ABSTRACT
It might seem strange, in the light of our awareness of the institutionalised power of men in the larger society, to focus on self-denial; but I am going to be looking at how self-denial is a mode of existence in the world which is systematically generated within bourgeois culture and institutionalised within masculine identity. It is a significant paradox that men’s self-denial is both a source of men’s existential alienation and part of the infrastructure of men’s power. This shows how complex power is, and how inadequate are the conceptions of the workings of power that we inherit within social and political theories.
