Refiguracje męskości w „narracjach prostatycznych”
Prostatic Narratives and the Refigurations of Masculinity

Summary/Abstract: The prostate cancer is one of the most widespread types of cancers among men. The disease attacks not only the male’s body, but it deeply concerns men’s social and cultural identity. As such, this type of cancer has been tabooed and its influence on men’s identity was silenced, even if Susan’s Sontag influential essay Disease as Metaphore aimed at redefining and demythologizing cancer. Literary and cultural representations of prostate cancer, identity and awareness‑rising actions among men have created in recent years a kind of “prostatic discourse.” This moment has a particular significance for a literary scholar: the newly established discourse could be analyzed intersectionally with the use of different methodologies: critical studies on men and masculinities, age studies, and maladic studies. On the basis of these fields of research I’m going to analyze Philip Roth novel Exit Ghost, L’ablation by Tahar Ben Jelloun, Philippe Petit’s Philosophie de la prostate. In conclusion I argue that the “prostate discourse” establishes the prostate as an important part of men’s bodies. It leads to a further conclusion that this recognition could result in important shifts in our understanding of cultural and social conventions of masculinity.

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