From Tarzan to Homer Simpson

From Tarzan to Homer Simpson

Education and the Male Violence of the West

Sócrates Nolasco
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To my daughters, Flora and Luisa
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgementsix

Introductionxi

Chapter 1: Contemporary Masculinity 1

An Introductory Note 1
Theoretical and Methodological Foundations 9
About The Simpsons18

Chapter 2: The First Sex 25

Male Representation 25
Learning to be a Man 45
Banalization of Masculinity 56
Male Violence 64

Chapter 3: Culture: Modernity and Subjectivity 69

Modernity and Individualism 69
Individualism and Subjectivity: Foucault, Baudrillard, and Keleman 87

Chapter 4: The Operators of Culture: Subjectivity and Myth 125

Subjectivity and the Greek Myths 125
Modern Male Myths 149
Constructing the Minority Subject 168
Myths in Late Modernity: Minorities 170
Feminism as a Minority Discourse 175

Chapter 5: Beyond Tarzan and Homer Simpson: Culture under

Transformation181

Chapter 6: Conclusion 187

References193

vii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Professor Donaldo Macedo, College of Liberal Arts University
of Massachusetts Boston, for his valuable support for the publication of this book,
and Erika Fraenkel for her generosity and availability.
A few institutions contributed directly to the development of this work; I would
like to thank the Center for Energetic Studies (Berkeley) and the ‘Center for
Formative Psychology’ (Rio de Janeiro).
This work received precious contributions from Stanley Keleman, director of
the Center for Energetic Studies, who was, for months, an attentive and committed
interlocutor. I take this opportunity to mention contributions by Leila Cohn, director
of the Center for Formative Psychology, who not only introduced me to Keleman’s
work, but also cleared countless doubts I came upon during my study of formative
thought. Our conversations were fundamental toward helping identify the right way
to conceptually apply Keleman’s work.
I also thank Professor David Gilmore, State University of New York, Stony
Brook, for having accepted my invitation to come to Brazil/Federal University of
Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and to present on his research through a most elucidating
conference.
In order to make it possible to complete this work, I counted on a few scholarships
granted by Jorge Paulo Lemann and Professors Augusto Sampaio and Luiz Cesar
Tardin (in memoriam), both from The Pontifical Catholic University (PUC)/RJ.
And I thank my parents (in memoriam) for giving me access to knowledge.
I would like to express my gratitude to Sense Publishers.

ix
 INTRODUCTION

Violence plays a prominent role in the media today. Both through public campaigns
and through various types of popular mobilization, it has become an ‘entity’ to
be examined. Upon analyzing some of the available data from sources like IBGE
(Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), from the Ministry of Health, or from
the Judicial System, it is possible to realize that violence is not restricted to a social
class, race, or age. Even if quantitatively it is more evident in more disenfranchised
social segments, violence cuts across all of them.
Something interesting becomes revealed in those data. Men are always the ones
who define the contours and the records of violence. Upon organizing a table by
sex, it can be verified that violence has no color, age, or social class, but it has a sex.
Men have lower life expectancy than women; they account for 90% of the
incarcerated population; they die more often in traffic accidents, from alcohol and
drug consumption, and they commit more suicides than women. If that information
has been accessible to everyone for a long time, why might it be that when campaigns
are created and actions are defined, it is not taken into account? Violence is not an
‘entity;’ it is male.
Confronted with that reality, I sought to formulate the question that oriented
my working hypothesis: After all, if violence has a face, why does that face not
show through the campaigns and in their proposed unfolding? Could it be that it
does not show because it should be forgotten, given that the involvement of men in
situations of violence plays an important role in the preservation of political ideation
in contemporary societies?
In order to examine that hypothesis, I started my research by evaluating some
transformations that took place in societies of the West, establishing as a connecting
thread the manner in which social representation of masculinity has been altered.
Therefore, in the passage from traditional societies to modern societies, I analyze
a phenomenon around which it was possible to think through the involvement of
men in situations of violence in complex contemporary and Western societies. That
phenomenon can be characterized by three variables: a shift in the axis of the social
value of hierarchy toward the individual, a decrease in the levels of responsibility
of modern and individualistic societies in regulating forms of recognition and social
insertion for the subject, and finally, the impact both have on the subjectivization
process.
Thus, I see that passage as having generated a process of change in the construction
of subjectivity and in the processes of subjectivization of male (and female)
individuals, as well as in the elements at the foundation of social representation of
masculinity in societies belonging to the modern era. That process continues to be in
course in contemporary societies.

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INTRODUCTION

In order to carry out the study of this central idea, I initiate an analysis around four
questions. The first has to do with the role of myth in the societies of the modern era
and its relationship to social organization patterns. The second refers to the role of
the collective in western contemporary societies. The third deals with a fraying of the
notion of representation while one of the operating principles of modern culture. The
fourth analyzes the articulations between subjectivity, culture, and nature, or also
between subjectivity, biology, and what is acquired in those contemporary societies.
Starting from the questions above, I consider that the involvement of men in
situations of violence is related to the effort undertaken by the subject to maintain
his form of being man within the culture he belongs to. That hypothesis will be
examined in the course of the book, having as connecting thread the alterations that
the hero figure has suffered through history. In order to investigate, in the bosom of
contemporary culture, what sense it makes for men to become increasingly involved
in situations of violence, two presuppositions constructed from the work by Girard
are employed.
The first of them refers to the reconfiguration of the sacred and of the divine
within the scope of (and due to) modern social representation processes and is at
the base of an emerging social representation of the male, in which violence loses,
irreversibly so, its original association with the sacred.
The second presents the exercise of minorities as a new “sacrificial dynamic”
that, nonetheless, is no longer sacred, nor an expression of the collective link with
the divine, and where the male appears as a new “emissary victim” (Girard, 1990).
Therefore, the change in the social orientation axis that took place in the course
of the transition from traditional societies to those founded on the law, on politics,
and on the market led to an alteration in how male social representation was defined.
Differently from the Greek hero and from the medieval knight, the attributes of
vigor, physical force, and loyalty are no longer an identity reference for the modern
hero.
The decreasing responsibility of modern and individualistic cultures for a role in
articulating forms of recognition and social insertion for subjects, such as took place
in traditional societies, caused a reduction in forms of subject adhesion and cohesion
relative to the multiples of the societies the subjects belongs to. As that responsibility
shifted toward the individual sphere, moving further and further away from the
collective, various discourses originating from social movements gradually became
consolidated in contemporary societies that came to play an aggregating role, similar
to that of the hierarchies in traditional societies. Those social movements, through
their struggle for parity of rights, committed to redefining the different social
representations of the subject (gender, race, and sexual orientation) in order to face
up to how each of them was treated in traditional societies, with a view to according
them recognition and value.
Within that landscape, another phenomenon has been increasingly taking place in
different countries of the West: The involvement of men in situations of violence in
the everyday life of large cities extrapolates the previous statistics of war and police

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 INTRODUCTION

casualties. Wars have been around since the age of the gladiators, being fostered both
within the Barracks and with police. The violence required from the gladiator and
from the soldier is authorized and socially instituted, in addition to being associated
with proof of honor and virility. What makes violence current is a certain design of
masculinity and the multiple pressures placed on the subject to make use of them;
that brings the gladiator closer to the recruit.
The creation of armies cuts through the history of humanity and signals consent
given to men regarding the use of force at the service of violence. That use was more
than consent; it was a necessity in demarcating borders and securing the domains
of nations. In that context, male honor is restricted to fighting. Since the Greeks,
dying with honor has been to die at the gladius, both in the political and the romantic
spheres.
In the history of societies, thus, we find violence to be associated with masculinity,
violence that is later no longer restricted to wars but permeates the empirical subject’s
everyday life and works as a sort of existence indicator. That is what we find, for
example, in the hero narrative.
Therefore, in ancient and primitive societies, we find cultures committed to
playing the agent role in violent acts, conducting them through symbolic matrixes
that work as devices for the preservation of the collective and of a given notion of
subject. Albeit on a different scale, the same happens with traditional societies up
until the beginning of the modern era, when individualistic ideation gains strength
and begins to significantly alter the forms of codification for social practices and
values.
That picture assists us in thinking through the relationship between masculinity
and violence, even in the face of a dearth of academic works on the topic or the lack
of theoretical consensus about the concepts of masculinity, femininity, and violence
in the social and human sciences. If that was expected of a man for a long time
and even, in some societies, was required of him, we do see traces of that historic
tradition in inadequate situations, such as of domestic violence in traffic.
Krüger (1986) states that:
If in the study of altruism we find a rarified theoretical field, the same cannot be
said about research on aggressive conduct, notwithstanding the inexistence of
a general and widely confirmed theory of human aggression. […] Even though
there aren’t consensually or unanimously accepted definitions in Psychology,
which per se already represents serious terminological and semantic difficulties
for specialists, we can see, however, pronounced agreement among social
psychologists in the direction that the agent’s intentionality must be admitted
as an indispensable factor in the characterization of aggressive conduct. (p. 60)
It is worth remembering that the lack of consensus in Psychology on the causes
of human aggression led Stoner to consider that even though there is very little
agreement as to the causes of aggression and as to the best way to control it, there
is agreement that aggression constitutes a social problem of considerable magnitude

xiii
INTRODUCTION

(Menandro, 1982, p. 3). In light of that, Menander (1982) comments that “an
examination of investigations about aggression and violence carried out in formally
distinct areas of Psychology corroborates Stoner’s finding.” He complements also
pointing out that “ample disagreement ensues regarding the very definition of
aggression and violence” (1982, p. 3) in Psychology.
Since the object of this study is to investigate the roots of human aggression, and
also problems pertaining to the discipline of violence, I focus my interest on the
reasons and causes that may be leading a larger and larger contingent of men, at ever
younger ages, to become involved in violent situations right in the middle of the
technology and information age.
From the starting point of formulating my object of study, the considerations
above lead me to ratify my working hypothesis. What interest me, then, is to define
a work plan oriented toward my guiding question: If there is a sense in which male
social representation is related to violence, how can it be explained and assist us in
understanding the reasons that lead to men’s involvement in situations of violence,
that question being put both to the empirical subject and to the culture he is a part
of. My effort is committed to an analytical perspective that places itself outside the
safety of the specialist, who already has a lot of problems to solve, for example,
finding some consensus in the definitions of violence and aggression for the human
and social sciences.
It is necessary, however, for me to make explicit the definitions adopted for
violence and aggression throughout this work. To that end, Menander helped me to
know how to use them, and according to his view, I will treat them here as synonyms.
In that regard, he says:
Almost all general texts produced in Psychology about aggression and violence use
those two terms in the same way: by pairing them together, without major discussion.
At some points, each of the terms shows up in isolation, in similar contexts, suggesting
that they are synonyms and can be used interchangeably (Menandro, 1982, p. 4).
Since it is not my intent in this work to undertake a revision of those terms in
Psychology, I opted for defining violence as an action that runs contrary to the moral,
legal, or political order. That way, one can speak about “committing” or “suffering”
violence. Violence in traffic, against wife and children, homicides, the use of alcohol
and drugs, and also involvement in robbery and stealing are examples of the types of
violence dealt with in this study.
Beyond those evident forms of violence, I examine another that is more subtle
but can be related. In the context of contemporary societies, built around democratic
ideals and the egalitarian credo, we find banalization to be a recurrent phenomenon.
It cuts across different social levels and serves as the basis for the ephemeral and
transitory character upon which those societies are based. This phenomenon affects
male social representation in particular manner, impacting according to a particular
type of violence directed at men. Unlike violence perpetrated by man, where the
damage is visible, this type of violence reveals itself in a subtle manner, and is
directed at forms of social recognition, visibility, and insertion. It is expressed in

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 INTRODUCTION

denominations such as feminine man, fragile man, woman within, etc. It can also be
present in the different discourses of minorities that treat masculinity as synonymous
to domination or in the plurality.
This type of strategic violence, like violence in general, holds within itself a
certain dose of ambiguity. In this case, what is expected of a subject is that it not be a
subject. The Homer Simpson character is a product of this situation of dissimulated
hostility directed against male representation. To contemporary societies, masculinity
has become a reference around which the demands of minorities are produced, at the
same that its elimination is sought. The demands of blacks aspire to parity with the
world of whites, similarly to those of women relative to the world of men, and those
of gays who seek the same rights as heterosexuals. That is, at the same time that parity
with the rights of men, whites, and heterosexuals is aspired to, their elimination is
sought. That is what the banalization of male social representation is for.
The elimination of masculinity in contemporary societies moves away from the
meaning the ‘death of the soul’ held to societies organized around myth. In order to
exist, the soul required a certain duality. Such duality has ceased to exist nowadays,
leading to the mystery of life’s profundity, an accidental mystery above all, being
forgotten. An individual does not choose sex or race at birth, those being accidental
attributes that, in some fashion, myth seeks to comprehend and monitor.
Myth serves as a device to avoid the ‘death of the soul’ and its implications
for the subject. The psychological significance of this symbolism is banalization,
that lowering of the individual that deserts the subject of his evolutionary effort
(Diel, 1991). Banalization is, then, violence itself to the extent that it divests male
representation of its vigor and virility. The Homer Simpson character, for example,
is founded on failure and contextualized according to the myth of the eternal loser,
which is the expression of evil to societies regulated by the market. He is a rude
evil, devoid of vigor or virility, written in small caps, quite different from the feared
Devil, who has the vitality Homer lacks.
From the Greeks to the contemporary, social representation of the subject has
changed in status and definition. Man’s relationship to his body has been altered
many times, in terms of both how he sees himself and how he uses physical force and
sex. All that does not eliminate the impact on the subject caused by the confrontation
between experience and the memory of knowing oneself a man in the course of
human history, and of having to adjust to one role or another as required by the
societies.
I see that, as they forfeited the marks of physicality and of sex and named
themselves societies of desire, contemporary societies neglected the symbolic and
cultural organizations that deterred the emergence of violence, as they lacked the
elements through which the sacred was instituted in traditional societies. As a result,
contemporary societies stopped investing in the maintenance and promotion of
collective organizations and their respective relationship with the divine.
That process accentuates the defacing of patriarchy and its respective values,
as well as of the male and female social representation associated with it. In the

xv
INTRODUCTION

transition to modern individualism, I can see a reduction in the importance of

theoretical arguments that associate biological sex with social practices, revealing
that the empirical subject disappears to make way for the subject of desire. The
emergence of discourses about subjectivity, which lack body and rely on language
and desire, presents the subject with a formulation about self that does not conceive
of sex as an accident that imprints marks on subjectivity. That way, physical force
and the power associated with it are no longer makers of social recognition and
visibility for the men in contemporary societies and begin to direct them no longer
under mythical prerogatives but as violence.
Men’s involvement with situations of violence can be understood as the expression
of a male emotional complex mirrored in feelings of anguish, fear, and insecurity.
Through the hero’s journey, as described in different myths, I realize that those
operate as managers of that complex within cultures. Male violence, as seen here,
results from dissonance in the sense of identity caused by the loss of forms for social
recognition that originated from male insignias set by traditional societies.
Since times prior to the Judeo-Christian era, we have found guiding parameters
to avoid violence and the crime associated with it. “An eye for an eye” and “thou
shalt not kill” are laws, and at the same time, they set behavior patterns and founded
a culture. In the West, the relationship between crime and culture is tenuous and
very old. By evoking the sacred, the patriarch claimed to himself powers over the
community, as well as rigorous and rigid action upon it. The issue of sacrifice, the
firstborn, and the laws delineated both the complexity and the proximity between
crime and the culture it belongs to.
At present, multiple views with differentiated slants analyze violence according to
the conceptual field where it is situated, be it psychic, social, or biological. However,
only recently have we seen works that envision possibilities for articulation between
violence and masculinity from the perspective of men. Initially, that correlation
shows up in gender studies, in particular relative to domestic violence of men against
women. Man as the aggressor has become a recurring character in those analyses,
which identify him as exclusive heir to the patriarchal system and sole representative
of the sexist and authoritarian prerogative.
Different paths led me to works by Keleman, Edelman, Girard, Baudrillard,
and Gilmore. Those authors were my main interlocutors, with whom I found the
resources to create and develop my argument.

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 CHAPTER 1

CONTEMPORARY MASCULINITY

I feel like a man and currently dare to be one.

Goethe

AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE

This book raises the issue of the relationship between violence and male representation
and how the transition toward individualism and social transformation phenomena
belonging to modernity predominantly contributed to its emergence. I also address
the narrative of myths, so that, through it, I can present those that I consider relevant
to male social representation in different Western cultures.
I also examine the concept of representation as being one of the operators of
modern culture most heavily frayed in the last decades of the 20th century. The
intensity of that phenomenon on the level of philosophy corresponds to the emptying
out of any meaning and sense granted the collective by Western contemporary
societies. Starting at the beginning of the 20th century, hard-hitting criticism against
large metaphysical systems and the role those play in the organization of culture
fostered the appearance of a new problem for those societies: how to structure social
life without submitting to the principle of hierarchy and social class. What would
be the implications of that fact for the organization of societies and for the life of
subjects? Metadiscourses pointed to how the concepts of difference and power
were replacing those of hierarchy and class in the bosom of individualistic cultures,
without compromising the necessary procedures for ensuring harmony in social life.
Among those procedures, we find investment in the production of identities. In those
societies, the sense of identity experienced by the subjects takes a certain priority
over collective life and over insertion in social practices. In order to maintain that
meaning, it would be necessary to define social representations of subjects in such a
way that their demands would find resonance in social life. Thus, the value system of
a bellicose society must accord a high value to representations of the warrior, and it
must disregard characteristics like cowardice, lack of vigor, and lack of assertiveness.
Myths fulfill that role; they indicate what subjects must and must not do, with the
difference that in traditional societies such action is an expression of the collective.
Mythical narratives define an evolutionary scale for the hero; he must move up on
the scale, gradually, until he meets his soul/psyche. Collectivity and myth are in
close relationship to one another – a relationship that was transformed along the
centuries. Through a comparative study of Greek and contemporary myth, I intend to
present some of those changes, as well as the implications they brought for the hero

1
CHAPTER 1

representation. Ulysses’ astuteness and wisdom at the service of a commitment made

to his friend Menelaus takes him to Troy causing him to depart from Ithaca leaving
his wife and son behind. The hero’s evolutionary path is marked by the relationship
between his contribution to the community he was part of and the scale of values
defined by it as male insignias. In Eliade’s view (1992), a man only becomes a real
man when he conforms to the teachings of myths, imitating god. Robinson Crusoe,
the typical modern hero, on the other hand, is a representative of the utilitarian world
that holds as a value for itself winning over nature and submitting it to its domination.
It is the myth of the solitary man, without a wife, family, or children.
The crisis of the institutions, a phenomenon of modernity, is already present in
that modern hero’s narrative. If he is compared to the Greek hero, it is possible to
identify decreasing importance given to the collective dimension as a concern on
the part of the hero. In that transition, we can notice that the great battles are no
longer represented as back in the days of the Odyssey or Iliad – public fights that, to
the extent of the hero’s engagement, had the effect on him of elevating his sense of
identity. Hercules and Theseus are examples of that. The alteration in the social axis
for social orientation toward a mechanical society, organized around politics, the
law, and the market, gradually minimized impact over a subject’s sexual identity, as
relates to his representation as a man. Defending democratic causes ceased to have a
connotation that reinforces one’s sense of sexual identity.
That aspect gained prominence in modern cultures, as they adopt investment
in the material to the detriment of the collective as an orientation axis, defining
identity as the subject’s problem, one of an exclusively private order. That type of
investment brings as a consequence a decrease in forms of collectivization, to the
extent that it exempts those cultures of responsibility as agents of forms of social
recognition, visibility, and insertion of the subject’s social representation, at the
example of traditional societies that articulated myths and social organization.
The latter invested in the production of symbolic matrixes that encouraged subject
adhesion and cohesion to the community he was a part of.
As that responsibility shifted toward the individual sphere, moving further and
further away from the collective one, social groups gradually emerged that sought
to recodify their social representations, since those did not accord them the desired
recognition and value. The representations of woman, black, and homosexual find
in that shift a harbor for the reformulation of their social representations, as well as
the re-dimensioning of their worth in the public sphere.
Therefore, through alterations to the hero profile, I see a change in male social
representations and the manner in which those articulated to social practices both in
traditional societies and in the contemporary societies of the West.
In traditional societies, there was a continuum that related male representation to
its public and private dimensions, defining which script a man should follow. That
continuum, characterized by pre-Cartesian formulations, did not rely on dualism or
dissention between knowledge and duty and, thus, fostered the engendering of male
social representations with social practices.

2
 CONTEMPORARY MASCULINITY

The intersection between the religious and the natural and social order is present
in the hero figure. Mythical discourse, which relates those three dimensions, is an
example of that. The social male representation present in that figure is positivized
when it operates as agent for the efforts undertaken by the hero in the direction of
social or collective ideals, such as we find in the Odyssey and Iliad. In them, the
hero’s representation corresponds to one of the manifestations of the divine. The
divine, according to Girard, must, as an expression of the sacred, be continually
followed and revisited by the hero. Descent into hell, trials, and rebirth from ashes
are movements that attest to his mobility to travel in the sacred sphere and invent the
collective (Girard, 1990).
In the transition to modern individualism, we see a distancing from the sense and
meaning accorded to what used to be considered sacred. A religious man, according
to Eliade (1992), is not given: He makes himself as he approximates divine models,
which are preserved in myths, in the history of divine feats. Contemporary societies
relinquish that perspective and begin to configure the subject as solitary and abandoned.
Social representations of the sexes were for many centuries tied to divine
prerogative, at the Adam and Eve’s example. As representatives of the divinity,
they possess certain characteristics inherent to Him, to wit, androgyny. It is told that
Adam and Ever attached back to back and that God, then, separated them with an
axe. In some versions, Adam (the first man) was half man and half woman; however,
God split him in half and made him into man and woman.
We also find a similar situation in representations of Evil. Certain narratives
attribute to the Devil divine origins. In order not to feel lonely, to have some
company, God supposedly created the Devil. He was God’s advisor and held him in
some esteem, such as God did Mephistopheles.
In those manifestations of the divine, we find his creations marked by violence:
The axe stroke to Adam, the fact that the Devil was created out of Divine scorn and
became his slave are, then, aspects pointing to what Girard described as “expression
between violence and the sacred” (Girard, 1990). At this point, I establish my first
articulation of masculinity and violence. As Gilmore (1990) shows us, in different
cultures, we find rites of passage that boys go through and whose purpose is to bring
them closer to the sacred properly speaking, to make them into warriors, hunters,
chiefs, or priests.
In those rites, presented along the book, I identify the expression of violence and
pain that the boys cannot demonstrate, that they must bear in order to be socially
recognized, valued, and accepted. In those cases, empirical death is of less value than
death of the soul/psyche, or of the subject. Sacrifice and sacrificial crisis correspond
to that subjective mark on the sociological plane. Killing by way of sacrifice is a
way to ensure cohesion and harmony in community life. Crime founds the collective
order and, with it, male social representation. Through Oedipus, Orpheus, and Midas,
we can think through what must be monitored by the hero; with Hercules, Theseus,
and Prometheus, we find the hero fighting against banalization, and we can observe
his effort to maintain a connection with spirit.

3
CHAPTER 1

It is those connections that gradually disappear from the bulk of the modern and
individualistic society’s construction process. That distancing became strategic
in order that it would be possible to criticize the different social representations
circulating in traditional societies. When God separates from the Devil he becomes
exempted from Evil, in the same way that, when he splits Adam in half, he exempts
the woman from involvement with crime.1
The whitening of Evil2 results from the attitude adopted by modern societies
before what Girard (1990) termed “sacrificial crisis.” Articulated as they are around
the axis of consumption, hedonism, materialism, and nihilism, those societies are
found to be averse to the possibility of recognizing pain and suffering as inherent
dimensions to human nature. It was that dimension that sacrificial crises recognized,
at the same time that they offered the subject a possibility for dealing with them
collectively. The rituals described by Gilmore (1990) inform us that they can be
considered sacrificial rites. In them, boys experience, in some fashion, a sacrifice
required of them by the community, with the objective of earning social recognition
and, through it, earning the gratitude required to defend and fight for it.
In contemporary societies, the representation of the soldier is an inversion of that
path for the acquisition of masculinity. Previously, in the traditional societies of the
West, a boy was first recognized as a man, to then become a warrior. At the Military
Academies the creed is a different one: a subject will only feel recognized as a man
after becoming a soldier.
In contemporary societies, men’s involvement in situations of violence can
also be thought of as a consequence of those societies’ establishing a distancing
from what, in them, represented the sacred. Violence banalization is an expression
of male social representation banalization, and that of the symbolic network that
articulated it to the various social representations and situated it well relative to
them, thus, composing the elements of a “social theogony.” The sacred as revelation
of the religious was replaced by a different social organization principle that adopted
science as organizing vector. A certain mythical disarrangement became established
between primitive and mechanical societies, in Lévi-Strauss’ view (1996).
Individualism accentuated a type of conflict that is quite common in those
societies; subjects find themselves at the same time tormented by their own destinies
and in conflict with the society they are a part of (Eliade, 1991). That relationship can
be found in the story of Faust, or also in Don Quixote’s. One of the characteristics
of the modern hero results from the polarization and systematic opposition between
individual and society, present in individualistic societies. That caused an emptying
out of any possibility for the creation and operationalization of collective symbolic
networks, at the example of mythical societies. Weakening of the collective is
thought to be an unfolding of the trajectory sacred went through in contemporary
societies. Thus, a society is found that did not re-update the sacred as part of a social
matrix; on the contrary, after adopting science as its direction-setting vector, it began
to ascribe the sacred less value.

4
 CONTEMPORARY MASCULINITY

Heading toward scientific societies, on the philosophical plane we note the

reflections by Kant (1781) and Hegel (1807). To Kant, in Critique of Pure Reason,
of 1781, the idea is elevated to the divine statute and takes its place. Even if
supported by it, the idea puts us before the representation of a speculative system,
where religion is considered speculation metaphor. It attributes to thought the great
human value, stating that thought requires not the existence and working of the
brain, but that, in fact, it is the brain that, among other representations, would not
exist or work without thought. As for Hegel, in Phenomenology of Spirit, of 1807,
the speculation is the identity of the subject and the object. Subject is spirit, which is
idea. Thought produces all, and it is in the subject that it is manifested, constituting
an argument for the consolidation of the individualistic credo. That credo is present
in the narratives of three modern myths: Don Quixote, Faust, and Crusoe. The
combination between Idea and History offers speculative thought a possibility
for creating and altering the manner in which the different representations of the
subject are socially defined.
In modernity, we find multiple possibilities for representation of the subject that,
starting in the 19th century, move further and further away from the empirical and
the organic. That strengthens the argument that the order of culture opposes that of
nature, and predominates over it. The sacred, originally articulated to the cosmos and
nature, loses relevance before the thesis for Idea autonomy. With Hegel, we watch the
devaluing of body while a living organism, as well as of everything associated with
it. Later, it will be the social body’s (collectivity) turn to be pondered as an obstacle
to the individualistic vision. Devoid of those “two bodies,” the representation of the
sacred ceases to materialize, and along with it, so does the subject representation
that provided it support. However, the social tensions represented by the sacred
in primitive societies continue to exist in modern societies, except that, while
mechanical societies, those lost the symbolic continent that anchored it. In some
manner, the social representation of the warrior and of the hunter worked as support
for that materialization.
When I refer to the dialectics of clarification, as well as to the implications in the
construction of emancipation discourses through which minorities gain expression, I
am signaling to the fact that modern and individualistic cultures function according
to certain operators. In primitive cultures we have myths, and in contemporary
culture we have social movements; both add value to the individual and invest in the
promotion of subject autonomy.
Redefinition of the social representation of woman, of black, and of homosexual
was promoted within the scope of contemporary cultures, but to that end, the
situation of victimization those subjects lived in traditional societies was used for
some time. Paraphrasing Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir states that women,
like everybody, are half victim and half accomplice (Beauvoir, s/d). Feminism, while
an emancipatory discourse, comes to remove them from that situation, restoring
their status and dignity.

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One might also think that the “victim” denomination takes us back to the societies
that operated by means of sacrifice and of expiatory victims, where the victim
played an important role. The victim “allowed himself to be immolated in order
that tubers or fruit trees should grow from his body” (Eliade, 1991, p. 84). The
purpose of sacrifice was to appease internal violence and to prevent the explosion of
conflicts (Girard, 1990). The body of the immolated divinity became food, and the
remembrance re-actualized by myth (representation of the founding killing) plays an
important role to the extent that it reminds subjects of what they must not forget, of
what happened in primordial time.
In Girard’s (1990) view, sacrifice serves the community as a prevention instrument
in the fight against violence; sacrifice serves as violence control. In societies devoid
of a judicial system, sacrifice and rite play an essential role. That is not to say that
sacrifice “replaces” the judicial system, but it asserts itself in violent manner. The
principle of justice often approaches that of vengeance, the same way that, like
violence, masculinity reveals itself as something eminently communitarian.
It is worth remembering that, even with all the social transformations, neither
the primitive nor the modern are able to contain the dissemination of violence.
Nevertheless, there is a perception that contemporary societies have dealt with it
in an extremely superficial and banal manner. Nowadays, the banalization of social
representations has become an expression of violence; by means of it, the use of
“good violence” is authorized in face of what is considered “bad violence.” Social
representation has been an operator through which contemporary societies and those
of written tradition express themselves. They feed off of that operator to construct
their political, judicial, and historical system. I am not analyzing here oral-tradition
societies, where the concept of social representation ceases to be a relevant operator.
From these considerations, it is interesting to think about how minority discourses
constitute themselves. One can think of systematic criticism to patriarchy as a system
that produces a bad violence and that, therefore, must be eliminated. It is a system
identified as the promoter of social identities said hegemonic, which as a byproduct,
must also be eliminated. A social justice notion permeates the composition of those
discourses, which in order to regiment the necessary force to maintain themselves,
make use of a dynamic similar to that present in sacrificial crises. Those discourses
do not feed on animals or plants as is done in primitive societies. They feed on social
representations that are used as a necessary part of carrying out a “sacrifice” and
maintaining cohesion among the members of those groups self-entitled minorities.
As mentioned previously, the body of the deceased divinity, or of what
represents it, must be eliminated, for that way, group members remain cohesive
and near the divine element (what the culture defines as social value). Therefore,
male representation and patriarchy are considered a part of Evil revealed in the
representation of white, heterosexual, male, which must be eliminated. Interestingly,
on an empirical plane, we see that men (not only white men) die more, in the same
way that they become involved in situations of violence more; in some way, we

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are faced with a type of sacrifice without a symbolic correspondent that accorded
sense to the fact. Contemporary societies have no need for male representation as
a parameter for intelligibility of the social dynamic. They began to feed on that,
seeking more and more complex ways to deepen the belief that it is possible to
renounce it, at the example of cloning, in vitro fertilization, and cyborg techniques.
Paradoxically, it is necessary for male representation to continue to exist in
order that individualist credos will prosper, except that no longer in the form of
warriors, but rather in that of banalized men, like Homer Simpson,3 for example.
The banalization of masculinity is part of a social strategy that makes use of alterity
elimination to conceive of social reality as virtuality, characterized by simulacra and
by the Santa Claus logic (Baudrillard, 1981). That world view finds in the minority
movements its greatest ally and sponsor.
Even if there are societies like Tahiti’s, where masculinity and violence do not
relate to one another in a direct manner, men in the history of humanity have their
representations marked by violence, be it as a soldier fighting in a war, a hunter, a
street jackhammer operator, a boxer in the ring, or even a criminal. Violence has
been recognized, for many centuries, as a masculinity reference and was used as
a tool through which subjects felt recognized as men. In some fashion, subjects
experience violence as an integral part of their lives, one that melds with them and
prevents them from symbolizing. That is an act that was transformed into myth and
that, in the present day, makes itself act once more in the form of violence.
In order to think those issues through, I will use, as illustrations, the statements
of men that sought the “PAI-24h” Program,4 for orientation regarding the experience
of fatherhood and involvement in situations of violence. The first question I asked
related to how men have been historically implicated in construction trajectory
of societies and what male attributes were valued. One example is the warrior
representation, needed in periods of territorial and border expansion for the empires.
In traditional societies, subjectivity was directly anchored in collective practices
that, in turn, developed around social hierarchies. In those, physical strength and
honor, while male attributes, were acquired through violent practices, as we see in
Chapters 3 and 4. Masculinity is an experience gained through situations of violence,
which in the course of history, has been moving away from the physical strength
attribute but continues to be identified with potential for caused damage. We went
from body-to-body combat to atomic bombs. The damage caused by swords is less
than that caused by warheads.
In the transition toward individualistic societies, physical strength, while a
masculinity attribute, loses its utility value and is gradually replaced by strategy
and by the use of arms. That transition also includes a change in the concept of
subjectivity, which becomes no longer a concept of nature to be considered a product
of culture. The body, the empirical, and the biological become dimensions that must
be overcome. We have entered the era of history, politics, and language, biases
conceived as oppositions to the physical world and what is associated with it.

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Even so, memory continues to be present and reminds us that, today, where there
are words there were, at some point, actions and experience. Certain organicity
was lost in that transition and was gradually replaced by discourses and political
practices, by a sense of relativity. From that standpoint, thought produced under the
presuppositions of clarification would come to strengthen that transition “outside”
the traditional world, by disenchanting it thorough the dissolution of myths and by
committing this “new world” to knowledge and no longer to imagination.
The individualistic perspective also strengthened the belief that it would be
possible for subjects to no longer require the mark of their bodies, nor the perplexity
they feel before it. Even if they do not choose whether to be born as men or women,
the individualistic culture will tell them that, in it, they will be able to choose. If
they are born as men, they will be able to become women; if they are born black,
they will be able to become white. In spite of that, however, they have that mark
imprinted in their memory and know that their existence originated from an accident
that precedes them at the same time that it inaugurates them. It is impossible to deny
that mark. That accident, however, was transformed into a representation that came
to be interpreted by the culture as a restriction to the modern individualistic vision
and, therefore, a challenge to be overcome with the assistance of science and of
technology.
The accident, as well as the traditional forms of knowledge transfer regarding
the origin of the world and of subjects, became no longer relevant, to contemporary
societies. Those societies became committed to the quality of levels of choice
afforded subjects and to their multiple roles. Social movements lack that demand and
make use of opposition pairs to advance. Violence is a human action present among
men, women, blacks, whites, heterosexuals, and homosexuals. It is an accident that
was, during a period of history, monitored and denominated sacred.
Man, then, played an important role, and his appearances were linked to collective
organization (hunters, warriors, etc.). Every subject’s performance depended on how
he used his body, and his body was the expression of his spirit. Through it, he gained
social status. The sacred could either bring a subject closer to the “questions” of
spirit or take him away, thus, immersing him in banalization.
We notice that in the transition to individualism the empirical subject’s masculinity
was no longer required, as its attributes and values were incorporated by culture
(work, power, production). The empirical subject (Evil) became a representative
of what must be overcome: the organic body, the collective, and the myths. Using
Girard’s (1990) perspective to analyze how male representation relates to minority
movements, we see that representation has been used as part of the sacrificial crisis.
That is the place occupied by male representation in contemporary societies. Toward
a society that affirms itself in choice and desire, it is necessary to get rid of the
accident principle, which we can also understand as the alterity principle. In that
sense, masculinity has been disqualified and banalized. It is against that death that
men will fight, by becoming involved in situations of violence.

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 CONTEMPORARY MASCULINITY

THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS

Considerations about the Investigation Method

In order to define a work plan for carrying out this research, I initially undertook
an incursion through Kaplan’s reflections and, subsequently, Feyerabend’s. Those
authors have different approaches to defining method and its role in social-sciences
and behavioral research. Kaplan proposes that the researcher should initially
reach the meaning of the act, that is, should interpret the conduct translated by a
particular behavior, and must next seek the meaning of the interpreted action and its
connections with other actions and circumstances (Kaplan, 1975). In that sense, we
are considering the denomination male representation a rule of judgment that works
as an operator within cultures, signaling to the empirical subject how he should
experience himself.
In that sense, representing is understood as causing knowledge, the same way the
object causes knowledge. Thus, male representation is the very object upon which
cultures define their masculinity standards, at the example of what we find in myths,
in literature, or even in the definition of the male social role.
In order to identify the experiences through which a subject, a member of a Group
of Men, denominates himself a man, I organized four meeting structured according to
the PAI-24h Program’s plan. The meetings were recorded, and some of the statements
by the participants were used in this book.5 The participants are middle-class men,
ages 35 to 50, married, single, or divorced. Their statements provided support for my
theoretical argument about the relationship between masculinity and violence.
According to Becker, contemporary scientists have opted for not studying the
problems that cannot be solved through procedures typical of a machine, under the
allegation that it is more reasonable to apply their resources to problems that can be
scientifically manipulated (Becker, 1994). That way, science should avoid becoming
committed to an essentially anarchical undertaking. Nevertheless, to Feyerabend
(1977, p. 17), “theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to
encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives.”
Adopting a different perspective, Feyerabend says that anarchical thought is
mentioned as one that can offer subsidy to epistemology and to science philosophy.
In that view, it is possible to advance a counter-inductive procedure, trusting that the
coherence of works in behavioral science must not be measured by the adjustment
of the hypotheses presented to theories already accepted. After all, persevering
on the oldest theory does not represent the best choice of a tool to carry out the
study in question. Defended theses that contradict well-set theories offer us more
investigation elements, which would hardly be identified any other way. Theoretical
diversity must be encouraged and uniformity fought, considering that the latter
compromises the subject’s development and expression.
The author also states that there is no theory that agrees with all the facts in his
field. The facts are tied to older ideologies, while conflict between theory and fact

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can be a sign of advance in that field. In gender analyses, for example, we find two
distinct values for the social representations of man and woman under the rubric of
that concept. Similarly to patriarchal ideology, and legitimized by the politically-
correct ideology, an inverted hierarchy is established between the sexes. However, at
the service of the individualistic prerogative, the minority subject takes the place of
the old patriarch. A tradition is thus instituted: The minority is absolute and sovereign
in its principles, not requiring any critique of itself.
Becker says that,
even though a few renowned methodologists and science philosophers believe
that methodology must focus on explaining and perfecting contemporary
sociological practice, conventional methodology does not do that. On the
contrary, it focuses on telling sociologists what they should be doing and what
types of methods they should be using, and it suggests that they either study
what can be studied by those methods occupy themselves imagining how what
they want to study can be turned in something that can be studied by those
methods. (1994, p. 18)
One of the difficulties for thinking about the correlation between masculinity
and violence stems from the lack of theoretical consensus both about the concepts
of masculinity and femininity in the social and human sciences and about those
of violence and aggression in psychology, as Menandro (1982) and Krüger (1986)
demonstrate. For that reason, it was necessary to identify authors whose models
made it possible to think through the relationship between masculinity and violence.
Before starting the bibliographical research to resolve that issue, I decided to go
through the works by the previously presented authors who make some considerations
about method.
Even though my initial inspiration was based on the reflections by Feyerabend,
I adopted Becker’s perspective, conducting the investigation within the field of
work by those two authors, in particular as regards the formulation of problems
and concepts treated through research methods in the social sciences. My analysis
focuses on how contemporary culture altered social relationships and transformed
the value of the subject’s social representation. That phenomenon, made more
clearly evident in the transition to modernity, intensified in contemporary societies
in the form of individualistic radicalization.
It is known that there are many obstacles to be overcome in research when adopting
interdisciplinary approaches. In that sense, I agree with the arguments by Sokal and
Bricmont (1999) about the risks involved in restricting scientific investigation to
analysis of “discourse,” to “social construction,” or to “myth,” or when ones makes
indiscriminate use of natural sciences terminology to advance analyses in the field
of the social and psychological sciences.
With the intent to accept those admonitions, I sought to identify works that took
the Sokal and Bricmont perspective into account. That was when I came upon the
studies by Keleman (1974, 1975a, 1975b, 1979) about Formative Psychology and,

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 CONTEMPORARY MASCULINITY

through them, to those by Edelman (1989, 1992), which pursue a biological theory
of consciousness, as well as the identification of what is specific in constitution.
The path proposed by Edelman redefines the biological field as one that recognizes
subjectivity as the complexity of one of its variants. He points to the existence of
a self-organizing process that is beyond natural selection (phenotypical). He thinks
about the implications of physical determinism for free will and presents the
Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS) as being a possible base for that self-
regulation process. As he presents the basis for biological epistemology, Edelman
exposes three moments that correspond to the multi-levels of definition for selection
systems. In one of them, he describes the determining condition for conscious
behavior, which to him is produced by memory based on values, objectives, and
plans with conceptual components that interact with conceptual categorization. That
is to say that perceptual category precedes sensation and reveals that experience
can be thought of as a combination of both. This suggests that consciousness has
morphological properties and makes use of structures to expand its extension
through the evolutionary path (Edelman, 1989).
To Edelman, consciousness is a property of morphology, being based on the
material and molecular order of morphological structures, on the development of the
interaction between phenotype and events and objects in the ecological niche, and on
the continually updated relationship with immediate perceptual categories referent
to remembered self/not self categories based on value.
Earlier states of primary consciousness were required for the acquisition of
language and of higher consciousness, and those offered the base for an increase
in social transmission and in intersubjective communication. The establishment of
the common sense convention shared through those means (despite the neuronal
bases of private and individual categories) and, finally, the development of scientific
procedures led to my present view of the world, of biology, and of physics.
The theory of consciousness and the concept of formation developed by Edelman
offer to scientific realism and empiricism an opportunity to incorporate the possibility
for the development of the culture of relational systems like logic and mathematics.
The problem posed by Descartes led science to an unacceptable split, identified
by materialistic metaphysics combined with implicitly rationalistic and dualistic
epistemology.
According to Descartes (1987),
An adequate theory sheds light upon the nature and the physical and
evolutionary origins of consciousness without abandoning the hypothetical
realism and materialism that physical scientists apply to the world outside the
observer. That is the objective of my theory. (pp. 264–265)
Edelman (1989) reminds us that, when an observer removes himself with his
mind from nature, he should not have the expectation of once again finding it in
nature. Modern scientists, at the example of a Galilean observer who removed his
mind from nature, do not commit – while observers – to being part of the observation

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process. That movement can be noticed through an emphasis on constructivist theses

used to understand subjectivity to the detriment of any biological model that seeks to
comprehend it according to the body referential.
In that sense, Keleman reveals that subjectivity is the body, and the body is its
own subject:
Every one of us is a series of living events, an organized network, a
microenvironment forming a macroorganism. From that point of view, the
body is a living process in continuous organization that feels and cogitates
about its own living and form.6
He sees the body while inheritance as influencing our bodily form, thus, representing
a symbol of our self. The body is a mythical image that helps the subject to comprehend
his roles and a multiplicity of paths he identifies with. Adopting Sheldon’s (1970)
constitutional typology, Keleman presents the subject according to distinct existence
patterns, through which he experiences himself and the world. His definitions are
three: mesomorph (one who uses), endomorph (one who seeks), and ectomorph (one
who avoids).
Considering personal and inherited history, he analyzes how subjectivity
gradually becomes corporified, seeing that it cannot be comprehended in the absence
of biology. However, he states that natural selection brought as much damage to
comprehending the subjective dynamic as Plato’s essentialism. He starts from the
premise that the body is the subject’s destination, seeing “subject” as a corporified
creature that continually makes itself, thus, being able to deal with that reality and
influencing it, rebelling against it, or even trying to comprehend it. From those
considerations, Keleman introduces the notion of corporified myth as an element
used to determine lifestyles or social roles.
Starting from reflections arrived at in partnership with Joseph Campbell, Keleman
explores the articulation between body and myth and considers myth a history that
grows from the corporeal process to orient life and ascribe it values (Keleman,
1999). Myth expresses a vision of the social and personal world; it represents a
cosmology and also organizes the attempts and tribulations to be traversed by the
beginner.
For different stages of adult life, a myth is a social order that speaks about familiar
roles, conflicts and resolution, states Keleman. It is an operator that assists the
subject in ordering his life experiences. To him, the journey proposed by both myth
and body is a long process, in which a subject lives his inherited histories. Keleman
(1999) introduces the concept of somatic imagination following the references of
Campbell, who states that myth is a somatic narrative.
To Keleman, the body is considered image, experimentation, and somatic
imagination, but not so to Hegel. Hegel defines thought as something that does not
require the body, similarly to some contemporary psychoanalysts who consider “the
body of psychoanalysis as devoid of organs or flesh” and, thusly, conceive of the
subject as a disembodied entity, which modulates itself through language without

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a body. To Keleman that investigation nears the order of delirium, something that
could make it, in fact, human.
Fortunately, we are no longer at a moment when analysis of social fact must
necessarily be subjected to the tools of the political-historical field, nor faced with
the blindness imposed by biological determinism. However, what led me to find in
Keleman a continent for thinking through the relationship between men and violence
is the way he defines body as expression of subjective experience. At different
moments of history we find male representation associated with use of the body, be
it as warrior or as criminal. Traditionally, social representation was valued by the use
the subject makes of physical strength, as well as by his capacity to cause damage.
That served as an element for differentiation and classification of men. Both subject
and society possess memory; to men that memory makes them feel recognized as
such, by the use of force and by the damage caused by it. The violence I study
here (homicides, traffic accidents, suicide) does require body and memory; it can be
considered as resulting from the use a subject makes of himself.
It was possible, that way, to define the orientation of this work. To that end, I center
the investigation on the impact caused for the subject resulting from the alteration
of meaning contemporary culture adopts for male representation. Historically,
that representation does not correspond to what, for centuries, was considered
male memory, the base for conceiving of the different social representations of the
subject. In the past, it was necessary to hunt, war, fight, and be feared – that was
considered the evolutionary challenge. Nevertheless, currently those attributions no
longer correspond to what is required of a man evolutionarily. Changed are man’s
relationship to his body, the representation he has of himself, and the use he makes
of physical strength, of sex. However, the question remains: How should a subject
manage the confrontation between the historic memory of what it is to be a man and
adjust to the “new” expectation for his social role?
I concentrate exclusively on analyzing the alterations to male social representation
in contemporary culture, those resulting from the transition to individualism in
modern societies, where the body is gradually transformed by the constructivist
approaches to subjectivity into a “thing” and no longer its own subject. It is my
view that, by no longer requiring the marks of physicality and sex, those societies
gave up on two elements by means of which the sacred was represented in primitive
societies and, therefore, exposed themselves to situations of violence. However, I
state that understanding of the problem presented is not confined to a culturalist
slant. Through Edelman, one can notice the correlations that exist between the fields
of biology and subjectivity, which also contribute to comprehending the relationship
between masculinity and violence.
Taking into account the concepts of consciousness and memory elaborated by
Edelman, I will analyze the bases of contemporary culture and what currently in them
represents male consciousness and memory. I will conduct a mapping of some social
changes that occurred in the 20th century, detaining myself on the impact they had
on how subjects know and feel themselves to be men. To that end, I will undertake

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a critique of the culture, based on the works by Baudrillard and Foucault, attentive
to the distancing contemporary culture established relative to traditional narratives
about male social representation (myths). I will also examine the neglectful attitude
adopted by this society before the need to reorder its symbolic matrix as regards
masculinity codes, which suffered the impact of social changes started in the 19th
century.
I agree with Feynman when he addresses the use of biological and cultural
references to think about human problems:
And going on, we come to things like evil, and beauty, and hope… Which end
is nearer to God; if I may use a religious metaphor. Beauty and hope, or the
fundamental laws? I think that the right path is to say that we have to look at
the whole structural interconnection of the thing; and that all the sciences, and
not just the sciences but all the efforts of intellectual kinds, are an endeavor to
see the connections of the hierarchies, to connect beauty with history, history
with human psychology, and human psychology with the work of the brain,
the brain with nerve impulse, nerve impulse with chemistry, and so on, up and
down in both directions. And today we cannot, and it is no use making believe
that we can, draw carefully a line all the way from one end of this thing to the
other, because we only just begun to see that there is this relative hierarchy.
And I do not think either end is nearer to God. (Edelman, 1992, p. 2)

On the Subjects, the Interviews, and Some Empirical and Theoretical Data

When I started to listen to the men who participated in the work Groups organized
by the PAI-24h Program, I noticed that in their statements they mentioned situations
of violence.7 Rather than with strangeness, they behaved toward it naturally. About
that, a 45-year-old man, the divorced father of two man sons, says:
I know that a man knows that in some way in his life he is going to come up
against violence, and I learned that, and today I know that which doesn’t kill me
makes me stronger; that makes me feel like a man. (My emphasis)
Is there a relationship between that statement and the statistics available in Brazil
and abroad, relative to men’s involvement in situations of violence?8 With the intent
to quantitatively define a picture of the motives that “kill” men, I found some data
that I consider relevant. The rates at which men become involved in situations
of violence with or without death provided clear evidence that the profile of the
violence curve is defined by the male population – whether men are the aggressors
or the victims.
What interpretation can we arrive at from these data?
Initially, I start out from the concepts of sacrifice, sacrificial crisis, and expiatory
victim developed by Girard as a resource to understand the problematics of violence
in the context of the culture. Subsequently, I seek to identify the transformations
that were taking place within the culture in the transition to individualism, and in

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what way they brought impact onto the social representations of subjects. In order to
monitor them, I elected a culture operator that was always present at different times
in history and that can be used to characterize male social representation: myths.
Before that panorama, it would be possible to think about violence, reflect
upon it, but … how about men? What could be going on with them? As mentioned
previously, Edelman and Keleman offer a basis for systematizing my field of
investigation. Through correspondence and conversations, Keleman presented to
me the relationship between the feeling of impotence and male violence. According
to him, impotence is something one learns. That realization emerges in his clinical
practice with North American men, when he identified hostility as a passive
expression of violence. He complements that reasoning, pointing to the summative
factor of the transformations brought about by the technological revolution – a
revolution that had a definitive impact on the concept of human nature, at the notion
of cyborg (a joining of the best in the human race with the best there is in machines),
and that also problematized two important elements at the base of traditional male
representation: physical force and virility.
In the West, there is a history of male social representation that can be monitored
by means of different narratives and that, at the example of myths, serves to describe
its origin and also to transfer social values from one generation to another. In
mythology, we find tyrannical gods, courageous warriors, and fearless travelers as
some of the social representations that provide support for the Greek world. Later,
we find the modern heroes. They are less articulated to the collective problematics
and more identified with the issues of the individual. We can, then, speak about
Don Juan, Faust, Crusoe, and Don Quixote as stories around which male social
representation is built up until the end of the 19th century (Watt, 1997).
We then arrive at the end of the 19th century and are confronted with what
Le Rider (1992) terms identity crises. The crisis of modernity, expressed through
the identity crises that afflicted subjects around 1900, particularly as relates to
the representations of men and women, pointed to the need to reformulate social
representations, to the extent that those would accommodate the social changes.
If those changes sought to grant subjects more autonomy and social freedom,
at the same time, we were watching the sharp decline of everything that was the
role of traditions while promoters of a sense of community. That does not mean to
say that traditional societies were better than modern ones, but in them there was
a sense of community that gradually disappeared and was replaced by another, an
impersonal one. The modern world crisis precipitated a different model of society
that was no longer normatized by traditions, but rather by politics, law, technology,
and the market.
In this type of society, the social representations of men and women became more
and more similar to one another and, as such, required the empirical subject to adapt
to something that came to regulate the social organization axis: the differences game.
In these societies of difference, we identify both a reduction in collective practices
and a loss of the notion of alterity (Baudrillard, 1991). The society of difference

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is eminently constituted by means of the political sphere, through the minority

movements – responsible for the reformulation of social identities.
Those movements are heirs to the individualistic credo and adopt as their form of
expression opposition to everything that was traditionally defined in their social role.
At Crusoe’s example, traditional became designated as everything that opposes the
new social order, which holds the individual as a moral value and no longer adopts
the hierarchy principle as an organizing element of culture.
Before that perspective, and making use of the dialectic of enlightenment (Adorno
& Horheimer, 1985), I begin to contextualize the changes that were becoming
consolidated in modernity. Enlightenment adopted as a focus of concern ridding the
subject of fear, vesting him in the role of master. Nevertheless, enlightened society
grew to gigantic proportions and gave form to a disenchanted world. Its aim, say the
authors, was to dissolve myths and replace imagination with knowledge. In light of
that, the woman, black, and homosexual myths began to be reformulated. To that
end, it was necessary to invest in social representation that resists that change. Held
as the exclusive offspring of the traditional world, that representation became the
one that had to be defeated. The minority movements are in part the product of these
original enlightenment considerations.
Minorities seek to reformulate the social identity of the subjects they represent,
in the pursuit of new ways to include them socially, thus, affording them recognition
and positive worth. Male representation, however, was left without a corresponding
mechanism in contemporary societies, given that it was necessary for it to stay
where it had traditionally always been, so that it would be possible to provide needed
opposition to emancipation, which minorities speak for.
Male social representation comes up in gender studies as one that retains in itself
the characteristics of the traditional world that must be fought (Beauvoir, s/d; Wolf,
1992). To the dialectic of enlightenment, all mythical figures can be reduced to the
same common denominator: the subject. It is to that measure that the collective
becomes empty and leaves up to the empirical subject the responsibility to adapt to
the “new” world view.
Considering the universality of the male presence in the history of wars, the
relationship between masculinity and violence is a constant and traverses different
periods of Western history. Wars and boxing are examples of situations where men
have authorization to kill and hit, and are socially rewarded for it. What can be
considered new in the contemporary landscape is a different form of violence,
beyond war and boxing, and that also agglutinates the empirical subject of the male
sex without, nonetheless, according value to its social representation: the high rates
at which men are killed in traffic accidents. In contemporary societies, masculinity
while a mark of the subject’s sex no longer had useful value, becoming diluted and
incorporated by individuals of both sexes as a premise of social ideation. I am referring
to the emphasis given to competitiveness, performance, and aggressiveness, which
in those societies cease to be a mark of masculinity and also become an expectation
of feminine performance. In some way, the codes of contemporary culture do not

16
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require male representation, given that in vitro fertilization and cloning are ways that
it can be considered secondary. This mechanism ends up bringing implications for
the alterity principle and its role in contemporary culture. After all, as relates Luís
Fernando Veríssimo, we are no longer in a society that had Tarzan, 1920’s hero, as
the male representation in effect.9 But who is, in fact, Tarzan?
Tarzan brings within himself aesthetic and moral qualities. He is considered
a school of energy and virtue that constantly produces dreams in the collective
imagination. We can consider him a Greco-Roman mythical archetype of the child
raised by animals.10 He is the child of an aristocratic British couple, the Greystokes,
who end up stranded in the jungle following a shipwreck. The pregnant woman gives
birth to a boy. She dies shortly thereafter, and the father is soon killed by a troop
of monkeys. Tarzan is then raised by Kala, a female monkey. In fact, the story is a
popular romantic narrative about a solitary hero, a mythical and classical one, where
women do not show and, according to Veríssimo, that confirms our hero’s world.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan’s “father,” published his first book in 1912. The
hero, however, only gained fame in the US a few years before the North American
depression of the 30’s. At the time, many men were unemployed, and the social
stature of masculinity was beginning to go into decline. Tarzan can be thought of
as a limited attempt to revitalize that “outmoded” social representation. He is a
survivor. Masterful in all situations, he seeks to dominate the hostile environment.
He is considered a hero, a winner, in a culture that still values the visibility of male
social representation.
From the transition to individualism to the present time, we observe some
important culture changes that had direct impact on men. About 200 years ago,
the warrior was quite different from today’s soldier. It was the practices of war
that equated masculinity to brutality and to violence, thus, causing the loss of a
connection between the warrior and the soul/psyche, which was present in Greek
mythology in the hero figure. I consider violence to be an expression of that loss of
connection with the sacred, represented by the historical memory of what it is to be
a man.
From the 20’s to the 80’s, male representation sinks into collapse and becomes
marred. Its worth becomes associated with a social past that no longer exists. Our
hero goes into an identity crisis, cannot find his “self,” his relations be it in nature,
be it in the culture. Tarzan, Jane, or Cheeta?
The process of banalization of male social representation intensifies, becoming
disseminated in the following years by means of mass cultures. Now, banalization
transcends identity crisis, or rather, it adds to the negative banalization of the hero’s
very physical structure. Tarzan’s physical vigor makes way for the brute force of a
Homer Simpson or an Earl Sinclair, from Dinosaurs. If Tarzan is “the lord of the
Jungle,” operating as a great protector of the forest, Simpson is a king without a
kingdom. 45 years old, married, middle-class, father of three, he is nothing more
than a technology regulator. Fat, piggish, and bald, he loves to drink at Moe’s bar and
to watch TV, but he hates going to church and his neighbor. In fact, if to us Tarzan

17
CHAPTER 1

still refers to physical vigor, and sounds echoes of ontophany and, consequently, of
singularity, Homer Simpson is the eternal outcast, a hero constructed from obscurity
and negation of male vigor and virility and who serves as alibi for the digitalization
of subjectivity and its transformation into simulacrum.
In contemporary societies, I see the relationship between violence and male
representation as the product of the banalization11 that representation is exposed
to. Gradually, through dilution of the symbolic matrix upon which were structured
traditional societies, male social representation is losing visibility. The rates of
men’s involvement in situations of violence escalate in a society where physical
power was no longer required and replaced by that of technology, that gave up on
sexual reproduction and began to carry it out outside the body (cloning and human
reproduction techniques), and that altered labor relations.
When I initiated this study, I thought of violence as resulting from the exaggeration
of aggressive actions that caused or exposed subjects to death. Later, I realized that
men are exposed to a different type of death, one more complex than the physical
one, but even so just as important. I am referring to a death relative to his social
representation. From this angle, I started my effort to understand the other meanings
that could be associated with men’s intense involvement in situations of violence.
What should men do with the memory of warriors and heroes? And as relates to
traditional inheritance, what should be given up? Could it be that in contemporary
culture a purpose is served by keeping men involved with situations of violence? If
so, what might that be?

ABOUT THE SIMPSONS12

The first season of The Simpsons started in 1989. The series was considered the most
important television event of the 1990’s.
In the mid-eighties, The Simpsons showed up as characters in shorts aired on Fox.
Later, in 1987, they became a regular feature of a North American talk show, when
they started gaining increasing popularity till their first season as a half-hour series.
In media speak, The Simpsons are one of the most important representations of
the contemporary North American family, as well as of its lifestyle. The scripts for
the series are created with cinematographic narratives in mind, and the topics are
variations on issues present in that society. However, the connection with cinematic
screenplays gained emphasis with the addition of rock. Movie references are the
essence of the show. References, citations, lines, or sequences are ways to insert
the language of cinema in the scripts, which make much use of them, from nouvelle
vague to productions like Cape Fear, in the “Cape Feare” episode.13
Nowadays, cinematic language tells a story or narrates a journey through
pathways that, at times, challenge human comprehension itself. Thus, that type of
language plays a role similar to that of a storyteller, a metaphor by means of which it
is possible to get to the density and the mysteries of a subject’s life. At the example
of myth, which is an essential type of story, cinema articulates gods, creative forces,

18
 CONTEMPORARY MASCULINITY

and a subject’s life. Certainly, not all contemporary stories are myths or manage
to gain mythical dimensions; nevertheless, stories told in the movies have a lot in
common with the old inspiration that animates myths, particularly as refers to certain
thought mechanisms through which ideas and feelings about some human quality
are tested. The structural patterns and archetypal characters of myths provide a base
for certain modern narratives present in cinema and adopted by the series. The show
pays homage to screenplays that vary in style and technical treatment.
One example of that is the episode Dog of Death (1992), a recreation of
A Clockwork Orange, by Stanley Kubrick. In it, Santa’s helper is brainwashed
similarly to what happens to the ultraviolent delinquents in Kubrick’s film. In
the episode titled Lisa’s Pony (1991), the first part was taken from 2001: A Space
Odyssey, where Homer is a lazy monkey that rests over the film’s monolith. Allusions
to Kubrick’s films are present in other episodes.
The films Citizen Kane, The Last Emperor, and Thelma and Louise are titles
that served as reference for the development of some episodes. However, movies
are not the only reference for the series. In the beginning, the topics dealt with
addressed familiar values presented through easily communicated, simple situations
that had an impact on the viewer. As the show evolved and gained acceptance, other
topics were gradually included, such as: racism, adultery, religious fanaticism,
homosexuality, corruption, and corporate conventionalisms. The language used by
Matt Groening, the sitcom’s creator, has no partisan or moralistic characteristics.
He sets out to portray dull hicks, easily manipulated by the media, politicians, and
religious leaders. The program did not have the same impact in Brazil as in the
US. The pace and wealth or references were not enough to capture the attention of
Brazilian audiences.14

A Few Characters in the Series

Springfield is the name of the town where The Simpsons live, one of the most
common in the US. Every state must have at least three towns with that name. Some
studies on the series suggest the town is located in Illinois.
Coincidence or not, the tragedy that shook the United States involving a boy
who took a rifle and proceeded to his school to kill his schoolmates after killing
his parents took place in a town by that name. That incident, repeated in various
towns in the US, suggests that the combination of prosperity, violence worship,
intolerance, and religious fanaticism promotes a winner-loser system that Americans
informally apply to their lives and causes them to arm themselves more and more.
In that culture, children learn quite early that being a loser is the same as being dead.
It is interesting to observe that the fact that took place in a real “Springfield”
corresponds to the symbolic death of the male social representation depicted in the
series. Both reveal a portrait of America.
The head of this household is Homer J. Simpson. He represents a typical American:
white, protestant, ignorant, frustrated, heterosexual, obese, and at the same time a

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CHAPTER 1

dedicated father and loving husband.15 Homer is a safety inspector in sector 7G of a

nuclear power plant; he drinks a lot of beer while he watches TV, and he has a half-
brother from an extra-marital relationship of his father’s.
The owner of the power plant is Charles Montgomery Burns. He is ninety
years old and is considered in the show to be the personification of evil. Owner
of immeasurable wealth, he is selfish, greedy, and a bad character. He is dishonest
and fragile at the same time, and he has a loyal gay assistant who loves him and for
whom he has become the only reason to be alive.
Homer is considered rude, impolite, lacking in any sense of civility, a lazy
bum who sleeps most of the time he is at work. He is also characterized as being
inattentive and incompetent, to the point of even forgetting his children’s names. He
is considered one of the funniest characters in the history of television.
Homer’s father is Abraham Simpson; his wife (Homer’s mother) left him early on,
and he raised his son with difficulty. He leads an unstructured life and is abandoned
to live alone in a nursing home.
Homer’s best friend is Barney Gumble. He is considered a born barfly, an
alcoholic Norwegian whose sole purpose in life is drinking. In the show, he is treated
as a damaged character ridden with sequelae. Homer has another friend called Larry,
who shows up in episodes at Moe’s bar continually drunk.
As far as the neighbors, Ned Flanders and Ruth Powers receive the most attention.
Flanders is a religious fanatic who represents a good portion of the American
population. Ms. Powers is a divorced and free woman.
There is also another important character in the show called Krusty. His name is
Herschel Krustofsky, and he works as a clown on TV. Krusty is a Jew of Polish origin
who became a clown against his family’s wishes. He is a born gambler, illiterate, and
a bad character. He feels constantly unhappy.
Bart Simpson is the oldest son; he is ten and is in fourth grade. The word bart
(from the name Bartholomew) is an anagram for brat, which means badly behaved.
Bart is always getting into all kinds of trouble. He does not like to study and always
does poorly in school. He likes skateboarding, graffiting, and playing practical jokes
above all. He is a Krusty the Clown fan and was elected by the magazine Times
(1999) as the cartoon character to most influence Americans’ behavior, beating
scores by Mickey and company. On the same survey, he is ranked as one of the top
20 most prestigious types of the decade. Bart is a bad boy, an eternal teenager, a man
with no access to adultness.
The women in the series enjoy a different status. Marjorie Jacqueline Simpson,
née Bouvier (Marge) is Homer’s wife. She is 40 and is a dedicated housewife who
does not like change. She is also considered the equilibrium point of the family,
always with politically correct and pacifying opinions; she is considered Homer’s
opposite. There are those who say that if Homer were to evolve someday he would
become a Marge. Her tasks range from fixing the garage door to changing diapers,
and she is responsible for keeping the family united. She has worked with Homer at
the power plant, charged her boss with sexual harassment, and footed Homer’s trip

20
 CONTEMPORARY MASCULINITY

to India. She was considered by her sisters a brilliant and intelligent student with a
promising future until she met Homer, who, according to them, ruined her life.
Lisa is the couple’s second child. She is 8 years old and a girl prodigy; she is
in second grade and is considered the most intelligent in the family, cultured, and
well informed. The series presents her as the one that inherited all of her mother’s
characteristics, including her sense of justice and dignity. Always engaged with the
problems of the family and of the town, she is respected by all in the show. Some
might doubt that she is the daughter of this family. She is loving, a goody two-shoes,
and mad about horses and the saxophone. She is always willing to help Bart to solve
his problems.
Marge has two sisters: Patty and Selma Bouvier, single twins. Both antagonize
and detest Homer. Marge’s mother is forever disappointed at her daughter’s marrying
Homer.
In addition to these characters, the series depicts America’s cultural diversity
through various foreign stereotypes, for one example, the Scottish gardener, Willie.
Other male characters include a stupid, corrupt, and authoritarian police chief, two
incompetent policemen, a swindler of a lawyer, and an unscrupulous doctor who
speaks Spanish. They all contribute to the characterization of a scathing and sarcastic
portrait of a superficial America made up of enterprising women and failed men.
The Simpsons is one more of the narratives about the sexes, in which Homer
embodies the male social representation in contemporary societies. Homer is
the banalization of that representation, and he assumes the new male status for
contemporary societies. The daily use of this representation is more and more frequent.
In that regard, there is a recent character in American cinema that corroborates
Homer’s traits. His name is Lester, from the film American Beauty (1999), by Sam
Mendes. Lester is a man in his forties hated by his wife and disregarded by his
daughter, and he seeks a new meaning to his life beyond the role of an idiot.
Homer and Lester are characters created from the same source: the banalization
and defacing of male social representation. When it comes to male characters,
both Homer’s stupidity and Lester’s mediocrity are two constants in contemporary
narratives. The male characters in the series The Simpsons are decadent and
authoritarian, while the females can be considered politically correct, and in line
with current social and political trends.
Homer and Lester have a lot in common. However, Lester is murdered, and Homer
is not. Above all, American Beauty is a story told by a dead man, who includes in
his account the day of his death. Lester is murdered because he tried to step out of
Homer’s role; however, in that story, he could not step out of that position, for he is
needed to play the role of the idiot, not any other. It is worth pointing out that Lester
faces two types of violence in his life: an empirical one, relative to his murder, and a
symbolic one, by being portrayed as a loser.
Male social representation in contemporary societies has been restricted to the
characterization of male failure, Homer being an example of that. In my analysis, I
interpret such restriction to be the expression of one of the forms of violence in this

21
CHAPTER 1

type of society. The loser is a subject who has lost his personal form and, therefore,
proves incapable of decoding, understanding and acting in complex contexts; he is
an anti-hero devoid of vigor, vitality, or strength. He is an anti-hero because he is not
a winner and, therefore, for this type of culture, someone who must be eliminated.
Violence, then, appears as a possibility of meaning in a subject’s life, to the
extent that it is necessary to make oneself present in order that it can be realized,
by invoking one’s personal history as a testament of faith and, through it, restituting
one’s own strength and vigor.
Homer is an important reference for the series. It is through him that Lisa’s
intelligence and Marge’s sense of justice are potentialized and more positivized.
Homer’s stupidity is necessary for maintaining this type of family, much the same
way as, according to Girard (1990), an “expiatory victim” is needed for sustaining
“group” cohesion.

NOTES
1
Cf. data presented in the ABRAPIA report on violence against children and also data that are omitted
about violence among women.
2
This denomination is used by Baudrillard in his essay about the issue “Whatever Happened to Evil.”
where he states that a society where the power of prophylaxis, of the extinction of natural references,
of a whitening of violence, of extermination of all germs and all cursed parts, of cosmetic surgery
on the negative is one that only wants to deal with calculated issues and discourse on Good (the
politically correct); it is a society where it is no longer possible to enunciate Evil. The whitening
of Evil means that Evil becomes diluted and used by discourses on Good, which become exempted
from It as they name themselves representative of democratic ideals. Nevertheless, in order that they
are able to circulate, discourses on Good must enunciate Evil, not as bad in and of itself, but as
a convention or principle that rejects the Western values of progress, rationality, political morals,
democracy, and gender.
3
Main male character in the Fox series, The Simpsons, created in the mid 1980’s.
4
The “PAI-24h” Program was created in 1993 and has as its target audience the male population and
maintains services by study groups, workshops, and a database fed by such sources as: IBGE (Brazilian
Institute of Geography and Statistics), ABRAPIA (Brazilian Multi-professional Association for the
Protection of Childhood and Adolescence), IASOM/Oslo (The International Association for Studies
of Men), UN, APA-Division 51/USA (Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity).
5
As regards a first draft of male social representation, I also used the Thesis for my Master’s in
Psychology, completed in 1996 at PUC-RJ (The Pontifical Catholic University-Rio de Janeiro) and
entitled: “Male Identity: A Study about Middle-Class Man.”
6
To Keleman, the body is a living process in constant organization and reorganization of itself. The
human body is an organism in evolution rooted in its own personal and universal vitality. According
to him, the formative approach honors the universal process that grants us life, at the same time that
it seeks to mature a personal and social body. In the course of life, a subject’s task is to embody the
person that is forming within. See Your Body Speaks Its Mind, p. 2.
7
The men who participated in the activities were between 35 and 45 years of age, divorced fathers
for the most part, college educated, and middle class. The statements were obtained in the meetings
promoted by the Reflection Groups on masculinity, according to the Vancouver’s Groups plan,
developed by Gervase Bushe, in 1992.
8
See statistical data presented in the chapter The First Sex.
9
We see the currency of that masculinity in effect in a conversation with filmmaker Tetê Moraes, with
her argument for a film that addresses such issues, except that in a perspective from Tarzan to Woody
Allen.

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 CONTEMPORARY MASCULINITY

10
Reference to the story of Rhea Silvia and Mars’ sons, who were abandoned on Amulius’ orders, placed
in a basket and set adrift on the river Tiber. On the river, they were found and suckled by a she-wolf
and protected by a wood-pecker. Later, they were taken in by a shepherd and grew up strong and
brave.
11
I use the denomination ‘banalization’ in this book to refer to a type of violence to the extent that
it reveals a power greater than that of weapons and leads to the symbolic death of male social
representation.
12
Some information about the show was taken from The Simpsons Archive, created by Fox and available
on the Internet, by Ezequiel Siqueira. The airdates are those for the originals in the US.
13
The creator of the show, Matt Groening, as well as members of his team, was a Hollywood screenwriter
for many years, which lends The Simpsons characteristics similar to the movies.
14
We do find, in the sitcom, mention of Xuxa, when Krusty the Clown has a Christmas show on TV
hosting several has-been celebrities, among whom is a South American sensation: Xoxchitla. Krusty
can hardly pronounce the name at all, reflecting the failed attempt to launch entertainer Xuxa in the
United States. In the episode Cartridge Family (1998), we have a mention of Pele. Those are the only
two Brazilian participations in the show.
15
Being a dedicated father and loving husband are desirable characteristics for the “new man.” What this
character points to is that those emerge from a failed individual, a loser.

23
 CHAPTER 2

THE FIRST SEX

I committed my children to the hospice of the Enfants-trouvés; that was enough

for me to feel like a monstrous father and from then on, spreading and warming
up to that idea, they drew the evident consequence, little by little, that I hated
children […] however, it would certainly be the most unbelievable thing in
the world that Heloise and Emile were the works of a man who did not like
children.
 J. J. Rousseau

MALE REPRESENTATION

Statistical Data and Patriarchy

Violence rates have gone up considerably in the past decades, having become one of
the main concerns of governments and of civil society. In Brazil, violence takes on the
most varied forms. Traffic accidents, homicides, emotional and physical aggression
make up a panorama of occurrences quantitatively defined by men. According to
the “Anuário Estatístico do Brasil” (Brazil’s Statistics Annual), published by IBGE
(Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) in 1992, of the 27,013 deaths that
occurred in 1989, 20,792 corresponded to deaths of persons of the male sex. In 1993,
traffic accidents around the world killed one person every 50 seconds and wounded
one every two seconds. It is men who define the patterns of the curves.
The following statistical data obtained from the last Penitentiary Census (IBGE,
1988) corroborate the thesis of male banalization: 94% of the inmates are men, being
that 96.3% of the entire incarcerated population used to work before incarceration.
Among those, practically half started working between the ages of 10 and 14. A
quick observation would lead to the generic conclusion that the central problem in
this work has as its main mark the capitalist social crisis and the manner in which
society has been responding to subjects’ needs, yearnings, and challenges. However,
the problem addressed here has elements that draw our attention to the concept of
subjectivity in the context of modernity, in particular male subjectivity.
In a study about violence conducted by the World Health Organization in 1993, we
find that in developing countries 215 thousand murders take place each year, against
61 thousand in developed countries. Violence and traffic accidents kill close to 3.5
million people each year all over the world. Men contribute with approximately
77% of the total number of deaths. Those deaths represent spending with medical
expenses and loss of productivity in the amount of US$550 million/year.

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CHAPTER 2

Studies about deaths by firearms conducted by Iser (Higher Institute of Religion

Studies), Municipal Department of Health for Rio de Janeiro and Datasus, in July
1993, reveal that in the past decades there has been an increase of 220% in the
mortality by firearm projectiles (PAF) rate in the country. In 1979, the rate was 6
deaths per every 100 thousand inhabitants. In Brazil, for every 4 young men killed,
one is killed by a firearm. Taking as reference the total number of deaths in 1997,
24% were caused by firearms. Thus, for every 1 thousand killed in 1997, 32 were
victimized by a firearm. According to the UN, all over the world, about 200 to 300
thousand people die every year, and men are the solid majority.
While in the US the total of deaths/year by firearms is approximately 6 thousand,
in Brazil that number is as high as 26 thousand. In 1997, we also identified other
data: of the total deaths for men between 15 and 29 years of age, 27% were firearm
victims, that is, one in every four. In Rio de Janeiro, deaths resulting from violent
causes are the most prevalent deaths among men up to 50 years of age, while the
largest part of deaths are of men between 15 and 39 (65%). Therefore, these men are
at a 4.5 higher risk for being killed by firearms than the general population. Should
this progression continue, we can anticipate a greater and greater reduction in the
number of men.
In order to have a sense of the great level of and impact caused by violent deaths,
we can compare them to deaths from AIDS over the same period of time. Between
1981 and 1989, for example, 6,692 people died from AIDS. In the same period,
780,816 Brazilians were killed as a result of accidents and violence. Adding to that
the number of homicides and other types of violence, there would be 250 thousand
murders in nine years. The studies done following that period have not shown a
reduction in those rates; on the contrary, the rates have gone up.
According to sources from the Ministry of Health, in 1992, 888,576 people
hospitalized were victims of violence. The cost of the medical assistance and
treatments provided to them was greater than US$360 million.
Another study conducted by “Pronto Socorro 28 de Agosto” (August 28 Emergency
Hospital), which belongs to the Public Health System (Ministry of Health), between
July and December, 1997, presents a profile of the victim of violence. He is a male
between the ages of 15 and 35. The study also points out that female patients are
significantly less involved in violent episodes. The time period with the greatest
number of cases admitted id from early evening to the middle of the night/dawn.
From the total number of patients seen, 78% are men. Cases are considered violence
related when caused by physical aggression, cold weapons, firearms, and traffic
accidents.
Another source of information is the report form the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP/1998). Its data corroborates the picture painted above. In that
work, it is possible to identify the factors leading to reduction in life expectancy
for the Brazilian population. Among them, I would highlight deaths from external
causes that befall men between 17 and 30 years of age. The report also suggests that
in order to increase life expectancy in Brazil it is not enough to invest in education,

26
 THE FIRST SEX

health, and sanitation infrastructure; better income distribution and improvement of

violence indicators are also necessary.
According to a survey conducted by the Ombudsman Office for the Military
Police of Sao Paulo, the number of suicides among police officers doubled in the
period between 1997 and 1998, going from 17 to 33 cases. It is the highest rate in
the past ten years. Suicide deaths in the Force outnumber deaths in the line of duty.
In the past eight years, 187 MP Officers in Sao Paulo took their own lives, while
102 died in the line of duty. Those numbers point to an increase in violence within
the Force, involving soldiers, corporals, and sergeants, that is, officers that work on
the streets. Among possible causes are rigidity of the hierarchy and discipline, low
salaries, and work overload. However, we observe difficulty on the prat of those
professionals in dealing with the violence they are exposed to daily.
Violent deaths reveal themselves more and more through situations where there
are outbursts of hatred and extreme despair. As an example, we have an incident
that took place inside a public institution that, in theory, is responsible for reducing
violence. The deaths of 4 inmates at Febem/Sao Paulo (a juvenile detention center),
which took place in October 1999, reveal what happens when a social relations
system lacks in the alterity principle; the intensity of hatred released corresponds to
the violence perpetrated against subjects as regards their existence as Other. From
that brutality, reminds us Jean Genet, violence arises. In October 26 issue of O Globo
that year, one of the Febem monitors gives this account:
The inmates who died were marked. They were smashed, the way you would
kill a rat. They used sickle, axe, pipe. It’s not possible to describe what I saw. No
filmmaker, not even a Spielberg, would be able to film such cruelty. They beat me
in my head and my hand. I knew I was marked to die because they had told me two
days before. I don’t know the reason; I never have hit a minor. They wrapped two
blankets doused in alcohol around my body and said they would burn me alive.
I saw a colleague be thrown from a five-foot wall. Someone locked the gates from
the outside, and 16 monitors were stuck inside and became hostages. I had never
seen anything like it. There was no leader, nor did they have any demands. There was
no apparent reason. It was a madhouse.
According to a report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the
United States, in 1991, the likelihood that a man would commit murder is nine times
greater than that of a woman. When it comes to violent rape, the ratio is 78 men to
one woman; for aggravated assault and battery, the ratio is 10 men to one woman.
In other words, the likelihood that a man will commit a crime is eight times greater
than that for a woman.
Historical data obtained from various statistical and census annuals in the United
States and in Europe report that the majority of crimes against persons of one’s
own sex are committed by men (between 92% and 100%). The data is taken from
historical documents dating back to the 13th and 14th centuries in England, and to the
19th century in the United States; they refer to hunter-gatherer communities, tribal
societies, modern nation-states. In all of them, we find the same essential cultural

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organization pattern known as “patriarchy.” That fostered the development of theses

that analyzed those facts according to a certain degree of cultural determinism.
However, if patriarchy were solely a cultural construction, an arbitrary occurrence in
history, it would be reasonable to find places and times when it never existed. Even
if Bachofen (1967) may have developed the argument that humanity experienced
a matriarchal stage, his reasoning did not provide archeological proof to support
it for any anthropologist. We have no way to prove the existence of a society in
effect governed by women, at the example of the patriarchal system. On that point,
Margaret Mead (1949) and Helen Fischer (1992) agree. Thus, we can say that
patriarchy presents itself as a social organization system present all over the world.
Therefore, considerations to the effect that it is exclusively a social intervention came
to be criticized and discussed. Might patriarchy be responsible for those deaths?
According to Wrangham and Peterson (1998), patriarchy exists all over the
world and in all of history; for that reason, those authors consider it to be an
initially biological product built upon the representation of a “demonic male,” who
is necessary for the survival of societies. They comprehend culture as an unfolding
of biology.1
Patriarchy serves the reproductive purposes of the men who maintain the
system. Patriarchy comes from biology in the sense that it emerges from men’s
temperaments, out of their evolutionary derived efforts to control women and at
the same time have solidarity with fellow men in competition against outsiders.
But evolutionary forces have surely shaped women, too, in mind as in bodies, in
ways that both defy and contribute to the patriarchal system. If all women followed
Lysistrata’s injunctions and refused their husbands, they could indeed effect change.
But they don’t. Patriarchy has its ultimate origins in male violence, but it doesn’t
come from man alone, and it has its sources in the evolutionary interests of both
sexes (Wrangham & Peterson, 1998).

Patriarchy and Violence

In the panorama of transition to individualism, there starts a process of disfigurement

of values belonging to patriarchy, as well as of the male social representation
associated with it. We also find, in that trajectory, a lessening of importance in
theoretical arguments in the field of human and social sciences that articulated
social practice with biological sex. In light of that, we can think that the empirical
subject begins to become involved in situations of violence as a resource toward
finding a social representation for himself that in some way can provide meaning
and sense to his life. From that madness are born the representations of skinheads
and pit boys. In the past decades, there has been an altering in the social value of
male representation, and which became separated from it. In Brazil, in the 50’s,
we found tabloids that mentioned boys who cut classes. That behavior, even if
criticized by the morals of the time, did not take away from masculinity reference
and created the figure of the bad-boy. Over the years, boys became more and

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more precociously involved with situations through which they felt identified
and recognized as boys. The bad-boy representation went from being an aspect to
becoming a masculinity reference that worked as social currency. Being “bad” came
to be mainly a way to be a “boy.” Presently, we will find boys cutting not only
classes, but also other boys.
Male representation in Mediterranean cultures is impregnated with prerogatives
such as: “A man is like a bear: the uglier he is the more handsome.”2 For a man,
violence is a possibility of response to the performance demands of his social role.
It is encouraged in different ways during the socialization of boys, thus, becoming
a key element to the construction of a particular type of male subjectivity. As we
will see next, a subject that cannot find forms of social recognition and insertion for
himself tends to become more directly involved in situations of violence, against
others or against himself. The male representation present in Romanticism, that he
should protect, provide, and war against Evil, at the example of Homer and of cavalry
novels, became the very embodiment of Evil in the course of the 20th century. Such
Evil was identified in the gender analyses as “patriarchy.”
But why would it be that, while violence is treated as a problem that affects
different countries, with epidemic proportions and at a high social cost, it is not taken
into consideration that men are the subjects directly or indirectly involved with in?
There is much talk about guns, traffic, and homicide, but no one is talking about men
or to them. On the contrary, as regards domestic violence, or even gender violence,
women are systematically pointed to as the victims, and men as the aggressors.
Nevertheless, that approach does not extend to qualitative analyses that deal with
violence against children. In those cases, the aggressor is of the female sex, and for
the most part, the mother (ABRAPIA, 1994, 1999).
In some way, a cultural value is activated, allowing a man to become involved
in situations of violence in the public sphere. On the other hand, the opposite is
expected of a woman, even if according to ABRAPIA data (1994, 1999), women
are the main aggressors against children in the domestic context. Female authors
who deal with situations of domestic violence do not discuss or analyze women
in the aggressor role (Faludi, 1991; Schechter, 1982; Walker, 1979). To the
gender analyses, it is as if that fact is not considered domestic violence, which
becomes restricted to the man-woman relationship. Society treats both situations
by granting invisibility to the aggressors; that is, when a man is the aggressor
against another man or a woman the aggressor against a son or daughter, that
is considered normal, making any deeper analysis impossible. There is an
understanding that it is “natural” both for a man and for a mother to engage in
aggression, if necessary.
In the present study, I start from situations where a subject is the agent or receiver
in situations that affect his physical or emotional integrity. However, as previously
mentioned, I limit myself to analyzing situations where only men are implicated.
Here, my objective is to investigate the correlation between those situations of
violence and male subjectivity.

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Some of that resonance can be found in etymology, both in the word “violence,”
presented by Barbosa, and in the studies on masculinity conducted by Gilmore
(1990). According to Barbosa (1985):
“violence” comes from the Latin violentia, which means “violent character”
or “angry,” “force.” As for the verb violare, it means “to treat with violence,”
“profane,” “transgress.” These Latin terms refer to the word vis, which means
“strength,” “vigor,” “potency,” as well as “quantity,” “abundance,” “essence,”
“essential character” of something. In that sense, the vis denomination means
force in action, property of a body, potency or vital force. Here, the correspondence
between the Latin and Greek meanings is maintained. The Greek term that
corresponds to vis is is, which means “muscle,” “vigor,” as well as “vehemence.”
As for the word “masculinity,” we find at its root the denominations: “virile,”
“energetic,” “strong,” and “active.” That proximity goes beyond semantic pertinence;
masculinity and violence maintain relations with one another that go from how boys
are socialized, to how a subject comprehends his feelings about being a man; in
other words, what he feels comes to directly correspond to the image he defines
for himself. That image is an expression of the body within the model defined by
Edelman (1989, 1992) and Keleman (1985). In the Greek myths, both heroes and
gods are known for their attributes of strength, vigor, and potency. In those mythical
stories, we identify the hero’s concern with the risk of banalization he is subjected
to (Diel, 1991), as well as fear that the sources of vigor and virility may be shifted
toward violence, precipitating the death of the hero’s soul/psyche.
Berger and Luckman (1983) tell us that “subjectivity is a key element of subjective
reality, and it finds itself in a dialectic relationship with society.” That statement
embraces the reflection proposed here and makes its development possible, to the
extent that it makes it possible to think about the articulation that exists between
“social reality” and subjective life. Through myths, we reflect how that connection
is made and in what way it may give origin to the relationship between masculinity
and violence.
Male violence should be understood here as a dissonance in one’s sense of
identity resulting from loss of forms of social recognition and insertion caused
by the disfigurement of male insignias previously defined by traditional societies.
As such, it is an expression of the way men live out their anguishes, fears, and
insecurities. Analogously, in male myths we identify those feelings in the hero’s
journey. In order to experience that emotional complex, the hero must traverse his
personal trajectory and insert himself in the social universe. That goes for Ulysses,
Hercules, Achilles, and Theseus. Crisis is an integral part of the hero’s journey, an
element for construction of and access to his “soul.”3 In this day and age, how can
this crisis be comprehended. Gilmore (1990) offers us support in thinking about
this problem when he analyzes different cultures and points to the existence of a
continuum among them, considering male social representation:

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 THE FIRST SEX

In them, men throughout the world seem to share the same notions about
masculinity. […] The masculinity ideal is not purely genetic in its origin but,
rather, culturally imposed. That way, continually recurring is a stress on hard
work, on effective enterprising and a parallel belief that this work ethic needs
to be artificially inculcated in hesitant or passive men, who prefer not to seek
it out. (pp. 109–110)

In those cultures, every man must confront that ideal, whether or not he
psychologically agrees with it. Upon it, every subject must build his sense of identity.
Both the policeman and the criminal must live up to the same social performance
expectations. Nevertheless, as observed below, men belonging to different social or
ethnic strata will feel compelled to respond to those situations where honor is under
attack.
In contemporary societies, analysis on masculinity, be it represented by identity
crisis (Le Rider, 1992) or by the genesis of male social representation (Gilmore,
1990), or be it about the existing relationship between male subjectivity and the
world of work (Nolasco, 1988; Tolson, 1983), reveals different elements that serve
as parameters for defining the male social representation originated from traditional
societies.
To that social representation, male subjectivity sustains itself on the basis of the
virility concept, as well as its connection with the world of work and of violence.
Being unemployed is a state that can be interpreted as lack of potency and virile
strength, the same way that losing possessions and honor is understood as an attack
on the male condition. Both situations demonstrate that, to a man, the feeling of
humiliation precedes situations of violence. To a subject, being confronted with
those circumstances means being in contact with the feeling of loss of alterity.
Immersed, thus, in the experience of his social representation’s banalization, he
demands through acts of violence to reestablish his possession of his own self, which
is granted by social recognition. Going against Descartes, the subject does not think,
but acts to recover his sense of existing through the insignia of violence: “I kill,
therefore I exist.”
We acquire our sense of identity through shared experiences with other human
beings; our Self, which we consider to be so “our own,” results from long and
complicated psychic work. In a way, it is work that is disregarded when one thinks
about the social ideals of masculinity and about the practices that make men feel
virile. We know that the majority of societies have consensual ideals through which
they conventionalize what masculinity is, a social category through which every
subject is considered a representative of his sex. However, in an ordinary sense,
the biological determinant (sex) becomes confused and comes to define male social
ideals. That causes a subject not to engage, during his socialization, in any reflection
about the meaning of being a man, instead resigning himself to masculinity ideals as
if those were not social but biological.

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We know that the sense of male identity is not acquired exclusively in spontaneous
fashion through biological maturity; it is also an artificial state that boys must achieve
in light of their singularities. They have to go through trials, at different stages of
their psychosocial development, and for the purpose of expressing what they feel as
men, differentiating themselves, thus, from the pattern that had traditionally been
defined for them. Even in contemporary societies, that still happens to a boy.
Among traditional male expectations, we can highlight the ability to use physical
strength and the capacity for inserting oneself in the public world by means of work.
From early on, they are encouraged to achieve high performance in the world of
work. That principle ensures that the sense of male identity will provide continuity
for a social system that sustains itself both on the economy and on the market. Just
like Ulysses, a man is considered a man when he is needed, and he should be that
continually and relative to all demands possible. Analysis about those aspects can be
found in contributions by Dupuis in his investigations about the historical moment
when humanity began to organize itself around revealed paternity. The patriarchal
system was born form a need to reorganize men’s attitude toward land (agriculture)
and toward other groups. His study presents a trajectory for the idea that includes
men as agents of sexual reproduction and of social gains accrued from that revelation.
The revealing of men’s participation in human procreation transcends the latter and
generates the patriarchal model as a symbolic matrix for the organization of culture
(Dupuis, 1989).
What until then was considered synonymous with social value and need (patriarchy)
has become a symbol of the past today, one that restricts the consolidation of a
different society regulated around the political and the informational. In this one, a
different type of male social representation becomes necessary.
In different types of patriarchal societies, we find a male representation that
maintains itself and is presented to boys as the one that will ensure them social
recognition and positive social insertion. The patriarchal value matrix points them
toward a rough path that starts with primary socialization and culminates with the
beginning of adult life. That course generates tension for men that is measured by
the performance requirement (Nolasco, 1988). One correspondent of that tensioned
state is also present in the initiation rituals presented by Gilmore (1990):
The Amhara, Masai, and New Guinea Highlanders share one feature in
common beyond the stress on manhood: they are fierce warrior peoples […].
One may argue that their bloody rites prepare young boys for the idealized life
of the warrior that awaits them. Let us take another African example. Among
the relatively peaceful! Kung Bushmen of Southwest Africa, manhood is also
a prize to be grasped through a test. Accurately calling them “The Harmless
People,” […] these nonviolent Bushmen have never fought a war […]. Other
examples of stressed manhood among gentle people can be found in the New
World, in aboriginal North America. Among the nonviolent Fox tribe of Iowa,
for example, “being a man” does not come easily. Based on stringent standards

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of accomplishment in tribal affairs and economic pursuits, real manhood is

said to be “the Big Impossible,” an exclusive status that only the nimble few
can achieve. (p. 123)
Gilmore’s analysis is plentiful in examples of “violent” situations identified in
the rituals a boy must get through to become a man. The situations of violence vary
in intensity and form; however, both in modern English high society and with the
Mende boys, there are tense procedures on the path toward acquiring manhood.
The Mende, a people from West of Africa, believe that, in order to become men,
boys must be introduced to society by undergoing the “Poro” initiation, whereby the
boys are “swallowed” so that they can be reborn as men. To ensure this metamorphosis,
each boy must have his back flayed – the marks of that sacrifice representing the teeth
of the hungry spirit. The marks are made with a hook that lacerates the skin. Should a
boy show any fear or try to escape this brutal situation, he is temporarily incapacitated
by the adults, who shove his head in a hole previously dug out.
Warrior societies are patrilineal and have physical strength as their masculinity
ideal. To them, it is necessary to associate vigor with physical strength, by adopting
its continuous use, excess, and damage as references for the worth of a man (Greek
heroes follow that prerogative). We also find associated with that value discipline and
courage, both being needed in order for a boy to become a warrior or a hunter. The
acquisition of masculinity is achieved in a context that is at the same time practical
and symbolic. Boys must acquire their sense of identity through a different feeling:
that of belonging to a group. The emotional experiences subjacent to that path at times
expose a subject to situations of pain, humiliation, and injury, thus, predisposing him
to react with fury. When they escape a subject’s control, all the feelings present in the
initiation drama turn into action. That is when he cannot contain the internal tensions
inherent to this masculinizing path. In traditional societies, myths, rites, and their
relationship to the sacred worked to manage those tensions and prevented them from
turning against a subject himself or against the community.
The type of subjective organization produced from that experience molds a
subject and articulates him with identifying enunciations present in initiation
rites. For example, his sense of identity is linked to those enunciations, becoming
materialized in the subject’s name and surname. By means of that sense, he feels part
of the community and perfects the ties he has to it.
Male representation is socially organized around excellence for performance and
a monolithic image that is shared by all the members of a community (Gilmore,
1990; Canalles, 1974; Ramirez, 1993). For example, in Mediterranean cultures
the majority of men are deeply committed to an image of masculinity articulated
with codes of honor and personal reputation (Pitt-Rivers, 1968; Campbell, 1968).
That image brings respect to one who wears it, provides safety and protection to
his family, and reflects personal reputation. Due to competitiveness and sexually
aggressive aspects, Mediterranean men’s ideation has been considered by scholars
as divisive and, at times, a “social evil” (Gilmore, 1990).

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Andalusians, for example, dedicate themselves to publicly proving their

masculinity. It will be expressed in terms like: “You are very much a man, very
macho, very much a man indeed.” If not, a man will be considered “weak,” “namby-
pamby,” a slacker, a sissy. He will be deemed someone who has forgotten to become
a man and “is of no use as a man, no good.”
Therefore, it is important for this type of subjectivity to separate what is good
(man things) from what is bad (anything that qualifies as “not manly”). In this type
of culture, the degree of fantasy a subject will engage in to sustain his sense of
identity surpasses any thought that might problematize his social representation.
In traditional contexts, having any doubt as to the type of man one wants to be
is considered a threat to conventional masculinity standards. On the other hand,
proof of masculinity is to have no doubt, and to that end, it becomes necessary for
those cultures to invest in a type of subjective organization continually consonant
with social values. That allows us to say that sexual roles are culture operators that
articulate social values with a certain type of subjective organization.
Each society structures itself in such a way that its members will identify with
social representations, adopting them as their own or even as ideals to be attained. It
is necessary, however, that there is within each of them some room for maneuvering,
such that a subject can manipulate the representation socially defined for him and
articulate it with the fantasies he has relative to himself. A symbolic matrix lends
itself to that, fostering the evolution and transformation of social representations.
In that dimension, each subject receives a name, enjoys the right to express his
subjectivity, thus, being able to define his own destiny and to assert himself as
unique and singular.
The way each subject interprets the social demands placed on male representation,
added to the emotional arrangement he adopts for his life and to his available internal
resources, may take him closer to or further away from the path toward consolidation
of his sense of identity. Violence against women can be thought of as an expression
of subjects’ distancing from what socially accords them identity. And women, as a
part of that, represent a dimension of what grants them alterity. Losing one’s woman
is losing oneself, and therefore, one reacts in such a way that, if he cannot have her,
no one will.
Control over one’s partner’s sexual behavior is a characteristic of the way
cultures organize the relationship between social representation and subjective
organization. At the same time that a woman is a possession, she is also Other. In a
social perspective, that relationship can be thought of according to the questions of
honor and of property, which introduce violence as a device for reparation and for
reasserting control over oneself.
Differently from women, men kill their partners and then commit suicide. Data
presented by Polk point to some differences between men and women as regards
involvement with crime and violence. Among them we can highlight those that best
characterize the participation of men in those situations. The first has to do with
lethal use of violence as a means of control over a partner’s sexual behavior; the

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second refers to questions of an insult and of honor related order; the third presents
marginal situations that include risk to one’s life and involvement with crime per
se; the fourth speaks to how common it is among men to use violence as a form of
conflict resolution (Polk, 1994).
Through Greek myths, it is possible to identify violence as a male form of conflict
resolution. In them, the roles of gods and heroes portray similar ambivalence to that
present in situations of violence, even if the hero or god identifies with what he fears.
In the three divine generations we find a father promoting situations of violence when
he adopts tyrannical attitudes towards his children, thus, revealing himself as an all-
powerful god.4 However, it is through him that a subject enters the culture striking a
“deal” with paternal law. Killing becomes a characteristic of this type of “deal,” an
impulse associated with the father’s figure and the way he organizes social life. The
death of the father is, thus, associated with emotional complexity blending feelings
of guilt and of loss, with states of distancing from the father imposed on the children.
In the recent literature about masculinity, we find entire chapters dedicated to
the construction of paternity and to the father-son relationship (Berger, Wallis, &
Watson, 1995). Corneau states that paternal absence can be examined as a constant
in that relationship and is considered at the same time a form of violence and a path
that authorizes a subject to exercise it (Corneau, 1990).
Socially authorized to use physical force to provide proof of virility, a subject
will be predisposed to use it when he finds himself involved in situations where he
does not feel recognized as a man. According to Colman, the course through which
a subject acquires his sense of identity is articulated with conflicts inherent to the
paternal complex (Colman & Colman, 1990). He uses two categories to analyze it:
sky father and earth father, mythical strands identified, for example, in Macbeth or
Hamlet, characters in which we recognize how much violence is available in the
relationship between father and son. In those narratives, Shakespeare (1564–1616)
presents a host of acts and practices of violence articulated around a type of male
representation founded on absence and the ills of the father. That aspect is present
both in the rebellion of the Titans and in Crusoe’s feelings of guilt, when he feels he
is disobeying his father and going his own way.

Masculinity Crisis

Also in modernity we can find reflections of this paternal conflict represented by

opposition between the value accorded to the individual and remembrances of
traditional societies. The individual’s emancipation in the political-social order, that
achievement of modernity at the end of the 18th century and the first decades of the
19th century, is on a par with the confident and proud affirmation of individuality in
the domains of ethics and aesthetics. That notwithstanding, both Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche analyzed the illusions and evils of individualism, and their criticism found
extension in psychology and in sociology at the end of the 19th and beginning of the
20th centuries. “The subject’s autonomy and loneliness appear as one of the most

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ambivalent phenomena of the modern condition,” writes Le Rider (1992). The crisis
of individualism, experienced in the form of a sense of subjectivity, can be found at
the core of literature and human sciences.
Le Rider contextualizes in that fashion the “male identity crisis.” A certain notion
of disassembling of masculinity seems closely linked to the transition to modernity.
By analyzing the works of different authors, such as Musil’s (1989), we see he paints
a panorama of the modern world by means of the crisis in female, male, and Jewish
subjectivity.
The emancipation of the subject has an important link to the transformations in
body sciences started in the 17th century. As regards manipulation of the body, the
century known as the Era of Scientific Revolution received prior contributions from
Paracelsus, Galen, and Aristotle. However, a new angle on the questions of identity
had its start at that time. Up until then, the manipulation of corpses was forbidden,
as the human body was considered sacred and inviolable by the Church. Descartes’s
contributions to philosophy made possible the development of a system of thought
that made the truth of things emerge by itself, supported by mathematical principles.
He perpetuated the scholastic and speculative thinking of the past, but opposed
Aristotelian conceptions.
By means of Discourse on Method (1637), Descartes offers a new perspective for
scientific thought, which more and more acquires utilitarian contours. Added to him,
Roger Bacon, a philosopher of science, valued the inductive experimental method.
He worked without having a defined hypothesis, seeking, through experience, to
allow his speculations to lead to a theory. Bacon was not valued by contemporary
scientists, but he did not side with Copernicus, who defended the thesis of
heliocentrism. The 17th century considered the body a micro representation of the
universe, understood as similar to a machine that must be explored.
Following that perspective, William Harvey discovers the existence of a system
responsible for the circulation of blood in the body, thus, offering a great contribution
to the philosophy of medicine. In The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, Dutch
painter Rembrandt (1606–1669) recreates a common scene in the 17th century. The
holding of public dissections of corpses allowed more and more detailed investigation
and revealed that the bodies of men and women had a greater number of similarities
between them than differences.
That realization originating from anatomy led to the reformulation of
considerations about what distinguishes a man from a woman. Whatever was, until
then, considered the truth about each of the sexes is gradually overcome; in other
words, the verification of similarities in tissues, organs, and other organic systems
had as effect an idea of crisis in masculinity. The sexual difference ceased to be a sure
reference to discriminate between man and woman. In the following centuries, both
started to be considered more and more as objects of investigation and knowledge.
The representation concept present in the thought of Kant and Hagel made viable
that operation of culture that will culminate in the birth of Human Sciences and,
with them, of the theories on the subjective. From then on, men and women will be

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 THE FIRST SEX

accessed by means of the identity crises as an expression of modern individualism’s

vigor.
In Le Rider’s view, the masculinity crisis, characterized in a few works at the end
of the 19th century, can be thought about through femininity nostalgia, or through
the characteristics of “bisexual love.” Homosexuality and repulsion at women are
expressions of that crisis. Therefore, what comes to be a pertinent question for the
individual sphere can also be understood in the scope of culture. The bisexualization
of the culture, present in Sex and Character (1903), by Otto Weininger, points to a
disfigurement of the boundaries between male and female representations present in
contemporary culture. He signals transformations that will take place in the female
representation, something that will increase its insertion in the public sphere. As for
the male representation what takes place is absolute decline, which was initiated in
the transition from traditional to individualistic societies. Weininger describes an
unabated attack on everything that represents the feminine in the culture, starting
from an analysis of the place defined for it by patriarchy.
The identity crises, as a phenomenon inherent to modernity and to the unfolding
of individualism, can be understood as resulting from the position that contemporary
philosophy adopts in the 20th century. The position transcends those crises and
arrives at the foundations-of-knowledge crisis present in Nietzsche and Heidegger.
In Edgar Morin’s view, contemporary philosophy “is less devoted to the construction
of systems upon secure foundations than to generalized destruction and to the
radicalism of questioning that relativizes all knowledge” (Morin, 1984, p. 84).
We can identify that trajectory in Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous
Illness (1903). In Schreber, male representation is seriously shaken, and that causes
him to hear voices, to feel like a woman, and to believe he has the prophetic mission
to renew humanity. Many decades later, we will find in the discourse of skinheads
a desperate attempt to recompose for themselves a previously valued place, yet one
lost while a symbolic record in the culture.
Le Rider presents the individual fates of Weininger and Schreber as being those that
condense what is termed, in the context of Viennese modernity, “male representation
crisis.” We notice that the notion of the disassembling of the masculine seems linked
to the very idea of modernity and is revealed through the feminization of art and of
literature around 1900. That feminization of the culture corresponds to what Baudrillard
referred to as a society that relinquished alterity and, consequently, the Oher. In it, the
Other ceases to be the representation of Evil, to be recognized as Evil itself.
Another aspect to mention about the masculinity crisis is the emergence of
homosexuality as a practice that establishes a relationship with the “natural” facts
of sexuality. Both in Schreber and in Weininger, we find the sense-of-identity crisis
linked to homosexual behaviors. In Baudelaire, for example, we identify an aversion
to “normal” sexuality that can be likened to extreme misogyny and to childhood
nostalgia. Homosexuality is nothing but one of the names that one can choose to
designate that revolt against the “natural” facts of sexuality, and that feminization of
art and literature that characterizes modernity.

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There is present in the literature of the end of the 19th century a certain element of
renouncing women, a distinct aspect from homosexuality. Also, in different authors,
we find affirmation of a new “male culture” and of men’s emancipation.
At the same time, the transformations contemporary societies have been going
through, in particular those referring to the fragmentation of social values and of
ethics, become more accentuated as a result of the radicalization of individualism.
We observe that in delayed modernity contexts there’s been little concern for the
impacts of those transformations on interpersonal relations. Violence, drugs, and
the unemployment and family crises have been creating a sense, especially among
younger men, that little can be done about these problems. Interestingly, the highest
statistics for violent deaths (traffic and homicides) are found precisely among the
younger age brackets.
In contemporary societies, another aspect associated with the idea of a masculinity
crisis is extreme valuing of the private to the detriment of the collective, as well as
certainty that the solutions to the problems around us have exclusively individual
solutions. This fact leads to an attitude of indifference among subjects as regards
social issues, and particularly those that refer to men and, more specifically, men’s
violence against men.
The belief that, in order to carry out projects, every subject depends on himself
alone and on resources he may have available strengthened, in this panorama, the
idea that a subject must be by himself in order to be a man (Robinson Crusoe, Faust,
Don Quixote, and Don Juan). In this nihilist culture, where everything quickly
becomes obsolete, pleasure is sought without restrictions, and the hero has become
a hero for himself – differently from mythical societies, where the hero’s works
were also community actions and the hero’s vigor resulted precisely from that. In
contemporary societies, the bond every subject has with himself and with others is
sustained by the ephemeral and the market game. In this context, material values are
asserted over the emotions, and competition overrides solidarity.
A society that operates on this basis adopts for principles the economy, the market,
technology, and information, taking on more and more psychological and industrial
characteristics. Therefore, we trade ideas for products, physical force for technology
power, and our performance standards become defined by machines. Today,
what grants us our humanity is no longer found in ethical principles or personal
relationships, but in the attempt to reinvent the human through the technological,
bringing the former closer and closer to the machine. Both the concept of human
nature and that of collectivity, as they were portrayed until the beginning of the 20th
century, have become meaningless in light of contemporary prerogatives. Honor,
virility, and physical strength have come to represent references of the past, retained
in some fashion in the empirical subject of the male sex under the allegation of being
obsolete.
The masculinity crisis defines itself in the face of that transition, and it can be
interpreted at an early stage as an attempt by men to differentiate themselves from
the masculinity standard socially established by traditional societies. This crisis

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 THE FIRST SEX

represents the problematization of social male representation that converges to the

belief in the existence of a real man, around which every boy is socialized. But it
can also be thought of as necessary to fuel individualistic radicalization represented
according to the ideology of minorities.
Part of what was recently produced about male representation, back at the
beginning of the 1970’s, addresses the masculinity crisis by means of criticism to the
idea that a man is made through such performance indicators as: physical strength,
uncontrollable sexuality, homophobia, financial success, and social prestige. That
dictatorship of winning is replaced with a type of personal engagement where losses
and gains are included as an integral part of the path toward consolidation of what
grants a subject identity. Seen from that angle, the masculinity crisis is addressed
exclusively in the perspective of the empirical subject and not on the plane of culture
where social representations are conceived. It is the subject who comes to be seen as
inadequate or maladjusted before the premises of contemporaneity.

A Real Man

Isn’t touching the eternal loser to touch the winner? (Goethe)

One of the consequences of the dictatorship of winning is the definition of a
relational pattern based on impersonal interactions restricted to social encounters
and competitive attitudes. Even among men, little is shared about what one
experiences, to the extent that the other is simultaneously considered enthusiastic
ally and unconditional enemy. From the interviews carried out with participants in
the PAI-24h Program, the following statement is noteworthy:
I think that the masculinity standard is expressed in different ways. Essentially,
it is a feeling that one can only be a real man by treating others as lesser men. It is a
belief that, in a way, one can only reach a certain degree of masculinity without the
presence of women, or only in the company of other men, or through behaviors that,
to a point, before women, make him feel that he is better than they are. I think that
the masculinity standard very much comes from the belief that there is a real man.
This statement by a 40-year-old man presents one of the difficulties created by the
socialization process a boy is subjected to. He was socialized to believe in the social
expectation that he should identify parameters toward recognizing in himself attributes
of the so-called real man representation. In our culture, the male representation that
comes closest to that representation has its origin in the father-son relationship, and
in what is idealization and appearance in it. Up until a few decades ago, paternity
was considered by feminist literature an act of faith. To that point, in Posthumous
Fragments, Nietzsche says that subjects should “revere motherhood, given that the
father is nothing more than an accident” (Bertrand apud Nietzsche, 1990, p. 157). A
man could only know himself as a father if a woman so recognized him, similarly to
the words of Lady Macbeth: “Are you a man? Come, I will take your life now.” The
destitution of powers that one sex had over the other is greater and greater. Today,

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paternity is not an accident. It is technology that confirms paternity, which ceased to

be a belief and came to be an act of science; the father stopped being a representative
of the traditions and became a singular subject, someone one can listen to. Presently,
we have an appeal for this father to speak, to be seen and heard. On that point, in his
statements, another interviewee mentions that, in his experience, that idealization
distanced him, while a son, from his father’s world. Today, as an adult, he is the one
who has a hard time becoming involved in his child’s world. He says:
I grew up in a suburban family with a father who worked in retail commerce.
My mother worked throughout my teenage years, and between the ages of
20 and 40, most of my childhood memories were of distance in a way, or of
discord with my father. He was a rigid and authoritarian person. Then, after
age 40, I had a son. All of a sudden, all those memories came to the surface
again. And they weren’t like conscious memories. There was no… They were
like instinctive memories within me of how much I loved being a child. I really
loved it. But I had forgotten about that, I was not able to deal with that.
In our society, fathers’ involvement in their children’s day-to-day is a relatively
new phenomenon. Some of the men who belong to the reflection groups may even
be thinking that they’d like to alter and expand the participation possibilities for
the male social role, but doubt about how virile they will remain weighs on them.
It is hard for them to talk about those insecurities. The father image is also one of
somebody threatening and angry, who does everything possible to hide from himself
the fear of not feeling as a real man. But what does it mean to be a real man?
This question could be answered in two ways. On one side, it would have as
a backdrop a patriarchal society, in which the social demands on a boy converge
toward the real man representation. On the other side, individualistic society has
been permitting successive revisions to the representations of men and women.
Consequently, we see new social demands emerging for both sexes – particularly
as regards a different male representation, constructed to allow for other forms of
involvement with children and with domestic tasks.
One of the interviewees says:
as a father, I was many times conflicted about how connected I should be to my
son… wrap him in a towel after his bath, hug him when he was upset… simply
to have a loving relationship. I was afraid; could I be exaggerating? Spoiling
him too much? I worry. I want him to be strong, to be tough. I want him to be
able to take care of himself, but not to the point of losing his sensibility.
Another participant comments:
My father was a very kind and also loving educator. When I ask myself
where the affection came from… physical affection in my life, I see that it
came from both my father and my mother, in part, for cultural reasons. My
father was Russian, and physical affection among men and between father

40
 THE FIRST SEX

and son was natural to a certain point, more so than in the culture my mother
came from; she was Presbyterian. I never thought there was any sort of
disagreement between the sexes about the raising of children. Then, when I
became a father, I felt I could handle the job. I felt good taking care of my
children. But I felt that there was this glad surprise from the outer world at
my doing so.
The experiences lived in the relationship with one’s father predispose toward an
intimacy pattern that men tend to reproduce in adult life. That pattern is characterized
by silence and estrangement. In our culture the denomination “intimacy” is associated
with female representation and has to do with what is intimate, what goes within,
that operates on the inside, very cordial, affectionate, linked by affection and trust.
For men, the notion of intimacy is not included in the socialization process they go
through; it is not something they learn, exercise, or develop.
This inhibition for intimate relationships corroborates the male representation to
be followed by boys, and which corresponds to that of a real man. It originates from
the idealization of the father representation founded on the symbolic distance that
such father representation carries in traditional societies. For one example of that,
we have the representation of God, who is the father, is up in heaven, and requires
obedience and loyalty from his children. To the son, this father is someone lonely
and reserved as regards his personal experiences, or else superficial and practical,
oriented toward action and the accomplishment of tasks.
Socially, women are allowed to express feelings of insecurity before new
situations, and that does not disqualify them as women. Differently from what occurs
with men, who grow up learning that in order to be real men they have to exclude
from their lives the experience and expression of certain emotions.
Nevertheless, presently it is expected that, in their relationships, they should
possess the necessary resources to understand the emotional needs of their partners
and children, at the same time that they are complicit with them. Considering the
masculinity standard belonging to patriarchal societies and the new demands placed
on subjects by contemporary societies, the “new masculinity” requires sensibility
from men, without prejudice to their virility, as well as initiative and assertiveness,
with no implication of displays of aggression, violence, or competition.
The new demands placed on men are situated within the scope of interpersonal
relations and problematize the way they forge their emotional ties. A boy learns that,
during his socialization process, he must silence his feelings and frustrations, as well
as avoid situations of shame and fear. He grows up creating defenses and protections
against unpleasant feelings, as they may serve as indicators of fragility and limitation
in living up to the requirements of his social role. Within the patriarchal system’s
framework of references, for some men, dealing with that limitation means being
very close to failure. Thusly, the effort they make to keep the necessary distance
from the feeling of failure limits their ability to increase their levels of emotional
autonomy.

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CHAPTER 2

A subject’s sense of identity is directly related to that of sexual identity. In part,

that sense relates to psychological experiences lived from childhood to adult life,
but it also relates to the culture and the family one belongs to. However, “not family,
not nation, not religion, not language can ensure a subject’s internal sense of his
subjectivity” (Berry, 1990). According to Berry, one’s sense of identity combines the
confident certainty of “I am comfortable with myself,” the confidence of “I know
myself,” the surprise of “I was not myself,” and the disdain of a surprising “I don’t
know myself.”
For a man, that sense of identity is born from a social practice geared toward work
and sexual performance. Those are the main references of the male representation
circulated in traditional societies. From early on, boys grow up assimilating the
idea that only through work will they be recognized as men. Therefore, work has
a cartographical dimension, as it draws a line between one’s sense of identity and
of social insertion. Work serves a double purpose for men: one of them is being the
axis by means of which a subject’s way of thinking and acting will be structured, the
other inducts him into the field of discipline, of method, and of violence, referring
male representation to a repetitive day-to-day.
Tolson states that,

The first day of work is an initiation into the realm of working men’s secret
and conspiring solidarity. It is by means of work that a young man comes to
be considered a “real man:” He makes money, climbs the power ladder, gains
personal independence from family. Men become strangers to themselves. And
it is through work that this strangeness is created. (1983, pp. 45–46)

In one of my other works, I consider that

work defines the first mark of masculinity, to the extent that on a social level
it makes it possible to leave the family home. One of the functions there is
severing the link to family, making a man, under the pretext of independence,
into a subject committed to a “productive” obsession and with reproducing the
values of the capitalist order. (Nolasco, 1995, p. 34)
One’s sense of identity is a sense of being one’s own self. For a man, that sense
develops through the way he will carry out his insertion in the world of work. In
some way, that represents his pursuit of recognition regarding social expectations
previously molded by paternal demands.
According to Colman,
For most men life is a long search for reunion with the lost father. Ask
Telemachus, whose search for his father, Ulysses, is defined as what today
we call “Homeric Odyssey” […]. Most men in my research indicate that the
men they most want to love and they wish to be the closest possible to – their
fathers – were the ones they were the least able to be intimate with. The ally
is revealed as rival. The hero has two faces. (Colman & Colman, 1990, p. 88)

42
 THE FIRST SEX

Just as the roles of father and mother are defined, a boy tends to orient his
behavior basically to respond to external appeals and carry out tasks and actions
that tend to move him away from his experiences and emotional needs. Based on the
patriarchal system, a subject feels like a man when he connects with experiences of
accomplishment and enterprise external to himself, to the detriment of engagement
with experiences in interiorization and emotionality. As a result, we are talking about
a subjectivity that can only reveal itself to be closed or appearance, that finds in the
real man representation its greatest limit.
In our culture, male representation has been, as Gilmore tells us, a problematic
ideal that cannot be reached through exchanges resulting from interpersonal
relationships, but rather through professional performance, acquisition of wealth,
display of physical strength, and through intense sexual activity (Gilmore, 1990).
But why is it a problematic ideal?
Because by adopting the real man representation as parameter for the socialization
of boys we are admitting that, from the emotional standpoint, it is necessary to take a
host of precautions in their lives in order that when they grow up they will turn into
those so-called real men. Thus, for every real man, there are many others who won’t
make it. For every jock, there is a sissy; for every successful man, there is a loser;
for every strong man, there is a weak one; for every god, there is a devil. These polar
representations serve as markers for the contours of a subjectivity that, in itself, is
conceived as problematic. But must that be so?
Formani says that, whatever masculinity is, it is very harmful to men (Ramirez,
1993). In his account of his experience in an institution in England, The National
Service, English sociologist David Morgan tells us that, in the rites of passage for
boys, such attitudes as cursing, smoking, being obsessed with women and soccer
were part of the masculine culture inherent to any institution, including the one
in question (Ramirez, 1993). He signals certain equivalence between militarism
and masculinity, as well as approval of exacerbated violence (through movies and
practices), and also disdain for gestures or movements deemed delicate. Homophobia
was a common attitude and encouraged among the boys of that institution, who
adopted an ambivalent behavior relative to homosexuality.
At these institutions, according to Segal, men were led to learn about masculine
gesticulation and to reveal their masculinity, more than to express their personal
characteristics, wishes, and attributes (Segal, 1990). Segal also states that men
learned to speak and live with their masculinity in an invasive and dominant manner.
Male representation would be directly linked to social values, making it difficult,
therefore, to establish it with some degree of tangibility, given that social reality in
contemporary societies is in continuous change.
Part of the male literature produced in the past twenty years works upon
empirical masculinity indicators originated from traditional cultures, such as
fertility, impotence, premature ejaculation, concern about penis size. The personal
disturbances that can emerge from such situations characterize a state of lack of
knowledge and despair in dealing with emotional life. In the patriarchal system,

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CHAPTER 2

this is the channel that exclusively identifies a boy with another man, reducing him,
through a sexist logic, to the exercise of his genitals.
Gilmore (1990) comments that for the most part men fall quite short of the
masculinity ideal circulated through the patriarchal system. The arrival of masculinity,
Le Rider tells us, goes through a “virile affirmation” and never comes to constitute
a definitive acquisition. To him, “virility must be constantly earned, at the risk of
regression toward femininity, always ready to gain ground” (Le Rider, 1992, p. 154).
One of the implications of that dynamic is the construction of relationships focused
on low-emotion and high-intensity sex.
There is a vein of emotional dependence, not made explicit in the man-woman
relationship, given that it represents the life of feelings. That implies establishing
relationships of friendship more “easily” with women than with men. Giddens
(1993) cites a study conducted with 200 men and women in the United States where
two thirds of the men interviewed were not able to name one intimate friend. Among
those who were able to, the friend was most likely a woman. On the other hand,
of the women interviewed, three quarters were able to name one or more intimate
friends, and for them it was always a woman.
There is also in the relationship between man and woman a social expectation that
the man should dominate that relationship, defining, to that end, strategies to bring
the woman into submission. Our society identifies these cases and presents them
as the most radical representatives of the threat of alterity loss: Violence, rape, and
battering are expressions of that foreshadowing.
This behavior that blends intimacy with sex and violence is provided for in the
masculinity ideal still in effect in contemporary societies. That ideal exacerbates
and encourages boys to confuse violence and assertiveness in life. Evidently, there
isn’t a rule that leads us to conclude every man who has trodden the conventional
socialization path is someone susceptible to producing this confusion. However, it is
common to find men resolving conflict through the use of physical force and violence.
Nonetheless, according to Giddens (1993), not only men make use of that artifice,
but also women are quite frequently physically violent toward men in domestic
environments, and violence does not seem to be rare in lesbian relationships, at least
in some contexts.
Men were socialized to go through successive trials, which in turn feed into
the expectation that someday they will come to feel like real men, and therefore,
recognized and socially inserted. From both a social and a psychological standpoint,
the real man notion makes it difficult for a subject to establish intimate relationships
with anyone, to develop and deepen his emotional ties in such a way as to relinquish
the use of violence. The absence of intimacy can be thought of as one of the marks
of brutality that produces violence.
That being so, we will be replacing acquisition of the real man representation
with the possibility that each subject may find a representation with which he feels
identified, thus, allowing him to listen to his own mythical story carefully, instead
of preparing for successive performances. Construction of male representation must

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 THE FIRST SEX

go through a coming together with what is true and singular in every subject. That
exercise goes beyond sexual theatricality. Regarding that, Corneau (1990) leads us
to think that every man’s truth is the mark of his personal history – it can only
be revealed at the same time through intimate relationships, complicity, solidarity,
and love. That undertaking is only possible if a subject is and feels inserted in a
community, keeping in mind that masculinity is a construct that gives visibility to a
public and gregarious life. If that collective life is being banalized and turned into
an opponent to an individual’s life, will the same happen to the empirical subject of
the male sex?

LEARNING TO BE A MAN

As we initiate studies about male representation, we find analyses about a given

representation considered hegemonic and identified with the “macho” man.
Machismo is presented as a value system guiding a culture about the sexes. The term
“machismo” brings in itself conceptual limitations as regards its explicative capacity
for mapping subject organization. The term reduces the issue of the subject to one
single aspect: the cultural-political. Its use in indiscriminate fashion points to a set
of behaviors that hinder understanding of how masculinity is socially constructed.
Male social representation can be implicated in the relations between the genders,
as well as in the possibility of transforming the parameters upon which it rests.
Nevertheless, taking into account different studies about primitive societies, we can
see that the beginning of male representation construction follows a binary logic and
differentiates itself from how femininity becomes delineated, as described in Simone
de Beauvoir’s feminism: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
If we follow the direction provided by the literature on machismo, taking it as
an analytical category, we will find theoretical deficiencies, differently from more
recent studies about male ideologies, sexuality, and social construction of masculinity
(Bermúdez, 1955; Stycos, 1958). Those studies offer us a different possibility for
thinking of how male representation is socially constructed, and how it relates to the
real man representation in Western societies.
There are theoretical approaches that contribute toward an understanding of the
complexity around which male and female representations emerge, (Maccormack &
Strathern, 1980; Ortner & Whitehead, 1981) uses of sexuality, (Dover, 1978; Herdt,
1981; Keuls, 1985) relations between the sexes (Reiter, 1975; Sanday, 1981), and
relationships between men (Brandes, 1980; Herdt, 1982).
From a social and political point of view, there is no absolute and linear male
ideology. In light of ethnic abundance and cultural diversity, we find male ideologies
that are the product of both and that exist in response to that diversity. Male
representation does not constitute a reality separate from the subject; it is a cultural
construction whose foundations are not exclusively biological, and neither is its
negation. Male and female representations, while analytical categories, are designed
of common consent with a beliefs and expectations system.

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CHAPTER 2

Gilmore proposes discussing what it means to be a man from the starting point
of an ethnographic and comparative perspective. He analyzes the male ideologies
in various societies, taking their differences into account. That approach allows us
to observe male representation in distinct types of cultures, from the simplest to the
most complex, located in different geographical areas. Except for Tahiti, Gilmore
finds a common element in all researched communities, one central tendency in the
construction of male representation: Being a man is something more than exercising
the right of being born male. In order to be one, a subject must prove that he is a man,
and only then, will he be recognized as such.
Among most of the peoples that anthropol­ ogists are familiar with, true
manhood is a precious and elusive status beyond mere maleness, an image that
men and boys aspire to and that their culture demands of them as a mea­sure
of belonging. […] A restricted status, there are always men who fail the test.
These are the negative examples, the effete men, the men-who-are-not-men,
held up scornfully to inspire conformity to the glorious ideal. (Gilmore, 1990,
p. 104)
Gilmore’s main argument is that male ideologies provide a necessary contribution
for the continuity of the social system and for men’s integration in their communities.
In most of them, masculinity is conditioned to the requirement that a subject is a
provider. That does not negate a woman’s contribution toward domestic support and
well-being or toward the community in general. He highlights three notions about
male representation. The first is related to an emphasis on physical work and on being
efficient at accomplishing the tasks assigned to a subject. The second associates male
representation with greatness, defined in physical terms, in terms of possessions, and
consequently, linking it to wealth, privilege, and power. A third notion has to do with
personal victories attained through the management of his actions in contribution to
society as a whole. In the cultures analyzed, the most difficult and dangerous tasks
fall to men, such as finding food, defending the group from predators, and warring.
That fact is justified because men have greater physical strength. In addition, they
are more available for such tasks, given that their participation in reproduction is
restricted to impregnating women.
The case of Tahiti is singular: a society where there is no male ideology in the
same mold of those identified in the other societies. According to Gilmore, Tahitians
don’t care much about masculinity, as they live in a society where abundance of
natural resources does not impose on men high risk tasks. There is no hunting; the
economy is cooperative, and therefore, it is not necessary to designate men for what
would be their duty in other groups.
Another aspect of the social construction of male representation that we must
address has to do with sexuality. Sexuality is a fundamental part of male ideologies
as regards its articulation with power and pleasure. In order to understand that
articulation, it is necessary to examine the dynamics in certain societies, and as an

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 THE FIRST SEX

example of that, we have a study conducted by Godelier (1986) about the Baruya of
New Guinea.
Every aspect of male domination in Baruya society had sexuality at its base.
Godelier’s analysis gravitates toward three points: the machinery of male domination,
the making of great men, and the ideological justification for the workings of the
social order.
Baruya society was located in the highlands of Eastern New Guinea, the last
region to undergo colonization by Australia – their first contact with whites took
place in 1951. It was an acephalous tribe with 15 clans divided by lineage, which in
turn, were segmented. The descendance system was patrilineal: At birth, every child
was associated with the father’s lineage.
The economic system developed around agriculture, making use of the slash-and-
burn method. The Baruya established a strict division of labor between men and
women. Within their system, the men were the owners of the land; they cultivated
it and dedicated themselves to hunting. Property transfer was done by the males
exclusively. The women were excluded from land ownership, from manufacturing,
and from tool control. The men would lend the women the tools needed to carry out
the work assigned to them. Women were also excluded from weapons possession,
for hunting and warring were designated male tasks.
Godelier points out that the tasks designated as women’s work had the following
characteristics: They required less physical strength, offered a lower risk of accidents
(Many men lost their lives when climbing on trees to cut them, collect fruit, or pursue
prey in the hunt.), and required less mutual help and cooperation among people. The
women spend a lot more time working alone than the men did, particularly in more
monotonous tasks, like cooking.
That being so, we find what Gilmore had observed about the characteristics of
men’s work when he said it required (from men) more physical effort and offered
greater risk. However, Godelier emphasizes that male domination does not come
from the social division of labor; on the contrary, the social division of labor among
the Baruya presupposes male domination.
Their domination system excluded the women, with resulting appropriation on
the part of the men of all assets, on the basis of 6 foundational precepts, to wit: The
women did not own the land, but they could use it; they could not own or use the
most efficient tools for clearing the fields; they could not possess or use weapons;
they did not participate in the production of salt or in the trade carried out with other
tribes; they depended on men to obtain salt; they did not possess any sacred objects
and occupied a subordinate position in the process that established blood relations,
given that the men would exchange them through the ginamare system.5
Those points signal that the women are subordinated to the men on the material,
political, and symbolic planes.
The Baruya go through a great deal of effort to turn boys into men by means
of initiation rituals. According to Godelier, up to the age of ten, boys live with the
women only. Ramírez (1993) tells us that

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When the time comes to begin the initiation process, boys are separated from
their mothers and taken to the men’s house, a place where women are not
permitted […]. The purpose of the various ceremonies celebrated during that
period is to separate the boy from his mother, disconnect him from the world
of women, turn him into a man, and prepare him to face women again when he
marries. The process is a complete immersion into the world of men through
which a boy’s masculinity is constructed. The initiation rituals, responsibilities,
attributes, and distinctions of masculinity that are gradually revealed to the
initiates form a body of privileged knowledge about and for men. It is a secret
knowledge that is never shared with women. In contrast, the process of turning
a female adolescent into a married woman takes less than two weeks and is
relatively simple […]. (p. 26)
That separation from the world of women leads them to achieve intense closeness
to other men. Among the Baruya, there are explanations about the origin of life and
of the sexes that encourage the use of homosexual practices between men.
Godelier highlights that, to them, children are created from sperm. Sperm is life
and strength; for that reason, women practice oral sex and ingest sperm when they
need physical fortification. The first sexual relations between newlyweds are of that
kind, given that sperm is considered essential for breast milk production. During
the process of initiation, young men drink sperm over many years. That very secret
practice takes place in the men’s house because the young men require sperm to
grow taller and stronger than women, for they must be superior to them, able to
dominate them.
Not every man can give sperm to the initiates. Married men cannot do it, as it is
considered an act of aggression against a young initiate to introduce one’s penis in his
mouth having already introduced it in a woman. That would lead to contamination
of a young man who is in the process of separation from the world of women. Thus,
only single men can provide initiates with sperm; the gift cannot be refused, since
this homosexual practice is fundamental for the masculinity construction process in
that society. This practice ceases when a man marries.
In the studies in question, we find reference to women’s menstruation being
ensconced in the belief that it drains male virility. Menstrual blood is viewed as
a manifestation of female power. It contaminates sexual practices and prevents a
married man from being the provider for an initiate.
Among the Baruya, social construction of masculinity is a constant making
oneself a man; it does not end at the time when one acquires the status of married
man. According to Ramírez (1993), a system of inequality is established among men
themselves. Sexuality, competence, and power are constitutive elements of male
ideologies, both among the Baruya and in other societies.
In the Sambia society from New Guinea, masculinity construction is carried out
through detachment from the mother (Gilmore, 1990). At birth, mother and father
separate, as childbirth is taboo, given that female fluids are considered dangerous,

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 THE FIRST SEX

toxic and can drain away male strength. Additionally, the Sambia avoid viewing the
mother breastfeeding her baby, as they fear that could sexually arouse her and put
the child’s life at risk. Babies are breastfed up till the age of three years, sleep nude
beside their mothers, and lead a life exclusively among the tribe’s women.
When a boy turns ten, he is abruptly separated from his mother and taken to
the forest, where he is undressed and severely beaten until he bleeds from his nose
and through his skin. Some cannot withstand the initiation rituals and die, but to
the survivors, now purified of female fluids, the secrets of men are revealed: If the
secrets are revealed before the ritual, they can lead to the initiate’s death. The boys
are deprived of food, as part of the ritual of purification from female fluids absorbed
over the time they lived exclusively with the women. They believe that only men’s
bodily fluids can produce true warriors. Therefore, for the ensuing ten years, fellatio
rituals are initiated where the initiates drink the sperm and blood of older boys. That
process extends to a young man’s maturity and ends when he chooses a bride.
All those rites are based on the belief that the extended union of a boy with his
mother can feminize him. It is worth noting that, among the Sambia, the homosexual
practice is condemned. On the other hand, in Western societies, there are rites that
also resort to exaggeration to produce men. For one example, there is the conduct
of teenage groups in contemporary cultures that live segregated from the female
world, while disqualifying any representation emanating from it, for fear that it
could threaten their sense of male identity. We also identify the fear of feminization
in military institutions, where it is used as a resource toward constituting male
identity. Young men are “chased” by professional soldiers and taken to the barracks
to undergo a series of masculinizing rites. They are lined up nude and evaluated;
the clothes they bring from home, where they lived with their mothers, are replaced
with their soldier uniforms; their hair is cut; also, it is common to find among them
situations of homosexual practice. These rituals are preserved so as to continuously
maintain a culture where initiates learn from veterans.
Such rites sustain the belief that male representation is constructed by eliminating
the female representation elements absorbed during infancy. At the same time that
they authorize a relationship with the mother and the other women in the community,
different cultures believe that masculinity is conceived through an act of rupture, of
force, of recovery and vigor to be continuously observed by means of tests. These
tests will certify if indeed a boy has become a real man or whether, on the other
hand, he still remains detained in the world of women, and they will not cease until
a young man has attained credibility and social recognition. They constantly take on
different forms at every stage of his life. As a man, he will always be questioned, as
does Lady Macbeth: “Are you a man?”
Given this panorama drawn from different cultures, Gilmore (1990) points out
that male representation is committed to dramatic contexts, differently from female
representation, which in many societies occurs according to a culturally refined and
extended biological attribute. He defines his work as being an anthropology of roles
and, starting from that focus, recognizes that masculinity ideals provide an important

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contribution both for the continuity of social systems and for the integration of
subjects into their communities. In his view, the male and female social roles are
considered to be culture operators that exist to solve behavior “problems” that may
occasionally emerge.
His analysis allows us to raise two issues. The first says that male representation
is a social status category relative to which subjects are continuously put to the test.
The second demonstrates that in all those societies masculinity is an impossible
ideal to attain. The so-called gender studies fail to do that term justice when they do
not include in their works a profound and systematic analysis about how subjects
become men in different cultures (Nicholson, s/d; Scott, 1988; Cancian, 1986). In
that sense, they commit what Gilmore (1990) calls theoretical arbitrariness when
they formulate gender concepts. These studies analyze restrictions imposed on
women by patriarchy through statements that place empirical subjects in opposition
to one another (man versus woman) in the social context, and they fail to consider
how male representation is constructed in societies where predatory hunting bears
no relevant significance, where men are not tied down by economic purposes, where
violence and war are unknown or carry no value. Gender studies have been adopting
a partial view of culture analyses when they universalize the idea that patriarchy is a
violent and oppressive system exclusively toward women.
They make a few mistakes when they ignore the situations of violence in which
men are predominantly involved (traffic accidents and homicides). As will be
discussed here later, those situations are directly related to the social expectations
regarding men’s performance.
Gender is a symbolic category that represents a continuum between the male and
female representations. There is no a priori polarization, since we cannot find either
masculinity or femininity in pure form, be it in a biological or psychological sense.
However, even though it is a symbolic category, we might ask why it is that effort,
investment, and passage through various challenges are required of a subject in order
that he may acquire “official” masculinity. It is interesting to think about and question
why, in different cultures, masculine representation became such a desirable state, at
the same time that it is granted to a subject through so many obstacles and tensions?
The tensions identified in male rituals are thought of by some authors as resulting
from evolutionary pressures, when those made subjects prepare for the hunt and for
war out of the need for group preservation. Tiger’s (1971) sociological argumentation
is in harmony with that by Wrangham and Peterson (1998), who also develop an
extensive study about male violence within a reductionist genetic approach. Gilmore
criticizes the sociological argument, the thesis of innatism, employed toward
comprehending the reasons why men are aggressive. He states that men are not
naturally aggressive, nor are they that different from women as regards that aspect.
He believes that in order to be a man, a subject must apply himself.
In any case, studies about masculinity seek, on the different theoretical planes
(biological, anthropological, psychological, and sociological), to make clear the
reasons that cause men to become involved in situations of violence, while trying to

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think through the articulations possible (Ramírez, 1993; Polk, 1994; Archer, 1994;
Spierenburg, 1998).
In his work about the cultures of the Mediterranean, Hertzfeld (1980, 1985)
found greater investment in monitoring merits obtained in the masculinity
affirmation process than in ensuring subject cohesion and consistency beyond merit
and performance. In those cultures, we can think that the expression of that real
man corresponds to a complex system of meanings and practices aligned with an
ideology termed macho (Stycos, 1958; Bermúdez, 1955). Most men belonging to
Latin cultures must meet the expectations of that ideology. In other societies, for
example in North America, common sense considers machismo to be violence or
the threat of violence. We know that “macho” in Spanish does not have exclusively
that meaning; as a concept, it is linked to broader aspects of social and political
life, one example being statements by former president Fernando Collor de Melo,
who addressed his ministers with statements such as: “I want an administration of
machos. Anyone not capable of defending the administration should leave it. Due
adaptations are made for Minister Margarida Procópio.”
Masculinity is earned by winning small battles with honor and praise. Maybe it
is for that reason that Pablo Neruda states: “It so happens I am tired of being a man”
(Ramírez, 1993, p. 37). In the West, masculinity does not come easily; it must be
earned through a great deal of effort, and there is a close relationship between male
representation and violence, since fighting is ultimately a way for a subject to defend
his image as a man. In Jacobin England, the worst insult one can direct at a man was
to say he had womanly ways or was a “good boy.”
In East Africa, boys from different tribes (Maasai, Rendille, Jie, and Samburu)
are separated from their mothers and subjected to painful circumcision rituals,
through which they become men (Gilmore, 1990). If a Samburu boy cries when his
body is being cut, or if he just blinks an eye demonstrating pain, he is humiliated
for his whole life, for he is not worthy of receiving man status. Like the Samburu,
Mediterranean cultures organize themselves around the real man representation, as
it is part of one’s honor and personal reputation. The representation not only earns
its holder respect, but also brings safety to his whole family or lineage. Those groups
share a collective identity that accords the community a reputation. Some studies
examining patriarchal culture consider this male representation to be divisive,
dilacerating, a personal vice (Beauvoir, s/d; Friedan, 1982; Wolf, 1992; Firestone,
1971). In light of that, they consider it a social evil.
In Ethiopia, for example, young men are forced to engage in bloody whipping
competitions, in order to show their masculinity. Likewise, in Melanesia, boys go
through such rituals before being recognized as men by their tribe. They are also
separated from their mothers and forced to go through a series of brutal rituals,
which include whipping, bleeding, and beatings – rituals the boys must withstand
impassively in order to become real men. The Tewa North American Indians also
believe that boys have to be made into men. The re equally removed from their
homes for purification and whippings without mercy by the Kachina spirits (their

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fathers in disguise). Each boy has his back hurt with a raw cassava whip that makes
him bleed, leaving permanent scars. Following this ritual, the elders tell the boys:
“You have been made a man.” Girls also go through rituals of passage, but without
the test elements, that is, beatings and bleeding.
Masculinity as analyzed in different societies seems to be directly implicated
in gregarious engagement. Man’s praxis is continuously associated with the
representation of life in community, thus, creating in subjects a yearning to pursue
a self-image profoundly involved with success, fame, recognition, approval, and
admiration from others. In Mediterranean cultures, masculinity can be considered
an expression of the love subjects have for pubic, open places (social agoraphilia),
where they are exposed to risks and opportunities.
Certainly, those boys are being prepared to develop susceptibility toward
aggression and violence, as a response to frustration. They are being hardened.
Not always are bleeding and violence part of masculinity construction.
Sometimes, for example as in Andalusia, virility and potency are the great tests of
masculinity. Among the Trukese, located in an atoll belonging to the Truk Islands of
the South Pacific, and the Amhara, located near Ethiopia, physical hardiness is the
most important. Other times, athletic ability or hard drinking are the measures of a
real man. Male attributes may vary in each culture; however, in order to become a
real man, a boy will have to go through some type of test, involving the following
elements:
• In any society, a real man is a protector, and that involves being a warrior.
• A real man must be an adequate provider.
• A real man must possess an erotic element, sexual competence, potency, or
virility.
• In Latin cultures, being a real man also involves being competitive, on a man-to-
man basis, vigorous, hard-drinking, generous, and dominant over women.
Analysis of different cultures allows us to infer that there are, in all of them, three
stages in common that a boy must get through till he becomes a man. The first of
them refers to the effort to be undertaken to sever the relationship with his mother, or
also, to distance him from her power. In the following stage, considered a transition
one, he is isolated from contact with women and ceases to be considered a boy,
even though he is not yet a man. In the third stage, he must prove to be deserving of
acquiring his masculinity and becoming a man.
In light of the “man-who-procreates-protects-provides” (Gilmore, 1990) parameter
determined for subjects, which is present in different societies, he must commit to
confronting danger, and from that, we can comprehend male representation as being
an induction toward a great performance in the social fight for scarce resources – a
code of conduct founded and articulated around collective interests and that overrides
internal inhibitions. In some way, masculinity is committed to the generalization of
traditional cultures: to reconciling social aims with individual ones.

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 THE FIRST SEX

In Mediterranean cultures, what makes a subject a real man are virtues opposed
to those of women: hardiness, strength, and power (Pitt-Rivers, 1968). A subject
gains respect when he is able to frighten other men, driving them out of his territory,
expressing ferocity, so as to defend what is his – similarly to what we identify in the
conduct of street gangs and pit boy groups. In contemporary societies, the loss of a
recognition and worth system, based upon which a boy gradually comes to feel as
a man, allowed for the occurrence of situations before which a subject can accord
himself worth through recognition on the part of a group. Displays of physical
strength and membership in a collectivity are an example of this “need” within street
gangs, organized soccer fan groups, and pit boy groups.
As Pitt-Rivers points out, Mediterranean cultures are identified with the value
system known as the honor-and-shame syndrome. Honor is male, and it derives from
success in competitions with other men, in defense of the family and of economic
success. The honor of men also results from shame on the part of women and of his
family, where shame means sexual modesty and chastity. If a subject is attacked
in his honor, be the attack directed at him or his wife, through seduction, he must
remedy the situation – something that will likely take place by means of violent
action.
Therefore, a subject protects the women of his family against depredation by other
men. Clearly, that creates sexual competition among men. Pitt-Rivers writes that
honor creates a social hierarchy among men based, in part, on sexual performance,
on a type of exacerbated “donjuanism”: The honor a man takes away from other
men by seducing his women becomes his honor, in such a way that men are forever
fighting over women. That contributes for the composition of the sexually aggressive
“Latin macho” cliché.
In the past, the male codes reflected the need for an aggressive and powerful
stance in an anarchical and dangerous world. Men had to be hardened in order to
protect their dependents from wild animals, from the forces of nature, and from
other hardened men. That is, after all, the basis for heroism. Currently, for the most
part, those dangers are overcome by technology or by social evolution, with the
exception of the danger offered by other men. As regards this last fear, we identify
its relationship with some male representations, to wit: the soldier, the boxer, and
the skinhead.
Soldier and boxer6 are professions. Soldiers must also follow honor codes and,
similarly to the cultures described earlier, must go through ritual tests. But, unlike
the characters in cavalry novels, or from Ulysses in The Trojan War, the soldier is a
commodity available for war. He constitutes himself through the negation of his own
singularity and history, as a soldier can be anyone and at the same time is no one.
After all, when it comes to making war, anyone’s son will do. That sets them apart
from mythical heroes, who constitute themselves as a result of their histories and
traditions. Ulysses is born with a combination of astuteness, wisdom, and strength,
and therefore, he is different from Hercules, who must fulfill Hera’s specific purpose.

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Nevertheless, no young man is born a soldier any more than he is a construction

worker or mechanic. Anyone can learn how to be a soldier.
Most recruits have never, in fact, been in a war. However, there are in the world
approximately some 20 wars in progress, and they are being fought by men who
learned how to be soldiers out of the battlefield. All the soldiers in the world have
the same profession, and that distinguishes them from all other men. They must
be different, for when at work, they kill and die. In addition, all soldiers are born
civilian, and at any academy the method for turning young men into soldiers is basic
training. That training is the same, be it in Brazil, in Russia, or in the US, and its goal
is to change people and to make them able to do things they never would otherwise.
The training provided by military academies defends the same in different parts
of the world; the uniforms may be different, but a soldier is always the same. For the
purpose of changing his way of thinking and perceiving the world, they are isolated
and put under great physical and mental pressure. In the initial stage of training,
a recruit is stripped of any evidence of his civilian identity; any insignias of his
personal history are taken away. In that regard, the basic training that the recruits of
the United States Marine Corps must undergo, on Parris Island, is the most severe.
Young men at the age of 18 go into a machine that manufactures a very special and
artificial product: the soldier.
As soon as they get to the training camp, they are greeted by the base commander,
who welcomes them and tells them that the United States Marine Corps makes men.
There, they will receive the tools needed to be able to sign their names as men,
and they will only be real men when they become marines. Many have never done
anything difficult or dangerous and become quite scared when they realize they are
outside their protection system. They are encouraged to continuously overcome
their fears, and one means for accomplishing that undertaking is by obeying orders
instantaneously; the other is by no longer feeling as an individual, but as part of a
group, of a troop.
Aggressiveness is an inherent quality of human beings; it can be found in men,
women, and children. The Armed Forces cannot create it or increase it. We know
that civilized life imposes limits to that aggressiveness, and subjects learn that
from early on, in particular as regards the use of physical violence. An important
part of training aspiring soldiers is teaching them to ignore those limits, so that
in certain circumstances, they will make use of violence against those deemed
enemies, and kill.
That way, basic training produces results equivalent to those produced by a
street gang without uniforms, made up of hardened, confident, and bloody boys.
But street gangs do not kill one another on a large scale. If they operated like the
Armed Forces, it would be necessary to deploy a true military operation to remove
bodies from the streets every day. However, gang members restrain themselves in
light of the belief that killing someone is an action that brings grave consequences.
Basic training serves the fundamental purpose of convincing recruits that the enemy,
whoever that might be, is not fully human, and therefore, there are no restrictions as

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far as exterminating them. Thusly, the representation of Evil is maintained, as well

as procedures for identifying it in any subject. A belief in Evil plays a fundamental
role in the upholding of that bellicose culture, as it allows for transforming the Other
into enemy, and with that, for the necessary polarization toward mobilizing soldiers
to make war. Differently from the warrior, or the hero, who does not depend on wars
to exist, the soldier can only survive through destruction and annihilation.
As an unfolding of the ideology of the barracks, we come to the young skinheads.
That term has been around for more than 25 years, and it was initially associated
with a culture that valued musical, aesthetic, and behavioral aspects. They were
groups derived from punks. Today, however, that denomination is linked to fascist
aggressions and to neo-Nazi groups. It is important to remember that originally skins
did not adopt racist or xenophobic attitudes; they were not aligned with the left or
the right.
In the 60’s they were young followers of black music and lovers of fun and sex,
influenced by the hippies coming from the British middle class. They were descended
from the working class, and they also absorbed the culture of black immigrants and
those from the Antilles (rude boys and chicos duros). In the beginning, skins were
closer to ska bands (a black rhythm and ideology contrary to hippies) and to soccer
teams. In 1966, England obtained excellent results in the world soccer championship,
thus, providing those groups great visibility as a result of various confrontations with
police. That is when boot boys came into being. Following that social panorama, in
1969, mods and skinheads appeared. From then on, the social identity of the latter
became more and more marked by vandalism and violence.
As those young people became gradually regimented by the right in different
countries (KKK in the US, neo-Nazis in Germany, and National Front in the UK),
they come to be defined as “soldiers of the truth,” prepared to reveal it to the world
and to fight against their enemies out of loyalty to the moral principles of the white
race.
Nowadays, both the soldier and the skinhead are male representations that
gained expression in societies where there was an emptying out of what symbolizes
community and unity, while a collective practice. Societies that operate under the
principle of technology and informatics relinquished the meaning provided by the
symbolic efficacy that connected subjects, situated them relative to one another,
and thus provided a sense of the collective. Everything that granted a subject “soul/
psyche” – the Greek hero’s mythical trajectory and his relationship to the belief
system that permeated that society, or also, the young Parsifal’s mythical path, as
he left his mother and went on a quest for the Holy Grail and connection with the
divine – comes to longer be relevant in contemporary societies.
Skinheads can be thought of as an expression of the madness in a society that
relinquished the use of alterity as a principle in its social functioning. They are
the expression of the death of social representations originating from traditional
societies that articulated subjects with a broader context, by inserting them in social
mythologies. Bellicose societies like those in the West, which produced the soldier,

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since the 18th century, as a necessary resource or their preservation, invested in

the construction of subjects who adopt an ideation of the other as opposer. Those
societies generated a form of human grouping that does not value the distinctions
among subjects and uses prejudice and physical force in an attempt to recover
meaning for itself, given by alterity. The soldier and the skinhead are men who do
not feel like men and must be in daily contact with many others equal to them in
order to know what sex they belong to.
The relationship between masculinity and collective practices is also present
in large urban centers. Soccer teams and organized fan groups are an example.
Masculinity is a collective experience developed by means of rites, tests, and trials
conceived so that subjects may publicly respond to whether they are men or not.
This binary logic fosters their systematically seeking insertion in collective practices
through which they can ensure visibility and social status for themselves, on a
performance basis.

BANALIZATION OF MASCULINITY

Banalization and clarification are two useful concepts toward understanding one of
the pathways of male representation in contemporary societies. Through myths, we
can realize that banalization is characterized as an expression of conflict between
spirit and intellect (Zeus and Titan), which translates to the ever present battle in
human destiny of choosing between matter and spirit.
Myth, while a quality of spirit, reveals the effort the hero must undertake so as not
to allow his desire to cast him toward matter. As Diel (1991) reveals, regardless of
how little he might stray from spirit and elevate matter, it will be sufficient to cause
him to bow to banalization. If myths narrate the origins, it is because in some way
they operate at the service of creation, and their meaning and orientation relate to the
narrative of the mystery involved in that act. Initially, subjects’ perplexity before the
mysteries of the “soul/psyche essence” confronted them with the problems brought
by a theogony, problems that were addressed by the cultures. Cultures set out to
address questions arising from subjects’ perplexity with the accident (sex and race)
that led the impacts brought onto them to require them to be able to decode and
order those impacts, so as to be able to understand them. Myths are the product of
that undertaking. In them, we can identify the hero’s struggle to reach higher stages
of integration at the core of an irreconcilable conflict, portrayed by cultures and
characterized by the battle resulting from the interdependence between subject and
society.
In Greek theogony, we find humankind as being the creation of Titan Prometheus.
The dramatic nature of a subject’s circumstance is described in the composition of the
mystery of creation. Human spirit is the most admirable expression of the mystery-
essence. “In that view, banal seduction, exclusive attachment to Mother Earth,
appears not only as a revolt of intellect against spirit, but also as an original fault, as
a sort of humankind fault in relation to the ‘mystery-essence’” (Diel, 1991, p. 123).

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 THE FIRST SEX

From that reflection we can comprehend what fault means to the hero, forgetting the
mysterious profundity of life. Myths symbolize that fault and denominate it “death
of the soul/psyche,” a concern every hero must mobilize against in the course of his
mythical path.7
If banalization is symbolically considered the “death of the soul/psyche,” its
opposite, purification, is represented by “immortality,” characterized by the hero’s
holocaust. That experience puts him on a path toward Zeus and, consequently,
initiates his entrance into Olympus. It is Zeus who casts a lightning bolt to light the
purifying fire where the hero will be burned – which means to say that Hercules’s
sacrifice is carried out with Zeus’s help. That way, the Greek ideal of man-god
consolidation is consecrated.
For a subject, winning over banalization corresponds to overcoming the fear
of death present in the mythical path; however, it is by defeating that fear that he
can die. As he goes through the experience of death, the hero conquers the spirit
dimension and recognizes himself as finite, limited, and singular. Only by so doing,
will he be able to commit to overcoming those dimensions and acquiring a “soul/
psyche.” The previously described male rituals fulfill that purpose when they turn a
boy into a warrior. They promote a boy to the status of an adult, supporting him to
advance toward death and to say no to the attempt to retreat to the womb. The rites of
passage, which must move a boy away from the “womb,” operate like a watershed
between the female universe and the child’s. For a boy, that universe is considered
an expression of the stagnant flow of conformity with the world of childhood. That
is “the winter of life, and our drama is to steady ourselves, so that life can proceed
once again. But that steadying can only be achieved by stepping on the cadavers
of those who are willing to die” (Miller, 1986, p. 15). Where there is death there is
violence, silence, and paradoxically, the possibility of life, of symbolization, just
as there is only possibility of life where there is finiteness, because the word is
finite. The word serves myth, whose purpose is to populate silence with names, an
achievement obtained by means of struggle and breaking apart, for only then can
a subject emerge from the word and connect with it to reign over the specter of
undifferentiation.
Turning ritual into an expression of the sacred means being able to contain violence
within the silence that preceded it, and that was undone through the elaboration of
origin myths. By means of those, the sacred is revealed as the promoter of the words
that will take the place of silence. That “populating” is perceived as dilaceration, a sort
of inaugural violence of creation revealed by estrangement, anguish, and pleasure.
That course is mythical and violent, given that, when the word breaks it up, the
silence of mystery is undone and in its place creation is revealed. The same way,
before the mystery of life, different mythologies present their creator gods with their
respective inventions: man and woman.
Origin myths deal with the murdering of a mythical creature by others also
mythical: word and silence. That event is considered as the founder of cultural order.
“From the dead divinity, there come not only rituals, but also the rules of marriage,

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the prohibitions, all the cultural forms that grant man his humanity” (Girard, 1990,
p. 120).
Through myths, we can realize that not only pre-modern cultures, but also modern
ones took it upon themselves to promote within themselves the formulation of
questionings regarding what they consider to be mysterious and about the violence
around them. Girard discusses that as we analyze mythical accounts we identify
bellicose behaviors and attitudes that evoke a sacrificial crisis that, in turn, generates
initially reciprocal violence. He says:
The benefits attributed to the founding violence will, therefore, exceed in
prodigious manner the frame of human relations. Collective murder presents
itself as the source of all fertility; to it is attributed the beginning of procreation,
the plants useful to man, and all edible foodstuffs flow from the primordial
victim’s body. (Girard, 1990, p. 120)
In the initiation rituals boys go through there is something in common with what
Girard describes as “sacrificial crisis,” a crisis of differences, in other words, of the
cultural order as a whole. In a way, the social order can be thought of as an organized
system of differences caused by subjects’ need to get around their perplexity before
the accident of life, defined as the incident where they are precluded from arbitrating
choices: being born a man or a woman, white or black, short or tall – characteristics
that define them and that they do not choose. That allows subjects to position
themselves relative to one another.
To Girard, violence is an inherent component of human societies, which take on
the task of exorcising it by means of expiatory victims. In that view, sacrifice serves
the purpose of “containing” violence, characterized by the exploitation of conflicts
resulting from rivalries. In human societies, violence is represented by means of
mediation from heroes and gods to whom their incarnation is attributed. Considering
the initiation rituals Samburu and Sambia boys go through, violence reveals itself as
something eminently community-based. By means of those rites, we can perceive
masculinity as a subjective dimension that must be expanded through the elimination
of what is considered inappropriate, impure, in relation to it. The ritual suppression
of that impurity is shrouded in violence. It is, thus, necessary to find ways to purge
violence from the group. The social construction of masculinity serves that purpose.
Negated violence, in turn, tends to return and spread throughout the community.
Granting males the status of First Sex, therefore, attributing it a superior value, upon
which the whole of patriarchal society is built, also is looking at it under the rubric
of the sacred: God is a man, and he is the father and is the son. And the sacred can
be viewed as that which dominates man, and makes him more and more feel like he
has the capacity for dominating it. “It is violence that constitutes the true heart and
secret soul of the sacred” (Girard, 1990, p. 47).
Therefore, as we analyze the course of Girard’s work, we can think of masculinity
as the expression of the sacred incarnate (Gilmore, 1990). As such, it aggregates

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within itself traits of violence and of what is collective. In modern thought’s

reflections on the sacred, we find an interpretation according to which primitive
reality is expressed by a “religiousness partially purified of his malevolent elements”
(Girard, 1990, p. 325). However, we know that it is not possible to transpose the
representations of the sacred to the collective day-to-day. The sacred delineates the
different aspects of community life, marking the contours of every dimension of
social life and situating them in relation to one another. As such, it is not simply a
matter of purifying evil. The benefits can only be achieved through pacification of
the divinity.
One implication of this reflection about “religiousness purified of malevolence” is
the formulation of the “new” male representation. What is sought is a purging of what
is considered nefarious (violence, virility, physical force), as if that were a possible
operation, and we arrive at the “feminine man,” a subject sanitized of evil. The
“feminine man” produced by Western culture is a modern fallacy, a simulacrum; he is
precisely the incarnation of what traditional cultures seek to avoid through initiation
rites. In our culture, the misogyny phenomenon is heir to the distortion of that process.
All those elements are related to one another, and they are part of subjective
organization; that means they have symbolic efficacy upon a subject. Destitution
from those elements without re-dimensioning them means demoting a subject,
without consideration of what they represent within the trajectory of social evolution.
Fearing that this could be consummated, subjects reveal their fear of feminization,
present in the Sambia and Samburu cultures, keeping in mind that this fear does not
mean homophobia; a boy must submit to masculinization rituals as a guarantee of
taking possession of himself. The violence he experiences corresponds to something
a lot smaller than the violence corresponding to loss of alterity, which is considered
a subject’s death. This loss implicates the extinction of the warrior, hunter, shaman,
and chief representations.
The transition to individualism gradually brought about a loss of value in
everything that was mediated by the religious man. While a representative of
traditional societies, the religious man instructed men about what should and should
not be done, and that exercise fulfilled the purpose of preventing the return of
destructive violence. On that point, Girard (1990) says:

When they neglect rites and violate prohibitions they call upon themselves
transcendent violence, which assumes the role of the demonic temptor – an
illusion for which men will continue to fight, spiritually as well as physically,
to the point of total annihilation. The surrogate victim alone can save them;
almighty violence may judge the “guilty” parties to have been sufficiently
“punished” and may condescend to become its transcendence once more,
to withdraw far enough away to observe mankind from the exterior of the
community, yet not so far away that it ceases to inspire the dreadful awe that is
essential to man’s salvation. (p. 316)

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With the radicalization of the individualistic path this century, we watched the
consolidation of a post-industrial and informational society averse to traditions.
Primitive society brought within itself the responsibility over recognition and
management of the sacred. We know that the sacred moves a great deal away from
the central core of society; there is always the risk that its teachings, that what they
show men about protecting themselves from it, will be neglected. Through religious
thought, traditional society also acknowledged that the sacred both founded and
regulated it. That allows us to recognize that subjects cannot live on violence, nor
can they live “for too long in detachment from violence, or under the illusion that it
is their instrument, a loyal servant, without taking into account ritual prescriptions
and interdictions” (Girard, 1990, p. 326).
The banalization of violence results from the banalization of Evil, a phenomenon
stemming from the incapacity of contemporary societies to enunciate the Evil
that eliminates the social dynamic materialized in primitive societies. In that
view, modern thought forbids itself to identify the sacred, thus, dimensioning it as
primitive, reducing it to the embodiment of violence. On his part, Girard shows that
modern thought tries to explain the exercise of violence as a result of non-acceptance
regarding differences. Explaining violence through prejudice is the most deeply
rooted of all prejudices, which only a correct reading of the religious primitive can
dissipate.
An expiatory victim is the one that must fulfill an arduous mission, that to expose
oneself to extreme danger and to sacrifice oneself for the benefit of the general
interest. This sense attributed to what is considered “in the general interest,” while
an expression of the collective, was being gradually defaced along the path of
history toward the 20th century. Through modern myths, it is possible to identify
that weakening of the collective dimension and that distancing of the sacred, both
present in the Greek myths.
For Girard, no society can live “within the sacred,” that is, in violence. However,
living in society is precisely escaping violence, something that has become a
modern obsession. Modern societies seek to eliminate the sacred, and they have
been doing so by reducing the religious to something primitive, wild. In Lyotard’s
(1993) view, the culture built in the post-industrial era is characterized exactly by
disbelief regarding philosophical-metaphysical discourse, with its a-temporal and
universalizing pretensions. This new world paradigm, instituted by means of its
negation, encourages a type of thinking that moves continuously away from the
violent origin, by means of the juridical-political plane and with no consciousness
about itself, and it becomes instituted.
During the 20th century, the traditional forms of reading and interpreting the
mythical universe were continuously devalued and banalized, thus, characterizing –
through their vulgarization – a new sacrificial crisis. Modern societies emerged from
the sacred and, gradually, moved away from it and replaced it with a sort of scientific
and technological rationality. We went from a world created by God, where man and
woman were defined at his image and likeness, to another one where man, in place of

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God, creates man at his image and likeness, thus, establishing social representations
that are valued to the detriment of others. Along that long journey, we see a change
in the concept of human nature, which is no longer defined as part of the divine, but
has become a sort of historical-political “nature” invented and created by culture
and production (Deleuze, 1990). Violence and the sacred gradually went out of sight
in the context of contemporary philosophy, less dedicated to the “construction of
systems upon secure foundations than to generalized destruction and the radicalness
of a sort of questioning that relativizes all knowledge” (Morin, 1999, p. 84).
Going back to what was said in the introduction, contemporary societies
move away from the sacred, and that moving away can be identified through the
involvement of men with situations of violence. At the same time, violence can be
thought of as an expression of the essence of evil directed at another person, and
evil understood as loss of freedom, a way of letting oneself be taken by immediate
gratification, a sort of appeasing of self-esteem.
Revisiting Ricoeur (1967), we are reminded that malignant action is characterized
by a retaking of a double scheme: sin and guilt. As regards sin, evil incarnates a
situation in which humanity is taken for a singular collective. Guilt, on its part, is
the access ramp to the dimension of Evil. Evil is engendered by human action in
its individual and collective dimensions. Through serving one’s punishment, a new
beginning is enabled, something in the order of creation.
The Devil played an important role, both in Antiquity and in primitive Christianity.
In Mesopotamia, among primitive Greeks and Hebrews, when it was felt that
something was wrong in the world, responsibility was attributed to the presence of
evil spirits, to mistakes caused as a result of wrong decisions, or to divine design.
Dualism radically altered that state of affairs, exempting God of responsibility for
evil and attributing it to an independent and hostile spirit, denominated “the Devil”
in some cultures. Among different representations of evil, the Devil can then be
identified as the expression of the unknown, of what has not been named.
Dualism has multiple effects on the cultures that adopted it, in fact, touching also
the social representation of the sexes. In a different slant, we have the same issue
raised by Honoré de Balzac in Séraphîta. Androgyny tells the history of a unity that
was undone, causing, thus, a double to emerge. In the beginning, from One, Two
were made, and the cultures, Western ones in particular, undertook an effort to make
each of them forget what their origin and history are. Moreno tells us that, the more
a subject represses his shadow, the darker and denser it becomes (Moreno, 1979).
That statement leads us to think about other considerations regarding Evil, among
which is one that tells us: In case Evil is silenced, at some point, it will return many
times more potent.
In search of a characterization of Evil, we are faced with the ambivalence present
in the concept of divinity. As an example, we can cite the studies carried out about
the Devil, which describe the history of Evil’s representative as an expression of what
Ricoeur defined as supremely the sacred’s crucial experience (Ricoeur, 1975; Russel,
1991; Woods, 1974; Watts, 1963). There is some closeness between the Jewish and

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Christian traditions regarding the significance of the Devil while a personification of

Evil. In the transition from monism to dualism, it was necessary to create a device that
allowed for the representation of God as, exclusively, the expression of Goodness.
For Christian thought, evil is nothingness, the absence of good.
On the other hand, in 15th century Germany, we find representations of androgynous
beings that sought to bring together opposites and that, similarly to some divinities,
reproduced the same ambivalence. Male and female, God and the Devil, life and
death are perceived by the different mystical traditions as manifestations of the
sacred. However, that dualism ended up polarizing each of the parts, driving them
further and further away and radicalizing their worth. To man and to God, a positive
worth was attributed, while to woman and the Devil a negative one. That served as a
guiding script for the development of social representations for many centuries.
Faced with the impact and significance of the “death of God,” contemporary
societies reinforce a type of social organization that relinquishes the religious – that
which operated for many years in traditional societies as a matrix through which
social tensions are absorbed. Contemporary thought leaves subjects to the abandon of
their own devices, and it represents a society that relinquishes collective orientation
markings and adopts different ones, such as hedonism, nihilism, and permissiveness.
Contemporary societies neglect their tensions, which represent a threat to social life,
when they interpret the “death of God” as being the dilution of the sacred. In the
context of modernity, the representation of Evil disappears, while a representation
of the religious, and of the sacred. However, denying its existence is fostering its
reappearance with greater potency.
The disfiguring of Evil is related to the interpretation modern societies gradually
came to accord to its specificity. More and more, the topic of Evil was shifted
toward the plane of politics, of history, and of law as an implication of how power
relations are defined (Foucault, 1979). That caused the symbolic power inherent to
the structure and function of myth to be relegated to the scope of the mystical and
wild primitive, which leads us to think about how those cultures treat metaphor.
In contemporary societies, technology and informatics take the place of what was
considered mythical (strength, courage, assertiveness, and vigor). The “death of
God” represents more than the elimination of the religious principle as a principle
for social organization; it corresponds to restricting use of the symbolic universe to
technology and the market (Baudrillard, 1991). We have, then, humans recreated to
the image and likeness of machines. Transsexual, trans-economic, transgenic, and
trans-aesthetic appear as the post-modern representations of contemporary subjects
(Baudrillard, 1992).
That effect created by the dispersion of Evil, banalizes its symbolic power and
places it all over the social network. That operation is only possible because Evil was
considered a restriction to be battled by the emancipation movements, which work
as culture operators regulated by desire. The dispersion of Evil corresponds to the
whitening of violence, and to the difficulty in enunciating it. Those societies came to
be interested in how it must be employed so as to lend consistency to the discourse

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on Good. One product of that principle is “politically correct” discourse, which

while a representative of Good, terms itself a discourse to restrict Evil. That way, it
is not capable of thinking of itself as a discourse of contradictions and ambiguities.
In order to survive, “politically correct” discourse, which is an unfolding of
individualistic ideology, and the modern equivalent of the place occupied by the
symbolic in traditional societies, makes use of a universal consensus strategy.8 Its
symbolic efficacy is made visible through its power to designate “the Other, the
Enemy, challenge, threat, Evil” (Baudrillard, s/d).
In that context, “politically correct” discourse has become the exclusive
representative of Good, and is adopted by a subject as if it were his own discourse.
However, paradoxically, that discourse has been transformed into a negation of a
subject’s alterity.9 In light of that reality, it is possible to demand employment as
well as unemployment, the right to strike as well as the right not to, the right to life
and the right to death, to adopt one’s birth sex or to change it. Nevertheless, anyone
who disagrees with what is determined by “politically correct” ideology or that of
human rights will be considered an enemy or even the incarnation of absolute Evil.10
Banalization came to be used as a strategic tool toward ensuring consensus
and disarticulating any other discourse not compatible with “politically correct”
ideology. It plays a relevant role in the preservation of emancipation discourses.
This strategy identifies Evil, instead of naming it, and by seeking the connection
that unites them, banalizes it. And to banalize means to destitute a subject of any
insignias or importance relative to his social role; to banalize is to whiten.
The representation the “politically correct discourse” creates of Evil is male, white,
and heterosexual. As such, it rested associated with what is exclusively traditional.
According to the discourses of minorities, which manipulate the sacred by means
of partial analyses, exempting themselves of any involvement in the situations they
seek to eliminate, that “evil” is the foundation upon which patriarchy is built. When
they deal with domestic violence, they point exclusively to male violence against
women, failing to include other types of also domestic violence, like that directed
at children, where women are the main aggressors (ABRAPIA, 1998). Also, still,
when they address “gender violence,” they do not include violence between men –
occurring at much higher rates than those of violence against women – and between
women.
In order to keep those discourses exempt of their own contradictions, it became
necessary to banalize certain social representations, in other words, feminist demands
present men exclusively in the aggressor role, as violent and having uncontrolled
sexuality (Beauvoir, s/d; Friedan, 1982; Wolf, 1992; Firestone, 1971) the discourses
of racial minorities (Davis, 1981) also characterize white men in the same role, and
the same goes for the gay movement (Costa, 1992; Parker, 1990) when it refers
to heterosexuality as a hegemonic sexuality. In the transition to individualism, the
social representations of subjects that originated from traditional societies were
problematized. And that goes both for women and blacks and for homosexuals.
That way, starting in the 19th century, we watched the growing reorganization of

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social practices and its implications for subject representation (Le Rider, 1992). In
the political sphere, through the consolidation of democratic regimes, we recognize
a commitment within social movements to redefining minority representations,
seeking to expand their participation in the public sphere, thus, restituting its social
value.
In order to make that path possible and compatible with the polarization of
individualistic ideation, a certain social representation (male) was placed in
opposition to the “new” representation (of woman, black, and homosexual). This
representation, which takes the role of the enemy, started to be visited as the one
impeding subject emancipation within the mold of demands made by the clarification
dialectic. Also an heir to individualistic presuppositions, this clarification provides
support for minority discourses, fostering certain rehabilitation on a social level,
recognition, and social insertion for those representations termed minority, but
which have hegemonic aspirations.
When we refer to the banalization of male social representation, we can extend
it also to two others: that of the white man and of the heterosexual. Within the
scope of the minority movements, male representation came to be the expression of
Evil. In the 20th century, the banalization of Evil allowed another representation
to appear that can be identified through Groening’s character: Homer Simpson
represents “the feminine man,” “a pink man,” “the woman within,” men without
any “soul/psyche.”
In the modern individualistic scene, male social representation retains within
itself the remnants of traditional society’s contradictions, so that the representations
making up this society will not investigate its implications for it (at the example of
the representations for woman, black, and homosexual). Through Girard’s (1990)
analyses, it is possible to realize that the movement for the consolidation of minority
discourses makes use of one social representation (male) in the same vein of the
value accorded to the “expiatory victim” present in sacrificial crises. That could be
one of the reasons why we don’t see in the 20th century a male revolution that could
lead us to a “new” man, as was the case with the “new” woman, and with gays, and
with blacks. The “new” man representation was created simply to be kept as a figure
of speech, imprisoned within emancipation discourses.

MALE VIOLENCE

To the politically correct ideology, being a man has become a crime.

(Anonymous)
A number of authors unarguably establish that homicidal violence is male in its
constitution (Wolfgang, 1958; Wolfgang & Ferracuti, 1967; Wallace, 1986; Daly,
Wilson, & Weghorst, 1982). Men make up the majority of the aggressors and, also,
to a lesser degree, the majority of the victims in homicides. Even when women kill
men, it has been demonstrated that they do so, in most of the cases, as a defense

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against violent acts of aggression previously perpetrated by their partners (Blum &
Fisher, 1978; Gillespie, 1989; Polk & Ranson, 1991; Easteal, 1993).
As a general proposition, homicide is related to male competitiveness. It is
men who feel compelled to compete for resources, for status, for domination and
control over sexual partners, thus, being willing to employ violence against other
men to ensure success in the competition. Based on the authors cited previously,
four scenarios have been identified for male violence (Polk, 1994). In the first one,
violence is considered control over the behavior of female sexual partners, which
implies to say that, in the subject’s view, the woman is considered his property. In
these situations, a man feels challenged in his masculinity, and as in the example of
the previously described male rituals, makes use of violence, if necessary, in order to
defeat a challenge to his ability to keep under his possession something that belongs
to him. Keeping what belongs to him is proof of masculinity.
The other three scenarios refer, for the most part, to violence by a man
against another man. One of them, according to Daly and Wilson, was termed
“confrontational” homicide. These are murders that start out, in some way, between
men on the basis of an honor dispute. These situations tend to occur spontaneously,
starting with some sort of affront directed at one of them. Another characteristic
of this scenario is that it is configured around defending one’s honor, without the
participants’ having the intent to make the violence lethal. In this type of homicide,
an audience plays an important role, both by offering social reinforcement for
the violence as it escalates and, in many cases, by leaving the passive position of
spectators and moving to engage directly in the situation of violence.
The second man-to-man scenario refers to violence that occurs in the course of
another crime. In it, the essential characteristic seems to be the men’s involvement
in marginal activities that lead them to risk their lives (robbery and theft). The final
scenario has to do with the use of violence as a tool used for conflict resolution.
These scenarios are typically male. Women rarely deal with those situations as
men do. At the same time, in the last three scenarios, the use of lethal violence
is a behavior found among the working and less privileged classes. Middle and
upper class men rarely become involved in lethal confrontations or engage in street
criminality that may result in loss of life, nor do they employ violence as a form of
conflict resolution. Some variables may be attributed to that configuration, among
them, level of education and age. Younger men with less schooling tend to become
involved in situations of violence at a higher rate than older and more educated men.
Two recent formulations sought to delineate general theories of crime, proposing
the presence of a common thread of elements. The view on homicide held by Katz
caused considerable discussion. In an analysis of what was termed justified massacre,
the author raised the following questions:
1. What is the murder trying to do when he commits a “typical homicide?”
2. How does the murder understand himself, his victim, and the crime scene?
3. Under what emotions does the murder commit the crime?

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For the author, “typical homicide”

is a passionate attempt to make a sacrifice in order to embody one version or
another of “Good.” When people kill in a moral fury, their perspective often
seems incomprehensible to us, and in reality, so it does to them moments after
the murder. But if we stay with the details of the event we can see the aggressors
defending Good, even in what at first seemed to be insane circumstances.
(Katz, 1988, p. 12)
Based on the analysis of various homicide cases, Katz (1988, p. 18) argues
that the “typical homicide” has the following characteristics: (a) It corresponds
to a “virtuous act in the eyes of the aggressor, carried out as a means to defend
collective values; (b) it is characterized by lack of premeditation; (c) the intent of the
aggressor’s actions is not predatory; there is a relationship between those acts and
those of a sacrificial crisis.
Based on those three characteristics, Katz highlights the importance of the role of
humiliation as the cause of the fury that leads a subject to commit homicide. Initially,
the aggressor feels morally dominated and responds to that with an attitude of
apparent indifference. Then, he becomes infuriated and tries to reverse the situation
by physically dominating the victim. That way, he initiates his recovery from his
condition of humiliation by means of the aggression that results in the victim’s
death, as in the classic case of a man who kills his partner after she has left him.11
It is worth remembering that there are homicide cases, such as those that are
premeditated, whose characteristics do not conform to the classification proposed
by Katz.
Daly, Wilson, and Weghorst (1982) approached male violence as a gender issue,
not as a social-class one, as usually occurs. Even though poverty and violence may
be close, the reasons that lead men to become involved with situations of violence
require deeper reflection, to include the manner in which male memory developed and
has been maintained in contemporary societies. In their studies, we predominantly
find men as the aggressors, and with social ties founded on sexual intimacy.
According to another established theoretical position, homicide results from
a substructure of violence (Wolfgang, 1958). That thesis defends that certain life
circumstances of some social groups create violence as a common product present in
everyday life. Wolfgang points to what is expected of a man: to defend his mother’s
honor, his wife’s virtue, and to never accept disqualifications regarding his race,
age, or masculinity. There is also a social expectation that a man will resort to
physical violence as a measure of daring, courage, and also of his social status,
especially among lower-class men. In homicides where there is confrontation, those
prerogatives are confirmed.
Wolfgang’s argument was expanded later in a work developed by him along with
Ferracuti, in which they state that the substructure of violence is not in complete
opposition to the dominant culture, nor does it require the continuous use of violence
as a response to each and every situation (Wolfgang & Ferracuti, 1967). What the

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substructure does is to promote certain social conditions within which violence

comes to be expected or required. For example, carrying a weapon is seen as being
disposed to participating in situations of violence. To a subject of this subculture,
it means being ready to engage in retaliation or to make a threat at any moment. In
light of that, violence has become a lifestyle.
This thesis was criticized by Gibbons (1992), McCaghy and Cernkovitch (1987)
for whom poverty is a greater indicator of homicide than the subculture of violence.
McCaghy and Cernkovitch suggest that the conditions promoting homicide be
analyzed more carefully, such as an emphasis on male honor, physical dexterity,
precipitation on the victim’s part, the excessive use of alcohol and chemical
substances, as well as a disposition toward carrying a weapon.
According to those authors, competitiveness between men leads to situations of
violence. Violence is a characteristic of that competitiveness. As a consequence of it,
one develops a life strategy defined as an adventure of greater risk and danger than
that of women.
Studies on male violence have focused more on violence by men against women
or children and a lot less on violence against other men. In part, that is due to the
fact that violence between men is more dispersed; it happens between strangers in
public places. It is also observed that violence within the family (domestic violence)
has been privileged, while a sort of prevention regarding cruelty against children
and as a concern with monitoring violence against women, for example, in works by
female scientists.
As previously mentioned, violence among men constitutes a grave social problem,
with repercussions not only for men but also for their entire families. Nevertheless,
due to theoretical, practical, and ideological reasons, this type of violence has not
been studied a great deal (Archer, 1994). Further and interesting insights involving
the analysis of alterity, a better understanding of a subject’s individuation path, and
the new possible forms of male social representation may emerge from those rare
studies. After all, no matter how prevalent the superman “myth” may be, how could
one explain The Simpsons and Earl Sinclair, from Dinosaurs, and all those new men?

NOTES
1
This position differs from the contemporary theoretical orientation defended by Keleman, which
places the body as a fundamental element of subjective organization, placing it, however, beyond the
biology of a Keleman primate. Without relinquishing the physical body, as do the approaches based
on sociological determinism, this school identifies it as the base of “self,” without which there is no
subjective development. The body as a process has cortical structure the necessary tool for organizing
itself and the world around it. See Your Body Speaks Its Mind: Sexuality, Self and Survival; Somatic
Reality; In Defense of Heterosexuality; and Emotional Anatomy.
2
Author’s translation of Spanish saying: “El hombre es como el oso, cuanto más feo, más hermoso.”
3
The denomination “soul” refers to the immaterial substance that remains in the midst of vital process
variations, which in itself produces and sustains the activities of psychic life and vivifies an organism. I
am not referring to the soul as being a mere complex of psychic processes, as mentioned by positivism
revisited by some psychology treatises. I also consider it to be simply a day-to-day experience and

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one of the most ancient convictions, both of a psychological and of and ethical and religious order
of humanity, and no less than the totality and unity of animist life. It is not my interest to discuss the
existence or not of a soul, or to follow the postulations by Pavlov, Wundt, or Bergson. However, I
consider the soul to be a man’s immediate self-experience and the observation he makes of exterior
life, and that makes it possible for a man to feel as same resulting from his social insertion.
4
This analysis is developed by Brandão according to observations by Hesiod about the fundaments
of a cosmogony, in other words, fundaments about the origin of the world presented even before
the Theogony. In Hesiod’s poem, didactically divided in three parts, the three divine generations are
present: Uranus, Cronus, and Zeus, sovereign fathers that occupy a place at the center of the family.
See Brandão, Junito. Mitologia grega. (Greek Mythology) vol. I, pp. 162s.
5
The ginamare system consisted of a type of exchange between men and women from different lineages
or lineage segments. When a young man decided to unite with a young woman, he had to have a sister
or cousin for an “exchange.” In case he did not, he should work for the family of his intended such that
he could be accepted as son-in-law. There was a derivate of that practice involving foreigners, where
those should pay for a bride by offering the family possessions. According to Godelier, the system
provides that “the only way one can compensate the gift of a woman is by giving another woman in
exchange […]” (op. cit., p. 102).
6
For a sense of the level of violence present in male culture, consider that, from 1945 to 1982, 330
boxers died on the rings.
7
That mobilization is portrayed Theseus’s stories; he was not lame like Oedipus and Jason and revealed
his well-armed spirit and protected soul/psyche. But it will be Hercules, considered the warrior of
spirit, to triumph over banalization. In his descent to Tartarus, he will tame Cerberus and will come to
Theseus’s rescue. Most of Hercules’s works represent the struggle against banalization.
8
Consensus and political correctness have come to be ways to refer to the precarious reminiscence of
the collective in contemporary societies.
9
See references at the end of this book to Violent Women’s Groups and White Pride.
10
Those were the terms used by François Mitterrand, former French president, to demonize Ayatollah
Khomeini and his policy of terror.
11
We can find similarities in this male attitude of killing the other in the documentary When Women Kill,
Barbara Doran (1992). In it, it is a few women who kill their partners. Inciting female violence against
men emerges today as the goal of some groups like The Association of Violent Women.

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CULTURE
Modernity and Subjectivity

In contemporary societies, there’s an attempt to believe that sexuality can escape

its sexual destiny. It is presented as a psychological category or as a social
drama. Anatomy has become defined simply as functional and mechanical.
 Keleman (1982, p. 11)

MODERNITY AND INDIVIDUALISM

The Industrial Revolution established a format for work relations that was
problematized at the end of the 19th century amid an atmosphere of hope and
progress. That public sphere phenomenon fostered a host of changes in the private
world, reaching all the way to the family and the man-woman relationship.
At the end of the 19th century, some critics of the work and family culture –
notably Marx and Engels – offered contributions toward the transformations that
took place in the 20th century as regards social representations. The women’s
movement and, later, that of homosexuals benefited from them, to the extent that
they also criticize the bases of traditional society and the way it defines family and
work. Women and homosexuals are two references of the patriarchal system that
relate to male representation.
The struggle for equality of rights by the minorities grew from the starting point
of proletarian demands and led to changes in some of the social representations of
subjects, and that caused a host of impacts on other dimensions of public life, for
example, how subjects relate to one another and how they are socially recognized.
The individualistic credo determined a dilution of traditional societies’ boundaries,
as well as of the representations of subjects associated with them.
In traditional societies, social recognition and visibility are defined according to
hierarchies that articulate different subjects within the culture. That web cuts across
different levels (class, sex, and social orientation), thus, establishing values and
subordinations among them. In those societies, a subject is identified according to
time and space variables (old, young, Southern, Northern) that grant him possibilities
for social insertion in the community.
The transformations in the world of family and work correspond to a stage of
quite broader changes in the whole social system. In the 20th century, this system
came to be defined according to discontinuity of time and space and to an investment
in the emancipation and strengthening of subjects’ autonomy. To that end, bonds of

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trust, control systems, and guarantees were gradually altered so as to consolidate

a vison for reflectivity of the “self.” The minority movements originated from that
vision, but what about male social representation? Why did it not benefit from those
transformations? In light of that panorama of change, male representation came to
be directly representative of everything that restricted a vision for emancipation of
the “self.”

The Contours of Modernity

Modernity is a post-traditional order, in which the questions about living are

answered through daily decisions. Those decisions direct how a subject must
behave, dress, or eat, thus, constituting also a temporal unfolding of self-
identity. (Connor, 1992; Harvey, 1993)
We can understand modernity as the equivalent of an “individualized world,”1
recognizing that industrialization refers to the social relations implicated in the
generalized use of mechanical energy and of machines in the production and
market organization processes. As such, industrialization is an institutional axis
of modernity. Another dimension of modernity is capitalism, a system for the
production of goods connected both to markets for competing products and to
the transformation of work force into merchandise. Each one of those dimensions
can be analytically distinguished from institutions of surveillance, which were the
base for massive growth in organizational power, associated with the emergence
of modern social life. Surveillance refers to control over the populations – one that
can take the form of “visible” supervision, in the sense adopted by Foucault (1978,
1984a, 1984b), or that of information use toward coordinating social activities. That
dimension of surveillance, for example, can become separated from control of the
means for violence in the context of “industrialization of war.” In a way, modernity
ushers in an era of “total war,” in which the potential for destruction, symbolized by
nuclear weapons, becomes immense.
Modernity also introduces, for sociology, certain distinct social forms, among
which the Nation-State is the most prominent. To some sociologists, as it refers to
modernity, society is a Nation-State that, under the form of social-political entity, is in
contrasts to most forms of traditional order (Durkheim, 1978; Giddens, 1991; Marx,
1987, 1988; Weber, 1981). The Nation-State represents a privileged characteristic of
modernity: the ascension of organization. What differentiates modern organizations
is not so much their size, or their bureaucratic character. When one speaks of
modernity, one does not simply speak about organizations, but organization: the
regularized control of social relations through defined space-time distanciation.
Among different aspects, modern institutions are discontinuous in comparison to
other premodern cultures and types of life. One of the characteristics that separate
modernity from any other time in history is its extreme dynamism. According to
Giddens (1994), the modern world is a

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runaway world: not only is the pace of social change much faster than in any
prior system, so also is its scope, and the profoundness with which it affects
pre-existing social practices and modes of behavior. (p. 26)
The dynamic character of modern social life can be described through the
following factors: (1) separation of time and space, that process and the resulting
emptying out of both, (2) de-contextualization of social institutions, (3) reflexivity.2
The first of them can be identified when we analyze the way cultures measure
time, as well as the way they define themselves spatially. There is no society devoid
of the notion of future, present, or past. All cultures have defined references that
point to a special awareness of place. In premodern societies, time and space were
linked through the situationality of place. For a great part of the population, in the
majority of everyday life activities, time and space remained essentially linked.
The markers of “when” linked up not only to those of “where” as relates to social
conduct, but also to the substance of the same conduct.
The separation of time and space implied the development of a dimension
“empty” of time, the main lever that propelled space out of place. The invention of
the clock and of other mechanical measurement instruments facilitated profound
changes in the web of everyday life, changes that were not only local, but global.
A world that defines for itself a system for measuring time, one universally dated
and standardized, is completely different from that adopted in premodern societies.
The globe map is the symbolic countermeasure to the clock as regards the emptying
out of space.
The emptying out of time and space does not take place in linear fashion, but
rather advances dialectically. It is worth observing, however, that the separation
between time and space does not mean that we can consider them mutually alien
to human social organization. On the contrary, that separation provides the basis
for the recombination of both in modes for coordination of social activities without
reference to the particulars of place. Modern social organization presupposes the
rigorous coordination of human behaviors that are physically absent: the “when” of
those behaviors is linked to the “where,” but not, as was the case in premodern times,
through the mediation of place.
That separation between time and space marks the intense dynamism that
modernity introduces into social matters. The phenomenon universalizes this “use of
history to create history” (Giddens, 1994), a most inseparable aspect of the processes
that conduct modern social life, thus, placing it far beyond the reach of tradition.
A certain historicity takes on global form with the creation of a standardized “past”
and of a universally applicable “future”: a date such as the year 2000 comes to be
recognizable to all of humanity.
The second influence on the dynamism of modernity refers to the “de-
contextualization” of social institutions. Giddens makes use of that term with a distinct
acceptation from what sociology defines as “differentiation,” which is under the direct
impact of time and space separation. By its perspective, differentiation transmits an

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imagery of progressive separation of functions, in such a way that modes of activity

organized in a diffuse manner in premodern societies become more specialized and
rigorous with the advent of modernity (Giddens, 1991). Notwithstanding how pertinent
that idea is, it fails to identify an important aspect regarding social relations: the “removal”
of those social relations from local contexts and their re-articulation, accomplished by
means of undefined space and time segments. It is that “removal” that Giddens terms
“de-contextualization.” He sees it as characterized by symbolic guarantee mechanisms
and expert systems, which when analyzed as a whole characterize abstract systems,
the main aspect that distinguishes modern institutions from the traditional world. As he
deepens his analysis of those concepts, Giddens (1991) reports:
With the development of abstract systems, trust in impersonal principles,
as well as in anonymous others, becomes indispensable to social existence.
Non-personalized trust of this sort is discrepant from basic trust. There is a
strong psychological need to find others to trust, but institutionally organized
personal connections are lacking, relative to premodern social situations.
[…] The tissue and form of day-to-day life become reshaped in conjunction
with wider social changes. Routines which are structured by abstract systems
have an empty, unmoralized character – this much is valid in the idea that the
impersonal increasingly swamps the personal.
Symbolic guarantees refer to modes of exchange that adopt a standard value, thus,
being able to be transacted along a diverse range of contexts. Money is one example;
with the advent of modernity, it became a complex and abstract means of exchange.
In it, is represented the separation of time and space, revealed in credit operations
and in transactions carried out between subjects that never meet. At the same time,
expert systems relativize time and space by means of utilization methods defined
by technical knowledge that develops around both. Expert systems are not limited
to areas of technological specialization, but they also extend to social relations in
and of themselves and to aspects of the “self.” A judge, a psychologist, and a doctor
make up the modern setting, as much as scientists or technicians do. Those systems
pervade the organization of everyday life through subjects’ needs.
According to Giddens (1991), the two systems – symbolic guarantees and expert
systems – depend on trust in an essential manner, which presupposes a step in the
direction of commitment, a quality of faith that cannot be reduced. It is related to the
absence of time and of space, and also to ignorance.
Trust accompanies a host of decisions that we make daily, not always consciously.
To trust is a generalized mental attitude adjacent to those decisions, connective of
trust and identity. Attitudes of trust relative to situations, persons, or specific systems
are directly related to a sense of psychological safety that subjects maintain among
themselves and with groups. We decide to trust because, in modernity, we find the
support of reflexivity.
When he says that modernity is essentially a post-traditional order, Giddens
is situating time and space transformations, along with de-contextualization

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mechanisms, as being engines of social life beyond the reach of pre-established

precepts and practices. According to him, that is the context of reflexivity, third
influence over the dynamic nature of modern institutions. Modernity’s reflexivity
has to do with a different perspective that opens up for analyzing social activity and
material relations with nature in light of new information and knowledge, which, in
turn, are a constitutive part of modern institutions.
The three aspects mentioned earlier, that is, transformations of time and space,
de-contextualization mechanisms, and reflexivity, make possible the genesis
of a discussion about male social representation and foster a host of cultural
transformations. I will denominate those changes to the social setting and to the
way interpersonal relationships develop in late modernity. The characteristics of
that global change to the paradigms of the cultural, social, and economic order
open up the possibility for expanding discussions about gender in such a way as to
also include men. In that sense, it is pertinent that reflection upon the shift in the
culture’s paradigms should problematize what used to represent the dominant role
within the scope of relations between the sexes through emancipatory discourses.
Feminism, the black movements, and the fight for homosexual rights are examples
of those emancipatory discourses that emerged within post-traditional orders
and that had the purpose of according greater value to individualities in light
of a new landscape of social changes. Those discourses promoted self-identity
transformations and operate as elements through which globalization is expressed.
In Giddens’s view, globalization and self-identity are two poles of the local-global
dialectic in late modernity. Changes to the intimate aspects of personal lives are
directly linked to establishing social connections of a broader scope. The degree
of time-space distanciation introduced by late modernity is so extensive that, for
the first time in human history, the “self” and “society” interrelate in a global
environment.
In the context of the post-traditional order, modernity’s reflexivity extended all
the way to the core of the “self,” thus, allowing for the development of emancipatory
discourses. The transitions in subjects’ lives, which were ritualized in traditional
societies in the form of rites of passage, require intense psychic reorganization. When
representations used to remain more or less the same from generation to generation
as regard subjects, the identity change was clearly demarcated, for example, as when
one transitioned from adolescence to adult life. As for the contexts of modernity, in
them, the altered “self” has to be explored and built as part of a reflexive process of
connecting personal change and social change. That is what we find at the base of
the feminist literature of Simone de Beauvoir:
One is not born, but rather becomes a woman. No biological, psychic, or
economic destiny defines the figure that the human female takes on in society;
it is civilization as a whole that elaborates this intermediary product between
male and the eunuch that is called feminine. Only the mediation of another can
constitute an individual as an Other. (Beauvoir, s/d, p. 13)

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The social changes we witnessed in the 20th century originated from illuminist
belief. The Enlightenment had as its purpose liberating men from fear, by means
of science and of technology, thus, making them their own masters and ridding the
world of magic and of myth. All evidence suggested that The Enlightenment would
usher in the power of man over science and technology. Nevertheless, man found
himself faced with a new impasse instead: the progression of technical domination,
what Lévi-Strauss referred to as “mechanical civilization.” In it, a subject is liberated
from fear of magic but not from mythical time, which migrates now to man himself.
That technological progress became a powerful instrument used by cultural industry
to deter the development of awareness among the masses.
We will find part of the answer to this question in the decade of the 60’s, in
the analyses of Popper and Adorno (Popper & Lorenz, s/d; Adorno & Horheimer,
1985; Adorno, 1989). To Adorno, cultural industry prevents the development of
autonomous, independent individuals capable of making decisions and exercising
judgment consciously. Even a man’s idle time is used by cultural industry as a way
of adapting him to the productive process of advanced capitalism. Leisure and
entertainment become an extension of work. The 1970’s were marked by debates
on the hermeneutics of history present in the works by Habermas (1998). In the
1980’s, we find the analyses about the contemporary in which discussions about
the fall of totalitarian regimes are introduced. Modern radicalization resides in
the individualistic promise of absolute freedom. The disassembling of traditional
societies gains ground and, in parallel, in the course of the century, modern ideation
becomes consolidated, more and more providing support for individual aspirations
oriented toward hedonism and permissiveness.
Modernity can also be understood as a period that values discovery of experience
or rediscovery of the true intensities of experience. It is critical relative to previous
periods, the traditional societies that used comprehension structures in a movement
for the concealment and distortion of such experiences. In contemporary societies,
cultural industry encourages individual attitudes committed to the pursuit of pleasure
at any cost, so that subjects can attain higher and higher quotas of wellbeing. To that
end, it is necessary for them to adopt a permissive view of the world. This panorama
corroborates the modeling of a type of subjectivity recognized by seeking more
sophisticated and narcissistic sensations. Life becomes restricted to a proposition
for unlimited gratification, while counting, for that purpose, on sustentation from
a society based on the economy and the market. Criticisms of the type of culture
consolidated in the 20th century found resonance in the works by Morin (1984) and
Baudrillard (1991, 1991a, 1992), who signal the dimension of hedonism in behavior
patterns oriented toward consumption. In this new perspective, everything can be
converted into pleasure. Spending and possessing come to constitute the experience
of freedom in the context of late modernity. In capitalist society, the consumption
ideal has no horizon other than multiplication and the continuous replacement of one
object with a better one.

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In contemporary contexts, the “self” became the reflexive enterprise. That is what
analyses by Velho (1981) show us regarding the social emancipation enterprise.
Starting in the 1950’s, social movements fought for the consolidation of democracies,
becoming also agents for minority discourses.
The new sense of “self” that subjects must develop for themselves, for example,
the social representation of the new woman, is constructed as part of an innovative
process of new social forms, such as those relative to the revision of motherhood
(Badinter, 1980; Chodorow, 1990).
The identity crises mark aspects of this period when subjects see themselves
submerged in individual and subjective experience, seeing in it the answers to their
issues. In light of that, abstract systems become involved in a central manner not
only in modernity’s institutional order, but also in the formation and continuity of
the “self.” That is what we identify in the primary socialization of children, who
come to depend more and more on the advice and recommendations of specialists
(pediatricians, psychologists, and educators), a great deal more than on the direct
initiation of one generation by another. That advisement and instruction are reflexively
receptive to the investigation in course. While knowledge producing fields, human
and social sciences directly link up to one another through the reflexivity of the
“self.” However, the most distinct connection between abstract systems and the
“self” is to be found in the tremendous growth in forms of therapy and advisement.
We can say that modernity breaks down the protective conformity of the small
community and of tradition, replacing it with much greater impersonal organizations.
Subjects feel stripped and alone, in a world where they lack psychological support
and a feeling of safety, both of which were previously provided them by traditional
contexts. In a way, therapy fulfills that role, to the extent that it provides someone
one can turn to, thus, creating a scenario of feelings of support and comfort, and
developing personal ties from the starting point of an impersonal relationship.
Identity becomes problematic in modernity when it is contrasted with the “self”-
“society” relationship in traditional contexts; nevertheless, that is not simply a
situation of loss, nor is it the only culprit for the escalation of subjects’ anxiety levels
either. Therapy, thus, comes to be both a recourse for dealing with feelings of anxiety
and a reflexivity path for the “self,” in which experience and emotional intensity are
contemplated.
Incidentally, Connor (1992, p. 12) tells us:
In fact, if one way of characterizing modernist culture and modernity in general
is in terms of its discovery of experience, then another way is to see it as the
moment when self-consciousness invaded experience. If a modern sensibility
is characterized by a sense of the urgent, painful gap between experience and
consciousness and the desire to replenish rational consciousness with the
intensities of experience, then this itself marks an awareness of the necessary
and inescapable dependence of experience upon consciousness and vice versa.

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In the 20th century, feminism gained scale and gradually spread around the
world, thanks to changes started back in the 17th century, in Europe. That is so
because modernity is a process that was not limited to the geography of one place.
On the contrary, it transcended continents and regions, thus, characterizing itself by
a transition marked by the emergence of a new type of social system that has the
subject at the center of its axis. According to Le Rider,
Literary critic Hermann Bahr added a variation on one of the fundamental
topics in the period of 1900: the irresistible growth of individualism. That which
the Enlightenment had considered a condition for progress came to constitute,
starting from early romanticism, a central point of kulturkritik. “Enlightened”
modernity had placed itself under the sign of subjective freedom, guaranteed in
the social order by private law, in the State by the demand for political equality,
in the sphere of life by moral autonomy and the Bildung, individual mediation
of the collective Kultur. Subjective spirit questions the ways of life legitimated
by religion or by tradition. To modernity is attributed the anticipation of topics
that will be discussed in post-modernity, at the example of what was the crisis
and triumph of individualism […]. The cultural identity of the collectives and
the subjective identities of subjects concentrated the assimilation of modern
ideas. (1992, p. 53)
The Enlightenment makes way for a transformation that foments psychological
freedom and accentuates what, in the anthropological panorama, will be known as
the passage from a hierarchical system of social relations to another that has the
subject at its core. The race toward a society where political equality is a reality
embraces a program allowing each and every subject choice. In that new referential
a subject can exercise choice. Those choices kick off individualization processes
marked by a need for subjects to move and to manipulate very different, and
possibly contradictory, codes. That will lead to multiple readings and possibilities
for understanding oneself and the world, with an emphasis on the psychological
dimension and a bias toward “radical subjectivism,” “runaway individualism,” and
the “pursuit of individual realization,” which will culminate with the creation of
emancipation discourses in the political and social spheres. The notions about the
subject present in Baudrillard (1992, 1996) deeply analyze the impact on subjects’
everyday lives following that course of cultural transformation and of insertion into
a society regulated by technology and by consumption.
On that point, Simmel (1993, p. 34) writes that
The essence of the modern is psychologism, the experience and interpretation
of the world according to the reactions of our inner selves, as if in an inner
world, or the dissolving of all stability in subjectivity.
More and more, a criticism is constituted against the notion of a “reasonable
subject,” visible in psychological criticism, from Nietzsche to Freud, pointing to the

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discovery of a rationality-based Other, responsible for the fragility of autonomous

subjects.
The illusions and the evils of individualism analyzed by Nietzsche found their
extension in psychology and sociology in the 19th and the 20th centuries. Le Rider
(1992) shows us that subjects’ autonomy and solitude, resulting from a strong need
for trust from another, and which is often lacking, emerges as one of the most
ambivalent phenomena of the modern condition.
In that context, subjects realize that they are restricted to autonomy demands
limited to their necessities for material survival, leaving to the side in everyday life
any investment in the development of bonds of trust. The search for identity, as
states Giddens, is a pathetic form of narcissism, something we could qualify as a
sort of radicalization of individualism (Giddens, 1991, 1994). The modern path leads
subjects to such experiences as discontinuity and loss of identity. Narcissistic utopias,
as a form of existence, foment the aspiration to overcoming the limits imposed by
life, abolishing the male/female division, and they tend toward an androgynous
ideal. They also aspire to the destruction of a “self” that suffers because it cannot
accept its accidental qualities, such as sex and race, with the intent to recreate a more
perfect self.
Modernity can also be characterized as a historical moment that replaces
Descartes’s famous statement with: “I feel, therefore I am.” That represents “a
radical shift from a rational and instrumentalist to amore consciously aesthetic
strategy for realizing Enlightenment aims” (Harvey, 1993, p. 14). It was believed
that “the development of rational forms of social organization and of rational modes
of thought promised liberation from the irrationalities of myth, religion, superstition,
release from the arbitrary use of power as well as from the dark side of our own
human natures” (Harvey, 1993, p. 22).
That transformation process marks modern life by means of a sense of what is
fleeting, ephemeral, fragmentary, and contingent. The transitional nature of things
makes it difficult for there to be any possibility for preserving all sense of historical
continuity.
The modern period faces human history as marked by discontinuities in various
stages of its development. The ways of life produced by modernity disarticulate us
from all traditional types of social order. To the degree of both their extensiveness
and intensity, the transformations implied by modernity are more profound than
most of the characteristic changes of earlier periods.
On that aspect, Giddens (1994) states:
On the extensional plane, they have served to establish forms of social
interconnection which span the globe; in intentional terms, they have come
to alter some of the most intimate and personal features of our day-to-day
existence. Obviously, there are continuities between the traditional and the
modern, and neither is cut of whole cloth; it is well known how misleading it
can be to contrast these too in too gross a fashion. But the changes occurring

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over the past three of four centuries – a tiny period of historical time – have
been so dramatic and so comprehensive in their impact that we get only limited
assistance from our knowledge of prior periods of transformation n trying to
interpret them.
However, as regards the type of social organization, modern society taken on for
itself a sort of complexity marked by the social division of work, by a great increase
in consumption and production, and also by its articulation with a world market
and with a rapid and overwhelming process of urban expansion. Life in cities is
eminently heterogeneous and contains a great variety of customs and experiences,
and that makes for the accentuation of fragmentation and of the differentiation of
roles. As a consequence of that, there emerges a sort of individual psychological life
filled with many particularities.
What is important is that the modernity of life in the metropoles consists of
that variety of stimuli and experiences that allows for pluralism of groups and
individualities. In that pluralism, we find discontinuities marked by symbolic
universes, which in turn are represented by more and more restricted codes. We must
also consider that, even while mentioning discontinuous contexts, there are between
them continuous symbolic dimensions marked by universalizing codes; for example,
we can cite the emergence of emancipation discourses, which are constituted from this
dyad between the universal and the local. The women’s movement, as well as that for
ethnic differences, reveals such discourses. Subjects participate in both codes when
it comes to social interactions, those codes being representative of the transitional
nature of things, which hampers the preservation of any sense of historical continuity.
“If there is any meaning to history, then that meaning has to be discovered and defined
from within the maelstrom of change […]” (Harvey, 1993, p. 22).
Those changes affect the representation a subject has of himself, as well as the
way he deals with his subjective issues, particularly those that have to do with
expressing emotions.

On Individualism
According to Dumont, in contemporary societies, subjects are exposed to different
forms of subordination from those in the Western Middle Ages, known as traditional
(Dumont, 1985), where a culture supported in religion operated as an element for
the ordering and totalizing of a hierarchized world view and subjects conformed
to broader social categories. The notion of a subject was not known as we know it
contemporarily. Velho (1981, p. 23) states that modern ideology is individualistic,
individualism being sociologically defined from the standpoint of global values.
This subject of individualism can designate two things at the same time: an object
outside ourselves and a value. According to Velho, we find,
on the one hand, the empirical subject who speaks, thinks, and wants, that is,
an individual sample of the human species, such as we find it in all societies.

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On the other hand, we also consider a subject an independent, moral, and

autonomous being, and therefore, essentially non-social, the carrier of our
supreme values, and who is primarily found in our ideology regarding man
and society. (1981, p. 25)
In his analyses, Dumont presents the subject as a value. He is conceived of as
someone who is situated in the exterior of social and political organization, outside
and above it, an individual-out-of-the-world in contrast to an individual-of-the-
world. Using the model from Indian societies, Dumont maintains that it would not
be possible for individualism to have developed in any other way, out of traditional
holism. He further discusses that the early centuries of the Church’s history showed
the beginnings of adaptation to the world of this strange being:
if individualism is to appear in a society of the traditional, holistic type, it will
be in opposition to society and as a kind of supplement to it, that is, in the form
of the outworldly individual. (Dumont, 1985, p. 38)
Dumont seeks to comprehend individualism starting from analyses of traditional
societies, thinking about ways in which a new type of understanding of the world
could develop in such societies opposed to that of common sense. He also points out
the importance of the State-Church relationship, in which, initially, the State is to the
Church as the world is to God. For this reason, he says:
[…] the history of the conception by the Church of its relation to the State
is central in the evolution of the relation between the bearer of value, the
outworldly individual, and the world. (Dumont, 1985, p. 105)
The path of that idea leads us to think that the most effective humanization of the
world, in the long run, came out of a religion that subordinated it to a transcendent
value in the most rigorous fashion. The male crisis addressed by Le Rider reveals
itself as a crisis of subordination to the values of the patriarchal system.
Dumont sees the institutionalization of individualism as something that started
with a Christian base and developed from the starting point of the general idea for a
secular society conceived to be a spiritual union of believers, in which every subject
is a morally autonomous entity. That society had certain historical and geographical
limits. It could not, for example, be found in China or in India. The primacy of
the individual is a mark of the society of the West, which had its beginnings with
Christianity and prospered through the Renaissance and through Reformation,
particularly with Calvin.
Between the 17th and the 18th centuries, we observed the production of the ideas
that significantly supported the cause of individualism. Accordingly, Descartes
sought to base his thought on an idea about which he would have no doubt: cogito
ergo sum – I think, therefore I am. Descartes said I think, and not We think –
cogitamus ergo sumus. Even today, when we see the connections between Descartes
and medieval philosophy with more clarity and discover the limitations of his natural

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sciences method, we must not fail to recognize that the history of modern philosophy
had its start with him. The I in Descartes is represented as an intermediary between
God and nothingness and possesses the faculty of orienting himself, by choice,
toward one or toward the other. Due to that freedom of choice, beyond which nothing
more sublime can be imagined, man is an image and likeness of God. It is that
way that he is presented with the ethical possibility for elevation, as an autonomous
essence, above the mechanical sort of autonomy that, by nature, formulates rules to
which it voluntarily submits. Later, Locke (1988), who contributed a great deal to
the foundations of the Enlightenment, worked by considering the subject as the base
for psychological, political, epistemological thought.
Locke is considered the father of modern liberalism, and as a politician, he
fought for the consolidation of a liberal monarchy. To him, the human spirit is a
tabula rasa; all human representations (ideas) originate from experience, which is,
in part, external (sensation) and, in part, internal (reflection), that is, originates from
observation of the spirit’s activity. Locke is not considered simply an empiricist, as
he insists on a subject’s identity, on the validity of mathematical ideas, and on those
from natural law. Even though he does not accept innate ideas and always analyzes
the genesis of knowledge, thus, providing the general foundations of an empirical
sort of psychology, he insists on the freedom of will, which, as the source of all
virtue, comes down to the natural desire to be happy. Locke’s ethics connected itself
to a rational sort of Christianity and to a natural sort of education doctrine. His ideas
influenced the thought of Rousseau and Goethe, Leibniz and the romanticists.
The two great precursors and models of individualistic ideas in the romantic
period were precisely Rousseau and Goethe. Rousseau wanted to open way for
man’s natural evolution, but at the same time, he fought against an artificial man
that had been degenerated by the culture. In Emile (1762), part treaty, part romance
novel, Rousseau made the facts into the foundation upon which would be built the
child’s soul/psyche, instead of suffocating it with religious theories. According to
him, authentic religion lays down roots in an unassailable, natural sense of totality
and of life, inherent to every subject. Even though Rousseau refuses the superiority
of Christianity, he considered it, however, an expression of divine law and identified
it as present in the hearts of men. Therefore, he also manifested profound reverence
toward the person and doctrine of Jesus. At the same time, his theory of the State and
of society possesses a revolutionary character. In The Social Contract (1757–1762),
for example, we see his desire for a State founded upon a social contract with free
subjects. They would remain free from the State, as they would submit to a law they
imposed on themselves. Their freedom is, indeed, that autonomy. The people are,
therefore, sovereign, but not as the sum of each of the subjects, who possess free will
(volonté de tous), rather as integrated in the common will (volonté générale), which
favors the interest of the totality over each individual’s interest.
Rousseau is a writer of universal significance, who always kept one idea at the
center of his thought: Man is intrinsically good, but society has made him bad. That

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thesis is presented in his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality among
Men (1754–1755) and in Emile (1762).
Goethe wrote a great deal about the problems of his individual self, especially
in his novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and in Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung
und Wahrheit (From my Life: Poetry and Truth). In the latter, we find revelations
about human beings’ cultural history, in which he includes confessions on “what our
feelings were” (Brunel, 1998, p. 345) in light of observations of the world exterior to
the “self,” which hoped to reveal, at the same time, “to myself, my interior life, my
way of being” (Brunel, 1998, p. 369). A man’s individuality could not be described
directly, but maybe it could be surprised almost interminably in its concrete
circumstances.
We notice that Goethe and Rousseau, each in his own way, revealed more about
the private sphere of their lives than any of their predecessors. Both showed an almost
religious sort of attention to what referred to the interior world. They thought of their
respective “selves” with words that were equivalent to the term “individuality,” an
English definition that corresponded to the sum of attributes that distinguishes one
object from others in the same class. Neither Rousseau, nor Goethe, or any other
contemporary or earlier writer, ever used the word “individualism,” a term with a
pragmatic sense.
The term “individualism” came to be discussed in England in the decade of 1930,
and it referred to what was unpleasant and hostile. It placed a subject in implicit
opposition to human solidarity, seen from a strictly collectivistic or group angle on
social phenomena, whether economic or religious. The hostile sense of individualism
was, very appropriately, created and adopted in the period of the French Revolution
and of the Romantic Movement. As Lukes presents in his study about that term, the
French Revolution awakened the concern that the community element would be
undone and reduced to individuality (Watt, 1997, p. 238). Certainly, it was French
writers who started disseminating terms related to individualism. Admittedly, one of
the first authors to use that vocabulary may have been Joseph de Maistre, a catholic
conservative who reached for the term “individualism” to attack the world view
created by the revolutionary democracy. He condemned that “deep and frightening
division of minds,” the “infinite fragmentation of all doctrines, political protestantism
carried to the most absolute individualism” (Watt, 1997, p. 239). Other authors also
castigated “individualism,” for its capacity to destroy the idea of obedience and duty,
disfiguring, thus, the power of the law. Romanticist Honoré de Balzac frequently
made offensive use of the term “individualism.” Thus, in 1839, he named the most
horrible of evils created by modern society: individualism.
Other authors also opposed individualism, such as, for example, those who
desired a socialist form of government. Among them, we can highlight Saint-Simon
and August Blanqui, cited in Steven Lukes’s work, (Watt, 1997, p. 1996) who
emphasized the need to create a “universal association” in light of the emergence
of the concept of individualism, which they considered “negative and pernicious.”

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In Blanqui’s view, communism would protect subjects, whereas individualism

would destroy them.
For his part, Alexis de Tocqueville was responsible for the favorable use of the
term “individualism” in England. In The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856), he
refers to the term “individualism” as being the one “we coined for our own needs.”
According to him, the word was unknown to our ancestors, for in their days every
subject belonged to a group.
Critics of individualism, like Reeve, argued that Tocqueville could make it
so that every man would forget about his ancestors and conceal his descendants,
separating them from his contemporaries by means of democratic thought.
According to Reeve, democracy would return a subject to his own loneliness, and
threaten to confine him to the solitude of his own heart (Watt, 1997, p. 1996). The
holistic societies turned citizens into links of a chain made up of all members,
from the peasant farmer to the king; democracy would break up that chain and
would leave its links isolated (Tocqueville, 1979, p. 100). This unflattering view
of the non-traditional aspect of individualism was, nevertheless, softened by the
admiration Tocqueville had for the North-American democratic institutions, their
freedom of the press, and for the sense of a higher understanding of the self-
interest principle. To him, individualism and the democratic institutions were
complementary. Through the North-American example, Tocqueville provided a
positive appreciation of individualism.
John Stuart Mill considered individualism essentially competitive, where the rule
was every man for himself and against all others. However, William MacCall and
Samuel Smiles defended individualism by means of the argument that no obstacle
should be created to individual freedom (Watt, 1997). In Self Help, Smiles extends
that argument to the economic picture, and emphasizes laissez-faire, an attitude that
was valued and encouraged in the final decades of the 19th century.
According to the liberal thinkers of the early the 20th century, in order to maintain
individual freedom and equality, the government would have to broaden the sphere
of social control. On the political plane, one could notice the weakening of the
unpleasant connotations of the term “individualism,” at the same time that a new
meaning gained strength within it: one that identified it with generalized acceptance
of the primacy of the subject in political thought.
Dumont (1985) examined the birth and the evolution of the subject notion while
a dominant category, and he followed the development of that set of ideas starting
from the 17th and 18th centuries. Individualism includes, however, at the same time,
equality and freedom, while it is possible to distinguish a “liberal” egalitarian theory,
according to which an ideal sort of equality is recommended, both of rights and
opportunities, and that is compatible with maximum freedom for everyone. And
there is another theory – denominated “socialist” – which intends to realize equality
through the facts, for example, by eliminating private property.
The caste system, as Dumont describes it, is a hierarchical system, oriented towards
the needs of all. Liberal society, on the other hand, negates both of those features at

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the same time: It is egalitarian and resorts to the laws of mercantile exchange and to
natural identity of interests, so as to ensure general order and satisfaction.
He states that, when the theoreticians of natural law place in the origins of the
State two successive contracts, one of association and the other of subjugation,
they betray the modern spirit’s inability to synthetically conceive of a hierarchical
model of the group. He also points out the need to analyze the State regarding two
elements: one of egalitarian association, and the other through which that association
is subordinated to a person or entity. That being so, from the moment that no longer
the group but only the subject is conceived as a real being, hierarchy disappears and,
with it, the immediate attribution of authority to an agent of government. In that
perspective, we have a collection of subjects and the need to construct, above them,
a power that is only justified if there is common consent from the members of the
association.
We know that modern society intends to be “rational,” that is, it disconnects itself
from nature so as to institute an autonomous human order. That process of moving
away from “the natural world” creates the necessary distancing for the production of
culture and of its forms of organization. As regards social roles, however, we notice
that the comprehension and explanation arguments, at times, reach for that natural
order in order to define them.
Within every culture, and by means of socializer precursors, men and women
interact with different symbolic codes regarding social roles, either more restrictive
or more universalizing ones. That distinction is the result of specific relationships
between modes of cognitive expression and differentiated experiences, as a function
of the sexual group they are part of. Bernstein works by considering this distinction
regarding socializer contexts to show that cognitive expression will be different as a
function of the predominance of certain languages existing within families (Velho,
1981, p. 19). Proportionately, a certain sociological fatalism is established. Further,
I observe that the author works with social-class references in order to develop his
analysis, and I consider his contributions important for this study in the sense of
establishing distinct and antagonistic symbolic universes for men and women.
In that regard, Velho provides the following comments:
In more general terms, it is a matter of posing the problem of how subjects
express their emotions and feelings through verbal language. For example,
what does the sentence “I am depressed” mean to different segments of
Brazilian society? The notion of depression, even though it is not exclusive,
is very much associated with a type of urban middle tier that is relatively
intellectualized and quite “psychologized.” That does not mean, obviously,
that subjects in other categories do not become depressed, but rather that
there are more or less socially delineated social trajectories and experiences
that produce universes that use with greater frequency, or develop, certain
expressions, sentences, whose meaning is strongly linked to and marked by
those psychological boundaries. (1981, p. 21)

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The socialization path that men go through creates subjective organization

patterns that relate to social roles. Thus, each subject is authorized to think, speak,
feel, and express a set of emotions that socially identify him as a man. There is more
or less universalizing language that provides the idea of consensus about what it
means to be a man. Therefore, men will also be recognized and identified by what
they say and what they express, as if there were feelings to masculinity.
In some cultures, the issue of violence is present for a man from birth. As we will
see in the following chapters, in some of them there is a clear and direct demand
regarding male violence. The aggressive attitude that, at times, can reach the limits
of violence is more widely expected from men than from women. At least in the
public sphere, it is authorized that a man can be aggressive. In our society, emotional
expression is an individualizing practice, both for men and for women. The sense
of identity that makes a man feel like a man originates from his experience in the
socialization path. In some way, a subject chooses what he will experience, and his
choice defines the vision3 he has for himself, considering what accords him value and
recognition and discarding what negates him as a subject.
To Velho, in modern cultures, there are more or less explicit rules for
individualization, and it is possible to arrive at a sort of stigmatization when
experiences go up against the symbolic boundaries of a certain cultural universe
(masculinity or femininity) or go beyond them(Velho, 1981). In society, we know
that a subject feels valued when the representation he has of himself corresponds to
that which provides him with visibility. The sense of identity is built in the correlation
between both.
For a man, there are parameters that define his sense of identity. One of them is
the relationship he establishes with work, how he responds to the social demand
for assertiveness and how he experiences his emotions. Another parameter has to
do with what makes him feel virile and, ultimately, how he uses physical strength.
The traditional male representation restricts a boy’s emotional aspect, limiting
him to stereotyping. The social practices that define the male symbolic universe
are characterized by a sort of rigidity that compresses men toward living under
conditions of emotional limitation.
When an adult, a man submits to the rigors of the male representations in effect,
thus, negating any possibility for knowing for himself a different way to organize
his personal experience and to insert himself socially. That way, men do not benefit
from the individualistic credo, as per the example of other social groups. Violence
can be understood as resulting from the identity organization process in which male
experience escapes the individualizing perspective.
Individualistic ideation, nevertheless, allows a subject to conceive of multiple
visions that can work as a resource for dealing with the feelings of ambiguity, the
various symbolic domains, and the fragmentation all resulting from the transition
from traditional societies to an individualistic one, thus, contributing to an increase
in the sense of social integration in contemporary culture.
In that regard, Velho considers that

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if a subject is taken as a given of nature, real unity, nothing would be more

logical than to presuppose the possibility of individual visions. Now, if a
subject is perceived as having a culturally fabricated dimension, which is
added to the empirical agent (biological unity), the notion of individual vision
must be relativized. It is clear that, in Schutz’s terms, if there are empirical
agents, there is conduct, as long as it does not presuppose a vision. When there
is action with any determined objective, there will be vision. (1981, p. 33)
Being a man or a woman is not an exclusively subjective phenomenon. There is
a field of social possibilities for implementing visions accompanied by a feeling on
the part of a subject of being in synchrony (or dissonance) with the concreteness
of his or her own body. In contemporary societies, every social interaction takes
place in a communicational context where there is language that affirms who is
a man and who is a woman. It is language directed at others and potentially
public, the raw material for which is the culture both are part of. That culture
favors similarities at times, when it is a matter of relations between the sexes, and
differences other times, when it is a matter of relations between those of the same
sex, thus, causing those who are “similar” to get closer and those who are “different”
to move apart.
Male and female social representations must be side by side, in such a way that
what we consciously know to be one or the other is an expression of the subjectivity
modeling defined by society. That means that the male and female representations
are related and are implicated one in the other. That way, a subject can be inspired
in some type of man to delineate the boundaries of his masculinity, knowing that
those boundaries must also be the ones to which all other men subscribe. Certain
cultures are more individualistic than others, allowing for specific levels and
degrees of particularities. However, what touches a man emotionally, and is socially
communicated, should also touch other men emotionally. As we will see later, in
Gilmore (1990) each culture values certain feelings and condemns others, as a way
of shaping the subject’s social representation.
It is interesting to observe that, differently from the individualistic prerogative,
although at the same time in a singular and collective movement, we find different
cultures in the past modeling human conduct and ethical-moral codes by means of
myths. The history of societies has always revealed the presence of myths, since
Homer up until the present day, differentiating themselves at any given time in
history by the level of importance between them and collective practices. Archaic
and traditional societies used them as living reference to organize social experiences
and to set the model of behavior to be followed by a subject. According to Eliade
(1992), myths tell sacred stories; they narrate events that occurred in primordial
times, the fabulous time of the “beginning.” Put another way, a myth tells how –
thanks to supernatural entities – a reality came to exist, be it a complete reality or
simply a fragment. Eliade (1998) describes myth as the narrative of “creation”: that
tells how something was created and came to exit. Whether through singular or

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collective movement, both traditional and individualistic societies operate according

to a certain mythology, and, in them, we will also find the myths of masculinity.
Fragmentation, which fosters visions and predisposes towards the creation of
individualized solutions, is part of contemporary society’s social experience, and
it generates needs for integration on the part of subjects that are distinct from those
present in traditional societies. Velho reminds us that it is necessary to understand
the context in which roles are played in order to notice the grammar and the logic of
individual behavior, including incompatibilities and contradictions. He says:
By adopting a linear view of personality and a non-relativized notion about
subjects, therapists tend to simplify a very complex problematics, where
comprehending context is fundamental and not residual or supplemental.
(Velho, 1981, p. 32)
The problem of men’s involvement with situations of violence gains a different
perspective if analyzed under the optics of individualism. In that context, violence
takes on a different channeling from the initiation rites of traditional and primitive
societies (Gilmore, 1990; Ramirez, 1993), following the course of banalization and
no longer that of value.
In the setting of individualistic societies, it would be inadmissible to think about
the reformulation of male social representation. Nevertheless, in order for that to
occur, it is necessary to develop a vision for masculinity in the mold of that presented
by minorities. On the characteristics of that vison, Velho argues that:
The more exposed the agent is to diversified experiences, the less closed his
network of relations is at the level of his day-to-day, the more pronounced
will be his self-perception of singular individuality. On its part, that awareness
of individuality – constructed within a specific cultural experience – will
correspond to greater elaboration of a vision. That vision will be encouraged
and will find the appropriate language to express it. (1981, p. 32)
But that was not what happened. Masculinity, considered a hegemonic category
by both feminist and homosexual literature, came to be examined as synonymous to
heterosexual masculinity. But if “to be a man” is to be hegemonic, to what hegemony
is that literature referring if the contemporary context is one of multiple identities?
In traditional societies, male social representation, present in a subject’s course
of socialization, is committed to a masculinity ideal whose symbolic boundaries
offer little flexibility. It is supported on similar domains and displays a low degree
of transformation, and that would easily lead us to think of identity crises. We can
also think of the masculinity crisis as a second stage in a strategy for revitalizing the
social visibility of the minority movements in the late 20th century.
The crises and pursuits of restoration to the sense of identity in modernity and the
questioning of traditional sexual polarity between male and female – an apparently
natural pillar upon which was erected part of our cultural tradition – are two topics
present in numerous debates about modern issues.

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INDIVIDUALISM AND SUBJECTIVITY: FOUCAULT,

BAUDRILLARD, AND KELEMAN

The Problem of Identity for a Subject without a Body

In his study about individualism, Dumont (1985) offers us instruments to think about
how the passage from the notion of the subject to that of identity is accomplished.
From the notion of the subject we arrive at that of individuation, which means
individual determinability, that is, what allows a subject to be precisely himself
and to distinguish himself from all others. Cultures deal with that issue when, for
example, they define the category of gender identity. Man and woman, male and
female are distinct aspects of a being.
We take individualism to be a doctrine according to which the subject is at
the foundation of every law that regulates a given culture. That doctrine opposes
collectivism, as it is considered destructive to individual freedom. In that broad
sense, the dictum of individualism advances toward beyond individual personality,
reaching all the way to groups that cultivate awareness of their own class. A
subject can be ethical, political, religious, economic, etc., depending on the activity
considered. The sense given to individualism differs not only according to activity,
but also according to the meaning of subject.
On that point, we can highlight two approaches: one in which a subject is
considered a sort of “social atom” and another in which he is a singular reality. In
the first approach, considered predominantly negative, a subject constitutes himself
through opposition to several realities (the State, society, other subjects, etc.). The
second approach is considered positive: It defines that every subject constitutes
himself by virtue of his own irreducible qualities.
The first approach was very common in the modern period and originated
several forms of individualism, at the example of the social contract notion and the
prerogatives of economic liberalism. Once accepted, that plane of analysis leads
to the following issue: How would the relationship among the various subjects in
a community be possible? The doctrines created around that concern are multiple.
Some state that the characteristic of that subject resides in his constant opposition to
society, or to what is stationed above him. As a reaction to that idea, individualistic
society aspires to be a society of “masters,” as states Nietzsche, or even anarchy,
according to Proudhon (Bancal, 1984).
According to Dumont (1985, p. 37),
[…] when we speak of man as an individual, we designate two concepts at
once: an object out there, and a value. Comparison obliges us to distinguish
analytically these two aspects: one, the empirical subject of speech, thought,
and will, the individual sample of mankind, as found in all societies; and, two,
the independent, autonomous, and thus essentially nonsocial moral being, who
carries out paramount values and is found primarily in our modern ideology of
man and society.

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In traditional contexts, the possibility for relations among different subjects is

enabled through philosophical-metaphysical metadiscourse or through religious
systems. They provide conditions for day-to-day behaviors and a foundation for
the “world view” present in those societies. Identities are created by means of
the different social roles, present in those metadiscourses, which exist alongside
socialization paths, in such a way that at every passage or transition experienced by
a subject we find a sense of identity associated to one of them.
When investigating the meaning of identity, it is possible to consider that one
of the many ways to approach it is to state that “any thing is equal to itself.” That
would be considered the ontological point of view, also known as real identity, which
extends to another point of view, termed “logical” or “formal.” Accordingly, we can
say that identity is “a unit of being, a unit of a multiplicity of beings or a unit of one
being treated as multiple, when one says, for example, that one thing is identical
to itself” (Mora, 1982). We can speak of identity in different senses: real, specific,
generic, gender, or race identity, etc.
It is not my intent here to develop a more specific debate on identity. Nevertheless,
the analyses by Hume (1989), Kant (1985), and a few post-Kantians provide us with
some indispensable aspects. Even if Kant accepts Hume’s solution to the problems
related to identity, he recognizes his criticism relative to the rationalistic conception
of identity. According to Hume, in order to infer the endurance of perceptions, we
imagine a soul, self, or substance adjacent to them; we presume, in addition to that,
that there is some sort of aggregate of parts in mutual relationship, something that
causes them to relate to one another, independently of such relationship. That would
lead us to think of a metaphysical identity, but Hume states that there is no basis for
supporting it. Thus, to him, the problem of personal identity is unsolvable.
On the other hand, in Kant, identity becomes transcendental to the extent that it
is the transcendental subject’s activity that allows for the identification of various
representations in one concept. The problem of identity seems unsolvable when we
intend to identify things in themselves. Accordingly, the solution is dissatisfactory
when, according to Hume, we place the relative persistence of impressions at the
foundation of identity. Conversely, identity seems assured when it is neither empirical
nor metaphysical, but transcendental. The post-Kantians made identity into a central
metaphysical concept, particularly with Schelling, who presented a system based on
subject and object identity (Schelling, 1989). Identity, here, is not simply a logical
concept, nor is it simply the result of empirical representations unified by means of
the consciousness of persistence, but a principle that appears logically as vacuum;
metaphysically, it is the condition for all posterior “development.”
The impasses created by the Kantian formulation allowed Hegel to develop,
in Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), a reflection that goes beyond Kant’s doubt,
designating it as an abstract moment in a historical-dialectical process, triggered
by the very situation of a subject that is a phenomenon to himself. Hegel shows
that the absolute foundation of knowing is the result of a genesis or of a history
whose vicissitudes are highlighted, on the plane of the phenomenon to which

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the philosopher’s gaze has access, by the successive and dialectically articulated
oppositions between the subject’s certainty and the object’s truth. In Phenomenology,
Hegel points out that the Kantian phenomenon and subject are rigorously non-
historical. In that sense, they are abstractions. To him, this world without history
is that referent to Newtonian mechanics and, while abstract, it is only a moment
in a process that starts with the emergence of the subject to himself in the “here
and now” of sensitive certainty – an emergence that shows the extinction of the
object’s truth in the certainty with which the subject seeks to fix it. From that point
on, the dialectical movement of Phenomenology proceeds as a deepening of this
historical-dialectical situation of a subject who is a phenomenon to himself in the
very act of constructing the knowledge of an object that appears in the horizon of
his experiences. In that way, Hegel transfers to the heart of the subject – to his
knowing – the phenomenon condition that Kant limited to the sphere of the object.
Still, Hegel refers to Phenomenology as being a reflection that could only happen in
a context of transformation, initially carried out in philosophy by Kant, and also in
the social and political changes taken to effect by the French Revolution. Even if it
addresses the relationship between historicity, culture, and individuality, we do not
find in it a reflection about the origin of society, since to Hegel the subject is always
a social subject.
In this work, the subject presents three fundamental significations: a philosophical
one, a cultural one, and a historical one. The philosophical one has to do with the
awareness and the meaning of experiencing oneself through successive forms of
knowing; the cultural one directed at modern Western man, relates “destiny” with
the task of deciphering the enigmas of history, revealing human effort in the search
for meaning in the face of the non-reason of conflicts. Finally, the historical one is
the one that marks Hegelian thought and brings questioning about what the need to
traverse the history of his world of culture’s formation, as a path that designates his
own formative moments, means to science. These three significations weave what
we know as the master-slave dialectic and, in light of it, the problem of awareness as
an instance that is created through praxis.

Consciousness and Identity

In order to know a historical subject who is his own master, Hegel opposed him to
nature. The order of culture is in opposition to the order of nature and denominates
itself historical-political on the basis of that contrast. The reflections that follow that
premise strengthen the existence of a subject of culture that becomes better defined
the more he differentiates from the world of the senses.4
By means of philosophical reflection, taking subjective contemporary questions to
be similar to those related to Hegelian spirit, within a social context that strengthens
the gregarious perspective and an eminently individualistic other, brings distinct
problems of consciousness. Those problems did not exist in philosophy before
the formulations of Cartesian dualism. For example, the body concept developed

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by Plato had raised problems that were abandoned by Descartes. Plato, as well as
Aristotle and Epicurus, considered the body an instrument of the soul and, as such,
its “opposite,” not opposition to it.
Even in the Middle Ages, in the works by Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint
Augustine, we can still find that concept of the body as an instrument of the soul.
Descartes, however, abandoned that notion of the body and established that body
and soul are two different and, thus, independent substances. In the conception of the
body as an instrument of the soul I can identify a continuum between “nature” and
“culture” that no longer existed with Descartes (Abbagnano, 1999). When Keleman
formulated his definition of body, he did so, just as Nietzsche, undertaking an effort
to exalt it, without this implying subject bliss. Nevertheless, a reclaiming of the
natural order, as the subject’s intelligent expression, is present in his work, which
does not follow the Cartesian methodological prescription, but rather commits itself
to the existential realism identified in mythical stories.5
To traditional cultures, even if the subject was the subject of culture, mythical
narrative did not distance him from his connection with the order of nature, or
from his presence in the collective practice either. The hero would move between
those two worlds, interpreting them and carrying out, in that exercise, his journey
towards union with his soul/psyche, which was at the same time singular and
collective.
As contemporary societies broke away from the natural order’s importance as a
constitutive element of subjective organization, and affirmed the subject as a social
value, they produced a mechanical consciousness averse to alterity and the other’s
perspective. This disembodied consciousness found itself at the mercy of technology,
of informatics, and of the market. It is a sort of consciousness in dissonance with the
very corporeal reality exclusively modulated by images.
According to Keleman (1999), in contemporary society, brain images, facts, and
information on how we should be are taken as real; myth and somatic response are
treated as make-believe. Information and the senses of sight and of hearing impose
images that suppress or dominate the subcorticality of the self.
Ancient cultures held myths, visons, and storytelling on the uses of physicality
in profound belief. The society used music, dance, and religious rituals to provide
support for the mythical images of the body and for those social experiences that
were valued by the community. In contemporary contexts, society broke away from
that series of connections between the body’s own subjective experience and the
culture. Edelman (1989) undertakes a detailed analysis of the relationship between
those connections and their role in consciousness organization.
Differently from that slant, Hegel strengthened that which Keleman came to
criticize. In Hegel (1992), the master-slave dialectic is created through the constitution
of self-consciousness, described by the independent-dependent binomial:
Self-consciousness has before it another self-consciousness; it has come
outside itself. This has a double significance. First it has lost its own self, since

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it finds itself as an other being; secondly, it has thereby sublated that other, for
it does not regard the other as essentially real, but sees its own self in the other.
(p. 155)
The master-slave dialectic is made of two moments: one of self-consciousness and
another when it mentions a consciousness that is not entirely of the self. Continuing
on with his reasoning, Hegel (1992, p. 155) states:
The dissolution of that simple unity is the result of the first experience;
through this there is posited a pure self-consciousness, and a consciousness
which is not purely for itself, but for another, i.e. as an existent consciousness,
consciousness in the form and shape of thinghood. Both moments are essential,
since, in the first instance, they are unlike and opposed, and their reflexion into
unity has not yet come to light, they stand as two opposed forms or modes
of consciousness. The one is independent, and its essential nature is to be for
itself; the other is dependent, and its essence is life or existence for another.
The former is the Master, or Lord, the latter the Bondsman.
In that perspective, the problem being posed emerges from certainty in a cognizant
subject, while a conscious subject. In other words, there emerges the fact that the
subject’s certainty of possessing the truth about the object is, in its turn, the object of
an experience in which the subject appears to himself as the founder of the object’s
truth. Accordingly, the place of the object’s truth comes to be the subject’s discourse,
which is also the place of the subject’s own self-knowledge – of experience. It is
not enough to compare “subjective” certainty and “objective” truth, but it will be
necessary to submit the object’s truth to the subject’s original truth or to the logic
of his discourse. Thus, it will be necessary to accord it the superior objectivity
of knowledge, which is science. Hegel denominates that movement “dialectic
structure.” It is through it that knowledge of the world goes into knowledge of the
self as into its truth. That way, Hegel marks another difference relative to Kantian
thought: He turns into a dialectic necessity the analytical necessity with which Kant
unifies the categories of Understanding into the transcendental unity of intuition in
I think. That thinking places itself above corporeal reality and above its respective
subjective connections.
In The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant (1985, p. 190) writes:
Whatever may be the content of our cognition, and in whatever manner our
cognition may be related to its object, the universal, although only negative
conditions of all our judgements is that they do not contradict themselves;
otherwise these judgements are in themselves (even without respect to the
object) nothing.
The notion of judgment in Kant casts our minds to the manner in which the
dynamic of Hegel’s self-consciousness is produced. According to him, it is through
self-consciousness that we enter the world of truth, and that consciousness is marked

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by a path of consciousness figures. He does not consider the first self-consciousness

the empty identity of I think or the Self=Self tautology, which modern philosophy
places at the center of the Copernican universe. To him, self-consciousness is a
reflection based on a being of the sensible world and of that of perception and is,
essentially, a return based on being-other (the sensible world). That being-other is
maintained in the dialectic movement constitutive of self-consciousness as another
difference that is inscribed in the first one through which self-consciousness
distinguishes itself from itself in the reflexive identity of the Self. Accordingly, the
sensible world extends within the space of that identity no longer as object that
confronts consciousness, but as that which is marked for self-consciousness with
a “negative character,” and whose “self” must be suppressed so that the concrete
identity of consciousness with itself can be formed.
These considerations lead us to think about the constitution of male representation
and how a subject acquires the consciousness that he is a man in modern societies.
Social discourse determines what is and is not relevant while a male attribute as
being an a priori category of thought. Firstly, a man knows himself as a man,
and only later will he elect the experiences that will consecrate him as such. To
paraphrase Fernando Pessoa, while an absolute thought category, masculinity puts
the following question to the subject: a man is only a man because he does not think
himself.
Hegel uses the concept of life as being the one that refers to the pure flow that
suppresses all differences and emerges as the object of self-consciousness, or as
its opposite, to the extent that it is the first sketch of world exteriorization for self-
consciousness. To the consciousness that returns to itself through the suppression of
its object in the certainty of truth which is now the truth of consciousness itself, the
object takes on the characteristics of life, with the figure of self-consciousness being
desire: “self-consciousness is the state of desire in general.”
To Hegel, desire appears as the first figure that self-consciousness takes on in its
certainty of being the truth of the world. In desire, the self of the object is negated
by satisfaction, and it is this negation movement that realizes, for consciousness, its
conversion into itself and marks the first figure of its transcendence over the object.
He states that self-consciousness can only reach its satisfaction within another
self-consciousness. As an implication, the object of the vital pulse is consumed in
satisfaction or disappears. It is not able to remain before the subject and exercise in
such permanence the mediating function that transitions a subject from the abstract
identity of pure “self” to the concrete identity of the “self” that stands before himself
in his difference from his object. “The human subject constitutes himself solely
within the horizon of the human world, and the dialectic of desire must find its truth
in the dialectic of recognition (Hegel, 1992, p. 19).
With Hegel, the notion of identity gains a historical and social dimension. In the
West, that path goes as far as the 1900’s and gains expression in the works by Karl
Marx. A revolutionary vision is then defined that delineates one ahead of another
in the social organization as being irreconcilable opposites. In that perspective, we

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arrive at the Marxist State and the exaltation of what Hegel presents as being the
very constitution of the master-slave dialectic.
In a sociological perspective, a commitment to the idea of progress marks the modern
path and gains relevance in the 19th century, as in the example of State expansion and
modernization, scientific and technical advancement, which led to both social changes
and loss of certain cultural traditions. All that came accompanied by demographic
and economic growth. Urbanization and the development of communication and
information media gave thrust to the constitution of different emancipation discourses,
among which feminism gained much visibility.
At the turn of the 20th to the 21st centuries, a spirit of innovation is revealed
not only in the production of concepts in science, but also in subjects’ world view.
Accordingly, the questions posed by Hegel as regards the formation of identity
unfold into the different emancipation discourses that ascend in the new millennium.
Modernity’s reflexive character is incorporated in a redefining of social identities,
questioning them both while cultural identities and while subjective identities.
The conceptions of male and female present in the culture are appropriated by the
emancipation discourses as opposition pairs articulated by a certain tension. Male
and female can be understood as cultural codes created out of the subject’s need to
respond to the perplexity he feels before the question of identity: Who am I, man or
woman?
Every culture seeks to answer those questions by creating mythical stories
to describe its origins and thus build cohesion of purpose and principle within
the community. In that sense, we can make use of Hegel analyses to think about
alterations to the cultural markers of identity (self-consciousness) regarding what it
means to be a man or a woman:
The first self-consciousness has no object before itself, as it is initially just for
desire; what it has is an object independently, […] about which, therefore, it
can do nothing for itself, if the object does not do to itself the same. Thus is the
movement, pure and simple, the double movement of two self-consciousnesses.
Each sees the other do what it does; each does what the other requires – thus,
only doing as the other does the same. Unilateral action would be useless,
as what must take place can only come to be through both consciousnesses.
(Hegel, 1992, p. 155)
Male and female come to be interpreted within this other conception of identity,
which, as such, means they also are estrangement and asymmetry to one another.
Differently from how mythical societies disposed them, individualistic societies
place them as opposition pairs. In that regard, Hegel (1992, p. 14) states:
Self-consciousness is being-for-itself simple, equal to itself by exclusion from
self of all other. To it, its essence and absolute object is the Self; and in that
immediacy or in that being of being-for-itself singular. What the Other is to it
is an unessential object, marked with a negative sign.

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Consciousness, which represents a subject’s effort to embody himself, seeks to

recognize itself in the activity that is life. One of the ways that zeal can be carried
out is by symbolizing it in the representations of male and female which become
characteristic of our primitive certainty that we see the world. Initially, we see the
world as men and women. The phenomenon was denominated “perceptive faith” by
Merleau-Ponty (1994) – a way to identify the intent to designate that the existence of
the world is revealed in the sexual difference. From then on, the subject develops a
dialogue with the Other in the course of acquiring self-consciousness that starts with
the impossibility of choosing one’s sex or race. Even so, the subject sees himself
and questions himself regarding his identity, and as he engages in that exercise, he
transforms a vision of himself into a gaze.
In the same way that consciousness does, that gaze has a different consistency. It
does not rest upon a continuous landscape of articulated space, rather attaining itself
to the wedges of discontinuous extensions, bothered by estrangement. In that regard,
the eye constantly confronts limits, voids, and alterity; it conforms to an open,
fragmented space, which in the perspective of late modernity, “‘atomizes’ the social
in flexible networks of games with a language that may seem quite separate from a
modern reality that previously represented itself blocked by bureaucratic arthrosis.”
That gaze is made from an inquiring impulse born from the discontinuity
between what is seen and what results from it the next moment, this unfinished
nature of the world created by means of the missteps of appearances, of the
magic of perspectives, that is, of the vacillations in significations. In that way,
the gaze does not accumulate and does not embrace, but it rather seeks; it does
not drift upon a plane surface, but it rather excavates, fixates and penetrates,
attentive to the gaps of instability in a world that gives cause to investigation
and inspection. That gaze thinks; it is a vision turned interrogation. (Lyotard,
1993, p. 31)
To Merleau-Ponty (1994), through his gaze a subject feels that
The subject of sensation is neither a thinker who takes note of quality, nor an
inert setting which is affected or changed by it, it is a power which is born into,
and simultaneously with a certain existential environment, or is synchronized
with it. The relations of sentient to sensible are comparable with those of the
sleeper to his slumber: sleep comes when a certain voluntary attitude suddenly
receives from outside the confirmation for which it was waiting. In the same
way I give ear, or look, in the expectation of a sensation, and suddenly the
sensible takes possession of my ear or my gaze, and I surrender a part of my
body, even my whole body, to this particular manner of vibrating and filling
space known as blue or red. Just as the sacrament not only symbolizes, in
sensible species, an operation of Grace, but is also the real presence of God,
which it causes to occupy a fragment of space and communicates to those
who eat of the consecrated bread, provided that they are inwardly prepared,

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in the same way the sensible has not only a motor and vital significance, but
is nothing other than a certain way of being in the world suggested to us from
some point in space, and seized and acted upon by our body, so that sensation
is literally a form of communion. (p. 285)
The subject experiences a communion that can be comprehended as a sense of
identity that traverses all of consciousness in order to feel recognized through the
social representations of man and woman. The subject’s actions correspond to who
he is and to the self-consciousness formed from the social representations. That
consciousness runs through the sexual marker.

Contemporaneity and Subjectivity

Connor considers post-modernity a sequel of modernity. To him, the postmodern

does not find its whole object in the cultural sphere, nor in the critical-institutional
sphere, but rather in some space tensely renegotiated between the two.
Foucault ponders that, rather than asking ourselves what postmodernism is, we
should ask where, how and why the postmodern discourse flourishes, in other words,
what postmodernism does.
Postmodernity should not be considered a revolution of culture, but rather an
important adjustment of power relations, both inwardly and in the realm of cultural
institutions.
Connor makes the following comments:
Charles Newman argues that the twentieth century has really seen two
distinct revolutions in the field of culture, the first, ‘real’ revolution in which
innovation and experiment swept across art and cultural activity throughout
the countries of the West, destroying old certainties and urgently politicizing
artistic activity, and the second revolution, apparently less dramatic, but
really more fundamental and influential, in which the universities and other
cultural institutions took over the various forms of modernism, canonized or
popularized its works and artists, drained away its political charge, and set
about the immense work of managing and administering it. (1992, p. 19)
In that perspective, within the scope of the subject, the impact brought onto
identities also produced transformations. Regarding what defines subjectivity relative
to fluidity, an approach emerged that was continuously open to the exercise of will
and of imagination. In that panorama, men would be faced with the possibility of
rethinking their social representation, given that it is considered multiple and devoid
of a single ordering axis.
The postmodern condition opens up space so that a subject can play multiple
roles; however, along with that, something stressful and profoundly destabilizing
is at play. In Baudrillard’s view, the implication of a subjectivity model built within
those references is something schizoid, without any depth, and directly linked to the
language of commerce and of goods.

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Newman says that postmodernism is simply a system that is representative of a

certain discourse inflation that traverses all levels of society, but in particular, the
spheres of communication and culture (Connor, 1992). To him, both critical and
literary language deliberately renounced all relationship to a reliable use value.
We stand before problematizations of those discourses instituted as the only and
true ones, that is, before “suspicion regarding metanarratives.” In that sense, there
is an alteration to the centers of power. They multiply and, consequently, totalizing
narratives that guarantee governance over social representations’ complex field
of activity cease to exist. Traditions succumb to “small histories” that, in turn,
multiply and proliferate within diversity and the countless possibilities for arranging
subjectivity. Here, there’s an attempt to embrace fragmentation and ephemeralness
in an affirmative manner. Lyotard (1993), for example, attacks any notion relative to
the possibility for the existence of a metalanguage or metatheory through which all
things would be connected or represented. Prior to that scenario, the discourses on
male and female suffer from this limitation.

Foucault: Culture Criticism as Discourse against Culture

One of the theoretical perspectives on gender identity, or even, minority identity,

finds in Foucault a reference to support its principles, especially those that followed
in the tradition of Simone de Beauvoir’s French feminism and that take “coming to
be” as the founding principle of social identities, planted in a perspective of both
social and political history. The considerations made on the formation of social
identities present in the History of Sexuality (Foucault, 1982, 1984, 1985), or even in
the foreword to Herculine Barbin (Foucault, 1982), point toward the medical-legal
notion of the identity principle in which the feminine condition, that of homosexuals
and of the mentally ill are presented as a product of the forms of discipline imposed
on the subject. In the same way, and similarly to Nietzsche, Foucault adopts the
premise that as long as the God-form still works, man cannot exist yet. And the God-
form represents the journey of “unhappy heroes in pursuit of identity” (Foucault,
1982). However, when the Man-form emerges, the death of man comes along with
it. In that regard, Klossowski (1991) wonders as to what guarantees an identity in the
absence of God and, equally, what guarantees feminine identity in the absence of the
social system that produced it and from which it seeks to be liberated. Nietzsche’s
superman, as an expression of the emancipation movements sought by minorities, is
an expression of the advent of a new form, in which there is neither man nor God,
and which is expected not to be worse than the other two: neither man nor woman,
neither man nor machine, neither white nor black, neither homo nor hetero, something
more in the order of artificiality, a cyborg. And how can this type of subjectivity
be produced? The docility & utility binomial is used by Foucault to characterize
the effects brought upon the subject as regards his subjective organization. In the
presentation of the positivity inherent to power, he shows us that individuality is a
production of power and of knowledge, just as we find in the educational, medical, or

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military practice. The soldier, the mental patient, and the student became “something
that is manufactured” (Foucault, 1984b, p. 125).
According to Deleuze (1998), Foucault considers the subject a variable, or rather,
a set of variables of what is stated. He is a derivative function of the primitive one,
or of what is stated itself. In Archeology of Knowledge, Foucault presents the subject
as being as being a place or a position that varies a great deal, consonant with the
type and the delineation of what is stated, and the “author” is not himself, but simply
one of those possible positions. Men and women are what is stated, representations
(what can be seen) without correspondence to what is said about each one. Language
“contains” words and propositions, but it does not contain what is stated and becomes
disseminated according to irreducible distances. But there is individuality beyond
discourse, one that is embodied and collective.
While markers of the identity pathway, individualization devices have been present
since the 16th century in the organization of parishes, in the institutionalization of
conscience exams, and in the reorganization of the sacrament of confession. Three
centuries before the development of human sciences in the 19th century, we found
indications that disciplinary power in no way destroys the subject, but, on the
contrary, it manufactures it. The subject is not another who opposes power, some
other reality that is nullified by him. According to Foucault, the “subject is one of
the most important effects of power” (Deleuze, 1998, p. 20), and as such, the product
of “true games,” or rather, truthful processing. To Foucault, the truth is inseparable
from the procedure that establishes it.
Foucault presents the concept of power under the form of legalized violence,
pointing out that its characteristic is not limited to positivity, but it extends all the
way to is productive efficacy, having the human being as its number one target – a
body that is a contingency and is there to be perfected and trained (Deleuze, 1998).
He also defines power as struggle, confrontation, power relation, and above all a
strategic one, differently from what we found in 18th century philosophy, according
to which power was considered “original right.” That way, power ceases being seen
as a thing, an object, and comes to be a practice in which, more and more, subjects
insert themselves in a politically docile and economically useful manner. That leads
us to encounter a legion of subjects mobilized toward increasing their economic
power and lessen their political one. Foucault shows us that this work that operates
upon bodies, while manipulating their elements, producing behavior, produces a
type of man needed to make industrial capitalist society operational. Differently
from Keleman, in Foucault, the body is not a living process that develops; on the
contrary, it is something to be manipulated and disciplined:
Mastery and awareness of one’s own body can be acquired only through the
effect of an investment of power in the body: gymnastics, exercises, muscle-
building, nudism, glorification of the body beautiful. All of this belongs to
the pathway leading to the desire of one’s own body, by way of the insistent,
persistent, meticulous work of power on the bodies of children or soldiers, the

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healthy bodies. But once power produces this effect, there inevitably emerge
the responding claims and affirmations, those of one’s own body against
power, of health against the economic system, of pleasure against the moral
norms of sexuality, marriage, decency. (Deleuze, 1998, p. 146)
He also analyzes the development of capitalist societies and shows us that those
societies only prospered because the domination they undertook was not exclusively
planted on repression. Foucault does not work with the notion of a State considered
a milestone for the production of knowledge or the origin of social power; he shows
us that in modern societies, outside the State, relatively autonomous knowledge was
produced that was gradually incorporated to it.
We find reflections on the positivity of power especially in two of his
works: Discipline and Punish (1975) and Will to Knowledge (1976). They
both contain analyses that seek to relate the historical perspective of the power
issue to the production of knowledge. Even if Foucault may have developed
methodological instruments centered around his historical research on power,
we cannot find in them a “general theory of power” (Deleuze, 1998, p. 20). He
relativizes the role of the State in the power relations of certain societies without,
however, minimizing it. What he presents as a new phenomenon is the fact that
modern societies have produced certain knowledge – on madness, criminals, the
sick, and on sexuality – from the starting point of man’s transformation into object of
knowledge. In that sense, under the rubric of individuality, subjectivity emerges both
as power production and as object of knowledge. Power and knowledge correspond
to and maintain one another reciprocally in a relationship that extends into political
practice, thus, relating them to the economic conditions in modern societies. That
principle marks another advent: that of sexuality. Thus, “there was no risk that
sexuality would emerge, by nature, counter to the law: It was only constituted
through the law” (Foucault, 1982, p. 106).
According to Baudrillard (1992, p. 15), the law that is imposed on us is that
of gender confusion. In contemporary society, “everything is sexual. Everything is
political. Everything is aesthetic.” The market economy is related to that of desires,
which emerges, more and more, from machine-bodies, created as they were for a
technological and informational purpose. To Foucault, the birth of human sciences
corroborates that perspective to the extent that, while disciplinary technique, it
produces a subjectivity no longer articulated with the Hegelian perspective, but
rather with a context where alienation is over, and in it the transparency of others is
imposed as something absolute and fundamental. “There is no longer the Other as
a mirror, as a reflective surface; self-consciousness is threatened with radiation in a
vacuum” (Baudrillard, 1992, p. 129).
To Foucault, the efficiency of social regulation mechanisms resides in their being
centered in a politics of desire as being subjects’ first visibility and mobility principle.
On that point, when he states that “power is everywhere, not because it embraces
everything, but because it comes from everywhere” (Foucault, 1984b, p. 89), it is

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necessary to think up a sustentation device for that prerogative. And desire is what
agglutinates and articulates this state of affairs. In that regard, Foucault complements:
One should probably be a nominalist in this matter: power is not an institution,
nor a structure, nor a possession. It is the name we give to a complex strategic
situation in a particular society. (in Deleuze, 1998, p. 149)
This way, we return to the concept of subjectivity not as being something of a
psychological order, but that is constituted through power relations, at the same time
intentional and not subjective.
The path trailed by Foucault between the materiality of the king’s body all the way
to the constitution of a social body notion makes us think of the different manners
in which subjectivity can be represented. Among them, male social representation
can be identified by the soldier figure, old mythological hero and warrior now turned
object of use. As well as the soldier, a man is someone who can be recognized from
a distance. Both carry in themselves natural signs of vigor and courage, pride, and
honor. The soldier’s body
was the blazon of his strength and valor; and although it is true that he had
to learn the profession of arms little by little-generally in actual fighting-
movements like marching and attitudes like the bearing of the head belonged
for the most part to a bodily rhetoric of honor. (Foucault, 1984a, p. 125)
Those denominations for identifying the soldier, present in the 17th century in the
Annales de la Charité (Foucault, 1984a), change after the second half of the 18th
century. From then on, still according to Foucault, the soldier is transformed into
something that can be manufactured:
out of formless clay, an inapt body, the machine required can be constructed;
posture is gradually corrected; a calculated constraint runs slowly through each
part of the body, mastering it, making it pliable, ready at all times, turning
silently into the automatism of habit; in short, one has ‘got rid of the peasant’
and given him ‘the air of a soldier.’ (Foucault, 1984a, p. 125)
We can see in this passage about the expelled peasant a reference to the defacing of
the social organization system that represented traditional societies, at the same time
that another became affirmed that assumed the subject as a moral value. Analogously,
in the feminist and gender analyses, masculinity is described as an unnecessary
category, a sign with no representation, sole used to indicate the empirical subject of
the male sex, as well as an emerging category of traditional societies.
The manufacturing of the soldier describes a process of constantly subjecting
body forces and channeling them toward economic utilization, imposing to the
body a docility-utility relationship. Foucault called these processes generating
the domination of the body “disciplines.” In the course of the 17th and 18th
centuries, they became transformed, and while general domination formulas, they
could be found at schools, armies, and convents. This form of domination, which

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distinguished itself from slavery because it did not take possession of the bodies,
can be named “political anatomy,” as well as “mechanics of power.” It was in the
18th century, for example, that the great prohibitions emerged regarding the history
of sexuality.
From the historic moment disciplinary practices emerge, an art of the human body
is born that is committed not only to its subjection and to increasing its abilities,
but also, above all, to making it more docile and useful in economic terms. This
way, “discipline increases the forces of the body (in economic terms of utility) and
diminishes these same forces (in political terms of obedience). In short, it dissociates
power from the body” (Foucault, 1984a, p. 127). To that end, a politics of minutiae
is created. At the barracks, at schools and hospitals, we find regulations, inspections
directed at the day-to-day of the body, which through this disciplinary machinery of
details, scrutinize it, disarticulate it, and recompose it. Careful observation of detail,
“a political awareness of these small things, for the control and use of men, emerge
through the classical age bearing with them a whole set of techniques, a whole corpus
of methods and knowledge” (Foucault, 1984a, p. 130). Molded by disciplinary
power, then, there emerges the man of modern humanism. The docile body works
like an organism, and in that sense, it correlates to a sort of individuality that is not
only analytic and “cellular,” but also, in the same way, natural and “organic.”
Foucault (1984a, p. 152) observes that “the interesting thing is to ascertain,
not what overall project presides over all these developments, but, how, in terms
of strategy, the different pieces were set in place.” This reflection extends to his
investigation about a “young man’s honor,” when he presents the young man’s
behavior as being something that belongs to a domain “especially sensitive to the
division between what was shameful and what was proper, between what reflected
credit and what brought dishonor” (Foucault, 1984, p. 182).
As he asks, “Do we truly need a true sex” (Foucault, 1982, p. 1), Foucault signals
the constancy with which modern societies answer that question affirmatively and
base on it the issue of “true sex” and of true identity.
Those are different considerations from those found in the works by Gilmore
(1990) on male culture and by Baudrillard (s/d a), relative to love asymmetry. To
these authors, in order to earn his masculinity, a man must leave the state of doubt
in which he finds himself. In the male rituals, boys are robbed of the possibility of
not having an identity.
Defining identities came to be a result of the moment when man was invented as
a matter for knowledge. He is neither the oldest matter nor the most constant having
been put to knowledge. That is the manner in which Foucault presents his thought on
man as object and subject of knowledge, and he facilitates our analysis of the social
representation concept.
Taking a relatively short chronological sample within a restricted geographical
area – European culture since the sixteenth century—one can be certain that
man is a recent invention within it […]. As the archaeology of our thought

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easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its
end. (Foucault, 1990, p. 403)
As regards the subjective issue, Foucault takes a neo-Kantian path, by reiterating
the criticism that removes from understanding the possibility to reach things in
themselves. That is the modern pathway. He speaks of a subjectivity that resists two
forms of subjection. One consists of our individuation according to the demands of
power, and the other is about the construction of identity and consists of attaching
every subject to a known and very determined identity. This type or argumentation
is also present in the gender literature and in the writings produced by the minority
movements. Foucault’s intention plays the role of putting an end to the conception
that what presides over history produces a sort of micro-consciousness upon the
subject, to which he must submit. He believes that it is possible to live without the
regulation of a legal structure or of an authoritarian system and that it is possible to
live under the sign of art.
To Foucault, the power crisis does not exist; what do exist are modulation,
capillarity, and microphysical segmentation of power. While an effort toward
comprehending power, his analyses traverse the determination of forces’
relationships, such that it is possible to identify how a new conception of power
is constituted. Foucault’s general principle corresponds to the premise that every
form is a compound of forces’ relationships, and the forces are given, while
man’s are the forces to imagine, remember, know, and want. And the forces in
man assume places, application points, or a region of what exists. Following
Nietzsche’s example, he finds that the Man-form has not existed and never will,
always, but has the body as its place of permanence and register, considering
to that end both a cartographic and an archival point of view (Deleuze, 1998).
To Foucault, subjectivity has the same correspondence when, through desire, it
aspires to what incarcerates.

Baudrillard: Culture Criticism as Discourse in Favor of Culture

To Baudrillard, Foucault’s writing is plentiful. On the one hand, it is a powerful
spiral that generates itself, that is no longer a despotic architecture without origin
and without catastrophe, unraveling itself more and broadly. On the other hand,
it is a flow of power that penetrates all the pores of the social network and of
the mental one, as well as bodies, modulating the technologies of power, there
where the relationships of power and seduction are entangled. All that can be read
in Foucault’s discourse, which is also a discourse of power. It is a discourse that
flows, invests, and saturates the whole of the space opened by it. The tiniest of
qualifiers find their way toward the inside of the slightest fissures in the meanings.
The analysis is constituted as if being an art of decentering, opening up power and
discourse space, and both being covered up by meticulous writing that pours out.
“There’s no vacuum here, no phantasm, no backfiring, but a fluid objectivity, a

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nonlinear, orbital, and flawless writing. The meaning never exceeds what one says
of it” (Baudrillard, 1987, p. 10).
That being the case, Foucault’s discourse is a mirror of the power he describes.
That is where his strength and seduction lie, not in his truth index, his initial reason.
However, the power of his discourse resides more in its construction devoid of
open spaces than in the truth it tries to reveal properly speaking. The procedures of
truth are not important, given that his analytical power is guided by the seduction
of the word and by its capacity to produce new operations and new powers. There
is a sort of exactitude in him that is both tactical and tactile (Baudrillard, 1987,
p. 4).
Foucault’s discourse is not the discourse of truth, but rather, it is a mythical
discourse, a mythic appropriated by the minority discourses that, while focused
on the truth supposedly revealed by that same discourse, lose perspective of the
mythical nature inherent to it. A strategy of seeking the truth seeks also to pass for
the truth itself, before a discourse that flows without leaving holes.
Foucault’s analyses inhibit the possibility that the subject might leave the place
of confinement that created him, to the extent that, by means of desire, he is the
one that demands this sort of order. That being so, he corroborates the perspective
of negotiating identities and differences, in place of a coup de force by the stolen
alterity. What is taking place today with masculinity in light of the minority
discourses is the same that happened with primitive cultures: Their myths became
comparable under the sign of Lévi-Strauss’s structural analysis. Their signs became
exchangeable under the sheltering of a universal culture, in exchange for the right
to difference. It is as if it were not possible for contemporary cultures to keep open
the alterity of forms or the disparity of terms. Femininity more and more becomes
reduced to masculinity and vice-versa.
Baudrillard (1981, 1991a, 1993) will develop his considerations on the social
logic of consumption, pointing to the existence of an ideology whose foundation is
the myth of happiness and of equality. He defends his point of view by signaling to
the fact that the high value ascribed to the apogee of democracy, which originates
from ideals of equality, liberty, and fraternity, tumbled to the ground if we consider
the logic by which contemporary society is revealed.
He tells us that one of the effects of accelerating modernity in technology,
media, politics, and sexuality was that “it has propelled us to ‘escape velocity’
with the result that we have flown free of the referential sphere of the real and of
history” (Baudrillard, 1991a). As an implication, the subject has the sensation of
being liberated from everything, such as bodies without an orbit and atoms with
no direction in space moving without any gravitational effect. As he builds his
analyses, Baudrillard (1992) points to the failure of Hegel’s vision, from which a
society resulted that “founded the cult of difference upon the loss of difference.”
He signals to the fact that, as the real differences between men were abolished, as
homogeneity was accorded to people and products, the kingdom of differentiation is
simultaneously inaugurated.

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Other considerations about contemporary societies can be made from the analyses
by Edgar Morin that corroborate Baudrillard’s ideas. Morin (1984) bases himself on
a certain sociological determinism, starting from which social life comes to be seen
as a condition to all organized thought. He depicts a panorama where individuality
dives into a process of its own dilution, to the extent that it comes to be recognized
by what escapes it, by what is public. In the 1930’s, social life initiated a process of
fragmentation, thus, threatening its status as organizing agent.
To Morin, the subject lives between the real and the fictional, in a double sort
of contamination. That makes it so that he identifies himself with and takes for
himself a cinematographic script as a life plan. He comes to identify with a series of
images successively produced by this type of culture, which favors the mix between
sensationalism and the romanesque. The subject is, then, one that makes and unravels
himself constantly in order to provide support to the dynamic of a consumer society.
When he refers to the death of the subject, Baudrillard (1996) presents an even
greater destruction relative to a world “entirely abandoned to the Same.” To that end,
he uses a writing from 1935 that expands on a world without women. The main idea
is articulated around the elimination of the feminine and, consequently, the end of
alienation. According to him, “alienation protected us from something worse: from
the definitive loss of the other, from the expropriation of the other by the same”
(Baudrillard, 1996, p. 148). Consider the elimination of the other, under all its forms
(disease, death, violence, estrangement, negativity), not to mention differences of
race, sex, language; when we eliminate all singularity in order to give effect to total
positivity, we are at the point of eliminating ourselves.
Baudrillard analyzes that when we fight against negativity and death, suppressing
evil, or whatever its expression may be, we develop an attitude to put an end to all
negative work, and with that, we assertively assume positivity as a value. Presently,
it is this positivity that eliminates alterity, when it follows a path similar to the one
trailed by the transformations that evil assumed before the advancements of reason.
Baudrillard, then, develops the notion of transparency, an idea planted in the
conception of a subject without other, without object, who has covered up his own
tracks and become transparent to himself. In Rojas (1996), we find a reflection
that benefitted from that argumentation as he analyzed the bases of contemporary
wellbeing considering a sort of nihilistic tetralogy, composed of: hedonism,
consumption, permissiveness, relativity, and materialism. According to him:
such a subject looks a lot like the denominations of light products of our days:
food without calories and bland, beer without alcohol, sugar without glucose,
tobacco without nicotine, Coca-Cola without caffeine and without sugar… and
a man without substance, without content, left at the mercy of money, power,
unlimited success, and pleasure without restriction. (Rojas, 1996, p. 11)
This type of representation, Baudrillard (1996, p. 150) analyzes, presents a
subject without references, devitalized, under the reign of effect without a cause,
the war against no enemy, passions with no object, time without memory; “we

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become slaves without masters.” Terrorized and exploited by himself, this subject
assumes a voluntary sort of servitude, dependent as he is on the different social
systems6 and on performance.7 “We have become masters – at least virtual masters
– of this world, but the object of that mastery, the finality of that mastery, have
disappeared” (Baudrillard, 1996, p. 150). It is a world without Hegel, without
difference, deprived of living out alterity as a destiny – alterity dwindles, and to
that extent, it becomes necessary to produce the Other as difference. That goes both
for social relations and for the body and for sex. A sort of madness is engendered
which one must escape from, escape from the world while a destiny, from body
and sex while destiny, as well as from the other sex. It is that escape that makes
it necessary to invent the Other as difference, to produce the Other, then. As an
implication of this reflection, we return, as does Baudrillard, to the effort of gender
studies. To him, trying to
Disentangle the inextricable otherness of male and female, to restore each to its
specificity and difference, is an absurdity. Yet this is the absurdity of our sexual
culture of liberation and emancipation of desire. Each sex with its anatomical
and psychological characteristics, with its own desire and all the irresolvable
dramas that ensue, including the ideology of sex and the utopia of a difference
based both in right and in nature. (Baudrillard, 1996, p. 152)
With modernity, we enter the era of producing the Other. Baudrillard (1996,
p. 151) states that “the aim is no longer to kill the other, devour it, seduce it, vie with
it, love it or hate it, but, first, to produce it. It is no longer an object of passion, it is
an object of production.”
Emancipation discourses are committed to revitalizing, updating social categories
that, prior to the modern age, were committed to the premises of that type of
society. Therefore, the invention of difference coincides with the emergence of a
new representation of woman that demands the place of stolen femininity. Feminist
literature, in particular, charges patriarchal culture with casting man’s femininity
upon women, molding it to that image and likeness. The hypothesis that a woman is
a castrated subject is an example of that statement. In that sense, we cannot find, in
the man-woman relationship, the courtship, a movement of wooing between both, of
seducing or being seduced, but above all, the effort to produce the daydream of the
“ideal woman or femme fatale, a hysterical or supernatural metaphor.”8 The feminist
premise, and later that of gender, is planted on the notion that woman was created as
being a projection of man’s universe. Thus, liberation movements must promote the
emancipation of that equation, de-naturalizing woman from biology, but naturalizing
her through the discourse of rights. Man and woman become a same; they are “twin-
like, almost incestuous figures.”
To Baudrillard,
The sexual difference, the concept of sexual difference which was established
in the same movement, was merely a variant of the incestuous form. In that

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concept, man and woman were no longer anything but the mirroring [mirage]
of each other. They were separated and different only the better to become the –
often indifferent – mirrors of each other. The whole machinery of eroticism
was turned on its head, since the erotic attraction which formerly emanated
from strangeness and otherness now shifted over to emanate from similarity
and likeness. (1996, p. 153)
The considerations above show us how much the sexes have equally lost their
singularity, making it so that the rigor of difference culminated in undifferentiation.
That implies a process of extrapolating the Same, of continuous and progressive
absorption of one sex by the other to the point of turning sexuality into a null
function. That puts us face to face with the scenario of clones, uselessly sexual, given
that sexuality ceases to be needed for reproduction. Gender analyses emerge in that
panorama as a problematic that replaces that of sex. We, thus, watch the progressive
dilution of the sexual function and find ourselves, as Baudrillard points out, in the
transsexual era, where both those conflicts relating to difference and those pertaining
to the biological and anatomical signs of that difference perpetuate themselves even
beyond the disappearance of alterity.
As regards transsexuality, Baudrillard presents a sort of contemporary symbolic
representation belonging to all subjects. He tells us that
The sexual body has not been assigned a kind of artificial fate (…) transsexuality.
Transsexual not anatomical sense, but rather in the more general sense of
transvestism, of playing with the commutability of the signs of sex and of
playing, in contrast to the former manner of playing on sexual difference, on
sexual indifference: on lack of differentiation between the sexual poles, and
on indifference to sex qua pleasure. Sexuality is underpinned by pleasure, by
jouissance (the leitmotiv of sexual liberation); transsexuality is underpinned
by artifice, be it the artifice of actually changing sex or the artifice of the
transvestite who plays with the sartorial, morphological or gestural signs of
sex. But whether the operation in question is surgical or semio-urgical, whether
it involves organs or signs, we are in any case concerned with replacement
parts, and since today the body is fated to become a prosthesis, it is logical
enough that our model of sexuality should have become transsexuality, and
that transsexuality should have everywhere become the locus of seduction.
We are all transsexuals, just as we are biological mutants in potentia. This is not
a biological issue, however: we are all transsexuals symbolically (Baudrillard, 1992,
p. 27).
In that respect, his analysis relates to the meanings of Michael Jackson, Cicciolina,
and Madonna9 in contemporary culture, and it asks, at the same time, what that
process is that they underwent after having experienced the “gains” of the cybernetic
revolution (man or machine?), of the genetic revolution (man or virtual clone?), and
also of the sexual revolution (man or woman?). In those three subjects, we find the

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mark of a pathway that signals indetermination itself, where multiplicity represents

nothingness. They are cybernetic, androgynous, politically indifferent: They are
transsexual. To that end, it is necessary to create a profession of faith around the
capacity for individualization and the right to it, such molding of the subject to the
ideation of the Same.
It is worth noting that same context does not require alterity. In it, groups like the
skinhead emerge that advocate supremacy of the white race, that seek in a radical and
paradoxical manner to destroy society by means of war and chaos, with the intent of
rebuilding it. Through their hate, they express their melancholy for feeling that they
lack visibility and social recognition, as well as consistent social insertion ties. They
represent the radicalization of differences, the death of the subject and of alterity.
The creed in effect in contemporary societies encourages subjects to personalize
themselves and, in that way, to distinguish themselves from the prerogative of
traditional societies. According to that belief, personalizing means to reclaim oneself,
to restitute possession of oneself, thus, abandoning the absence in which one lives.
In that regard, Baudrillard comments:
Personalize your own home yourself! This ‘over-reflexive’ expression
(personalizing oneself … in person etc.!) tells the real story. What all this rhetoric
says, while floundering about unable to say it, is precisely that there is no one there
– no person. The ‘person’ as absolute value, with its indestructible features and
specific force, forged by the whole of the Western tradition as the organizing myth
of the Subject – the person with its passions, its will, its character (or banality) – is
absent, dead, swept out of our functional universe. And it is this absent person, this
lost instance which is going to ‘personalize’ itself (Baudrillard, 1996, p. 160).
In the feminist proposal to liberate women from their artificial condition
defined by pre-modern culture, we find an unfolding of that endeavor to reclaim
the self. The idea is to restitute their “genuine” stature as sexual beings and, at
the same time, recognize them as subjects of rights. Neither a castrated man nor
a politically impeded subject, the “new” representation of woman comes to be
one of the tools for constituting this social prerogative that requires no alterity to
state its liberation. In this perspective, man and woman look at each other through
one another, and they do so by means of predictability, of a certain “generalized
sexual cross-eyedness,” which replaces sex with an alternative function instead
of considering it a dual relationship and, thus, where it was previously alterity, it
becomes “alternative current.” Between the sexes, the gaze of seduction vanishes
where the seduced one is perplexed and seeks self-control, there where he is
fascinated by some sort of danger, the locus of one who does not know where he
steps, but thinks the seducer does. We cannot state that the seduced one loves the
seducer; however, we know that he is a prisoner, who may well hate more than
love the seducer (Kehl, 1990). It is that game – the experience of estrangement,
belief, and dream – that contemporary societies ceased to require. This type of
social organization is mobilized toward the production of what must be seen:

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transparency and the absence of mysteries. This production is committed to

banalization, saturated with clichés and with what is disposable, where everything
became indistinguishable, looking like the same thing. As Baudrillard (1996, p. 154)
suggests, man and woman, exposed to this context and produced by it, tend to
naturalize desire
As function, as energy, as libido. And that naturalization of pleasures and
differences leads just as ‘naturally’ to the loss of the sexual illusion. Sex
removed from artifice, illusion and seduction, and restored to its conscious or
unconscious economy.
Those issues deal with the problematics of the contemporary subject, a
metropolitan passenger, who travels very fast and looks upon everything with that
effect, placing himself more and more distantly and at greater and greater velocity
(Peixoto, 1990). In that way, the tendency is for there to be a flattened perception of
the world, which becomes superficial and lacking in depth. Baudrillard presents us
a world converted into scenery, where the subjects are mere characters who traverse
the “cinema-city,” where all is image and surface. In it, nothing is meant to be seen
up close, slowly, or in detail, as did the flaneur, that subject from the end of the 19th
century, as analyzed by Walter Benjamin (1993). He was a passerby who considered
his experience a conducting thread in the search for meaning, constructed by a chain
of multiple representations articulated with his personal history. As he traversed
the city, the flaneur initially exposed himself to a field of meanings that was later
organized through the search for meaning. He would see it all and question himself
about it. That specificity of the flaneur’s gaze, once disfigured by the premises of
contemporary societies,10 leads to a loss of meaning in the images that constitute our
sense of identity. What’s left to know is whether the subject is able to see through
this mythology emptied out of meaning by repetition.
We know that Western thought has sustained itself on the basis of the
representation principle. Both the images and the concepts lend themselves to
representing something that is exterior to them. To the extent that another principle
becomes established that generalizes the imagery, the principle of representation
loses its functional strength. Therefore, the images themselves come to constitute
the reality they refer to. We cannot, thus, work with the traditional concept of
representation, to the extent that the very notion of reality contains within itself
that which should represent it. There lies the difficulty in distinguishing what is
real from what is not. In this world of imagery, the real no longer has any origin
or reality. An effort is constituted, thus, to see what is behind the image, what
is hidden, or indeed what is real. However, there is nothing to look at, there is
nothing behind it; surface is all there is. In “The Student of Prague,” Baudrillard
analyzes the path of a character who, having sold his soul/psyche to the Devil,
kills himself, given that it is his image that takes his place and becomes alive and
real.11 He loses sense of his actions, which are symbolically generated around him

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by the spectacular imagery. The transparency of his relationship with the world
is expressed by the relationship that remains unaltered between the subject and
his reflection in the mirror. The fidelity of that reflection witnesses he reciprocity
between the world and him. Symbolically, in case the image should go missing, that
would indicate a dulling of the world for him, and thus, his actions would escape
him; he, therefore, loses any perspective on himself. Without that guarantee, no
possible identity can exist: He becomes another relative to himself; he is alienated.
That is a journey of violence. By means of it, the subject seeks to restitute his
possession of himself. What he had relinquished of himself (soul/psyche) demands
expression, seeking like a ghost to find vengeance for being forgotten. Within this
system, the subject becomes his own enemy, thus, producing his own death. It is a
death he seeks to avoid through violence, as he tries to break away from this state
of alienation; nevertheless, as he does so, he eliminates the principle that creates
him as alterity: the other.
As regards alterity, Baudrillard argues:
What defines otherness is not that the two terms are not identifiable, but that
they are not opposable. Otherness is of the order of the incomparable. It is not
exchangeable in terms of a general equivalence; it is not negotiable; and yet
it circulates in the mode of complicity and the dual relation, both in seduction
and in war.
It is not even opposed to identity: it plays with it, just as illusion is not opposed
to the real, but plays with it, and as the simulacrum is not opposed to truth, but
plays with truth – doing so, therefore, beyond true and false, beyond difference
– and just as the feminine is not opposed to the masculine, but plays with
the masculine, somewhere beyond sexual difference. The two terms do not
correlate: the second always plays with the first. The latter is always a more
subtle reality which enwraps the former in the sign of its disappearance. The
whole effort will be to reduce this antagonistic principle, this incompatibility,
to a mere difference, to a well-tempered play of opposition, to a negotiation of
identity and difference in place of the stolen otherness. (1996, p. 159)
And the Other is that foreigner that gazes on and recover meaning where it is
lost. He looks on as if for the first time, and what his eyes see, those that are already
there are no longer able to notice. He, thus, recovers the meaning of the mythology
created by the symbolic game of alterity. The Other considers everything to be
mythology, reintroduces imagination and the language where everything is empty
and silent, pure banalization of our ideation, so that this way a sense of identity can
be produced. It is the identity lost through violence and that seeks through violence
to reclaim itself.
Therefore, not only is all violence the Other’s violence, but it is the Other, as such,
that is violence; that is so given the fact that he is other, is present, and exists.12
Dadoun (1998, p. 66) also tells us about that Other:

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Other in excess! And that “excess” is violence itself, elemental, clear. From the
very moment it places itself in front of me – but the Other is always in front of
me! – he is against me; he exists against me; he occupies a certain space – that
removes me.
The Other “occupies” me – it is unbearable! To him, it suffices to be other; still
it is necessary for him to implicate me in him, to swallow me, to absorb me
in his alterity, for him to turn me and re-turn me in his own interior, so as to
throw in my face an image unknown to me and with which it covers me. The
Other infringes upon me double violence: the violence of alterity as such and
the violence of alterity because it tries to identify me, because it corrodes or
erodes my identity.
The issue is that contemporary societies made the alterity principle secondary
as an element in affirming singularity. In that sense, it was necessary to invent
the Other as a product generated from the negation of the world, of the body, and
of sex as a destiny. The perplexity before each of those accidents was converted
into the organization of a culture of desire where alterity dwindles, and thus, it
becomes necessary to “produce the Other as difference, in place of experiencing
alterity as a destiny” (Baudrillard, 1996, p. 151). From that replacement results
the misconstruction that the sexes have symmetrical destinies. According to the
reflections by Baudrillard, as one relinquishes alterity, one dives into the field of
sexual indifference. In that sense, any possible alterity would be on the side of
women, given that they want to produce themselves as different, as they no longer
wish to be produced as an extension of male history. It is up to them, then, to produce
a new figure of the other as the object of seduction – the same way that it was up to
men, up to a certain point, to produce a seductive image of women. According to
Baudrillard, that is the problem the woman turned subject of desire is faced with,
to the extent that she cannot find the Other that she could desire as such – after all,
could it be that there aren’t enough men?
We can think that male and female are two incomparable terms, and as such, the
habit of opposing them becomes a senseless operation. Baudrillard (1996) states that
the problem of sexual difference is unsolvable when one tries to resolve it by means
of the relationship of opposition between the two sexes, such as was done to the
concepts of good and evil:
They are not on the same plane. The real problem is precisely the strangeness,
the imperviousness of Good and Evil to each other, which means there is no
reconciling them, and thus no ethical solution to the problem of their opposition.
The inexorable otherness of Evil passes across the ecliptic of morality. (p. 159)
We retake, then, the problem of alterity, comprehending that what defines it is not the
discovery that two terms are no identifiable, but that they do not bring within themselves
a relationship of opposition. Distinctly from what has happened with identity and
difference, which came to operate as negotiable operators of a politics of the correct

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based upon and moved by negation of alterity, we see with Baudrillard that “otherness is
of the order of the incomparable; it is not exchangeable in terms of a general equivalence;
it is not negotiable” (Baudrillard, 1996). Any possibility of singularity that does not
adjust itself to this political game of difference must be limited: That is what we find in
the feminist analyses about the “world of men,” or also in the criticisms from the gay
movement about “hegemonic sexuality,” or the heterosexual one.
The feminist criticism is aimed at patriarchal culture, as it relinquishes the
asymmetry between man and woman, provides support for the beginning of alterity
negation. This negation can be identified by the idea that “traditional sexuality” is
a contagious disease that must be combated. While associated to reproduction, this
type of sexual exercise will be liberated toward beyond contraception. Before the
traditional model, there is the premise of a sexuality freed from reproduction: “[it]
leads on to reproduction without sexuality, and what was freedom of choice becomes
quite simply the growing hold of the system over all forms of in vitro generation”
(Baudrillard, 1987, p. 15).
The fact that women stopped being alienated by men is a paradoxical
consequence of the women’s movement’s virtual victory. However, the “new”
female representation is deprived of the masculine and, therefore, destitute of the
vital illusion of the Other and, thus, also of “her own illusion, of her desire and of
the privilege of being a woman” (Baudrillard, 1996, p. 152). It is no longer a matter
of women’s demands in light of men’s power, but rather of a certain hurt before the
absence of men’s power to change themselves. Before the “hegemonic male” that
interdicted freedoms, a frail and feeble conception of masculinity emerges,13 one
devoid of its phallic and dangerous power. In that regard, Baudrillard (1987) states
that, “whereas in the past it was freedom, desire, pleasure and love which seemed
to be sexually transmitted, today it seems to be hatred, disillusionment, distrust and
resentment between the sexes.”
In contemporary cultures, there is a resistance to admit that in the universe of
love there is no symmetry, or difference, given that male and female are “light years
apart.” After the sexual liberation movements, “each sex is no longer exactly the
other of the other sex.” Heterosexual man, considered the direct heir to the patriarchal
system, was pitched as an enemy of the sexual liberation intent represented by the
women’s and the gay movements. The emancipation movements became perfect
crimes (Baudrillard, 1996) –­­whose reconstruction is impossible, given that they are
assumed to have, like natural catastrophes, no perpetrator or motive. By means of
that perspective, they analyze the social systems for sexual oppression, which tend
to be mirrors of the powers they themselves describe. There lies the seductive power
of the feminist discourse, which in order to make itself democratic, eliminates the
Other as alterity (ecstasy, anguish, or castration).
To Baudrillard,
[…] woman is, for example, the only animal creature capable of distilling death
for man in homeopathic doses. But the opposite is not true. Man has never

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signified death for woman, as she signifies it for man. There is no symmetry in
the world of love. (s/d a, p. 119)
Differently from what happened in traditional cultures, present-day societies
apply themselves toward accelerating all bodies, messages, processes in all senses,
and as Baudrillard states, through the modern media, a trajectory simulation to
infinity is created for every development, narrative, or image.
Every political, historical, cultural fact possesses a kinetic energy that tears it
away from its state and projects it into hyperspace, where it loses all meaning,
given that it will never return. It is useless to resort to science fiction: From
now on, we have here and now, with our informatics, our circuitry, and our
networks, this particle accelerator that definitively broke the referential orbit
of things. (Baudrillard, s/d, p. 9)
In that context, consumption emerges as a new ethic around which subjects seek
to orbit. The objects to be acquired represent the effort and reward of those who have
in fixed capital, in assets, the sense of security and prosperity. Said another way,
production and work precede consumption. Currently, the objects present themselves
before being acquired; they appear ahead of the sum of efforts they represent; their
consumption precedes their production. In the patriarchal economy, founded on
inheritance and income stability, consumption does not precede production. Today,
however, the stature of an entire civilization changes to the extent that objects
present themselves as something replaceable and that never grows old. In that slant,
the “new” male representation will be demanded.
The valuing of abundance and the fruition of objects only makes sense if analyzed
along with the conditions of scarcity in which subjects are immersed. The right to
fresh air, says Baudrillard (1992), means the loss of fresh air as a natural resource,
its passage to the stature of merchandise, and its un-egalitarian social redistribution.
Supported by the Declaration of Human Rights, the social dynamic of consumption
reaffirms the principles of individualism, without referring to a specific subject in
order to do so. Growth is abundance, and abundance is democracy. That conception
of society seeks to ensure, in light of the needs and of the satisfaction principle, that
all men are equal. They are so because the objects and goods so allow. The consumer
society rises toward beyond the contradictions of class, and it is founded on the
ideology of wellbeing.
Baudrillard (1981) signals the fact that the consumer society results from the
commitment between democratic, egalitarian principles and the fundamental
imperative in the order of privilege and domination. Equality, as well as growth, is
a function of inequality.
Baudrillard’s work also indicates that this type of system is uniquely knowledgeable
about the conditions for its own survival, while ignoring any social and individual
content. To him, consumption, information, communication, culture, and abundance
are instituted, discovered, and organized by the system itself, as new productive forces.

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According to the author, the system produces solely for itself, reducing individual
purposes to a minimum. Everything it defines as a value is fleeting. This imperative
force toward abundance generates a constant sort of excitement on the part of subjects,
who seek to satisfy themselves in light of it, while it ultimately does not belong to
them. Individual needs become expressions of those created by the consumption
system. What this system produces are needs, as well as subjects to embody them.
In this model, the value of a subject is not determined by his singularity but by
the role he plays in maintaining the system. What is a priority is for the system to
be maintained, even to the detriment of the subject. Therefore, needs are advanced
forms of systematization of the productive forces within the scope of subjectivity.
Consumption constitutes the logical sequence necessary for production.
The objects produced within inside this system will not fully satisfy those who
seek them, and that continuously leads to dissatisfaction. In light of this panorama,
the subject only exists while a consumer. With that stature, there is no recognition
of his singularity or personal history. The consumer becomes melded with the goods
and becomes feeble, insatiable, and in need of definition.
In Galbraith’s conception, the subject exists to serve the industrial system, to
the extent that he is invited to consume its products. This system, according
to Baudrillard (1992, 1993), requires men as workers, as economizers, and as
consumers. Among those three dimensions, the consumer condition is the one that
most demands from the subject today. In that role, he is practically irreplaceable.
Happiness and wellbeing are only possible on the basis of consumption. An ego
consumans is created that avidly seeks identification with objects. This action, in
turn, produces an individualizing effect, a dissocializing and de-historizing one. As
a consumer, the subject becomes lonely.
Appeals for personalization and authenticity seek to minimize the effects generated
by the consumer society on the subjects, leading them to believe that it is possible to
differentiate themselves from the anomie in which they are immersed. In this type
of society, there is no one who is a person in an absolute value, with irreducible
features, such as was forged by the Western tradition as an organizing myth of the
subject with his own passions, will, and character. Baudrillard complements his
reasoning that a similar person, absent, dead, swept from our functional universe,
has to personalize and differentiate themselves.
The effort to differentiate oneself completely is in a context where the subject is
worth less and less for what he is and more and more for what he represents within
the value scale of the consumer society. It can be said that personal experiences
participate very little in that representation, to the extent that subjects only exist as
they consume. And consumption replaces a spontaneous relationship to mediate it
through signs that come to be the true object of consumption. And while signs, the
executive woman and the sensitive man are, in this scenario, goods launched just
like two products. The subjects must put their personal experiences at the service of
those models, distorting them through fictional parameters, fragments of illusions
created within the production system. Anguish, pain, and suffering emerge as signs

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of failure or obstacle to the implementation of the abundance model. In it, those

feelings find no recognition or expression.
Autonomy and differentiation are priority aspects, but paradoxical ones, of
a society that does not value the existence of channels for expressing individual
experiences within the scope of what is singular. A rhetoric of difference rises before
a scenario where what rules are de-personalization and anomie. Homo consumans
becomes consolidated from the starting point of singularity negation, without losing
sight of what it represents for the subjects, to the extent that it serves as a basis for
defining what they must consider priorities in their lives. We are talking about a sort
of standardization of what is singular, as a mass is singular.
One effect of that is to be perceived in what is going on through the male and
female categories. They were widely used in human and social science as a factor
for the production of identity, but now they lose their importance day by day. As
consumers, man and woman are becoming the same. The discussion emerges, then,
around difference, never before as valued as it is now.
In consumer societies, sexuality was made artificial and limited to the concepts of
exchange and use. Social representation is, alternatively, the sign and the reproduction
of a socially valued object; it has an organized corpus of knowledge and one of
the psychic activities thanks to which men turn the physical and social realities
unintelligible, insert themselves in a group or daily connection for exchange, and
liberate the powers of their imagination. That is how Moscovici (1978) defines and
delineates the reaches of the social representation concept. Even though his analysis
is set upon psychoanalysis, his steps assist us in thinking that there are adhesions that
are made between the subjects and the images socially associated with them.
Baudrillard is categorical when he states that the possible way out is death,
given that for this context the subject is defined by his own negation. To him, this
contemporary subject is not in any way a subject, as he has taken on performance
as a religion. In the name of the rights of Man, everything is consensus and
negotiation:
The subject lives in regret for subjectivity and alienation, the heroic reclaiming
of the self. He does not think except about the technical appropriation of the
self. He has become a convert of the sacrificial religion of performance, of
efficacy, of stress, and of timing – a much more ferocious liturgy than that of
production – of total modification and unconditional sacrifice to the divinities
of information, total exploitation of the self by oneself – the final stage of
alienation. (Baudrillard, 1987, p. 56)
As the portrait of an era, these reflections are interesting and frightening, although
they make us think about how empty we are of a conceptual apparatus to help us
follow the strength of these analyses; that means working toward identifying the
existing connections between psychic and social content. To that end, it is necessary
to examine in what manner should be structured a sort of reflection committed to
that goal.

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Those connections can be analyzed by means of the contribution made by myths

as an organizing narrative of social and subjective histories, keeping in mind that, as
they narrate the origins of subjective life, they do so by articulating it with collective
life. Myths put us before metaphor, dream, illusion, and utopia; they express the
problem of freedom for the subject, casting him into a limited and transcendent field,
a symbolic space that determines him, at the same that it confronts him with his
finality and destiny. Myths tell us about alterity, about freedom, about the subject’s
effort to overcome his own alienation and to realize what is a “collective” dream,
replaced in the transition to individualism with individual yearnings through which
a subject affirms himself socially. As an example of that in contemporary societies,
we have, on the political plane, the minority movements.
The shift of collective practices into the interior of political groups, or those for
sexual or ethnic-religious emancipation, is part of one of the stages in the dilution of
traditional societies’ value system. In contemporary society, there isn’t a free subject,
but rather a liberal subject. Then we went “from liberty to liberation, from liberation
to liberalization. The extreme point of highest dilution, minimal intensity, where
the problem of liberty cannot even be posed any longer” (Baudrillard, s/d, p. 158).
To the extent that the concept of alienation tends to disappear, that of difference
emerges as an alternative. And difference, still according to Baudrillard (s/d, p. 160),
is the subject’s childhood disease, while the identity fixation is the old-
age disease. We have conquered otherness with difference and, in its turn,
difference has succumbed to the logic of the same and of indifference. We have
conquered otherness with alienation (the subject becomes its own other), but
alienation has, in its turn, succumbed to identity logic (the subject becomes the
same as itself). And we have entered the interactive, sidereal era of boredom.
Before history, taken as lost reference, could be turned into our myth, following
Foucault’s example, myth played a different role within cultures:
Myth, chased from the real by the violence of history, finds refuge in cinema.
[…] History is a strong myth, perhaps, along with the unconscious, the last
great myth. It is a myth that at once subtended the possibility of an “objective”
enchainment of events and causes and the possibility of a narrative enchainment
of discourse. The age of history, if one can call it that, is also the age of the
novel. It is this fabulous character, the mythical energy of an event or of a
narrative, that today seems to be increasingly lost. (Baudrillard, 1991a, p. 59)
In the transition to individualism, we find a disfiguring of the traditional man
and woman representations. However, we also identify, by means of the dialectic
of clarification, the structuring of emancipation discourses that strengthen
individualistic ideation, by recreating the traditional representations of the subject.
We notice that path in feminism, as well as in the homosexual movements. It was
necessary for a polarization to become established between the traditional and
the “new” representations in order that it would be possible to strengthen the new

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representations of social subjects. The representative of the traditional orders, of

their tensions and their symbols, ended up being the empirical subject of the male
sex, as if he were the exclusive and first creator of traditional organizations. This
political and tactical operation permeated all of the 18th and 19th centuries and
came all the way to the present day by means of a “fatal strategy” of masculinity
banalization. Firstly, however, we identify a disfiguring of the social space, or of
any gregarious sort of organization that became an opposition to the individualistic
project, not to what it has of empirical or practical, but to what it has of metaphorical.
The social was so valued and expressed in the 20th century that we identify its death
in the effusion with which it is presented. It was diluted in the real, made extinct
in whatever possibility there is for existing in the real (Baudrillard, 1991a, p. 152).
For the subject of the male sex, masculinity is more than an identity term, an
expression of his sexual mark. It represents a means for insertion and recognition,
a characteristic of collective organizations’ vigor and an unfolding of the alterity
rubric. The tensions or forces present in the subject, existing in his interactions
with the respective collectives, are contemplated, for example, in Greek myths.
To the extent that we advance toward more complex and multiple forms of social
organization, we find a moving away from and a lack of concern with those forces.
The scientific, legal, and technological societies relinquished the need to monitor the
impact of those tensions upon the subjects’ day-to-day and kept organizing more and
more, thus, moving away from their most immanent needs. The ceased to compose
with subjects visibility and recognition codes in which each one’s singularity could
be represented and valued by groups.
Our intent, then, is to go through the narratives of some male myths and to
analyze them while elaborations on tensions present within the subject, as well as on
the world in which he is inserted. In them, there is recognition both of the subject’s
forces of origin and of the journey through which he will constitute himself into one.
That journey, at the same time particular and collective, speaks of masculinity as an
experience of strength and wisdom, of courage and astuteness, of honor and fidelity.

Keleman: Culture as Embodied Experience

Keleman (1975) conceives his concept of subjectivity in a work titled Your Body
Speaks Its Mind, where the very modeling of experience is considered identity itself.
Keleman does not work with the traditional mind-body opposition when he deals
with the subject notion. On a different slant, his thought resembles the analyses by
Baudrillard, as those relate to the role of alterity in the constitution of subjectivity.
Keleman states that we do not have bodies, but we are our very bodies. Emotional
reality and its biological base are one and the same and cannot be separated or
differentiated in any way. As he created the notion of the Formative Principle, the
author presents singularity as an open process, where experiences continuously
offer new possibilities for forming relationships and establishing relations with
the environment. Keleman’s object of study is the Formative Process, in which he

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states emotional and biological realities are inseparable. That principle is present
throughout his work, being developed through the concepts of form, organization,
inherited body, and acquired body.14
Subjectivity is a continuous formation, and the body is an expression of that. In
other works developed at the Center for Energetic Studies, in Berkeley, in the United
States, Keleman continues to show the relationship between the body and identity.
One of the highlights is his analysis about the connections between anatomy and
feelings, the shape of the body, and the emotions, in Emotional Anatomy (1985);
his reflections on the manner in which shocks, abuse, and negligence become
incorporated to human experiences in Patterns of Distress (1989); his approach to
concepts regarding the life of the body in Somatic Reality (1979).
In his recent work with Joseph Campbell, Keleman (1999) redefines the notion
of body as destiny and inscribes it as image, experience, and somatic imagination,
while making use of myth to compose the relationship between body, subjectivity,
and society, and to present myth as being the body: “The body is given. Myth is also
given from the body.” To Keleman, one’s sense of identity is no longer defined by
thought, but rather comes to be revealed through the embodiment experience.
According to him, the effort undertaken by contemporary culture has been in the
direction of seeking to understand it, rather than telling it as a myth. In that sense,
modern myth is committed to deciphering creation through the genetic code, and the
myths of creation and of evolution guard close relations to one another:
For me, there is another aspect to the creation and evolution myth – that is,
the coming into existence of the body’s subjectivity. Myth is about the birth
and evolution of the body’s inner subjective experience. Embryogenesis is
cosmogenesis; the birth of the body is the birth of the inner emotional cosmos.
(Keleman, 1999, p. 428)
Becoming embodied, according to him, is to take part in a migration that goes from
one corporeal form to another, where every subject is a nomad and moves similarly
to a wave whose duration lasts a set time to then takes on a new somatic form.
That perpetual transformation is the topic of myths. Keleman refers to childhood,
adolescence, “adultness,”15 and old age as examples of those new somatic forms
present in the life of every subject.
To Campbell, experience is the key word. There is a certain degree of irony
regarding the themes in mythical journeys (Keleman, 1999). We have a whole
vocabulary about searching for the “meaning of life.” However, a subject is not
always looking for that meaning; the subject seeks to experience life.
In that regard, Keleman (1999) comments that the experience of one’s body is the
key. When telling stories, a subject is synthesizing somatic experience, organizing
the elements of the corporeal experience that gives us a “personal contour,” a
direction, and even a sense of meaning. For that reason, it is important to look for
the body in myths, instead of looking for symbols and meanings. That way, he says,
“we experience cortical man conversing with the subcortical” (p. 75).

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Keleman sees the body as having multiple forms, which are produced from the
relationship between the subject’s physical, emotional, and psychological aspects.
This multiplicity of forms embodies in the course of life constitutes the base of
his Formative Psychology. Thus, a baby’s body contains the body of the adult he
will be. The impulse toward composing the form of an adult generates feelings and
sensations and is articulated with other impulses, such as that toward reproduction
(Keleman, 1975a, p. 96). The latter, for its turn, generates sexual attraction impulses
and toward sexual proximity and pleasure.
When a child is growing inside the mother, it starts to release chemical substances
that suscitate a bonding relationship, which in turn will help to form something out
of nothing. We call those feelings motherly love (Keleman, 1979, p. 37).
Formative Theory states that the subject is conceived as an adult and goes through
provisional forms until he reaches his grown body. Even though he is born as a child,
the conceived adult is always present as a basic organization principle. The adult
being formed is part of the baby. The paradox, says Keleman,
is the way an adult not yet formed, called a child, hides the archetype of the
adult. Even though we have been blinded by the inflated image of magic
in childhood, the adult process continues to operate behind the scenes. The
primal, genetic, archetypal adult is always operating and will become formed
independently of what society might do. (1979, p. 36)
In order to reach adult form, a subject goes through a series of stages marked
by transitions. He oscillates between the behavior of a baby and that of a child,
until the latter becomes fixed; later, the same happens toward consolidation of the
adolescent and adult forms. Therefore, the forming impulse continuously promotes
the formative process.
At the same time that he states that being alive means having form, Keleman
says that remaining fixed in one single form is being stagnant. Human destiny is
to continuously form and re-form oneself. Each form has its own organization
characteristics, which define the different somatic types. The degree of intensity
with which a subject becomes fixed to one form varies. Somatic types structure
patterns for emotional expression organized along a continuum and can go from
the more inhibited to the most explosive. Following that example, we have the
connections between the feelings of fear and anger, two somatic organizations with
opposite directions. Fear is the expression of an organization turned inward, and
anger is its opposite.
Through the concept of form in Formative Psychology, we arrive at Keleman’s
notion about the body: a succession of forms organized in a continuum that constitutes
the subject’s experience and establishes his somatic type. The degree of organization
of each somatic type is influenced by the subject. Embodiment is an action to be
undertaken by the subject toward the construction of his personal history. While
a living process, “to embody experience” is to transcend the somatic-emotional
organization to which one is subjected, thus, influencing form itself and the process.

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Keleman (1987) developed a “Five Steps Methodology,” based on the organizing

process, according to the principle that an organism operates based on a pulsatory
continuum, described as a movement of contraction (away from the world) and of
expansion (away from one’s interior). These two movements characterize different
tension and pressure states present in somatic-emotional organization.
The heart, for example, beats in variable frequencies, according to whether pressure
increases or decreases. That expansion and contraction constitute diastole and systole.
The heart speeds up when we experience fear and slows down when we sleep.
Natural and spontaneous actions such as heartbeat and the nursing infant’s
suckling are organized movement patterns. “Be quiet,” “be good,” “shut up” are
instructions that we consciously organize into specific somatic patterns. Many of
those learned organizations promote maturity, but others cause conflict or pain.
“I want contact, but I should keep quiet” is an example (Keleman, 1987, p. 18).
Tension and pressure make up a continuum that goes from self-compacting to
self-extension, through which Keleman presents the relationship between insight
and new experience. The process denominated Bodying Practice (or The Five Steps
Methodology) takes perception of the present situation as a starting point. The second
step is to intensify the existing form in the present situation by means of contraction
or expansion. In the third step, the subject must disorganize the form produced in
the previous stage, thus, forming a third layer of experience. In step four, the subject
establishes a pause and is able to take in the sensations, feelings, and images that
emerge from that exercise. That way, he begins a process of reorganization of the
initial form and of creation of a new form, which can then become consolidated and
incorporated by the subject (step five). In the formative perspective, the subject seeks
to reorganize old patterns that have become obsolete and to build his own pathway as
the aim of maturity. Transforming those patterns resulting from the fixation of form
is one of the goals of the Five Steps Methodology. The formative process goes from
that which happened to that which is, to that which can be, to that which will be.
The formative pathway is analyzed by Keleman similarly to the hero’s journey
in mythical narratives. That topic is dealt with in depth in his work titled Myth
and the Body (1999). Just as the journey, the formative process offers the subject
the possibility to access certain knowledge about himself that transcends biology
without breaking away from it and makes personal history the resource employed by
the subject toward authorship and autonomy in life.
Nevertheless, as he defines the body as a living, emotional, and energetic
process, according to the precepts of an emotional biology, Keleman considers that
subjectivity has its contours defined also by the social. To that end, he uses Adlerian
concepts on the role of society in the development of personality and in the will to
power. Centered in the premise that that the somatic and emotional dimensions of
subjectivity cannot be dissociated, the author develops conceptual fields by means
of which the interface between the two will be constituted. In that perspective, his
work is founded on the existing relationship between body and brain and, more
specifically, between body and cerebral cortex (Keleman, 1975a).

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As we can see in the works by Edelman (1989) and Damasio (1994), the
complexity of brain structures does not allow for simplifying slants.16 On the contrary,
that complexity requires that areas of interface are created between the somatic
and emotional dimensions, where matter and function hold distinct relationships
between one another. Keleman proposes such an interface through Formative
Psychology, especially as regards the concept of form and the relationships between
the somatic types and the constitutional types. The relationship between emotional
conflict and distortions to corporeal posture can also be understood as patterns of
aggression against form that generate pain and emotional suffering. The Five Steps
Methodology aims at disorganizing the patterns of pain and at reorganizing them
into growth patterns. For example, contraction is reorganized into contact, desire
into intimacy, isolation into relationship and communion. That way, the formative
methodology seeks to embody, use, and configure the subject’s experience in such
a way that, through practice, he can manage to influence his somatic organization
(Keleman, 1985).
Using a clinical model, Keleman analyzes the consequences produced for the
subject when he is subjected to situations of insult. In Emotional Anatomy (1985), he
dedicates a chapter to that topic, titled “Insults to Form.” According to the somatic
perspective, insult to form corresponds to every event, whether internal or external,
that evokes a state of shock (startle reflex) in the subject. The insult can vary as far
as its timing, duration (whether it is a continuous or sporadic episode in the subject’s
life), frequency (whether it occurs a lot or not), and intensity (whether it is greater
than the subject can tolerate without going into suffering) (Keleman, 1985).
When faced with an insult or with violence, an organism first reacts by contracting
and seeking to solidify itself more. Pulses turned toward contraction and expansion
are produced in order to manage the insult. Two somatic-emotional paths can emerge
from that situation. In one of them, the subject becomes fixed on an eminently solid
organization (overbounded), a characteristic of the Rigid and Dense types. This
direction in responding to insult is commonly accompanied by feeling of anger,
hatred, fury, control, challenge, and self-doubt. Down the second path, the subject
loses solidity, with decreasing muscular tone, and with a fixation on less defined
forms (underbounded), which correspond to the Swollen and Porous types.
Insults interfere with the organism’s development in such a way as to generate
feelings of fury, depression, fear, and rejection. If the insult is temporary and of low
intensity, the pulsatory cycles return to normal, and the person does not alter his
form. However, if the insult persists or increases, the person remains rigid, dense,
swollen, or porous.
The reflex from shock involves a predisposition toward more complex forms,
depending on the intensity, frequency, and duration of the insult. A certain
combination of those conditions makes it so that a simple reflex becomes a
complicated process that permanently affects the subject. That way, the organizations
of startle and alert, and the immediate fight or flight responses give place to trauma
and to somatic-emotional suffering. In that case, either a subject remains in a

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continuous state of organization, be it in preparation for combat or for flight from

what is threatening, or he weakens and collapses.
When faced with an insult, a subject can organize a state of moderate contraction
or of profound spastic rigidity, reflecting feelings of terror and fury. To the extent
that those states become permanent, flexibility and responsiveness are lost. That
affects all tissues, muscles, organs, and cells, as well as all thoughts and feelings.
Insults can be in the order of intense repression (criticism, humiliation, inhibition,
threat) or in the order of negligence and abandonment (lack of limits, of parameters,
of care, and of containment). Similarly, to Keleman, the same possibilities exist on
the social plane. A rigid organization can be extremely repressive; however, the
absence of organization can lead to impotence and violence. A very repressive system
leads to suppression, rebelliousness, insurrection, and violence, while a system with
little organization leads to the installation of a wild sort of freedom that constitutes
another type of violence (Keleman, 1982).
Western contemporary societies have invested in forms of excitement without
inhibition, guided by a psychology of the body that takes social drama as its provider
center. In that context, anatomy became defined as functional or mechanical.
Keleman (1982, p. 45) formulates a question where he has the anatomic sexual mark
as the promoter of feelings, sensations, and thoughts, thusly, distinguishing itself
from points of view based on politics. To him,
sexual violence is not limited to the recognized increase in instances of rape,
child abuse, and pornography. There is an abundance of images in the media
that suggest excitement in situations of danger or relief through anger and
violation. We are initiated in a sexuality removed from the original experience
and the feelings of our bodies. This flooding of our senses with sexual stimuli
and the cult of idealized performance expectations are an aggression against
our sensibilities.
Public images that disassociate love from sexuality and separate sex from bonding
are an act contrary to the possibility of collectivization and against the very subject.
Bonding, tenderness, and complicity with another have a unique ability to prevent
people from abusing one another. Disrobing sexuality of those qualities is an act of
violence in and of itself (Keleman, 1982, p. 45).
As mentioned previously, Keleman states that the body is a living form. That
form is constituted by what the subject inherits genetically and acquires culturally.
Culture accords or subtracts value to the whole of behaviors adopted by individuals.
A social group partakes in corporeal actions, in how the body is used and shared
among its members, examples being hunting, reproducing, and working. It is from
the collective use of the body that mythical narrative emerges (Keleman, 1999).
Campbell argues, for his turn, that myth is a collective dream and that dream is a
personal myth (Keleman, 1999). In this way, every body type dreams about his own
existence, his formative course, creating personal images and histories.

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As a living form, the body creates its own images, organized differently in distinct
cultures, as in the example of the hero’s journey. The images created by the subject
may be confirmed or not by the culture he is a part of.
In contemporary societies, men and women have oriented their lives around
disembodied images, circulated by the media and produced by a technological,
informational culture articulated in a market-based axis. As they impose on the subject
behavior patterns that oppose his own formative course, the images originating
from publicity and from politics promote dissociation between the subject’s formative
course and its own images. By accentuating this dissociation mechanism, contemporary
culture constitutes disembodied subjects, removed from their own somatic-subjective
process.
Every social group has a body image with which it identifies and which
grants it identity (social representation of man and woman). When those images/
representations are threatened with losing their social value (banalization is an
expression of that), anger and hatred emerge as reparatory recourses, by shifting to
the destructive act the threat of one’s own annihilation.
Under the influence of social or emotional stress, the subject fabricates patterns of
corporeal distortions that, in turn, cause him to experience psychological difficulties
(Keleman, 1981). Among them, we can highlight impulsiveness, impotence, and
stets of emotional numbness. These difficulties can be identified in such behaviors
as, for example, explosive behavior.
In that perspective, I see the banalization of male social representation as
an insult or aggression (in the mold of what was previously described) that
predisposes the subject of the male sex to frequently respond with violence in
different situations.

NOTES
1
That equivalence is a formulation created from the analyses by Sautet when he says: “there would
not have been a victory of reason over superstition if Copernicus had not demonstrated that the center
of the world was not Earth but the Sun. Surely, there would not have been a cosmological revolution
without the shakeup in social relations introduced by the market economy. The engine of “modernity”
was not Reason, but rather the generalized exchange of goods.” Sautet, Marc. Um café para Sócrates
(A Café for Socrates), p. 14.
2
Giddens developed the concept of reflexivity to refer to social life, which consists of monitoring
social practices, continually examined and reformulated toward their renovation, thus, changing their
character. In traditional cultures, reflexivity lent itself to providing continuity for the traditions, thus,
maintaining cultural heritage through its clarification. Giddens also refers to institutional reflexivity
when he mentions that the concept involves routine incorporation of new knowledge or information
into action environments, which become reconstituted or reorganized. See GIDDENS, Anthony.
Modernity and Self-Identity and The Consequences of Modernity.
3
According to Velho, the vision is not an exclusively subjective phenomenon, but rather one developed
within a field of possibilities, which is historically and culturally circumscribed, in terms of both the
very notion of individual and the existing topics, priorities, and cultural paradigms. The vision is
potentially public. Velho states that the most effective visions are those that display a minimum of

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symbolic plasticity, a certain capacity for supporting itself in different domains, a reasonable potential
for metamorphosis, would be a dimension of culture. See op. cit.
  We notice feminism developing upon that social support. It grows with the consolidation of
democracies in the world and points to inequalities as threats. However, what meaning does it carry
for contemporary culture that men move away from the formulation of a vision for themselves as was
the case with women, with ethnic groups, and with homosexuals?
4
Mention to Plato’s considerations about the distinction between body and spirit in the dialogues of
“Phaedo.”
5
Reference to analyses present in Living Your Dying (1974).
6
Giddens, Anthony. Modernidadee identidade pessoal (Modernity and Self-Identity).
7
In this regard, Morin analyzes that the society of spectacle is the place for visibility and for the
possibility of social recognition.
8
Idem, p. 152.
9
Regarding those meanings, Cathy Schwichtenberg analyzes the alliance between feminists and
homosexuals as being something of a strategic order. She goes through the definitions of queer
and black and points out how much the denomination Black is beautiful uses the qualifier black
to make it positive. In the author’s view, Madonna is a cultural sign through which we identify the
coordinates of postmodern culture, in particular what she represents while a media phenomenon. See
Schwichtenberg, Cathy. The Madonna Connection: Representational Politics, Subcultural Identities,
and Cultural Theory.
  In the same way, the word queer, a sign of support for anti-homophobic politics, designates
homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, and transvestites, as well as the other non-conformed
sexualities, which also include the heterosexual mutants (transgendered). From the theoretical point
of view, she signals the fact that postmodern feminism can be particularly defined as a theory of
queer, the idealization of heterosexual gender norms. According to her, feminism and the theory of
queer are sources of a radical criticism that we find in the origin of the postmodern questioning
of institutions. The similarities that exist between homosexuality and feminism can perfectly well
constitute an effective league of the postmodernity signs of which Madonna is an enthusiastic host.
She is composed as a media simulacrum, full of herself and inserted within a hyper-real spectacle.
10
I am referring to the social context’s being composed of images, the mediascape produced by the
cultural industry that the subjects inhabit. It is a world of characters and sceneries where everything
looks like a remake and where culture is characterized by images where everything has been lived and
needs to be recycled.
11
See “A lógica social do consumo” (The Social Logic of Consumption). In: Baudrillard, Jean.
A sociedade de consume (The Consumer Society).
12
At this time, one can infer that violence is the essence of evil, in the molds of what Russel presented
(Russel, Jeffrey, B. O diabo [The Devil]). His analysis complement those developed by Girard, where
he consideres violence a natural component of human societies, requiring them management and
attention on their part, without which they lose themselves in a process of collapse in their principle
that founds them while collectivities: the Other. We notice, through Girard’s work, that an efficient
form of management of the human forces that generate violence was to make them of a sacred order,
inscribe them in mythology and anchor them in rites. And the cultures prepare for that. However, as
shows us Morin, the information we receive from contemporary philosophy is that it has devoted itself
less to the construction of systems upon secure foundations than to generalized destruction and to the
radicalness of sort of questioning that relativizes all knowledge. See Girard, René (op. cit.) and Morin,
Edgar (op. cit.).
13
I am referring to the male representations that today are part of both the feminist criticism and that
present in the media (the Simpson and Sinclair families) and in Pedro Almodóvar’s cinema.
14
This view on the human body is affirmed with the precepts of biology developed by Edelman in
The Remembered Present and Bright Air, Brilliant Fire.
15
According to an evolutionist perspective, the goal of every living being is reaching adult age, thus,
completing the spectrum of its development. Human beings tread the same path, which I termed

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“adultness.” Keleman divides this adultness into two phases: ALPHA-ADULT (approximately to age
50) and the SECOND ADULT (from 50 to 75/80 years of age, approximately). The first phase is
construction and affirmation of the world. The second is a phase for deepening and maturity, in which
the subject is more focused on his interior world and less concerned about social affirmation.
16
Edelman, Gerald M. The Remembered Present and Damasio, Antonio R. Descartes Error: Emotion,
Reason and the Human Brain.

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THE OPERATORS OF CULTURE

Subjectivity and Myth

A myth is a lifeline, an image of what is to become, and not a fossilized fable.

 G. Bachelard

SUBJECTIVITY AND THE GREEK MYTHS

There was a moment, more precisely in the 17th century, when the truth ceased
to reside in the act described by discourse and came to be in what it said: The
day came when the truth shifted location from the ritualized, efficacious and just,
act of enunciating to the enunciation itself, to its meaning, its form, its object, its
relationship to its reference. In that transition, we find the beginnings of the pathway
toward mechanical societies and toward what Baudrillard denominated hyper-reality
and simulation societies. As Lévi-Strauss (1996, p. 236) states, “in the mechanical
civilization there is no place left for mythical time, except for within man himself.”
In that sense, according to Baudrillard, we are faced with a world that is no longer
real, but merely a simulation of the real. His ideas about simulation are articulated
through the notions of hyper-reality, of simulacra, and of the mass communication
media. Hyper-reality points to a world where the signs used to represent things
are devoid of meaning, where the relationship between signification systems and
reality takes place in a most confusing manner. New possibilities present themselves
through the use of communication technologies, emphasizing the domination of
culture no longer as that referring to that of representations of the real, but rather that
referring to the production of the real. The real comes to be an effect of television, of
computers, of virtual reality, etc. The dialectic between image and reality no longer
exists; there are only signification practices (Baudrillard, 1991a).
In mythical time, male and female were considered inventions that sought to
bring human beings closer to the gods, to the representation of heroes, and also to
stories through which one knew who was a man and who was a woman. At the end
of the 20th century, they came to be considered the artificial destiny of the sexual
body (Baudrillard, 1992). Masculinity and femininity are used to refer an experience
where the game of commutation of sex signs, which opposes the previous game of
the sexual difference present in mythical narratives, becomes, in the contemporary
perspective, the game of sexual indifference (Baudrillard, 1992, p. 27).
The notion of identity becomes altered, ceasing to be an affirmation field in the
game of differences to become a field of possibilities mediated by technology. To

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Lévi-Strauss (1996, p. 238), myth was present in in societies as a reflection of the

social structure and of social relations, as an expression of “feelings, such as love,
hatred, and vengeance, feelings that are common to all of humanity.” Everything
can happen in a myth; it is a succession of developments that is not subjected to any
rule of logic or continuity. However, if the content of a myth appears as something
contingent, how to understand that in different continents and societies they retain
so many similarities?
One way to answer this question is to consider mythology as an inherent necessity
of language, the latter being considered the externalization of thought. According to
considerations by Müller (1882), mythology is the dark shadow that language casts
upon thought, which will remain until language and thought become completely
superimposed.
Antiquity represents the time in history when Greek myths carried greater
strength. Today there are also myths that are part of contemporary societies, but they
are restricted to the exclusive perspective of the subject himself. They no longer
describe the irruption of the impact caused by alterity in social life. According to
Müller, the word “mythology” means the power that language exerts over thought,
considering all possible spheres of spiritual activity.
Myths are images capable of giving direction to the philosophical meaning of
everyday life’s facts. They can be understood as narratives of events that possess
a sacred quality and, thus, foster the communication of sacred content in symbolic
fashion. Both from Cassirer’s point of view, who saw them as the expression of
symbol, and in Malinowski’s and Durkheim’s, who considered them part of the
social structure, myths are structures around which it was possible to integrate
and articulate the tensions present in the organization of subjective and social life
(Cassirer, 1992; Malinowski, 1929; Durkheim, 1978). Within the scope of language,
they work as operators populating the silence that accidentally marks living and
dying. Being born male or female had thus far been an accidental mark, one a subject
did not choose. Nevertheless, contemporary cultures have disregarded that fact,
thus, stating that their greatest value lies beyond the notion of human nature and of
finiteness. The strength of myth lies in the commitment a culture upholds regarding
alterity. Myth demarcates the world of gods and of heroes, their heritage, and the
correlation between the two, thus, inscribing destiny on the order of the acceptable.
Myth is the itinerary upon which the hero will constitute his pathway toward divine
legacy: the discovery of his soul/psyche.
Currently, there are different ways to think about myth beyond the traditional
approach, which held it as the portrait of chaos. One of the oldest meanings of myth
is that it seeks to provide answers to factual or rational questions. According to some
approaches, myths should not be interpreted in literal fashion, given that they are
considered projections of human reality (Diel, 1991). As Cassirer (1994) reminds us,
it is a way to symbolically structure the world.
In some sociological perspectives, one of the main functions of myth is to maintain
reinforcement to social solidarity. In that perspective, we have a correlation between

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myth and ritual. Graves discusses that relationship as something symbolic, which
represents approaches related to social structures. Lévi-Strauss contributes with a
different perspective in analyzing myths as he demonstrated a sequence of structural
regularities in the collective representations of primitive societies.
In traditional cultures, heroes and gods symbolically play a fundamental role,
providing anchorage for feelings and thoughts of hostility toward the Other, with an
intensity that compromised the principle of alterity and sense of community. Alterity,
as well as violence, bears down directly on the collective body, thus, molding it as a
culture. For centuries, different cultures developed by monitoring within themselves
the forces that represent Evil, be it under the rubric of religion, of science, or of law,
so as to keep it under control.
Girard’s work recognizes in myths the foundational elements of violence. It is
the axis of his thought, which makes explicit a game that continuously requests the
intermediation between heroes and gods, to whom is attributed the embodiment of
violence: “violence belongs to all and is present in all” (Girard, 1990, p. 11).
Considering the different slants on myth cited previously, we find in all of
them that mythical thought characterization is as thought that returns to the act of
creation: “something” that happened for the first time, a testimony on how a given
fact unfolded. Accordingly, when the killer (Chiron, Cronus, Theseus, Medea) holds
such an important place in ritual, it is because he has an important place in the
foundational time. As regards male representation, we identify that the empirical
subject is directly involved with the different in situations of violence, being in the
origin of the act but unattached from any symbolic framework (rites) that can give
meaning to the violent act.
In his analysis, Girard demonstrates that the expiatory victim has the function
of ending the cycle of violence within the community; however, once paralyzed,
another cycle begins – that of sacrifice. He says:
if this is true, foundational violence indeed constitutes the origin of everything
that men possess of most precious and that they preserve with most care. That
is precisely what they state, in a veiled, disfigured manner, all the origin myths
that refer to the murdering of a mythical creature by other mythical creatures.
That event is perceived as foundational to the cultural order. From the slain
divinity come not only rites, but also matrimonial rules, prohibitions, all
cultural forms that grant men their humanity. (Girard, 1990, p. 119)
Male representation, while a social operator, aggregates in itself elements of
that foundational violence. That is what can be seen through the works by Gilmore
(1990), Polk (1994), Spierenburg (1998), and Archer (1994). Both in analyses about
the construction of masculinity in primitive societies and in those about the value
of honor in Europe and in the United States, or even in the attempt to produce a
theoretical analysis on male homicide, in the expositions by all those authors we
identify narratives about trials, sports and war competitions that incite rivalry and
bring us closer to what Girard denominated “sacrificial crisis.” The sacrificial crisis

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seeks to signal the real and imaginary dangers that threaten the community, so that
they can be ritualized, thus, protecting the group they are part of. According to the
author,
rite is the repetition of a first spontaneous lynching that brought order back
to the community, by having reestablished, against the expiatory victim, and
around it, the unity lost in reciprocal violence. (Girard, 1990, p. 121)
In the male initiation rituals analyzed by Gilmore, violent rites can be identified
that are prepared for the boys, as if what they must endure were part of some lesser
violence that worked as a barrier against a greater type of violence: the loss of alterity
lived out in the form of threat to the community (social body). The male rites seek to
renew community peace by means of a feeling of safety brought by the warrior, the
hunter, the chief, or the priest. Masculinity represents the revelation of the religious
that mobilizes all as an expression of the effort to maintain social body unity.

The Characteristics of Myth

Man is not a thing, he is a drama, an act… life is a gerund,

in no way a participle; it is a faciendum, in no way a factum.
Man has no nature, but a history.
 Ortega Y. Gasset
Lévi-Strauss (1996) sums up three provisional conclusions regarding the
characteristics of myth. The first one of them has to do with meaning, the second
one with language, and the third one refers to its complexity:
If there is a meaning to be found in mythology, this cannot reside in the isolated
elements which enter into the composition of a myth, but only in the way
those elements are combined. Although myth belongs to the same category as
language, being, as a matter of fact, only part of it, language in myth unveils
specific properties. Those properties are only to be found above the ordinary
linguistic level; that is, they exhibit more complex features beside those which
are to be found in any kind of linguistic expression. If the above three points
are granted, at least as a working hypothesis, two consequences will follow:
(1). Myth, like the rest of language, is made up of constituent units. (2). These
constituent units presuppose the constituent units present in language when
analyzed on other levels, namely, phonemes, morphemes, and semantemes
[…]. (p. 242)
Those units are present in the different stages of the path to socialization boys and
girls are subjected to in childhood, thus, characterizing the performance expectations
for both sexes. Both the social practices and the social discourses about gender operate
from the starting point of banal reality and of belief systems regarding what it is to be a
man or a woman. Just as the meaning of motherhood brings sacredness to the woman

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image, honor and hardiness consecrate that of man. Social practices and discourses do
possess the necessary symbolic efficacy to interfere in subjective organization and to
imprint identity marks on the subject concerning the roles of the sexes.
Traditional societies determined how sexual differences would mark the
subjective organization of subjects through the body. The system of differences
exists in order to make it possible to think about affective experiences and make
them acceptable to the subjects. Having a sense of identity is one of them. In
contemporary societies, abstract systems work as orientation patterns for organizing
and sustaining individualities, no longer as social or mythological narratives that
prescribe a system of beliefs articulated with collective principles. Mythical time is
now inserted in the subject himself.
Symbolic efficacy is a mechanism that assures subjects that their feelings about
themselves are linked to belief systems shared by the whole society. Therefore, myth
has as the function of reintegrating elements alien to the subject’s identity, ensuring
that possible dissonances that exist can be recovered and that the sense of identity
can be established once again. The game of differences is part of the process of
constituting alterity and is present in mythical narratives, thus, characterizing the
effort to be undertaken by subjects toward a sense of identity, which was denominated
“soul/psyche” in Greek societies. Mythologies did lend themselves to that role for
centuries: establishing the mark of the “divine” in the human experience, thereby
granting it a transcendent dimension, a soul/psyche that delineates, at the same time,
the contours of individuality and its insertion into a given social system. That is what
we find, for example, in the myths of Ulysses and Theseus.
In the analyses by Lévi-Strauss about cure and the role of the shaman, we find a
similar path:
The cure would consist, therefore, in making explicit a situation originally
existing on the emotional level and in rendering acceptable to the mind pains
which the body refuses to tolerate. That the mythology of the shaman does not
correspond to an objective reality does not matter. The sick woman believes
in the myth and belongs to a society which believes in it. The tutelary spirits
and malevolent spirits, the supernatural monsters and magical animals, are all
part of a coherent system on which the native conception of the universe is
founded. The sick woman accepts these mythical beings or, more accurately,
she has never questioned their existence. What she does not accept are the
incoherent and arbitrary pains, which are an alien element in her system but
which the shaman, calling upon myth, will re-integrate within a whole where
everything is meaningful. (1996, p. 228)
The subjective mechanisms that operate in the cure can be taken to exemplify the
way identity and myth ensure a relationship of cohesion between one another, thereby,
maintaining the sense of identity preserved. To that end, that link relates to symbolic
maneuvers regarding individual and collective beliefs, which correspond to culture
patterns that exist in traditional societies. However, in contemporary societies, we

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also find elements of that same transaction, except that present in psychological
culture, establishing a relationship between the shaman and the psychoanalyst. To
Lévi-Strauss:
The shaman plays the same dual role as the psychoanalyst. A prerequisite role –
that of listener for the psychoanalyst and of orator for the shaman – establishes
a direct relationship with the patient’s conscious and an indirect relationship
with his unconscious. This is the function of the incantation proper. But the
shaman does more than utter the incantation; he is its hero, for it is he who, at
the head of a supernatural battalion of spirits, penetrates the endangered organs
and frees the captive soul. In this way he, like the psychoanalyst, becomes the
object of transference and, through the representations induced in the patient’s
mind, the real protagonist of the conflict which the latter experiences on the
border between the physical world and the psychic world. The patient suffering
from neurosis eliminates an individual myth by facing a “real” psychoanalyst;
the native woman in childbed overcomes a true organic disorder by identifying
with a “mythically transmuted” shaman. (1996, p. 230)
Symbolic efficacy certainly works because the patient believes in its social myth.
In contemporary societies, scientific discourse in and of itself would not cure us,
but that does take place because it works on the basis of an external cause-effect
relationship, while in mythical discourse what transpires is an interior relationship,
of spirit: “between symbol and thing symbolized, or, to use the terminology of
linguists, between sign and meaning” (Lévi-Strauss, 1996, p. 231). That way, this
type of passage to verbal expression, resulting from an otherwise uncontrollable
conflict, was exposed by Freud as ab-reaction. In 1895, he writes that “it is in
language that man finds a substitute for the act, thanks to which substitute, the affect
can be abreacted almost in the same manner” (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1983).
That is how Lévi-Strauss brings the shaman figure closer to that of the
psychoanalyst coining the expression “individual myth,” later used by Lacan (1987).
Lévi-Strauss says that the patient afflicted by neurosis annihilates an individual myth
by objecting to a real psychoanalyst; the indigenous woman in labor overcomes
organic disorganization by identifying with a mythically transposed shaman. He
goes beyond, stating that the comparison between the two figures and the respective
process of cure, in both cases, constitute a myth that the patient must live, or re-live.
In psychoanalysis, it is a matter of a myth the subject must build from elements
provided by his personal history, while in shamanism it is a social myth that the
patient accepts from the outside. In one of the cases, the patient speaks and the
psychoanalyst listens (given that it is the patient who builds his own myth), while in
the other, the shaman speaks, narrates the social myth, while the patient listens. In
both cases, myth plays a central role in the cure, being considered foundational to it;
only the origin of the myth differs: individual or collective.
The concept of structure comes up in the studies by Lévi-Strauss when he refers
to the Freudian unconscious and when he uses the difference established by French

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linguist Ferdinand de Saussure between language and word, in order to clarify the
difference between individual event and mythical structure, stating that vocabulary
matters less than structure. He also says that, for a subject, psychic life and all of his
future experiences organize as a function of an exclusive or predominant structure,
whose catalyst is the effect of his individual myth (Lévi-Strauss, 1996).
If establishing an inter-relation between the previous considerations here and the
emergence of the gender categories in different cultures, we can think of them as
being built from the starting point of a “foundational myth,” around which sexual
identities organize.
The passage from myth’s collective functioning to the contemporary subject’s
individual functioning is analyzed by Lévi-Strauss according to the distance that goes
from the “cold” or savage societies – producers of myths, stimulated by a symbolic
efficacy mediated by common and structural beliefs in their cultural totality – to the
“hot” societies – historic, modern, and characterized by accelerated changes. We
can also see that the passage from “collective myth” to “individual myth” is directly
linked to the way in which modern societies are structured, and to the emergence, in
them, of the capitalist mode of production described by Marx. The capitalist type of
labor organization can be considered the base upon which are planted the “mechanical
societies,” where collective myth disappears, shifting to the subject. The mechanisms
of power present in those societies were presented previously through the analyses by
Foucault, who investigates the materiality of those mechanisms in the modern State
and its implications for the subject’s body (Foucault, 1982, 1984b).
We know that “to know the myths is to learn the secret of the origin of things”
(Eliade, 1998, p. 18), an origin that, in the case of the contemporary subject, was
restricted to the individual source and no longer tapped on collective tradition. In the
re-creation of myth by the subject, it is interesting to attain ourselves to the words by
Lévi-Strauss that, if myth borrowed from tradition,
it derives from its sources – individual or collective (between which
interpenetrations and exchanges constantly occur) – only the stock of
representations with which it operates. But the structure remains the same, and
through it the symbolic function is fulfilled. (1996, p. 234)
That function causes us to think that, in mythology, formal analysis leads us to the
matter of the meaning manifested from produced structures upon which myths are
expressed. Those structures make available to the subject “answers, cures, excuses,
or even remorse” (Lévi-Strauss, 1996, p. 276).
Gender categories were built in different cultures following the script of collective
mythologies and defining ways of being for men and women. To the subject, that
implies, therefore, knowing how to operate with the images and the feelings narrated
by myths, at the same time that senses of identity and forms of social insertion
develop. In the works by Lévi-Strauss, we identify a balanced structure that
promotes the articulation between subject and society, favoring the emergence of
differentiation systems and the relationship between the sexes (Lévi-Strauss, 1996).

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In a different perspective, Eliade considers that the 19th century was a period
in which, differently from the way of the archaic societies, myths were managed
as “fables,” “fictions,” rather than as “true and extremely precious histories due to
their sacred, exemplary, and signifying character” (Eliade, 1998, p. 7). Eliade goes
further: In myths, the stories have Gods and Supernatural Entities for protagonists;
as for tales, the stories have heroes and miraculous animals for characters. However,
both do not belong to the world of everyday life. In archaic societies, myths refer to
stories directly related to the subject; tales, on the other hand, have to do with events
that did not modify human condition. That puts us before the issue of origin, that is,
in Eliade’s words,
If the World exists, it is because supernatural Beings exercised creative powers
in the “beginning.” But after the cosmogony and the creation of man other
events occurred, and man as he is today is the direct result of those mythical
events, he is constituted by those events. He is mortal because something
happened in illo tempore. If that thing had not happened, man would not be
mortal – he would have gone on existing indefinitely like rocks; or he might
have changed his skin periodically like snakes, and hence would have been
able to renew his life, that is, begin it over again indefinitely. (1998, p. 16)
When we analyze modern man and that that lived in archaic societies, we can
state that modern man considers himself an integral part of all historical facts,
even if he does not know them directly, while archaic man is the result of a certain
number of mythical events. He builds his identity while making the argument that a
sacred history, composed of Supernatural Entities, not humans, went before him and
sees himself obliged to remember his community’s mythical history, as well as to
re-update it periodically. Another difference consists in the irreversibility aspect of
events that, to modern man, is a characteristic of history (Eliade, 1998).
This search for the origin present in mythical narratives gets closer to the focus
of gender investigations in the human and social sciences, when they seek the
determinants for the behaviors of man and woman. Be it in the naturalistic view, of
the demonic male in the Wrangham and Peterson conception, or in the constructivist
one, according to Beauvoir, there is an attempt to comprehend how the conducts
of male and female originate, in the same way that, in myths, we find an effort
to understand the World and the way for the subject to exist in the World. Thus,
according to Eliade,
the essential thing is to know the myths. It is essential not only because the
myths provide him with an explanation of the World and his own mode of being
in the World, but above all because, by recollecting the myths, by re-enacting
them, he is able to repeat what the Gods, the Heroes, or the Ancestors did ab
origine. To know the myths is to learn the secret of the origin of things. In other
words, one learns not only how things came into existence but also where to
find them and how to make them reappear when they disappear. (1998, p. 18)

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From the perspective of re-appropriation of the lost and banalized masculinity,

Bly develops work that follows a narrative in which it is up to the hero to reclaim
forgotten dimensions of his masculinity (Bly, 1990). By using the story of “Iron John,”
the author conceives of community practices in which are present the hero’s old male
insignias. The methodology proposed by Bly favors following a course that will
problematize the notion that masculinity, brutality, and violence are synonymous. He
starts out from the 18th century, a time when the practices of war equated masculinity
to attitudes of ferocity and violence, given that the earlier representations of the
warrior were not directly linked to war, but rather to dance and poetry (Bly, 1990).
Bly uses a narrative of societies with oral traditions coming from African
mythology in order to illustrate the internal trajectories to be completed by a boy in
his transition to adult life.1 In the story, a father tells his son to never lie down next to
a virgin, as doing so could kill him. Thus, he raises the boy alone and isolated. Once
grown and nearing “adultness,” the young man meets a young woman who asks him
why he finds himself in such a solitary state. Moved by a feeling of compassion,
she commits to going to see him every day. However, he objects, saying that, if she
comes, what his father warned about will come to pass and he will die. In light of
that, the woman gives up seeing him; nonetheless, he comes to insist and ask her to
come. They sleep together, and the young man dies.
The woman, then, seeks out the elders in the village and tells them her story. They
tell her to go and gather wood and to build an enormous fire, and to throw in it a
lizard; they tell her: If the lizard dies, so also the young man dies, but if someone
takes it out of the fire, he will live. The young man’s mother tries to take the lizard
out but fails; the father tries and also fails. However, the young woman succeeds. At
this point, the story changes, and the elders again say: If the lizard lives, the young
woman dies; if it dies, it is the young man’s mother who dies. They then ask the
young man: What would you do?
The work methodology continues on by means of that myth, introducing to men
groups binary2 aspects that are constitutive of masculinity: to the young man the
question is put as to whether he will forever be “mother’s boy” or face he mother’s
death and, in light of it, open up for himself the possibility of experiencing love.
Disobedience to the father, indicated by failing to follow his order – “you cannot lie
down with a virgin” – is mention to a part of the emancipation path that the young man
starts out in toward adult life. In Brazilian culture, for example, there is a statement
that is quite common among men and that corresponds to this masculinizing binary
credo: “that which does not kill me makes me stronger.”3 It serves as an everyday
guideline for men to test their masculinity.
Bly also demarcates that the young woman represents the young man’s soul/
psyche, being the possibility of that encounter and the consolidation of his identity. An
identity that is affirmed in its relationship with the world goes beyond the bounds of
family. That way, the focus shifts from what is familiar and moves toward something
that represents a new meaning of masculinity for the young man. Therefore, that
experience offers him another possibility of meaning for himself. Thus, it is him who

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must kill the lizard, and in so doing, move away from everything that represents the
“mother.” From the inertia of the protected world, emerges the representation of the
“warrior” and, with that, a vision of masculinity that is constituted outside references
to brutality.
With mythical stories, Bly (1990, p. 43) wishes to show the importance of the
social transformations taking place in the past decades according to the consumption-
technology-economy triad. To him, these transformations have been decisive in
characterizing the mythical devices that promoted social insertion for the subject
and the consolidation of his sense of identity. According to Eliade:
The mythical time of origins is a “strong” time because it was transfigured
by the active, creative presence of the Supernatural Beings. By reciting the
myths one reconstitutes that fabulous time and hence in some sort becomes
“contemporary” with the events described, one is in the presence of the
Gods or Heroes. As a summary formula we might say that by “living” the
myths one emerges from profane, chronological time and enters a time that
is of a different quality, a “sacred” time at once primordial and indefinitely
recoverable. (1992, p. 87)
In the case of the story narrated in the African myth, time was lived out within
the father-son relationship, which was punctuated by the dimension of sacrifice – if
the lizard dies the mother dies; if it lives, the young woman dies. Making a choice
implies entering the dimension of sacrifice as being “something very sacred.”
According to Girard (1990, p. 13), this dimension of the sacred appears as something
“to be neglected at grave peril, at other times as a sort of criminal activity entailing
perils of equal gravity.” Mythical experience causes the subject to leave profane
time and makes him enter “sacred” time. Sacrifice is the means through which that
passage takes place.
Myth and identity correspond to one another when, for example, we analyze
the codes of honor and hardiness present in different cultures upon which is based
male identity. Some rites of passages are tests presented to boys that confront
them with super-human reality, present in myths. Those identity-generating rites
work as value-directing mechanisms capable of guiding subjects toward providing
signification to human existence. To a man, honor and hardiness accord signification
to his existence. According to Eliade (1992), the experience of the sacred causes
ideas about reality to spring up, as well as about truth and signification that will be
ulteriorly elaborated upon and systematized by metaphysical speculations. Myth is
systematically confirmed by the rites not exclusively as regards masculinity.
When we analyze the initiation rituals that boys must go through in traditional
cultures, we find that “sacred” accessible to human experience. “Reality” reveals
itself and id constructed from transcendent levels, which can be lived ritually, and
which become included as an integral part of life.
When Eliade elaborates on the role of myths, he produces a synthesis and signals
the following facts about archaic societies: (a) Myth constitutes the history of the

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actions by Supernatural Entities; (b) that history is considered absolutely true and
sacred; (c) the myth always refers to some sort of “creation” and tells how something
came to experience, or how a behavior pattern, an institution, a way of working were
established – that is the reason why myths constitute paradigms for all significant
human actions; (d) By knowing the myths, one knows the “origin” of things, and
consequently, one comes to master them and to manipulate them at will – it is not a
matter of “exterior,” “abstract” knowledge, but rather of knowledge that is ritually
“lived,” whether through the ceremonial narration of myth or through performing
the ritual for which it provides justification; (e) One way or another, one “lives out”
the myth, in the sense that one becomes impregnated by the sacred and exalting
power of the events remembered or ritualized (Eliade, 1998).
As regards the myths that participate in the genesis of masculinity, understood as a
social category present in Western culture, we find the living belief as to what being
a man is. Myth has proven to be an important and vital element of civilization. Myths
tell the story of man’s apogee (in Ancient Greece) and his decline in the present day.
Next, I will analyze the first part of masculinity’s mythical apogee and, following
that, how it unfolded in the Renaissance and in the centuries that followed it.

The Foundational Myths

Authors like Eliade and Diel consider that the Greeks gradually stripped the mythos
of its religious and metaphysical value. Opposed to the logos, and later to history, the
mythos ended up heralding that which “cannot in fact exist.” However, Diel also tells
us that myths speak about human destiny under its essential aspect, a destiny resulting
from the healthy or unhealthy (evolutional or involutional) functioning psychism.
Distancing from the fact has not eliminated the participation of those stories in
social ideation and male representation in contemporary societies. We know that the
dominium of myths lends itself to the most varied perspectives. As states Bachelard,
myth seems to permit the validation of any philosophy. He comments:
The hero himself and his combat represent the whole of humankind in its history
and in its evolutionary impulse. The hero’s combat is less a historical combat than
a psychological one. In that sense, it is not a matter of a fight against the accidental
or exterior dangers. It is a struggle against the inner Evil that always detains or
mitigates the essential need for evolution.4
Because foundational myths represent the main male characteristics that make up
man’s social representation, I propose to initially analyze a few of them. Such myths
served as a starting point for traversing the symbolic universe of some narratives on
men that defined the contours of male social representation, analyzed in this work by
contemporary authors (Corneau, 1990; Nolasco, 1988, 1995, 1995a; Tolson, 1983).
Initially, it is convenient to emphasize the distinction that exists between the
Greek myths and modern myths. The Greek heroes possess among them multiple
similarities that are repeated in different stories and situations. They point to
a particular reference of masculinity that values warrior abilities, spiritual and

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physical strength, the daring and wisdom needed for a man to be a father. There is
an interconnection among them that goes beyond individual similarities. What the
heroes seek or fear, the pathway to be followed accord those stories a collective
and community character. Male representation emerges from a collective situation
materialized through individual stories.
The Greek myths present the heroes continuously involved in collective actions.
The Iliad and Odyssey are examples of that. Along the centuries, those stories
fostered the development of a social consciousness and memory representing a
collective experience, about what it means to be a man. Once incorporated by the
most different traditions, male representation is assimilated by initiation rites, whose
function is to prevent the transformation of myth into legend. According to Brandão
(1986, p. 40), “rite, which is the liturgical aspect of myth, turns word into verb,
without which it is simply legend, something that must be read but not proffered.” In
contemporary culture, male representation is something that should be walked away
from, such that it becomes a “humorous” legend.
The male representation present in the Greek myths emerges from the deliberate
action of a tyrannical father (Zeus, Cronus), with great sexual appetite, extremely
virile and a good reproducer. For every son born, the Oracle appoints a father
threatened with being dethroned or killed (Cronus or Laius) or a son who claims the
father’s throne (Jason or Hercules).
In modern myths, on the other hand, we find heroes with trajectories devoid of
any valuable collective insertion. They circulate in the midst of a collectivity that is
continuously fragmenting and undoing itself, leading to intimist pathways for their
protagonists. They are not toned, are lonely, fragile, and intellectualized.
In the transition to individualism we can observe altered characteristics of social
male representation, as well as altered human pulses that they are the agents for,
one example being the emotional complex that brings about crime and sacrifice.
In the trajectory between mythical and mechanical societies, we can also identify
the weakening of the symbolic forces that constitute the collective. Those were
replaced with the individualistic prerogative that rests upon a historical, political,
and scientific society.
Let us start, then, with the Greek myths in their representations of the father, of
strength, of the fighting spirit, of astuteness, and of wisdom.

a. Hercules: The Patronymic Male

Hercules is considered the greatest Greek hero. In this hero, what makes a man
is hard, risky, and purifying work: “If you want to know a man, work with him”
(Tolson, 1983). His name in Greek, Heracles, Hera + Kleos, means “the one who
makes the glory of Hera.” He did so through performing the Twelve labors imposed
by the goddess. Among the heroes touched by banalization, Hercules is to only one
to defeat it. The son of Zeus in the myth, and of Alcmene, he should have been
named Alcides initially, which means “strength in action, vigor” (alke) and the
one who reveals patronymic males (ides) (Brandão, 1999). It is accepted that, until

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he performs the Twelve labors, the hero must be called Alcides, then, becoming
Hercules only when the initiation trials imposed by Hera are complete.
Hera is betrayed by Zeus, who impregnates the hero’s mother, Alcmene, and she
directs her jealousy and anger at the son resulting from that union: Alcides. In the
hero’s story, Zeus’s fecundity represents the quality of sprit and his fecund power,
just as Hera depicts sublime love, suspended between heaven and earth. Between
the earthy and the noble, she pursues her perfect form and purges herself of her
jealousy. Hera is not Alcides’s mother; he symbolizes Zeus’s infidelity. Thusly,
the hero becomes predestined to live a conflict between his extraordinary potency
and his tendency toward depravation. Hera keeps him in opposition to union with
his soul/psyche and, therefore, prevented from “sublimating the impetuousness of
sexual desire” (Diel, 1991, p. 194). The conflict between Zeus and Hera becomes,
to the hero, the essence of the fight that remains in his soul/psyche during his whole
life. The depravation that threatens Alcides comes up in the myth in the form of
banalization, which must be defeated through the completion of the Twelve labors.
We can conceive of them as in two stages: the first six and the last six, the latter
being the most difficult and laborious – after all initiation is a progress into pain.5 On
a symbolic level, the Twelve labors characterize a course that goes from darkness
to light, where, by shedding mortality, the hero “will clothe himself in a new man,
dressed in the cloth of immortality)” (Brandão, 1999, p. 520).
The first labor is known as the Nemean Lion, which symbolizes the “insignia
of victorious combativeness.” The second, the Lernaean Hydra, expresses the
multiple vices – everything that comes in contact with the vices becomes corrupted.
The third, the Erymanthian Boar, allows Hercules to take possession of the symbol
of spiritual power, a characteristic of that animal. The fourth, the Ceryneian
Hind, carries in itself the expression of the hero’s search for his inner liberation
and, therefore, the search for wisdom, which is very hard to attain. The fifth,
the Stymphalian Birds, represents triumph over darkness. Hercules killed them
because they denied him hospitality; however, they provided it to his enemies. They
represent the impulse toward perverse desires that come out of the unconscious
and obfuscate the spirit. The sixth labor is known as the Augean Stables. In it, by
Eurystheus’s determination, Hercules must clean the filthy stables. The meaning
of this task is the purification of the stables (unconscious) by using the waters
of the river (life that flows), that is, ridding the soul/psyche of banal stagnation,
thanks to a lively and sensible activity. The seventh labor has to do with the Cretan
Bull, a ferocious animal that Eurystheus (Perseus’s grandson) ordered Hercules to
deliver alive to Mycenae. The eighth refers to the Mares of Diomedes, who was
king of Thrace. Hercules kills Diomedes, who continuously threw at his horses
the men who fell in his hands. The horse symbolizes impetuousness, and the ones
who eat men represent the perversity that swallows them, that is, the banalization
that causes the death of the soul/psyche. The ninth involves the Cattle of Geryon,
where a battle is fought. Geryon, a three-headed giant with three torsos attached
to the same hip, symbolizes the three forms of perversity: vanity, debauchery, and

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domination, which can be found in the combat against Antaeus, the anti-God, the
one who is the adversary of spirit, a clear mark of banalization. Diel tells us that
the forces of Geryon are reborn
every time that, defeated, he touches the ground. The image represents the
banal desires that, at every new contact with the earth, are exalted imaginatively
and recover a new vigor of passion. Hercules will defeat Antaeus crushing
him with his arms, lifting him up from the ground (symbol of sublimation).
(Diel, 1991, p. 198)
The penultimate has to do with the hunt for the hound Cerberus, where we are
confronted with Hercules’s descent to Hades. According to Brandão, this descent
to the underworld constitutes the supreme initiation rite: catabasis, symbolic death,
is the indispensable condition for anabasis, a “climb,” a definitive escalation in the
search for self-consciousness, for transformation of what is left of the “old man”
into the “new man.” The excavation course, in which the hero is faced with mythical
monsters, represents the trials of the initiation process that point to recognizing
oneself and broadening the self, thus consecrating the inscriptions etched on the
Temple of Delphi: know thyself. The hound Cerberus represents the sublimation
of perverted energy (Diel, 1991). The last labor refers to the Golden Apples of the
Garden of Hesperides that signify the difficulty in sublimation. In order to find them,
the hero has to go to the other side of the world. The apple is the symbol of earth, of
worldly desires, and gold is the mark of the elevation of desires. With that labor, the
cycle is closed. “Agnosis was acquired, and Hercules just about ready to die,” could
now be named “Hera’s Glory” (Brandão, 1991).
In Hercules’s story, we find two moments that represent aspects of his personality.
The first refers to a situation of adultery committed by Zeus, where in an inaugural
act of revenge by Hera upon Hercules, she projects onto him her feelings of anger
and dementia, thus, rendering him completely mad. In this situation, the hero kills
his children, and when he regains reason, he seeks the Oracle of Delphi’s orientation
regarding his purification from that involuntary act, even if killing one’s child is
considered a “heinous crime” by the Greek. The second has to do with the gift Hercules
receives from Deianira: a tunic poisoned with Hydra’s blood and the Centaur’s sperm.
As he puts it on, he starts to feel his body burning, tries to take it off, but the tunic
had already adhered to his skin. Mad with pain, he goes to Trachis, where he meets
Deianira, who kills herself at the site of him in such great suffering. To Brandão,
Hercules’s return is similar, thus, to a sort of Odyssey in reverse. Ulysses,
rejuvenated by Athena, receives Penelope’s kiss, upon pink-fingers Aurora’s
first smiles; Hercules, with his flesh is pieces, observes Deianira’s suicide, as he
agonizes, under the silent Curses of the Nessus Centaur. (Brandão, 1991, p. 537)
A different version for Hercules’s death refers to a situation where he incandesces
under the sun and, then, throws himself into a stream to put out the flames that are
consuming his body, thus, drowning to death.

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In both versions, fire is used as Hercules’s “cause of death,” thus, bringing to

mind purification states that exist in order to denude the hero of the mortal elements
originating from his mother Alcmene. Once he is accepted among mortals, Hera
reconciles with Hercules by way of a simulation of another birth for him, but this
time as if he came out of her womb, from within an immortal mother. In light of that
passage, Hera is considered by Sophocles the most perfect of mothers.
Hercules’s immortality, attained by means of his labors, was ensured by suffering.
Suffering plays an important role in that passage: “to suffer in order to understand,”
said Aeschylus. Even if he was considered the most fearless of men, the most
popular of Greek heroes, deserving more temples in Athens than the Athenian hero
Theseus, we see in his fall the symbol of vigorous negation of weakness before
Hera’s maternal hostility, while Deianira figures as the perverse mother (Brandão,
1991). In Sophocles, Deianira (“the one who kills her husband”) stabs herself like a
hero, given that women can only die by hanging; the gladius is a form of death for
men, who must die with honor. In the tragedy The Trachiniae, he presents Hercules
as a woman, while Deianira becomes a man, the hero, and devoid of any male
characteristics, cries and screams like a woman. Thusly, it is that state that destroys
him, without need for a dagger.
This whole course traversed by Hercules at last transforms him, in a moralizing
perspective, into a “new man,” except that now a chaste, wise, and virtuous one,
thus, different from the “old” Alcides. Later, we will find him being celebrated for
the centuries for his “warrior value.” It is good to remember that the Hercules myth
provides continuity for other more ancient myths more concerned with constructing
a hero according to characteristics valued along centuries, up until the middle of
the 19th century in the West, such as courage, compassion, loyalty, tenacity to
face difficulties, and dedication in the pursuit of a dream. A story that emerged
in Mesopotamia approximately five thousand years ago, about King Gilgamesh,
articulates itself with others that followed, as is the case with Hercules, Ulysses, or
even King Arthur.
With the Hercules story, at last, we come into contact with some foundational
attributes of social male representation, such as physical strength with no bounds,
prowess, and exacerbated sexual potency; excess becomes a principle that indicates
masculinity; it’s the struggle to overcome old age, which does away with the muscles
and the nerves of a warrior.
b. Theseus: Representation of Strength
Like Hercules, Theseus can be considered a hero who fought against banalization
(the death of the soul/psyche). Considering the Hercules of Attica, Theseus signifies
“strong par excellence.” It was up to him to restart the fight to “free himself” and
liberate Greece from the monsters. To that end, six labors were carried out, and
through them, the monsters were eliminated. That would be the first stage of the
hero’s pathway. The second stage refers to experiences with weakening, to the death
of the Minotaur, to the removal of Ariadne and marriage to Phaedra, to the descent
to the Hades, and to the death of the hero.
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In the first labors, Theseus defeats Periphetes, a wrongdoer who attacked pilgrims,
and eliminates the giant Sinis, who with all his strength toppled over the trunk of
a pine tree and forced those who went by him to keep the tree in that position,
and he in fact, kept many of the passersby. The third labor refers to confronting
the Crommyonian Sow – symbol of the feminine principle reduced to one single
right: that of reproduction. In the fourth labor Theseus faces his cousin Sciron and
is considered a murderer. In the fifth challenge, he fights Damastes or Polypemon,
also known as Procrustes, that is, “the one who stretches.” In the myth, Procrustes
would lay his victims down on a bed and cut the legs off those taller than him, or he
would stretch them if they were smaller. As he reduced a victim to the desired size,
he symbolized “banalization,” reducing of the soul/psyche to a predetermined size.
To Brandão, Procrustes
is the configuration of ethical and intellectual tyranny exercised by persons
who do not tolerate or accept the actions and judgments of others, except to
agree. We, thus, have in this sanguinary character, the image of absolute power,
whether it is a man, or a political party or regime. (1986, p. 428)
The sixth and last labor refers to the hero’s victory against Cercyon, a giant
who forced travelers to fight him. Possessing colossal strength, he killed his
adversaries.
Once finalized the first stage, Theseus heads for Athens, where, as he pulls his
sword out of its sheath, he is recognized by his father, Aegeus, who proclaims him
his successor. Aegeus’s wife, Medea, tries to poison the hero, who according to her
threatened the kingdom. She fails and is banished from Athens.
Through those labors, Theseus gives more and more demonstrations of his
strength, originating from his divine ancestry, the expression of his timé and areté,
that is, his personal honorability. He is considered someone who has “a protected
soul and an armed spirit” and, for that reason, he is taken along with a group of
youths to become food for the Minotaur; however, those who managed to escape the
labyrinth could return to Attica. At the time, Minos, father of Ariadne and Phaedra,
was king of Crete. Ariadne falls in love with Theseus and promises to help him find
a way out of the labyrinth, if he will marry her. Theseus accepts the deal but does not
keep his promise, thus, abandoning Ariadne as he falls in love with another woman.
Aegeus commits suicide in error for believing that his son had died. The hero
rises to power in Attica. From this point on, there are a few different versions. One
of them says that Attica was invaded by the Amazons, who decided to seek revenge
for the abandonment of Antiope, mother of Hippolytus. From Theseus’s marriage
to Phaedra, Ariadne’s sister, two children are born. Upset with the hero over the
consecration of Artemis and feeling disregarded, Aphrodite foments a passion
on Phaedra’s part toward Hippolytus, but he violently repudiates her. Fearing for
Theseus’s reaction, Phaedra simulates a situation suggesting that Hippolytus had
seduced her. Under the effect of his ire, the hero kills his son, and Phaedra hangs
herself out of remorse.

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In the second phase, Theseus develops a fraternal connection with Pirithous,

who admires him greatly. With the death of Pirithous’s wife, he starts to accompany
Theseus in his travels – in the kidnapping of Helena and in the catabasis to the
Hades to kidnap Persephone, among other adventures. The kidnapping of women in
mythology, according to Brandão, constitutes an initiation rite in the same proportion
as receiving seeds to be germinated. As we have seen previously, the catabasis
represents self-consciousness, the transformation of the old man into a new one.
In their descent to Hades, Theseus and Pirithous are greeted by Pluto, who invites
them to a banquet. Once seated, they could no longer get up – not even Hercules
could free them. Nevertheless, Theseus obtains assistance and manages to be torn
away from the chair, while Pirithous remains imprisoned by the chair of oblivion.
There are other versions for the death of Pirithous; however, what is more
interesting to us is to identify the causes that led to Theseus’s failure. Diel initially
ponders upon timé and areté; later the questioning regards the sadness that remained
from abandoning Ariadne and Phaedras death (Diel, 1991). Finally, according to
Brandão (1991), Theseus’s death can be understood as a regressus ad uterum, or
even a return to the world of his father, Poseidon.

c. Achilles: The Ideal Warrior

The concept of the warrior has been for many centuries a reference of a model
for social male representation. In the Middle Ages, it shows up in cavalry novels.
Masculinity and the capacity to fight have retained a strong connection to one
another. Achilles is an example of that. Through his story, we come to learn about
some of the characteristics of the fighting spirit that have been incorporated by men
in Western culture. It is complementary to the warrior’s characteristics to act while
possessed by murderous rage and by immeasurable cruelty when honor is under
attack.
Son of Thetis, the sea-nymph, and of Peleus, Achilles was the seventh child by
the couple, and he was exposed to fire by his mother as a means of removing from
him the “seal of mortality.” His six brothers were killed in that undertaking, and he
was the only one saved by his father; however, his lips did get burned, as well as the
bone of his right heel. According to Brandão, there is another version for the myth:
Thetis, while holding Achilles by the heel, dips him in the waters of the river Styx,
with the intent of making him invulnerable. However, the part of Achilles’s body
(his heel) from which his mother held him remains vulnerable. The same way as
in the previous version, Achilles’s father intervenes, and Thetis leaves him, turning
him over to Peleus. From that point on, he comes to have Phoenix as a mentor
(Brandão, 1991). In another narrative, Achilles is turned over by his father to the
centaur Chiron, so that he can be cured from the physical problems left by Thetis
and that he can be educated. Possessing profound knowledge of the art of medicine,
Chiron exhumes the remains of the giant Damysus and uses his bones to operate on
Achilles’s heel. When Achilles is twelve, Chiron teaches him how to hunt and to
ride horses; he also introduced him to the art of medicine, and he taught him how to

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play the lyre and to sing. The master spares no efforts toward ensuring Achilles will
learn to cultivate the old habits, such as defense of personal honor, love of truth and
moderation, resistance to pain and to unbridled passions. Achilles eats the entrails
of lions, boars, and the marrow of bears, so that he will acquire the courage and
strength of those animals.
Honey gave him sweetness and persuasion; it was the centaur who gave him the
name Achilles, as it was Ligyron previously, whose meaning may be “the one with
a clear, high-pitched, and clear voice,” as if it were a derivative of “high-pitched,
melodious, and sibilant” (Brandão, 1991, p. 99).
Achilles fights the Trojan War, but before that, in order to avoid that a prophecy
by Calchas comes to be, Thetis dresses him up as a girl and takes him to the kingdom
of Lycomedes, where he lives among the king’s daughters. Answering to the name of
Pyrrha, Achilles unites with one of the king’s daughters and fathers a son, Pyrrhus,
who will later be named Neoptolemus.
Achilles is recognized by Ulysses when he goes to the gynaeceum in Lycomedes’s
palace. While the women become interested in fabrics and adornments, Pyrrha
immediately becomes interested in the weapons and, thus, becomes exposed. Among
the different episodes in the story of the feared winner Achilles, the hero of the Iliad,
we see one that marks his cruelty and ire, expressed when his personal honor is
attacked – “something a Greek hero values above all” (Brandão, 1991, p. 101). That
is what we see in the incident of Achilles’s friend Patroclus’s death by Hector of
Troy. Hector takes away from Patroclus the weapons offered him by Achilles for
combat. At that moment, the hero feels attacked in his timé and “pours himself like a
hurricane over the Trojan plain” (Brandão, 1991). His ire causes Achilles to perpetrate
a great carnage, covering the Scamander River with bodies. Terrified, Trojans seek
refuge, but no one is willing to oppose the hero. Aeneas, supported by Apollo, takes
a chance but with no success. In the myth, the gods Apollo, Poseidon, and Athena
participate in the fighting, seeking to distract and confuse Achilles, thus, preventing
him from killing Hector. However, the hero liquidates the Trojan, as Homer shows
us in a passage from the Iliad. Achilles replies to Hector’s pleas by saying: “Don’t
you come pleading to me, you hound, at my knees or my parents. May ire and
courage lead me to bite myself into your raw flesh to devour it” (Brandão, 1991).
Achilles’s cruelty, seen in the funeral rites for his friend, demonstrates uncontained
resentment and anger, vehicles for an even greater charge against his opponent.
Zeus’s intervention becomes necessary so that Achilles will return Hector’s body to
Priam. The way the scene is described, we realize there was an explosion of furor,
only contained by divine mediation.
According to Brandão (1991), Achilles shows up at two points in the Odyssey,
more specifically those referring to the passage through the Hades, where the son of
Peleus tells Ulysses that he would prefer to “serve a man without resources in the
fields than to rule over the Hades.” Subsequent stories emerge to complete the hero’s
cycle. Among them is the fight against the queen of the Amazons, who came to help
Priam along with her army. After killing her, Achilles gazes at her and is touched

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by her death and beauty. Thersites uses scorn to refer to Achilles’s tenderness and
threatens to puncture the queen’s eyes. At that moment, Achilles kills him. Another
episode has to go with Achilles’s involvement with the king of Troy’s daughter,
Polyxena. Achilles’s death closes the hero’s cycle. Brandão also presents “the
bravery of the most fearless of the Achaeans becoming perpetuated in the memory
of the Hellenes.”
The portrait of Achilles left by Homer shows a, then, ideal warrior: He is tall,
strong, blond, the most handsome of Hellenes. He is fearless, brave, and possesses
such violence that, at times, gets to be ferocious. On the other hand, he is sensitive:
capable of being touched by the beauty of the Amazon’s agonizing eyes and of
crying copiously, touched by Priam’s speech, when the latter went to ask for Hector’s
body. He cultivated a superlative degree of friendship for Patroclus, Antilochus, and
Phoenix. He profoundly loves his parents and his son, Neoptolemus. He is only at
peace in the other life, when, after asking Ulysses for news on his father and son, he
becomes certain that Peleus is not being humiliated and neglected in his old age and
that Neoptolemus is as brave as his father” (Brandão, 1991).
Achilles is considered a hero who was born to serve, with fluctuations, given that
he is driven by passion. He arduously defends his timé and areté, yet he becomes
emotional and cries when he is taken by memories of his father and of Patroclus.
Brandão also points out that the Stoic present him as a symbol of violence and of
passions, placing him in opposition to Ulysses, a model of prudence and wisdom.

d. Ulysses: Strength, Astuteness, and Wisdom

Strategic courage, offspring on every port, and strength to handle his weapon are
some of the attributes we find in Ulysses’s story and that make evident the male
representation of a hero who leaves his home, wife, and son in order to keep his word
given to a friend and to free Helen of Troy.
In this hero’s myth we identify his contribution through the development of
astuteness and of wisdom by mythological heroes. Differently from Hercules,
Achilles, and Theseus, Ulysses defines himself as a practical, determined man, as
full of savvy, as skillful, wise, intelligent, and courageous. Considered the king
of Ithaca, Ulysses (Odysseus for the Greek) is said to be the son of Anticlea and
Sisyphus. Even though we find his mother married to Laertes in various mythical
reports, we know that she became pregnant by Sisyphus before marrying him.
Having Sisyphus, the most daring of mortals, for a father, Autolycus, the smartest of
thieves, for a grandfather, and Hermes, the god of trickery, for a great-grandfather,
Ulysses received from this male lineage an inheritance that, in fact, make him
capable of developing the characteristics for which he became known. That allowed
him, during the Trojan War, to conceive the wooden horse as a strategy to ensure
victory (Brandão, 1991).
Even without knowing precisely the origin of the name “Odysseus,” most tend
to infer that it represents “I become angry; I become grieved,” or also, “bearing
a grudge against someone.” Ulysses’s story contains some passages that work as

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marks of his identity and that aggregate value to his name. One of them refers to
the scar caused by a boar’s bite and the other to the exchange, with Iphitos, of his
sword and lance for the divine bow. With that bow, Ulysses will kill suitors seeking
to marry Penelope. These two episodes mark the first initiation tests to become a
horseman. Killing a boar, “the symbol of spiritual power,” and acquiring the bow,
“the image of real power and of the initiation of horsemen,” make up, for this hero,
the initially required tools for ruling over the riches of Ithaca.
Ulysses marries Penelope after giving up on Helen due to her high number of
suitors. Penelope joins Ulysses, and they head for Ithaca, even though she was
pressured by her father to remain in Sparta, considered the city of virtuous and
righteous women. In fact, that resulted in the reputation for being the ideal wife
attributed to Penelope. However, as Brandão shows us, in some versions, Penelope
is shown betraying her husband before and after his return to Ithaca. Ulysses had one
son with Penelope, Telemachus.
Ulysses’s departure and consequent separation from his wife and son for twenty
years has antecedent propulsion in the abduction of Helen, Menelaus’s wife, by
Paris. Menelaus stakes a claim on the oath made by all of Helen’s suitors that
the one chosen to marry her would have to be given assistance when requested.
Menelaus, then, enlists Ulysses, who pretends to be mad in order not to leave Ithaca,
but Palamedes exposes him, thus, forcing him to join Menelaus.
During the journey to rescue Helen, Ulysses gives demonstrations of his strategic
abilities, his astuteness and leadership. His prudence is present both in the journey
there and in the return to Ithaca. Even though his is a similar journey to that of heroes
presented previously, it sets itself apart from them by replacing the use of physical
force with astuteness and wisdom. The long return trip home is marked by a pace
that makes it evident to Penelope; to her, Ulysses’s journey represents the “presence
of absence,” which is undone with his return.
The challenges put to Ulysses correspond to the labors performed by the other
heroes. Such is the case with his cunning employed against Polyphemus, or also
when facing the powers of the witch-goddess Circe, who once defeated extends him
hospitality and love, warning him of the dangers to be faced when confronting the
Sirens. Ulysses departs after a year, and he does not head for Ithaca, but rather toward
a different life, in order to complete his mythical itinerary. According to Brandão, the
king of Ithaca’s catabasis is “symbolic.” That means he does not descend to another
life (Hades), like Hercules. Ulysses defeats the Sirens by skillfully maneuvering
around the lethal seduction wielded by them and heads for the island of Ogygia.
Only after overcoming the hatred of a few gods, like Poseidon, who objects to the
injurious statements made about his son Polyphemus and becoming imprisoned by
heated passions for different women, who bear him many children out of marriage,
does Ulysses finally return to Ithaca.
During his absence, Telemachus defends his mother and their assets from the
tireless suitors who wish to marry her. To Brandão, Penelope was retouched quite
a bit in the text of the Odyssey, emerging as an example of fidelity to her husband,

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one of the only wives who did not succumb to the “demons of absence.” Forced by
her suitors to choose one among them, she makes use of a trick that became known.
She begins to weave a shroud for Laertes, which she unravels each night, as a way
of avoiding having to marry any of suitors.
Ulysses arrives back in Ithaca under disguise and in rags. It was necessary to
be prudent in order to find out what had been going on in his kingdom. Father
and son meet and recognize each other; that is when the massacring of the suitors
begins. However, before that, Ulysses becomes emotional over the loyalty shown by
Argos and Eumaeus. As a beggar, Ulysses is insulted and humiliated at the palace
by Antinous, the most violent of the suitors. Penelope takes him in, without yet
knowing that he is her husband, and has him see the maid Eurycleia, who recognizes
him from the scar on his leg.
To Brandão, winning a bride’s hand is never gratuitous for a hero. A suitor, he
says, must overcome great obstacles and risk his own life, even to review his lost
part. He must devote his soul/psyche to winning his own love.
Penelope starts the test of the bow, which will elect her future groom. Ulysses starts
to kill those who dishonored him, whether suitors or servants. He finally comes to
Penelope, who still was resistant. During this test, Ulysses shows patience and answers
the questions put by his wife about the particularities of married life. The hero answers
them one by one, starting with identifying the couple’s wedding bed, made by him
with olive tree trunks to symbolize strength, fecundity, reward, and peace.
In light of the revolt by Ithaca residents to avenge their dead – the suitors to
Penelope’s hand – Athena intervenes, putting an end to what would have turned into
a great massacre. In the Odyssey text, Homer presents a hymn that Ulysses writes
for Penelope regarding her faithful attitude. Ulysses represents the hero in the myth
of the husband’s return who attests his identity by way of marks that are his own: the
husband’s ability to handle his bow, his knowledge about the couple’s wedding bed,
and the wife’s recognizing the scar left by the boar.
To Brandão, the boar’s bite, the first test, can be seen as a sort of “mini-mutilation,”
if considered from a shamanistic point of view, the hero’s moving closer to the sacred
and the gods. Ulysses is held as the Homeric hero who is most protected by the gods.
That bite represents the embodiment of spiritual power; it predisposes him toward
forming solid unions.
The second test refers to Ulysses’s ability to string the bow, a deed that all 180 of
Penelope’s suitors were unable to perform. According to the tradition, the weapon
has a certain energy that responds only to the one who evokes its name, a name the
hero alone is able to pronounce. Therefore, Ulysses is able to string the bow and
complete the test.
The third test refers to recognizing the couple’s wedding bed, made from the
sacred tree. According to Chevalier and Gheerbrant the bed means
replenishing through sleep and love, but equally works as the place of death.
Birth bed, wedding bed, and deathbed are the object of very special care and of

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a sort of veneration as being the sacred center of life in its fundamental stage.
(Brandão, 1991, p. 484)
Like the majority of Greek heroes, Ulysses has a violent death.
If the hero, for his own essence, has a difficult and complicated birth, if his
existence in this world is a parade of dangerous journeys, of fights, of sufferings,
of dis-adjustments, of unrestraint, and of excesses, the final act of his drama,
his violent death, constitutes the apex of his final test. (Brandão, 1991, p. 85)
He also reminds us that it is this violent death that grants him the denomination of
hero, and makes him into a protector of his city. And the power of the Ulysses myth,
in the end, resides in its collective mark expressed in the hero’s trajectory that exiles
him in the name of the word given to a third party.
e. Foundational paternity: the gods, the sacred, and violence
We could still analyze a complementary perspective through which the male
archetypes could be contemplated. We characterize male representation through
the four heroes previously presented. However, that representation gains more
importance when we consider a few gods. Among them, we will find those that
predominantly use hatred and uncontrolled anger as a way of asserting themselves
in the world. There are eight Olympian gods that can be used to characterize male
representation (Brandão, 1991). The first one is Zeus, the god of the sky and of light,
lord of lightning and thunder. He was saved by his mother, Rhea, from being eaten
by his father, Cronus. Counseled by Metis (prudence), Zeus gives Cronus a potion
that makes him throw up his children, whom he had swallowed. Thus, supported by
Hades and Poseidon, he wages a war against his uncles, the Titans, to take over the
government. Cronus and the Titans are imprisoned in Tartarus, and the domains are
divided among the three gods. Zeus keeps the sky; Poseidon takes the sea, and Hades
the underworld. Zeus is considered a patrilineal god, skilled at forging alliances and
at conquest, and he has a reputation for being an obstinate charmer and lover.
Zeus’s victory over Cronus affirms the triumph of order over chaos, “of the
divinities of light over the primordial powers” (Brandão, 1992). There mythologists
that denominate Zeus’s tendency to monopolize authority and to destroy
manifestations of autonomy in others Zeus Complex.
The fear that his autocracy, his dignity, and his rights might not be duly accepted
and respected made Zeus extremely sensitive and given to choleric explosions, not
rarely, calculated ones. These complexes reveal the roots of a manifest feeling of
intellectual and moral inferiority, with the evident need for social compensation, by
means of displays of authoritarianism (Brandão, 1992, p. 256).
The second god is Poseidon, god of the sea, of storms and earthquakes. At the
same time that he is held as king of the seas, he is also considered the father of
earth. He plots a conspiracy with Hera and Athena to dethrone Zeus, which results
in a distancing between him and his brother, thus, establishing mutual distrust. He
is considered intuitive and emotionally unstable; he can rapidly turn into a cruel

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enemy. Poseidon lives many romances and has many children. However, while
Zeus’s children become heroes and prove useful to humanity, Poseidon’s children
are known as misshapen and violent. The king of the seas also rules over the depths
and primeval emotions.
The third archetype is the god Hades. A recluse, he rules over the shadows,
fantasy, and images; for this reason, he is considered terrifyingly dark and
invisible. Heir to the kingdom of the dead, he is so feared that he is never named
out of fear arousing his ire. Hades is considered an introvert, violent, inflexible,
and sensitive. One of his powers is the ability to dominate souls/psyches and the
unconscious.
The fourth god is Apollo. Accepted as a considerably heterogeneous mythical
figure, he is seen as a violent and implacable god, the holder of bow and arrows
that kill. He is considered determined, successful at attaining goals, and he has a
legalistic and conservative profile. Illuminated by the Greek spirit, Apollo manages
to positively articulate and channel multiple aspects of his constitution, given that he
is held as an “amalgam of various divinities that synthesizes in one single god a vast
complex of oppositions” (Brandão, 1992, p. 258).
A reconciling of different polarities is conducted by Apollo toward an “ideal of
culture and wisdom.” He is a model god of reflection and prudence, a son protected
by Zeus.
The fifth archetype is Ares, considered the god of war, of violence, of “disgrace
and misfortune.” His courage is immeasurable, blind, and brutal. Zeus denominates
him the most hateful of all immortals that inhabit the Olympus. He makes himself
known for his use of muscles and of physical force. Ares does not commit to causes
to be defined; he is specifically devoted to violence. Some mythologists name him a
rejected son, and a riveting and aggressive lover.
The sixth god is Hermes, a wayfarer with great communication ability. Named
the messenger of the gods, he is an excellent guide and negotiator. Among his
stories, the highlights are his skillfulness and astuteness to learn and acquire new
knowledge, just as happened with Apollo. The Greeks hold him as a “friendly
trickster and protector of tradesmen and of travelers.” A guardian of roads, he moves
with ease through the darkness. He is considered Zeus’s favorite messenger, who
operates on three levels: Olympian, telluric, and chthonic. He guides souls/psyches
from one level to the other and, for this reason, does not become identified solely by
astuteness and intelligence but, above all, by gnosis and magic. He is known as the
companion of men.
Hephaestus is a god that came into the world through a loveless union. Hesiod
considers him a “lame god and lord of forges.” He was born to Hera alone as revenge
against Zeus for his having caused Athena to be born out of his head without his
wife’s participation. In one of the fights between Hera and Zeus, Hephaestus takes
Hera’s side. Furious, Zeus takes him by the feet and throws him off the top of
Olympus. Hephaestus falls and has his body broken in many pieces; the incident
leaves him crippled and psychologically disturbed.

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There is another version to explain Hephaestus’s physical defects. At birth, he was

ugly and deformed. As she took one look at him, Hera repudiates him and throws
him off the top of Olympus. Hephaestus falls in the sea, is collected, and spends
a long period in a cave under the sea (initiation period). He learns to work with
iron, bronze, and precious metals, thus, becoming “the most ingenious of Zeus’s
children.” Hephaestus’s masterpiece was the creation of the ideal woman, at Zeus’s
request. He sculpts her in clay initially – she is fascinating. He not only sculpts her,
but also gives her a soul/psyche and life. That creation becomes known as Pandora.
Due to his physical handicaps, Hephaestus becomes an expert artist and someone
who is always ready to please. “Servile, humble, and helpful,” he does not change,
not even when he catches Aphrodite, his wife, cheating with Ares. Hephaestus is
considered a consummate artist, who is creative and works alone.
The last male archetype is Dionysus. The god of wine, of ecstasy, and of
enthusiasm, he has as characteristics dynamism and a libertarian character, without
repressions. He was considered a passionate lover. Initially gestated in the womb of
his mother, Semele, he continued his gestation in the thigh of his father, Zeus.
It is said that Dionysus’s followers live transformative experiences and that they
break with interdicts of a social, political, and religious order in the polis. According
to Brandão,
Evidently, this overcoming of the human condition and this freedom gained
through ecstasy and enthusiasm constituted liberation from interdicts, taboos,
regulations, and conventions of an ethical, political, and social order. Thus,
there is the Dionysus-Apollo antinomy: in one, a detachment from all taboos,
and in the other, restraint, moderation, and rigorous ethics cyphered in “know
thyself” and the rigor of “nothing in excess.” (1992, p. 263)
That can be seen as a reflection of the reduction in symbolic power held by male
representation within individualistic culture, as well as of its disarticulation from
collective practices. Accordingly, the hero becomes exclusively a hero of his own
self, restricted to attributes like physical strength, great sexual appetite, and success.
Those characteristics, stripped of any collective anchoring, in the course of the
centuries, submerged the Greek hero in banalization, and the struggle to overcome it
gave way to individualism.
First, however, there was a preliminary stage characterized by modern individualistic
heroes, analyzed by Watt. In his work, we find male heroes who are devitalized,
whose vigor is questionable, and who were lost before new social demands (Watt,
1997). We are in a society that gradually lost its collective particularities without
managing the impacts and the meaning this produced for the culture.
We know that consciousness is made through organization of mythical history’s
narrative. A subject only knows who he is when he tells his history; when he acts,
he has no such awareness. Therefore, through myths we realize that the history of
men is being told. And through those histories, we can see the patriarchal culture’s
trajectory. As we disorganize a certain type of culture, we are faced with new

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demands that need to be identified, systematized, and responded to. Men gradually
became directly identified with the patriarchal system, pointed to as aggressive,
violent, and oppressive. The generations that followed grew up without hearing from
older men a response to that perspective. That way, they grew up believing that a
man is potentially an aggressor. Statistics show that, presently, young men are quite
faithful to that belief, and uncritical about it.
Next, we will see a few modern heroes that lent support to the hollowing out
of social male representation. This is a representation that, in the absence of any
response to a “men’s world,” brought us to Homer Simpson.

MODERN MALE MYTHS

Many times, it is collective consciousness that produces “mythification,” and

literature records it. Other times, however, it is literature that takes the initiative.
Thus, we are faced with a new category of literary myths: everything that literature
turned into myth.
Different cultures make use of myth’s functions of telling and explaining a story
in order to circulate social male representation. “African myths,” “Germanic myths,”
“Japanese myths” are some of the cross-sections of the way cultures propagate their
traditions. It is not my interest in this work to establish a discussion relative to the
status of Greek and literary myths. In this book, they are used as culture operators6
retold by older men to younger men (Gilmore, 1990). I recognize the difference and
what is an intersection between the two. In Brunel’s (1998) view,
When we go from myth to literary myth, observes Phillippe Sellier (1984),
certain characteristics disappear, and others emerge. We know that literary
myth is not foundational of anything nor does it institute anything; works
that illustrate in principle are signed, and literary myth is not considered true.
But language has recorded a real kinship, and designated by the same noun
religious myth and literary myth. Their characteristics in common are symbolic
saturation, tight organization, and metaphysical illumination.
Accordingly, I consider mythical narrative one of the discourses of culture,
representing both its oral and its written expressions. Myth gives form to the different
social dramas and determines an orientation for the pathways of the hero. Brunel
describes myth as a fragment of being and, thus, as revealing of both being and what
is divine in it. Therefore, myth can be presented as a sacred history.
Nevertheless, there are authors who take a skeptical position regarding myth, as
is the case with Lévi-Strauss in The Raw and the Cooked (1964). To him, literature
is myth’s adversary, to the extent that in it myth becomes devalued and is profane. In
turn, the word “mythos” means word, narrative passed on. Dumézil (1992), in Mythe
et Epopée, states that we can only know myths through literature, in other words,
literature is the true repository of myths. Brunel reminds us what would we know
of Ulysses but for Homer, about Antigone but for Sophocles, and of Arjuna but for

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the Mahabharata? Like prehistoric research, pre-literary merely wanders at random.

And just as it is necessary to study history in order to understand prehistory, so it
is only from the starting-point of literary texts or traditions that we can move on to
hypotheses concerning preceded them.
It follows from this that myth reaches us completely swathed in literature and is
already literary, whether we like it or not. It also follows that literary analysis will
inevitably at some point come up against myth. Recent attempts at ‘myth analysis’ or
‘mytho-criticism’ have in fact demonstrated that they constitute a fruitful approach
to the interpretation of texts (Brunel, 1998, p. 17).
That leads us to believe that literary myth is not limited to the survival of ethno-
religious myth in literature. We find, in the Western cultural pantheon a great space
produced by the Athens-Jerusalem dyad, which fostered the flourishing of variants
in Greek mythology and the demarcation of sacred text. Among the marks of the
Western identity is Greek mythology and an intricate set of Celtic legends (Avalon)
assimilated and reformulated by Christian symbolism. We find remnants of those
legends in Western history, now represented by modern fiction. King Arthur and
his knights mark the adventure narratives of an action hero, while with Tristan and
Isolde we identify episodes of love and passion that provided inspiration for modern
romantic lyricism. According to Sevcenko:
From Orpheus’s shamanistic energy to Homer’s narrative composition,
an immense change has operated. The Orphean world is the world of oral
communication, of direct contact between the orator and his audience. The
Homeric situation, on the other hand, is mediated by the written word; one
who writes acts alone and aims at an abstract public; one who reads hears one’s
own voice and projects an author according to individual fantasies. The present
order is that of representations. If the Orphean world was properly mythical,
the Homeric situation is entirely historical. Thought now acquires autonomy
and formulates the narrative according to the conventions of an aesthetic in
tune with a hierarchy of values that corresponds to an instituted and vertical
social and political system. In this new situation, myth continues to exist, but
its existence is linked to literary representation. There is, therefore, great and
growing historical complexity from Orpheus to Homer, from aoidos to Virgil,
and from romans to Pessoa or Varnhagen. (Sevcenko apud Brunel, 1998, p. 23)
Traditional societies demonstrated a very close connection between the social
and the sacred. In them, myth defined the origins, was the foundation for beliefs,
gave legitimacy to social institutions, gave meaning to everyday reality, and thus,
constituted a source of wisdom for the members of the community (Sevcenko apud
Brunel, 1998, p. 676). For example, in African societies belonging to black Africa, of
exclusively oral tradition, a whole mystique of the word and of knowledge developed,
at the center of which myth belonged to the domain of the esoteric reserved for
rituals and initiation sessions, which explains their limited circulation.

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Some African myths presented in the present work are part of that oral tradition,
described by the writer from Mali, Amadou Hampate Ba (1969). He reports on
various heroes that are part of traditional education for the Fulani (Peul in French)
from the curve of the Niger, the most popular of whom is Kaïdara. Bly returns to
some of the stories told by this supernatural being, in particular those having to do
with the initiation of boys. The serve as a base for the author’s analysis, through
contemporary social male representation, of the effort undertaken by the boys in
order to earn their adult masculinity, which they comprehend as vigor, potency,
strength, and virility (Bly, 1990).
Bly signals that in African cultures the older men responsible for the task
of facilitating the passage from one stage of life to another, from adolescence to
adultness, while in contemporary Western societies older men have disencumbered
themselves from that role and turned their backs to the young.
In Lévi-Strauss’s (1964) essay entitled “The Meeting of Myth and Science,” we
find an analysis about the beginning of a disconnect marked by science’s attitude
toward the world of the senses, of passions, of what we perceive. In that view,
the sensory world is illusory, and the real world would be that of mathematical
properties revealed by reason, which is in contradiction to the world of the senses.
The latter, having opposite characteristics to the one from which reason emerges,
remains associated to the universe of the body, considered the locus of what is not
thought, thus, claiming exclusively for itself what is finite and temporal in man. In
the tradition of Western thought, which sees reason as sovereign, the body possesses
no memory (history) or desire; reason and its derivatives, on the other hand, become
imperious and valuable compared to it. In light of that, what contribution does poet
Fernando Pessoa offer us to think about the problem raised in this book and its
incursion into mythical narrative when he states, “What feels in me is thinking?”
I consider myth to be an expression of man’s effort to think and feel. Therefore,
it plays an important role in cultural differences toward cohesion and social
organization to the extent that it organizes experience by naming the subject and
according to his life a meaning that emerges and is organized from the body itself.
So it was with Ulysses, Achilles, Hercules, and Theseus.
Even if to the Greek the world of the senses was supposed to be overcome, when
they referred to memory or its loss, they did it by referring to the dead. However,
they chose one of the senses to tell about recovery of memory: drinking fresh water
from the lake of Mnemosyne.
After all, if reality is the domain of the imprecise and of occult things, why did
scientific precision come to be absolutely sovereign over the senses? Or still, why
do some mythologies seek to have influence over the others? Wouldn’t classifying
multiple “mythologies” and establishing among them a hierarchy block the flow that
allows us to think about feeling, since feeling cannot be classified?
The feelings that associate a man with situations of violence are many, and the
different mythical narratives help me to identify them. Thinking about present day

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male violence is, in a way, to think about what makes a subject feel like he is a man,
while also situating those feelings in light of what a warrior was, and a knight or a hero.
In that sense, I try to demarcate the hero’s journey as an access channel to social
male representation, identify what happened to him in the passage from traditional
societies to egalitarian societies, and analyze the transformations that representation
went through, as well as their meaning in terms of the social values in question.
In light of the different approaches to myth, it is necessary to break away from
any absolute concept as to what it is. According to Dabezies (1998), every “primitive
human group lives as if within a global myth that is, simultaneously, global image of
the universe and justification for society and its rites.”
Culture has taken responsibility for making mythologies acceptable to the majority.
For one example of that we have religions, Judaism and Christianity in particular in
the West, determining a renewal of those ancient mythologies. Religions introduce a
different vision that comes to take the place and the function of the previous images.
Even if it preserves some elements, the new vison radically modifies the symbolic
reach of those mythologies, by evolving a history oriented toward the future. Later,
centuries of theological reflection will construct an articulation between “symbolic
images and abstract reality.” According to Dabezies,
later, in the literary field, old topics of mythological origin will coexist with
a Christian-globalizing representation that, in turn, evokes its own mythical
images: Faust and Don Juan. In the 19th century, Romanticism will renew all
images and will redefine them according to what can be called religiousness –
or romantic weltanschauung. In sum, the 20th century will be able to mix all of
these elements, for it has become aware of this host of mythical inheritances.
(1998, p. 733)
Thus, from the single and “totalizing” myth from the primitive group, we move on
to an avalanche of myths that modern culture activates: Mythical elements coming
out of different parts of the world, and that successively take form, are incorporated
by modern culture according to a certain “stratification” and gradually come to
emerge in individual and collective consciousness.
If, on the one hand, literary myths cannot handle the whole of man or of life,
on the other, it is possible to identify that they implicate a fundamental reference
to a totalizing vision that serves as their backdrop and without which they are
inconceivable.
That is what happens when we analyze modern individualism and do not
consider the importance Faust and Don Juan have for it. Faust’s primitive myth was
constructed having the Lutheran religion in the background, the same way Don Juan
is built upon the popular Catholicism scene.
Therefore, in a desacralized society, as is the case of that contemporarily found in
the West, literary production represents still one of the privileged fields where myth
can find expression. Certainly, in order to carry out the analysis of literary myths,
it is necessary to consider the quality and personality of the author, his initiative

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to introduce transformations, as well as his capacity to integrate a certain element

of the present time. All these transformations can intervene in the oral narrative of
the myth, but now they are especially multiplied, thus, leading to a great distance
from the original drama. Contrary to what says Lévi-Strauss, in literature, not all
versions of a myth have equal importance (Lévi-Strauss, 1964). In my research,
myth is an operator used to understand the reasons and the motives that link men and
situations of violence in contemporary societies, from Tarzan to Homer Simpson. In
that regard, DaMatta says:
The myths of our television heroes contain the same components as the myths
told by the wood stoves at our homes and farms, and those are, by their turn,
the same as the myth of our grandparents and of the navigators, which, in turn,
is the same myth of our societies. (1997, p. 259)
Following that same perspective, Keleman (1999) presents Gilgamesh, Ulysses,
and Percival as being heroes who seek their identities as men of action. These heroes
are mesomorphs that know themselves in action: To them, not being in action is the
same as having no identity. That is the issue for all these men, including Hercules
and Tarzan. However, at some points along their journeys, they are invited to reflect
upon themselves. To Keleman, the Greek and the literary myths are treated the same
way if we consider the hero’s pathway.
A myth speaks about a somatic type and his inclinations for acting and organizing
his perception references, even if they are unconscious. The narrative part of a myth,
the verbal history, is adopted to legitimize and encourage these mesomorphic histories.
When we consider social male representation in traditional societies, we find that
action and violence go hand in hand. Being identified as a man of action is to be a
defender, a male who must act against external forces (hunt, war, and throw himself
into adventures).
The myths mentioned previously are the base for social male representation in the
masculine world. Being a man of action-violence is simply another way of living the
mythical; it is the mesomorphic somatic type’s inner yearning, through which we
have access to the soldier, the pioneer, the chief, and the father. At first, mesomorphic
action becomes the ideal (for the hunter, the kill), and later, it is transported as if part
of the images in primitive cave paintings, through which stories are told or myths
are created; hunters and warriors are initially part of “oral images” that are passed
on in the cultures and later become pictorial images, in narratives or in advertising.
In traditional societies, the man of action-violence played an important social
role: to protect, to provide, and to defend. Those actions accorded him a positive
value, to the extent that they identified him as a man needed for the preservation
of collective practices. Here, masculinity and collective practices keep a very close
relationship.
In the transition to modern individualism, the role of the action-violence man
gradually ceases to be relevant and necessary in light of the new demands of a
society oriented by science and the exacerbation of individual values. The positivity

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previously accorded that man, present in the Odyssey and in the cavalry novels,
loses strength and visibility in the transition to modern individualism, which not
only relinquishes that function but also feeds on hard criticism to it. Cervantes and
Tirso de Molina do so, when they conceive their heroes with opposite characteristics
to those of vigorous Ulysses or victorious Parsifal in their progressive ascension
toward the sacred.
The feebleness and the crisis in which these modern male heroes live serve as
the base both for judging the parameters of that “old world” and for inaugurating a
sort of examination of the subject’s social representation and his effort to affirm an
“individual mythology” that no longer corresponds with the sacred as the previous
ones did.
By its turn, if this strategy of taking apart the sacred and its implications for
collective organization fostered the emergence of a different value system, that
system – individualism – ascended by means of constant and more and more complex
criticism of traditional societies. In that sense, some social categories lent themselves
better to it than others, as was the case of race and sex. The social struggles that grew
from the starting point of the individualistic credo sought to emancipate the subject
and free him from everything that tied him to the context of traditions.
To that end, social male representation went on to be considered within the
scope of the private a representative of traditional societies, something that opposed
modern individualistic values. The positive function accorded masculinity now
becomes negative. The action-violence man may no longer be needed given the new
demands of contemporary society, as he was in traditional societies, but having him
in this negative place became as important as he was previously.
Somehow, cultures reach for expiatory victims in order to maintain social
cohesion, thus, establishing the necessary sacrificial rites. For modern individualism
and for contemporary societies, it was no different. I find in both echoes of Girard’s
(1990) analysis, and through them I can identify the negativity associated to social
male representation as necessary for the modern and contemporary enterprise. It has
become the new “expiatory victim.”
Men’s involvement with situations of violence has come to be an alternative for
repairing and reclaiming the relationship between masculinity and the sacred, which
in this context is the collective expression of subject recognition, visibility, and
social insertion.
Some authors, like Morris, establish AD 1050 as the year when the constitution of
the structures for individualism had its start. Dumont criticizes Morris in his essay
on Individualism, saying that its institutionalization had its base in Christianity and
was an experience that was restricted to the West, not being seen in China or in India.
Dumont states that what had its start with Christian doctrine was later consolidated
and developed by Reformation (Watt, 1997; Dumont, 1985).
Both the Renaissance and the Reformation strengthened the primacy of the
individual over the collective, thus, making that one of the characteristics defining
modern Western society. The cause of individualism gained powerful contributions

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from the works by Rousseau, Descartes, John Locke, and Goethe. Descartes, for
example, presents his ideas from the starting point of the primacy of the Self. He
says: I think instead of We think – cogito ergo sum. Rousseau defends the idea in
his works that man is intrinsically good, but society makes him bad. In different
works, Goethe carries out an incursion into the “world of feelings,” the inner life
and the way of being of individuals. Those authors systematically present the notion
of individuality, which becomes affirmed in the opposition to everything that is
collective.
The word “individualism” arrived in England in the year 1830, and it had a
“disagreeable and hostile” meaning opposing the individual to human solidarity,
which was strictly perceived as collective. French writers began to widely disseminate
the term, which to them takes on characteristics of the “evil” that permeates modern
societies.7 However, it was Tocqueville that positively disseminated use of the word
“individualism” in his works:
Individualism is a novel expression, to which a novel idea has given birth.
Our fathers were only acquainted with egoism (selfishness). Selfishness
is a passionate and exaggerated love of self, which leads a man to connect
everything with himself and to prefer himself to everything in the world.
Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of
the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart
with his family and his friends […]. (Watt, 1997, p. 239)
Employing the term with positive characteristics was also adopted by Samuel
Smiles, in his Self Help, where he defends an economic practice based on laisser
faire, whereby no difficulty should be created on the individual plane that could
inhibit the economic level. Liberal thought follows the individualistic prerogative,
reinforcing and strengthening the positive meaning brought to political thought.
According to Watt (1997, p. 240), there is a period of public approval of
individualism, and in that course,
We cannot, it seems, avoid the contradiction between the social and ideological
view of individualism on the one hand, and the psychological and ethical view
on the other. The sociological view is naturally linked to the historic view; it
aligns itself to the view of “individualism” as a relatively modern ideological
characteristic in history, and basically limited to Western societies. Therefore,
the myths of Faust, Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe, and Don Quixote were
recently new, and under that aspect they reflect the new emphasis of their time
on the social and political primacy of the individual.
Differently from what Greek myths do, modern myths do not deal with origins
or transformations, but rather, they start from individual accomplishments. Thus,
they differentiate themselves from collective or community journeys. If we consider
the formalization of individual life, they can be considered representative of its
origin.

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Through the narratives of some modern myths, one can identify the organizational
trajectory of Western societies, where there is a valuing of attributes upon which is
constituted the social dynamic of contemporary societies. Highlights are, thus, two
characteristics: the emphasis on the psychological and the systematization of social
procedures determined by the legal order.
Starting from the analyses presented previously and having as a goal identifying
to what measure the stories of Faust, Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe, and Don Quixote
can be considered mythical,8 we can identify not only similarities among them, but
also the different relationships they establish with the social structure. This way,
they exemplify what happens to male representation, which is committed to both the
social structure and the mythical meaning that structure attributes to it: to protect it.
We do not find in those stories any relationship with the dimension of the “sacred.”
In Watt’s view, the four stories can be considered “myths of modern individualism”
(Watt, 1997). Cohen observes that any narrative must have a beginning in time, and
that one of the most important functions of myth is to anchor the present in the
past (Watt, 1997, p. 228). We know that the heroes in the four myths existed in
remote times and, in a certain way, we can see them as belonging to the past. On the
other hand, they also remain present in modern cultures and, similarly to traditional
myths, they became public through oral literature. Accordingly, the public listened to
them as if they were real histories, or narratives created from figures that had indeed
existed. The four heroes in the myths have an analogous type of reality: They are not
real and historical “persons;” their public attributes them a real existence to a point.
That is what we realize in the enterprise undertaken by many researchers toward
ascertaining who the persons were that served as “foundational models” for Faust,
Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and Don Juan. In that perspective, they are attributed
a differentiated reality, and that makes it so that they are not treated as fiction,9 but
rather as narratives derived from the transition between the social and intellectual
system of the Middle Ages and the system dominated by modern individualistic
thought. That passage became marked by the development of its meanings, initially
Renaissance ones, but romantic ones to others.
In order to think about the meaning of masculinity, we will adopt the same view
employed by Watt, for whom
myth is a traditional story that is exceptionally widely known throughout the
culture, that is credited with a historical or quasi-historical belief, and that
embodies or symbolizes some of the most basic values of a society. (1997, p. 16)
Likewise, social male representation has taken on in history the basic values of
the society where it circulates. However, since the transition to individualism, it has
been suffering a decrease in its collective expression and value. We can observe
this aspect in the distinction between the narratives of Greek and modern myths.
With modern myths, masculinity initiates a process of decline that will lead to
representations in the media such as that of Homer Simpson. The sense and meaning
present in the Odyssey and in the Iliad regarding the hero’s search to acquire his soul/

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psyche are lost down the individualizing path. The collective sinks into oblivion, and
exclusively what emerges is fascination with the introspective incursion. From that
point on, the world will be spoken through the hero’s adventures, and out of it he
cannot exist. Along this path, masculinity has been moving away from the collective
narrative toward becoming a matter inherent to the empirical subject of the male
sex. Nevertheless, as with other categories, it cannot do without social recognition
and visibility.
By means of the myths of Faust, Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe, and Don Quixote, I
can identify the contours of the male representation present in modernity. Each hero
represents a criticism of the world of traditions that is developed through a certain
defacing of male representation, thus, fulfilling the role of attacking collective
practices.
In Faust, by Goethe, we find some of the characteristics of the Nietzschean
superman. It is modern man’s desire for potency, as he wishes to rule the world, with
his passion, at any price. Faust reminds us that the subject cannot remove evil from
his life so easily. In the characterization of the pact with the Devil, we can see the
degree to which a subject’s freedom can apply itself toward becoming involved with
evil, delving right into it.
Faust emerges in the 16th century, but records dated between the years 1480 and
1540 show us that at the time, in Germany, there lived an individual whose name
was Georg Faust (Watt, 1997). In the course of his life, he seems to have taken
residence in different German cities, and he died from a violent death in Staufen. The
first references to him show up in 1506; he received attention for making diabolical
alliances and for accomplishing supernatural deeds. In 1587 the first report was
published about a man who made pacts with the Devil.
The topic already appeared frequently in medieval narratives; however, one
specific aspect emerged now: the individual seems willing to enter into alliance with
Mephistopheles for the purpose of “speculating the elements […] day and night […]
seeking to discover the foundations of everything, both on heaven and on earth”
(Theodor, 1981). He does not seek merely to acquire wealth, or even to obtain easy
enjoyment of life; he seeks to know a lot, more and more all the time, to push the
limits of knowing.
Due to the different narratives about Faust, we find in Goethe a work that accords
the hero a philosophical and human value. In the first part of the Faust, the focus of
the action is in the formalizing of the pact between the hero and Mephistopheles, when
he seeks to exchange his soul/psyche in order to quench his thirst for knowledge and
joy. After seducing Marguerite, Faust leaves her. As a result of that episode, she kills
her son and is sentenced to death. In the second part of the work, the plot is situated
in the wager between The Lord, who bets that Faust will be safe, and Mephistopheles,
who hopes to degrade him to the condition of a beast. In some interpretations, Faust
represents humanity, as he errs when he acts, but must continue to do so to reach an
ideal he foresaw himself. Faust is saved because he never abandons the pursuit of an
ideal.

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We can consider Faust a renaissance myth, a narrative about the story of an

individual who lived in Germany. There are about 13 contemporary references to
Faust. In his day, both illiterate and educated people believed that supernatural and
spiritual forces governed the world. Faust was considered a professional magician,
or even a scholar of the Greco-Roman traditions, a philosopher. The myth carries in
itself the profile of a pretentious and unpleasant charlatan, but also of an obstinate
individualist, able to make his own way in a society that more and more required
a regular job and a permanent residence of everyone. In Faust we have a meeting
of the old and the new tradition, the former represented by magic and by a pre-
scientific society, the latter by the incarnation of new forces that asked for change,
for example, the renewal of classical knowledge that emerged with humanism.
In Luther’s version, Satan was an element that served to disseminate the Faust
myth. Luther pointed to the Devil as the one responsible for temptation, doubt, or any
nefarious event in one’s personal life. Only faith in God could protect man from the
Devil. Thus, the Faust myth emerges at a time when Christianity, in its development,
believes it has polarized the human and supernatural worlds, in a conflict between
good and evil, thus, bringing new rigor to the fight between these two parties. That
caused the Devil to acquire both psychological and theological importance.
We know that the idea of soul/psyche is one of an independent entity, not
subject to being commanded by ego, which contradicts the basic presupposition in
individualism. In its Latin root, the word “individual” means “what is indivisible.” In
later phases of individualism, willingness to go to hell becomes a common notion for
the price to be paid for being individualistic. Such is the notion we are faced with in
the works by Arthur Rimbaud, particularly in A Season in Hell, and in Huckleberry
Finn’s (Watt, 1997, p. 57). According to the latter, in order for us to be coherent
with our own feelings, it becomes necessary to go to hell. At a different stage, an
evidently psychological one, we have the reflections by Weil (1991), produced from
the notion that, if we descend into ourselves, we will discover that we have just what
we desire. Therefore, the “self” gradually becomes a totality that anchors, while a
subjective dimension, all the disquieting previously belonging to the soul/psyche.
Mythical time reveals itself more and more strictly in man himself, who must then
express himself based on his connection to himself: “But you’ll never speak from
heart to heart, unless it rises up from your heart’s space” (Goethe, 1981, p. 47).

Faust: A Divided Man Committed to Himself

As we go through the two versions of Faust,10 we realize that the different accounts
converge to contemporary issues that have a stronger impact on individuals. Those
issues were discussed here previously in the sections about Baudrillard and Foucault,
signaling that the effort undertaken by the hero to remain individualistic was at once
his glory and his damnation.
In the Faust from the 16th century, we find an ambitious subject, who is not
sensible and is anxious over the tension between what moves the Renaissance

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(power, knowledge, pleasure) and the medieval Théophile, through which he enters
into a pact with the Devil. Romanticism will turn him into the narrative of a man
heading toward the ideal of liberty. With Goethe, we find a grand Faust.
Goethe produces a subsequent version of the Marlowe Faust, in which the pact
with the Devil gradually disappears, and the hero gradually incorporates the modern
aspirations regarding the pursuit of knowledge, power, and happiness.11 He breaks
with the world of traditions and heads for the 20th century as a romantic hero with
no drama, and in that sense, Goethe plays an important role.

Don Quixote: The Marks of Banalization

Don Quixote, differently from Faust, is a hero that was constructed without having
a real person for a base. There is no consensus among scholars regarding possible
evidence suggesting that someone had inspired Cervantes to create Don Quixote and
Sancho Panza.
Quixote’s travels in search of adventure begin from his intention to obtain fame
and to make contributions to his country. Following the example of the knights-errant
and their adventures, Quixote initiates his journey setting his name and surname:
Don Quixote of La Mancha. The hero’s name is a combination created from the
province of La Mancha, to the south of Madrid, a poor and arid place, and the part
of a knight’s armor that protects his thigh, called quijote. In Cervantes’s story, there
is a parodic intention, a fine satire aimed at cavalry heroes.
The adventures begin with a peculiar sort of authorization from the night to his
horse: it would be up to the animal to decide on the direction the journey would take.
Among the episodes unfolding in the first five chapters, we have Quixote’s being
knighted, the effort to free Andres from his boss, an attempt to get a caravan to attest
that his loved one, Dulcinea, is the most beautiful woman in the world. There is a
disconnect in the narratives between what Quixote thinks and what takes place in
his adventures. Clumsy and delirious, he charges against the world with the intent
of saving it.
Satire and caricature are part of the narrative, whose text abuses dramatization and
realism in order to present the ridiculous nature of devotion to romance in a comical
manner: someone who confuses the real world with that of fiction and desperately
seeks to sustain idealization as a principle for interacting with the world. In a way,
that makes Don Quixote a loser, someone who lives his life being continuously
helped by others in order to remain faithful to his fantasies. The psychological core
of the story is complemented with Quixote’s attitudes regarding the defeats that,
once rationalized, protect and strengthen the illusion that originated them. For one
example, we have the beating the hero took from a mule driver. He chalks the event
up to the inherent nature of a knight’s wandering, caused by a “false step made by
his horse.”
What makes Don Quixote a myth is the fact that there is in the narrative of his
adventures a dialectic between “Don Quixote’s mind and the realities with which he

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is confronted along the way” (Watt, 1997, p. 64). There is an intent in Cervantes to
deface the cavalry novels, and that intention carries an interest in ridding civilization
of its Christian inheritance. As a transition period in the history of customs, in the
hero’s characterization, we find marks of the weakening and fragility of the time’s
values. In light of a world in transformation, cavalry novels agglutinated the world
ideals that held the knight as representative of an admirable ideal.
It was with the feudal lords that cavalry originated. They invested heavily in
creating those groups that fought in the Crusades and, later, managed by the Church,
kept violence in the fields and villagers under control. Veritable religious and military
orders sprung from that. They were powerful and closed brotherhoods led by the
owners of great wealth and many possessions. The 17th century was the apogee of this
type of organization, which led to the emergence of cavalry novels. In those stories,
we find a combination of religious idealization and day-to-day eroticism enchanted by
supernatural means. The Knights of the Round Table are an example of those vernacular
stories, originally written in Old French.12 Aspects of those novels are also present in
Don Quixote, elucidated by the Christian ideals of culture and their corresponding
secular values. In the search for the Holy Grail – the part of Jesus Christ’s blood kept
in the chalice by Joseph of Arimathea – knights who were pure of spirit and faithful
to their vows are faced with adulterous passion. Adulterous love, then, is subordinate
to platonic love, part of romantic and monogamous marriage. In medieval Europe, a
lover adopts an attitude before the loved person that is similar to religious adoration.
That is what makes Quixote remain quiet, until the emergence of his Dulcinea. She
represents an expression of idealized courtly love toward an unattainable woman.
Around the 14th century, the Crusades had already ended, and the cavalry’s
military functions fall out of use. Therefore, the knight covered in iron armor ceases
to be a figure present in the conflicts of force of the time. According to Watt, during
the Hundred Year’s War, infantry soldiers armed with bows, crossbows, and lances
attest their superiority before the knights, as well as the use of gunpowder in 1453,
by the Turks, in the capture of Constantinople. We are, then, faced with the end of the
era of castles, of bastions, and of the feudal knight. Once the cavalry’s military power
monopoly succumbs, the institution is transformed into a social and ceremonial one,
linked to the royal courts. According to Watt (1997, p. 68),
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the old warrior code was gradually
adapted to the purposes of leisure and social display in the elaboration of
highly complicated rules of honor, dueling, and jousting at tournaments. New,
and largely honorific, orders of knighthood were created […]; at the same
time the increasingly centralized power of kings diminished the military and
political autonomy of the knightly class.
The author complements that reflection pondering that
historically it seems clear that medieval knighthood’s ideals of honor and
courtesy had some occasional effects even on the actual conduct of war as late

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as the sixteenth century, and gave a distinctive character to the lives of a good
many people. (Watt, 1997, p. 69)
Thusly, “chivalry” came to be defined as a secular lifestyle with sublime
characteristics. It was, therefore, an aesthetic ideal enfolded in an ethical ideal – an
ethics of individuality marked by adventure, rather than by the collective content of
battle, action plentiful of challenges and obstacles: enemies, giants, and sorcerers,
similar to those present in Greek myths. In a way, knights-errant sought to find in
their isolation a solitary meeting with glory, as it testifies to their courage, generosity,
and tolerance toward the weak. Those aspects, which are the chivalrous ideals, later
become fused with the humanist presuppositions of the Renaissance.
That being the case, Don Quixote of Cervantes is an attack on the cavalry novel
and on its world of origin. The satire contains the elements that will sustain a
new perspective on the hero, who now takes on no longer the characteristics of
the old chanson de geste, but rather, under the veil of cavalry romance, unfolds a
psychological action. As he sets out on his travels, Don Quixote seeks to reveal
his noble origin by means of a fight in a world that, as he understands it, is divided
between good and evil. Quixote’s psychological pattern reveals the nature of a subtle
and complex character made explicit, for example, in the way he perceives the world:
He does not discriminate between what is reality and what is not.
In the text, the character’s madness is said, by his niece, his nursemaid, and
his barber, to result from the books he read. However, the hero does not give any
importance to that fact and evaluates the error of his first adventure as due to the
fact that he had not recruited a squire. Sancho Panza is certainly not representative
of the traditional squire; on the contrary, from the beginning he accepts the position
intending to take advantage of it.
The event of the fight against the Giants, which were turned into windmills by
Friston, present the issue proposed by Cervantes: we are before a world that, in
Watt’s (1997) view,
perpetuates its own illusions, making them indestructible by any sort of
reality; in general, however, the fact that things are this way makes us happy,
because that means our hero will be miraculously immune, from the greatest of
humiliations, knowing that he has made a fool of himself. (p. 75)
Cervantes managed to reverse the course of novels at the time, which turned
historical figures into characters of fiction. Starting from a fictional character, he
constructed a historical celebrity. In that perspective, the character’s madness does
not correspond to what is defined as insanity in the modern era. The character
became popular, which leads us to believe that if, in fact, he were crazy that would
hardly have happened. At Cervantes’s time, insanity was not considered something
that could create a difference between two people. The theory of humors in vogue at
the time stated that any type of excess could lead to its correspondent in the mind,
making it exceptional. According to some readings of the knight of La Mancha’s text,

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he only says something outrageous when referring to the cavalry stories; otherwise,
as regards other topics, he adopts a clear and impartial attitude.
Quixote’s madness represents a place for recollecting himself, where he retreats
as a result of Dulcinea’s rejection. To him, going mad is a means toward avoiding
greater suffering. This quixotic view is adopted by Freud when he refers to the
therapeutic function of neurosis and psychosis. A superficial reading of the work
would cause us to believe that Quixote’s performance characterizes him as delirious.
Nevertheless, in certain passages within the text we realize that his exaggerated-
enthusiasm attitude and explosive impatience are not continuous; he also shows
himself to be “skeptical, sober, and practical” (Watt, 1997, p. 82).
Through the text, we can see Quixote’s effort to obtain prestige and visibility
through his position as a knight. Nonetheless, many times, he distances himself
from the chivalrous ideal and from an altruistic practice. That is what we see in his
relationship to Sancho Panza, a relationship that, in the great majority of times, is
characterized by opposition: thin and fat, body and soul/psyche, reason and instinct,
dream and reality, knight and peasant, solitary and gregarious, in other words,
denominations that would a priori place them in opposite poles. However, there are
intersection areas between them, as reminds us Salvador de Madariaga. In his view, the
distinctions between the pair should not be seen as opposites, but rather as reference to
the human subjective dialectic. There are traces of Quixote in Sancho, and vice versa.
Madariaga also points out that, in the course of the work, Quixote gradually becomes
“sanchoized” while Sancho “quixotifies” himself (Watt, 1997, p. 82). That means to
say that the differences presented between them on the moral and intellectual level
are not determinant of disjunction between them; on the contrary, there are many
similarities on the emotional and existential level. They are parts of the same form.
The modern presupposition is defined in a story that presents the conflict between
belief in one’s own identity and the reality of the world. It is the tension between a
non-quixotic world and a quixotic character. Within a differentiated perspective, but
one in synch with the structure of Greek myths, Don Quixote descends to the Cave
of Montesinos, creating an allegory of the Greek hero’s descent to hell. Quixote,
however, does not perform labors, nor does he overcome challenges, but rather
returns in slumber, mobilized by the beauty of the place.
According to Watt (1997), that episode corroborates the structure of the work
where, by means of Don Quixote, Cervantes reveals his nostalgia for
the golden age and the heroic past, the triumph of good over evil, the exciting
life over quotidian boredom, inspirational dream over everyday reality,
madness over prudence. (p. 99)

Don Juan: When a Man is no Good

This is about the trajectory of Don Juan Tenorio, son of Don Diego Tenorio, and
four women. Each one of them was duped due to three different reasons: deceit,

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possession, and doubt. Starting from that argument, a religious man who used the
penname of Tirso de Molina created, in the 17th century, a most significant (and
fecund) symbol-character of Western culture. There are indications that the play may
have been written one generation after the emergence of Faust, and a short time after
Don Quixote was published.
The play is divided in three journeys, between Naples and Seville, to four
distinct locations, two of them being to the “dames” (regal palace and mansion in
Naples) and two others to the “plebeians” (the coast of Tarragona and the Hermanas
people, southeast of Seville). With Isabel and Ana, the action accentuates deceit
and doubt.
In the initial dialogues in the text, Isabel is in a courtship with Don Juan because
she believes he is her fiancé, Don Octavio. Here we find the hero in dim light with
a duchess. She says that she wants to put a light on, and Don Juan resists, but she
does it. Upon seeing him, she asks, “Who are you?” He replies, “I am a man without
a name.” “A man?” she says, “who is not a duke?” and then she calls the guards
to arrest him. The king of Naples orders that the man responsible for such offense
be arrested, but Don Juan escapes to Milan or Sicily. Isabel and Don Octavio are
arrested for moving up their wedding and contributing to the situation.
The following journey takes place with Tisbea, a fisherwoman who keeps men
at a distance with her indifference and coldness. Don Juan’s ship sinks, and he is
saved by Catalinon, who takes him to Tisbea, and she falls in love at first sight. The
hero makes promises of eternal love to the fisherwoman, who gives herself to him.
However, Tisbea swears vengeance, in case he does not keep his love vow. Don Juan
sets fire to Tisbea’s house and runs away with Catalinon. She goes in his pursuit,
determined to accomplish her intended revenge.
Don Juan’s encounter with Ana takes place after the king of Naples’s sentence
determining that he, Juan, shall marry Isabel to restitute her honor. In the meantime, Don
Octavio accepts the possibility of marrying Ana, given the unfolding of developments
with Isabel. Nevertheless, when he hears his friend, the Marquis of la Mota, talking
about Ana, Don Juan feels a great attraction toward her. Ana loves the marquis and is
loved by him; she sends him a letter asking him to meet her in her chambers, but Don
Juan intercepts the message and goes to meet her. Juan, then, sets out in another of his
conquests; he tries to deceive Ana, pretending to be her loved one.
Ana discovers his ruse, accuses Don Juan of murdering her honor, and screams
for help. Her father, Don Gonzalo, comes to her rescue and is killed by Don Juan.
After Ana’s father’s death, the marquis of la Mota arrives for the arranged meeting
and is unfairly accused of murdering Gonzalo.
In the third act, Don Juan is on the way to Lebrija, and he goes by the wedding
party of Aminta and Bratricio. That is the start of the fourth seduction; he joins the
party and proceeds to court the bride. Again, he makes promises of eternal love and
vows to marry her. Certainly, the hero deserts her; thus, a chase ensues that leads to
the character’s death.

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On her way to Seville, Isabel runs into Tisbea. Don Octavio, Aminta’s father, and
Batricio, her fiancé, leave for Naples in order to ask the king to force Don Juan to
marry Tisbea. He disobeys the king’s orders one more time and secretly departs for
Seville.
We are nearing the conclusion of the story, which ends during a dinner party to
pay tribute to Don Gonzalo. A stone statue has been erected upon his tomb, a mix
of tribute to the subject and revenge mechanism. Upon his tombstone an inscription
is seen that will revert to chaos, thus, restoring “justice” to the present world. Don
Juan’s daring spirit, however, blinds him to the truth, causing him to challenge it:
He grasps the hand of the statue twice and drops dead. The statue, then, pronounces
the moral of the story: “This is the justice of God; one who owes a debt will pay
someday.” The ground sinks and Don Juan with it. The king, then, in light of the
hero’s death, grants all four women the possibility of having their honor restored and
marrying the men they had been committed to.
This character’s conduct is of special interest to society. In him, we find one of
the essential myths of the modern world (17th century and after). In a way, it reveals
attributes of the male representation in the West, considering the different versions
of the character by Moliere, Mozart, Byron. In its different versions, Don Juan
embodies the traditional male representation and its conflict with time and space.
The narrative represents the confrontation of time with eternity and of God with
man – tensions that Don Juan does not experience, given his dominating passion for
deceiving women and depreciating the men they are committed to. He acts that way
because he knows that human justice does not exist and that divine justice delays
and never happens. The hero is bold and does not understand the reasons why he acts
as he does; however, when he manages to anchor his way of life in some reflection,
there is no time left to reverse any situation.
The view of the world present in the narrative is one of disorder, deceit, and
error, of a place where there is no justice. However, as the story develops, the hero
is faced with superior values to his own and, with that, learns that by disregarding
them he will find no salvation. Those values originate from divine justice and make
order possible on earth. The story follows a Christian trajectory, and its conclusion
is confirmation of that perspective on life.
Molina conceives Don Juan as living prevalently in the present. His life articulates
itself not through a succession of facts, but rather through their conversion. In the
beginning of the text, the action makes use of deceit as a dramatic element; then, it
arrives at the conclusion with the truth being revealed. From that point on, harmony
makes the scene fecund.
Don Juan deceives, cheats, and pretends. His pleasure consists of deluding, as he
believes that he will always escape and will never be detained or immobilized. His
temporality repeals what is immobile. It is not a matter of seeking pleasure or carnal
ecstasy; he does not seek satisfaction with frenzy, but he satisfies himself with being
as fast as time itself. For this reason, he can anticipate the next moment, believing
that it is possible to compete with fleetingness.

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Many cultures glorify the liar (Radin apud Brandão, 1992), like Ulysses in
Greek mythology. According to Watt, it was the tradition of Christianity, and in
particular manner of Protestantism, that turned honesty into a universal obligation
(Watt, 1997).
The fame sought by Don Juan is opposed to the honor based on chivalry ideology
and on courtly love. He amuses himself with the results of his trickery, and he can
only do so because he inhabits a world in which acceptance of moral, social and
religious codes is entirely faked. Don Juan is representative of the individualistic
vein to the extent that he spares no efforts toward getting what he wants; to him, lying
is indifferent, as is entering into conflict with society and its rules. He manipulates
the code of honor to suit his own interests, and he is astute in his handling of the
family loyalty and courtly love codes.
Under a different slant, Molina’s comedy emphasizes the sterile falsehood of the
court and the depravation of its own product: Don Juan. Defense of female honor
was the favorite topic of Spanish dramas. As women were the repositories of male
honor, it was understood that a father’s responsibility for his daughter’s honor was
vital to the family’s reputation. Don Juan is a continuous threat to families, in what
he takes advantage of his own family’s position of privilege.
Watt tells us that “he is more perverse, more amoral, and also more skillful, more
active, more courageous than the people around him, but he does not essentially
differ from them, in goals or in methods” (Watt, 1997, p. 119). Molina writes about
the decadence of the Philip III and IV period, and the sadness and disregard for
society as a whole it revealed. During that period, immorality became one of its
dominant features, and the author wished to show the result of a society hollowed
out of values and a young man who enjoys a host of class privileges, plenty of
energy and disposition toward action. Said young man ends up acting with complete
disregard regarding the social codes and the human beings that are part of society;
he lives exclusively for himself and is not afraid of being punished.
Don Juan tries to show that he possesses joy, but he is not convincing. On the
other hand, we do not see in him any remorse for the suffering he has brought to
others. He proves to be exaggeratedly egocentric, and at no time does he question
himself. He does not seem to have had the opportunity to become different from what
he is.
To Albert Camus, “Don Juan chooses to be nothing;” to Watt, Don Juan is
basically autonomous; he is a cheat who “only needs the existence of other people to
have the possibility of amusing himself by deceiving them, and to feed his pleasure
with their suffering” (Watt, 1997, p. 126).
Molina’s Don Juan is a villain for whom there is no redemption; he is not in any
way a comical trickster, as he lacks generosity. In the individualistic perspective, he
is the representative of evil that is not manifested in the collective, but rather, and
systematically, in the subject. However, the play’s success is related to the secular
world’s ambiguity, as it condemns him publicly, but secretly admires him and roots
for his success in his attacks.

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Robinson Crusoe: Work and Solitude

With Robinson Crusoe (1719), Defoe presents the trajectory to be followed by an

individual who responds to his desire to survive and conquer the world. He says:
Being the third son of the family and not bred to any trade, my head began to
be filled very early with rambling thoughts. My father, who was very ancient,
had given me a competent share of learning, as far as house-education and a
country free school generally go, and designed me for the law; but I would be
satisfied with nothing but going to sea; and my inclination to this led me so
strongly against the will, nay, the commands of my father, and against all the
entreaties and persuasions of my mother and other friends, that there seemed
to be something fatal in that propensity of nature, tending directly to the life of
misery which was to befall me. (1997, p. 7)
Travel as a realization course for history’s action corresponds to the yearnings for
leaving the home and affirms that a hero is made in the world. However, Defoe’s
time is different from that when Homer created Ulysses. There is, in the Homeric
narrative, the description of Ulysses’s ambivalent feelings about his departure from
Ithaca. He tries to avoid it, but the commitment previously made to third parties
forces him to go. The hero’s behavior relates to the presence of the collectivity in his
day-to-day, a feeling of gregarious obligation that is lost in Crusoe.
The hero tells a story where there is no room for the collective. It is a work
dedicated to the narcissistic cult to one who does not submit to criticism. He is a
perseverant hero capable of surviving trials that anyone else could hardly survive.
According to Watt, Crusoe is not only a tribute to the bases of individualism in
psychology, or also to the ethos of developed capitalism; he is the same way, a
reflection of the virtues and of the vices in the English character. In that regard,
James Joyce wrote:
The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence; the
unconscious cruelty; the persistence; the slow yet efficient intelligence; the
sexual apathy; the practical, well-balanced religiousness; the calculating
taciturnity. (Watt, 1997, p. 176)
The narrative determines the creation of a “new” world, characterized by doubt
over having disobeyed the father and by liberation from regret over having done it.
When he finds himself in the condition of shipwreck survivor, his feelings oscillate,
and when feeling uncertain, Crusoe supposes that the storm is a punishment from God.
The hero’s saga depicts an investment by someone for the benefit of his own
economic reward. Therefore, it is necessary for his actions to be supported on the
psychological basis of self-esteem and to be lined up along his methodical day-to-day
based on working for results. According to him, our “self” is the very purpose of life.
He wishes to become rich, and soon. The way this aspect of the story adheres
to the ideation of Western cultures is related to the principle that continuous and

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devoted work is capable of redeeming us. The popularity of the myth lies precisely
in the notion that it is sustained in the dignity of work.
On the island, Crusoe benefits from his compulsion to produce individually;
however, he is punished for nomadic character and condemned to solitude. The idea
of punishment for disobeying his father serves the function of preserving traditional
culture. There is a similarity here with the African myth presented previously
as regards the matter of disobedience – an aspect present in male representation
organization. Crusoe inaugurates a new orientation vector in life; he signals a way
for the individual to measure himself through his own performance, economic,
moral, and psychological growth.
Defoe (1997, p. 129) composes Crusoe with a realistic and utilitarian philosophy
characterized by attitudes where the “good things of this world are of no farther good
to us than for our use.” The hero wants the immediate return of commerce, whether
through the products or the slaves he is an agent for. In any case, the story shows us
how much the common individual, as he is faced with being alone, proves capable of
subjecting nature to his own material objectives, thus, defeating it while a physical
environment. Crusoe’s life is a narrative of numerous successes and few failures.
Crusoe lived 28 years completely alone on an uninhabited island, and he returns
to London after a 35-year absence. As regards his relationship to the other, for
example, with Friday and Xury, his trajectory is that of someone who sees the other
as an object to be used for his own benefit.
To Crusoe, his relationship with Friday is the ideal relationship. Utilitarian,
he prays to God asking for the gift of a slave of the male sex. According to Watt
(1997), Friday is completely satisfactory to him, providing him with an idyll where
women were unnecessary. To him, sex is subordinate to business, which is indeed
in the forefront. Sex is considered something impregnated with a high content
of irrationality, and therefore, it takes focus away from rational objectives. The
masculinity associate with marriage in and of itself does not guarantee profitability
in the matrimonial investment.
Gradually, the reservations raised against the individualistic principle dissipate
and little by little become the most desirable human quality. O good part of that
process takes place in the analyses by Rousseau, who consider solitary man (the
ideal student) the necessary judge in evaluating the quality of each thing. In Emile,
for example, the solitude of the island is the true essence of Rousseau’s point of view.
In the text, he discusses that the boy shall only feel the desire to know useful things,
and nothing beyond them, to wit, the industrial and mechanical arts. Emile and
Crusoe form a continuum in which individualistic thought becomes consolidated,
even though Rousseau in part tried to betray that direction and Defoe’s story unfolds
as it does.
On the other hand, we have Marx attacking the Crusoe myth by stating that
he is a hermit producing only for himself. Therefore, he cannot be considered as
representative of the Marxist view on the production and social nature process (Watt,
1997). Marx does not object to Defoe’s narrative, but rather to the use economists

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made of the story. In Crusoe, two dimensions are present upon which individualism
becomes consolidated and develops: the economic and religious principle.

CONSTRUCTING THE MINORITY SUBJECT

In the transition to individualism, we identify in the Faust, Don Juan, and Quixote
myths a restriction in the value given to collective forces while determinants in
the subject’s constitution, in how they could expand him. Gradually, through the
unfolding of the capitalist system, the increased complexity of cities and of markets,
we observed both monitoring and control that limited the subject’s expression and
accomplishment. A “new” representation of the subject becomes necessary in order
to sustain this “new” representation of the world. It became necessary to provide
quotidian anchors that made viable the transition from religious societies to legal
ones. The way to do it consisted of altering the representations of femininity and
masculinity, thus, providing men and women with forms of engaging in projects
by means of a different credo: the in individualistic one. As presented previously,
the societies committed to clarifying their unfolding, following the example of the
emancipation movements, which encouraged these “new” social representations
by ritualizing them through the political discourse of social movements. Initially,
it was necessary to free, and that was accomplished through the various liberation
movements: Women, blacks, and homosexuals committed to destroying the myths
that restricted both the path toward liberation and that toward social upward
mobility. On its turn, “the world of white, heterosexual men” became at once target
of criticism and ideal to be pursued. Blacks become whitened; women narrate about
a time when they were men, and homosexuals demand rights to inheritance and
children, as granted to heterosexuals. The emancipation movements did not recodify
the, thus far, white, male, and heterosexual world, but rather organized in order to
gain access to it.
In that sense, if we consider the transformations suffered by social representations,
modern myths work at the same time as social criticism and as vision for the
centuries ahead. In a way, they offer criticism against male representation and
how much it reveals of the traditional world but also a vision for sustaining the
autonomy of subjects. We can understand the criticism directed at the empirical
subject of the male sex as resulting from a shift in the modern criticism of the State,
the family, and its institutions toward the inside of the subject himself. The idea
of a masculinity crisis stems from that sort of analysis. The subject’s impotence
before contemporary societies results from the value attributed to performance. The
humanistic-liberal discourse, previously present in Hegel’s “speculative device,”
or in Kant’s “emancipation devices,” is abandoned by the State. Contemporary
societies are defined by techno-informatics; they are informational and cybernetic,
there being no place in them for the social constitution of myths, as was the case in
traditional societies. Any representation of the subject other than that of cyborg will
be discarded. In that sense, the banalization of masculinity is a strategy (one more)

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that seeks to eliminate any possibility for subjective organization committed to a

humanist culture rather than to one of desire. Accordingly, criticisms are being waged
against the State and its institutions in what they contain of impediment to individual
freedoms. Making it smaller is the same as adjusting it to the size of the individual,
thus, proportionately restricting its role in promoting and guaranteeing all that is
collective. Analogously, heterosexual masculinity, as a representative category of
the collective and, in certain versions, of the hegemonic, receives the same criticism
for having been – to present – the recipient of privileges and for having restricted
the aspirations of social categories under its tutelage: Women and homosexuals are
typical examples. Modernity, thus, presents us with a correspondence on a micro
level of what has been taking place on the macro social level with the State and its
institutions. The crisis in male identity is the denomination, on the micro level, of
what individualistic criticism does to traditional societies.
Similarly, Cervantes makes his criticism against the traditional world of knights
by creating a character like Don Quixote. As he constructs a male character that
is puny and feeble, he deconstructs another that was, until then, virile, strong, and
fearless – the knight. With Cervantes, a new way to think about and analyze what
is designated as traditional can be learned; he created a new way to look at it in the
vein of disqualification, fragility, and banalization. Centuries later, we identify the
same attitude in the feminist discourses as they refer to men. Where there used to
be a collective reference, now there comes to exist the denomination hegemonic.
Therefore, hegemonic is considered one who opposes individual interests, now
represented by minorities. Accordingly, the cavalry novel character who confronted
evil, similarly to Greek heroes, gradually shifts position in the transition to
individualism, from being one who fought evil to becoming evil itself. Don Juan
embodies evil, the same evil that appears in Faust in Mephistopheles’s voice: “I am
part of that Power which eternally wills Evil and eternally works Good” (Goethe,
1981).
The dialogue with Evil in the societies of the West ceases to belong to the religious
domain to become stimulation for scientific thought, which grows and becomes
strengthened. Until then, as we see in Goethe (1981),
None dared to criticize the situation; each could, and would improve his station.
Even the smallest wished to be great enough. But for the best it proved a step
too much. The capable declared, with energy: ‘He who brings peace can have
the mastery. The Emperor can’t, and will not – let us choose a new Emperor,
who’ll inspire the realm anew. While each man achieves security, in a world
that’s re-created freshly, let peace and justice there be wedded, too. (p. 392)
The space was open for renewal, and it constitutes itself by the individualistic
credo. Robinson Crusoe is another of its representatives.
Crusoe’s narrative offers us elements to comprehend our recent history. The
island can be considered a metaphor for the minority principle that resists and has its
contours defined by the majority. Minorities are that dimension of late modernity and

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agglutinate one of the paradoxes of contemporary societies: the disjointing between

the collective and the individual. The minority discourses, to wit, the feminist, gay,
and black ones, are examples of that. At the same time that they are constituted as
the manifestation of a “group,” they rely on the individualistic argument to affirm
themselves as such. And similarly to the opposition between the individualistic and
the traditional worlds, the public and the private, minority groups oppose what is
considered the hegemonic collective: white, heterosexual, male.

MYTHS IN LATE MODERNITY: MINORITIES

The individualistic premise advances over the codes of the premodern era,
demonstrating that view of the world and proposing another where injustice and
inequality should be carefully monitored and eliminated. According to Adorno
and Horkheimer (1985, p. 27) that prerogative can be thought of as a movement
committed to the dialectic of enlightenment: “Enlightenment dissolves away the
injustice of old inequality of unmediated mastery, but at the same time perpetuates it
in universal mediation, by relating every existing thing to every other.”
This operator of the thought characteristic of modern science presents subjects
renouncing the senses, thus, disenchanting the world, destroying animism, replacing
the senses with formulas, cause with rule and probability. To Adorno and Horkheimer
(1985),
to define substance and quality, activity and suffering, being and existence in
terms appropriate to the time has been a concern of philosophy since Bacon;
but science could manage without such categories. They were left behind as
idola theatri of the old metaphysics and even in their time were monuments
to entities and powers from prehistory. In that distant time life and death had
been interpreted and interwoven in myths. The categories by which Western
philosophy defined its timeless order of nature marked out the positions which
had once been occupied by Ocnus and Persephone, Ariadne and Nereus. The
moment of transition is recorded in the pre-Socratic cosmologies. […] Even
the patriarchal gods of Olympus were finally assimilated by the philosophical
logos as the Platonic Forms. But the Enlightenment discerned the old powers
in the Platonic and Aristotelian heritage of metaphysics and suppressed the
universal categories’ claims to truth as superstition. (p. 27)
On the social plane, the logic of modern scientific thought has the individualistic
perspective as an ally, as it is committed to the desecration of myths and assumes
before them an attitude of valuing facts, operation, and efficacious procedure. The
emancipation discourses, as well as the utilitarian trajectory of Robinson Crusoe and
the science of fact and of enlightenment, became sufficiently organized to destroy
myths, and with that, to eliminate from themselves “the very rest of their self-
consciousness.” The discourse of the minorities structured itself in that slant; they
have in Crusoe an antecedent character: “I was chosen and, so to speak, separated

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from the rest of the world to be disgraced” (Defoe, 1997, p. 75). It is against this
social mark that the emancipation movements will fight, both in the case of women
and that of homosexuals and ethnic groups.
One of the implications of using the individualistic operator as a value reference
for production and organization of the social dynamic is to ensure, one way or
another, the subject’s social insertion. In light of that transition, new forms of
visibility and social recognition need to be created. Restating Defoe, what made
Crusoe into a hero also disgraced him. It was only possible to testify to his efficiency
and determination because he shipwrecked, and from that shipwreck, was born the
prototype of a new social representation for the subjects. Thus, this march toward
desecration of collective representations, expressed in the devaluing of myths and in
the affirmation of the science of results, also produced an effect of disqualification
upon the subject. In the sense of defeating it, a criticism of culture, and why not say
a political criticism, was initially produced which implied the problematization of
the concepts of woman, black, and homosexual.
Therefore, the discourse of minorities is part of a metaphysics of emancipation
anchored in the dialectic of enlightenment. We know that for a long time enlightenment
has been committed to ridding subjects of fear and to turning them into masters. That
being the case, to enlighten is to disenchant. This premise of world has as a goal
dissipating myths and replacing imagination with knowledge. In that context, that
which characterized the traditional world is disposed of.
The discourse of minorities does not recognize any legacy left by the previous
perspective and imposes itself over it by means of opposition. Therefore, the
construction of this type of discourse occupies and important place in contemporary
culture, which is organized around argument (Tannen, 1998). In this culture, the
adoption of fighting stances is encouraged, and the other comes to be identified as
adversary. Public discourse assumes bellicose prerogatives and presents the use of
aggressiveness and of assertiveness as orientation parameters for the subject. Both
the media and politics rely on that perspective in order to operate. Political analysts
seek to determine who has won and who has lost, and similarly to the military
approach, they have opposition as their raw material for the creation of arguments
that must be committed to a fighting attitude, always.
What we observe in this culture is the breaking up of any sense of community.
In it, content is disarticulated from form, which takes on greater relevance relative
to the former. Form (discourse, representation) favors the extreme; it distorts fact
and promotes mediation of force between distinct arguments. What was conceived
under the rubric of enlightenment has moved away from its presuppositions. We
have come to understand social organization under the prism of tensions that oppose
one another. One example of that is how we find the man-woman relationship to
be approached. In this culture, it is treated according to the argument that there is
a war between the sexes. Likewise, we identify how the currents of thought that
define subjectivity are classified. A new opposition pair emerges: naturalism versus
constructivism. The world comes to be conceived according to polarizations, with

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attitudes of investigation being replaced with those of accusation. In the culture of

scandal, authority pales out, and there is an absence of leadership. Subjects give up
on ideologies that could articulate different social practices in order to take sides
between one or another practice and to avoid the attack and aggression that now
carry the force of “values.” The goal is to mobilize the attention of society through
raw and hard-hitting attacks. Attracted by polarization, the subject does not think
about this situation and does not perceive it as part of a collective experience.
This society s organized around litigious contest, fighting, and opposition, and
it has moved away from the exercise of investigation, analysis, and dialogue. The
culture of argument looks for error and does not consider it a stage of the culture
process. Violence establishes itself a value in itself, a reference of impact, precision,
and persuasion of discourse.
The minority discourses are necessary elements in this argument culture, which
has in discourse a tool for constituting the opposition attitude toward what is defined
by the other. For example, the Crusoe story speaks about someone who opposes
nature and mobilizes all his resources in order to dominate it. Nature must submit
to the discourse of culture, to the principle of reason; it must give in to it, given
that before culture it represents its opposite. In this culture of argument, that which
differentiates itself is turned into opposition and considered a threat, an evil. In that
regard, Russell (1991) states that
The essence of evil is abuse of a sentient being, a being that can feel pain. It is
the pain that matters. Evil is grasped by the mind immediately and immediately
felt by the emotions; it is sensed as hurt deliberately inflicted. The existence of
evil requires no further proof: I am; therefore I suffer evil. (p. 1)
In a historic perspective, Russell analyzes the personifications of evil and sees
the devil not only as representation, but also as a manifestation of the divine, a
part without which God cannot exist. In the Judeo-Christian culture, however, evil
is seen as a nothing, and absence of good. The same way, the male representation
in contemporary societies is seen as a nothing, an absence of the good that is
present in politically correct discourses, thus, fostering the emergence of banalized
representations like those of the Homer Simpson and Earl Sinclair characters.
For centuries, this dichotomized thinking sustained the perception that women
represented the embodiment of evil. Eve comes out of Adam’s body and affirms him
as the negation of the principle that constitutes her. From that point on, masculine
no longer requires feminine, which subverts it, while also subverting whatever order
there is in the world. When Eve is held responsible for their expulsion from paradise,
we forget that she originated from Adam. Therefore, there is also something in
him that became interested in the forbidden fruit of knowledge. In other words, a
dichotomy was created where man and woman polarize aspects belonging to both.
The unity principle appears in the association of God with the Devil present in the
analyses by Eliade (1991) about the myth of the androgyne and those about the

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creation of the world. In one of them, Adam was presented as man on the right side
and woman on the left and as being later divided by God.
There is also in those myths the effort to characterize God as a single and
indivisible principle and as that which is in itself the absence of evil. Androgyny
would be an unfolding of that principle, represented within cultures as an effort
directed toward the systematization and management of this “fissure” caused by the
splitting of the subject into two sexes. The notion of unity is in God, and it is later
extended to the idea of androgyny. Once that idea is undone, we have the foundation
of masculine and feminine. This trajectory of separation of unity into two sexes puts
the subject in a perspective of human development where renouncing being both is
what marks his entrance. Therefore, our view of the world is impregnated with this
experience of separation depicted in the way we face our losses and how we deal
with the feeling of absence created by it. Thus, from a psychological standpoint, the
formation of societies and of groups can be thought of as an effort to overcome the
losses represented by the social distinctions system (class, gender, ethnicity, age).
And love, while a feeling, is an attempt to mitigate the terror and isolation caused
by separation.
The notion of collectivity and of sense of community contributes to overcoming
this fear and has in social ties and rules its greatest expression. The other affirms
the finiteness of the “self” and places it before the need to establish emotional
connections, thus, successively facing him with the alterity-identity dilemma and
reminding him of the failure of his dream for absolute unity.
As presented previously, the individualistic prerogative accords the subject a
perspective for reclaiming that dream, as he relinquishes the other and the notion
of the collective. That being the case, the systems for social distinction come to be
perceived as an impediment to accomplishment of the individualistic undertaking,
and that leads to the culture of argument. In it, both the individual and the collectivity
are presented as opposed pairs, and the individual becomes affirmed as a moral
value.
Thusly, androgyny illustrates the human discomfort experienced in light of the
impossibility of consummating the idea of fusional and perfect union. Originally, we
identify that union in the creational myths, for example, in the pairs God and Devil,
Eve and Adam, man and woman, gods and heroes. Perplexity over a state of undone
unity led to two also opposed attitudes: androgyny and misogyny. In androgyny, a
subject seeks completeness, while in misogyny, he considers himself to be it.
On the other hand, the notion of a complete subject appears in the myths of
different cultures and, for a long time, has served as a conducting thread in defining
the hero’s path. Conquering the soul/psyche, pursuing plentiful love, and seeking
happiness are some of its manifestations. This experience constitutes the base of
social memory. Through it, the subject believes he has come out of God, but will
return to him through religion. It will be the love experience that will lead him to a
meeting with his other half and, still, through catabasis and anabasis, he will meet

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his divine ascendance. Those stories were revealed under the denomination of the
sacred; it is alterity itself.
The individualistic “program” gradually relinquished that liaison. It strengthened
the value in the division of the parts more than it kept alive the connection among
them, as traditional cultures did. Fragment comes to circulate in the individualistic
cultures as an autonomous, independent, and complete unit. We identify minority
discourses as one of the effects of that dynamic.
From another angle, it is only because the ideas of evil and good bear a
correspondence to each other that it becomes necessary to define some sort of
distinction between them. Distinguishing them, then, is to eliminate in each the
foundational principle of the other. According to Ricoeur (1967, p. 9), “evil is the
crucial experience of the sacred.” He further develops that idea in another work, in
which he analyzes evil and its correspondence to the scheme of sin and of culpability
(Russell, 1991). As related to sin, evil is understood as a situation in which humanity
is taken as a singular collective, and guilt conceives of evil as an act initiated by the
individual. Crusoe feels guilty for having left his father’s advice behind and defining
a plan for himself to travel the world, make money, explore and conquer nature.
The minority discourses seek to subvert the order defined by the status quo and
to accord value to certain categories of social practice, which had been devalued
by what was defined as hegemonic. There was a time when women, blacks, and
homosexuals took the place of this “minority subject,” who lacked freedom,
therefore, to enterprise their own autonomy projects. In a misogynous context, the
emancipation discourses refer to what was socially defined as subordinate, thus,
seeking to emancipate them by means of criticism against hegemonic categories.
Similarly to the “forces of good,” those discourses are committed to destroying
“evil” and, also, what is good in it.
Operating in androgynous contexts, or those of late modernity, the minority
discourses point to masculinity as a social representation that can be relinquished
and identify it, at times, as representative of misogyny. The distinction between
misogyny and femininity is made by means of a lowering in the standing of male
representations, similarly to what happened to the Devil when he rebelled against
God. Presently, however, the unifying principle for gender, ethnicity, and sexual
orientation categories is the discourse of political correctness, as it is representative
of the political systems committed to the constitution of an essentially good social
universe: a democratic society, free of oppression against the other. In light of that
scenario, distinguishing oneself as a white, heterosexual, man implicates shifting to
the representation-of-evil place.
In this new millennium panorama, the culture of argument assumes itself as a
value before the weakening of the great metaphysical discourses. Its function
is to play the same role as the religious discourses of olden times, with similar
characteristics to those of discourses proclaiming themselves representatives of the
gods. However, the gods only are the gods because they don’t think of themselves,
similarly to minority discourses, now elected and the representatives of good.

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FEMINISM AS A MINORITY DISCOURSE

The constitution of the feminist argument and its dissemination in the West owe
a great deal to the work of Simone de Beauvoir. She was and continues to be
inspirational to the feminism that emerges in the 20th century. Her argument starts
from the man-versus-woman prerogative, always in a relationship of opposition. It
consists of one of the devices most representative of the argument culture.
The representation of man in Beauvoir’s analyses is “of an absolute type of
subject” who symbolizes humanity and accords it male status. Thus, woman is not
defined as an autonomous subject, but rather as someone who extends from man. To
Beauvoir, a woman “is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he
with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential.
He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other” (Beauvoir, s/d, p. 10).
Beauvoir characterizes the man-woman relationship as one of struggle and
opposition, to Tannen’s (1998) specifications. That relationship is ensconced in a
class society that ascribes privileges to a given class or race to the detriment of
another, also doing the same with the religions and the sexes. Referring to Hegel,
Beauvoir (s/d, p. 12) considers that in consciousness itself there is “a fundamental
hostility towards every other consciousness; the subject can be posed only in being
opposed – he sets himself up as the essential, as opposed to the other, the inessential,
the object.” And that hostility would be represented in one of the main characteristics
of patriarchal society – control over female sexuality and over adultery.
Beauvoir’s perspective inspired different approaches to feminism in the North
American and the Latin movements. In Brazil, for example, the social leadership and
the theoretical production modeled themselves in the author’s reflections to develop
consideration regarding women’s history and social practices.
At the start of his reflection on the concept of gender identity, De Romani starts
out from “one of the fundamental positions of the feminist movement,” as she states:
“What is individual is political.” That means to say that the smallest details of one’s
personal life are articulated with the broadest of power relations.

if what is individual is political, sex is political because, while biological,

translated and reinterpreted by culture, it incorporates social relations, roles,
and symbols, not being seen as a series of disconnected and a-historical acts.
It is in that perspective that social definitions of sex are discussed, as a gender
identity production process. (De Romani, 1982, p. 64)

According to the feminist point of view, one of the marks of that gender identity
is sexual asymmetry, which dictates that what is individual (woman/feminine) shall
become a universal depicted as a lesser-value category. This “woman’s place” is
reclaimed by the feminist movement, which while part of modern enlightenment,
proposes to rehabilitate it and reposition it socially. This trajectory present in
De Romani’s (1982, p. 70) reflections has its start at the realization that “in man’s
and woman’s cultural evaluation, feminism seems to have been, always, the less

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valued.” Therefore, gender identity is a category that can be thought of by social

sciences to the extent that it is a social phenomenon that mobilizes women from
different societies. It is the collective turned individual, yet rehabilitating the subject
and re-inserting him in society according to the rubric of individualistic politics,
inspired in Kant and Hegel.
In this universe of asymmetry, man is defined by the feminist literature as
being the first, a model to be followed, while woman is the “other,” secondary. To
question this social place occupied by women is to initiate a course of successive
problematizations of patriarchal culture and of its asymmetrical and hierarchical way
of organizing sexual differences in the social space. Patriarchy is also considered
an ideological system of oppression and restriction that foundationally defines the
man-woman relationship as one of “domination and subjugation of women by men.”
As such, patriarchy needs to be surpassed to a certain measure, and surpassing it is
precisely to overcome the notion of masculinity implicit in it, not to emancipate it,
enlighten it, or expand it where it is restrictive and limiting, but rather to make it into
an insignia of the patriarchal world that can also be banalized. There is an attempt
in these analyses to turn man and patriarchy into equivalent, as well as machismo
and man/masculinity. Accordingly, one of the ways to surpass the view of the world
present in the patriarchal system comes to be the banalization of masculinity, as
if patriarchy, while an ideology, were not committed to the social representations
of man and woman. In Beauvoir’s work, we find one of the expressions of male
banalization. She points to some men’s comments about women from antiquity to
the end of the 20th century. According to them, woman was at times an evil concept,
at times a female diminished by “castration,” and they brought the characterization
“men who win over women” (Beauvoir, s/d, p. 12). In that regard, she states:
Now, woman has always been man’s dependent, if not his slave; the two sexes
have never shared the world in equality. And even today woman is heavily
handicapped, though her situation is beginning to change. Almost nowhere is
her legal status the same as man’s, and frequently it is much to her disadvantage.
(s/d, p. 14)
The idea that man puts woman at a disadvantage and prevents her from
accomplishing her autonomy project appears other time in Beauvoir’s work, which
sees the duality between the sexes as the expression of a conflict, won by men since
the beginning. They defeated women. This duality is also represented as a conflict
between blacks and whites, or between Jews and non-Jews. According to Beauvoir
(s/d, p. 17),
‘The eternal feminine’ corresponds to ‘the black soul’ and to ‘the Jewish
character’. True, the Jewish problem is on the whole very different from the
other two – to the anti-Semite the Jew is not so much an inferior as he is an
enemy for whom there is to be granted no place on earth, for whom annihilation
is the fate desired. But there are deep similarities between the situation of

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woman and that of the Negro. Both are being emancipated today from a like
paternalism, and the former master class wishes to ‘keep them in their place’ –
that is, the place chosen for them. In both cases the former masters lavish
more or less sincere eulogies, either on the virtues of ‘the good Negro’ with
his dormant, childish, merry soul – the submissive Negro – or on the merits of
the woman who is ‘truly feminine’ – that is, frivolous, infantile, irresponsible
the submissive woman. In both cases the dominant class bases its argument on
a state of affairs that it has itself created. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, in
substance, ‘The American white relegates the black to the rank of shoeshine
boy; and he concludes from this that the black is good for nothing but shining
shoes.’ This vicious circle is met with in all analogous circumstances; when an
individual (or a group of individuals) is kept in a situation of inferiority, the
fact is that he is inferior.
The denomination “man” is treated as a single bock without any differentiation,
where man is seen as the most “arrogant towards women, more aggressive or scornful”
(Beauvoir, s/d, p. 19). In these considerations, there are elements that we will find
in the United States in the 1980’s under the denomination hegemonic-subordinate,
except that now to designate an extension of this thinking in the relationship between
heterosexuals and homosexuals. Beauvoir’s thought feeds on the belief that woman
brings out hostility in man:
and if this sex seems to man to be contemptible and inimical even in harmless
dumb animals, it is evidently because of the uneasy hostility stirred up in him
by woman. Nevertheless he wishes to find in biology a justification for this
sentiment. (s/d, p. 25)
But could it be that man stirs up some type of hostility in woman? Why would it be
that, when she squares out a solution for the feminine mystique in similar fashion to
the problem of blacks and proletarians, Beauvoir presents, as a way out for women,
an experience in the mold of the Haitian and Russian revolutions, respectively?
A revolution against men?
If [women] belong to the bourgeoisie, they feel solidarity with men of that
class, not with proletarian women; if they are white, their allegiance is to white
men, not to Negro women. The proletariat can propose to massacre the ruling
class, and a sufficiently fanatical Jew or Negro might dream of getting sole
possession of the atomic bomb and making humanity wholly Jewish or black;
but woman cannot even dream of exterminating the males. The bond that unites
her to her oppressors is not comparable to any other. (Beauvoir, s/d, p. 13)
To Beauvoir, women cannot find a way to unite because they have no past, no
history, or religion of their own. They are deprived from uniting like the communitites
of proletarians, blacks, or Jews. “They live dispersed among the males,” submissive
to the world man created.

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That analytical perspective, which conceives of man in that representation,

contributes for the development of other feminist works, such as those by Badinter
and Wolf. To Badinter, woman is seen as a source of disorder that man must make an
effort to dominate by all means. In order to establish order, man shall: “immobilize
her, hide her, separate her as much as possible from the man folks” (Badinter, 1988,
p. 137; Wolf, 1992). In other words, he must dominate her.
Wolf analyzes the myth of beauty as a modern device for control over women. To
her, it is a matter of a violent contemporary reaction that seeks to control the women
belonging to the second wave of feminism. The myth of beauty would assume a role
of social coercion today that the myths of motherhood, domesticity, chastity, and
passivity can no longer accomplish over women. Wolf believes that the beauty myth
seeks to “undo psychologically and covertly all the good things that feminism did for
women materially and overtly” (Wolf, 1992, p. 13).
To her, this myth has nothing to do with women. It belongs to the male institutions
and men’s institutional power; it responds to a political fear call on the part of the
institutions dominated by men, which are threatened by women’s freedom. Wolf also
considers the myth a political fact rather than a sexual one, as one might think. Man
as an expression of evil appears in her work when she cites Ann Jones:
I realize that it is fashionable … to repudiate any and every idea of male
conspiracy in the oppression of women … I agree with the words by William
Lloyd Garrison: “as for me, I am not prepared to respect this philosophy. I
believe in sin, so in the sinner; in robbery, so in the robber; in slavery, so in the
slave master; in evil, so in the evildoer. (Wolf, 1992, p. 13)
In Beauvoir’s view, evil shows up represented as the Other. In that regard, she
adopts the ideas by Kierkegaard when he states that woman is a task only bearable to
woman herself, to the extent that woman, while an Other, is negatively represented
by man, who sees her an expression of ambiguity. She says:
It has already been said that Other is Evil; but as it is necessary for the Good, it
reverts to the Good; through the Other, I accede to the Whole, but it separates
me from the Whole; it is the door to infinity and the measure of my finitude.
And this is why woman embodies no set concept; through her, the passage
from hope to failure, hatred to love, good to bad, bad to good takes place
ceaselessly. (Beauvoir, s/d, p. 183)
There comes a moment when we can think about the references of Evil to a
society that has placed it everywhere. Today, Western societies are committed to
increasingly articulating the discourse of Good, and in them, there is no possibility
for enunciating Evil. Baudrillard analyzes thusly the trajectory of Evil in a society
that has established the discourse of political correctness as a paradigm for itself.
He says that refusing the Western values of progress, rationality, political morality,
democracy, etc., in other words, negating universal consensus of all things Good,
accords him the energy of Evil, “the Satanic energy of the outcast, the eclat of the

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accursed share” (Baudrillard, 1992, p. 85) that must be extirpated or relinquished.

In the scope of current social relations, Evil becomes represented by the white,
heterosexual man, as can be observed in the rising violence indices of the past
decades.

NOTES
1
Part of the stories Bly works through were identified as being from the Fulani (Peul in French),
from the Niger curve, described by Amodou Ba when he talks about Kaydara. Bly uses them in
his workshops as a resource toward dealing with the construction of masculinity. See Hampate BA,
Amadou. Kaidara, recit iniciantique Peul, p. 9.
2
The denomination binary refers to the manner in which masculinity is constructed in different cultures,
according to Gilmore’s analyses in Manhood in the Making. The male initiation rituals clearly
demarcate a distinction between what Simone de Beauvoir classified as coming to be a woman. She
says, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” referring to a social practice at the foundation of
femininity and that disarticulates it from the naturalist principle. Represented in various communities,
masculinity indicates that what is put to the boys is not a coming to be, but rather a “dialogic game”
that carries a symbolic efficacy over the production of identity defined by being and not being a man.
It is similar to the formulation of the question in the African myth: either the young woman dies, or the
mother does. The question posed to the subject of the male sex is whether he is or is not a man. A doubt
remains, and ritualized types of proof were created in an attempt to answer it. We conclude, then, that
one of the possibilities for differentiation between masculinity and femininity in social practices is
born from these two distinct types of logic, instead of the masculine and feminine categories – present
in gender analyses – being built under the same principle. Therefore, the statement – one is not born,
but rather becomes a man – is not truthful, if we consider the way in which masculinity emerges in
different cultures.
3
I had access to that statement through the testimony of one of the interviewees. It was also reproduced
within the comments by the other participants, but it was phrased in other ways: “a man is not afraid,”
“a man who is a man faces up to it,” “are you a man or not?” These statements characterized states of
tension and confrontation where the interviewee perceived himself as being faced with a situation of
risk or threat. It was highlighted for better capturing the sense in male conversations. I do not know
whether any other author has mentioned it.
4
Apud Diel, Paul, op. cit., p. 13. My italics refer to the aspect that in antiquity the essence of Evil is
considered to be violence against a being that can feel pain. It is pain that matters. I will adopt that
perspective in dealing with the relationship between violence and masculinity, considering among
the different meanings of violence that which refers to an expression of social precariousness and
limitation to deal with the inner Evil. Going through human history, we will find in different cultures
a systematic effort to regulate the matter of Evil, an effort that, in the context of late modernity, come
undone. In that regard, by means of the question “where did Evil go?,” Baudrillard analyzes aspects of
contemporary culture that disseminated Evil everywhere. “In a society which seeks – by prophylactic
measures, by annihilating its own natural references, by whitewashing violence, by exterminating all
germs and all the accursed share, by performing cosmetic surgery on the negative – to concern itself
solely with quantified management and with the discourse of Good, in a society where it is no longer
possible to speak of Evil, Evil has metamorphosed into all the viral and terroristic forms that obsess
us.” Baudrillard, Jean. A transparencia do Mal (The Transparency of Evil), p. 91.
5
Brandão, Junito, op. cit., p. 523. The presence of pain as an initiation reference comes up in the
analyses by Gilmore, more specifically those referring to anthropological studies on “masculinity
under development” in Manhood in the Making. The rituals belonging to different cultures use the
experience of pain as a parameter to measure how much of a man a boy is. As in the story of Hercules,
there are labors to be performed by boys, such that the evaluation of their performance focuses on
“forming the male soul.” It is at the soul that those rituals aim, and to that end, the cultures organize
themselves so as to foster their members’ double growth in their sense of identity and of belonging to

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the community. Those are experiences that make for an appropriation of the self, virile revelation, and
visibility of one’s worth.
6
The denomination ‘operator’ I use corresponds to the concept of logical operator and refers to a set of
symbols of a certain culture that can be used with one or more variables to produce a new variable.
Culture produces multiple masculinity symbols that are ordered in different discourses. Myths are one
of those discourses that contain and explain the histories of heroes, with the distinct male symbols
being ordered in each one of them.
7
I am referring to the French writers Balzac, Saint-Simon, and Joseph De Maistre and to the English
Luckes and Burke.
8
See considerations on literary myths included at the beginning of this chapter.
9
In that respect, Watt presents an extensive work about the presence of those heroes in the present
time, situating them out of the bounds of fictional narratives. In a study conducted in 1951, “Robinson
Crusoe as a Myth,” he reports that we do not think of that story as being a novel, but rather, along with
Faust, Don Quixote, and Don Juan, as narratives of force that gave very special repercussions to the
particularities of individualistic societies, i.e., those that more and more are formed in the opposition
between collective and individual.
10
I am referring to the version by Christopher Marlowe (1592) entitled The Tragical History of the Life
and Death of Doctor Faustus and Goethe’s (1770), written two centuries later.
11
This Faust has very little in common with Marlowe’s. He lacks the fascination with magic, or the
desire to reach the condition of a semi-god through it. The Faust tradition sustains the idea of the fall
because man gives into the temptation to eat from the forbidden fruit of knowledge, about good and
evil, but with Goethe all the fruits of that tree are good and have less flavor, because what the subject
needs is the energy to harvest them. With Goethe, we have the idea that in order to be individualistic
the subject has to pay a price, and that has to do with a decent to hell.
12
A popular form of the Roman language that was opposed to classical Latin, the language all previous
literature had been written in.

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BEYOND TARZAN AND HOMER SIMPSON

Culture under Transformation

To recall something I presented at the outset of this work: Is there a culture without
crime? Is it possible to control crime?
We find reflection on those questions in various fields within human and social
sciences. However, be it in the form of a systematized effort to bring criminality
under control, be it in order to understand the reasons for crime, or still, to realize
how social and economic conditions act upon the subject so as to lead him to become
involved with crime, we cannot identify a consensus in psychology as to how to
respond to the problem posed by crime, by violence, or by aggression.
We find authors who interpret violence to result from a given conjuncture that
aggregates poverty and social inequality. That is the case of Zaluar, Quinney,
Feldman, and Bicudo.1 There are also studies about aggression that interpret it under
the ethological perspective, as those by Lorenz and Archer (Lorenz, 1966).
Multiple views with different slants describe the problem of human violence
and aggression according to foundational principles, be they psychic, social, or
biological. However, only recently can we find works that consider the articulation
between violence and masculinity according to the differential of man. That
correlation shows up in studies about domestic violence that focus on situations
of physical, psychological, and moral aggression by men against women. Man as
the aggressor becomes a recurring character in those analyses, which identify him
as exclusive heir to the patriarchal system. Possession and honor are two aspects
discussed in those analyses, which seek to explain violent behavior against women
as resulting from cultural and political conjuncture.
Nevertheless, in the general panorama of violence, the studies about domestic
violence do not include situations of violence between men, or those by men against
themselves. In absolute numbers, the indices for the latter two surpass those relative
to violence between men and women, a fact that in no way diminishes the importance
and seriousness of situations of domestic violence. Certainly, there is a relationship
between all forms of violence mentioned above. However, the involvement of men
in situations of violence requires a more encompassing cross-section.
For the subject, the relationship between masculinity and violence belongs to the
order of self-consciousness, and the sense of being a man results from the awareness
and the memory of oneself as one. In my perspective of analyses, that consciousness
is constituted by means of various experiences defined by the codes of the culture
and interpreted as well as lived by the subject according to his personal history.

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He, thusly, establishes his presence in the world, which reflects, in turn, its own
embodied experience, expressed through the way the subject reconciles, or not,
social demands and personal needs.
Consciousness is the experience of knowing one’s own self and of recognizing
the effort expended by the subject to sustain his way of being in the world. Those
experiences of himself are recorded by the subject as memory. Memory and
consciousness keep a dynamic and reciprocal relationship to one another; they are
mutually influential and materialized in the body.
To consciousness, one of the functions of the memory system, which brings
within itself value and category distinctions and is connected to models-of-oneself
through the formation of concepts, is to disregard answers. To Edelman, that is a
key function in the course of human evolution. Such models-of-oneself must have
emerged through social transmission by means of the comparison and discrimination
mechanisms (Edelman, 1989). The development of consciousness about oneself
requires a way to keep symbolic relationships in the long term, or sustaining memory
states related to communication between subjects.
Social male representation is incorporated to the consciousness of men, who
in turn orient themselves by the performance standards defined by culture. The
incorporation of social representation takes place during the socialization pathways
lived by men. By means of rites, traditions are passed on and embodied. The
subject has the internal record of a certain social representation that will grant him
recognition of the male condition within the community: warriors, hunters, and
chiefs. Phylogenesis and ontogenesis are art of the consciousness process, working
as social and individual devices that simultaneously build the culture’s traditions
and the subject’s memories. As mentioned previously, memory, while a record of
experience, makes it possible for a boy to think about his performance, identify what
is expected from him, and define a response pattern. That is what myths speak about.
This mythical problem is put both to the Greek hero and to modern man, who
must ask themselves how to solve it. The difference between the two lies in the social
implications of each hero’s response pattern. In the case of Greek heroes, the response
is always something that interferes in collective organization. For modern heroes,
the response patterns mostly affect them. This aspect of the modern hero remained
present in contemporary societies under a radicalized form of desecration of the
collective. To Lévi-Strauss, as they relinquish myth, mechanical societies foster its
existence solely in the subject dimension; however, that maneuver comes at a price.
In the modern period, there starts to be a change in the consciousness and memory
patterns about what it means to be a man. Starting from the narratives of modern
myths we find masculinity more and more restricted to the universe of work and
of wars. The 17th century consecrates these two aspects in social life, and they
come to be considered masculinity indicators in the West. The male representation
constituted in this phase of history associates the masculinity standard to brute force,
thus, making it an element for use in the world of production.

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Modern times require no social organization founded on the mythical perspective.

In light of the criticism against traditional culture, a different male representation
becomes necessary that corresponds to the new value of an emancipated “self” and
one that represents the project for liberation of human beings.
The panorama of contemporary societies can be characterized by the value
attributed to differentiation, to discontinuity, and to discussion between the local and
the global, pointing to the need to reorganize time and space and the way subjects
relate to one another socially. In these societies, the emancipation discourses cause
the emergence of new expert systems, as well as the reformulation of bonds of trust,
favor, and reflexivity (Giddens, 1994), thus, altering the subject’s social identity.
That led to the emergence of new identities better adjusted to this scenario and with
sufficiently flexible projects so as to permit their social movement. The minority
movements are heirs to that.
Considering the social movements, I realize that social male representation did
not follow the same trajectory as the minority representations, thus, remaining
instead at the opposite pole of the emancipation process. In the literary context of
social identities, there was no correspondent to masculinity because it was necessary
to maintain it as opposition to the “new” identities and, as such, an element
strengthening the emancipatory character of those movements.
This new arrangement of the social base and values emerging in the transition
to individualism produced multiple impacts on the male representation, among
which I would highlight two. The first refers to changes in the specificity of that
representation at the core of traditional societies; the second has to do with the
use value of that representation toward the emancipation of the female, black, and
homosexual representations.
I analyze the involvement of men with situations of violence according to those
two impacts. As we go through the analyses by Gilmore in the context of traditional
societies, we find three foundational concepts around the male experience: that
of verification, that of resistance, and that of individuation, all of which will be
disorganized in the transition to individualism, as shows us Le Rider (Gilmore,
1990; Le Rider, 1992).
These three concepts are related in the following manner:

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Through the individuation-verification relationship, I identify the mythical path

followed by every hero, history as unique experience. Myth is assessor of values by
means of which the subject knows how he will individuate, as well as what he must
and must not do to earn his “spirit.” That pathway is singular to each hero, who will
determine it in distinct fashion. Hercules followed a different path from Theseus’s,
which in turn is different from Ulysses’s and so on. No matter how many common
elements there may be in the narratives (every Greek hero dies violently), in each
one of them the hero’s trajectory is unique.
The verification-resistance binomial is responsible for the type of denomination to
be attributed to each subject. For example, if during verification he proves especially
resistant during the rites of passage and bears all the pitfalls of his mythical journey,
he will be known as the “glorious one,” or like Hercules, the patronymic male.
If, during his journey, he systematically uses wisdom and astuteness in order to
face up to his irritation, he will be identified like Ulysses, and so on. By means of
this binomial, the subject will earn his role, that is, the way he will be recognized
socially: hunter, warrior, or fighter. The traditions are organized according to this
binomial, and in them I find the notion that men don’t cry; a man must possess
uncontrollable sexuality and give demonstrations of physical strength. One knows
who is a man by his resistance capacity, and resistance is always and more and more
a symbol of strength.
Finally, the resistance-individuation binomial points out to the subject the risk
of being banalized in his individuation process, at the same time that it signals the
importance of defining parameters upon which he will conduct his life. The life of
spirit corresponds to a state of expanded synchronicity of the subject with himself
in light of the risk of banalization. It is that risk that provides him with the right to
choose. In order to enjoy that right, he must recognize himself as the product of an
accident (sex or race), at times experienced as limitation.
The more a subject resists submitting to the limits of those precepts, the greater
will be his chances of drowning in banalization, thus, suffering the death of spirit.
Hercules is the only hero who defeated banalization. Considered the warrior of spirit,
he suffers from lack of sexual restraint and debauchery, which must be conquered. By
means of his labors, he overcomes his resistance to moving toward his individuation,
which represents his own spirit, the possibility of using his own name. To defeat
banalization is to earn one’s own name in order to affirm it in the world.
According to the itinerary developed in this book, I consider that the involvement
of men in situations of violence is related to a desperate effort by the subject to
repossess his self by means of reintegration of his name, which to the Greeks
corresponds to spirit. Masculinity, while a construct erected around those three
binomials, was inserted in traditional societies in such a way that the subject had
some symbolic and cultural elements available to him toward accomplishing his
individuation journey. The warrior’s body and his respective sense of identity were
part of a unity around which the name of the subject was built. That name granted

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him both social recognition and expression of his alterity. The warrior is needed in
a given type of society.
Among the successive transformations resulting from the transition to modern
and contemporary societies, I can see a project for altering the subjects’ social
representation, except for male representation. In the course of the 20th century, the
latter became reduced to a materiality and brutality state that became synonymous to
violence itself, an act upon which the subject cannot signify.
In different cultures, masculinity is an experience founded around resistance and
verification. A man who can withstand and resist discomfort, pain, fear, pleasure,
and joy will more easily be recognized as a man. But that wasn’t always so: Before
being restricted to the value of work and war, male experience was constituted by a
life of expansion, in the example of Greek and modern heroes. As seen previously,
masculinity recognizes itself through social systems of verification, such as the tests
and trials that grant the subject visibility before his group.
The term bias corresponds to violence in Greek, and in its elements, I can identify
attributes considered male values, such as victory, competition, and power. Violence
and masculinity maintain many points of contact with one another, to wit: Isaac’s
sacrifice, rites of passage endured by boys in transition to adultness, the violent
deaths of Greek heroes, Jesus’s crucifixion, the deaths in wars, violent deaths in
traffic accidents, and homicides.
The difference is that, both to Isaac and to the Greek heroes, or even in the
formation of warriors, there is a purpose, a course to be followed. Even though
these complex forms adopted by traditional cultures for turning a boy into a man can
withstand criticism, there was in them a guiding principle that came undone and, in
some way, created potential for men’s involvement with violence.
In the context of contemporary societies, another important aspect has to do with
the place occupied by male representation. In the 1990’s, the last male hero who
could be considered a survivor of the patriarchal system left stage – Superman.
Created in 1932, a date close to that of Tarzan’s creation, he does not have the wind
to sustain himself today. In light of such great technological advancement, he can be
discarded. New heroes come onto the scene, now demonic and terrifying ones, like
Darkness and Cyborg, for example.
At the end of the 20th century, I see male representation following the example
of those heroes, that is, becoming identified as an evil that must be eliminated, as
presented by Spielberg in Jurassic Park (1996). There are no male dinosaurs in the
movie, only females. Males were eliminated and fertilization came to be accomplished
by technological means. On the other hand, in All About My Mother (1999), Pedro
Almodovar presents a story in which all men are veritable dinosaurs, and the heroes
are women and transvestites exclusively. There is a similarity between the heroine
in the film and the sacrificial crises present in ancient societies. In the same way,
the heroine’s son is violently killed, sacrificed, and dismembered, the pieces being
donated to members of the community for the purpose of salvation. Transplants

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made possible by organs donations is a contemporary example of sacrifice analyzed

by Girard.
The heroine’s journey in Almodovar starts after her son’s death and extends to
the city where she conceived him, thus, characterizing the film’s dramatic trajectory.
As she seeks to locate the young man’s father to inform about his death, the mother
discovers that the father also impregnated another woman. In my view, Almodovar’s
transvestite is the embodiment of a divinity (man-woman) that inseminates women
as a god in decline, reduced exclusively to the reproductive function.
It is women and homosexuals who have recognition and visibility in Almodovar’s
world. But, if art imitates life, we are faced with a society that relinquishes men, and
with men without memory, identified with this sort of death, seeking it, continuously,
in day-to-day situations.

NOTE
1
See conference delivered by Alba Zaluar on the UFRJ campus on 11.17.1994 and published by the
magazine Comunicacao e Politica (Communication and Politics), CEBELA, vol. I, number 2 –
December 1994/1995; Quinney, R. “O controle do crime na sociedade capitalista: uma filosofia critica
da ordem legal” (Control of Crime in Capitalist Society: A Critical Philosophy of the Legal Order).

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CONCLUSION

The rates of homicides, suicides, and traffic accidents in large Brazilian urban centers
indicate that men die more than women if we consider those causes of death. In the
state of Rio de Janeiro, men represent 92% of the incarcerated population. Even
given the large volume of information made available by the media, we still face an
increase in male deaths by external causes, concentrating on men aged 14 to 24. In
the opposite direction, we find women, who have longer life expectancy than men,
live in cities with different social and health programs specifically aimed at them.
Without falling for the trap of a victim culture, I thought about the contribution made
by this scenario to the preservation of an informational, cybernetic society regulated
by the market and politics.
However, starting from the theoretical premises defined by gender analyses, what
tools do they offer us to think about the involvement of men in situations of violence?
Recent analyses about gender discuss the involvement of men in situations of
violence when he is the aggressor, and the victim is exclusively a woman. They do
not consider violence between men or by men against themselves.
While I was conducting interviews with men’s groups, traditional roles and
other roles mixed in the talks by the subjects. They formed an image of themselves
that does not correspond to the traditional male representation, originating from
patriarchal societies, and that cannot be identified as an heir to gender, ethnicity,
or sexual orientation analyses either. This “lack of form” in which we find social
male representation has been treated by contemporary societies as an identity crisis
experienced by the empirical subject.
During the interviews, the men referred to this identity crisis as a fait accompli, a
“truth” starting from which they sought to understand the situations they experienced
in daily life and to establish for themselves a positive reference on what it means to
be a man. “Feminine man,” “woman within,” “father-mother,” “mfather”1 are terms
that aim at handling this “new” place defined for masculinity. The adjectivized terms
are formed from the intersection between the traditional social male representation
and another that has been superimposed to it, but without making it disappear.
Starting from the male-female duality, there is an attempt to arrive at another identity
reference that is no longer dual but one. Western culture has already gone through
similar periods to this one, when it strengthened the search for the androgynous
ideal.
Beyond those denominations, today there is a lack of positive male representations
at the center of contemporary societies, such as there were in traditional societies.
The adjectives associated with social male representation today indicate a limitation

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in re-signifying maleness beyond the gender definitions originated from traditional

societies.
In a way, the survival of gender discourses depends on how male representation
was defined by traditional societies. Those discourses are part of a larger group,
termed “emancipation discourses,” around which contemporary societies are
organized. From that group, individualistic and egalitarian aspirations emerge that
seek forms of insertion and visibility for subjects whose social representations are
not valued.
In light of that, it was possible to systematize a certain type of social representation
(white, heterosexual, male) that came to operate in the axis of contemporary societies
as a catalyst for different minority discourses. As I analyzed the talks by the men
who participated in the interviews, I noticed that part of the difficulties present in
their relationships (especially with women) results from the fact that they are “men,”
or even ”white men,” or “white heterosexual men” and, lastly, “heterosexual men.”
In the course of this century, these social categories strategically lost in positiveness
and social value, thus, leading to the emergence of new characters, as is the case of
Homer Simpson. In some way, types of hostility emerged from this situation directed
against masculinity.
To recall Sautet (1999, p. 19), “is violence specific to man or is it found in all
of nature?” Is it possible for a man to escape the fate of violence, which in a way
characterizes the relationship he maintains with the other?
If violence is not exclusively an act generated by the subject, but is also part of
the ways in which he is initiated into social life, it follows that, depending on the
organization type of the culture, subjects can be exposed to it to a greater or lesser
degree. That is what we see in the analyses by Gilmore, Corneau, Godelier, Ramirez
and Keleman.
These authors produced reflections on social male representation in traditional
societies and analyzed boys’ paths from infancy to adultness to signal different
situations of violence. Both in societies with oral traditions and in written cultures, in
the forming of warriors and the hunters, we can find challenges and tests that require
the use of force-violence by the subject. In case he fails at those tests, a greater type
of violence than that of arms will befall him: symbolic violence, which corresponds
to his death as a subject and his transformation into simulacrum.
The rites of passage present in traditional societies represented stages to be
completed by boys toward the ideal of masculinity, or narratives that organize the
subject’s social and subjective life. Therefore, I started my analyses about social
male representation in traditional societies, using as a conducting thread the various
mythical discourses that are circulated by the cultures. Later, considering the transition
to individualism, I analyzed what first changes that traditional representation went
through in light of transformations in the culture. It is in that transition that I identify
a first reformulation in the Western standards of masculinity. If the medieval hero
received influences and perpetuated certain identity categories from the Greek hero,
the modern one distinguishes himself to the extent that he defines himself as the

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author in creating worlds from himself. That is what happens, for example, with the
heroes of modern individualism, as Watt (1997) shows us. The world of traditions
gradually disappears, and a schism is established.
At a certain point in the modern world, intellectual activity and knowledge
ceased to be inseparable from ethical judgment and moral action, as they were in the
premodern world. Therefore, more and more, the subjects constitute himself from
himself, as an entity that founds itself in opposition to the natural order and affirms
itself as history and desire.
Modernity established the adoption of an attitude of maximum attention, in which
he cannot be satisfied with anything, as a criterion for the subject. The masculinity
references that, until then, came from observation of nature – physical strength and
virility – go into decline. At the same time, the subject maintains with himself the
spirit of the pursuit and accomplishment of freedom through the effectiveness of
State institutions identified in the new hero’s representation.
Even if modernity presented reason as an instrument at the service of Evil
elimination, be it political, social, or economic, that effort in itself was not successful.
But the opposite almost happened.
When Hegel thought about the positiveness of reason, he did so by conceiving
of it as an agent capable of feeding on any negativity, becoming stronger with
that. Negativity positivizes reason even more. On the political plane, the struggle
against totalitarian systems and social inequalities represents one of the focuses
of modern theoretical production, which is committed to equality and individual
freedom ideals. Then, what hinders the reaching of those ideals can be identified as a
manifestation of Evil, which can also be considered the fuel of “fights” that demand
the re-signification of the subject and of the situation he is inserted in, for example.
What makes minority discourses negative serves, at the same time, as a parameter to
define their strategies and purposes.
In light of that, we can think that both in traditional societies and in contemporary
ones what threatens the establishment is considered by it as an expression of Evil. The
difference is that, while in traditional ones it was treated as opposition and duality
and, therefore, had to be eliminated, in societies oriented by the ideology of political
correctness, Evil is banalized and relativized, thus, serving as an instrument for
cohesion and preservation of the discourses and practices in effect. In contemporary
societies Evil does not exist as duality or ambivalence, but rather as ambiguity.
Ambiguously maintaining it, modernity reconfigured Evil by means of reason,
thus, making it available as a focus for demand or positiveness. Homosexuals seek
the same rights as heterosexuals; blacks the same as whites, and women the same as
men. In that context, Evil is both something that must be eliminated and something
inspirational.
As they relativize Evil, contemporary societies shed light on what is fundamental
to them: to intervene in the definition of patterns for coexistence among its members
(conciliation and mediation) according to political, market, and desire prerogatives,
without any sense of commitment to the quality of the community and interpersonal

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ties established by its members. On the other hand, under the premises of traditional
societies, protecting oneself from Evil worked as an element in the ordering of the
collective, in the affirmation of traditions and of social cohesion.
In Girard’s (1990) view, Evil is one of the expressions of the collective understood
as sacred. To contemporary societies, there is no longer the idea of “Absolute Evil;”
however, It still survives taking on relative, subtle, and sophisticated forms that
make in inviable for the collective and for community to emerge.
In contemporary societies, Good is regulated by the law and by consensus. This
“Greater Good” takes over the establishment and portrays itself in the formulation
of various discourses originating from the egalitarian credo, erected around what
Baudrillard (1992, p. 90) calls “Western values of progress, rationality, political morality,
and democracy.” By their turn, those discourses systematically exempt themselves from
any mark of negativity, suppressed by the belief in the idea of consensus. Any man or
woman who refuses to accept it is identified as the expression of Evil.
The positive function of negativity, says Rosenfield (1989), puts reason under
the stigma of necessary positiveness, excluding any possibility that it might take the
direction of the devil, of destruction, or of Evil. That belief, created by the absolute
use of reason, is present in the ideals of technological progress, the market, and
political emancipation disseminated in politically correct discourses. With some
difficulty, that belief will be problematized by contemporary societies, but to the
contrary of that, the societies of the relative have made the discourses pronounced
by them absolute.
Against the absolute of reason, Musil and Kafka denounce the illusion upon which
is built the utopic process and the technological dimension of German individualism,
represented by Kant and Hegel.
Both Musil’s novel and Baudrillard’s analyses about the consumer society led me
to think that in order to survive this century the modern revolutionary ideal produced
new forms of expression, in the example of the dialectic of enlightenment and of the
emancipation discourses (for minorities). The latter have carried over to the present
day and taken on an absolute and dogmatic stance.
Among the characteristics of modernity, opposition to the traditional world must be
highlighted. One of the effects of that opposition can be found in the desacralization of
concepts dear to that world. Through the radicalization of the failure of State figures,
of the father and of the law, contemporary societies create even more potential for
the impact of the desacralization, extending it to quotidian life and to the subject’s
social representation. As part of the strategy to preserve the modern undertaking,
certain social representations (woman, black, and homosexual) have gained positive
value in light of the desacralization process, while others were made negative (white,
heterosexual, man). Differently from the polarization of Manichaeism that maintains
the vigor and strength of what is positive and negative – God and the Devil, Good
and Evil, etc. – desacralization divests the vigor of that which represents the negative
and banalizes it. As regards male social representation, banalization is instituted as a
form of contemporary violence, to the extent that eliminates the subject’s history. It

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was the effects of banalization that produced Homer Simpson, and ambiguous form
to depreciate one who goes against the establishment.
Homer is the product of a culture that became “de-collectivized” and that resorts
to him to affirm the need to ensure full-steam ahead on the fight for subjective
emancipation. This subject that grows with modernity and sees himself more and
more abandoned to himself and, in the example of his modern patronymics, is
encouraged to give up on any type of social insertion. In the novel The Man without
Qualities, by Robert Musil, Ulrich is a character born from the poor success of
modern ideals and represents the transition to a new type of utopia. In a fragmented
vein, Musil presents a subject who renounces any type of social, personal, political,
or professional engagement, so that, this way, he can find meaning both in his action
and in the reflection that results from it. The disbelief and failure that cut through
modernity were recovered by the contemporary through the minority discourses.
In Musil, we find the radicalization of utopic thought and in it the presentation
of a new utopia defined by the immediate melding of the subject with social space.
This aspect marks a completely different position from that which says subjectivity
is born from an interdiction – that of incest. The melding proposed by Musil places
the subject before a space of indetermination regarding himself that forces us into
another reflection about the issue of alterity. Through Ulrich, we can understand the
problematics that involves social male representation in the present day, in aspects
related to both the empirical subject and the function and meaning attributed to the
representation by contemporary culture.
This character brings with himself a density from which it is possible to identify
forms of violence he is exposed to. His effort to overcome the indetermination to
which he is subjected, by seeking to meld with the social space, can serve as a
reference so we can understand what is taking place with male social representation
in contemporary societies. If in traditional societies it embodied the role of agent of
the action upon which stood social values, in the transition to individualism it shifts
gradually to another place that is worth less with the passing of the years. However,
nowadays, the indetermination of social male representation, or the masculinity
crisis, can be attributed to the fusional state that is found in light of emancipation
discourses.
In the transition to modern individualism, male social representation begins to
be characterized by means of the “antihero.” The physical type, the posture, and
the apparel adopted by Don Quixote were created in opposition to those pertaining
to the old medieval knights. The same happened in the development of donjuanian
morality, conceived as a criticism to the courtly standard. These “antiheroes” of
the traditional world slowly became the new modern values. Modernity’s reflexive
character took advantage of the traditional social male representation as a resource
in the formulation of the emancipation discourses present in the modern setting, as
occurs with Crusoe, Quixote, and Faust.
Following in the footsteps set in Violence and the Sacred toward understanding
what is happening to social male representation, I realize that there is a correlation

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between what goes on with that representation in contemporary societies and what
happens to the “sacrificial victim” in the societies analyzed by Girard.
The “sacrificial victim” is at once threat and protection. Its negative character
(threat) is positivized by the effect brought by the sacrifice (protection) to the
community. As Hegel tells us, what strengthens the rational and historic perspective
is the creation of mechanisms that can absorb the negativity surrounding them, thus,
consolidating the belief in the positiveness of reason.
In that sense, part of the contradictions present in the minority discourses have to
do with existing hostility between those who profess them and that which is shifted
outward according to the principle of the “expiatory.” Since such hostility cannot
be revealed publicly, it disguises itself in recourses such as the banalization of the
representation in question. Contemporary societies began to systematically adopt an
idea of crisis to refer to the male social representation with the aim of understanding
what goes on with the empirical subject. However, this crisis came to be “the
reference” to be used when one wishes to talk about men. Beyond it, there is the
troublemaker, the brute, the sexually avid, the macho man. Contemporary societies
relinquished a positivized social male representation with visibility and that serves
to support the subject in accomplishing his project.
The “masculinity crisis” was a stage through which it was possible to maintain
part of the modern ideals and, with that, reorganize the social orientation axis by
orienting it toward the market, technology, and politics, where permissiveness,
relativism, and hedonism rule. In that context, blacks can be white; men can become
women; life comes to be more and more produced outside the body, like foods
outside the natural order. In this “post” scenario, male social representation plays
an important role, not for men, but for this long process toward the subject’s social
emancipation that has its start in the transition to modern individualism and goes all
the way to the market democracies.

NOTE
1
In Brazil there is a neologism that merges the words father and mother as “mfather.”

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