Men, masculinities and the material(-)discursive

This article addresses the relations of materialist and discursive analyses of men and masculinities. More specifically, it argues for a materialist-discursive, material/discursive or even a materialdiscursive approach to men and masculinities. In the first part, some of the intellectual and political influences on the development of this approach are outlined. These include elaborations on materialism towards discourse, elaborations on discourse towards materialism, and attempts to work across that boundary. This is followed by focusing on, first, the example of men and violence, second, the topic of men, and, third, men's and males' materialdiscursive bodies. The concluding section discusses the importance of situatedness of knowledge, and the possibility of working towards the abolition of the social category of ‘men’. To deal with this complex problematic, a concept that speaks across the non-equivalence of males, men, masculinity is needed, and for this I suggest ‘gex’, rather than sex or gender.