Kauffman 1

Johnny Kauffman 11 December 2012 English Senior Capstone Beautiful Essay

Wanting Cowboys, Thinking Rethinking without Thinking

What is become of the horseman, the cow-puncher, the last romantic figure upon our soil? For he was romantic. Whatever he did, he did with his might. The bread that he earned was earned hard, the wages that he squandered were squandered hardhalf a years pay sometimes gone in a nightWell, he will be here among us always, invisible, waiting his chance to live and play as he would like. His wild kind has been among us always, since the beginning: a young man with his temptations, a hero without wings. The Virginian, Introduction

I think I live in a family of cowboys. My grandfather Mel was the first among us, at least the first I ever heard about. He grew up on a farm with four sisters and still complains about all the work he had to do as a child. From here he battled, without a college education, to become economically comfortable, working in a variety of groundskeeping positions for the county parks department where I grew up. Eventually he reached this place of economic comfort and he is now able to spread the all-important symbol of his success, the savings his family never had, to his grandchildren. More than anything else though, Mels physical labor defined his identity, even now it is primarily through gardening, woodworking, and volunteering that he has become involved in the community that surrounds him. Each popping vein, callus, and shrunken fingernail on his body demonstrates who he is and exhibits his financial success. Mel would be annoyed if he heard me call him a cowboy, but because his success seems to have come from his own strenuous, masculine effort, this comparison seems reasonable to me. Last fall when Mel had heart surgery his world changed significantly. He lost the physicality he once had. His body thinned and his skin became pale. His body wouldnt respond

Kauffman 2 to his mind in the way he wanted it to. Most importantly, Mel could not work himself out of this situation like he had throughout his groundskeeping career, or on the farm where he grew up. My grandmother Loretta suffered more than anyone because she was cooped up in a small apartment at a nursing home with a man used to volunteering long hours, tending gardens, and putting up birdhouses. He complained and blamed, forcing my grandmother to fight many meaningless battles against the nursing home. She was told to complain to the administration about all the cats running around, and the relocation of the community gardens and the goose shit on their lawn. My grandmother Loretta suffered with Mel. She lost confidence along with him as her relationships became less stable and she had to take time away from the volunteer work she was used to doing. Ultimately, Mel was unable to handle the fact that his habitual existence was more dependent on the efforts of his wife than himself. Thankfully, he has gained some of his strength back, and Mel has become more comfortable with his body. In addition, the relationship between Mel and Loretta has stabilized and become more relaxed, but they continue to suffer on a profound level. My grandfather did what he wanted, but in the end he was never able to gain total control, or even a firm grip on his masculinity. Because there was no rule that told my grandfather, Yes, you have now become an ideal man, a need to prove his masculinity seemed to always be in the back of his mind. His current peace has come, in part, as he has begun to accept the inevitable presence of this need in the back of his mind. Acceptance of this need, but more importantly the impossibility of it ever being fulfilled, has led to justice in my grandparents household. Loretta doesnt feel the need to listen to my grandfather as much as she did before and had become more independent, not only making her healthy and happier, but

Kauffman 3 connecting both her and my grandfather with many of the individuals in the community in ways that strengthen our relationship. In a 1989 speech at the Cardazo Law School in New York City, Jacques Derrida said: Law is the element of calculation, and it is just that there be law, but justice is incalculable, it requires us to calculate with the incalculable; and aporetic experiences are the experiences, as improbable as they are necessary, of justice, that is to say of moments in which the decision between just and unjust is never insured by a rule. (Derrida, Force of Law. 947) This statement appears in Derridas broader interrogation of the way the law provides us with the criteria through which decisions are made and objects become known. The appearance of justice requires an escape from the terms of the law: those things most often taken for granted or considered natural, the assumptions underlying the workings of society. Pronounced examples of the law in this sense might include the assumption of the heterosexed body, the autonomy of the scientific process, or the logic of non-contradiction. Derrida, unsurprisingly, does not make things easy. In order to approach justice we must leave behind the normal ways we see, read and reason. Our approach must come from a different direction. In fact it might not be an approach at all, but some sort of alien transportation, or perhaps, and this seems the most likely possibility in the terms of Derrida, we will fall into justice totally unaware. My grandfather certainly had little awareness of the justice that would appear in his household after his heart surgery. In the moment by grandfather accepted the fantasy of ideal masculinity he gave up control allowing justice to surface. There is an awkward comparability between Derridas definition of justice and ideal masculinity, insofar as the latter is that which is sought but can never be embodied in a complete, unified, or singular form. This awkwardness appears because while neither masculinity nor justice can ever be fully achieved, ideal masculinity, more or less, is constituted by regulations,

Kauffman 4 names, and definitions, while justice can only occur beyond these types of rules. That is to say, masculinity is formed through citations of patriarchal hegemonic discourse, while justice is often thought of in a metaphysical sense, something more real than the real, something intangible but always already present and permeating throughout the real. Furthermore, the comparison of justice and masculinity is awkward because of the violence so often appearing during the quest to achieve masculinity, as well as the defense of its status as law. Masculinitys lawfulness is maintained as it is cited by individuals who claim male identity positions and violence is used to keep certain groups from making these citations in order to maintain social hierarchies. However, what if by accepting the phantom like quality of masculinity, the fact that it can never be fully embodied but is always present, the quest for masculinity might be a quest for justice. By rejecting the ideality and naturalness of masculinity, the effort to achieve ideal masculinity might be redirected and become an impulse behind the search for justice. Of course, on a theoretical level, masculinity as law cannot simply be slid into the realm of justice. 1 Yet my goal in this essay is to make this movement, to demonstrate how the destabilization and fragmentation of my own thought, in combination with the individual masculine effort to remove myself from male dominated structures of thought, might lead me to the edge of a pit of justice. While my grandfather labored toward a comfortable place of economic stability during his life, throughout this semester my academic work has moved toward destabilization on a number of fronts. The courses I took this semester were plagued with postmodernist approaches that demonstrated how theoretical manifestations of stability, completeness, and unity, are unrealities maintained by unbalanced structures of power to create a fantasy of justice and equality. Much of my writing then, has focused on the fragmented and incomplete operations of
1

I have significant doubts, actually, that this theoretical move can be made at all. However, for the purpose of this essay, call it a selfish purpose even, Im going to step back from theory in the hopes of perhaps ending in a place that is theoretically viable.

Kauffman 5 sexuality, subjectivity, ideals, identity, and self. The papers I have written tend to fall into incoherence rather than organization and certainty, and in my writing Ive tried to find a place between communication, and the development of arguments that by definition do not manifest in the terms of normative modes of thought. These papers where grappling with Derridas definition of justice. They were an effort to get myself as close to the edge of the pit of justice, providing a quick glimpse of what is at the bottom, and then running away and telling everyone what I saw. This pattern appeared early on in the semester when I wrote on Judith Butlers text Bodies that Matter. The arguments I presented in the paper demonstrated the necessity of the moves, although often failed and misdirected, I was making towards incoherence in my other work. I wrote: The difficulty in rethinking appears at the level of symbolization, which cannot escape its own structure, pointing to, with the appearance of the privileged signifier of the phallus, the way in which structures of thought themselves are sexed in support of the hegemonic heterosexual matrix. (Kauffman 3). Without going into Butlers theoretical discussion of symbolization and the phallus, this sentence describes the inextricable link between thought and sex, especially heterosexual masculinitys privileged location in the workings of thought. 2 Thus, in my efforts toward destabilization and justice, I needed to separate my academic work from masculine modes of thought, like my grandfathers, that failed to operate beyond the terms of masculinity. The assumption I am making in this essay is that while ideal masculinity and the quest to achieve ideal masculinity are certainly not justice, the spaces in which ideal masculinity fails might be the locations in which justice can appear.

Although I know I share this with a number of Earlham students, Butlers work, even just Bodies that Matter, has affected drastically the way I read. The phallus appears all over this essay, I can only hope Ive attached it to some places its not supposed to be.

Kauffman 6 In my grandfathers case, the ideal that identity is formed through physical labor and not interpersonal interaction led him to blame, and treat Loretta in ways that caused her to suffer. I was only able to articulate how rethinking might occur through strenuous individual labor like my grandfathers, spending hours hunched over papers editing often incoherent prose. Furthermore, spending so much time in the library did very little to help me build interpersonal relationships like those that make Lorettas life so vibrant. For the most part, this laboring individuality that I enacted throughout the semester, kept me from rethinking. The inclination to individual labor that I share with my grandfather separates us from the thoughts and perspectives of others that might invade our own and lead to a legitimate rethinking. I use the word invade here because there cannot be a casual rethinking. Rethinking by definition must be a threatening destabilization of every ground and framework through which an individual acts and perceives. The individual might have the power to open themselves up to invasion, but this also seems to be too much of a comfort to allow for destabilization. 3 Even my huge effort to rethink by demonstrating the way my own masculinity stems from men in my family and two novels, Portnoys Complaint and American Psycho, only leads to a small amount of destabilization. I hope for this essay to destabilize and decenter my identity and self through its focus on the stories of the Kauffman cowboys and these two novels. By focusing on these intertexts, the essay and my identity spread out and can no longer be called my own. This is an essay written by the Kauffman cowboys, hopefully grounded by their readings of Portnoys Complaint and American Psycho, and their own self-reflection. Unfortunately, the Kauffman cowboys are not all senior English majors at Earlham College, rather it is the I appearing throughout this essay

I hope you are beginning to grasp why this is so frustrating! The alternative title for this essay is, Johnny Kauffman: A Big Dummys Struggle to Abstain from Enacting White Male Backlash.

Kauffman 7 that represents the conglomeration of their texts within the cowboy that is Johnny Kauffman. 4 I think ultimately my efforts in this regard will fail, but I hope the effort might bring about some justice, perhaps there is more justice in failure than success. My readings of Phillip Roths novel Portnoys Complaint were at points made incomprehensible because of my desire to rethink, and my papers about the text often crept so far beyond normative modes of thought that they were totally incomprehensible and meaningless. Of course Im exaggerating here, I was able to write some moderately compelling papers thanks to the threads of my grandfathers strenuous masculinity that I held onto. But, the fact that I thought I could rethink solely through my interpretation of Portnoys Complaint forced me to labor excessively over papers just to make them readable, and had negative effects on my relationships. I dont mean to say I somehow have this way of thinking, like Butler or some other groundbreaking theorizer, way beyond what others have the capacity to understand. Instead, when trying to rethink, many complicated issues arose that led me down muddy, overgrown, circular, and dead end paths of thought. For example, thinking seems like such an individual act, but what is an individual in the first place? How is thinking wrapped up in individuality? In addition, rethinking still relies on some level of thought that is always embedded in the normative terms of dominant discourse. To think in a different way always already assumes the presence of a certain trace of thought, the thinking before rethinking, necessary to identify the difference between the new and old. But Ill stop there, I want to resist going to far into theory by thinking thinking. However much I might enjoy this theoretical play, to a certain extent it must end here, at least for now. 5 Coming back to a more solid ground my

Im hoping these footnotes serve as my own text, an intertext to my efforts to conglomerate the Kauffman cowboys. 5 It seemed appropriate to say this, but I think some sort of subconscious hate for theory might be surfacing within this essay.

Kauffman 8 labored reading of Portnoys Complaint was fruitful insofar as it demonstrates the importance of this kind of abrupt break from thought. Portnoys Complaint is the monologue of its protagonist Alex Portnoy to his psychiatrist. The monologue traces a conflict Alex presumes exists between the morality he was instilled with growing up in a middle class Jewish home, and his rampant sexual desire. Throughout the novel Alex expresses his desire to detach himself from his past, but every action he takes, most often of a sexual nature, only leaves him more wrapped up in the oedipal structure that forms his memory of his home life. As a child Alex is a perfect student, gaining the overwhelming affection of his mother and his teachers, even as he is constantly running to his room and the bathroom to masturbate. As an adult Alex is the New York City Assistant Commissioner of Human Opportunity, a position in which he is able to enact the altruism he was instilled with as a child, but outside of his job his life revolves around his sexual relationships, which more often than not are characterized by physical and verbal violence. Ultimately, Alexs attempts to separate his morality and sexuality are what cause him to struggle so severely, and as he tries to detach himself from his past he only becomes more intricately tied to it. Alexs largely one-sided monologue with his psychoanalyst Dr. Spielvogel exhibits his attempts to unify his identity, even as he is always already doomed to fail. The doctor, like the reader, sees the text of Portnoys Complaint before him, and brings it together through a diagnosis, the source of the novels title. The novel begins with the definition of Portnoys Complaint as A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature (Roth). In a sense, Alexs identity as it is defined by disorder, is unstable and incomplete from the start. His struggle to bridge the gap between his altruism and sexuality are what name him and his narrative, reducing

Kauffman 9 his subjectivity to the effects of the instability of ideal masculinity, and the unified identity that he seeks. Portnoys Complaint is not fully a novel about Alexander Portnoy, because if Alexander Portnoy existed in any sort of complete form there would be no complaint and there would be no novel. Yet by diagnosing Alex, Portnoys Complaint locates both the source of his violence and morality within him in order to cling to his subjectivity. The novel is, as its title suggests, about Alexanders failure to unite altruism and intelligence with male sexuality. While self-reflection allows Alex to see the gaps between his altruism and eroticism, his narcissism and guilt dont allow him to accept the instability of his identity, and lead him to violence. If Alex were to abandon the centralization of morality within himself, the effects of his self-reflection might be expanded to check his guilt and inhibit his violence. While Alexs guilt ultimately fails to unite and totalize his masculine identity, it is one of the most predominant characteristics of his narrative and the inspiration for his psychoanalytical confession. His guilt frames his life, inspiring his professional career and regulating his sexuality. Alex both desires and hates a woman he meets named Naomi because he sees her as completely moral, a way to alleviate his guilt and establish his natural, individual identity. Alexs attraction to Naomi is illustrated as he says, If I was born to be austere about myself, so be it! A grueling and gratifying ethical life, opulent with self-sacrifice, voluptuous with restraint! Ah, sounds good. Ah, I can just taste those rocks! What do you say, take me back with youinto the pure Portnovian existence! (269). The erotic language Alex uses here illustrates the way he perceives Naomi as a location to unite his sexual desire and moral center, the two forces most vital to his understanding of himself. However, this erotic language is his own construction, stemming from his guilt. It is a self-deception that attempts to bring into being a reality through which he can obtain ideal masculinity and subjectivity, but his construction will

Kauffman 10 always come up short. Guilt, for Alex, is an attempt to unify subjectivity through language. As he rejects his guilt, he loses his ability to communicate, and the language of his narrative breaks down into a single incoherent, angry, scream of Ahhhhhh (274). Alex is unable to realize the violence of his action. He feels his guilt is unfair because of the way he has centralized morality within himself. Guilt serves Alex in two ways: first, as a way to enter language and create a narrative that he uses in his effort to establish a pure identity, and second, as justification for, and a way to displace the cause of his anger. The text relies on Alexs centralized morality for its intelligibility, and as this centralization leads to violence, serves as an example of the manner in which the formation of intelligible subjectivities relies on violence. Thomas Byers, in his article Terminating the Postmodern: Masculinity and Pomophobia, uses the term pomophobia to explain the anxiety suffered by individuals like Alex. Byers argues that this type of anxiety stems from a masculine identity crisis that threatens to transform or even overthrow the whole concept of identity (Byers 7). Furthermore, in Byers argument, masculine violence is not only a response to the fact that the dominant order, which privileges Alex and allows him to be so sexually mobile and manipulative, is becoming more residual, but also serves as resistance to the encroachment of marginalized groups into a previously delimited discourse. Alexs violence against Naomi, for example, serves a dual purpose. It defends his dominant position within the social order as his male body controls her female body, as well as stabilizes his subjectivity and identity by refusing to acknowledge her understanding of herself or her interpretation of Alexs sexual approach. In other words, Alex fails to think beyond the terms of his own, supposedly bounded individual guilt, a guilt that always locates the source of his anger outside of him as something he is justified in combatting with violence. To focus solely on my own struggle with masculine

Kauffman 11 structures of thought, and my own interpretations of this struggle, inhibits my perspective in ways, as Alexs situation demonstrates, that often lead to violence. My cousin Seths story is tightly interwoven with my own, so that by working through his own struggle with masculinity, I might labor to enhance the influence of this relationship on my rethinking. For the most part, Seth and I played on the same baseball teams until we graduated from high school. Seth was a year younger than me but far more athletic. He was, historically, one of our high schools best goalies, and holds a number of scoring records for our basketball team. Simply the fact that he can dunk demonstrates his athleticism and popularity as an athlete. To dunk in high school means youre something really special. On our high school team Seth was our best catcher and I was our best pitcher, although these titles didnt mean much considering how bad our team was. Some of the most romantic moments in my life occurred on the baseball field. Of course Seths romantic experiences on the baseball field paled in comparison to what he did on the basketball court. Indiana, our home, has always been more of a basketball state than a baseball state. While the baseball bleachers held about forty fans, high school basketball games filled gymnasiums with thousands. Dunking in front of Amish teenagers, RV factory owners, farmers, families of Mexican immigrants, and hoards of horny teenagers has a different feel then catching a pop-up in front of you and your teammates parents. It seems that Seth must have enjoyed his high school days gloriously then, reveling in his success, popularity, and the beauty of his athletic ability. But, as is often the case to the point of clich, a high level of popular success does not necessary lead to personal happiness. In middle school Seths father Jamie, my fathers brother, my grandfathers son, and my uncle, died suddenly, breaking apart Seths primary system of personal support. No longer supported by a stable heterosexual family, Seth became especially attached to hegemonic ideals

Kauffman 12 of nationalism, individualism and masculinity. I remember multiple instances in the high school locker room when he expressed racism towards our opponents, used homosexual slurs, or was physically abusive to younger teammates. 6 His high school life was made even worse when his mom quickly remarried after the death of his father. This sent shockwaves through my family, and although the death was the primary source of the conflict now present amongst us, this marriage inhibited the healing process. Seth went on to play basketball in college, but wisely, I think, dropped out after his first year. Looking back on Seths high school athletic career, perhaps unfairly, his athletic beauty and success appear less romantic. Seth was suffering deeply during this time, searching for some sort of legitimate approval for his abilities and identity. Although he now attends a technical school in Ohio without sports teams, recently received his truck drivers license, and seems like much more of a competent adult than other men his age, he still seems to be looking for approval that he did not receive at home, or anywhere other than athletic competitions. My cousin wants to be wanted. Instead of playing basketball he has become a bull rider. Bull riding, Ive learned, is a popular sport in Indiana that allows my cousin to prove the strenuousness of his masculine body before thousands. Unlike my grandfather, my cousin would appreciate being called a cowboy; hes certainly got the height, grace, and skinny but muscular body the name requires. Outside of the realm of athletic competition my cousins led him to violence. He did not receive the supportive confirmation of masculinity like he might have from his deceased father, and the support he received from my family in high school centered on his athletic performance. On the basketball court and in the rodeo ring, however, my cousins teammates, his coaches, and the fans need him because of the way he embodies the physicality and demeanor of masculinity.
6

Im worried Im being too critical of Seth for his violent masculinity in high school. The behaviors I just described arent that much different than any other high school idiot, myself included.

Kauffman 13 Here, my cousin finds a place where he is wanted, not only because he can jump high and run fast, but because of the confidence and self-reliance with which he competes. Making a shot under pressure is not only a result of the athleticism of his body, but his individual ability, separate even from his teammates. In this combination of physicality, individuality, and selfreliance, my cousin is able to form for himself a unified, coherent, masculine identity. In Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho, Patrick Bateman finds a unified masculine identity in the repetitions of pornography and film that he assembles, but his life outside of these repetitions is permeated by physical violence. In no way do I want to say that my cousin is somehow similar to Patrick, that his violence is on the same level as Patricks, or my cousins performance on the basketball court mirrors pornography. Instead, I hope that the following discussion of American Psycho will demonstrate the risk one takes in a dependence on a bounded space, like the basketball court or rodeo ring, when developing a unified, coherent masculine identity. In American Psycho Patricks narrative, like his masculinity and subjectivity, lacks coherence. Patrick often contradicts himself, and the reader is rarely able to determine if what is happening is real, or is just a hallucination. In an attempt to stabilize the narrative, and his subjectivity, Patrick rewrites pieces of masculine culture relocating them within his narrative, on his body, and in his home. Large sections of the text are taken up by tedious music reviews that only seem to replicate the ideas of other music journalists, as if Patrick is only able to express an opinion by bringing together an assortment of disparate voices from pop culture. Additionally, the beginnings of scenes often include about a page of text in which Patrick names all the labels and styles of the clothing he and the surrounding characters are wearing. The most important cultural repetitions in Patricks narrative are his assembling of pornographic sex scenes that draw their material from the pornography that he watches.

Kauffman 14 The physical violence that Patrick commits against women that goes beyond what might be considered as standardly pornographic takes place at the end of the sex scenes Patrick sets in his apartment, in which he is a director, photographer, and actor. There is little or no transition from Patricks regular narrative into the pornography he creates, so that it seems to be unattached to, but still enclosed in the larger narrative. Patrick is chatting, usually with two women in his apartment, and suddenly Sex happensa hard-core montage (Ellis 303). His description of a scene in the film Inside Lydia's Ass uses the same prose as the pornography he creates himself, and because of the details of the scenes descriptions, Patrick appears not to be recalling something that actually took place, but simply repeating exactly what he has seen in the films and pornography he watches daily (Ellis 97-8). Patrick assembles these scenes so that he is in total control, the women always seem to be pleasured, either by him or the other women he brings into the scenes (Ellis 325). Patricks control and repetition of other films and pornography are reliant on each other, but they end when he becomes monstrously violent and he moves from the repetition of the language of films and pornography into reality. Patricks narrative cuts off abruptly once he begins torturing and mutilating the bodies of the women he included in his pornography scenes. In one instance he is describing the boots he made a woman named Elizabeth wear while they have sex, and in the next moment, with not transition, he says, Elizabeth, naked, running from the bedroom, blood already on her, is moving with difficulty and she screams out something garbled (Ellis 289). In the bounded pornographic scenes he creates Patricks masculinity is complete and unified, his body fit and sexually attractive, and his perspective totally dominant. Yet outside of these scenes, not only when he begins to hurt the women he included in his pornography, but as he wanders the streets of New York, his

Kauffman 15 masculinity comes under threat and he is compelled to act violently to protect his privilege and the terms that form his identity. As Patrick assaults a homeless man named Al he physically removes him from the streets of Manhattan, the location of the novels dominant discourse. Als marginal approach to consumerism: Im hungryWhat am I gonna do? but sit here and ask for help, is taken out of Patricks world in which the ability to amass resources for consumption defines identity (Ellis 130). In the conversation leading up to the assault Patrick imagines that Al's personal character flaws and homosexuality are the reason for his suffering. Patrick tells Al, You've got a negative attitude. That's what's stopping you. You've got to get you're act together. I'll help you (Ellis 130). This statement makes Al cry, which enrages Patrick and causes him to order Al to stop crying like some kind of faggot (Ellis 131). As he defines a lack of action and homosexuality as the cause of Al's homelessness Patrick conceals the force of an unbalanced system that has gifted him financial inheritance as well as professional opportunity, and possibly forced Al onto the street. Patrick assumes that he and Al operate on a level playing field, so that the supposed differences in their individuality and subjectivity are the reason Patrick is able to consume excessively and Al is not. In other words, by assaulting Al, Patrick is able to continue thinking in the terms of consumption that he uses to form his masculinity and maintain a position of dominance. In one of the shopping scenes in his narrative Patrick is compelled to embody the marginalized approach to consumerism that he relies on in opposition, to confirm his wealth is inextricably linked to his own masculinity. The pain Patrick experiences from the surrounding consumerism drives him into a store to steal a canned ham. He finds the lobby of a nearby building and opens the can with a key, hiding from the doorman while he eats. Patrick says, the

Kauffman 16 doorman, who at first seems to recognize me, then, after I start stuffing handfuls of the ham into my mouth, scooping the lukewarm pink meat out the can, getting it stuck between my nails, threatens to call the police. I'm outta there, outside, throwing up all the ham (Ellis 151). Patrick's consumption, in the end, does little to distinguish him from the homeless people he encounters like Al, and leaves him cowering in the corner of a building eating cheap food he has stolen from a grocery store. Patricks consumption, instead of unifying his masculine subjectivity and identity, and confirming his privilege in the present economic order, makes him a marginal presence in society and keeps him from committing physical violence against those who might take his place of dominance. Patrick experiences such a severe destruction of his body because he enacts masculinity to the extreme. He does not, even in the moments when he is not writhing along the streets of New York, embody the masculine referent of the calm, pragmatically skilled, physically adept, and charming cowboy. This formation of masculinity has the most potential for bringing together justice and masculinity, perhaps because it most effectively conceals the problematic ideology underpinning its construction. There are a number of issues with cowboy masculinity, for example, cowboys tend to be extremely violent, neutralizers of racism and social inequality, who are supposedly justified in their actions because of the pure individualism and democracy that they represent. My goal in this essay has not been to uphold cowboy masculinity, but to take advantage of its characteristics to bring together justice and masculinity and enable rethinking. While the stories of my grandfather and my cousin demonstrated primarily the negative effects of cowboy masculinity and masculinity in general, my dad Jeffs embodiment of masculinity, especially in its cowboyish qualities, approaches justice.

Kauffman 17 Jeff was the middle child in a family of three boys. Hes the only son of my grandparents that is still living. The oldest son Bobby, died at the age of five when he fell off a fence and broke his neck. The youngest son Jamie, my cousins father, died because of a brain aneurism he suffered in 2005. Jeff grew up working in my grandparents hardware and garden store. He had little free time to play sports like Seth and I. He worked throughout high school and then went off to college in Kansas to gain some business skills that would help improve his parents store. During his sophomore year on the drive back home, one of his friends feel asleep while they were driving and the car, filled with the bodies of four college students, fell from an overpass. Two of the passengers died, the driver was paralyzed from the waist down, but luckily Jeff only ended up in a body cast. It seems to me that this moment secured his fate. My dad would never be able to do what he wanted. My dad was kept in a body cast in Kansas for over two months. During these two months he decided that he wanted to be a nurse. I say that this moment secured my dads fate, not because he was destined to be a nurse, but because his life began to come under the reign of tragic events beyond his control. Perhaps this is the case with everyones life, but its striking to think that my dads family, as well as his occupational choices, have been so severely shaped by unexpected death. But wait, is this actually the case? Has my dads life really been regulated by these tragic events, or am I simply making that statement to develop a motivational narrative: I am going to take control of my life in a way that my dad has not. Thankfully, my dad himself has a response to these issues. Deer hunting is quite popular in northern Indiana, and there are enough deer running around in cornfields and often in front of cars, making it a relatively easy sport that is also supported by the local community. My dad has always been more of a fisherman, but every once

Kauffman 18 in a while he will go hunting, usually on the first day the season, when tradition dictates that men should head out early in the morning and shiver in the woods while they look for something to shoot at. As far as masculine interactions with the landscape go, my dads always been more Wordsworth than Teddy Roosevelt. That is to say, hes more attracted to the idea that reflection and peace can be found in nature, and not so excited about killing things and cutting through weeds to attain some sort of profound connection with his inner-self. 7 Both philosophically and historically the idea that a more profound and complete self can be reached by going out into nature is wrapped up in colonialism, the destruction of the environment, male inflicted violence, and a number of other injustices that rethinking might combat. However, my dad approaches hunting in a unique way that challenges these searches for an inner self and exhibits a breakthrough in the control-rethinking dichotomy that plagues this essay. My grandfather doesnt hunt, but my cousin Seth and his stepdad are serious about shooting deer, especially bucks. Most hunters in northern Indiana focus on killing bucks so that the can take their prize to the taxidermist and have the bucks head cut from its body, and then stuffed and mounted. Hunters put these heads around their houses and the more points on a bucks antlers the more impressive the kill. 8 In the past five years neither my cousin, my dad, nor my cousins stepdad has been able to shoot a buck. In that time they have all shot a number of doe, which is frustrating for my cousin and his stepdad, but actually exciting for my dad. My family has a horrible history of heart disease, my grandfather, my mom, and my dad, have all had heart surgeries, so we dont eat a lot of red meat. Venison provides however, a lean substitute for beef, and young doe have the best meat. This winter however, both my dad and my cousin shot bucks, my dad a 12-point and my cousin a 10-point. While my cousin celebrated
Whatever that means. I also think killing a male deer, in the minds of a hunter, exhibits masculinity more strikingly than killing a female. Unfortunately, discussion of interspecies sexual interaction remains beyond the scope of this essay.
8 7

Kauffman 19 his kill, uploading a number of pictures to Facebook and texting all of our family, my dad was very humble about what he had done. My cousin is the man in my family who most wants to be a cowboy, but I told my dad he had acted more cowboyish by demonstrating his pragmatic skill in the wilderness but being refrained and humble about his success. My dads approach to hunting this winter illustrates the possibility for combining the individual interrogation of the self, especially the masculine self, in coordination with a community of other individuals. For my dad, hunting is always an event of interdependency. He no longer hunts unless he is invited by someone else who would enjoy a companion. In addition, because my parents live in the city, for hunting space he depends on the property of family friends. In this way, hunting is not only a way for him to spend time in the woods alone and gain confidence by killing a deer, but an act that helps him develop relationships that then become a part of his own self-discovery in the woods. In addition, he hunts not to increase his social status by getting a trophy to put on the wall, or to uphold his masculinity, but because hunting is a means to obtain meat that might benefit our family. By going out into the woods my dad does not become more detached from his surroundings, but more connected. My dads individual act of hunting allows him to both reflect and become more intertwined with other individuals and aspects of his life, like food consumption and the environment. Furthermore, hunting connects my dad with lower class white men who he otherwise might not encounter during his quotidian existence. In fact, it seems that hunting for my dad is less about going out into the woods by himself, and more about becoming connected with everything around him. However nice my fathers hunting in the woods might be, he still remains in control of the terms of this situation which will ultimately limit his rethinking. Finally then, through American Psycho, Ill address my own thinking.

Kauffman 20 Luis is a gay character who is sexually attracted to Patrick throughout the novel. Central to Patricks claim to masculine identity are his fashion sense, the clothes he buys and wears, and the appearance of his muscular physique. The majority of the scenes in Patrick's narrative, especially those describing his dinners with groups of male friends, open with a long list of the styles, colors, patterns, and designers of the suits the men are wearing. GQ magazine is the privileged source of male fashion in the novel. It defines the normalizing terms through which Patrick and his male friends frame their bodies. Patricks friends often bring him their fashion questions like they would submit a question to GQ, asking for example, When wearing a tuxedo how do you keep the front of your shirt from riding up? (Ellis 35). At one point in the novel another character actually says, Girls dig PatrickHes total GQ (Ellis 90). Patrick is inculcated by the terms of male commercial fashion and brings them to bear on his own body, forming and activating it as he moves closer to becoming total GQ and embodying ideal masculinity. However, as Luis expresses his sexual attraction to Patrick, it becomes clear that not only girls dig total GQ, and the masculine discourse of fashion might lead to something other than ideal masculinity. In a restaurant, after describing the outfits of his male companions, Patrick notices Luis a few tables away. According to Patricks description, Luis is far from total GQ, he is: dressed as if hed had some kind of frog attack this morninghes wearing an unidentifiable suit from some French tailor; and if Im not mistaken the bowler hat on the floor beneath his chair also belongs to himit has Luis written all over it. (Ellis 156) Patrick follows Luis into the bathroom describing his intent to kill him, but when Patrick comes up behind him in a stall and puts his hands around Luis' neck to strangle him, Luis interprets Patrick's touch as a sexual advance. This interpretation immobilizes Patrick and keeps him from committing physical violence. Patrick is caught in a double bind, because in the terms of Luis,

Kauffman 21 his violence now signifies his homosexuality, the very reason, at least it seemed initially, he intended to kill Luis. Furthermore, if Patrick submits to Luis, he still exhibits homosexual desire. Ultimately, Patrick expresses homosexuality through both violence and nonviolence. In addition, Luis's interpretation permeates the discourse of heterosexual male fashion with the disciplinary terms of homosexuality. Being total GQ does not lead to ideal heterosexual masculinity, but inspires homosexual interaction. Luis interpretation of Patricks actions and appearance in this scene has a powerful, permeating effect on his narrative. His interpretation not only stops Patrick at the moment he is about to commit violence, but demonstrates a possibility for a broader reworking of the disciplinary terms of masculine discourse that might prevent this violence further. Certainly the violence of the masculinity enacted by my cousin, my grandfather, and I, is hardly comparable to the violence enacted by Patrick in American Psycho. The insignificance, yet permeating effect of Luiss interpretation of Patricks severe violence is laughable, but it demonstrates the productive possibilities of a resignifying confrontation with masculinity. Expressing homosexuality in the face of heterosexual masculinity is not the only way to resignify heterosexual masculinity in order to curtail its violence. I cant imagine that me kissing my grandfathers hands would have a positive effect, or lead him to rethink in anyway. But, an interpersonal confrontation, if executed correctly might do the trick. Moving away from myself, like I hope Ive done throughout this essay, would help me build relationships with individuals like Seth in ways that might enhance the effects of interpersonal confrontation. Ultimately, returning to myself, interpersonal confrontation is one of best ways to relinquish my control of my rethinking. Discussing Seths masculinity with him serves a dual purpose, providing him with certain capabilities for rethinking, while putting me in a situation out of my control and

Kauffman 22 allowing for an invasion of my thought. I would like to think that in this interpersonal confrontation, as long as I have given up control, Seth and I together might fall into justice. I would also like to think that his essay has demonstrated what this loss of control might look like, that if Seth were to pick it up and read it he might say, Johnny has no idea what he is talking about, but its clear that he is trying to build a relationship with me, maybe I should give it a second look and see what I can gain from it. That is my hope. 9

The Kauffman cowboys want me to tell you Thank you for reading this essay.

Kauffman 23

Works Cited Derrida, Jacques. "Force of Law." Cardazo Law School, New York. 1990. Lecture. Ellis, Bret Easton. American Psycho: A Novel. New York: Vintage, 1991. Byers, Thomas B. "Terminating the Postmodern: Masculinity and Pomophobia." MFS Modern Fiction Studies 41.1 (1995): 35-73. Print. Roth, Phillip. Portnoys Complaint. New York: Vintage, 1967. Kauffman, Johnny. Rethinking Sex. Women Gender and Sexuality Studies: Anthropological Perspectives. Earlham College. JoAnn Martin. 2012.