Posthumane Männlichkeiten

The masculine machine-man, associated with notions of a virile, hyper-muscular male body since the 1980s, is a thing of the past in contemporary art; the author shows this on the basis of representations of male, masculine and queer bodies since the 1990s. While the cyborg figure generally refers either to a militaristic, self-contained masculinity or to a feminine, fluid resolution, an analysis of male-technological bodies in contemporary art is still overdue. The author locates the bodies depicted in the debates on a post-human dissolution of body and gender, while enquiring how these are interwoven with current discussions on new concepts of masculinity and gender.

Maike Hoffmeister (née Wagner), scientific assistant in the DFG project "Männlichkeiten im Umbau", Ruhr University Bochum, until 2023