THE ANARCHIC MALE BODY IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN POETRY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF NEW MASCULINITIES

The second half of the 2010s to the beginning of the 2020s in the Russian context are associated with the active intervention of the state in the sphere of private life. In a situation of gender inequality, the male body is subjected to particularly strict regulation. The new normative masculinity is perceived by a significant part of so-ciety as illegitimate. In the public sphere, the conflict between the state and society often takes the form of a performance, in which the naked male body turns out to be a medium of the utterance -rebellious and anarchic. In contemporary Russian poetry, resistance to the pressure of power is associated with the emergence of non-normative models of masculinity, in the design of which bodily representations also play an important role. Victim masculinity implies unbalanced, conflicted behavior, constant readiness for a political challenge. Transgressive masculinity connects the specifics of masculinity with striving for all possible boundaries and provocative violation of cultural and aesthetic prohibitions. Phenomenological masculinity puts the masculine into question, considering it as something looked-for, and not given a priori, and the anarchic meaning of this model is associated with the rejection of the very idea of a behavioral patter n.(c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This article discusses the strict regulation of male bodies in the Russian context under state intervention, as well as the emergence of resistance to power and non-normative models of masculinity in contemporary Russian poetry.