Crisis of capitalist patriarchy
Renegotiating masculinity and the heteronormative family in Kumbalangi Nights
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12690539 |
|---|---|
| Authors | P Mani Mathew (0000-0002-6287-9191, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Birla Institute of Science and Technology Pilani, Rajasthan, India, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1737-1752 |
| Publication date | 2022-01-31 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Feminist Media Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1468-0777 • E-ISSN: 1471-5902 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14680777.2021.1996418 |
| OpenAlex | W4210356199 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 14 |
The Malayalam language film Kumbalangi Nights was released in 2019 and narrated the story of working-class people negotiating structures of capitalist patriarchy, encountered at moments of its crisis, which are also moments that indicate possibilities for social transformation. The trajectory of its narrative, the characters, and the tropes addressed in the film offer a new synthesis—both, of hegemonic masculinity and the kinship structure of the heteronormative family. Here, working-class lives are foregrounded in the contemporary crisis of patriarchy, accelerated by the crisis of social reproduction under neoliberal capitalism. Central to this crisis of masculinity and the bourgeois family form depicted in the film is the “crisis of care” that has been explained in recent scholarship on social reproduction. Nancy Fraser uses the expression to analyse the contradictory capitalist tendency to strain the conditions of social reproduction necessary for its own reproduction and stability. Through an analysis of the film, and the social realities of contemporary Kerala, this paper identifies the contours of this new synthesis. The film imagines a new mode of existence for subordinate masculinities, and challenges some of the ideologies of capitalist patriarchy, while continuing to valorise romantic love and its relationship to work
Capitalism · Masculinity · Narrative · Patriarchy · Political science · Politics · Reproduction · Social capital · Social reproduction · Social science · Sociology · Gender Politics and Representation · Gender Studies · Law · Social and Economic Development in India · South Asian Cinema and Culture
Capitalist patriarchy and the case for socialist feminism
Social Reproduction Theory
The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community
Crisis of Care? On the Social-Reproductive Contradictions of Contemporary Capitalism
Sleepless fathers in Malayalam cinema
PE Usha, hegemonic masculinities and the public domain in Kerala
The Decentralisation Discourse
Gender Myths that Instrumentalise Women
The condition of postmodernity
Down with Love
Hegemonic Masculinity
Toward a new sociology of masculinity
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |