Fielding Fractured Masculinities: Implications for Nonrepresentational Educational Research Methodology in the Philosophy of Erin Manning

Abstract

In this paper, I put Erin Manning’s philosophical project into conversation with gender theory and consider possibilities regarding what it means to theorize masculinities in educational research methodology. To do this, I first speak to the urgency for reconceptualizing masculinities in education, outline how educational researchers have previously theorized the field, and problematize previous work that theorized masculinity as a relatively stable and monolithic identity marker. Following this, I consider what Manning’s process philosophy might offer educational researchers in the field of masculinities. In thinking with masculinities, the ongoing and lived experiences of gender, and Manning, I offer “fractured masculinities,” which theorizes masculinities as multiple, mobile, relational, contextual, intersectional, and fractured.