My proposal comes from a chapter I am working on called “Twins Not-Twins: Temporizing Hegemonic Masculinity” where I identify premodern and modern temporal constructions of masculinity through a phenomenon that I name ‘twins not-twins.’ The first set of twins not-twins is seventh-century Maximus the Confessor’s monks: a group of individuals who nevertheless learn from, mimic, and work toward a single identity in their ascetic pursuit of God. Fourteen centuries later, I identify a second set: Mathew McConaughey and himself in his lead role in the 2014 film _Interstellar_. McConaughey’s character, Cooper, travels through space guided by a temporally suspended version of himself that has been trapped in a black hole. Temporally, Maximus’s monks are multiple striving to be one; Cooper is singular split into two.
Twins not-twins emerges as theoretically potent entry point for unpacking the inter-relational construction of hegemonic cis-male masculinity—a group that has largely been theorized as self-propagating or intra-relational, and escaping the descriptors often attributed to ‘other’ masculinities or gendered and sexualized groups, such as fragmented, multiple, excessive, or lacking. In the chapter, I make three arguments: first, each temporal context makes legible the multi-nodal structures that construct hegemonic masculinity, provincializing the production of hegemonic masculinity. Second, hegemonic masculinity’s temporality in both Maximus’s and _Interstellar’s_ time is pervasive and mundane yet only experienced by some, locating it as neither fully queer nor entirely straight time. Third, when both read separately and together the two sets of twins not-twins evoke Susan Stryker’s and Cael Keegan’s evil twin metaphor of trans and queer theory.
In this presentation, I argue that Maximus’s influence was and is so expansive, both geographically and temporally (Louth), that his religious and social assumptions about masculinity contribute to broader traditions of gendered hierarchies that remain present. The term hegemonic masculinity, coined in the mid 1980s by sociologists Raewyn Connell and James Messerschmidt, theorizes how different types of masculinities exist hierarchically, while resisting the biologically-based language of ‘sex roles’ as too essentialist and limited (Connell and Messerschmidt, 829). I categorize Maximus’s monks as hegemonically masculine, using scholars such as Geraldine Heng, Averil Cameron, and Nicole Lopez-Janzen to locate Maximus’s influence in Christianity as ultimately inhabiting a socially recognized and privileged religious-racializing force in the premodern.
Maximus acknowledges the process of working toward becoming what I’ve been calling twins not-twins when he writes about the monks, noting: “In the multiple there is diversity, unlikeness, and difference. But in God, who is eminently one and unique, there is only identity, simplicity, and sameness” (Maximus 1985, 144). Becoming monk is the process of shaping difference toward creating unity of identity. As the monks undertake their coordinated practices of prayer, study, disavowal of self-love through the direction of love toward God and others, they establish their twins not-twins identity temporally. As they individual and collectively work to cross the five cosmic divisions, they establish their twins not-twins identity temporally (Ambiguum 41, Maximus 2014). The monks that comprise the hegemonic masculine space of the monastery are internally related to one another and to God in ways that produce their singularity.
In _Interstellar_, viewers learn that Cooper-the-space explorer has, in fact, been guided throughout the entire film by a temporal version of himself: Cooper-who-has-been-trapped-in-a-tesseract. Tesseract Cooper has been manipulating the time/space fabric to lead earth-Cooper toward NASA’s goal of colonizing space in the guise of saving humanity. Here, hegemonic masculinity is literally spread across multiple temporal sites in the production of Cooper-the-white-space-cowboy and tesseract-Cooper, who leads earth-Cooper to himself. Cooper is a twin not-twin of himself.
Hegemonic masculinity is culturally and historically contingent; it is a category comprised of geographically specific and relational aspects. Examining the contours of the twins not-twins’ hegemonic masculinities provides both intra-temporal and cross-temporal work of being site specific while tracing recurring patterns of social organization. Despite so much scholarship on its purportedly constructed nature, hegemonic cis-male masculinity’s seams remain stubbornly invisible, regardless of the time period. Maximus’s monks occupy a hegemonic masculine landscape that has very little trait-based overlap with Cooper from _Interstellar_. Yet, both sites reinforce the layers and modes of how religious, social, and structural authority remains organized.
I argue that examining the temporal constructions of the monks’ divine pursuit and of Cooper’s space pursuit makes visible the context-specific internal production of each one’s hegemonic masculinity that stubbornly persists as the externally and eternally smooth touchstone by which other groups are measured. Further, I argue that examining the cross-temporal confluences of premodern and modern hegemonic masculinities reveal dynamics in both sets of twins not-twins that are occluded by the tendency toward periodization. Cooper’s cosmic travels to save humanity poses questions about Maximus’s own travels and his monks’ goals, and specific components of the monks’ hegemonic masculinity influence visions of what Cooper and NASA hope to find when they are forced to abandon Earth.
Bibliography
Cameron, Averil. 2003. Jews and Heretics – A Category Error? In The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages Ed. by Adam Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed.
Connell, R. W. and James Messerschmidt. 2005. “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept” Gender & Society, Vol. 19 No. 6, December: 829-859
Heng, Geraldine. 2018. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages.
Keegan, Cáel. 2020. Transgender Studies, Or How to do Things with Trans*. In The Cambridge Companion to Queer Studies, ed. Siobhan Somerville.
Lopez-Jantzen, Nicole. 2019. Between Empires: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages. Literature Compass16:1-12.
Louth, Andrew. 2015. Maximus the Confessor’s Influence and Reception in Byzantine and Modern Orthodoxy. In The Oxford handbook of Maximus the Confessor, ed. Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil.
Maximus the Confessor. 1985. Selected writings: Selected writings. The classics of Western spirituality series, trans. George C. Berthold.
Maximus the Confessor. 2014. On difficulties in the Church Fathers vol. 2, trans. Maximos Constas.
Nolan, Christopher, dir. 2014. Interstellar.
Stryker, Susan. 2004. Transgender Studies: Queer Theory’s Evil Twin. GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, Vol 10, 2: 212-215.
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.