Unraveling Masculinity and Rethinking Citizenship: A Comment

The essay reflects on the implications of the decomposition of the "general" in the individual contributions to the conference. The various contributions each demonstrate the specificity or particularity of their different constructions of masculinity. The cumulative effect of this emphasis on context is to make visible the false universality in constructions of masculinity. The essay draws  from the tension more broadly between the universal and the particular in the ideas of citizenship. While welcoming the decomposition of masculinity as "general" or universal citizen, it concludes with a plea for a recomposition of the "general." Through a brief discussion of colonial India, it argues for the potential of reconstituting the universality in the idea of citizenship.