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Paper short abstract

Drawing on research in Greece, this paper examines how aging bodies shape masculine selves. Challenging the self/body dichotomy, it discusses how materiality and bodily orientations in later life enable older men to negotiate multiple –private/public, past/present– masculine selves over time.

Paper long abstract

Drawing on anthropological research into aging experiences and the construction of embodied masculine subjectivities in Greece, this paper examines how bodily materiality, techniques, and orientations are constitutive of masculine selves in later life, by challenging binary oppositions associated with aging. It takes as its analytical starting point a rupture articulated in my interlocutors’ self-narratives between an inner, concealed, unchanged “self,” grounded in the mind, soul, or heart and an external, observable “body” that is visibly transformed, deteriorates, ages, and persistently resists attempts to sustain a sense of continuity over time.

Engaging anthropological and feminist perspectives that challenge the ethnocentric, Cartesian self-mind/body distinction, and foregrounding the centrality of eneryitikotita, “the state of being active”, in the cultural construction of (heteronormative) masculinity in Greece –as a shifting yet persistent discourse, embodied practice, and bodily orientation across the life course– this paper discusses two crucial aspects of this dichotomy that emerge through critical consideration.

First, it frames the dichotomy as a culturally situated and gender-specific performative gesture that reflects tensions between private (internal) and public (external) dimensions of the self, rather than an unyielding rupture between a unified, cohesive self and a fluid body. Second, focusing on the multiple temporalities of self-narratives, it highlights interlocutors’ ongoing negotiation between past and present embodied selves, in which shifting bodily materiality is not positioned as external to or in opposition to the self, but instead emerges as a privileged site through which multiple versions of the masculine self are redefined and integrated over time.