Susan Faludi, "The Naked Citadel"

Questions for Making Connections Within the Reading:

1. In "The Naked Citadel," Susan Faludi provides a series of vignettes that describe life at the military school. Why does she present the vignettes in the order she does? Why does she start her article in Jane Bishop's classroom? Why does she then move to the courtroom? Make a chart that tracks the organization of Faludi's essay. What is the argument that Faludi is making by telling these vignettes in this order?

2. The sociologist Ervin Goffman coined the term "total institutions" to describe places that become almost entirely self-enclosed and self-referential in their values and behaviors. Goffman's principal example was the mental asylum. Can we describe The Citadel accurately as a "total institution"? Are its values the product of its isolation, or does Faludi's account furnish evidence that the attitudes holding sway in The Citadel also persist outside the institution as well? Is The Citadel just an aberration, or does it tell us certain truths about our own society?

3. Faludi offers this overview of The Citadel:

In the late-twentieth-century setting of The Citadel, in a time when extreme insecurity and confusion about masculinity's standing run rampant, the Corps of Cadets once again seeks to obscure a domestic male paradise with an intensifying of virile showmanship and violence. The result is a ruthless intimacy, in which physical abuse stands in for physical affection, and every display of affection must be counterbalanced by a display of sadism.

On the basis of the evidence Faludi provides, is this a fair assessment of the culture of The Citadel? What evidence confirms this assessment? What evidence might be said to complicate or even contradict it? What other explanations might we offer for events at The Citadel? Does masculinity have to occupy the central place in our analysis, or might other factors be more important?

Questions for Writing

1. In what sense is Susan Faludi a feminist? If we define a feminist as someone who is specifically concerned with defending the rights of women, does she qualify? Does she regard the rights of women as practically or theoretically distinct from the rights of men? How about the needs and aspirations of women: Are these fundamentally different from the needs and aspirations of men? Does Faludi see men as "oppressors of women"? Does she imply that our society systematically empowers men while systematically disempowering women, or does disempowerment cross gender lines?

2. "The Naked Citadel" might be described as a case study of the relations between sexuality and social structures. In what ways do social structures shape sexuality at The Citadel? Does Faludi's account call into question the belief in a single, natural form of male sexual expression? Is the problem with The Citadel that natural sexuality has been perverted by linking it to relations of power? Can sexuality and power ever be separated?

Questions for Making Connections Between Readings:

1. Faludi and Martha Nussbaum are both considered feminists, but are they feminists of the same kind? Do they share the same understanding of women, of women's dilemmas, and of the solutions to those dilemmas? In what ways do their feminisms intersect with other more general issues, such as the struggle for human rights? Is it possible that the degradation of different women in different contexts requires different approaches? Should we discuss women's rights at all, or should we concern ourselves primarily with human rights?

2. Like The Citadel, the People's Republic of China during Mao's later years might be described as an authoritarian society--a society that offers ordinary people little personal freedom and control over their own lives. On the basis of your reading Faludi's "The Naked Citadel" and the selections from Jasper Becker's Hungry Ghosts, make an argument about the origins of authoritarianism. Is it fair to say that authoritarian regimes are generally the product of evil geniuses--like Hitler and Saddam Hussain--who drag along everyone else? Do authoritarian societies maintain control over the populace simply by the exercise of brute force, or do good and well-meaning people participate in such societies willingly? If authoritarian societies are not created by evil geniuses or by the exercise of brute force, how do they come into existence?

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