Emotions in older profeminist men’s collective memory work: multifaceted analysis and reflections

This article is a retrospective examination and contemporary interrogation of emotions in a UK-based, long-term, profeminist collective memory work (CMW) older men’s group, of which the authors were members. The group met all day twice a year during 2002–15 and subsequently produced the book Men’s Stories for a Change of written memories and analytical commentaries. The article asks the following: what do these experiences and analyses of older profeminist men’s CMW reveal about men, masculinities and emotions? This question is addressed in terms of both the immediate case study and older men and emotions more broadly. The methodology employed derives from the CMW group, with its own interrogative methods, complemented by subsequent qualitative, quantitative and textual analysis, as well as co-autoethnography. In this process, the prime aim became the multifaceted analysis of and reflection on men’s (relations to) emotions in CMW, recognising interconnections and overlaps between personal, empirical, political and theoretical facets. In the written memories, the most prevalent clusters of emotions were the following: anger, fear and humiliation; loss, sadness and shame; love and pleasure; and acceptance. In the process of the group and in doing profeminist collective emotion politics, several emotional ambivalences and tensions were noted between collective emotion work and work on collective emotions, supporting feminism and critically nurturing each other, emotional expressiveness and emotional restraint, and profeminist activism and bodily ageing. Emotions were aged, though not in a given deterministic way, and were gendered, referencing feminist and gender awareness, though not only that. The importance of situating older men’s emotions in time and place is emphasised.