Performing a victim: toxic postsocialist masculinities

Abstract

The article analyzes postsocialist toxic masculinities as an ensemble of discourses, rules, and practices characterized by excess and banality. Focusing on male politicians, it argues that moderation, restraint and sobriety are foreign to their brand of toxic masculinity. Fraught with fear and anxiety, Lithuanian politicians attempt to resolve their masculine ambiguities by resorting to dramatic performances of resentment, impetuousness, hatred, and denigration of others. The examined Lithuanian politicians’ pronouncements suggest that they constitute themselves as injured victims and perpetuate the obsessive discourse of male victimhood. Constant claims about manliness under siege are a way of fabricating simulacra of a particular toxic masculinity characteristic of postsocialist Lithuania. Using the postcolonial theory on mimicry, excess and banality of power, the author argues that these men’s pursuit of shameless lawlessness best epitomizes this type of masculinity.