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This essay proposes that terrorism manifests itself in a relation that encompasses masculinity as well as the media. The origin of this relationship is the joint performativity of gender and acts of terror. This makes terrorism an instrument of social and political change. But in order to legitimize themselves, terrorism as well as masculinity require authorization by a phantasmagorical power. Drawing on the dominance of males among terrorists, this essay will look at an early depiction of terrorism in Conrad's The Secret Agent, a contemporary representation in Sahota's novel Ours Are the Streets and terrorism's real manifestation in the Paris carnage of November 2015. It will show that in the desire to satisfy an imagined "higher authority" and thereby assert an individual as well as political identity, masculinity and terrorism share a performative root. This also suggests a possible way of exposing and exploding terrorism and masculinity from within, by feeding into the mediated stream of its representations images and ideas of inferiority, ridicule, and failure.

Since its inception in the 1980s, postcolonial theory has greatly enriched academic perspectives on culture and literature. Yet, in the same way that colonial goods and services have long contributed to economic and political growth, postcolonial topics h.

This interdisciplinary study analyses the ways in which signs of masculinity have been performed across a wide variety of contexts and genres - including literature, classical ballet, sports, rock music, films and computer games - from the early nineteenth century to the present day, Were there male celebrity bodies before David Beckham? When did male dancers start playing a part -- and which one? Was Victorian masculinity all in earnest before Oscar Wilde? What kind of masculinity does cricket promote? What is 'Cock Rock'? How can we understand Chinese American masculinities? Do contemporary computer games have a gender? These and even more questions are addressed in the present study through contemporary theories of masculinity and performativity. The answers that experts from many different fields of Literary, Cultural and Media Studies provide add up to a survey of modern masculinities, its precursors, its manifestations across different genres and different media, as well as its continuing challenges and impasses