Kennon, Patricia
(2017)
Monsters of Men: Masculinity and the Other in Patrick Ness’s
Chaos Walking Series.
Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 37 (1).
pp. 25-34.
ISSN 0735-1690
Abstract
To date, studies of gender issues in young adult dystopian novels have
been dominated by a focus on constructions of female subjectivity, girlhood,
and the potential for female empowerment. However, little critical
attention has been correspondingly dedicated to examining how regimes
of masculinity, traditional privileges of male power, and male adolescence
are represented and mediated in dystopian fiction for teenagers. Patrick
Ness’s exploration of normative and transgressive embodiments of masculinity
in his dystopian Chaos Walking series for young adults powerfully
addresses tensions between power and vulnerability, autonomy and conformity,
and concepts of boyhood and manhood. Through their experiences
with the possibilities of telepathy, biotechnology, and interspecies relationships,
Ness’s protagonists must negotiate with the simultaneous attraction
of the fragmented self and its threat to the regulation of conventional
manhood, as male characters struggle to sustain their inherited understanding
of themselves and the relation between self and other. Through
his problematizing of the boundaries between traditional hegemonic and
Other, human and alien codes, and his emphasis on the importance of nonhierarchical
and inclusive co-existence, Ness proposes a receptive, expansive,
and egalitarian paradigm of masculinity.
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