Conrad and Masculinity

Masculinity and the Body 69
Stallybrass and White observe, in thinking the body ‘adequate conception
founders upon the problematic familiarity, the enfolding
intimacy, of its domain’ (PPT, 28). Rosi Braidotti summarizes the
conception of the body arising out of the dialogue of feminism,
psychoanalysis and poststructuralist theory:
The body ... cannot be reduced to the biological, nor can it be
confined to social conditioning ... the body is seen as an inter-face,
a threshold, a field of intersection of material and symbolic forces;
it is a surface where multiple codes of power and knowledge are
inscribed; it is a construction that transforms and capitalizes on
energies of a heterogeneous and discontinuous nature. The body is
not an essence ... it is one’s primary location in the world. 8
In considering the role of the body in Conrad’s representation and
construction of masculinity, I will refer to a number of these aspects:
in particular, to the material and the symbolic, and to power, knowledge
and inscription. In ‘Typhoon’ men’s individual bodies, and
bodies of men (the officers, the crew, the Chinese passengers) are
engaged in strenuous physical struggles within the body of a ship.
How does the materiality of body, ship and storm interact with
symbolic meanings (the storm as symbol of life or of the unknowable)
in endorsing or unsettling normative ideas of masculinity and the
male body? In The Secret Agent, does the physical destruction of the
marginally masculine body of Stevie inscribe or circumscribe male
power in a bureaucratic, alienated modern urban society? Nostromo
discovers that his physical prowess and macho heroism, which seem
to give him power, only make him the passive victim of larger structures
of economic and political power. How does this reflect on the
place of the male body in structures of power?
The usage ‘the body’ is of course open to question on at least two
grounds. By seeming to refer to an abstract essence, or at the very least
announcing a ‘concept’, it risks dematerializing and homogenizing
just at the moment when the issues of the materiality and variety of
bodies are introduced. 9 Furthermore, in its implicit singularity and
unity it may be thought to reproduce masculinist modes of thinking.
10 However, Pamela Banting argues that ‘nominal pluralizing’
(changing ‘the body’ to ‘bodies’, ‘woman’ to ‘women’, ‘feminism’ to
‘feminisms’, etc.), is merely essentialism ‘spelled “differently”’. 11 To
reject the use of ‘the body’ would, I believe, be limiting, but it should
be used with an awareness of the risks of generalization. The problem