characters as in the novel The Road is explored.

Kollin, Susan. "Barren, Silent, Godless: Ecodisaster and the Post-abundant Landscape in The

Road." Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, The Road. Ed. Sara

Spurgeon. Bloomsbury, 2011. 157-171.

The apocalyptic element is explored in this essay and connected with the impending ecological

collapse. The characters in The Road attempt to reconstruct belief systems, human relations and

understandings of the self in a hostile and alienating reality. The family and kinship relation

serves as an uncertain sanctuary in a reality where the natural world has been altered forever for

the worse. The characters are faced with a natural as well as a social crisis. There is a comparison

made between Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and The Road and using the ideas of Donna

Harraway of a natural-cultural disaster. Post-apocalyptic condition as a post- abundant condition

where the father and the son use a shopping cart to collect items necessary for survival while

scavenging in a landscape where there is very little to survive upon. There is an exploration of

the symbolism of the shopping cart as a instrument of mobility and signifying technology. The

electronic equipment and many things from the past consumer culture fall out of use and become

irrelevant.

Mavri, Kristjan. "Cormac McCarthys The Road Revisited: Memory and Language in Post-

Apocalyptic Fiction." SIC-asopis za knjievnost, kulturu i knjievno prevoenje 6 (2013): 0-0.

This article looks at memory and past affecting the post-apocalyptic setting on the novel. The

language used by McCarthy mirrors the social breakdown, natural devastation and the

desperation of survival. By not using hyperbolic or traditional language and leaving out

quotations, capitalization of proper nouns at times and sporadic punctuation, McCarthy creates

an environment of a wasteland and a sense of depletion and it reflects the utter darkness which it

tries to portray. The failure of language to adequately describe the past richness of the world

before the apocalypse and how not only the stories seem meaningless to the boy but also the very

ideas of justice and courage seem to be disappearing. The paradox in writing a post-apocalyptic

text is that in describing the world destroyed and dead revokes by reconstructing the memories of

the images of the past. The remnants of the past inherent in language animate memory.

Mac an Ghaill, Mairtin. Understanding masculinities: Social relations and cultural arenas.

McGraw-Hill International, 1996.

This book brings together the historical, theoretical and methodological approaches to the

understanding of masculinity. It brings together overviews of the key theoretical debates with

new empirical material, focusing on different social and cultural arenas, and the wide range of

masculinities which exist. It discusses education, unemployment, sport, sexuality, HIV, and black

masculinities. Understanding Masculinities critically explores the gendered and sexual dynamics

of these masculinities, challenging and transforming our conventional assumptions. It takes the

position of viewing masculinities as a contested territory in an ideological battlefield and not as a

universal simplistic view of a singular and unitary masculinity.

Wielenberg, Erik. "God, Morality, and Meaning in Cormac McCarthy's The Road." Cormac

McCarthy Journal 8.1 (2010): 1-16.

This essay delves into the concept of morality in the novel and it's relation to religion and God.

According to the arguments in this essay, though there is a lot of religious imagery in the novel,

the moral code or the goodness found in this text is very secular in its essence. The existence or

non-existence of God is ambiguous in The Road. It offers a clear enough moral code and the

meaning it offer to the narrative and the lives of the characters. The struggle to be remain good

and moral, despite of drastic circumstances and an absence of religion or God, by the two main

characters, the boy and man is explored and examined in this essay. Drawing from religious

texts, philosophical thought and other sources, a deeper understanding of moral good and how it

gives meaning to life is described in this essay.

Zibrak, Arielle. "Intolerance, A Survival Guide: Heteronormative Culture Formation in Cormac

McCarthy's The Road." Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and

Theory 68.3 (2012): 103-128.

This essay links the violence enacted out of a paranoid sense of mistrust of anything that

threatened the relationship between the father and the son in The Road to the conservative

anxiety over the traditional structures being under threat by subversive forces in society. It argues

that The Road and the violence in it reflects the traditional heteronormative and its intolerance of

any change or difference in society. The use of phrases like the "good guys" and the "bad guys"
posit a sharp binary between the heteronormative family oriented characters and the characters

who do not fit into this neat model. The 'normal' characters and how they survive the hostility of

the abnormal around them and how violence against this abnormality is justified and presented

as survival of the 'good' is argued in this essay. The violence, then, is coded as punishment or acts

of defense with a moral ideology underpinning all this. The critic connects the themes in the

novel to contemporary political discourse on social issues and argues that the elements in The

Road appeal to the conservative political ideology.

Web Sources

Adams, Tim. "Cormac McCarthy: America's Great Poetic Visionary." The Guardian 20 Dec.

2009, The Observer Profile sec. Web. 20 Aug. 2014.

<http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2009/dec/20/observer-profile-cormac-mccarthy>.

This article gives biographical information about the author and data collected from different

sources which shed light on the origin of the ideas and themes present in the novel The Road and

the general attitude and background of the author. It starts with how the idea for the novel started

when the author spent a night in a old hotel with his son and at two in the morning he went out to

take glimpse at the landscape and wondered how it would look like in some 50 or 100 years. His

thoughts were about destruction and his own son which spurred him to two pages which went on

to become a book. Details about his personal life him being thrown out of the University and his

dislike for engaging his readers or the idea of interviews give a personal profile of the author

which can be assessed to determine what part of his personality affects his work.
Jurgensen, John. "Hollywood's Favorite Cowboy." The Wall Street Journal 15 Nov. 2009. Web.

18 Aug. 2014.

<http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704576204574529703577274572>.

This interview gives one insight into the writing of The Road and how it relates to the authors

personal life and beliefs. Cormac McCarthy says that his 11 year old son is the unofficial

coauthor of this novel as it contains many conversations which he had had with his son and he

describes it as "Just a conversation that two guys would have". The realistic dialog in the text

comes from a real life love relationship between the author and his son. When asked about why

he does not go deep with his female characters he answers that he is working on it and feels

himself never to be competent enough to do it but he has to try. The letters from his readers who

are fathers show that their affection towards their children was stirred by reading this book.

McCarthy states The Road is essentially about moral goodness and the most moral character is

the boy in the novel and he believes that morality is not learned.