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- Zoom
A Man among Other Men examines competing constructions of modern manhood in the WestAfrican metropolis of Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. Engaging the histories, representational repertoires,and performative identities of men in Abidjan and across the Black Atlantic, Matlon shows howFrench colonial legacies and media tropes of Blackness act as powerful axes, rooting masculineidentity and value within labor, consumerism, and commodification. Through a broad chronologicaland transatlantic scope that culminates in a deep ethnography of the livelihoods and lifestyles ofmen in Abidjan's informal economy, Matlon demonstrates how men's subjectivities are formed byand through hegemonic ideologies of race and patriarchy. Matlon provides a theoretically innovative,historically grounded, and empirically rich account of Black abjection set against the anticipation of male privilege, a story ofthe long crisis of Black masculinity in racial capitalism.