Friday, March 1, 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
INSTITUTE OF FRENCH STUDIES COLLOQUIUM
Masculinité(s) et virilité: contextes métropolitains et situations coloniales aux XIXe et XXe siècles
Worshop organised by Edward Berenson (IFS) and Christelle Taraud (NYU Paris)
In English and French
CHRISTELLE TARAUD
Visiting Professor, NYU; author of Sexe et colonies. Virilité, homosexualité et tourisme sexuel au Maghreb (1830-1962)
VENITA DATTA
Wellesley College; author of Heroes and Legends of Fin-de-Siècle France: Gender, Politics, and National Identity
EDWARD BERENSON
NYU; author of Heroes of Empire: Five Charismatic Men and the Conquest of Africa
During the first half of the 19th century, the idea of colonialism as the production of real men and as a space for masculine and national regeneration was developed in all the colonial metropoles. Based on the then-developing idea of Social Darwinism, they believed that Europeans were engaged in a “struggle for life” and that this fight would “naturally” lead to the triumph of the strongest people. Through exploration, military conquest or the “development” of territories, colonialism permitted the necessary toughening of men who were supposedly “castrated” and/or “emasculated” in Europe and needed to “regenerate” overseas. This masculinization of Europeans was constructed by and mirrored the de-legitimization of the colonized as “real” men. Consequently, the question of virility and masculinity must be analyzed in conjunction with the relationship between metropole(s) and colonies: between the social question, the national question and the colonial question.
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