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020			_a0-226-04139-5
040			_cFoundation University
082			_a305.309 _bB29 1995
100			_aBederman, Gail _910134
110			_910126
245			_aManliness & civilization / _cGail Bederman
260			_aChicago : _bThe University of Chicago Press ; _c1995
300			_axiii, 307 pages : _bill. ; _c23 cm.
504			_aIncludes bibliographical reference and appendix.
520			_aFOREWORD Every society is known by the fictions that it keeps. When,for example,Iwas an American girl child, I was told that God walked and talked to a mannamed Adam in the splendid groves of Eden. The issue is not whether a soci-ety tells fictions to itself and others, but which fictions it calls true, which false,which art,which entertainment. Manliness and Civilization is a revelatory study of the genesis and growth of a profoundly influential fiction that many Americans began to accept as true in the period between the end of the Civil War and the entrance of the United States into World War I.The purpose of this story was to construct and legitimate a vision of the best possible man, the masculine ideal. Gail Edelman recognizes that manhood, like womanhood, is not an ahistorical given. Rather,each is the consequence of "historical, ideological" processes.This best man was white. He was also the apex of civilization,the greatest achievement of human evolution, progress, and history. Literally embodying the survival of the fittest,he deserved to rule the globe and its various spe-cies. Not everyone bought into this myth. African-Americans, for example,resisted it in every possible way. Despite this gainsay,the myth gained sway and affects American men and women still. Brilliantly, freshly,with fine authority, Bederman examines four very dif-ferent figures who helped to write and revise the fiction of male suprem-acy. The first is Ida B. Wells, the militant African-American journalist and crusader. Undertaking her lonely struggle against the lynching of African-American men, she defiantly asked how the civilized white race could per-mit such barbarism. The second is G. Stanley Hall,the scholar,psychologist,and educator.Like many others, Hall worried that the advanced races might prove to be too delicate, that civilization might drain people of potency and energy. The then-current medical discourse diagnosed and warned of near-sighted is,a disease of the highly evolved. Hall wanted to bring up men, not sissies. His strategy was to train schoolboys to experience the evolution of the white race and to capture the primitive within their psyches. Cleverly, Bederman shows how the figure of Tarzan, whom Edgar Rice Burroughs invented in 1912, extends Halls project of permiting white men to be caelized and savage at once. women and civlization. she limited her linkage to women and e evaooyposi azimoiensidnnernbainsuicide,"Roosevelt encouraged white men and women to reproduce theemons, African-Americans into inferiors, and the Japanese into fearsomecompetitors. The title Manliness and Civilization evokes Madness and Civilization,theman describes her methodological debt to Foucault. That is, she explores thediscourse of a society,its characteristc set of ideas and social practices.Aware of how contradictory and contestatory these ideas and practices canbe,Bederman abhors vacuous oversimplification and respects the complex-ities of history.For example,she carefully traces the intricate development ofthe figure of the brutal savage rapist, a figure that eventually became a popu-lar image of well-deserved punishment for uppity feminists.Happily for herreader,she balances her respect for complexity with an ability to take themeasure of the structuring constants of a historical period.One constant thatshe foregrounds is the fusion of racism and sexism in America. We have con-structed race and gender together. Indeed,Bederman closes the book withthese words:“Male dominance and white supremacy have a strong historicalconnection. Here, surely, is a lesson that we can all learn from history." Recently,I,no longer a girl child, was listening to a male relative tell meabout his involvement in the contemporary men's movement. He spoke withcheerful awe about going off into the woods with a group of male friends,camping out and beating drums,recovering the lost,wild boy within him.Because I am fond of this man,because I know him to be a decent fellow whowould never hurt a fly, I heard him out indulgently.After reading Manlinessand Civilization,I am less sanguine about the meaning of his pastora pas-time.Like all important history, Manliness and Civilizationforces and encour-between them,and the reasons why we must dethrone some fictions thathave so far reigned supreme.
650			_2LC _aSex role--United States--History _910127
650			_2LC _aMasculinity (Psychology)--United States--History _910128
690			_2FU _aUnited States--Race relations _910129
690			_2FU _aWhite supremacy movements--united states--history _910130
690			_2FU _aUnited states--Civilization _910131
690			_2FU _aRemaking manhood through race and "Civilization'" _910132
690			_2FU _aThe white man's civilization on trial _910133
856			_3https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo3683791.html
942			_2ddc _cBK _h305.309 _iB29 1995 _n0
999			_c4160 _d4160