Stoic Masculinities: Incel Subjectivity under Neoliberalism
Historical Materialism Barcelona Conference 2026, Barcelona, İspanya, 2 - 04 Temmuz 2026, (Yayınlanmadı)
- Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Yayınlanmadı
- Basıldığı Şehir: Barcelona
- Basıldığı Ülke: İspanya
- Ankara Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Stoic Masculinities: Incel Subjectivity under Neoliberalism
Over the past decade, the resurgence of Stoicism within personal development literature has reframed it as a technology of the self rather than a philosophical doctrine. By foregrounding Stoic ideals such as inner tranquility, resilience, patience, self-discipline, and affective control, this framework rearticulates selfness through a discourse centered on self-governance and internal mastery. This model, referred to as Modern Stoicism, has evolved into a mega-industry, as evidenced by the rapid increase in publications and sales figures, indicating its growing cultural appeal and expansive audience. Beyond its general popularity, Stoicism has gained particular traction in specific cultural spheres -most notably as Silicon Valley Stoicism, where figures such as Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Cuban are portrayed as contemporary Stoics, illustrating its selective adaptation within neoliberal corporate contexts in which self-mastery and emotional control align with entrepreneurial ideals. This paper turns to a markedly different cultural sphere: incel communities. It critically examines how this male formation, structured around misogynistic discourse, appropriates Stoic ideas in constructing its worldview and its deep entanglement with neoliberal subjectivity.
The term incel -short for “involuntary celibate”- originally referred to online communities formed by male individuals experiencing sexual inexperience, romantic rejection, and social isolation. Since the mid-2000s, however, these spaces have increasingly transformed into forums characterized by anti-female sentiment and masculinist grievance. As a male-centric subculture within the broader manosphere, incels portray feminism as hostile to men and seek to mobilize adherents around the restoration of perceived male power and privilege. This worldview combines hostility toward women and purportedly desirable alpha males, synthesizing self-deprecatory and self-esteem issues with extensive misanthropic sentiment. Within this affective economy, Stoicism initially appears as a therapeutic discourse offering techniques to endure rejection, humiliation, and social invisibility. As a resource for precarious and fragile masculinities, it promises psychic insulation against injury and shame. However, this therapeutic orientation gradually mutates into a disciplinary regime in which emotional vulnerability is feminized and pathologized. Stoic ideals are reinterpreted to legitimize affective suppression, emotional numbing, and withdrawal from relational dependency, thereby reinforcing hegemonic masculinity rather than challenging it.
This paper interrogates what the turn of incel communities toward Stoic self-guidance reveals about contemporary masculinity crises under neoliberalism. Neoliberalism functions not only as an economic system but also as a social regime that produces particular kinds of subjects and emotional dispositions, shaping individuals into self‑responsible, competitive, entrepreneurial actors. It generates neoliberal subjectivities by instilling constant pressures for self‑improvement and continuous self‑evaluation. Involuntary celibates, positioned as “unsuccessful” subjects within sexual and economic markets, exemplify this condition. While Stoic self-mastery promises autonomy and empowerment, it paradoxically registers powerlessness, generating ressentiment that accumulates as an affective capital. When coupled with neoliberal victim-blaming logics, this ressentiment may crystallize into self-destructive practices, such as suicide, or outward-directed violence. This helps explain why, for the first time in history, we are observing violence and terror carried out in the name of “masculinity,” and why such violence is taking increasingly brutal and varied forms.