Narrating the Modern Relation between Masculinity and Care

The article is based on the debate about care concepts and care practices currently being held in the cultural and social sciences. It is shown how , and in particular concepts of masculinity, have been linked with care since the 19 century. It turns out that the feminine connotation of care that was popular for a long time only represents one side of the relationship between care and gender. From a transdisciplinary perspective, the complex interdependency between care and modern concepts of masculinity is demonstrated. Based on historically and theoretically meaningful texts, processes of excluding and including care aspects in aesthetic-literary, philological, philosophical, and socio-scientific narrations, constructions and discourses of masculinity are revealed. In reference to a critical reading of the tradition of the art of living, these considerations seek to offer and to point out alternative, non-hegemonic masculinities by incorporating practices of everyday (self-)care in male forms of existence. Particular emphasis is placed on contemporary literature.