Masculinity as Flight
Vulnerability, Devotion, Submission and Sovereignty in the Teachings of Silvanus
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22037746 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Blossom Stefaniw (0000-0003-1721-207X, MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 66-87 |
| Publication date | 2021-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Early Christian History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2222-582X • E-ISSN: 2471-4054 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/2222582x.2021.1928525 |
| OpenAlex | W3206430378 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 28 |
Late Roman masculinity required dominance and control and favoured violent hierarchies. Yet scholars of early Christian martyr acts and ascetic literature frequently observe ambivalence or deviation from this norm. Rather than accumulate more and more exceptions to the traditional ideal (which was never really singular anyway) or continue collecting variations on this model of masculinity, the following essay seeks to shift the model by introducing a notion of masculinity as a plan of escape from vulnerability, not as a state of affairs or set of traits. Treating masculinity as a trajectory and a necessarily volatile process allows us to accommodate all the ambivalence and variety that has already been observed, because flight is always volatile, because human beings trying to be invulnerable is impossible, and because in the late Roman world, that plan of escape passed through a bottleneck of submission to specific other already-sovereign males. I illustrate the notion of masculinity as flight from vulnerability on the basis of an example of ascetic instruction between master and disciple known as the Teachings of Silvanus, tracing a jumbled narrative arc starting with intolerable vulnerability, passing through indulgence in submission and devotion, to the promise of total sovereignty. I wish to suggest that treating vulnerability as intolerable and fleeing from it is what is at the root of late ancient masculinity
Ambivalence · Art · Asceticism · Literature · Masculinity · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sovereignty · Theology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Gender Studies · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology
Demons and the Making of the Monk
Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond
Mind, Text, and Commentary
Cruel Optimism
The rhetoric of the maternal book-body in the passion of Perpetua
Snapshots of Evolving Traditions
Monasteries and the Care of Souls in Late Antique Christianity
Desert Christians
The Garden of Priapus
The Teachings of Silvanus as a Gnostic work
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |