Creating A New Noble for Men: Nietzsche and the Oxymoron of a Manhood of Ressentiment
Introduction:
Something is wrong with how some men—specifically how young men—are thinking about the world. They feel as though they have been owed something, a life, a status, a capability that contemporary society in the first world has not been successful at giving to them. Whether it is a job, a lifestyle, a girlfriend, a country, or a community, many young men have been searching for something to make them a part of the ideal Man. This community of characters, appearances, concepts, and goals like strength, power, and wealth takes on divine location. It becomes heaven. However, like all idealized and desired locations, it is often not where the people that want to be there find themselves. That difference in location, of where young men are and where they want to be can be incredibly frustrating. To understand that difference in location, and answer questions like why they are where they are, and not where they want to be, these men need a story. A way to make sense of the world and assign responsibility and possibility is common among all humans, at present, the types of stories some young men are using to understand their place in the world are bad. These stories lead to the hatred of women, people of different races, the destruction of the environment, the dissolution of free government, and many other externalities. Why do men want this? What kind of relationship to life, as it is and as it can be, do these men have? In order to understand and disrupt the relationship to life these young men have, this paper will utilize a Nietzschean narratives and genealogical tools to offer a new story to live from and by.
Setup for Terms and Connections:
The focus here is mostly on men in North America and Europe that this collision with men, masculinity, and fascism is happening. Additionally, because these are rich and powerful regions of the world with lots of global power and racially these regions of the world are the home base of “whiteness” (Kim et al 191-214, Pitts et al. 188-203, Scott et al. 33-49). These narratives and analyses are hopefully relevant to men of color and men outside these rich, “white” countries. The nexus of this collision of men in rich countries in North America and Europe that are feeling as though they were promised something they are not getting is where the focus will be on because of the unique destructive potential and my own familiarity with these narratives and viewpoints.
Section 1: Relevance and Focus: White Guys and the Manosphere
It is not surprising that young men in high school, college, and the workforce are desiring a better life than maybe what they think is available. Student debt, rent prices, the omnipresent yet isolating nature of social media changing how social interaction takes place are all things that negatively impact them. Their parents or grandparents had it easier, the complexity of the world is able to seen in a few clicks where before that kind of information proponderence was not feasible to people. Thus, with complex, anxiety-inducing, and disappointing realities, many men are looking for stories and narrators to help them understand, cope, and change themselves and their worlds. That is part of the appeal of the manosphere. The “manosphere” is this big tent of YouTube channels, forums, social media accounts, podcasts, and political figures all about reclaiming and becoming men. Topics of interest include financial planning, analysis of women, human nature, a particular kind of model for the dating marketplace, hating on women, promotion of the products of these figures who act as teachers and guides, and instruction to live your life by (Wynn, “Incels” and “Men”). These are men that are looked up to and want to guide these young people to the promised land of fame, wealth, power, sex, and whatever else these men understand they were promised (Kim et al 191-214, Wynn, “Incels” and “Men”). This note of men feeling emasculated by the way political and economic conditions have changed in the last thirty years is nothing new: see Chuck Palahnuik’s work, and Fight Club more specifically. What has changed and will likely continue to be a force in the future of politics is the relationship between manhood and fascism—notably an explicit focus on whiteness—as instructive. Men want to feel like men, and what that means for things like strength, providing, protecting and other behaviors and beliefs is not as easily achievable as people wish it was. Mass shootings, lack of organized labor power, and the cost of living all are problems for the United States, all of those issues affect how men feel about their ability to be able to live out their ideals. That is where the manosphere pounces in. Later on, the seeds for hate-fueled violence are sown.
Now, not all male-centered or oriented channels and media figures focusing on things like wealth, sex, politics, et cetera are going to be in my categorization of the manosphere. For example, there are plenty of male dominated and oriented podcasts, social media accounts, and media product lines. That does not mean they are a part of the manosphere. For example, watching YouTube channels about lifting weights and gaining muscle mass for men does not necessitate or even imply beliefs or even engage in the rhetoric that the manosphere is known for. This paper argues the mansophere encourages a certain relationship to life that is uniquely destructive and demeaning to the values of human possibility and effectiveness. Men are not the problem, the relationships the mansophere and other ways of being like it that are encouraged are the problem. A related media space that is important to note to further define the bounds of the focus is the place pursuing bodily pleasures occupies on social media and the fantasies of men across the globe. Some Instagram and other social media accounts focus and encourage a lifestyle of parting, working out, and lots of sex but do not really orient themselves as part of the manosphere. One reason for that could be what this paper is going to point out, that the relationship to life the content, stories, and thought of the manosphere fosters a negative relationship to life. For some of the internet’s party demons, gym rats, and content creators, the manosphere could be understand as “for the dorks”. Many in the manosphere would likely object to that characterization or point out if it is “for the dorks” it is a place to change dorks in “alphas”. The interests of this paper lie with understanding and thinking with the men who are engaged in or are susceptible to the manosphere’s ideas. In light of that, the fluidity of the style of the manosphere is noted because in true Nietzschean fashion, the necessary and sufficient conditions are not the point of this analysis, the continually unfolding relationship to life and its possibilities are (Kaufmann et al. 67-71) These relationships help show how one must strive to become noble in will in order to actually take more control of one’s life, not just sound or look like it.
Section 2: The Manosphere
The manosphere is the topic of a lot of online discourse, and has been so for at least the past couple years (Wynn, “Incels”). Both positive and negative takes on it proliferate many people’s online spaces, even if they are not particularly embedded in internet culture. For examples of this see Andrew Tate and Hustler’s University rise, fall, and now reemergence as official accounts (Das, Tate). To understand the many strands of the manosphere and how they pull for engagement, understanding some of the different types of their content is pertinent. My description for the contemporary manosphere will utilize the work of Natalie Wynn’s work on the manosphere on her YouTube channel ContraPoints. Wynn has been engaged with and researching the particularly seedy and bigoted sections of the internet for years now (Wynn, “Incels” and “Men”). Her work lends itself well to the project of examining the relationship to life these areas foster; specifically, in terms of the manosphere. Some of the types of communities in the manosphere are: Men Going Their Own Way or MGTOW, Pickup Artists, Men’s Rights Activists, Alpha Males, and Involuntary Celibates or ‘Incels’ (Wynn, “Incels”). The pertinent subgroups this paper aims to focus on are Alpha Males and Incels.
There is considerable overlap in the stories, relationships, and worldviews of these groups; they are not strict dichotomies. Not all men who consider themselves plugged into the manosphere and are not having sex consider themselves incels, and not all men who may have the physical or social conditions of what would be considered “alpha” consider themselves alpha males or the specific kinds noted in the manosphere. Rather, these categories are more like genres function as ways of thinking, enacting, and conclusions to arguments and stories for the people in this headspace (Wynn “Incels”). The relationship to life and the type of will this originates is what matters here. While the thing that takes hold of people can be the particular subgroup and its theses, the commonalities of theses shared amongst the subgroups and their models is what is most pertinent here (Wynn, “Incels” and “Men”). The commonalities make it so characterizing something as the mansophere actually allows a model of understanding to be constructed.
In terms of incels, the premises of their worldview can be summarized as follows: First, there is some way to quantify the level of attractive someone is in a fairly stable way (Wynn, “Incels”). Second, a just world is where men and women of equal looks or attractiveness match up and are in romantic and sexual relationships (Wynn, “Incels”). Third, this just world has been ruined by women and feminism because women consistently date or have sex with men more attractive than themselves and ignore men they are supposed to be in a relationship with because they are ‘a match’ (Wynn, “Incels”). This orientation for trying to have sex with or date men of a higher attractiveness is called “hypergamy” by incels, this orientation is upsetting the distribution of men and women in relationships (Wynn, “Incels”). That is why men today find it harder to date, because women are screwing up and trying to whore out themselves for men out of their league (Wynn, “Incels”). The men at the top of the attractiveness threshold are referred to as “alphas”, “chads”, or sometimes “high-value men” by incels and the manosphere more generally (Wynn, “Incels” and “Men”). These chads or alphas are consistently interested in having as much sex as possible, have desirable physical and social traits, and are able to essentially live the life they want because women flock to them (Wynn, “Incels”).
The men who lose out on the women, those who are ignored by the hypergamous women are referred to as “betas”, “cucks”, or “low value men” (Wynn, “Incels” and “Men”). Now, the distinction between incels and alpha males in the specifics of their stories can be found here. Incels and alpha males essentially share this worldview and refer to being exposed to it or adopting it as “taking the red pill”, in reference to a scene in the movie The Matrix where the protagonist takes a red pill in order to see what “reality” really is and get past his accepted delusions (Wynn, “Incels” and “Men”). Where they differ can range from specific premise content or just in the focus of their work. Incels can be more of a doomsday view, where your attractiveness is unchangeable because something like your skull or height is just the way it is and because of that no women will ever truly love (Wynn, “Incels”). If you ever are in a relationship, it is because the woman is using you to fund her lifestyle and is cheating on you with as many chads as possible (Wynn, “Incels”). This will eventually lead to her divorcing you to be with her new chad lovers or just bleeding the bank accounts dry until you finally divorce her or commit suicide, ending your suffering (Wynn, “Incels”). This in contrast to the alphas, this group of men who think that there is some hope for these young, disillusioned men to become the chads they are so jealous of. These men who preach the possibility of increasing one’s own value do not totally reject the worldview of the incel. Rather, the alphas think essentially the same things about women and their impulsive inferiority and disposability, the degeneration of manhood in the West due to “the left” and the range of other parties administering that plan, and the meaning of what it means to be an alpha or a chad (Wynn “Incels”) Alphas are alphas because they can and do—or at least want to appear as they do— have sex with as many women as they want, impose their will on the world, and overcome the limitations of living paycheck to paycheck (Wynn “Incels” and “Men”)
Section 3: Nietzsche and A Genealogy of Morals
Internet Nazis and violently vitriolic virgins may seem to be new groups of people, but for the work Nietzsche performs in On the Genealogy of Morals the relationships to life these people have are well documented. Nietzsche’s genealogy will serve as the generative starting point of this analysis and the basis for a new story to be offered to these young men. In this dense and dynamic work, Nietzsche seeks to subvert and make strange the moral ideas, feelings, and conventions people use and justify every day (Kaufmann et al. 16-27). The specific focus for Nietzsche is the values that motivate and animated the internal life of 19th century Europeans (Kaufmann et al. 16-18, 21-24). What were these values; how could they be understood; what kind of person did they create; and what makes these values valuable or animating are the important questions to ask about the state of one’s life for Nietzsche (Kaufmann et al. 16-20). To focus the approach of the genealogy, A concise reading of Nietzsche’s motivations and an introduction to the provided genealogy of European morality serve as the perfect starting points.
An X, a symbol denoting whatever the writer wants. The X is the true thing or unknown quantity to find that drives the whole point of an argument or equation. Nietzsche finds this search for an X to be an unfortunate metaphor taken too seriously and used by moralizers to get their will executed upon (Kaufmann et al. 29-33, 36-44). Rather than study the actually observable and beautifully complex human behavior and the behavior of other living things, we look for a “soul” (Kaufmann et al. 40-44). A soul acts as out for our responsibility for what actually happens in our life. Ways of thinking like “who cares if you do not have riches, love, friendship, and power on earth, the only thing you actually have any reason to do anything; rather, store up riches in heaven…” are the enemy of a well-lived life (Kaufmann et al. 44-49, 97-106). The philosophical search for an essence is a similar thing to Nietzsche, why must we makeup stories and then delude ourselves in thinking we know more about reality than what there is (Cazeaux and Nietzsche 53-62, Kaufmann et al. 44-49). Why discount “appearances”, there is nothing but and appearances serve as the basis for all fictions and ideas of their obscuring. This drive for searching behind the wall knows no bounds, and is an evolutionary heuristic; not an insight into a “deeper” reality. In terms of morality, Nietzsche’s genealogy focuses on this line of thought and offers a story and explanation for why Europeans—and possibly all humans—hold certain ideas about what is worthwhile to do in life and why that is so without engaging with an “X” (Kaufmann et al. 128-139). There is no singular origin point in what the European Philosophers and Christian thinkers before him refer to and think as “truth”.
Origins, reasons for something if you far enough back are not real for Nietzsche. That is not how the world works. It is more processes and “appearances” all the way down. Mind you, that “down” idea is a metaphor too. Engage with the specifics and values of life is the scholarly search to focus on (Cazeaux and Nietzsche 53-62, Kaufmann et al. 16-20, 24-33). Why do we dothe things we do? Who does that benefit? Who does it hurt? What are benefits and harms? How are our values shaping our lives? What do people get by having certain values? What relationship to life and its possibilities to the values we hold, and the values we seem to act on tell us about that person or group? By pursuing a story, an explanation, and a possible origin that Nietzsche provides in his genealogy Nietzsche seeks to change how one thinks about what animates and situates their life by making the happenings of the past and present strange to the person engaged with them (Kaufmann et al. 57-58).
To start, Nietzsche’s genealogy posits the origin for the ideas of “good” and “bad” and then further distinguishes how the ideas of “good” and “evil” came from those. The characters Nietzsche introduces to explain good and bad are the noble, and the slave. While these occupy different positions of power in human societies, they serve as categories for types of wills and eventually relationships to life (Kaufmann et al. 27-35). A will is that animating relationship to life that encourages or discourages action to be taken and values and examples to create. Life for Nietzsche is the happening, and possibility of the future. That messy interaction between biological processes templating psychological states that adapt us to and change our experiences to people and other things present on this hurdling rock of mud, water, and magma humans call a planet (Cazeaux and Nietzsche 53-62, Kaufmann et al. 26-34). Life is the something that we have and continue to have, and we understand it through grasping what others had and what can be possessed. Life is present, and rather than focus on how it is, wills work to undertake the gargantuan task of getting us to engage with it: the most important thing that we cannot understand.
For Nietzsche, the noble exemplifies the type of will he creatively calls the “noble will” and relates to an affirmative relationship to life (Kaufmann et al. 31-34). Nobles act upon the world. Nobles pull the future they want out of the bundle of uncertainty that is the future and lay down the foundation of their desires for the world. The things nobles come up with values— things that make life meaningful and worth living and doing—and then they actually seek to do them and actualize their creations (Kaufmann et al. 26-30). Life is full of possibilities and nobles will fight tooth and nail to affirm and secure the ones they want to be what they live in (Kaufmann et al. 36-39). Nietzsche notes nobles do not have this type of “morality” commonly understood today as good and evil. Rather, for nobles there is “good” and “bad” (Kaufmann et al. 26, 30-31). Good is what they call things they see and understand to be things that line up with their will being done, their expeditions in the future becoming resources in the present (Kaufmann et al. 27-31). Bad is what they call things out that seem to run counter to what they want (Kaufmann et al. 28-30, 33-34). Bad things need to be corrected for their desires to be achieved, good things are taken as evidence that they are and can get what they want. The slave type of will is one that goes with a negative relationship to life due to impotence (Kaufmann et al. 33-36). Slaves seek to comfort and motivate themselves to a lower degree to act upon the world by these ideas of “good” and “bad” that become “good” and “evil”. What the concept of good denotes for the slaves is that which minimizes their suffering (Kaufmann et al. 34-36). Slaves in Neitzsche’s genealogy have no political power or effective means to have their will act upon the world to transform it, so their concept of good is reactive (Kaufmann et al. 39-43). Good is that which minimizes their suffering, their acknowledgement of their place in the world: which is at the bottom (Kaufmann et al. 44-49). Similarly, the slave’s concept of bad denotes the reminder the nobles provide by living unencumbered via orders and actions that the slaves are disposable. The slave is cannon fodder, doing someone else’s bidding and acting as a tool for the noble. Now Nietzsche’s analysis for how the different meanings of good and bad percolate is not complete, because there is a third place unmentioned. That third place, third character is the Priestly type of will, which gains power and attempts to obscure their own insecurities by offering something to the slave type: a pernicious type of coping (Kaufmann et al. 33-35, 143- 148).
The Priest seeks and gains power via prohibitions. The priestly character enters the fold as a way to acknowledge a spot in society about how beliefs and distracting hopes from the slaves about the value of their work and life in the eyes of others comes about. Priests have status, but not the political power necessary to become nobles (Kaufmann et al. 46-54). Priests use the hope of belief in the value of the overlooked to gain power by introducing concepts of “purity” and “impurity” (Kaufmann et al. 31-33, 157-161). Purity refers to questions of ability to or continually partaking in things, whether it be actions or rituals (Kaufmann et al. 143-148). The priestly type uses purity as a way to actually make the fact that the nobles act, that they actualize and place yearn to exhibit their values as a type of impure action. How dare people actually accomplish things, that ability to do so denotes a moral failing for the rhetoric of the priests. Priests can form a bond and gain an audience with the slaves by offering them a belief in the afterlife, or asceticism. Meaning without actually doing the hard, noble work of creating values and acting upon them; salvation is achievable (Kaufmann et al. 128-139, 143-148). The afterlife acting as a place like the Christian heaven or enlightenment by abstaining from actually engaging with the life they have is the “cure” to the sickness of this life that the priests offer the slaves (Kaufmann et al. 44-49). “Build up the churches, store up riches in heaven, do not act because God will act for you” are all statements that obscure people from the responsibility of their lives and collective relationships to power, for Nietzsche that is a negative relationship to life (Kaufmann et al. 44-54, 157-161). Priests and slaves by not having power or seeking to create their own values and establish the project of gaining power are bedfellows in their wistful negativity concerning the nobles.
That relationship based on denying yourself, denying the possibility of actions that can be taken fosters a blame of others and the world for their plights, and that becomes the focus of their lives (Kaufmann et al. 97-98, 150-155). The goal is not creative action, nor a positive grasping and wielding of possibilities; but a cry out and linguistic tool to whine and be jealous about one’s placement in life. That attitude is one that Nietzsche calls ressentiment (Kaufmann et al. 36-39, Scott et al. 33-49). Thus, morality appears—appearance is not used to imply something deeper here, in a Nietzschean fashion appearance is the only type of metaphor that actually encompasses the contingency of life that is inescapable—to spring from ressentiment be a tool to cope with one’s placement in life. Nietzsche calls this fashioning of a worldview and subverting the noble’s values a transvaluation (Kaufmann et al. 97-98, 128-148). This transformation of what the terms good and bad refer to and eventually to what good and evil refer to means to not seek to change one’s life positively is admirable. Walling themselves off from engaging with the flux of life is one of the only “good” responses. That “goodness” is opposed to engagement and indulging in action to gain power and be responsible for that, which is denoted as “evil” (Kaufmann et al. 46- 54, 157-161).
The key move here to incorporate a reading of Nietzsche to aid in combatting the relationship to life the manosphere fosters is noting that Nietzsche’s genealogy is a narrative, an explanation for how morality originated in Europe. Thus, the priestly type corresponds to the Judeo-Christian ideas Nietzsche finds prevalent in Europe at the time (Kaufmann et al. 26-54). However, that does not mean types of wills and relationships to life are bound up to positions in society. They are not. Those positions are characters in a story for Nietzsche to explain and unsettle the ideas one may have about the value of moral values and relationships to life. These types of will are the resulting characters of different active engagements with life (Kaufmann et al. 128-139, 146-148. They are the end result of actions, an ever-evolving story about how an individual understands or misunderstands their place in the world. They are the end result of a set of actions and reasons for acting, and they are subject to change. What changes them is an appreciation and adaptation to gain power. Not all Jewish or Christian people have a priestly will or relationship to life. Not all people who are indentured servants, of low socioeconomic placement, or enslaved are victims to a slave moralities. Not all nobles or successful people have created their own values and then are willing to answer for them.
Rather, these are not generalizations to apply to empirical people, the wills and the world they occupy in this narrative for Nietzsche are characters, explicit metaphors with loose ties to certain elements of historical threads (Kaufmann et al. 35-43). Nietzsche is explicitly performative and provocative and there are multiple Nietzsches. One heuristic to help bring this point out is that he is committed to a direction, but not a specific path in that direction. Thus, things that are centered around life and possibility denying relationships like antisemitism, racism, sexism, classicism, et cetera this paper takes not to be good Nietzschean readings, even when and if Nietzsche does engage in them (Kaufmann et al. 28-56, Pitts et al. 188-203, Scott et al. 33-49). Plural approaches in the same directions is the goal here, Nietzsche can still be incredibly generative when he is held to the standards he wants (Pitts et al 188-203, Scott et al. 33-49). Certain elements of Nietzsche’s genealogy seem to immediately apply to analyzing and correcting the thoughts of the manosphere; the setup for that analysis and offering of a new story is not complete. To further situate and genealogize the wills and relationship to life the manosphere promotes, this paper will incorporate some insights from Michel Foucault to add some 20th century genealogical work (Rabinow and Foucault 76-100). By incorporating aspects of Foucault, the values of the manosphere will be better situated into the contemporary distributions of power and the value-centric analysis and new narrative from Nietzsche’s work will be easier to see.
Section 4: Foucault’s Contributions
Foucault’s thought centers around how different contingent happenings in human history result in creating a relationship between power and knowledge (Foucault and Sheridan 10-16, Foucault and Hurley 5-8). Time and the possibility of chronologies are the impersonal agents of change that Foucault wants us to study (Rabinow and Foucault 76-100). The way in which things happen—from the notable to the mundane—and the possibilities and relationships that facilitated that happening produce something for Foucault (Foucault and Sheridan 16-24, Rabinow and Foucault 76-100). What is produced at different points in history are different ways of understanding and using relationships, summed up in his hyphenating of “power-knowledge” (Rabinow and Foucault 76-100). Who or whatever is in charge exerts acts upon the world and produces a certain way to engage with the world for themselves, and people below them in the hierarchy.
That production of the hierarchy is always in flux and subject to change, yet, it is always creating something. These conflicts, compliances, and cognitions that keep a society going produce models and tomes of evidence for what the relationship between power-knowledge is created (Foucault and Sheridan 22-24, Rabinow and Foucault 76-100). The idea of neutral statements or just statements of fact is not present for Nietzsche or Foucault. Interpretation and examination of values guides the genealogical process, that does not mean all statements are corrupt or unusable in some way. The lack of a normal fact-value distinction means that every statement has a history, a genealogy for why it makes sense, and that genealogy is inseparable from the past arrangements of the human. There is no ‘X’ behind these statements, rather: it tools for interpretations or for—Nietzsche appearances—all the way down (Rabinow and Foucault 76- 100, Kaufmann et al. 128-139).
For an example of what he means by power-knowledge examining what he argues that categories and concepts are will be informatvive. Concepts and categories that have explanatory power like “homosexual”, “pervert”, “deviant” are themselves produced and they produce the changes in how power is distributed among a society (Foucault and Sheridan 17-25). The specific elements of Foucault’s thought this paper will use will be best tied to the analysis of the manosphere’s relationship to life, considering Nietzsche serves as a pertinent instructor for Foucault as well. Foucault’s work in The History of Sexuality will help contextualize an origin for why the manosphere produces what it does, and that will be built upon a Nietzschean analysis of the values present. By examining the mansophere in these ways where the values and production of their narratives are examined, the need and opportunity for a new narrative for these young men will more completely emerge.
Section 5: Explicit analysis via Nietzsche and Foucault of the manosphere:
To start, in line with Nietzsche, Foucault, Wynn, Hom, and the other thinkers this paper utilizes the key beliefs of the manosphere will be approximated here for analysis. The first of the three foundations for the manosphere’s worldview is that men, manhood, and or masculinity is under attack (Kim et al. 191-214, Wynn “Incels” and “Men”). Next is the belief in an almost all powerful and omnipresent yet weak force that is responsible for that attack (Kim et al. 191-214, Wynn “Incels” and “Men”). This is usually some combination of “feminism”, “the left”, “the globalists”, “the Jews”, “the gays”, or some group that has been historically othered, yet understood as powerful (Kim et al. 191-214, Scott et al. 33-49, Wynn “Incels” and “Men”). The final pillar is where some divergence happens, yet the beginning of the belief is the same: that this force is still actively coming after what it means to be a man and that will not stop. Some groupings, especially those that get closer to the kinds of actors that overlap between the manosphere and fascism attempt to formulate a response that is claims to be creative in nature (Kim et al. 191-214, Scott et al. 33-49, Wynn “Incels” and “Men”). The incels have approximately two responses to the first two beliefs: suicide or some attempt at “revolutionary” violence (Kim et al. 191-214, Wynn “Incels”).
Immediately, a helpful thing to situate in the manosphere is the role confessionals and creating objects of knowledge play. For Foucault, sex and sexuality are connected to discourses about managing the population (Foucault and Hurley 133-138). If one can group, one can document, then one can more easily attempt manipulation (Foucault and Hurley 1-10, 133-138). Thus, the prominent figures that produce incel and fascist related content aim at providing a sense of community, via getting individuals to confess their greatest insecurities, complaints, and anger with the world they live in and give the figures more power by being in relation to them (Foucault and Sheridan 34-40). Power is never a possession but always the result of a relation for Foucault (Foucault and Sheridan 34-36). By confessing and admitting one is experiencing troubles, now whomever is confessed to has a power via the ability to offer a prescription or diagnosis (Foucault and Hurley 39-46). If everything is going fine in one’s life, they are not searching out for the answers as to why they cannot attract a mate or afford a life they want, et cetera.
Thus, the figures who capitalize on this anger among some young men are readily adopted as an authority because the way to reach them more closely is confessional in nature (Foucault and Sheridan 90-94). Whether explicitly or implicitly, making a post or liking a video or following a person online will impact what one sees and is easily able to search for in the future for psychological, social, and algorithmic reasons (Wynn “Incels” and “Men”). These men are looking for a way to resist a body of knowledge they believe they are being grouped into unjustly, so they seek to create their own that explains and justifies their resistance. Thus, men are more primed to hear it is feminism or whatever’s fault for their not having the life they feel entitled to and unable to achieve, not a critique of capitalism necessarily or some other larger interactions between societal structures that thinking in a “feminist” or “leftist” way would lead to. Pursuing an understanding that seeks to engage with a more pluralistic genealogy or history of the world via multiple ways of thinking is an enemy here because that may lead to a kind of hope that is not found in fostering hate.
An additional linkage to examine in the first belief relevant to the analysis here is one where Nietzsche and Foucault both emphasize the lack of one origin point for reality. For incels and the manosphere more generally, even if one combines groups as the problem that is still one origin point. It is either a compounding, or a mutually enforcing, or whatever metaphor for linkage that is supposed to be necessarily explainable via tracking one thing. Even when Nietzsche and Foucault posit what looks like an origin, it is not necessarily that one origin that must be (Rabinow and Foucault 76-100) Those thinkers offer narratives and explanations to assist the reader in examining themselves and the world around them in such a way that generate possibility and keeps that in focus (Rabinow and Foucault 76-100). For Nietzsche, the idea of men being under attack is likely a weird statement. Rather, the question to ask is what system of values is being attacked via using the category of men—if there is one—as the character? An assumption here of all men or manliness being noble is suspicious and impossible for Nietzschean reading committed to his genealogical and generative approach (Kaufmann et al. 143-148). Thus, in a genealogical approach, this first statement already makes mistakes of forgetting metaphors and buying into an ‘X’ for starters.
The next statement that the force attacking men originates in some group of people is built upon shoddy foundations. For a Foucaultian reading, its suspicious how a group that grew as a response to being a unit of issue in a disciplinary power structure like feminism or Jewish people or did is capable of subjecting the people, behaviors, and relation to sex that is most the reason for the body of knowledge to anything really powerfully disruptive (Foucault and Hurley 140-150). While resistance is always possible, resistance is not exactly the best word to describe the people at the top of a power relation that have centered themselves as the norm and thus the knowers (Foucault and Hurley 1-10). Not all people grouped into men are in the best power knowledge relation of course, however, membership to the category of men based on the standards of the body of knowledge relevant here is the best vehicle out of a relation to sex for getting one to the position of power-knowledge. The second belief of the manosphere is an attempt at genealogy based on an anti-genealogical approach. More consistent Nietzschean readings will also find a great problem here.
For Nietzsche, an omnipresent and powerful group of people being responsible for your problems and focusing on that is easily typed as a slave morality. Rather than a kind of acknowledgement with what is, and a commitment to the generative power and responsibility of creating values for yourself and exhibiting them to the world, one just defines themselves in only in opposition to that force (Kaufmann et al. 33-36). Whether one acts or not, that is ressentiment and a negative relationship to life (Kaufmann et al. 123-130). By diving deeper into inceldom, that is a kind of explicitly masochistic asceticism: whatever hurts is true and whatever hurts is the reason one cannot act (Wynn “Incels”). In terms of the manosphere and its overlap with fascism, just doing something rather than wallowing does not take someone out of a negative relationship to life. Rather, priests act, they initiate and implement a transvaluation and offer that to the slaves (Kaufmann et al 143-145). They seek a kind of power over others and that could be mistaken for affirming the possibilities of life. However, it is not.
The manosphere has core beliefs, distributions of responsibility, and origin stories that a Nietzschean understanding of would require lambasts to be engaged faithfully in the generative approach of a genealogy. They forget their metaphors and actually believe in their generalizations about specific empirically present people, and not the larger, and more important issue of values (Kaufmann 116-125). The manosphere also has created an enemy and a response to them—suicide or violence out of moralizing—that is necessarily negative. Rather than critique the norms, usages, and implications of the moralities and the way they are used to control people and their relationships to others, the manosphere seeks to establish themselves as heroes. Yet, not successful heroes (Wynn “Incels”). Rather, those knowers who have found such a hope-killing “truth” that cultivates the ideas to either to kill oneself, believe that anyone different from you and your group are less than people and not seek generative relationships with them, or resentful killing of others as one way to express your impotence with responsibility (Wynn “Incels”).
In a similar vein, a Foucaultian and Nietzschean reading would examine what is gained and lost from this worldview: certainly, many men in the manosphere gain a kind of community, but they allow others to make them objects of knowledge and tools for accruing powers (Kaufmann et al 52-55, Rabinow and Foucault 76-100). The people who benefit in a much greater way from the manosphere are those who offer cures or coping with this worldview. The mansophere has created priests of sexuality. These are priests that gain power not necessarily from specific prohibitions, but by talking like nobles when they actually offer a relationship to life that prohibits generative responsibility. Women, people of color, et cetera are not monoliths or helpful generalizations when the questions of values are concerned (Kim et al 191-214, Pitts et al. 188-203, and Scott et al 33-49). Nobles are divorced from station, and station can and often is interpretively tied with race, gender, et cetera (Kim et al 191-214, Pitts et al. 188-203, and Scott et al 33-49). So, noble is divorced from those too if a generative Nietzsche who is committed to a continued creativity of relations and values is the one sought.
Conclusion: A New Story to Live By
The emphasis that Nietzsche, Foucault, and the overlap of genealogical method used by both is on how things could have been different, and how they still can be. For the men that are actively inside and those that are susceptible to the views of the manosphere, the felt need for a story to understand the world by and base one’s actions on is in focus with renewed angst. These ideas are not so isolated, rather, they are a culmination of worries, irrationalities, and pain felt by all humans, with a special language and specificity for men. We want to provide for our loved ones. We want to be big and strong. We want to be independent. We want to be more than we worry is possible. Rather than live in a fixed fiction that fosters a relationship to life that shuts one down from the truly remarkable possibilities of existence, Nietzsche, Foucault, and the genealogical approach helps one situate themselves in a world already in existence before their arrival, but one that can be fundamentally transformed by their actions to be a testament to their wills. Due to the responsibility of engaging in that continual project, the will must be of the creative and effective kind. Thankfully, that will is not only restricted to those in the highest socioeconomic or political class, but rather, that will is defined and open to all who seek to understand the influx nature of reality, regardless of status. Based on the values and power-knowledge relations most densely present in North America and Europe of massive wealth inequality, a “one origin for problems” kind of thinking on the rise, and an isolating nature to social life; there are plenty of ways to engage in noble ways of creating. Those ways are ones that generatively actually seek to generate possibilities and fight against the contemporary conditions that limit them. While Nietzsche denotes the type of will that has a creative and generative relationship to life and values as noble, one does not have to have a royal title to engage with life like a king worthy of myth, story, and song.
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