The ‘Post-Truth’ of Toxic Masculinity in Leftist Circles: Reading Meena Kandasamy’s When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife

Abstract

Meena Kandasmy’s When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife narrates the story of a wife trapped in an abusive marriage where her abuse is meted out and sustained through a structure of manipulative tactics which her abuser claims as nothing but “leftist truths”. This immaculate description of toxic masculinity and violence upheld by flawed yet historically founded absorptions of leftist political ideals begs the need for a deeper enquiry into how the left conserves toxic masculinity. This paper is a further analysis of the novel with respect to understanding the ways communist and socialist ideologies (or what can broadly be termed as the left in popular political vocabulary) defend and reproduce hegemonic notions of masculinity while at the same time denying its effects or existences. This is also an enquiry into the possibilities how the left has in many ways believed in what can be understood as a post-truth that it is inherently resistant of patriarchy, while upholding it.