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The personal is political … just not always progressive: affective interruptions and their promise for CSMM

ABSTRACT In critical studies on men and masculinities (CSMM), a well-established argument has been that white, heterosexual, middle-class men practice emotional repression as a means of maintaining social power. Whilst CSMM have often overlooked emotions, there is an increasing body of work which argues that men both have an active understanding of their emotional lives and that men’s emotional lives have significantly changed. Crucially, emotions are important for exploring how men’s practice connects to structure; what has been called ‘the problem of social embodiment’. However, recent perspectives on emotions and masculinities may over-emphasise the gender-progressive effects of men discussing emotions, tending to overlook how ‘semi-’ and ‘non-conscious’ forms of men’s embodiment shape far less progressive trends and even how discourses around ‘softening masculinity’ may support various forms of misogynstic behaviour. This article argues that critical feminist ‘turns to affect’ can help foreground the problem of social embodiment in CSMM in less deterministic ways, without neglecting intersectional questions of power. To illustrate potential uses for affect in CSMM, the article adopts Wetherell’s concepts of ‘affective practice’ in combination with Ahmed’s notion of ‘happy objects’ through an exploration of three key case studies: online masculinist rage; ‘nice guy’ discourse and nationalist politics.