When Men Meet: Homosexuality and Modernity

Henning Bech

ISBN 10: 0226040224 / ISBN 13: 9780226040226

Published by University of Chicago Press, 1997

Former library book; May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0226040224I4N10

Synopsis:

For sociologist Henning Bech, the image of the male homosexual has become emblematic of the modern urban condition, in which freedom and mobility contend with transience and superficiality, in which possibility, energy, and engagement vie with uncertainty and restlessness. In this powerful and frankly provocative critique, Bech skillfully examines the distinctive relationship between urban modernism and the gay experience, exploring in compelling fashion its growing ramifications for the cultural mainstream.

Gay society has persevered, even flourished, in this highly charged urban environment, aestheticizing and sexualizing the spaces, both public and private, where men meet. With profound insight and honesty, Bech details this world, candidly reflecting on sex, friendship, love, and life as manifest in the homosexual form of existence. He convincingly demonstrates that, in the face of modern alienation, successful coping strategies developed by gay men are gradually being adopted by mainstream heterosexual society.

These adaptations are often masked by what Bech calls an "absent homosexuality, " in which sublimated themes of homosexuality and masculine love surface, only to be disavowed in expressions of social anxiety. This "absent homosexuality" acts as a kind of cultural filter, allowing key traits of gay life to be absorbed by the mainstream, while shielding heterosexual males from their own homophobic anxieties. Ultimately, Bech foresees, a postmodern convergence of hetero- and homosexual forms of exisce emergent from this urban landscape and, with it, a new masculine synthesis.

Certain to ignite immediate controversy, When Men Meet offers both a penetrating scholarly analysis of the modern homosexual condition and an unflinching cultural vision of the masculine in transition.

Review: "Henning Bech is one of the most original and thought–provoking interpreters of contemporary culture who emerged in recent years in European social science. The publishers are to be congratulated on making his magnum opus available to English readers, who will find Bech′s work unlike anything they read thus far, opening entirely new horizons."

"On the face of it, this book is a most thorough and profound insight into the homosexual experience; but it is also a most synthetic, multifaceted analysis of contemporary living, of which that experience is a sample, an epitome and condensed expression. An exemplary exercise in reaching the totality through a case study." Zygmunt Bauman, University of Leeds

"Henning Bech is one of the most original and stimulating contemporary writers on sexuality. When Men Meet is an extraordinarily ambitious work about the conditions and possibilities of life in modern society, and Bech produces a dazzling melange of insights and observations. A significant contribution to debates within gay and lesbian studies, gender studies, queer theory, and cultural studies, as well as wider debates about modernity and postmodernity, it could become a landmark book." Jeffrey Weeks, South Bank University, London

Bibliographic Details

Title: When Men Meet: Homosexuality and Modernity
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication Date: 1997
Binding: Paperback
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket