Impersonal Domination, Cyclical Crises, and Hegemonic Masculinity in Valeska Grisebach's Western (2017)

This paper examines the transformation in hegemonic masculinity during neoliberal crisis and the rise of global authoritarianism via Berlin School filmmaker Valeska Grisebach's Western (2017). The recent re-popularization of traditional gender roles, of productive masculine labor and domestic womanhood, signals a new era in capitalist development and unveils the continuing entanglement of gender and political economy. Rather than heralding the decline of the nation-state, the representation of transnational mobility in Western enables both the recuperation and critique of “traditional” forms of concrete, masculine domination. As I show, seemingly archaic forms of domination are historically immanent insofar as they sublimate the impersonal, abstract mechanisms of power prevalent in advanced stages of capitalism.