Rethinking Symbolic Violence on Social Media: Incels and Mentalisation

The aim of this article is to discuss the notion of symbolic violence and to foreground a psychoanalytic conceptualisation of the term. Having been popularised by Pierre Bourdieu and other thinkers, the term is routinely used to describe forms of violence that stop short of the physical. It remains under-theorised. Following a brief literature review, it is argued that psychoanalysis has much to add when it comes to conceptualising symbolic violence and how it plays out online. Peter Fonagy’s theory of mentalisation is brought in to conceptualise symbolic violence as a particular form of externalised, distorted mentalisation. I finally apply the term to contemporary discussions and user exchanges on social media that are so often characterised by intense forms of symbolic violence. The misogynist incel community is presented as a case study via exemplary quotes. Incels display forms of symbolic violence that are characterised by vivid fantasies about other men and women which reveal a distorted, yet highly coherent and organised, symbolic world.