INSTITUTO DE LITERATURA Y CIENCIAS DEL LENGUAJE

FACULTAD DE FILOSOFÍA Y EDUCACIÓN

PROYECTO FINAL DE SEMINARIO DE GRADUACIÓN

PARA OPTAR AL GRADO DE

LICENCIADO EN LENGUA Y LITERATURA INGLESA

“Simulation of authority figures and self-destruction as a discourse of protest

in the postmodern world in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club”

Estudiante: Eduardo Soto González

Profesor guía: Catalina Forttes Zalaquett

Fecha: 06 de Julio de 2012

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“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend.

Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read.”

(Often attributed to Groucho Marx)

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Table of contents

1. Abstract…………………………………………………………………………….2

2. Introduction………………………………………………………………………..3

3. Theoretical framework……………………………………………………………4

4. Analysis

Chapter I: Everything is a copy of a copy: Simulation in Fight Club…………….8

Chapter II: You have to fight: Constructing male gender and a discourse

of protest……………………………………………………………....19

Chapter III: A father to complete ourselves: The role of male parents in the

postmodern world………………………………………………….....31

5. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………...38

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6. Works cited………………………………………………………………………..40

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss Chuck Palahniuk’s portrayal of the state of postmodern reality,

postmodern masculinity and the role of authority figures such as that of the father and that of God

in his novel Fight Club. Discomforted and frustrated, the unnamed narrator is a fine example of

the postmodern man: he struggles with the consumer-driven goals of society, the diminished

condition of manhood in a Hyperreal world and the emptiness such world makes him feel.

By analyzing works from the perspective of gender studies and psychology, this project

intends to explore and review concepts such as social constructionism of gender, fatherhood,

simulation, and Hyperreality in order to discuss broader topics such as violence and self-

destruction as means to reassert masculinity and as a discourse to protest against postmodern

society.

Key concepts: Hyperreality, simulation, masculinity, self-destruction, discourse of protest

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Introduction

In a world where male role models are dictated by advertisement and mass media,

discomfort and frustration among men begin to set in. An example of this kind of man is the

unnamed narrator of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, who finds a way to reject the spoon-fed

approach to contemporary living.

In the first chapter, titled “Everything is a copy of a copy: Simulation in Fight Club”, a

definition of the concepts of Hyperreality proposed by Jean Baudrillard as a real without origin

and simulation as a vehicle to alter reality is provided. Baudrillard’s understanding of God as a

mere simulacrum of His own is also defined in this chapter as it will be useful to the analysis of

the main characters attempts to transform their own life. The second chapter, titled “You have to

fight: Constructing male gender and a discourse of protest”, explores social constructionism of

gender and Fight Club as a vehicle that helps in such process. The discussion encompasses the

fields of gender studies and psychology by reading the novel’s manifestations of masculinity in

the light of critics and theorists such as Judith Butler and R. W. Connell. This chapter also

incorporates Nigel Edley’s discourse-oriented approach on manhood as an aid to the discussion

of violence and self-destruction and the role of these practices in the configuration of the

narrator’s identity. The third and final chapter “A father to complete ourselves: The question of

fatherhood in Fight Club”, applies Anthony Clare’s discussion on the role of male parents in the

life of the postmodern man, focusing on the experiences of the narrator portrayed in the novel.

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Theoretical framework

This framework is intended to provide an overview of the theories to be revised in the

examination and analysis of Chuck Palahniuk’s portrayal of the state of masculinity, the

configuration of authority figures and the setting and kind of reality in which events in his novel

Fight Club take place. In order to do so, research and analysis on different academic fields will be

carried out: Theories ranging from gender studies to psychology will be of help in the

development of the discussion of concepts such as social constructionism, masculinity, violence,

self-destruction, Hyperreality, and fatherhood.

In regards to gender studies, the concept of masculinity will be defined in an attempt to

better understand its relevance to literary studies. Similarly useful will be psychological

approaches when examining the masculine identity crisis experienced by the narrator of the

novel. Likewise, issues such as the significance of the creation of an underground fighting club

on the reassertion of postmodern masculinity and the rejection of the role of men as dictated by

the postmodern world will be analyzed.

First of all, ideas proposed by Jean Baudrillard about Hyperreality as a real without origin,

simulation as a vehicle to alter reality, and God as a mere simulacrum of His own will be useful

when analyzing the narrator’s attempts to transform his own life. Many of the events within the

novel taking place in a dream-like artificial state of consciousness, at one point the narrator states

that “with insomnia, nothing is real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a

copy” (Palahniuk, 21) In other words, the novel, the literary text (as well as the movie) would be

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the embodiment of a postmodern reality whose boundaries with fantasy become blurry.

Baudrillard’s contention that to simulate is "to feign to have what one hasn't" (2) will serve as

ground for discussion of the narrator’s attitude towards life when attempting to cure his insomnia

by attending to support groups. Another instance of simulation may well be found in the name of

the street (Paper Street) where the narrator’s alter-ego supposedly lives: “Paper street” refers to a

street that is depicted on a map but does not actually exist. Tyler Durden is the work of the

unconscious that the narrator has produced. In other words, Tyler is the simulation; the narrator,

the simulator. Tyler represents the narrator’s unconscious. Tyler's work, as a projectionist, a

banquet waiter, a soap distributor and all his work with and around Fight Club is performed and

produced in the real by the real (the narrator). So despite he believes that Tyler is doing all the

work and is therefore real, it is, as a matter of fact, the narrator’s unconscious being produced in

the real by the narrator. Baudrillard’s claim that simulation "threatens the difference between

'true' and 'false,' between 'real' and 'imaginary'” (2) will be of help as well to analyze Palahniuk’s

characterization of Tyler Durden and his existence being only in the narrator’s mind.

From the perspective of gender studies, Judith Butler’s thoughts on sex and gender as

being socially and culturally constructed through the reiteration of stylized acts in time will be

discussed. According to Butler, “gender requires a performance that is repeated” (140) She

further argues that if gender does not exist, but is rather performed, it is up to individuals to

perform individual gender roles that fit their lives more appropriately. By doing so, she rejects the

fact that gender arises from biology. In Fight Club, the narrator is looking for ways to recover his

sense of manhood that has been lost to a consumerist society. One of these ways is through

violence, a primitive form of masculinity that has been present in humanity from early years.

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Similarly pertinent to the analysis of Palahniuk’s novel are R. W. Connell’s ideas on the

masculinity, especially his proposal of the existence of more than one kind of manhood. One of

these categories is hegemonic masculinity, regarded as the norm at a certain time and place. In

Fight Club, an example of such category would be the tendency to purchase and accumulate

material goods as a way to channel one’s frustration and to fill the emptiness of life, an

experience that is depicted in the characterization of the narrator of Fight Club. In addition to that

category, Connell claims that there are also subordinate masculinities, which does not only

include within itself homosexual masculinity but also any other large group of men whose

members are systematically excluded from political, social and cultural contexts. In this respect,

the narrator in Chapter 6 refers to participants of Fight Club as being part of a “generation of men

raised by women” (Palahniuk, 50). Such allusion may well fit the description of a rejected group

of men, which is, in this case, a large group of postmodern individuals who have grown without

an authority figure (God and/or father) in their lives. In addition, Nigel Edley’s discourse-

oriented approach on manhood will be employed for the discussion of violence and self-

destruction as a discourse of protest against the postmodern society and its consumer-driven

goals.

Throughout the novel, several allusions to authority figures (God and father) are made. In

this regard, psychiatrist Anthony Clare’s thoughts on masculinity as well as his ideas on

fatherhood are examined, taking into consideration the narrator’s experiences that are depicted in

the novel. Clare, for example, poses the question of the usefulness of the father figure in today’s

society. “If men still have a role as fathers”, he demands, “then it is time they explained what it

is. And it is time they fulfilled this role.” (222) He further asks, “What is it that fathers do? What

is it that fathers are? What do they bring to society that society cannot do without?” Without a

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male role-model provided by a father figure, the narrator has been accepting what postmodern

culture, mass media and advertising has been telling him about the role of men in society (to have

a good job with a good salary, to own the finest car, the finest house, the finest technological

device and the like) and such lifestyle eventually overwhelms him. Such questioning by Clare

might well find answers in the realization that the narrator (a postmodern man who resents the

absence of a father in his life) and his alter-ego Tyler Durden (a kind of surrogate father) are the

same person, thus rendering the role of an authority figure useless or, at least, subject to be

questioned.

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Chapter I: Everything is a copy of a copy: Simulation in Fight Club

Before addressing issues such as the condition of masculinity in the postmodern world

and the importance of authority figures such as that of the father and that of God in the

configuration of postmodern manhood, it seems pertinent to describe the context in which Chuck

Palahniuk’s Fight Club is set.

In his essay “The Precession of Simulacra”, Jean Baudrillard provides significant

elements for the discussion and the revision of the conditions of postmodern culture and society

as they are depicted in Fight Club. As a starting point, he takes Jorge Luis Borges’ fable On

Exactitude in Science, in which “the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that

it ends up covering the territory exactly”, as an example of what once was “the most beautiful

allegory of simulation”. When the Empire falls, the only thing that is left is the map. However,

Baudrillard contends that “[t]oday abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror

or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance” but

it is “a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal” (2). It is the real, not the map, he argues, whose

vestiges remains until today. "The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is

nevertheless the map that precedes the territory—precession of simulacra—that engenders the

territory" (2). He further develops that “[i]t is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication,

nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real” and now the

development of every real process is by means of its “operational double, a programmatic

metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all the signs of the real.” (3). Such machine

or machinery may well be the kind of society depicted in Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club:

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the unnamed narrator’s (and also the main character) experiences take place in a world where

everything seems to be handled on a plate, provided that you have the job and thus the money to

afford it: from furniture to food, every single basic human need seem to be covered in such a way

that an individual needs not move from his desk to get what he needs; there is no urge to get the

paper at the newsstand: you can read it online; there is no urge to cook: you can order fast food

for delivery; there is no urge for sex: you can watch pornography and so on and so forth. Thus,

the narrator is a fine example of a postmodern man who has been deprived of all his drives by a

consumerist society that has taken all his agency away, who now finds his life devoid of meaning

or direction and whose role in society is passive. As the telling of the story progresses, we learn

about the miserable, lonely life that he leads and we eventually get to sympathize with him: he

works as a recall specialist for the automobile industry and his duty is to survey nationwide car

accidents involving his company’s car so that the firm is able to determine if it is worthwhile to

pay for the damage caused by their cars; it is as if human lives are set a price, a job morally

questionable and undoubtedly depressing that even makes him wish he was dead: “Every takeoff

and landing, when the plane banked too much to one side, I prayed for a crash” (19).

Baudrillard’s idea of hyperreal (“a real without origin or reality”) has a resonance in the

narrator’s statement that “(…) Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy” (21) Postmodern culture

is, according to Baudrillard, a chain of substitutes for a non-existent reality; many of the events

within the novel take place in a dream-like artificial state of consciousness which serves as an

embodiment of the postmodern reality: a reality whose boundaries with fantasy have been

blurred.

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In fact, as a result of the stress of his job as well as the jet lag induced by constant

business trips, the narrator develops insomnia. In seeking treatment, he goes to a doctor hoping

for a pharmaceutical solution to his problems. He, instead, suggests that the narrator attend

support groups for people struggling with terminal diseases to see other people suffering, in an

attempt to find out what is keeping him from falling asleep and focus on that, an advice the

narrator follows. The first instance of simulation can be observed at this point: the narrator

attends meetings for people who are struggling or have been struggling terrible life-threatening or

life-altering diseases, despite the fact that he is physically healthy. With the hope that he will feel

some kind of engagement to society, that is meaningful connections with other people, he ends up

becoming addicted to these meetings and finding comfort with the support group for victims of

testicular cancer. The members of this group prove to be the only individuals to whom the

narrator relates. In fact, he finds a way to release his suffering by crying for the very first time

after a man named Bob, a former body builder who lost his testicles to cancer caused by abuse of

steroids, embraces him. Later that night, the narrator manages to fall asleep. (“And I slept. Babies

don't sleep this well” [22]). Thus, the narrator has been able to find relief and things in his life

have been back to normal by, following Baudrillard’s premise, substituting signs of the real for

the real. The narrator’s statement in the very same page illustrates that he is living another kind of

reality: “This is better than real life”. By “this”, he is referring to the support groups, which have

come to constitute the simulated reality he has been living in, a world of his own that provides

him with a shelter from the postmodern consumerist culture he has been wishing to escape from.

The gesture of visiting support groups exemplifies what Baudrillard in the section “The

Divine Irreference of Images” defines as simulation: “[…] to feign to have what one doesn’t

have” (3), as opposed to dissimulation, which is “to pretend not to have what one has” (3). He

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further develops this idea by quoting Littré who states that "Whoever fakes an illness can simply

stay in bed and make everyone believe he is ill. [But] Whoever simulates an illness produces in

himself some of the symptoms." Interestingly enough, it can be argued that it is not the narrator

himself the one who has produced the symptoms of the life-altering condition that he feigns to be

ailed with and that actually affects members of the support group for victims of testicular cancer.

Instead, the narrator’s emasculation has been caused by a postmodern society that has taken his

agency away and is best seen as a metaphorical removal of his sexual organs. Thus, some of the

symptoms of the illness or condition in question –in this case, testicular cancer- are somewhat

produced in the narrator, although not by he himself. The kind of society in which he has lived

has taken his agency away by providing men with few or no opportunities whatsoever so that

they can do things for themselves. Having the courage –or, to use the rather sharp metaphor,

having the testicles– is not really necessary because no much effort has to be made in order to get

things done in the world depicted in Fight Club. Nevertheless, such symptoms is what enables

him to be placed in as equal position as the rest of the members of the group: they share the same

signs –or in this case, consequences- of the disease, only with the exception that the narrator’s

castration is metaphorical rather than literal. According to Baudrillard, pretending or

dissimulating leaves “reality intact”, whereas simulation replaces reality by altering it, something

the narrator does by faking he is suffering from the same conditions that affect other members of

the group. In fact, he acknowledges that he disguises his real identity when introducing himself to

support groups (”I never give my real name at support groups” [22]). Only after he simulates

what he is not and what he does not have (that is, by entering the world of the terminally ill and

by doing so with an identity that is not his own) is he able to find relief. By being embraced, that

is, by establishing meaningful contact with somebody else, the narrator is able to cry and feel

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accepted, even if it is not by society as a whole: “Walking home after a support group, I felt more

alive than I'd ever felt” (22)

However, such relief does not last long due to the intrusion of Marla Singer, also feigning

to be ill, at the same support groups meetings. In seeing her fakery reflect back on him, the

narrator makes up his mind about confronting her and threatening to expose her. The narrator -

unlike Singer- passes judgment on her behavior, neglecting the fact that it is the same as his; the

two of them seek the same thing in the meetings; that is, meaningful human contact. However,

the intrusion of Singer into the meetings, by feigning to have the same diseases the other

members of the groups, ends up ruining the narrator’s goal at the meetings: to cry freely to be

able to fall sleep; her presence makes him feel inhibited and insomnia reappears: “Since the

second night I saw her, I can’t sleep” (23)

Despite having convinced Marla Singer to attend meetings separately so as to avoid each

other, the narrator seems to have quitted visiting support groups and while on vacation, in an

attempt to find a way out of the problems in his life, he meets Tyler Durden, the man with whom

he eventually creates Fight Club. The character of Tyler Durden may well be the embodiment of

what Baudrillard refers to as simulation, which is something that "threatens the difference

between 'true' and 'false,' between 'real' and 'imaginary'” (3). Baudrillard claims that the simulator

–in this case, the narrator- cannot be treated as being either ill or not ill because any symptom can

be “produced” and can no longer be taken as a fact of nature. In fact, he argues that “every illness

can be considered as simulatable and simulated” (3) Medicine “loses its meaning”, he further

develops, because its ability is to treat “real” illnesses according to objective causes. Disregarding

the idea that simulation should “be at the gates of the unconscious”, Baudrillard poses the

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question of why the “work” of the unconscious could not be “produced” in the same way as any

old symptom of classical medicine. He is quick to provide an answer himself: “dreams already

are”. In this regard, we may find the embodiment of simulation in the character of Tyler Durden

because he exists only as a result of the work of the narrator’s mind while he is unable to sleep.

Tyler Durden, the character with whom the narrator creates Fight Club, and the nameless narrator

are the same person: Durden is the persona the narrator adopts when being awake, that being the

most likely reason why Palahniuk does not give the narrator a name. Durden is the simulation;

the narrator, the simulator. The former’s work, as a projectionist, a banquet server, a soap

distributor and all his work with and around Fight Club is performed and produced in the real by

the real, in this case, the narrator. In fact, towards the final chapters of the novel, specifically in

chapter 22, the narrator begins to question his insomnia and wonders whether he has been

sleeping or not. Standing at the edge of his bed, Tyler Durden explains that while the narrator

thinks he is sleeping, he becomes Tyler: "Every time you fall asleep," Tyler says, "I run off and

do something wild, something crazy, something completely out of my mind.” (163)

Such discovery allows the narrator to realize he has been hallucinating; he has created

another self and does not have insomnia. Thus despite he believes that Tyler is doing all the work

and he is therefore real, it is the narrator’s unconscious that is being acted out into the real by the

narrator. "One implies a presence, the other an absence", (3) Baudrillard states. For the narrator,

he is real because he looks and acts real, but to other characters, the narrator and Tyler are the

same person. Another indication of Tyler Durden’s incarnation of simulation is the name of the

street where he supposedly lives: Paper Street. A paper street refers to a street that does not

actually exist but it is nonetheless depicted on a map. Metaphorically speaking, Tyler Durden

would be the street that only exists in the narrator’s mind, in this case represented by the map.

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In recalling how he meets Durden at the beach while on vacation, the narrator draws to

the following conclusion: “Maybe I never really woke up on that beach. (…) / When I fall asleep,

I don't really sleep.” (173) Such acknowledgement on the narrator’s part –that he never actually

slept– is followed by a fearful confession: “Tyler Durden is a separate personality I've created,

and now he's threatening to take over my real life.” (173)

The reason for such creation stems from the narrator’s discomfort at life as a result of the

consumerist lifestyle of the postmodern society. Unmotivated by his everyday life, the narrator

creates another self that could embody everything he cannot:

I love everything about Tyler Durden, his courage and his smarts. His nerve. Tyler is

funny and charming and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect

him to change their world. Tyler is capable and free, and I am not.

I’m not Tyler Durden.

“But you are, Tyler,” Marla says.

Tyler and I share the same body, and until now, I didn’t know it (175)

Early signals of this split personality can be found throughout the novel in sentences such

as “I know this because Tyler knows this” (Palahniuk, 12) and is now reaffirmed by the statement

“Everyone in fight club and Project Mayhem knew me as Tyler Durden” (Palahniuk, 12). In other

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words, he is viewed as the creator of both organizations to which he comes to represent a sort of

God-like figure.

In light of this, I would like to discuss Baudrillard’s revision of the Iconoclasts’ ideas

about God, which states that they foresaw that simulacra would have the faculty to efface God

from the conscience of man and that there was an annihilating truth to be discovered: “(…) deep

down God never existed, (…) only the simulacrum ever existed, (…) God himself was never

anything but his own simulacrum” (Baudrillard, 4). Spontaneously created after Tyler asks the

narrator to “hit him as hard as he can”, Fight Club gives birth to an even more violent and radical

organization, Project Mayhem, that is intended to fight the postmodern consumerist society.

Dissatisfied at the fights at the club, the narrator goes back to the support groups only to find Bob

alone, who tells him that the club has disbanded and that he has found a new group (Project

Mayhem). Throughout the novel, signs that allow us to think that he is a Creator, with capital

letter, a sort of God/Jesus-like figure can be found. For example, Fight Club and also Project

Mayhem have their rules, the equivalent to the Ten Commandments. In the same sense, members

of the club may well be viewed as his apostles to whom he has directed his teachings (the rules of

Fight Club and Project Mayhem). Towards the end of chapter 5, after his condominium is

completely destroyed -the only belongings are inside his suitcase- and all of his “clever” furniture

he has spent so much money and time amassing is now gone, the narrator decides to call Tyler

Durden in the hope that he would set him free from the materialistic and hollow life he has been

leading so far: "Oh Tyler, please deliver me / Deliver me from Swedish furniture / Deliver me

from clever art” (46)

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With the idea of Tyler Durden as a God-like figure, it seems inevitably not to think of the

language the narrator is here employing as religious. The “evil” part from the Our Father prayer

is here replaced by elements that represent evil to the narrator in the postmodern world (namely,

furniture and material goods in general). The line "the phone rang and Tyler answered" (46) is

also indicative of Tyler’s status as a savior figure, especially the verb at the end of the sentence

(to answer) which is the same verb people employ to say God has heard his prayers. In chapter 8,

Durden makes the narrator promise not to talk to Marla Singer about him (“Don't ever talk to her

about me. Don't talk about me behind my back. Do you promise?” [72]). Unable to keep the

promise, the narrator betrays Durden, and this provides another example of the God/Jesus-like

figure of who has been betrayed by Judas.

Rejected from the time of their birth by their own fathers, the narrator and Durden see

them as figures who might have never really wanted them in the first place. (It seems worthwhile

to clarify at this point that the issue of fatherhood, although will be discussed in the ensuing lines,

will be addressed in a greater extent in another chapter.) In order to overcome this internal strife,

Durden proposes getting to the core of yourself to find out who you really are and in order to start

building yourself back up from there: "Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer / Tyler never

knew his father / Maybe self-destruction is the answer." (49)

Unable to recall memories of his father during his childhood (“I knew my dad for about

six years, but I don't remember anything” [50]), the narrator progressively comes to the

conclusion that “[m]aybe we didn't need a father to complete ourselves” (54). At one point, the

narrator recalls a time when he asks Tyler what he has been fighting and Tyler says his father, a

figure whose role is several times discussed by Chuck Palahniuk through the narration and

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dialogues of the characters of the novel. In chapter 18, a mechanic, who is a member of Project

Mayhem makes the narrator ponders on this issue: “If you're male and you're Christian and living

in America, your father is your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father

bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?” (141)

This statement summarizes Durden’s view of God not as benevolent or reliable, but

indifferent to the human condition. In Durden’s interpretation, God becomes an obstacle to

progress as human beings cannot truly move forward as long as they feel they need the blessings

of an indifferent creator. According to Baudrillard, in the era of simulacra and of simulation,

“there is no longer a God to recognize his own.” (5) In this regard, the narrator, resenting the

absence of his father in life, has unconsciously created a figure (Durden) out of the necessity to

have an authority and messianic figure capable of saving him from the life that he leads: Tyler

functions both as a father and as God as both are the same person, thus the narrator becomes his

own God.

Towards the end of the novel, we learn that the narrator is institutionalized and refers to

his psychologist as God, with whom he disagrees during his sessions. Statements such as “God’s

got all this wrong” and “You can’t teach God anything” (207) are examples of this conflict. At

the hospital, patients who are still hurt or bruised, continue to recognize him as Tyler Durden;

that is, as the creator of Fight Club and Project Mayhem. “Everything’s going according to the

plan” (208), an individual with a broken nose tells him. “We miss you Mr. Durden” says another.

Conceived of as a creator, Tyler Durden a.k.a. the narrator is the embodiment of the Iconoclast’s

idea revised by Baudrillard that God never existed, that only the simulacrum ever existed and that

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God himself was never anything but his own simulacrum. In a world where “everything is a copy

of a copy”, Durden is a copy of God.

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Chapter II: You have to fight: Constructing male gender and a discourse of protest

The notion of gender as rooted in biology and attributed to the natural work of hormones

has been contested by a considerable amount of theory that has focused on the social dimensions

involved in the production of gender. The idea of gender as a social construction is today

installed in debates regarding sexual and gender identity but also feminism and human rights

theory.

The post-structuralist philosopher Judith Butler will understand gender as a result of

social reiteration of codes of performances that define the feminine and masculine over time. This

is a notion of gender that distances itself from a biological explanation and focuses on the

language on masculinity and femininity and will therefore contribute to the examination of Chuck

Palahniuk’s depiction of male gender in his novel Fight Club. Similarly pertinent for the

discussion will be both the revision of the ideas proposed by sociologist R. W. Connell in regards

to the existence of more than one kind of masculinity, thus widening the scope of the topic as

well as the examination of the concepts elaborated by Nigel Edley and his discourse-oriented

analysis of masculinity.

In her book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity Judith Butler

provides interesting elements for the discussion about gender. According to her, gender “requires

a performance that is repeated.” (140) Such reiteration is at the same time both “a reenactment

and reexperiencing of a set of meanings already socially established”. Instead of conceiving of

gender as a “stable identity”, Butler develops the idea that gender, far from being “a locus of

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agency from which various acts follow” (140) is an identity constituted in time, in an exterior

space, by means of “stylized repetition of acts”.

In Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk seems to present the argument that the condition of

manhood is not what it used to be. Once a hunter that had to risk his life for shelter and food, the

postmodern man needs not to go out and make much effort to have their basic needs satisfied.

Thus, the social establishment of the set of meanings that Butler refers to can be noticed in the

postmodern men’s consumerism depicted in the novel; unknowingly, men now find themselves

shopping because the ownership of material goods, namely the finest car and/or the finest

technological device or, in the case of the narrator of the novel, furniture, has become the

parameter by which masculinity is measured:

You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life.

Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at

least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect

bed. The drapes. The rug.

Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they

own you. (44)

This quote from chapter 5 illustrates Butler’s point about the admissibility of the act that

composes gender: it is “the mundane and ritualized form of their legitimation” (140). The

acceptability of this new form of masculinity, to which not even the narrator is able to escape, has

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been achieved because no other form of constructing gender has been able to challenge it. With

time, it became the accepted pattern of what it means to be a man as a result of its permanence in

time. On another note, the excerpt also serves to make evident that the narrator, in order to

maintain the illusion of happiness and wholeness in which he lives, must work a job he despises.

With the money necessary to continue buying the goods he think he needs, eventually he finds

himself locked in a sort of prison made up of material goods.

Gender is, however, always subject to mutation. According to Butler, the possibilities of

such transformation are to be found in “the arbitrary relation between the [repeated] acts [that

constitute gender], in the possibility of a failure to repeat, a de-formity or a parodic repetition.”

(141) In post-modernity, as depicted in Fight Club, we see that men have become individuals

with consumerist-driven goals. This new conceptualization of male gender represents a disruption

of what, until that point, was said to be constitutive of what it means to be a man.

The statement "The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography,

now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue. (43)” provides elements that

indicate a change in the state of affairs. The postmodern man’s life has been so absorbed by the

materialism of the time that he has even began to replace traditional acts, even from the most

intimate sphere of an individual’s life. Sexual gratification is now achieved, not with the aid of

pornography as it used to be, but with a furniture catalogue instead. Pornographic material does

not make for a satisfying and satisfactory source of pleasure; human beings do not only enjoy

IKEA items as pieces of furniture (the purpose of their manufacturing), but also as objects of

desire.

22

The continuous purchasing of material goods, as portrayed in Fight Club, would be the

postmodern enactment of the performance of a cultural act that Butler argues as constitutive of

gender. Such constitution of gender was a disruption of what, at a given moment in history, was

understood as masculinity; however, it becomes so only because of the permanence in time of

this kind of practices and cultural acts. In this case, the obsession with buying things has been

embraced by the postmodern men and has been incorporated into their everyday lives. They have

come to accept the tendency to purchase material goods as the pattern of (cultural) acts that needs

to be followed in order to construct male gender in the postmodern world. This acceptance stems

from the comfort implied in such a spoon-fed approach to life. As Butler argues, the effect of

gender must be understood “as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements and styles

of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self” (140). Examples of the styles

Butler refers to can be noticed in the following lines from the novel: “A lot of young people try

to impress the world and buy too many things,” (45), “A lot of young people don’t know what

they really want.”(46), “Young people, they think they want the whole world.” (46) and “If you

don’t know what you want (…) you end up with a lot you don’t” (46).

All expressed by the doorman of the building where the narrator used to live before it

explodes, these statements reflect the wandering state of the postmodern society. Things are

bought because one of the main goals in the postmodern world is to impress others, not for their

own sake or delight and, in light of this, the narrator is a fine example of people that “end up with

a lot you don’t” (namely, furniture, sofa, set of dishes, bed, drapes, rug). Palahniuk’s choice of

the doorman as the character that expresses these statements might not be coincidental. A

doorman has a privileged position and overview of a building; from his spot, he has the greatest

23

view of what happens there on a daily basis –probably with the aid of a closed-circuit television

system– and thus he has an external, wider and objective view of peoples’ behavior and lifestyle.

Apart from making him unhappy and unfulfilled, such lifestyle ends up causing the

narrator insomnia. In addition to despising his job, he feels isolated by and detached from society

and its consumerist-oriented goals. As a consequence, the unnamed narrator looks for ways to

escape from the reality he is living in and that includes the sense of masculinity that he does not

feel comforted with. In seeking treatment for his insomnia, the narrator follows his doctor’s

advice to attend support group meetings for the terminally ill in order. Eventually the narrator

finds comfort with the victims of testicular cancer, after a former bodybuilder named Bob

embraces him:

(…) [T]hen Bob was closing in around me with his arms, and his head was folding down

to cover me. Then I was lost inside oblivion, dark and silent and complete, and when I

finally stepped away from his soft chest, the front of Bob’s shirt was a wet mask of how I

looked crying.

That was two years ago, at my first night with Remaining Men Together.

At almost every meeting since then, Big Bob has made me cry.

I never went back to the doctor. (22)

24

Such physical contact between the two has turned out to be a cure for the narrator’s

insomnia as it has allowed him to release his suffering by crying. To his chagrin, he is unable to

continue attending meetings due to the appearance of a woman by the name of Marla Singer, who

not only feigns to be ailed with life-altering diseases just as the narrator does (the situation

borders on absurdity when she shows up at a Remaining Men Together meeting) but is also

aware of the narrator’s fakery. Her knowledge of the situation and her threat to expose him (“You

tell on me and I’ll tell on you” [38]) end up inhibiting his crying and insomnia, in turn,

reappears. In looking for other ways to escape his troublesome reality after such failure, the

narrator meets Tyler Durden, his alter-ego, with whom he creates an underground fighting club.

As time passes, the club starts gaining popularity among men as it provides –not only the

narrator, but also other men– with the opportunity to free themselves from the plight of their lives

by beating each other (“[…] every week you go [to the basement of the bar where fights take

place] and there’s more guys there.” [50])

The narrator seems to have found the cure for his insomnia in a club that implies two

forms of (male) gender construction as the repetition of acts in time: the notion of a club as a

space (both in a temporal and in a physical sense) for men’s reunion is an example of, what

Butler states, a set of meanings socially established. Just as there are some devoted to hobbies,

sports, social activities, religion, politics, this is an association of men whose goal is to put

themselves out of the misery of their lives by inflicting blows to other men. Violence, conceived

of as the intentional use of physical force, has been believed to be a demonstration of

masculinity; a primitive form that has been present in humanity from early years. In

Masculinities, R. W. Connell states that all societies have cultural accounts of gender, but not all

have the concept “masculinity”. The modern assumption is that one's behavior is the result of the

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type of person one is; in light of this, an unmasculine person's behavior is different: an

unmasculine individual is said to be peaceable rather than violent; he is said to be conciliatory,

not dominating, and hardly able to kick a football, etc.) (67) Such conception, according to

Connell, represents the presupposition of a belief in individual difference and personal agency. In

that sense, it is built on the conception of individuality that developed in early-modern Europe as

a result of the growth of colonial empires and capitalist economic relations. For Connell, the

concept of masculinity is “inherently relational” (68) because “masculinity” does not exist unless

in contrast with “femininity”. He argues that a culture which does not treat women and men as

“bearers of polarized character types, at least in principle, does not have a concept of masculinity

in the sense of modern European/American culture”. (68) He relies on the historical research

conducted on the field that suggested that this was true of European culture itself before the

eighteenth century.. Women, Connell notes, “were certainly regarded as different from men, but

different in the sense of being incomplete or inferior examples of the same character (for

instance, having less of the faculty of reason). According to Connell, our conceptualization of

masculinity seems to be a recent historical product that is a few hundred years old at the most.

Instead of attempting to define masculinity as an object (a natural character type, a

behavioral average, a norm), Connell favors the idea of focusing on “the processes and

relationships through which men and women conduct gendered lives”. “Masculinity (…) is

simultaneously a place in gender relations, the practices through which men and women engage

that place in gender, and the effects of these practices in bodily experience, personality and

culture. (71) In section “Gender as a Structure of Social Practice”, Connell defines gender as “a

way in which social practice is ordered” instead of conceiving of it as an objective and essential

26

category; it is only possible to conceived masculinity in relation to other categories such as

femininity.

Due to a “growing recognition of the interplay between gender, race and class”, Connell

has noticed that “it has become common to recognize multiple masculinities. (76) The

recognition of the existence of more than one kind of masculinity is “only a first step”.

Disregarding the idea that it is a fixed character type, Connell refers to “hegemonic masculinity”

as the kind of masculinity that “occupies the hegemonic position in a given pattern of gender

relations, a position always contestable” (76) In other words, the type of masculinity that, at the

present time and place, is regarded as the norm. According to Connell, hegemonic masculinity

can be defined as “the configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted

answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy” (77) In Fight Club, a hegemonic kind of

masculinity is embodied in men’s tendency towards consumerism. The male performance of such

cultural acts has resulted in a type of masculinity that is now the norm. Society has embraced the

postmodern men’s tendency to purchase and amass material goods as a common or typical thing

for them, as if a feature of masculinity. Such men’s tendency stems from the fact that

consumerism provides the easiest way to get things and to have their needs satisfied in the

postmodern world. In light of this, Tyler Durden’s emerges as a figure whose goal is to counter

the effects of this ruling kind of masculinity by getting rid of everything from desires, thoughts,

wants to material possessions: "'It's only after you've lost everything," Tyler says, "that you're

free to do anything.'" (70)

Despite he himself succumbed to such a lifestyle, the narrator of the novel has come to

realize that his life is shallow and the consumerist goals of society have rendered him empty. In

27

such a state of discomfort, the narrator is no longer part of what Connell calls hegemonic

masculinity; he belongs to a subordinated type of masculinity. According to Connell, “oppression

positions homosexual masculinities at the bottom of a gender hierarchy among men” (79) he

states that gayness is “(…) the repository of whatever is symbolically expelled from hegemonic

masculinity, the items ranging from fastidious taste in home decoration to receptive anal

pleasure.” However, homosexual masculinity is “not the only subordinated masculinity” (79).

Some heterosexual men and boys too are expelled from the circle of legitimacy, Connell further

argues. In Fight Club, the narrator fits this description. In chapter 6, while providing a portrayal

of the fight club that he and his alter-ego Tyler Durden have created, the narrator acknowledges

that postmodern men belong to a different kind of generation, when compared with previous

ones: “What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women” (50)

Such allusion may well fit the picture of a rejected group of men, which is, in this case, a

large group of postmodern individuals who have grown without an authority figure and/or a male

role-model to follow. The issue of the importance of a father figure in a man’s life will be

discussed in next chapter.

Fight Club functions “five hours from two until seven on Sunday morning” (52); in other

words, it takes place in an underground fashion: at night, the counterpart of day. Its moment is

not daylight because daylight belongs to those who rule (hegemonic masculinity). The kind of

masculinity that is seen in Fight Club, despite its growing popularity among postmodern men, is

the subordinated one. Despite its evolution into a more extreme and violent organization intended

to perpetrate chaos in society (Project Mayhem), Fight club has been created out of the necessity

to find a place, to gain a sense of belonging, to fight the hegemony of the consumerist and

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feminized society in which they are living in by means of a traditional way of asserting

masculinity: violence.

There are a number of activities that are viewed as being typical of men within our

culture. Nigel Edley, in Analyzing masculinity, provides watching soccer, beer-drinking and

trying to get away from the traffic lights faster than the cars in the next lane as examples of what,

according to him, are “practices and characteristics which we conventionally associate with men”

(191). Nevertheless, it does not mean that all men will perform these activities or that they

constitute a domain exclusively for men; as a matter of fact, it is very common to see women do

them, he claims. Instead, they are conceived of, according to Edley, as “normative forms of

behavior”, similar to what Connell calls “hegemonic masculinity”. Edley argues that activities

such as beer drinking or brawling have been seen in the past as “'symptoms' of masculinity and

the by-products of something that is both prior to and more fundamental than the activities

themselves.” (191). He sustains that many people today remain convinced that gender is in some

way rooted in biology. As a result, that men race off from the traffic lights, for example, is often

attributed to an aggressive and competitive nature rooted at the level of genes or hormones.

Edley, however, emphasizes the importance of relationships within society in the creation of

gender: it is “neither something into which we are born nor something we eventually become”

(192). Instead, he favors the idea that gender is something that is ‘done’ or accomplished in the

course of social interaction. As a discursive psychologist, Edley neglects the traditional

psychological view that “men’s tinkering with cars and their repeated conversations about beer

and football” are footprints of an animal that must be tracked. Instead, he proposes that such

words and deeds “are the beast itself”. Instead of seeing masculinity as permanent or fixed,

Edley’s discursive psychological approach postulates that it is “constantly remade on a moment-

29

to-moment basis” (193) and thus it provides a radical destabilizing of the assumption that gender

is something that is natural, inevitable or God-given. Edley emphasizes that “transforming the

status quo becomes understood as a matter of challenging and changing discourses”. The narrator

of the novel transforms the predominant discourse of materialism as a parameter to measure

masculinity (the hegemonic kind in Connell’s terminology) by resorting to a traditional form of

reassertion of manhood: violence. The narrator’s way to transform discourse is through fights at

the club. In chapter 21, as he continues to go around the country for his job, he sees men with

bruises, cuts and stitches:

“YOU WAKE UP at Sky Harbor International.

Set your watch back two hours.

The shuttle takes me to downtown Phoenix and every bar I go into there are guys with

stitches around the rim of an eye socket where a good slam packed their face meat against

its sharp edge. There are guys with sideways noses, and these guys at the bar see me with

the puckered hole in my cheek and we're an instant family.”(157)

Edley provides the example of a man protesting in the street with a sign that reads “I am a

man” to illustrate that “identities are not secured merely by proclamation” (194) and that the

accomplishment of identities is far from a mere exercise and have to be “negotiated or won”,

being the statement “I am a man” part of such negotiation. Edley further develops that

“establishing one’s identity as a man is a messy and complicated co-production [and] it is

30

fashioned through social interaction, subject to negotiation and (…) inextricably bound up with

the exercise of power” (194).

In referring to the role of power in the social construction of masculinity, Edley draws

attention to the importance of why men, such as the one from the example, are protesting. Many

black American men during the 1960s, he recalls, felt “angered by the structural barriers which

prevented them from fulfilling the traditional masculine role (and) resented the fact that they

were denied the kind of work that would allow them to become the major breadwinners and

heads of their respective households”. Edley emphasizes the importance of the realization that the

demand to be recognized as a man is not a “purely symbolic issue” and it is not just that men

want to be thought of as such. What men look for is “the social, political and economic privileges

that are associated with that symbolic status”. In Fight Club, men fight other men out of their

discomfort that postmodern society and its consumerist culture produce in them. In the novel, we

can see signs of the co-production that Edley describes as a constitutive element of one’s identity

in the fighting club. By meeting every night to inflict blows on other men, participants of Fight

Club are socially interacting with one another and thus collectively constructing a “new” form of

male identity. The public display of the bruises and the stitches of the members of Fight Club

would be the equivalent to the man’s sign with the proclamation “I am a man” protesting in a

street during the 1960s. By doing so, they are challenging the predominant discourse of the

materialistic postmodern society –the main source for their frustration, discomfort and

numbness– and, at the same time, they are constructing their own discourse in which injuries are

its protesting words.

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Chapter III: A father to complete ourselves: The role of male parents in the postmodern

world

In Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk alludes to the issue of fatherhood several times; one of

the first references being made by the narrator in chapter 6 in regards to the experience of his

alter-ego Tyler Durden: “Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer. Tyler never knew his father.

Maybe self-destruction is the answer.” (49)

Focusing on the role of men in today's society of gender equality, Anthony Clare proposes

interesting elements for the discussion of masculinity and fatherhood in his book On men:

Masculinity in Crisis. The opening lines of “The Dying Phallus”, the first section of his treatise,

are characterized by the author’s acknowledgement of a variety of things about which he claims

to be either ignorant, doubtful and/or skeptical: what makes people happy, whether there is a

God, whether good mothers are born or made, what makes people be the ruler and the ruled, and

whether he will see the day when the cure for cancer, schizophrenia or Alzheimer’s is discovered

and so forth and so on. His major concern is, however, with manhood. Although he admits to

knowing what it is to be a man, as he ponders on how he learned about the issue of masculinity,

he concludes that all the teaching was implied and took place almost as if by osmotic process; in

fact, he fails to recall either his father, mother, teachers, or classmates say “This is what it means

to be a man, a son, a brother, a lover, a dad” (9). In spite of that, Clare states that he soon found

out about what makes a man; he learned that his work is as important as his own self and,

furthermore, that in the capitalist society of our time, a man is not defined by what he is, but by

what he does.

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In recalling the concept of the empty nest syndrome, Clare notices how its scope

broadened from affecting females to males: married women about their 40s after having devoted

their life to their children realized that they had grown up and their husbands spent most of their

time working and playing golf (11). But now, he notes, a man in their mid-40s who has faithfully

devoted his life to a company is now forced to retirement and, in confusion, finds himself in the

position women used to occupy: it is him who now finds his children are not home and it is his

wife the one who has other occupations. All in all, the justification for male patriarchy, Clare

argues –although it has not been overthrown since there are still more men holding job positions

and getting better salaries than women– is at least confusing and must be revised and discussed as

a concept. Clare sustains that the time of men’s ruling power, authority, and/or domination has

come to its end (13). He recalls the experience of his father as being a member of a generation

that boasted about their condition of being the breadwinners, the ones earning the money to

support their wife, family and themselves. Currently, that is no longer necessary because married

women benefit from the education they receive and they eventually make their own money (17-

18). All these contemporary changes have resulted in “the role of the father being threatened”

(18). He believes that factors such as the advances in the field of assisted reproductive

technology, in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, surrogacy and the belief that one single

parent as a caregiver is as good a caregiver as two inevitably lead to posing the question “where

is fatherhood headed?” (18) And he adds some more: Is there anything left from the role of man

as breadwinner and protector? Do we need men? Do we need fathers? If so, what kind of a man

and what kind of a father do we need? (19)

The narrator has vague recollections of his encounters with his father whom he knew for

not so long:

33

Me, I knew my dad for about six years, but I don’t remember anything. My dad, he starts

a new family in a new town about every six years. This isn’t so much like a family as it’s

like he sets up a franchise.

What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women. (50)

With the knowledge that Durden is a split personality the narrator has created, the

former’s father correspond in fact with the latter’s. Consequently, the implication seems to be

that barely knowing someone, six years in the case of the narrator, is the same as not ever

knowing that someone, as in the case of Durden. All in all, the absence of a strong father figure in

the life of a child and/or young individual is an issue not only affecting the narrator. According to

the last sentence of the aforementioned excerpt, Fight Club is an organization with a growing

membership constituted by individuals belonging to an age group that had female role-models to

follow, instead of male ones. What you see at Fight Club is a group of individuals whose only

model for adult male –that of a father– has been absent. Without male role-models to follow,

these men have largely accepted the role of men in society as presented by mass media and

advertising, in which the emphasis is put on the sense of completeness you can achieved by

purchasing material goods. This “self-improvement” is rejected by the narrator who has seen

emptiness in such a model and does not believe it to be “the answer” to the problem.

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In recalling how Fight Club was created, the narrator again visits the idea of self-

destruction while describing his first encounter with Tyler Durden and how he hits him at

Durden’s request:

I didn’t want to, but Tyler explained it all, about not wanting to die without any scars,

about being tired of watching only professionals fight, and wanting to know more about

himself.

About self-destruction.

At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to

make something better out of ourselves. (52)

The so-called completeness the narrator refers to is but an illusion of happiness and

fulfillment that has only been sustained through consumption –activity he sustains with a job he

despises– of material goods which are nothing but consolation prizes that, instead of giving him a

sense of accomplishment, have merely demonstrated his buying power. Thus the narrator toys

with the idea of self-destruction as being the proper way to overcome his internal struggle. He

contemplates the idea of getting to the core of yourself in order to discover who you really are

and thus be able to make a better “you”. Later, the narrator inquires Durden as to what he is

fighting at the club and “Tyler said, his father” (53). The narrator then ponders on the importance

of a father in the building of one’s identity and says: “Maybe we didn’t need a father to complete

ourselves” (54)

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In fact, the narrator has needed a father to somewhat complete himself: Tyler Durden. He

has been the Messiah that has saved him from the materialistic life he was leading and the

Creator of the club where he has acknowledged to have been reborn (“You aren’t alive anywhere

like you’re alive at fight club” [51]). The narrator has in fact expressed that he senses Durden as a

father: “Me, I'm six years old again, and taking messages back and forth between my estranged

parents. I hated this when I was six. I hate it now.” (66)

The estranged parents he refers to are Durden and Marla Singer and the messages that he

says is taking between them have to do mainly with Durden wanting to get rid of Marla. In order

to so, he tells the narrator to tell Marla to go out and buy a can of lye. The narrator’s anger at the

situation stems from his discomfort at being treated as a child. Durden and the narrator being the

same individual, the implication is that he is in fact his own father. He actually needs a father to

feel complete: he needs himself.

Further references to the issue of fatherhood are to be found in chapter 18, a point in the

novel where Fight Club has already evolved into the more radical organization called Project

Mayhem, whose target is the economic establishment. Initially a participant, the narrator

eventually quits as he becomes uncomfortable with the increasing destruction of the group

(particularly after Bob –the same Bob from the support group for victims of testicular cancer– is

killed during one of the sabotage operations). Some time before his departure, Durden phones the

narrator at work to tell him he must get in a car that is waiting outside. There, he meets a

mechanic that happens to be a member of Project Mayhem. As he drives, the mechanic tells the

narrator:

36

"What you have to understand, is your father was your model for God.”

“If you're male and you're Christian and living in America, your father is your model for

God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out and dies or is never at

home, what do you believe about God?” (140)

The novel might be posing as answer that God never existed or that God, as conceived of

in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is not even necessary in the first place. The mechanic seems to

be saying “It is okay if God does not exist because I can make one of my own”. In the first

chapter of this project, I presented the idea that the narrator (most precisely his alter-ego Durden)

was a copy of God in a hyperreal world (a messiah that saves the narrator from the hell of the

materialistic life, a God who was the creator of Fight Club, where “there’s hysterical shouting in

tongues like at church” after which “you feel saved” (51) and who directed his teachings to its

members as if they were apostles. If one’s father is one’s model for God, as the mechanic have

said, then the narrator has been his own model for both. Although he adds that "What you end up

doing (…) is you spend your life searching for your father and God" (141), the narrator’s search

for his father and God has ceased as he has found both figures in himself. In regards to the role of

father and its justification, Anthony Clare states:

If men still have a role as fathers, then it is time they explained what it is. And it is time

they fulfilled this role. What is it that fathers do? What is it that fathers are? (222-223)

37

A father is someone who, in most cases, has a word of advice for and cares about his son

or daughter, even if he does not live at home with them. Durden embodies this description by

suggesting to the narrator that he get rid of the unnecessary parts of his life in order to find

himself. With his creation Fight Club, Durden also teaches the narrator values and imparts

discipline as a father would do. All in all, the narrator –or Tyler Durden if you will– ends up

filling the void that his father has left when abandoning him by becoming his own father.

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Conclusion

Although the narrator intended to overcome his discomfort with life through the creation

of an alter ego that served him as a father and a God/Jesus-like figure, he ends up in a mental

institution where his inmates see him as Tyler Durden and expect him to resume his work at

Project Mayhem to continue elaborating anti-corporate sabotage operations.

Even though the narrator’s ability to create or replace a father figure may be interpreted as

way of overcoming difficulties and self-empowerment, such efforts prove counterproductive as

the narrator ends up losing his freedom as a result of his work at the destructive Project Mayhem.

Out of all the narrator’s creations –Tyler Durden and his by-products Project Mayhem and

Fight Club– only the latter seems a worthwhile effort to struggle with the weakened state of the

postmodern masculinity: after a night at Fight Club, the narrator and its other members began

feeling they had been reborn and felt they had regained his sense of manliness. Confined to the

limited physical space of the basement where fights took place, damage, violence and destruction

were employed as tools to build male identity. In contrast, Project Mayhem worked on a larger

scale as an anti-corporate organization and ended up with one of its own members being killed

during an operation.

The fact that the novel shares the same name as the underground fighting club might not

be coincidental. It might well be an indication that both “Fight Clubs”, Durden’s and Palahniuk’s,

are not only their commentaries on the state of affairs of the postmodern society, but they both

might well be considered as creations of an individual’s mind, which are meant to help regular

39

men find answers to the question of postmodern masculinity and whose patterns have been

dictated by advertising and mass media due to the absence of father figures among this generation

of men.

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Works Cited

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Grazier. Ann Arbor: University

of Michigan, 1994. Print

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge,

1990. Print

Clare, Anthony. On men: Masculinity in Crisis. Trans. Irene Cifuentes. Madrid: Taurus, 2002.

Print

Connell, Robert. Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995. Print

Edley, Nigel. "Analysing Masculinity: Interpretative Repertoires, Ideological Dilemmas and

Subject Positions." Discourse as data: a guide for analysis. Ed. Margaret Wetherell, Stephanie

Taylor and Simeon J. Yates. London: Sage, 2001. 189-228. Print

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996. Print