男性气质与性别政治——解读伊恩.麦克尤恩的《家庭制造》

Hegemonic Masculinity and Gender Politics:Interpreting Ian McEwan's “Homemade”

《家庭制造》选自伊恩.麦克尤恩1975年发表的短篇小说集《最初的爱情和最后的仪式》。在男权社会中,对个人的规训往往以真理的名义行使权力之实,导致男性的内心焦虑与变态。这个短篇通过暴露主人公的言行,对传统的霸权性男性气质和逻各斯中心主义进行挑战和颠覆,揭示了其对非主流男性及女性的压制,并在小说结尾促使读者反思这一理想化的男性气质的本质,寄期望于建构新的男性气质体系。

Masculinity, as a more powerful term than femininity, is socially acquired instead of naturally born. In modern society, like capitalism itself, masculinity is always in crisis. Ian McEwan's short story “Homemade” uncovers how masculinity is initiated, structured and regulated by the power politics and interrogates how masculinity comes to be hegemony. This male hegemony, in “Homemade”, is intertwined with the possession of male heterosexuality through the protagonist's first sexual discourse with and possession of a female body, which does not result in pleasure but spiritual loss. The hero is thus trapped in the gender politics which empowers but also confines the masculine identity. Ian McEwan's short story subtly unveils the grotesque and destructive design of the traditional hegemonic masculinity, and further deconstructs it through interrogating its formative and normative mechanism.