MASCULINITY IN A POSTMODERN TEXT: CONCEPT, IDENTITY, CHARACTER

Abstract

The paper considers masculinity representation in a postmodern text. The author reveals the theoretical background of the origin and development of masculinity studies as a branch of gender research. The key parameters of masculinity include sexual, social, cultural, national, and age components. Specific traits of masculine personages are explicated in postmodern texts of different styles. Masculinity is treated as an objectivated realization of androcentrism which loses its dominant positions in the bipolar world of gender dichotomy due to the postmodern transformations of the outlook. It acquires the features which form a new image of a man in consciousness, community, and a text. The paper proves that contemporary society does not possess gender polarity, it witnesses weakening of “hegemonic masculinity” and diffusion of boundaries between men and women as subjects of social intercourse. There appear new aspects of masculinity which destroy male stereotypes; masculinity splits into plurality of identities often being polarized inside this sex-gender group. The paper reveals the characters framed linguistically in a text. Resulting from restructured social relations and reestimation of values, they turn up not as a traditional character of a father in a literary text but a “divorced father” who performs his father’s duties remotely as a spouse, a “domestic partner”, “ex-husband”, and/or “lover (boyfriend)”. All the newly formed gender identities and the corresponding text constructs obtain relevant lingual nominations. Analysis of dictionary definitions enables to fix the correlation between the systemic meaning of masculine gender identities and their contextual semantics. The article concludes that postmodern masculinity is no longer interpreted as a biologically determined entity but rather as a performative option of a personal choice.