Book excerpt: First published in 1992, The Inward Gaze looks at men’s fantasies and self-images from a wide range of texts (notably boy’s superhero comics, modernist literary classics, and a Freudian case-study) to discuss the theories of subjectivity, masculinity, and emotion. The author explores the split between the experience-based claims of the men’s movement and the discourse theories of postmodernism. Does this division reveal a continuing refusal of masculine self-awareness? Why does postmodernist theory investigate desire and ignore emotion? This is a ground-breaking and controversial book which seeks to reformulate the way we think about men’s subjectivity. Its interdisciplinary approach weaves together material from many different sources and will be of vital interest to students of literature, cultural studies, gender studies, and psychoanalysis.