Arresting Masculinity: Anger, Hybridity and the Reproduction of Phallic Space

Abstract

This paper examines how the signifier of ‘toxic masculinity’ operates in the contemporary psycho-social landscape of embodied power relations. It is argued that toxic masculinity is a symbolic response to the deep sense of anger people experience owing to the persistent disturbance of reason that characterizes the radically incongruous Thirdspace in which we live. To those who feel disoriented and lost, toxic masculinity is both an imagined cause and a projected solution to the endemic sense of dislocation. As an index of repressive power, self-serving discipline and ruthless ambition, toxic masculinity is held fully responsible by angry ‘outsiders’ for the ongoing disturbance of reason, whilst the very attribution of the cause of this disturbance to a gendered position of traditional embodied authority simultaneously serves the purpose of changing the hybridity of Thirdspace into more conventional figurations of social imbalance. This explanatory model, which draws both on Edward W. Soja’s reflections on the changing spatialities of the human lifeworld and Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the (re-)production of (phallic) space, is further employed to address the questions as to why patriarchy persists and whether alternative constellations of governance are feasible.