Neonihilism: Meaninglessness and irony in neoliberal capitalism

Abstract

In this paper I propose a novel theoretical phenomenon, neonihilism, which follows a historical and theoretical trajectory from 19th-century nihilism and is distinguishable from another contemporary phenomenon, described as fashionable nihilism. Neonihilism is contextualized to a North American neoliberal capitalist social matrix, with meaning and mental health crises as defining features. I argue that neonihilism produces a sense of hopelessness in tackling the mental health and meaning crises when our neoliberal social matrix internalizes systemic inequities as personal moral responsibilities. Furthermore, neoliberalism has the potential to commodify the darkness of nihilism and transform it into fashionable nihilism, which further obfuscates the possibilities for resistance. I suggest a set of strategies for overcoming neonihilism by shifting from a science of nihilation to an art of nihilation as an ars nihil.

Nihilism is broadly defined as a rejection of morals, knowledge, and meaning (Gertz, 2019). It has historical roots in Western culture from the first use of the term nihilism by Jacobi (1785–1815/2009) to argue that philosophy becomes meaningless if faith in (a Judeo-Christian) god is abandoned. Turgenev (1862/2008) later popularized the term nihilism in his 1862 novel Fathers and Sons, which was contemporary with the Russian nihilist movement (1860–1881) against the oppressive Tsarist regime (Hingley, 1969), identifying a pervasive amoral philosophy and complete rejection of societal mores (Avrich, 1974; Radzinsky, 2005). Nineteenth-century Europe had a literary, political, and philosophical fascination with nihilism, though the latter dominated the discourse with a focus on the loss of Christian faith following the rise of rationalism (see Jacobi, 1785–1815/2009; Kierkegaard, 1846/2010). Nietzsche (1882/1974) famously identified this problem with his claim, “God is dead. . . . And we have killed him” (p. 181), and attempted to overcome nihilism with a philosophy centered on reassessing Christian morality, embracing suffering, and extolling the virtues of exercising freedom and power to overcome oneself (see Kaufmann, 1950).

Nihilism in the 20th century was described as a sense of meaninglessness in response to industrialization (Frankl, 1946/1984) and capitalism, captured in the antiestablishment Dada art movement (Hentea, 2014) and pessimistic philosophies (Cioran, 1934/1992, 1949/2010). Following the Second World War, nihilism took on an expressly existential nuance, suggesting that life itself might be meaningless (see Camus, 1942/1955; Heidegger, 1927/1962; Sartre, 1943/1992). Nihilism in the 21st century can be conceived as a response to the conditions of neoliberal capitalism (see Teo, 2018b), due to a loss of faith in secular institutions to provide meaning in the absence of faith in god. Neoliberalism is defined as a set of laissez-faire economic policies based on free market capitalism (Jameson, 1991), which have transcended the political realm and produced a neoliberal culture marked by self-improvement since the 1990s (De Keere, 2014).

Teo (2018b) argues that neoliberalism has produced a new form of nihilism that has nothing to do with faith or the meaning of life, but instead is a deconceptualization of the possibility for political, economic, and systemic change. This alienation from possibilities for changing sociopolitical inequities further entrenches the neoliberal values of individualization, as a process of internalizing the construction of one’s life (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002), responsibilization, as a process of reducing systemic problems to personal responsibilities (Brown, 2015; Harvey, 2005; Teo, 2018a), self-governance, in the absence of government intervention (Harvey, 2005), and competition, based in the myth of meritocracy and scarcity (Bloodworth, 2016). Neoliberalism reinforces the notion that social change is impossible while drawing us inward to seek change in the self via commodities of self-improvement. This new nihilism correlates with what has been described as a meaning crisis (Petranker et al., 2022) and mental health crisis (Rudd & Beidas, 2020).

As we have seen with the historical lineage of nihilism, the scarcity of meaning and conditions of suffering propagate nihilistic sentiments. If contemporary nihilism is marked by crises in meaning and mental health due to feelings of hopelessness in the face of systemic inequities, then we must interrogate the contemporary neoliberal social matrix, which includes our social and cultural context, attitudes, beliefs, values, peers, family, and work that shape our norms (see Eisner, 1997) and constitute us as neoliberal subjects. Contemporary nihilism can then be understood through the frameworks of neonihilism and fashionable nihilism as they relate to neoliberal subjectivity within a neoliberal social matrix (I first developed these concepts in Plesa, 2020; Plesa & Petranker, 2023). Neonihilism is defined as a confrontation with meaninglessness that results in irony, given that we are aware we are hopeless to change systemic inequities while feeling persuaded to seek change within ourselves, while simultaneously aware of the irony that changes within the self will not relieve the hopelessness relating to our social world, but instead, reinforce it. Fashionable nihilism is defined as an encounter with meaninglessness that is coupled with satire as a coping mechanism toward the systemic inequities we feel hopeless to change.

Following the generalized definition of nihilism as a rejection of morals, knowledge, and meaning, we can understand how neonihilism and fashionable nihilism are responses to a neoliberal social matrix in which: (a) morality is obscured when secular institutions sustain systemic inequities that produce marginalization and oppression (see Alstadsæter et al., 2019; Arnold & Hartman, 2006; Busey & Coleman-King, 2020; O’Donovan et al., 2019); (b) knowledge is uncertain in what has been called a “post-truth era” (see Lewandowsky et al., 2017; Sismondo, 2017); and (c) meaning has not been adequately provided by morally questionable secular institutions in the absence of god (see Jason, 2020; Parker et al., 2019). Internalizing these problems into the neoliberal self is commensurate with the meaning and mental health crises, which are once more treated as individual problems in neoliberal capitalism. To combat this individualizing approach, I argue that the confrontation of meaninglessness in neonihilism creates an opportunity for connectedness with others based in the shared recognition of irony. What I propose is a resistance to the neoliberal self through intersubjectivity, relational ontology, and solidarity as an art of nihilation, an ars nihil.

Neonihilism and fashionable nihilism

What distinguishes neonihilism from nihilism or Teo’s (2018b) new nihilism is the advent of irony coupled with meaninglessness. This distinction does not make neonihilism a separate problem, but rather makes it part of a lineage of nihilism stemming from the 19th century and dealing with pervasive problems of meaninglessness throughout progressively industrialized periods. Teo (2018a) identified the most recent adaptation of nihilism as a feeling of alienation from sociopolitical change under neoliberalism. What neonihilism adds to this lineage is the by-product of irony at the realization of the futility of working on ourselves as neoliberal subjects in a world that is dying. We face not only our own mortality but also that of the world, which introduces a unique existential angst. These realizations are facilitated by a hyperawareness of sociopolitical problems, environmental degradation, climate change, and systemic inequities in the information age (see Floridi, 2010; Vaccaro & Madsen, 2006), which become internalized as personal problems in neoliberalism and contribute to the meaning and mental health crises. For example, this hyperawareness can lead to thinking: I am part of the problem; or I cannot hope to change these systemic problems; or I must be an agent for change that begins with changing myself.

With the advent of the internet, the information age has accelerated the proliferation of information media in a world that is increasingly dependent on media for work, communication, and social networking, which has contributed to increases in stress, feelings of meaninglessness, and mental health problems (see Braghieri et al., 2022; Fortier & Therrien, 2018; Hoofd, 2009; Sadagheyani & Tatari, 2021). Furthermore, much of the media we consume has a negativity bias because bad news has more psychological traction than good news (Soroka & McAdams, 2015). The negative news we are exposed to generates a skewed hyperawareness that systemic inequities and sociopolitical problems are pervasive and the entities responsible evade penalty and accountability. As such, North Americans have been shown to hold pessimistic views of the future regarding politics, economy, and the environment (Parker et al., 2019).

Our exposure to persistent negative media as a source of hyperawareness of sociopolitical issues and systemic inequities in our neoliberal social matrix, paired with a self-improvement culture that internalizes these feeling of hopelessness into the self, produces a neoliberal subjectivity that sees external change as impossible and internal change as compulsory (and compulsive). As individualized, responsibilized, self-governing, and competitive neoliberal subjects (see Teo, 2018a), we fixate on overcoming internal issues that have little bearing on our social world. The world appears meaningless in light of our exposure to the social, political, and environmental issues that saturate the media, where we internalize that we are part of the problem and overwhelmingly feel incapable of seeing a solution. Therefore, not only does the world appear to be a meaningless place, but so do our lives within it. As Fisher (2009) pointed out, it is easier for us to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of neoliberal capitalism, which produces a sense of nihilistic hedonism. We have no prosperous futures to envision so we try to avoid thinking about it. Without the possibility for changing the state of affairs in the world, there appears to be nothing worth suffering for. Existentially, suffering has been a conduit to meaning.

Nietzsche (1872/1967, 1885/1975) proposed overcoming nihilism by first recognizing it, then embracing suffering as indispensable to meaning in the way the Ancient Greeks transformed tragedy into art, and finally overcoming ourselves through a reassessment of our values toward a life of joy. Unlike the return-to-faith philosophers, Nietzsche proposed a confrontation with nihilism and the transformation of suffering into meaning to overcome ourselves and thereby overcome nihilism. Frankl (1946/1984), inspired by Nietzsche, developed logotherapy as a meaning-making philosophy to overcome suffering. Camus (1942/1955) and Sartre (1943/1992) established existential avenues for meaning-making, also through a confrontation with meaninglessness and the absurd. The existential project for meaning-making was through self-transcendence, which was taken up by humanistic psychologists to propose a transformational notion of self, where self-transcendence was translated into self-actualizing our inner-most potential (Diaz, 2014). Then, with the rise of neoliberal capitalism in the 1980s and a focus on self-improvement, positive psychology provided seemingly empirical avenues for transforming the self, through agentic self-modifying behaviors oriented toward the neoliberal cultural values of individualization, responsibilization, self-governance, and competition (Binkley, 2014; Brown, 2015; Davies, 2014; Harvey, 2005; Held, 2004).

This last development in the transformational notion of self is what gave rise to the neoliberal self, which is a turn inward to enhance the marketable aspects of the self and eliminate the unmarketable, for economic viability in an increasingly precarious world. Self-transformation became self-commodification. Neonihilism is the creeping realization that our self-transformational/commodifying tendencies are insufficient to adequately address our unstable social matrix and may ironically be contributing to that feeling of instability when meaning is neither within nor without. Fisher (2014) argues that our neoliberal social matrix produces a state of depression where we are unwilling to accept the mediocrity of capitalism, we cannot envision positive futures, and we not only become cynical about the possibility for change but also deny that change has ever occurred, resulting in self-loathing, alienation from the world, internal emptiness, and no faith in participating in the sham of reality. The crisis of meaning underlies neonihilism, and the confrontation with meaninglessness that results in irony is what sets it apart from other notions of nihilism.

It is also important to distinguish neonihilism from fashionable nihilism, which is another contemporary form of nihilism sweeping Western consciousness. In The Banalization of Nihilism, Carr (1992) describes cheerful nihilism as a fashionable way we have begun to accept meaninglessness without critical thinking. Yet, the most accurate interpretation of fashionable nihilism for my purposes is captured in a podcast episode titled “In the Dust of This Planet,” by Radiolab (see Abumrad, 2014). The podcast episode describes the social phenomenon and popularity of nihilism as fashionable nihilism, a seductive posturing of the darkness of nihilism without absorbing the philosophy or its existential effects. In a way, fashionable nihilism negates nihilism by caricaturing it—turning it into satire. Fashionable nihilism demonstrates that even the sentiment of meaninglessness can be commodified, highlighting the power of neoliberalism to transform the undesirable into the desirable. The marketable element of nihilism is its rebellious undertone—a rejection of morality and norms, an acceptance of mortality, and an attitude of defiance. The popularization of nihilism in culture and media, which is expressive of social realities, creates the possibilities for commodification in neoliberalism.

If nihilism has become a sentiment sufficiently popular enough that it carries marketable sociocultural value, then by sanitizing the existential depth of meaninglessness, the façade of nihilism—fashionable nihilism—can be sold as a disposable pacifier. When a consumer can purchase meaninglessness on a T-shirt, from an expensive fashion line no less, they are simultaneously supporting a sentiment of nihilism while also negating it by giving value and meaning to the signifier of meaninglessness on their clothing. This contradiction may or may not be apparent to the consumer. However, the appeal of nihilism is reflective of the popularity of meaninglessness, and its commodifiability arguably further reinforces meaninglessness, hence also the meaning crisis. Seeing meaninglessness as a commodity suggests that anything can be sold under neoliberalism. The core distinction between fashionable nihilism and neonihilism is that the former is an encounter with meaninglessness while the latter is a confrontation with meaninglessness. The mere encounter with meaninglessness in fashionable nihilism relies on satire as a coping mechanism for meaninglessness, while the confrontation with meaninglessness in neonihilism ends in irony.

Neonihilism and the neoliberal self

At its core, existential angst is a death anxiety about the self, and with neonihilism as a response to our neoliberal social matrix, this angst is also extended outward: a death anxiety about the world. We cannot fathom our future legacy, our extension of self into the future through procreation, or existential transcendence, in a world without a future, or at least an increasingly uncertain future. This death anxiety about the world is then internalized into the self. In neoliberalism, meaninglessness became a death anxiety about the world and the self as a discourse rooted in scientific knowledge and truth about death rather than an art of death. Foucault (1976/1978) makes this distinction regarding sexuality in Western civilization, as the development of a discourse based in a science of sex in the 19th century, a scientia sexualis rather than an art of sex, an ars erotica, seen in pleasure-centric ancient civilizations like the Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Arabic-Muslim, and Roman. The scientific discourse on sexuality is determined by power–knowledge relations, which establish parameters around the truth and falsehood of sex. The scientia sexualis transformed Christian morality into scientific truth around sex, recoding sin into pathology, the confessional relationship into therapeutic operation, and ultimately medicalized sex around reproductive function, and physical and mental health, while retaining the religious moral associations of sex with danger and death.

Scientia sexualis was a scientific discourse on sex that developed in line with the 19th-century capitalist society’s focus on truth and regulation, and the tactics of power within the discourse are meant to reveal hidden truths about the self (Foucault, 1976/1978). It became part of the way we are historically constituted as subjects based in the available discourses we rely on to make sense of ourselves. Our contemporary notions around our sexuality are based in scientific truths, which constitute part of our understanding of self when it comes to erotogenic zones, sexual preference, safer sex practices, procreation, and anatomical functions, which in turn generate associations of what is permitted, forbidden, shameful, and pleasurable. By contrast to the scientia sexualis, Foucault (1976/1978) argues that in an ars erotica,

Truth is drawn from pleasure itself, understood as a practice and accumulated as experience; pleasure is not considered in relation to an absolute law of the permitted and the forbidden, nor by reference to a criterion of utility, but first and foremost in relation to itself; it is experienced as pleasure, evaluated in terms of its intensity, its specific quality, its duration, its reverberations in the body and soul. (p. 57)

Art is pleasure focused whereas science is truth focused. A scientia sexualis was produced through a scientific paradigm that also produced a scientific discourse around the meaning(lessness) of death, what I will call a scientia nihil, or science of nihilation, of nonbeing, rather than an ars nihil, or art of nihilation. The art of tragedy, as Nietzsche (1872/1967) claims, is killed by the Socratean paradigm, a rationalist paradigm focused on knowledge. He tries to draw us back to the art of tragedy to overcome nihilism by seeing the meaning in our suffering, but we are now, more than ever, focused on a science of tragedy. Conditions of death are medicalized and psychologized, generating truths and falsehoods about how to live in avoidance of nihilation—avoiding toxins, recreational drugs, sexually transmitted infections, carcinogens—and being proactive against death by exercising, dieting, regulating sleep, going to therapy, and biohacking (Calder et al., 2018; Furedi, 2004; Safren et al., 2011; Steger et al., 2015; Sugarman, 2015; Yetisen, 2018). Furthermore, scientific truths inform us about how our behaviors, like eating, washing, driving, traveling, using electricity, cellphones, and shopping contribute to the death of the world by producing waste, pollution, greenhouse gasses, and ultimately climate change (Dettinger & Culberson, 2008; Ha, 2007; Moran et al., 2018; Sultana, 2021; Tomes, 1990).

The scientia nihil is a scientific discourse on nihilation that reveals hidden truths about the self and becomes part of the way we are historically constituted as neoliberal subjects. The neoliberal self internalizes death anxiety about the world into death anxiety about the self, recoded as an individual responsibility that it is hopeless to change but compelled toward endless self-transformations for the impossibility for change, nonetheless. This world–self death anxiety is the sense of meaninglessness pervasive in our neoliberal social matrix and realizing its ironic futility is neonihilism. We are neonihilistic not only because secular institutions failed to provide meaning in the absence of god but also because meaning was promised through scientific discourse that instead produced truths about death and obfuscated our possibility for a confrontation with nihilation based in an ars nihil. An ars nihil cannot be a strictly individualistic phenomenon because it addresses not only our own nihilation, nonbeing, meaninglessness, and death but also the relations between the nihilation of the world and others with ourselves. The art of nihilation can only generate truths from meaninglessness, suffering, and death as a collective enterprise, an artistic movement, a culture in response to a demand for meaning like the Ancient Greeks who made art of tragedy to overcome it. Collective truths are derived from pleasure in the art of nihilation. The challenge with an ars nihil in neoliberalism rests in the blurred line between neonihilism and fashionable nihilism.

To reiterate, the distinction between neonihilism and fashionable nihilism is that the former is a confrontation of meaninglessness that produces a by-product of irony, whereas the latter is a tragicomedy, which is an encounter with meaninglessness that attempts to negate its effects via satire as a coping mechanism. Neonihilism captures the irony in the absurd in confronting meaninglessness. Fashionable nihilism creates a caricature by negating suffering and diverting away from the absurd and toward relief. It is a false confidence that says, “I’m not afraid of death,” having never faced mortality. On the other hand, Sartre (1943/1992) and Camus (1942/1955) argue that confronting meaninglessness requires courage but enables freedom, revolt, and the ability to live with passion and existential authenticity, which are ways they define meaning. Confrontation is also suggested by Nietzsche (1901/1968) as a way to understand what we can learn from suffering and use to our advantage, which also gives us purpose and meaning.

The important distinction between neonihilism and fashionable nihilism is that the former provokes a confrontation with meaninglessness while the latter is a mere encounter with meaninglessness. Confrontation provokes us to think critically and dialogically, in other words to engage in dialogue with a problem. Confronting a friend, an enemy, a situation requires courage, strategy, and adaptation as one works through a problem, inquires, and argues. The dialogic aspect of confrontation, whether with another person or with an internalized representation of a person (as a dialogic argument with oneself), forces us to present our arguments and think about the counterarguments, real or imagined (see Kuhn, 2005). When neonihilism conveys meaninglessness with ironic accuracy, we are forced to confront the conditions for meaninglessness. We must make the connection between the conditions that cause meaninglessness as an exercise in analyzing evidence and generating theories about potential causes. Via this mode of inquiry and critical thinking, we arrive at the irony in the absurd, which is the realization that reality cannot be understood through reason alone (see Camus, 1942/1955), given that the conditions that produce meaninglessness are often unreasonable. Neonihilism, as a neoliberal phenomenon, points to systemic issues as these conditions, which we are hopeless to change but yet internalize as personal responsibilities (see Brown, 2015; Harvey, 2005; Teo, 2018a).

Meaninglessness in fashionable nihilism is presented as a symbolic recognition of a familiar problem we encounter, such as a satire of social inequities, and generating a sense of relief through the nonthreatening familiarity. Encounters are at best transient and at worst provoke bias and prejudice. Encountering a friend, enemy, or situation is accidental and subject to normative parameters that often guide us toward the least uncomfortable resolution (see Milgram & Sabini, 1978). Encounters are unlikely to provoke critical thinking because we are not faced with deliberately resolving a problem; at best we are merely made to recognize a problem and react. In an encounter, the act of recognition subjects us to heuristic shortcuts and unidimensional thinking, which act as antitheses to critical thinking (see Kuhn, 2005). Encounters provoke monologues rather than dialogues in accessing our existing beliefs as a source of recognition. In the absence of counterarguments, we are not forced to challenge our beliefs, assess new evidence, and theorize possible causes (see Kuhn, 2005). The relief in the familiar encounter is precisely in not having to confront the problem, but instead being guided to a convenient, ready-made solution. Fashionable nihilism resolves for us the problem of confronting meaninglessness by an encounter with its familiar caricature.

Neonihilism produces irony as a by-product of recognizing the absurdity of neoliberal capitalism as a source of internalized meaninglessness for external conditions. This is amplified by the hyperawareness of the information age, presenting systemic issues of political corruption, environmental degradation, and social inequities, which correlate with the meaning and mental health crises. The pervasiveness of meaninglessness is not universal (everyone suffers the same), but rather, unifying (we all suffer for similar reasons). This is because meaninglessness is subjective, but the unification is facilitated via the advent of irony that connects us with an understanding that we all, or at least many of us, suffer together, albeit in diverse and intersectional ways from the conditions of our shared neoliberal social matrix. This unification around the common theme of meaninglessness is facilitated by the communal recognition of its irony. For example, this irony is a communal theme in nihilistic memes, which point out the futility and hopelessness of resolving sociopolitical problems in neoliberal capitalism. These nihilistic memes demonstrate the transition from neonihilism to fashionable nihilism, when the focus shifts from meaninglessness to relief, from confrontation to encounter, from irony to satire, from critical thinking to coping mechanism. This transition highlights the obscure threshold between the confrontation and the encounter with meaninglessness, which is a product of the power of neoliberalism to commodify meaninglessness as a marketable feature of neonihilism and to transform it into fashionable nihilism. In so doing, our connection to others via the communal recognition of irony is severed as we are drawn back into the self via the coping mechanism of satire.

The effect of fashionable nihilism is to examine the poignancy of sociopolitical issues by satirizing the contradiction in our awareness and simultaneous lack of revolt. It disseminates information on important issues while making the message more palatable with a comedic tone that is typical of memes—satirical pieces of media. Fashionable nihilism then uses the uplifting element found in tragicomedy, often through satire, self-deprecating humor, or dark humor to acknowledge meaninglessness and to joke about the pointlessness of existence. Humor creates a safe version of nihilism that we can satirize as a way to cope with despair. There are plenty of studies on humor as an efficacious therapeutic technique (see Dziegielewski, 2003; Franzini, 2001; Hirsch et al., 2010). However, I argue that the humor in the context of fashionable nihilism operates more like a coping mechanism rather than an intentional therapeutic technique. As a coping mechanism, it temporarily alleviates some sense of meaninglessness via satire. Humor is often used as a literary device to help establish difficult connections, such as those found in tragedy (see Ruggieri, 1999). This same process is evident in internet meme culture, where humor is often used as a device, along with popular culture, to point out hypocrisy and sociopolitical issues. Humor establishes a connection and reduces the impact of the potentially painful content.

Let us consider an example; a meme with two news article screenshots. One image indicates that celebrity Kylie Jenner is not, in fact, a billionaire, as is popularly believed; she is actually shy one hundred million dollars. However, a GoFundMe crowdsourcing campaign has been initiated in her honor to raise funds for Jenner to become a billionaire (see Bernard, 2018). The second image is of a man whose crowdsourcing campaign to buy insulin was short by $50, leading to his death. The caption of the meme reads, “This is why people keep saying we should eat the rich, just in case you’re wondering.” This meme comments on an ironic situation with an undertone of dark humor while highlighting that we exist in a world where we prioritize celebrities over the well-being of disenfranchised people. The meme is both informational, in providing insight into wealth inequality and its consequences, while signaling resistance with a hyperbolized socialist catchphrase. The hyperbole here does not incite actual resistance but highlights the impossibility of resistance when the mechanisms necessary for its accomplishment are absurd—to eat the rich.

Memes like these are only a small sample of an ever-growing online tradition to mimic sociopolitical problems through the use of irony and satire to point out hypocrisy and absurdity. They nevertheless provide insight into the popularity of sentiments of displeasure, cynicism, criticism, hopelessness, meaninglessness, and sometimes blatant nihilism. However, it is unclear whether these kinds of memes signify a confrontation or encounter with meaninglessness. It is unlikely that the memes will produce a profound confrontation with meaninglessness resulting in the recognition of irony. However, the production of these memes indicates the recognition of irony in meaninglessness, while the reception of these memes can be read as satire. It is a case of the medium being the message (McLuhan, 1964). The commodification of meaninglessness into a meme generates an association with the medium rather than the message, where memes are designated as imitations of cultural phenomena and often viewed as satirical pieces of media (see Dawkins, 1976; Shifman, 2013). Memes are judged on their ability to accurately imitate using the metric of representation via humor, wit, irony, and satire. The message of the meme is a secondary function of its ability to imitate. The focus is on the popularity and virality of the meme rather than its content.

The commodifiability of nihilistic sentiments into memes further reinforces meaninglessness. As an example of fashionable nihilism, these memes represent merely an encounter with meaninglessness that reminds us we are hopeless to change the world but can find some relief in the comic absurdity of this recognition. The possibility for an ars nihil must exist at the confrontation with meaninglessness, not an encounter. The art of Greek tragedy is a pleasure derived from the confrontation with tragedy, while tragicomedy is merely an encounter with tragedy, because the pleasure is derived directly from comedy to alleviate the tragedy (Aristotle, ca. 335 B.C.E./2006; Foster, 2004). Likewise, an ars nihil must be an art of nihilation and not an art of comedy to quell the suffering of nihilation if neonihilism is to be overcome. Furthermore, we must return to the unifying factor in the irony of neonihilism that points to a connectedness, which creates the conditions for the possibility of solidarity and collective action as forms of resistance. As I mentioned previously, an ars nihil must be a collective enterprise, and neonihilism contains within it the possibility for this very unification.

Neonihilism and nihilistic memes

Nihilistic memes may merely be an encounter with meaninglessness, or a form of fashionable nihilism; however, this does not mean they are not effective ways to transmit information and sometimes even lead to important cultural phenomena and social action. For example, the Instagram user Quentin Quarantino (@quentin.quarantino real name Tommy Marcus), who has gained popularity for disseminating memes that satirize conservative American politics, created “The Quentin Quarantino Rush Limbaugh Memorial Planned Parenthood Meme Fundraiser” (see Quarantino, 2023) in 2021. The fundraiser was created shortly after the death of controversial right-wing political commentator Rush Limbaugh, who was known for strong anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ views. On the Quentin Quarantino Instagram page, Marcus posted a meme where he donated US$100 to Planned Parenthood in memory of Limbaugh and then developed a fundraiser to see if he could reach US$10,000 in donations for the sexual health nonprofit. In only three days, the satirical fundraiser reached over one million dollars in donations for Planned Parenthood, which is the largest provider of reproductive health services, including abortion, in America, and caters to LGBTQ+ communities.

What was started as a jab at Limbaugh’s legacy with a memorial fundraiser for a nonprofit that goes against many of his conservative views has become a push for a sociopolitical cause driven entirely by satire. Quarantino’s Instagram page now displays screenshots of other users showing appreciation for the fundraiser, many sharing stories of how Planned Parenthood saved their lives. Arguably, the entire scope of the original meme that began the fundraiser was to employ humor as a device against Limbaugh’s harmful legacy. The traction to pull in over a million in donations was for the sake of realizing a grand satirical gesture against right-wing views, and only indirectly benefitting advocacy for reproductive rights. Had a fundraiser been created without the satirical element, I would venture to guess it would fare like many other fundraisers, obtaining modest results. Herein lies the problem.

The primary driver for the success of this fundraiser was satire, and as such, the resolve to donate to Planned Parenthood was not in support of the foundation’s work and advocacy, but rather, as a jab against Limbaugh. The incentive to donate was to be part of a grand satire, to have a good story to tell, to participate in the viral moment as it was happening, which had the additional moral benefit of charity. One could argue that the end justifies the means, and it very well could in this isolated case. We do not need to question the motives of people donating to Planned Parenthood if the money goes to help people in need. However, if we are concerned with resisting sociopolitical issues and meaninglessness, it is unclear that fashionable nihilism can be helpful. Like tragicomedy, the uplifting principle in comedy alleviates the tragic so that we do not dwell on it. The Quarantino stunt becomes the uplifting principle that helps us avoid dwelling on LGBTQ+ and women’s sexual health, reproductive rights, and well-being. It avoids the discomfort of confronting these social problems when we take refuge in comedy to lift us out of the confrontation, resulting in a mere encounter. The focus becomes the popularity of Quarantino’s social media account, the merchandise you can buy from his page with the logo “The Quentin Quarantino Rush Limbaugh Memorial Planned Parenthood Meme Fundraiser” (see Quarantino, 2023) to signal that you were part of the viral moment, and the anticipation of Quarantino’s next stunt. The opportunity to commodify the success of the campaign was irresistible under neoliberalism. Although it is also understandable to want to generate income from one’s available revenue sources.

Is nihilistic memeing revolutionary? It uses the uplifting principle of humor to deliver poignant and informational messages that are sometimes forms of online activism. Whether this is effective in creating systemic changes remains undecidable, partially because any changes would likely appear as correlations rather than causation. Nevertheless, the popularity of nihilistic memes is indicative of both the growing hyperawareness of social issues and a collective desire for social change. Memes can also encompass marginalized communities that do not typically have other platforms. Previously unheard voices are part of our daily exposure to media. However, some voices can be commodified because their campaign has become marketable, such as the girl power movement and the love-your-body movement (see Gershon, 2011).

Neoliberalism obscures the question of effective resistance in neonihilism, which enables its persisting nihilistic tone. We face the uncertainty and undecidability of whether social change is possible in a meaninglessness world. Naturally, this uncertainty reinforces meaninglessness, which itself can be metasatirized. When neoliberalism succeeds in commodifying nihilistic sentiments, it further propagates the status quo and reinforces the idea that systemic changes are impossible. The individual is then drawn out of the social world and persuaded once more to seek change within the self. This is what Teo (2018a) calls the neoliberal form of subjectivity (NLFS), which renounces collective change in favor of personal change and endorses a new nihilism that regards sociopolitical change as impossible. The information age sustains the NLFS with overwhelming and catastrophizing global affairs. The message is that we (they?) are all corrupt, culpable, and nothing is to be trusted. Hence the possibility for stronger support of satirical fundraisers as a commitment to absurdism, rather than a genuine fundraiser.

Neonihilism is marked by a loss of faith in the secular institutions that promised to provide in the absence of moral institutions (i.e., religion). Faith in humanity is now being lost in the way faith in God was in 19th-century Europe, a sentiment echoed in postmodernism (see Lyotard, 1984). One might say in a Nietzschean tone that humanity is dead, for we have killed it. Then in the absence of faith in God, in secular institutions, and humanity, the focus is on the self to change with the available resources, and here the neoliberal self prospers. As an individualized and responsibilized neoliberal form of subjectivity, we seek happiness in self-activities to ameliorate the constant stress of unchangeable sociopolitical conditions (Teo, 2018a). Self-overcoming cannot be understood or accomplished in a vacuum, no less an existential vacuum (see Frankl, 1946/1984). Overcoming neonihlism—whether it has this intrinsic possibility or not—is not a self-overcoming project, but rather a recognition of unity in suffering under the same conditions with various intersecting consequences and a reaching out to others for collaborative meaning-making.

Neonihilism and the art of nihilation

What I am suggesting is that for us to overcome neonihilism we need a different approach rooted in an ars nihil. We have not overcome neonihilism because we have focused on coping and self-overcoming rather than collective meaning and solidarity, which actualizes the possibility for changing systemic issues and creating a world where meaning-making is possible. The irony in neonihilism, which actualizes through the confrontation with meaninglessness, acts as the point of connectedness with others because the realization of that irony is rooted in our shared neoliberal social matrix. Extending outward to others to unpack that irony becomes a communal confrontation with meaninglessness that does not end in hopelessness because we are no longer attempting to resolve the problem alone and within ourselves, but out in the world with others.

We can look at the existential transcend yourself, not as an individual project of self-overcoming but as a transcending of the self toward others, a going beyond the self and reconnecting with the world with others. Sartre (1944/1989) is famously quoted for the line “Hell is—other people” (p. 45) in his play No Exit. Many misunderstood this to mean that others are to be avoided but Sartre later stated it to mean that we judge ourselves based on how others see us, which can be a hellish experience, but this does not mean we should avoid relationships; on the contrary, it highlights the importance of those relationships to our self-understanding (Bakewell, 2016). In this way, avoiding Sartre’s notion of hell is precisely through focusing on improving our relationships with others. Heidegger (1927/1962) also suggested that meaning is only discovered out there in the world with others, that humans are socially interdependent, and that to be present with others is what it means to exist. The social and relational aspect of the existential transcend yourself became lost with the emergence of the humanistic transform yourself as it became a neoliberal cultural value that often results in commodify yourself—a technology of self-transformation based in an instrumental relationship with the self whose only outward extension to others is through instrumental relationships with others.

Why not an approach based on relationality? In other words, why not an approach that relies on intersubjectivity (see Husserl, 1931/2013)? Intersubjectivity is a term coined by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and it refers to thoughts and feelings exchanged both verbally and nonverbally between people, facilitated by empathy. Intersubjectivity gives us another way to understand ourselves through the relations we have with others. There are theories on intersubjectivity that use embodiment and relationality to theorize the subject (i.e., the self, being, person), the other, and the world (Zahavi, 2005). Embodiment allows us to theorize the immediacy of experience and emotions in the body while suggesting the impossibility of a solipsistic self (see Kirschner, 2013). Embodiment treats the mind and the physical body as a single phenomenon, which means that we cannot be solipsistic minds in an empty world because our bodies clearly interact with the world and others.

Relationality means there is a causal relationship between self and others, and self and society, and those relations are how we can understand subjectivity (see Richardson & Woolfolk, 2013). Relationality, as Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) conceived it, implies an ethical responsibility to the other as a primary and irreducible feature of intersubjectivity (Levinas, 1961/1969). It is a descriptive phenomenological account that explains subjectivity through the ethical relationship that is formed when our embodied subjectivity encounters the other (Morgan, 2007). In other words, when we become conscious of other people, that relation is first recognized as a spontaneous responsibility to those others. In intersubjectivity, relations form the core that explains how we understand ourselves. In this way, subjectivity is not understood prior to the relations it forms, but those relations are understood first to then understand the self. As Slife (2004) explains, one’s being is defined by their relations where, “each thing, including each person, is first and always a nexus of relations” (p. 159). Scholars have attempted to reintroduce intersubjectivity into psychology as ways to understand the self as a network of relationships rather than a single unit (see Gergen, 2009; Slife, 2004).

Seeing the self as a network of relations alleviates the problems of individualization, responsibilization, and self-governance to suggest an understanding of one’s relations as a reflection of the self (but not in an entirely deterministic way), a sense of shared responsibility to others and those social relations, and a sense of collective governance of social relations that conditions the possibilities for meaningful experiences of a world cared for and reassessed collectively. Intersubjectivity is then a descriptive account of the relations that exist among people and the world, and the ethical responsibilities that are embodied as a conscious awareness of the other in a face-to-face encounter (see Levinas, 1961/1969). Intersubjectivity is a way to explain psychological relationships rather than psychological objects (i.e., people). This forms the theoretical ground for relationality and can address the systemic problems in our neoliberal social matrix. It allows for solidarity and collective action to be integrated into theorizing subjectivity. Also, in treating subjectivity as embodied and relational, we can account for the performativity in context, multiplicitous and conflicting subjectivities, power relations and privilege, and reflexivity (see Teo, 2015). All of these ideas are crucial to the ars nihil as strategies for nihilating the neoliberal self.

The ars nihil begins with a nihilation of the neoliberal self, as an art of resistance to the individualizing, responsibilizing, competitive, and self-governing notions of self for social and economic survival. The art of nihilation concedes to the pleasure derived from the irony in the confrontation with meaninglessness in neonihilism, not as futility in itself but as futility in seeking answers and resolution within. It is a pleasure in realizing that the irony is not a vicious circle looping the world’s problems into a self that we endlessly transform without hope for changing the world, but rather the realization that we are not alone. That we are not individually and morally responsible for the meaninglessness we experience in the world is not the end of the ars nihil but merely the beginning. It is the starting point to reach out to others in mutual recognition of meaninglessness and the irony of self-work as a false neoliberal solution, and toward communal meaning-making, solidarity, and collective action to create the social changes necessary to disrupt our collective neoliberal social matrix. It is to find meaning in existing together and for one another by looking at the relations between us that define who we are as beings-in-action, not static identities. The ars nihil is an art of confronting meaninglessness, bringing to light its irony, and nihilating the neoliberal self as a sacrifice. It is to sacrifice the neoliberal self in pursuit of relationality, and in so doing leave nothing coherent to be commodified in the process. In this way, the ars nihil truly becomes an art of nothingness.

Implications for an ars nihil

The art of nihilating the neoliberal self is toward a shift in consciousness that aims at a relational understanding of self to counter the individualizing, responsibilizing, self-governing, and competitive norms of our neoliberal social matrix. This is not a change in beliefs or an act of willpower, but a strategy for finding resistance within existing power relations through solidarity and collective action with others. This begins with relationality, as a nexus of ethical relations to others from which we begin to understand our (inter)subjectivity as interdependent in a world with others (Gergen, 2009; Levinas, 1961/1969; Richardson & Woolfolk, 2013; Slife, 2004). First, a relational approach to intersubjectivity explains psychological relationships rather than psychological objects, which helps us move away from the subjectifying and objectifying power in neoliberal institutions and cultural values (see Foucault, 1979/2008). Second, in focusing on solidarity and collective action as both material relations and modes of resistance within existing power relations, liberation from oppressive norms becomes actualizable as political strategies, mutual aid, art, knowledge reassessment, and mobilization, and new discourses emerge on possible subjectivities that include intersectional and diverse identities.

Solidarity and collective action are at the core of the feminist movements, the civil rights movement, the alter-globalization movement, and activism that includes allyship and accompliceship (see Broad & Heckscher, 2003; Butler, 1990, 2004; Foucault, 1976/1978; Hallward, 2011; Luft, 2009; Pleyers, 2010; Powell & Kelly, 2017; Spivak, 1983/2000; Sumerau et al., 2020; Watzlawick et al., 1974). Relationality and collective resistance form effective strategies for confrontations with neonihilism and the possibility for collective meaning-making. The application of these strategies should not be limited to a philosophical proposition for interested individuals but can be incorporated into existing practices. For example, I have proposed a way to incorporate neonihilism as a theoretical lens in the emerging research on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy by engaging in group therapy to access connectedness and collective meaning-making to confront meaninglessness derived from systemic inequities (Plesa & Petranker, 2023). The ars nihil encompasses a collection of subversive strategies, which must not be contained within a closed definition, as contexts and strategies will inevitably change. As Butler (1990) suggests, subversion must remain somewhat ambiguous if it is to be subversive at all.