Masculine furniture: a study of eighteenth-century French masculinity

去年5月29日，埃马纽埃尔·马克龙在凡尔赛欢迎弗拉基米尔·普京。把自己放在这个意义非凡的纪念碑上，这是法兰西王国的象征，他复制了世纪对强大男性角色的崇拜。他建立了自己的男性身份，作为他权力的一部分。不可否认的是，我们的时代正在目睹对男子气概的更高认识。领导者要么用它来维护对他人的控制和权威，要么建立另一种替代方式，由情感和公开表达情感组成，呈现出一种新的男性领导力。为了充分理解当今的男性规范（它们的影响、它们来自哪里以及它们如何转变），追溯更长的历史是至关重要的。因此，我的研究项目建议将重点放在18世纪的法国家具上，以了解当时男性气质是如何表达的。作为日常生活的一个元素，家具是社会和性别认同的积极组成部分。男性研究在英美学术界并不是什么新鲜事：无论是一般性的（卡佳·西尔弗曼的《边缘的男性主体性》），还是专注于18世纪的（乔治·E.哈格蒂的《恋爱中的男人》，德克兰·卡瓦纳的《娘娘腔的岁月》），我们找到了很多关于这个主题的书。主要是与英国打交道。在法国，关于这个问题的研究很少。特别是在法国，关于男性气质的研究是最近才开始的（Eprouver la Masculinité，Mélanie Gourarier，2016），并且只涉及当代社会。法国艺术史学家似乎一直忽视了这个问题。这不仅揭示了法国如何处理性别问题，还意味着这段历史还没有通过这个透镜来探索。因此，我的目标是填补现有奖学金中的这一空白，并提出对家具作为性别认同不可或缺的一部分的反思。

On May 29th last year, Emmanuel Macron welcomed Vladimir Putin in Versailles. Placing himself in this highly meaningful monument, a symbol of the Kingdom of France, he replicated the 18th century cult of a powerful male persona. He built his masculine identity as a performative part of his power. It is undeniable that our time is witnessing a more heightened awareness of masculinity. Leaders either use it to assert control and authority over others, or build an alternative one, made of emotion and public demonstration of feelings, presenting a new kind of male leadership. To fully understand today's masculine norms (their impact, where they come from and how they might have shifted), it is crucial to trace back to a longer history.My research project therefore proposes to focus on eighteenth-century French furniture as a way to grasp how masculinity was expressed at that time. As an element of everyday life, furniture is an active component of social and gender identity. Male studies are not new in British and American academia: whether they are general (Kaja Silverman's Male Subjectivity at the Margins) or focused on eighteenth century (George E. Haggerty's Men in Love, Declan Kavanagh's Effeminate years), we find plenty of books on that subject. However, they mainly deal with Britain. When it comes to France, few research has been made on the subject. In France especially, research on masculinity is very recent (Eprouver la Masculinité, Mélanie Gourarier, 2016) and only deal with contemporary society. French art historians seem to have overlooked the subject until now. More than revealing a point on how France deals with gender, it means that this historical past hasn't been explored through this lens yet. My goal is therefore to fill this gap in existing scholarship and to propose a reflection on furniture as an integrant part of gender identity.