Revisiting the Abject Phallus in a Post-#metoo/#balancetonporc World

Keith Reader’s The Abject Object (2006) brought together the Lacanian concept of the phallus with the Kristevan notion of abjection to theorize representations of emasculated and failing masculinities across a range of modern French texts. This article brings Reader’s Lacanian-Kristevan model up to date with a discussion of recent developments in online cultures. The past twenty years are marked by the rise of the feminist movement known as #Metoo/ #BalanceTonPorc, the invention of the personage of the ‘incel’ (involuntary celibate) in the misogynistic corner of the internet termed ‘the Manosphere’ and, latterly, a particularly high-profile French rape trial, the Pelicot case, in which the perpetrator sought other men online to abuse his drugged wife. The article examines whether the theoretical model of masculinity Reader proposed almost 20 years ago may offer generative ways of thinking about the new crises potentiated by contemporary digital sexual cultures

Art · Male genitalia · Phallus (fungus) · Sociology · Cinema and Media Studies · Cuban History and Society · Gender Studies · History