Patriarchy’s Creative Resilience: Late Victorian Speculative Fiction

Patriarchys Creative Resilience explores the disturbing sustainability of White male supremacy in British speculative fiction published between 1870 and 1900. Kramp demonstrates how patriarchy uses diverse resources to promote hegemonic masculinity, control dangerous women, hyperbolic and sentimental performances of male sovereignty, and reversions to authoritarian, at times violent conduct. He also shows how the classic military strategy of dividing to conquer undergirds these tactics, inhibiting our creative energies and dynamic collaborations.

Format: Hardback
Length: 262 pages
Publication date: 26 February 2024
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Patriarchys Creative Resilience delves into the unsettling endurance of White male supremacy. Kramp explores an imaginative failure and an imaginative success, highlighting how even the elastic and wildly inventive literary form of British speculative fiction published between 1870 and 1900 remains incapable of promoting non-patriarchal masculinity. He attributes this inability to the creative resiliency of white male supremacy. Through his examination of this literary period, Kramp demonstrates the inventive utilization of diverse resources, often perceived as conventional or simplistic, showcasing a versatility that is often dismissed as mere power. He draws from an archive of late nineteenth-century speculative fiction to present a comprehensive patriarchal toolbox, encompassing hegemonic masculinity, control over dangerous women, hyperbolic and sentimental performances of male sovereignty, and even reversions to authoritarian and, at times, violent conduct. He further considers how the classic military strategy of dividing to conquer underpins these tactics, stifling our creative energies and dynamic collaborations.

Various chapters within the book showcase patriarchy's enterprise, ingenuity, and adaptability in reshaping and rejustifying normalized systems of oppression. While scholars have consistently identified moments and agents of resistance to patriarchal structures through the recognition of creativity, resiliency, and resourcefulness, Kramp's project unveils how patriarchy itself possesses these qualities.

Weight: 690g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032232973