Male Trouble (PDF)

FINTAN WALSH is IRCHSS Government of Ireland Post-doctoral Research Fellow in Drama at the School of Drama, Film and Music at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

'Innovative in its Butler inflected, psychoanalytically informed, queer approach to a diverse range of work from Mark Ravenhill to Franko B, Walsh's book is a must for those engaged in cultural and performative studies of 'male trouble'. The study takes the masculinity in crisis discourse from the nineties and beyond to new theoretical heights.'

- Elaine Aston, Professor of Contemporary Performance, Lancaster University, UK

'Of all the books published on men and masculinities in the new millennium, Fintan Walsh's is the most perceptive and persuasive. Impressive in its range and justified in its claims, Male Trouble is psychoanalytically inflected cultural studies of the highest order.'

- Calvin Thomas, Professor of English, Georgia State University, USA

'Probing in its analyses of its artistic sources, and unafraid in its interrogations of western masculinity, Walsh's Male Trouble is a unique and persuasively rigorous ethico-political intervention into the notion of 'masculinity in crisis', which belongs on every gender, performance or cultural studies scholar's bookshelf, and should also be required reading for graduate programs within these fields.' Theatre Survey

'I believe this book provides an original and insightful account and analysis of some perfor­mance artists and playwrights' extreme responses to the so-called crisis of masculinity. It certainly deconstructs and debunks any notion that these performances and narratives are radical challenges to masculine power whether homosexual or heterosexual. Moreover, far from challenging the dominance of heteronormative values as might be expected when many of the artists are gay men, these performances reproduce the very masculine-feminine binary that sustains them..' Organization

'Male Trouble's most valuable contribution to the current field of dysfunctional masculinity studies lies however in its meticulous, convincing elaborations on the roles of sacrifice