The Undefeated Monster of Hegemonic Masculinity in Hunter's Run
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| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | Taken for granted, normalized as a non-category, and thus invisible, masculinity used to be a topic that escaped academic attention. This changed with the postmodern tendency to question and deconstruct dominant narratives. Hegemonic masculinity was quickly identified as boys’ and men’s pursued ideal; the privileges it promises, however, come with many dangers towards women, other men, as well as oneself. These complexities have captured the interest of multiple literary scholars, and I join them with an analysis of Hunter’s Run (2007), an American sci-fi novel for mature audiences authored by George R. R. Martin, Gardner Dozois, and Daniel Abraham. The novel is filled to the brim with commentary on ‘real’ men, ‘proper’ men, ‘good’ men, men as their own species, and mankind’s colonialist efforts in space. Most importantly, confronting hegemonic masculinity forms a crucial plot point when the protagonist encounters his clone and realizes he despises his own gender performance even more than the aliens he is fighting. Despite all these direct and indirect criticisms and the promises Ramón makes to himself about becoming a better man, the novel has an anticlimactic ending with Ramón’s behavior changing very little, making Hunter’s Run one in a line of novel-shaped critiques of traditional masculinity ideals that offer no alternative solutions. The authors do not help the issue by describing Hunter’s Run as a book about ‘humanity and identity’ rather than masculinity, attempting to make the topic an invisible one yet again |
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