Hegemonic Masculinities in Time: Maximus the Confessor and _Interstellar_

This paper tracks the construction of hegemonic masculinity across temporal disruptions through a phenomenon that I call ‘twins not-twins.’ First, I examine the religiously-racially premodern hegemonic masculinity of monks taught by Maximus the Confessor. Fourteen centuries later in the 2014 Christopher Nolan film _Interstellar_, I analyze the modern hegemonic masculinity of the film’s lead character Matthew McConaughey and himself (trapped in a black hole). Temporally, Maximus’s monks are multiple striving to be one; McConaughey’s character, Cooper, is singular split into two. Each are twins not-twins. I argue that the hegemonic masculinity produced through the monks’ divine pursuit and Cooper’s space pursuit are context-specific hegemonic masculinities that provincialize the idea of a stable touchstone by which other masculinities are theorized. Further, I examine the cross-temporal confluences of these premodern and modern hegemonic masculinities to situate dynamics in both sets of twins not-twins that are occluded by the tendency toward periodization.