Violence and masculinities in the poetry by Ricardo Aleixo

Abstract

This paper examines the construction of masculinities in the West. In the first part, I present a discussion proposed by Pedro Ambra in his work O que é um homem? Psicanálise e história da masculinidade no Ocidente (2015). The author's arguments problematize the cultural schemes, the conditions and historical possibilities that allowed male domination to happen, on the one hand, and the submission of women on the other. In the second part, I analyze the poem “Meu negro” (2018), by Ricardo Aleixo, to question how racism affects the construction of black masculinity. Thus, I seek here to investigate the tensions, contradictions, limits and possibilities of the formation of the black man’s subject. It is a bibliographical study based on psychoanalysis, gender studies and decolonial studies. The results of the research suggest that the structures of male domination are based on symbols and are legitimated by education, religious, family, military institutions, among others.