“Good vibration” or domination?: Stylized repetition in mythopoetic performance of masculinity

Abstract

Performances in the mythopoetic men's movement are designed to restore a deep and essential masculinity theorized by Robert Bly and those who have written handbooks attempting to put Bly's theory into practice. Judith Butler's analysis of gender as performatively constituted by “stylized repetitions of acts” establishes that the masculinity Bly and others wish to restore does not occur prior to the performances they propose to achieve that restoration. Application of Butler's analysis to three constellations of mythopoetic performance (the dividing practice of pathologizing the “soft” or uninitiated male, the attempt to “contain” masculine space, and the nonconsensual initiation of boys) reveals the construction, rather than restoration, of masculinity by the movement. In particular, the nonconsensual initiation of boys represents an ultimately sadistic performance that destabilizes the movement's claims for an essential masculinity and warrants feminist resistance.