A semiótica psicanalítica dos celibatários involuntários

Abstract

This research aims to analyse the involuntary celibates as well as the outcomes of their online activities. Incels offer us deep insights on contemporary masculinity. Immersed in moral, social and psychological conflicts these men feel unable to establish emotional bonds with women. As a result of their angst, the group has promoted hate speech, inside and out of the internet.We hypothesize that our culture is deeply rooted on a misogynistic bias and the gender discontent resonates with the capitalist Market’s self annihilation politics. From that point on, our corpus is delimited by private videos uploaded by a subject, member of incel online groups, in his YouTube channel from 2019 to 2021. As the subject’s narratives unveil different aspects of contemporary culture, the research sheds light on the historical identitarian crisis in western society. The current attack on identity politics is dissected through a thorough analysis of semiotical signs, in a Freudian and Lacanian perspective. The incel subject is characterized amidst the crisis, as the research evokes Judith Butler (2003), Howard Bloch (1991) and Antoine de Baecque to portrait the conflicts in gender politics and misogyny, as well as the downfall of the virile hero narrative. It is not without underlying the shift in cultural values towards a mercantilist subjectivity that our research indicates the absence of scientific publications about the involuntary celibates, social phenomena growing on the fertile ground of online hate speech.