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The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves

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Abstract

This interdisciplinary volume brings together specialists from different backgrounds to deliver expert views on the relationship between morality and emotion, putting a special emphasis on issues related to emotional shocks. One of the distinctive aspects of social existence today is our subjection to traumatic events on a global scale, and our subsequent embodiment of the emotional responses these events provoke. Covering various methodological angles, the contributors ensure careful and heterogeneous reflection on this delicate topic. With eleven original essays, the collection spans a wide variety of fields from philosophy and literary theory, to the visual arts, history, and psychology. The authors cover diverse themes including, philosophical approaches to political polarization; the impact of negative emotions such as anger on inter-relational balance; humour and politics; media and the idea of progress; photography and trauma discourse; democratic morality in modern Indian society; emotional olfactory experiences; phenomenological readings of spatial disorientation, and the significance of moral shocks. This timely volume offers crucial perspectives on contemporary questions relating to ethical behaviours, and the challenges of a globalized society on the verge of political, financial and emotional collapse.
The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves
Ana Falcato Sara GraçadaSilva
Editors
The Politics of
Emotional
Shockwaves
ISBN 978-3-030-56020-1 ISBN 978-3-030-56021-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8
© e Editor(s) (if applicable) and e Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2021
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Editors
Ana Falcato
IFILNOVA
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Lisboa, Portugal
Sara GraçadaSilva
IELT
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Lisboa, Portugal
IELT and IFILNOVA are supported by National Funds through
FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia—under the projects
UIDB/00657/2020 and UIDB/00183/2020, respectively. e editors
are supported by FCT under the contractual programme in accordance
with articles 4, 5, and 6 of the Law Decree no. 57/2016, of
August 29, altered by Law no. 57/2017, July 19.
vii
When we initially planned to edit this book, we were far from imagining
the social and political turmoil the world would be facing as we now
write this short acknowledgment message, still quarantined at our homes.
We would like to show our appreciation for everyone involved in the
making of this volume of which we are so very proud. Inevitably, the
covid pandemic aected everyone’s deadlines, tested everyone’s patience,
and inspired a new take on what was already a challenging endeavor.
e number of chapters collected in this book, and their diversity, is a
testament to the ever-growing and ebullient interest the topics of emo-
tion and morality originate, especially in this political context. Our most
sincere thanks to all the contributors for their enlightening chapters,
patience, and cooperation in these testing times. ank you also to the
editors at Palgrave for their professionalism and understanding during all
the phases of the process, especially Lauriane Piette and Dhanalakshmi
Muralidharan.
Acknowledgements
ix
Emotion and Political Polarization 1
Jesse Prinz
The Efficacy of Anger: Recognition and Retribution 27
Laura Luz Silva
Emotional Shockwaves, Populist Mode of Humour and
Post- Truth Politics 57
Javier Gil and Sergio Brea
Negativity in Contemporary Journalism Towards Civic and
Material Progress 81
João N. S. Almeida
Perverse Witness: The Role of Photography and Shock
Compulsion in Contemporary Trauma Discourse 101
Hannah R. Bacon
Contents
x Contents
Shockwaves of Rape and Shattering of Power in the
Contemporary Indian Web Series: The Case of Delhi Crime,
Made in Heaven, and Judgement Day 123
Shuhita Bhattacharjee
“You Stink!” Smell and Moralisation of the Other 147
Sara Graça da Silva
The Moral Significance of Shock 165
Oded Na’aman
Emotional Shock and Ethical Conversion 187
Ana Falcato
Making and Breaking Our Shared World: A Phenomenological
Analysis of Disorientation as a Way of Understanding
Collective Emotions in Distributed Cognition 203
Pablo Fernández Velasco and Roberto Casati
The Radiant Indifference of Being: The Mystic Fable of The
Passion According to G.H. 221
Nicolas de Warren
Index 251
xi
João N. S. Almeida is a PhD candidate of the Literary eory
Programme at the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa (School
of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon). He obtained his
Master’s degree in 2018 with a dissertation on Nietzsche’s early tropologi-
cal theory of language. Since then, he has presented several talks and
articles in academic circles on topics such as Fiction eory, Epistemology
and Ontology, Early Christianity, Sound eory, Art Cinema and Popular
Cinema, and Philosophy of Language.
Hannah R. Bacon holds a PhD in Philosophy from Stony Brook
University. Bacon’s dissertation employs the work of Henri Bergson to
present a durational conception of trauma and interrogates the conse-
quences this would have for a Levinasian intersubjective ethics. Broader
interests include aesthetics, phenomenology of embodiment, incarcera-
tion, care ethics, philosophy of race, gender, and sexuality, and social and
political philosophy. Bacon holds a Master’s degree in philosophy from
e New School.
ShuhitaBhattacharjee is Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts (English) at
the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. Having completed her
PhD from the University of Iowa, she is working on a Routledge USA
monograph that examines the representation of colonial idols in
n-de- siècle British and Anglo-Indian literature and on an Orient
Notes on Contributors
xii Notes on Contributors
Blackswan (Literary/Cultural eory Series) monograph on Postsecular
eory. She has written in English Literature in Transition and has current
and forthcoming publications on the Victorian Gothic and on diaspora
literature and culture with Palgrave Macmillan, Lexington Books
(Rowman and Littleeld), and Edinburgh University Press. Alongside
her academic interests, she has worked extensively in the social sector at
national and international levels in areas such as violence against HIV-
positive women, gendered approaches to sex education, gender- sensitive
HIV media campaigns, and awareness of workplace anti-sexual harass-
ment laws among university students.
SergioBrea holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Oviedo
(Spain). His dissertation is entitled e (at)traction of the center. A
philosophical- political proposal on the social liberal and fascist syntheses and
speeches in Europe and Spain. His research focus has been on issues in
political philosophy and includes articles and a book on Carl Schmitt’s
thought.
RobertoCasati is the Director of Institut Jean Nicod. In the last years,
he has worked mainly on the computational properties of shadow repre-
sentations. His last book, e Visual World of Shadows, written in collabo-
ration with Patrick Cavanagh, was published in 2019 with MIT Press.
More generally, Casati has worked on theoretical problems related to cog-
nitive artifacts in the framework of an extension and generalisation of the
“two modes” account of reasoning, which is meant to be an alternative to
“extended mind” theories. A number of training and eld projects are
ongoing or planned. e main aim is to dovetail the cognitive mechanics
underlying the use of artifacts (shifting, bridging, recycling, contracting,
and so on) in a unitary framework centered on the tradeo between rep-
resentational advantages. His present research is on waynding and navi-
gation, and he is writing a book on the centrality of maps for cognition.
Nicolasde Warren is Associate Professor of Philosophy & Jewish Studies
at Penn State University. He is the author of numerous articles and has
recently published A Momentary Breathlessness in the Sadness of Time and
co-edited Philosophers at the Front. He is writing a book on forgiveness
and another one on the impact of the First World War on German
Philosophy.
xiii Notes on Contributors
AnaFalcato holds a PhD in Philosophy from the NOVA FCSH, Lisbon,
Portugal. Between 2013 and 2015 she was a Humboldt Research Fellow
at the Johannes-Gutenberg University and the University of Oxford. Her
work has appeared in Studies in the Novel, Hypatia, Kant-Studien,
Wittgenstein-Studien and Daimon: Revista International de Filosofía. She
published Philosophy in the Condition of Modernism in 2018 and
Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity and Values (co-edited
with Luís Aguiar e Sousa) in 2019. She is a research fellow at IFILNOVA,
where she conducts a project about the novelistic and critical work of
J.M.Coetzee. Over the past four-and-a-half years she has organised sev-
eral international meetings at NOVA, and in all of them she systemati-
cally presented work on negative moral emotions, discussed through the
lenses of literary criticism, phenomenology, and philosophical, anthropo-
logical, and moral philosophy.
PabloFernández Velasco is pursuing his PhD on the phenomenology
of disorientation at Institut Jean Nicod (ENS, EHESS, CNRS) in Paris,
and he is a visitor at University College London, where he collaborates
with the Philosophy Department, the Spatial Cognition Lab, and the
Bartlett School of Architecture. His work combines an interdisciplinary
approach with philosophical methods, and his work has been published
in venues such as Journal of Consciousness Studies and Human Geographies.
He specialises in the phenomenology of space and in theories of cogni-
tion such as Distributed Cognition or the Predictive Processing
framework.
Javier Gil is an Associate Professor at the University of Oviedo. His
teaching and research interests encompass the areas of political philosophy,
democratic theory, normative ethics, bioethics, and, more recently, pub-
lic health ethics and disaster ethics. He is a member of the management
committee of the COST Action CA16211 “Reappraising Intellectual
Debates on Civic Rights and Democracy in Europe” (RECAST). Some
of his recent publications are “Checks and Ambivalences: On Pierre
Rosanvallon’s Conceptual History of the Political”, in Global Intellectual
History (2019); “Hilary Putnam”, in Amy Allen and Eduardo Mendieta
(eds.), Cambridge Habermas Lexicon (Cambridge University Press, 2019);
Abstaining citizenship”, in Claudia Wiesner et al. (eds.), Shaping
xiv Notes on Contributors
Citizenship (Routledge, 2018); “Modelling meritocracy”, in Philosophy
and Public Issues (2017); “Democratic authority and informed consent
in Kari Palonen and José María Rosales (eds.), Parliamentarism and
Democratic eory (Budrich, 2015).
SaraGraçada Silva received her PhD from Keele University in 2008
with a thesis on the rich interplay between nineteenth-century science
and literature: “Sexual Plots in Charles Darwin and George Eliot:
Evolution and Manliness in Adam Bede and e Mill on the Floss”. She is
appointed Researcher at the Institute for Studies of Literature and
Tradition, NOVA/FCSH, Portugal, working on evolutionary readings of
literature. She has a large experience with working in an interdisciplinary
environment and has collaborations with Durham’s Centre for the
Coevolution of Biology and Culture, and the Centre for the History of
Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. She has
contributed to the Victorian Literature Handbook, Dictionary of Nineteenth
Century Journalism, Utopian Studies, Royal Society Open Science, National
Geographic, PNAS, amongst others, and has edited two volumes with
Routledge on the relationship between Morality and Emotion: New
Interdisciplinary landscapes in Morality and Emotion. Routledge (2018),
and Morality and Emotion: (Un)conscious Journey to Being.
Routledge (2016).
OdedNa’aman is a Postdoctoral fellow at the Martin Buber Society of
Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Before coming to the
Hebrew University, Oded was a lecturer at the Stanford Philosophy
Department and a postdoctoral fellow at the McCoy Family Center for
Ethics in Society at Stanford University. He received his PhD in
Philosophy from Harvard University. Oded writes about ethics, moral
psychology, philosophy and literature, and political philosophy. Recently,
he has been developing a process-based view of the rationality of emo-
tions in general and of emotional change in particular. Recent publica-
tions include “e Rationality of Emotional Change: Toward a Process
View”, Noûs 2019; “e Fitting Resolution of Anger”, Phil Studies 2019.
xv Notes on Contributors
Jesse Prinz is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director of
Interdisciplinary Science Studies at the City University of New York,
Graduate Center. His research focuses on the perceptual, emotional, and
cultural foundations of human psychology. He is author of Furnishing the
Mind (2002), Gut Reactions (2004), e Emotional Construction of Morals
(2007), Beyond Human Nature (2012), and e Conscious Brain (2012).
Two other books are forthcoming: e Moral Self. New York: Oxford
University Press (in production) and Works of Wonder: A eory of Art.
Oxford: Oxford University Press (in production).
Laura Luz Silva is a Post-Doctoral researcher at the Center for
Philosophical Psychology at the University of Antwerp. She works with
Bence Nanay. Laura holds a PhD in Philosophy from University College
London and a BSc in Neuroscience from the same institution. Laura
works primarily on the Philosophy of Emotion, at the intersections of
Moral Psychology, Feminist Philosophy, and Philosophy of Mind. Her
research is empirically informed in two distinct senses: she strives to take
social reality seriously and engages with experimental work in the brain
and behavioral sciences. Lauras doctoral work focused on the emotion of
anger in particular, and defended its ability to play the roles feminist
philosophers have long advocated of it, by developing an account of
anger, and its rationality, that better ts empirical and phenomenological
reality. Laura’s research focuses on fundamental questions regarding what
emotions are, including what and how emotional states represent the
world around us, as well as epistemological questions regarding how
emotions play positive and distinctive roles in the generation of knowl-
edge. Laura is particularly interested in how these fundamental questions
help shed light on the practical role emotions play, or ought to play, in
our everyday and political lives.
xvii
We are living in dangerous times. e historical moment the world is
facing is one of absolute uncertainty, with the soil of democracy being
meticulously dismantled in front of our eyes on a daily basis. e subjec-
tive experience of such catastrophic events at a global scale is bound to be
one of emotional shock. It is thus natural to assume that under such
progression of existential threats, the emotional (im)balance of millions
of men and women reects these constant waves of emotional trauma,
impacting on social, cultural, political, religious, technological, and other
levels of existence.
Not so long ago, pre-covid crisis, the world was already facing a sense
of emotional disorientation, fuelled by the rise of political extremism and
growing economic adversities. When we set up to edit this book, we were
far from imagining that we would be confronted with such a shocking
turn of events regarding the sort of life we grew familiar with. We are still
in the beginning of this ght, and no one really knows how it will end,
but the shockwaves from the covid pandemic have already changed the
world as we knew it, and have so far succeeded in forcing us to assess new
priorities of survival. is situation also created a sense of unity within
and among nations which is hard to recall even in times of war.
Governments and politicians agreed that people came rst, and acts of
empathy and altruism grew and ourished mostly everywhere. Additional
Introduction: Thou Shall not
Believe in Fairies
xviii Introduction: Thou Shall not Believe in Fairies
laws and severe restrictions were also enforced to control and halt the
spread of the virus, which saw the normality of our lives and liberties
altered indenitely. e enforcement of measures diered according to
each country and culture specic circumstances and has been met with
various degrees of acceptance. It certainly raised a myriad of sensitive
questions regarding morality (or better still, moralities) and emotions.
It is interesting to observe the emotional waves that emerged during
this testing period. We use the word “wave” deliberately here for there has
been no word shared more widely over these weeks than “tsunami”. As
with any tsunami, the danger is greater as the waves travel inland, becom-
ing higher and higher until the unavoidable shock happens. As with a real
tsunami, the world has been hit hard. It was awakened from trivial petu-
lances to face real challenges and ght for our continuity as a species. e
motion ranged from a sense of distant unaected empathy when only the
other (national or foreign) was stricken to an assimilation of feelings of
panic and despair when the virus knocked at everyone’s door. Far and
wide, an initial selshness stemmed out of fear and was reected in com-
petitive and hoarding behaviour for the benet of ingroups only. Many,
including politicians, were caught preaching classical cases of “do as I say,
not as I do”, demanding from others what they themselves could not
carry out.
In his book Why Everyone (else) Is a Hypocrite (2011), Robert Kurzban
argues that people often fail to see their own inconsistencies. It is pre-
cisely this failure that makes us believe that everyone else is an hypocrite.
When explaining human behaviour, he recognises that people use moral-
ity strategically in social environments, manipulating it in both coopera-
tive and competitive situations. Furthermore, he claims that we are not so
dierent from the politicians we complain about other than the fact that
they are in the public eye. In a chapter masterfully titled “Morality is for
birds”, Kurzan notes “this might be one reason that politicians appear to
be such hypocrites. My guess is that—and maybe I’m just naive—politi-
cians, despite appearances, arent actually all that much more hypocritical
than the rest of us. It’s just that the rest of us skate by without anyone
noticing” (Kurzban 2011: 217). We are all guilty of having felt pleasure
at witnessing others’ misfortune. In this setting, politicians are great tar-
gets for this emotion, which cultural historian Tiany Watt Smith
xix Introduction: Thou Shall not Believe in Fairies
describes as Schadenfreude (from the German for “Schaden”, damage, and
“Freude”, joy):
Schadenfreude might be seen as the opposite of empathy, but even vicari-
ous sadness can be a pleasure. We all know people who love a good catas-
trophe, so long as it’s not happening to them. All that gossip and drama,
the boxes of wine, the tissues. Misery, as the old saying goes, loves com-
pany. It’s reassuring, to hear about other people’s bad decisions and errant
spouses and ungrateful children. It reminds us that it’s not only our own
hopes that get dashed—everybody else’s do, too. (Smith 2018)
In a rst clash which reected a raw survival reaction, the “me/us” instinct
spoke louder than the “them”, but it was not long before people realised
that the former could not succeed without the latter, and displays of pro-
social behaviour, generosity and support towards outgroups ourished.
Bonds between neighbours and strangers were strengthened, and a duty
of abnegation, norm following and sacrice towards a bigger, moral goal,
was incorporated. Indeed, in times of aiction, morality and law can act
as pacifying and unifying premises in controlling conicts that may arise
from the intersection of the various forces that pull us in dierent direc-
tions. Research in cognitive neuroscience and moral psychology suggests
that behaving morally and cooperating with others helps solve and nego-
tiate social problems. We want to feel we belong (and the sense of belong-
ing is crucial here), to a group, to a community, to the world.
Over the years, research has shown that group mentality is crucial for
successful social interactions. Whilst most emotions are about the “me”,
we can feel strong emotions to what happens to other people, something
evolutionary psychologists such as Jonathan Haidt call moral emotions:
“e moral emotions can be dened as those emotions that are linked to
the interests or welfare either of society as a whole or at least of persons
other than the judge or agent” (Haidt 2003: 276). As “biological, psycho-
logical, and social entities”, our exposure to society and to a specic con-
text from infancy to old age impacts deeply on our actions and on the
way we react and perceive the other and ourselves, morally and emotion-
ally (Schechtman 2014: 197). In practicing of our ability to put ourselves
in someone else’s shoes on a daily basis, we constantly struggle to
xx Introduction: Thou Shall not Believe in Fairies
counterbalance our heliocentric tendencies with the need for cooperation
and collaboration, and within this eort, morality provides a calming,
soothing sense of security and identity by setting behavioural boundaries.
As Marieke Vermue and colleagues note in a recent study on trust behav-
iour, “group memberships form an important part of our self-concept”,
and is a “strong predictor of cooperation between individuals” (Vermue
etal. 2019: 1004).
In this book, we propose looking at emotions beyond the sheer con-
ceptual and meta-conceptual level—that is, in terms of knowing what
makes an emotion moral and how we know that is the case—and
approach strong emotional episodes head-on. Our intention is to account
for this new global disposition of calamity, lack of orientation and politi-
cal incongruence, and analytically zoom in this epochal imbalance in dif-
ferent parts of the world, in dierent media, and in as many dierent
types of emotional events. Emotional responses cut across cultural, social
and political dierences, and the shape and grade of interpersonal feed-
back naturally accompanies these variations.
e intensity and success of social exchanges depends on the trust
people allocate to feelings of belonging and community. A few years ago,
James Jasper, a sociologist from NewYork, made a comment at a confer-
ence on Democracy and Emotions at the Centre for the History of
Emotions, at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, which, thinking about
it now, hit us for both its simplicity and reach within the present context.
Jasper pointed out how, not so long ago, having emotions excluded peo-
ple from citizenship whereas nowadays they are perceived as a require-
ment. Whether they are real or fake, that is another question.
e current global situation has also made ideological divisions more
pronounced, and politics has not escaped this vivisection. On the con-
trary, political gospel in democratic societies appears more rened than
ever. e rise of political polarisation is the focus of Jesse Prinz’s discus-
sion, which reviews this trend “through a specic lens: the role of emo-
tions”. Prinz argues that emotions allow us to better understand the
sources of political segmentation, and oers a tridimensional analysis of
the ways in which they contribute to this reality: through an aective
look, zooming in on the issue of ideology and, nally, on questions of
identity. While the author focuses primarily on the situation in the US,
xxi Introduction: Thou Shall not Believe in Fairies
his analysis retains a global perspective in an eort to present possible
solutions to encompass diverse communities, for “in order to understand
polarization, it is important to look beyond party divisions in any
country”.
Precisely such widespread feeling of political irresponsibility and impu-
nity exacerbates the expression of violent emotions. is is the topic of
Laura Luz Silva’s chapter in this collection. “e Ecacy of Anger:
Recognition and Retribution” is an engaging defense of the moral value
of anger in ghting social injustice and seeking recognition. Silva makes
her case against Martha Nussbaum’s reasoned attack on the feasibility of
anger for moral and political life, by examining the action-driven benets
of an extremely destructive feeling that can, however, serve the purpose of
a radical wish to change the status quo and improve the life conditions of
an unfavoured group or single individual. e essay defends this shift in
the interpretation of the main features of anger and its ecacy for moral
life by analysing its underlying motive: seeking recognition.
e present climate of political polarisation and widespread mistrust
in public institutions and political agents may equally arouse new forms
of popular humor. Javier Gil and Sergio Brea’s contribution oers a criti-
cal approach to new manifestations of a political sense of humor based on
expressions of moral tribalism. e authors have a keen interest in the
unstable socio-political eects of a shared sense of humor, wisely claiming
that “any politically centered approach has to take into account these
views and explore the idea that laughing at each other—with malice and
benevolence—may both facilitate the democratic engagement and
endanger the mutual coexistence”. In a wide- scope analysis of new forms
of political and anti-political expression available to almost everyone
nowadays—be it social media, sitcoms, cartoons, web-series and movies
or popular novels—Gil and Brea defend that such digital forums for
political debate can only serve democracy if they manage to preserve or
reinstate the hiatus between political emotions and facts, rather than con-
tributing to supplant the latter.
e portrayal of emotional shocks is not always objective but often
dependent on a series of social and political biases which are in turn per-
petuated by media outlets all over the world. In his chapter about nega-
tivity in contemporary journalism, João Almeida addresses this situation,
xxii Introduction: Thou Shall not Believe in Fairies
describing the role of the media in the emotional response of societies to
the present and to post-enlightenment promises of progress. In his exam-
ination, he acknowledges the contradictory position of the media which
“praises material and technological progresses while at the same time
delights itself in presenting a decaying world”. is stance, he argues,
oscillates between a conservative mindset focused on objectivity defended
by the school of Walter Lippmann, and a progressive angle with a desire
to change the world for the better inspired by John Deweys pragmatism.
Almeida alerts to the risks of having what he considers the fundamental
notions related to modern citizenship, such as res publica, free speech, or
individual rights, directly mediated by the journalistic class. As he
explains, medias conduct can be somewhat dishonest when portraying
the positive evolution of democratic capitalist systems for wanting to
paint the worst possible picture. While it often focuses on showing a
decline in civil and economic betterments, such as poverty, economic
inequality or social mobility, the truth is, Almeida notes “ that, in relative
and proportional terms, most of those indicators have in fact been
improving”. is shows a clear conict with what the author sees as a
self-proclaimed objectivist ethics, and highlights the long dispute Almeida
identies between objectivity and interpretation in journalism.
e search for the real is often associated with a confrontation with the
traumatic. Increasingly, the dissemination of shocking images is a testa-
ment to memory and remembrance. It is also, we dare add, an expected
proof of existence. In her chapter about trauma photography, Hannah
Bacon insightfully describes the attitude shift concerning the way in
which people interact with emotionally charged images and what she
calls the fantasy of witnessing. ere is, she notes, a rising preoccupation
“to look at our own looking, to witness the desire to witness” that trans-
forms the framing of photographs into both interpretative and represen-
tative acts. In this thought- provoking chapter, Bacon explores the human
fascination with trauma and victimhood seen through a variety of means
(be it the evening news, lms, talk shows, or others), and ponders on the
dangers of this dissemination to an anesthetisation of feeling due to the
repetition of shock. Dwelling into the notion of trauma discourse, she
discusses the risk of viewing shocking images in order to prove our moral
superiority: “it satises this vicarious and perverse itch [for] morally
xxiii Introduction: Thou Shall not Believe in Fairies
elevating cathartic desire in a way that appropriates the pain of the other
without motivating the viewer to alleviate it”. By comparing Judith Butler
and Susan Sontag’s contrasting perspectives regarding the use of shocking
images (the former defending their viewing, the latter opposing it), Bacon
argues that both arguments miss the point in that they fail to recognise
that images are only necessary to make trauma real to those who are not
rsthand experiencing these traumas. Her thesis acknowledges those
traumas as real beyond the “performance and fantasy of vicarious wit-
nessing”, which does not entail political action and is thus insucient.
Instead, she defends a way of seeing shocking realities that allows the
witness to act and “honestly see their own privileged vantage without
appropriating the pain of the other”.
In a rather similar vein and making much from a quasi-sociological
reading of gender issues in contemporary Indian society, Shuhita
Bhattacharjee deploys a careful analysis of three well-known Indian web
series: e Case of Delhi Crime, Made in Heaven, and Judgement Day.
Bhattacharjee’s theme is violence directed against women, and how crim-
inal behavior committed against an unprotected group in modern India
can be sanctioned by a deeply conservative political structure. Her
impressive analysis of one of the few available critical weapons against the
ancient caste system and its politicised exercise—a powerful movie indus-
try—leaves plain as day the hypocrisy of contemporary Indian society
(specically in what regards such pressing issues as violation).
Bhattacharjee’s text cleverly addresses the topic of gender violence by
reporting equally violent sketches from the three series picked up for
critical scrutiny. e visual treatment of bodily violence made against
women suddenly brings to front stage the shocking impact of forms of
social behavior that an ancient power structure refuses to punish.
Continuing the focus on unprotected, vulnerable groups, the follow-
ing chapter by Sara Silva explores how the sense of smell is intimately
linked to our emotions and morals in the context of the refugee crisis. As
a species, we make use of scents to make decisions, judge pleasant and
unpleasant situations, and avoid dangerous environments. Historically,
however, as Silva notes, smell has always been somewhat overlooked in
favour of other senses, in particular vision or hearing. In her essay, Silva
revitalises the value of this particular sense by presenting a history of its
xxiv Introduction: Thou Shall not Believe in Fairies
evolution and a fresh take on its importance in the context of large-scale
migration and refugee inux. Presenting smell as a “sign of identity, sta-
tus, and social class”, Silva explores the negative framing of the foreign by
focusing on how these particular outgroups are “especially vulnerable to
contempt and hate behaviours because of the scents associated with their
existence”, establishing a relationship between olfaction and prejudice.
e topic of civic violence—or, better yet, of the systematic exercise of
violence made against civilians living in a disputed shared territory—has
become dramatically commonplace in this calamitous twentieth-rst
century. is is the starting point for Oded Na’aman’s instigating medita-
tion on the relevance of the human capacity to be shocked for our moral
life. Our susceptibility to shock is the mark of a sane moral performance
as well as of an important openness to the potentially thorny—even cha-
otic—features of a shared human life. e author takes Benjamin’s notion
of “aura” and deploys it in several readings of both ctional and real-life
situations, in which a reasonable awareness of the moral meaning of sur-
rounding events (especially another’s suering) is a key condition of per-
sonal responsiveness, and even of mental health. e capacity to be
shocked is all the more important for us, the author argues, because we
can experience its failure as the beginning of a deep moral aw. us, the
true moral signicance of shock reveals itself in the disturbing eects of a
personal incapacity to suer such a thing.
e experience of a moral shock and its aftermath is indeed mysteri-
ous. As an instigating topic for reection, especially in the strange
moment the world is facing today, this topic can be addressed with con-
trasting tools and deliver equally dierent conclusions. Honoring the
organising theme of this volume and trying to gure out the potential
ethical gain behind a shocking incident, Ana Falcato discusses the rela-
tion between emotional shock and moral conversion. e essay uses a
crossed methodology of analysis, linking phenomenology and moral
approaches to negative emotions, in an eort to describe the potentially
decisive impact of a moral shock on one’s convictions and even life-
changing decisions. e importance of an emotional shock, the essay
defends, can also be assessed in the way it helps to understand the back-
ground of the specic shocking episode. For that end, analytically sepa-
rating shock from the close experience of surprise is a key conceptual
exercise.
xxv Introduction: Thou Shall not Believe in Fairies
At times, we are surprised by experiences of disorientation. Getting
lost allows us to devise strategies to either reassess our orientation, or
engage in exploration. To do so, one must be connected to the surround-
ing environment, either through our bodies or with the help of technol-
ogy. In their chapter, Pablo Fernandez and Roberto Casati show what
happens when this connection is weakened or severed. ey discuss how
disorientation transforms our perception of the world by focusing on the
role emotions play in distributed cognitive processes such as queuing or
navigating, through the lens of a situated approach to emotions. As the
authors explain, “situated approaches to emotion oer an alternative to a
long tradition of considering emotions as purely internal states or pro-
cesses. In contrast to such a tradition, situated approaches consider emo-
tions as forms of skilful engagement with the world that are both
scaolded by and dynamically coupled to the environment”. While argu-
ing for a phenomenology of disorientation, Fernández and Casati dem-
onstrate how aective states help regulate cognitive processes by syncing
the dierent elements of a distributed cognitive system, be it in humans
or artefacts. Using the example of the practice of an Alaskan Eskimo
community of shaming individuals who got lost in the wild, the authors
show how emotional regulation occurs both synchronically (in the
unfolding of the emotion itself, such as anger at being shamed) and dia-
chronically (in the process of acquiring an emotional repertoire, e.g., the
emotion of shame promoting the learning of navigational skills).
e volume nishes with a reection about a moment of social turbu-
lence and emotional upheaval that demands a reassessment of the mean-
ing of life as a whole. An original eort to rethink the human condition
in existential terms is oered by Nicolas de Warren in his chapter about
Clarice Lispector’s e Passion According to G.H. De Warren wisely reads
Lispector’s story as an ontological fable about our situation in the world.
Contrary to what Heideggerians use to preach, Lispector—with other
twentieth-century philosophers and writers, like Emil Cioran—rightly
allegorises the gratuity of our rootedness in the world as a struggle against
the drama of having been born. e meaning of this ontological excess
can be disclosed to us in such a trivial episode as meeting a cockroach in
a closet. e nauseating overtones expressed in Lispector’s fable comes to
xxvi Introduction: Thou Shall not Believe in Fairies
show the keenness of our “personal” stories with the natural, disgusting
stu making up animal life in all its splendor.
is collection of essays is an expressive attempt to better understand
what happened to the world in recent (and not so recent) years. While
the dangers and ruptures brought about by globalisation began to be
anticipated several decades ago, few prophets of our time could have
imagined the twists and turns of the dire political, economical, environ-
mental, and sanitary crises with which we are currently presented. is
widespread feeling of fear and fracture may well be the post-slumbering
reaction of a generation accustomed to comfort. Be it as it may, current
circumstances deserve and demand the eort of a deep, mature reection.
is book is our modest contribute to this challenge.
AnaFalcato
SaraGraçadaSilva
References
Haidt J. 2003. Elevation and the Positive Psychology of Morality. In Flourishing:
Positive Psychology and the Life Well-Lived, ed. C.L. Keyes and J. Haidt,
275–289. Washington, DC: e American Psychological Association.
Haidt, Jonathan, and Joseph, Craig. 2008. e Moral Mind: How Five Sets of
Innate Intuitions Guide the Development of Many Culture- Specic Virtues,
and Perhaps Even Modules. e Innate Mind, Volume 3, Foundations and
the Future, 3.
Lispector, C. 2012. e Passion According to G.H. NewYork: New Directions.
Kurzban, Robert. 2011. Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the
Modular Mind. Princeton University Press.
Schechtman, M. 2014. Staying Alive. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Smith, Tiany Watt. 2018. Schadenfreude: e Joy of Another’s Misfortune. UK:
Prole; US: Little, Brown.
Vermue, M., Meleady, R., and Seger, C.R. 2019. Member-to-Member
Generalisation in Trust Behaviour: How Do Prior Experiences Inform
Prosocial Behaviour Towards Novel Ingroup and Outgroup Members?.
Current Psychology 38: 1003–1020. https://doi.org/10.1007/
s12144-019-00289-8.
1
© e Author(s) 2021
A. Falcato, S. Graça da Silva (eds.), e Politics of Emotional Shockwaves,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8_1
Emotion andPolitical Polarization
JessePrinz
Political polarization is a major source of conict in democratic societies,
and there is evidence that it is on the rise. Polarization has been most
actively studied by political scientists, but it also raises psychological
questions about the underlying mechanisms, historical questions about
causes, and normative questions about whether and when polarization is
problematic. is chapter will touch on all of these issues, but through a
specic lens: the role of emotions. By focusing on emotions, we can bet-
ter understand the psychological bases of our political divisions.
I will begin with a characterization of polarization, reviewing research
on its increase over time. I then turn to three dierent ways emotions
contribute: aective outlook, ideology, and identity. I will argue that the
rst two factors are explanatorily inadequate on their own; identity plays
a pivotal role. I will conclude with some speculation about causes of
polarization, some of its consequences, and an assessment of whether it
should be a matter of serious concern.
J. Prinz (*)
City University of New York, New York, NY, USA
e-mail: jesse@subcortex.com
2
1 The Nature ofPolarization
1.1 What Is Political Polarization?
Political polarization is dicult to dene in a neutral way, because some
initially appealing denitions bring in controversial commitments.
Polarization clearly involves some kind of division between groups, but
not all group divisions are polarized; there is no polarization dividing
butchers and bakers, for example. It is tempting to dene polarization in
terms of ideological division, but it presupposes that ideology is essential,
and that, we will see, can been challenged. One might opt for a more
neutral approach and dene polarization in terms of negative attitudes;
two groups are polarized if they harbor mutual animus. is may, in fact,
be true of polarized groups, but, for the purposes of this chapter, that
makes emotional division true by denition, rather than treating emo-
tions as a possible mechanism underlying a phenomenon that can be
characterized in some other way. An appeal to animus is also too broad
when it comes to political polarization. ere are groups who dislike each
other (e.g., mods and rockers in 1960s England), without necessarily
dividing on political lines.
I will opt here for the following working denition. Two groups are
polarized if they regard the boundary between them as both political and
oppositional. “Political” here is intentionally vague. In most cases, politi-
cal polarization involves political party aliation, but it need not. For
example, in transnational cases, we can talk about a political divide
between two countries, ignoring domestic party divisions. ere can also
be regional dierences within a party (e.g., Southern and Northern
Democrats in the US during the 1960s). A political divide can involve
party aliation, ideology, platform, local obligations that could impact
voting patterns, and even choice of candidates within a party. Some
divides are intersectional, such as the regional case, as well as divisions of
class, ethnicity, and religion, which can contribute to political factioniza-
tion. ese latter divisions need to be political, but they begin to count
as such when they become determinants of such factors as platform refer-
ences, party alliances, or voting behavior.
J. Prinz
3
To call a boundary “oppositional” is also intentionally vague. Politically
polarized groups may favor policies that are antithetical (e.g., for and
against legal abortion), but they need not be. ere can be a perception
of division that transcends legislative incompatibility. is is evident in
cases where people show patterns of enduring party membership, such
that it would be anathema to vote for the other party’s candidate, regard-
less of platform. Polarized boundaries can also lead voters to feel that they
must pick sides—they “cannot credibly claim neutrality” (LeBas 2011).
In democracies where leading parties are ideologically close, polarizing
aliations can still arise. e opposition is ideational, not necessarily
logical. is is sometimes captured by saying that polarization manifests
itself as an “us versus them” attitude. In polarized climates, it would seem
odd for a person to move willy nilly between two political groups.
Polarization does not preclude compromise, however; indeed, the very
word, “compromise” implies some kind of instrumental and provisional
agreement between otherwise opposed groups. Compromise implies giv-
ing something up, and, thus, any context in which that concept is opera-
tive is also one in which compromise is dicult.
1.2 Is Polarization ontheRise?
I have characterized polarization in terms of oppositional political divi-
sions between groups. e denition entails that polarization is a matter
of degree. Indeed, it can be graded along a number of dimensions. ere
can be variation in the degree of perceived opposition between groups, in
the number of people who aliate with opposed groups, on the rigidity
of those aliations (e.g., do people vote for the same group within an
election cycle?), and the xity over time. Some of these dimensions can
be subdivided further, or operationalized in dierent ways. Perceived
opposition can involve intergroup attitudes, willingness to compromise,
willingness to form alliances, and so on. Given such dimensions of varia-
tion, we can ask whether polarization has changed over time.
Some have argued that polarization is on the rise in certain parts of the
world. Much of this work has focused on party division within the US
(e.g., Abramowitz and Saunders 2008), but there is also evidence for
Emotion and Political Polarization
4
increased polarization in many other nations. In a recent edited volume,
Coruthers and O’Donahue (2019) survey polarization in Poland, Turkey,
Kenya, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Colombia, and Brazil. LeBas
(2018) looks at polarization in Kenya, Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Côte
d’Ivoire. Lynch (2016) examines rising polarization in the Arab world,
including Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Gulf countries.
In Western Europe, evidence is mixed. Polarization seems to be declin-
ing in Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom (Boxell etal.
2020). In places like Germany, it is not unusual for voters to vote for
dierent parties. Still, many European countries have seen an accelerat-
ing growth in right-wing extremism. Right-wing parties have seen a dra-
matic upswing in the number of seats held in the EU parliament, while
centrist parties have experienced a steady decline. Left-leaning Green par-
ties have also grown rapidly. Looking at Germany, again, we can see
Greens and the Alternativ für Deutschland (two polarized parties) gain-
ing ground, as centrist seats slip away.
In what follows, I will focus on the situation in the US, though I will
also retain a global perspective, because I hope to show that the situation
in North America does not always generalize to the rest of the world. In
order to understand polarization, it is important to look beyond party
divisions in any one country.
e claim that polarization is escalating in the US is somewhat conten-
tious. Fiorina (2017) has been an outspoken skeptic, noting that party
membership numbers have been stable for decades, and that the majority
of American voters are not party aliated; according to a recent poll,
38% are independents, as compared to 31% and 28%, who are Democrats
and Republicans (Pew 2019). Still, the same poll shows that the vast
majority of independents lean towards one party, leaving only 7% who
have no preference. e number of “non-leaners” is slowly shrinking.
Overall, party membership has not changed much, but there is strik-
ing evidence for polarization of attitudes; the two main parties are grow-
ing more distant and more hostile. Donald Trump is the most divisive
president in recent history: the gap between Democrats and Republicans
on his approval ratings is unprecedented, with Barack Obama close
behind, followed by George W. Bush (Jones 2019). Since the 1990s,
Democrats have gotten more liberal and Republicans more conservative;
J. Prinz
5
the gap between their views on policies has tripled (Pew 2014). For exam-
ple, in 1994, Democrats and Republicans were equally opposed to immi-
grants; now there is a 20-point spread. Likewise, there was only a 10-point
dierence in their stance on strict environmental laws; now the gap is 35
points. Bishop and Cushing (2008) show another sign of polarization:
Since the 1970s, the number of American living in “landside counties”
has doubled; thus, over 60% of the population lives in politically homog-
enous communities, where one party reliably wins elections by margins
higher than 20 points.
Polarization often takes on an emotional cast. ere has also been a
dramatic increase in negative sentiments between the two major parties.
is is what political scientists call “aective polarization” (Iyengar etal.
2012; Kimball et al. 2018). Some studies use “feeling thermometers” to
ask how voters feel about political parties. Between 1964 and 2012, there
was about a 30% increase in the number of voters who have very warm
feelings toward their own party; meanwhile, very cold feelings towards
the opposed party quadrupled (Pew 2016). In 1964, only about 12% of
partisans felt very cold towards the opposition, and now about half do,
and nearly 80% feel some degree of coldness. Similarly, between 1994
and 2016, the number of Democrats reporting “very unfavorable” atti-
tudes towards Republicans has grown from 16% to 55%; Republicans
condemnation of Democrats has similarly climbed from 17% to 58%
(ibid.). is trend is continuing. Between 2016 and 2019, both
Republicans and Democrats came to see members of the other party as
more close-minded, unintelligent, and immoral, and 78% say that parti-
san divisions are growing (Pew 2019).
It is dicult to pin down the cause of these divisions. Party dierences
grew when Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act sending
Southern Democrats to the Republican Party, but much of the division is
more recent. One key factor is changing demographics. Cultural and eth-
nic diversity is on the rise, and white voters in smaller communities who
feel like their way of life and access to power is under threat.
e demographic analysis parallels a plausible explanation of European
polarization: there, the rise of right-wing nationalism has been linked to
the rising tide of immigration. Similarly, in Côte d’Ivoire, polarization is
being fuelled by conicts between migrants and indigenes. But, as we will
Emotion and Political Polarization
6
see below, polarization may have many causes, and its causes may vary
from place to place. For now, the key point is that polarization is real and
rising in some places. Our next task is to explore the underlying
psychology.
2 Polarization andEmotion
2.1 Affective Outlook
I turn now to the main theme of this chapter: the role of emotions in
polarization. We have already seen that political divisions are accompa-
nied by negative feelings. Polling data tells us that these attitudes exist,
and psychological research can deepen our understanding. Various lines
of investigation implicate a number of emotional processes. Emotions do
not tell us the whole story, of course, but they play key roles, and examin-
ing these can teach us something about the psychological mechanisms
that sustain polarization.
e rst topic I want to consider can be captured by the phrase “aec-
tive outlook.” It is sometimes suggested that the two major parties in the
US dier in their emotional dispositions. According to this idea, mem-
bers of each party tend to react to things somewhat dierently, and this
emotional divide could be related to dierent perspectives and concerns,
thus contributing to division. It is unclear how far these patterns extend
to other national contexts, but, before raising that question, let’s look at
the American divide.
Some researchers claim to show that American conservatives are more
prone to fear than liberals (see Jost and Amodio 2012, for review). ey
show greater physiological responses to threatening stimuli, like spiders
and wounds, a stronger startle reex, and they have larger amygdala vol-
umes on average (Oxley etal. 2008). Dodd etal. (2012) found that con-
servatives xate faster and longer on negative stimuli. Heightened fear
may also have implications for trust. Conservatives often seem less trust-
ing than liberals. Among the negative adjectives most often used in
Donald Trump’s twitter feed, we nd: fake, crooked, dishonest, phony,
J. Prinz
7
and rigged. ese seem like attempts to express and must distrust and
that, in turn, can be seen as a kind of threat. Fear might be related to an
elevated sense of threats such as job loss from immigration or rising
crime. Liberals, in contast, place emphasis on hope (a key term in Barak
Obamas rhetoric). When Trump and Ronald Reagan invoke hope in
their slogan, “Make America Great Again,” it is tinged with fear that
things are degenerating.
ere is also a large body of evidence linking conservatives to disgust.
Conservatives show higher levels of disgust sensitivity (Inbar etal. 2009),
and this pattern has held up cross nationally (Inbar etal. 2012). Carney
etal. (2008) report that conservatives have more cleaning products, indi-
cating a fear of germs. Relatedly, reminders of cleanliness can make peo-
ple’s political judgments more conservative (Helzer and Pizarro 2010).
Disgust has been associated with socially conservative values, such as
negative attitudes towards gay marriage and abortion.
e foregoing ndings have led Hibbing etal. (2014) to posit a “nega-
tive bias” among conservatives, though this may generalize too far. ere
is recent evidence that liberals may be more prone to anger than conser-
vatives (Yang etal. 2019). Liberal anger has been implicated in attitudes
towards climate change. Steiger etal. (2019) also show that liberals report
more contempt than conservatives when considering politicians on the
opposing party. Liberals are often stereotyped as smug (Etelson 2019),
and Hillary Clinton weakened her election bid by calling Trump sup-
porters “a basket of deplorables.
ere is also research suggesting that liberals are more prone to empa-
thy, or at least more likely to self-ascribe and endorse empathy as a moti-
vation—another nding that had held up cross-nationally (Hasson etal.
2018). is may lie behind such clichés as “bleeding heart,” which has
been applied to liberals. e phrase “tree hugger” is used to suggest that
liberal empathy extends, perhaps absurdly, to nature. ere is also a ste-
reotype that liberals are hypersensitive, which has been enshrined in the
pejorative term “snowake.” In debates about political correctness these
are used by conservatives to suggest that liberals have a thin skin.
Such observations paint a picture of two very dierent aective out-
looks. Conservatives are presented as highly reactive to threats (fear and
disgust), while liberals are sensitive types, who feel each others’ pain, but
Emotion and Political Polarization
8
show anger and contempt to those who are perceived as lacking adequate
sensitivity. Dierences in aective outlook imply pre-political personality
divide. A clash in temperament might be used to explain why liberals and
conservatives have diculty getting along. ese emotional dispositions
can also be related to policy preferences, and they might also explain radi-
cally divergent perspectives on world events. For example, a terrorist
attack might primarily be seen as a threat by conservatives, whose perpe-
trators need to be eradicated. Liberals might see the terrorists as freedom
ghters, who are victims of imperialist oppression. Likewise, immigrants
may be seen as competitors by conservatives, and as a downtrodden group
in need of care by liberals. Disgust sensitivity may fuel conservative atti-
tudes towards variation in gender identity and even contribute to racist
attitudes, insofar as disgust can contribute to dehumanization. For empa-
thetic white liberals, sexual and ethnic minorities are seen as vulnerable
groups who must be protected.
Such research points to an intimate link between emotions and politi-
cal divisions, but two major caveats are also needed. First, much of this
work is highly reductive: it relates small and graded dierences in emo-
tional dispositions to political orientations in a way that inates their
impact. Reading this literature, one might be tempted to think that
innate emotional dierences determine one’s party preferences, when, in
fact, factors such as demography (think red states and blue states) are
vastly more powerful determinants. It seems more likely that emotion
dispositions are the result of political norms, rather than the other way
around. Second, it’s not clear how far these ndings generalize when
looking beyond the Democrat/Republican divide. Despite some cross-
national support, it’s unclear whether people on the left always t the
snowake stereotype: this may apply more to white, privileged, Western,
liberals than to people of color, to socialists, and anarchists, and other
leftists, and to secularists, who are the liberals in states with powerful
Islamist parties. In addition, as we will see in the next section, the liberal/
conservative distinction is not the only basis of polarized divisions. So the
aective outlooks considered here may shed light on the US, but it would
be a leap to assume that it captures political divisions more globally.
J. Prinz
9
2.2 Ideology
In the foregoing section, we saw that dierent emotional dispositions
might relate to political attitudes, but dierences in attitudes need not
presuppose dierent underlying emotions. e very same emotions could
bolster attitudinal dierences, provided dierent people get upset about
dierent things. So even if we assume that partisans have the same suite
of emotions, we can imagine that these get directed in opposing ways.
Members of dierent political groups have dierent values, and values
can be analyzed as emotionally grounded beliefs.
In political contexts, there is often another word that is closely related to
values: ideology. Here I want to explore the role of emotions in ideology, by
oering an analysis of ideology in terms of values, and values in terms of
emotions. Values are most often discussed in the context of ethics and
moral psychology, and there has been little discussion of ideology among
ethicists and moral psychologists. I think they are intimately linked, if not
quite identical, and I will begin by spelling out the relationship.
“Ideology” has been dened in many dierent ways (Gerring 1997). One
useful analysis comes from McClosky (1964: 362):
[I]deologies [are] systems of belief that are elaborate, integrated, and coher-
ent, that justify the exercise of power, explain and judge historical events,
identify political right and wrong, set forth the interconnections (causal
and moral) between politics and other spheres of activity, and furnish
guides for action.
ere is a lot to unpack here, but the core idea that I want to distill is
that ideologies are systems of beliefs that are used to justifying matters of
political concern: power arrangements, political norms, and the relation-
ship between political and other spheres. To justify is to give a reason in
favor of something, and, when it comes to politics, justifying reasons
bottom out in core beliefs about what is good and bad, politically speak-
ing. To call ideologies “systems” is to say that these justifying reasons
often come as packages (“coherence” may be overstated, though people
view their ideologies as coherent). Classic examples of ideologies include
Nazism, Communism, and Classical Liberalism. Each encompasses a set
Emotion and Political Polarization
10
of views of the principles that a just state must uphold, such as racial
purity, non-alienated labor, or civil liberties. ese foundational princi-
ples guide statecraft and policy, and can be used to interpret historical
events (e.g., they settle which historical changes are progressive).
Given this account of ideology, we can see how values come in. e
foundational principles or justifying reasons in question can be regarded
as values. A value, in contrast to a non-evaluative belief, is a belief about
how things should be. It is a belief about what states of aairs are good or
right. us, an ideology is a system of values concerning the politi-
cal sphere.
e term “ideology” is sometimes used derisively to imply that a set of
beliefs is merely a matter of conviction, transcending pure reason and
facts. I would submit, however, that this is true of values quite generally.
As Hume (1739) argued long ago, values cannot be derived from reason
alone (see Prinz 2007, for an extended discussion). Once we move beyond
saying how things are, and start specifying how they should be, we are
expressing or preferences. is is where emotions come in. For Hume,
matters of value, unlike matters of fact, are based on feelings. To say that
murder is wrong is not to describe some scientically identiable feature
of cases where one person takes another life, but rather to say that such
actions are abhorrent. Prohibitions against murder reect our horror at
such acts, and our desire to be protected from them.
For this discussion, I will assume that Hume’s picture is basically right.
Applied to ideology, this means that our political ideals can be regarded
as systems of emotionally grounded beliefs: freedom is good, democracy
is good, tyranny is bad, and so forth, where each of these expresses a com-
plex set of emotional dispositions. e person who regards democracy as
good would feel outraged to discover that an election was rigged, for
example; she might also feel delighted to learn about a edgling democ-
racy, and guilty about buying products from countries that impede
democracy. ese emotions are collectively constitutive of the value that
democracy is good, and that value may be a component of a system of
values, such as classical Liberalism.
Turning back to polarization, the concept of ideology gives us a more
substantive and less reductive explanation than mere aective outlooks.
Liberals and conservatives are not just temperamentally dierent; they
J. Prinz
11
endorse dierent systems of values. It is the ideologies that divide them,
not just their emotional dispositions. Liberalism and conservatism are
ideologies. As such, they have an emotional foundation. e principles
that dene each are not just cool factual beliefs, but emotionally grounded
preferences that guide political action.
We caught a glimpse of these ideological dierences when discussing
aective outlooks, but the discussion there focuses on dierent emotional
feelings, as opposed to dierences in values. Much recent work in empiri-
cal moral psychology attempts to identify dierences in what liberals and
conservatives care about. is work does not emphasize the term ideol-
ogy, but it came to be so framed.
One inuential line of research has been pursued by Jonathan Haidt
and his collaborators. Haidt and Joseph (2008) posit ve dierent “moral
foundations,” or innate domains in which moral values develop. ese
are: Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, In-Group/Loyalty, Authority/
Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. Haidt and Joseph argue that, somehow, lib-
erals have stopped caring much about the last three of these, and only
tend to use the rst two in justifying their moral and political values. If a
liberal wants to assess whether a policy is wrong, they ask whether it is
harmful and fair. Conservatives, on their view, care about harm and fair-
ness too, but they also regard the other domains as foundational values.
If a policy does not show special concern for the in-group, respect for
authority, and a commitment to purity it will be regarded negatively. In
the US, that means conservatives think it is important to put Americans
rst, to display reverent respect for the ag and the military, and to
uphold traditional social roles, such as heterosexual marriage, which are
regarded as sanctied and decent. Haidt and Joseph believe that these
domains have dierent emotional underpinnings, and, in this respect,
their account also commits to divergent aective outlooks along party
lines: harm and fairness are grounded in compassion and anger, respec-
tively, while in-group, authority, and purity are respectively associated
with emotions such as pride, respect, and disgust (Haidt and Joseph
2008: 382). Notice, however, that they think conservative values encom-
pass liberal values, so there is some emotional overlap. Moreover, they
emphasize the content of the domains more than the associated emo-
tions, and they allow that the same emotion can arise for violations in
Emotion and Political Polarization
12
more than one domain; anger, for example, occurs in response to both
unfairness and disloyalty. What divides liberals and conservatives, there-
fore, is not just a matter of what they feel, but how their feelings are
directed.
Haidt’s approach has guided a productive research program (Graham
etal. 2009), but I have misgivings about the details. First, it is not clear
that Democrats have abandoned the three domains that he attributes dif-
ferentially to Republicans. Consider Democrats’ attitudes towards civil
rights leaders (reverence), union members (in-group loyalty), and men
who engage in sexual harassment (sleazy). Democrats regard Trump sup-
porters as members of a repugnant out-group unworthy of respect. If we
avoid conservative buzzwords, like “purity,” I think Haidt’s domains
might apply to both parties equally.
Second, by positing innate domains, Haidt underestimates the degree
of variation among political ideologies, reifying the contemporary
American divide, and implying the conservative values are more natural.
In reality, political divisions uctuate across time and place. e current
divide in the US has a complex history. Both liberalism and conservatism
are oshoots of Classical Liberalism, the rights-based political philosophy
that took shape during the age of revolutions, but they push that philoso-
phy in dierent directions. e current Democratic agenda was cobbled
together over dierent eras (tax reform in the 1910s, welfare in the 1930s,
civil rights beginning in the 1940s, womens rights in the 1970s, environ-
mentalism in the 1980s). e Republican agenda also evolved (free trade
in the 1910s, lowering taxes in the 1920s, social conservatism in the
1970s, shrinking government in the 1980s). In the past, the US has had
dierent political divisions: between Federalists and anti-Federalists
(focused on states’ rights), between free states and slave states, and
between protectionists and laissez-faire capitalists (the election of 1912).
None of these divisions map in any obvious ways onto Haidt’s domains.
ird, it is even harder to deploy Haidts framework when we look
internationally. Political divisions vary around the globe. In Taiwan, the
main divide concerns attitudes towards China; in Palestine, the domi-
nant parties disagree over strategies for liberating occupied territories; in
Turkey, secularism is the main issue, and in Lebanon, there are both secu-
lar and sectarian divisions. In multiparty Western democracies, we nd
J. Prinz
13
many divisions that are dicult to characterize in terms of Haidt’s
domains: social democrats, labor parties, greens, classical liberals, popu-
lists, ultra-nationalists, and so on. We also lose resolution when making
ne distinctions in the US, as between Republicans and Libertarians,
and, when Haidt suggests that conservative values encompass the liberals’
concern for harm and fairness, we lose explanatory purchase on the deep
divides with respect to issues such as armative action and social welfare.
Such considerations weigh in against an emphasis on innate domains—
the political spectrum is far too varied. Still, we might want to follow
Haidt in trying to explain divisions by appealing to emotionally grounded
norms. What I nd most promising in his approach is the eort to give a
psychological spin to the old concept of ideology, by identifying core
values with emotionally grounded principles. Some of Haidt’s specic
domains, including authority and purity, capture real ideological dier-
ences, provided they are not too rigidly interpreted. We might do better
to put aside innate domains, and think about culturally constructed ide-
als, such as the tenets of socialism, or neo-conservatism, or green parties
as the building blocks of ideologies. Historical forces and socialization
would then determine which of these takes on emotional force for any
individual.
So elaborated, the ideological approach would contribute much to the
understanding of polarization. Groups become polarized when their val-
ues are perceived as incompatible and their adherents have strong emo-
tional commitments, making compromise and mutual respect dicult to
achieve.
ere is, however, one important limitation to the ideological approach.
Not all political divisions seem to be divisions of value. In many coun-
tries, the leading parties are not very dierent politically, as is the case in
Japan (despite many fringe parties), and Mauritius, the most democratic
nation in Sub-Saharan Africa. In some Arab states, there are divisions
based on tribal aliations, or on attitudes towards the US and Iran. Or
consider Kenya, where, until recently, political divisions have been eth-
nic. In the US, too, there is empirical evidence that party aliation tran-
scends ideology. Lilliana Mason (2015) has shown that many Americans
are ercely divided across party lines even when their policy preferences
are closely aligned (see also Kimball et al. 2018; Lelkes 2018). us, a
Emotion and Political Polarization
14
complete account of the psychology underlying polarization cannot rely
entirely on aective outlook and ideology. ere must be something else
at work in at least some polarized divides.
2.3 Identity
Masons eort to show the limits of ideological accounts is coupled with
a robust alternative, which is developed in her (2018) book, Uncivil
Agreement: How Politics Became our Identity. e title gives it away: polar-
ization results from a tendency to identify with a political group. In the
US case, the idea is that being a Republican or a Democrat is not just a
matter of adopting a party platform, but rather becomes a basis of iden-
tity here in its own right. We identify with our party aliations, and, for
many, that entails allegiance even as the platform evolves, or even when
we are not entirely sure what that platform is.
What is it to identify with something? ere are thinner and thicker
answers to this question. Let’s begin with the thin. In psychology there is
a notion of social identity which refers to membership in a group. In this
sense, the link between political group membership and identity is trivial,
but there is a suite of psychological eects associated with group mem-
bership, and that is what Mason is inviting us to consider.
ere is a long tradition in social psychology investigating how group
membership impacts behavior. Work in this tradition shows that mem-
bership in a group, no matter how arbitrary, can lead to preferential treat-
ment of the in-group and derogation of the out-group (Tajfel 1970). In
the lab, such eects can be transient, but long-term group memberships
are likely to show a similar pattern at longer timescales. Studies of polar-
ization bear this out. For example, Iyengar and Westwood (2015) show
that Democrats and Republicans show preferential treatment toward
members of their own party when considering scholarship allocations or
when playing economic games in which other players can give money to
a stranger. Iyengar etal. (2012) also found that people do not want to
have friends in the opposing party, and would be upset if a family mem-
ber married someone on the other side of the party divide. We also avoid
dating people who belong to opposing parties (Huber and Malhotra 2016).
J. Prinz
15
Such group preferences involve emotions. We come to view members
of in-groups positively, and we view members of out-groups negatively.
We have already seen evidence for negative feelings in polling research.
Recall the Pew (2016) study, where most Democrats and Republicans
regarded each other “very unfavorably.” In the same survey, almost half
those polled rated the opposing party as a source of fear, anger, and
frustration.
ere is also another role for emotions here, and that requires a look at
a thicker notion of identity. Psychologists usually think about identity as
something purely social—the groups to which we belong. Philosophers
tend to think of identity in a dierent way, as something personal. e
features that make up one’s person identity are essential to retaining one’s
self. If they change, one is no longer the same person. I think the social
and the personal are often intimately linked. One’s social identity can
become personal: it can become part of what one takes as necessary for
remaining the same self. Some social identities are not like this. I can join
a book club and then quit, without becoming a dierent person. Other
social identities are more intimately related to the self.
Elsewhere I have argued that moral values relate to identity in both of
these ways, social and personal (Prinz 2016). When we adopt moral val-
ues, we join the group of those who share those values, and we come to
think of these as essential to our personal identity. is is in part an
empirical claim. ere is research showing that people regard changes in
morality as changes in the self (Prinz and Nichols 2016). Given the link
between politics and values, it is no surprise, then, that people identify
with political views. But what about cases where party membership is
dissociable from ideology, and hence not essentially linked to a set of
values? Is there any reason to think we would come to regard a member-
ship in a political party as personal, not just social, if that party lacks a
xed ideology?
I think the answer is armative, and it has to do with the fact that
political group membership allows us to build long-term social alliances.
With the addition of enduring social commitments, we have a special
stake in retaining the trust and loyalty of the group. One way to ensure
that is to treat group membership as something that is necessary rather
than contingent. To regard political identity as personal is to treat it as
Emotion and Political Polarization
16
something that cannot change without loss of self. is implicitly reas-
sures others that our allegiance will endure. It’s also a self-fullling proph-
ecy. If we abandon our political aliations (and any other long-term
group memberships), we can nd ourselves alone without a rudder.
Long-term group memberships provide us with peers and also tell us how
to make our way in the world. Once those are lost, there is a sense in
which we really would lack a self; we would lose our basis for consistent
decision-making.
e personal nature of political identity is borne out by a pair of
empirical observations that are sometimes discussed under the banner of
“sorting,” which refer to alignments between traits. First, consider what I
call “taste sorting”: our political dierences align up with a surprising
range of lifestyle choices. Party membership can impact what car you
drive (Prius or pickup), what snack foods you like (guacamole or moz-
zarella sticks), what beer you drink (microbrew or Miller Lite), where you
buy coee (Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts), what vegetables you favor
(arugala or iceberg), what sports you watch (tennis or NASCAR), how
many kids you have (few or many), and even what pets you choose (cats
and small dogs or big dogs) (Hetherington and Weiler 2018). Party
membership also correlates with musical preference (DellaPosta et al.
2015), and in an ongoing research project I am exploring links between
party and personal appearance. Imagine someone who reads poetry, lis-
tens to jazz, dyes her hair blue, and loves sushi. Probably a Democrat.
Now imagine someone who reads military history, listens to country,
wears khaki shorts with a baseball cap, and loves red meat. More likely, a
Republican. ere will be many exceptions, of course, but we nd many
ways to celebrate the political groups to which we belong, and to signal
this to others. Party membership may not be the source of these other
behaviors—there is no manual on how to dress like a Democrat—but we
implicitly capitalize on such correlations and use them to select social
partners and signal enduring commitments.
e second kind or sorting involves an alignment between political
party membership and some of the most important aspects of our social
identity—things like ethnicity and religion, cornerstones of sociological
research. I call this “demographic sorting.” In the US, we nd many reli-
gious Catholics joining the Democrats and many religious Protestants
J. Prinz
17
joining the Republicans. Given the close links between religion and val-
ues, we might expect both to join the same party, but the division between
the two sects is deeply entrenched historically and geographically, and
those dierences may outweigh more ideological forms of overlap. Mason
(2018: 24) emphasizes demographic sorting in her work. She comments,
“e American electorate has sorted itself into two increasingly homoge-
neous parties, with a variety of social, economic, geographic, and ideo-
logical cleavage falling in line with the partisan divide.” She also comments
on Trump’s appeal to white Christians; he can tap these aspects of iden-
tity without even mentioning policy, since, in America, party and social
location have become highly correlated (p.89).
Sorting draws attention to another way in which emotions contribute
to polarization. I have already mentioned that we harbor negative atti-
tudes towards out-groups and positive attitudes towards in-groups. is
is a straightforward corollary of laboratory research on the social psychol-
ogy of groups. With more entrenched and aligned forms of identity, these
feelings are intensied. We don’t just favor our in-groups; we take tre-
mendous pride in them, and when the group is confronted with opposi-
tion, it is experienced as an identity threat. Heres Mason:
When multiple identities are strongly aligned, a threat to one identity
aects the status of multiple other identities. e possible damage to a
person’s self-esteem grows as more identities are partnered with the dam-
aged group. (94)
us, when we disagree with a Trump supporter on some matter of
policy, his whiteness, masculinity, and Christianity may also be on
the line.
For Mason, political changes qualify as identity threats because politi-
cal identity is bound up with many other group memberships. I would
add that identity is threatened because all these group memberships,
including political aliations, are construed as aspects of personal iden-
tity. ey are enduring aliations that we regard as essential to retaining
our sense of self. e fact that they get bound together greatly increases
the existential stakes. If our political aliations change, we cannot rely
on these other enduring aliations to furnish us with a sense of personal
continuity, for they too may destabilize.
Emotion and Political Polarization
18
reats to political identity can arise even when there is no explicit
disagreement. Consider, again, our reluctance to socialize with members
of other parties. Why not? Are we afraid we will argue? Perhaps, but
many people enjoy debating topics that are not political in nature; politi-
cal debates really sting (Skitka etal. 2005). Why? One answer is that close
encounters with members of the other party pose an identity threat. is
threat is double edged: it involves both appearances (will someone see me
fraternizing with the enemy?) and anxieties of inuence (can this persons
values rub o on me?). e rst threat can erode our social alliances and
support systems. e second threat comes, in part, from the implicit rec-
ognition of the fact that our political identities are somewhat accidental.
We typically fall into them as a result of highly contingent facts, such as
geography and socialization. Nevertheless, we regard them as essential to
identity and authentic reections of what we really care about. When we
socialize with political opponents, there is a real risk that our convictions
will shift. us, condence in who we are can be shaken by exposure
to others.
ese twin threats may shed light on other aspects of political behav-
ior. We like echo chambers, and we spend many hours virtue signaling on
social media. Surrounding ourselves with those who are like-minded and
reminding them how much we agree can secure the camaraderie that we
depend on and undergird our self-condence. If we were to befriend or
date a member of the out-group, we might lose our social networks and
destabilize the convictions that make us who we are.
Some commentators worry that biased news outlets are causing polar-
ization. I grant that they can play a role, but I suspect the causal arrow
usually points in the other direction: we tune in to biased media because
we are polarized. Or rather, we tune in a strategy to keep our identities
from fracturing, and when our opponents do the same, the net result is
the ossication of separate political groups, each of which occupies its
own, self-arming reality.
In summary, the concept of identity provides a perspective on polariza-
tion that we cannot derive from aective outlook and ideology alone.
Dierences in emotional temperament and deeply held beliefs can lead to
divisions, but neither of these factors is necessary or sucient for political
group membership. Moreover, neither fully accounts for the emotional
J. Prinz
19
perils when we encounter political opponents. Some ideological disputes
have high personal stakes: the rich might not want to be taxed and the
poor might want social welfare. But many do not: those in the comfort-
able middle may not be personally worried about either exorbitant taxes
or unemployment benets. Still, they may have a strong commitment to
a party that takes a stand on these issues. at commitment does not
become emotionally impotent when policy disputes have limited per-
sonal impact. Our partisanship can remain passionate even if our policy
preferences are not personal. at is because partisanship itself is per-
sonal. When someone challenges one’s party, ones ego is on the line. e
animus we have towards political opponents is a way of policing the
facade of the edice that shapes our identities. When we let down our
guard, we risk a structural breach. Without those rigid contours, we may
cease to exist in some sense; we lose the walls that keep us recogniz-
ably intact.
3 Conclusion: Causes, Consequences,
andCures
In this concluding section, I want to return to an issue with which we
began: rising polarization. Why is polarization on the rise? What are
some consequences? What should we do about it? Let me briey take up
each question.
I noted earlier that the rise in polarization may have many causes, but
one of these seems to be changing demography, including demographic
changes due to immigration. Now we can ask, why this should increase
polarization. First, work on aective outlooks suggests that conservatives
are prone to fear, and demographic changes could evoke a strong response,
heightening tensions between parties. Second, ideology can play a role:
for parties that value diversity, demographic changes can conrm core
values, but parties that value homogeneity may regard demographic
changes with horror. ird, changing demography puts us into contact
with the political other, and that is an identity threat for all. at may
lead us to arm our current political commitments with new fervor.
Emotion and Political Polarization
20
Is polarization a bad thing? Most commentators think so. e negative
consequences are especially clear when we consider the role of emotions.
Emotionally heated divisions can foreclose communication, and that is
bad for deliberative democracy. is for two reasons: emotions generate
animus, and disagreements about emotion-backed values cannot be
rationally adjudicated. With deep divisions, compromise is very dicult.
at can lead to stagnation or to a majority party imposing its agenda on
all. In a two-party system, polarization can also lead to the disenfran-
chisement of independent voters, who are perennially subjected to the
competing extremes.
e risks of polarization can be made more vivid if we recall the link
between party and identity. at entails that we may follow advice from
party leaders, even if it arbitrary or weakly linked to a party’s ocial plat-
form. A recent case is the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic. is
became highly politicized. ose on the right, tended to downplay the
virus and resist strong interventions such as lockdowns and mandatory
mask wearing. ose on the left tended to favor such measures, but that
preference may have had less to do with ideology than the simple fact that
the virus was most active in liberal districts. After all, liberals do not usu-
ally favor government interventions that restrict borders and curtail basic
liberties, especially when such measures threaten the livelihoods of the
working poor. Research suggests that personal responses to the pandemic
reected political party membership, and that citizens tended to ignore
guidelines issued by politicians in the party they oppose, regardless of the
content of those guidelines (Painter and Qiu 2020). is culminated in
numerous conservative politicians (including Donald Trump and several
other heads of state) contracting the virus.
at said, there may be benets to polarization as well. LeBas (2018:
60) argues that polarization can help decentralize power, and build strong
parties so that no single group controls government—an important mile-
stone in edgling democracies. Lupu (2015) provides evidence that
polarization can bring clarity to a party’s agenda, and that increases party
membership and political participation. Polarization can also give voice
to individuals who have been politically marginalized. Both right-wing
and progressive parties aim to represent people who feel invisible, and,
doing so may be a good service, provided those conicting voices can nd
J. Prinz
21
a path forward. Voters on the American left are appalled by Trump’s base,
but they cheer when progressive democrats ght for LGBT+ rights.
Without polarized parties, both groups might be left out of the political
equation (see Hochschild 2016, on the Tea Party).
is advantage of polarization can also be explicated in emotional
terms. In this chapter, I have linked political divisions to aective out-
look, emotionally grounded ideologies, and deeply felt aspects of iden-
tity. Each is worth preserving. If we opt for policies that do not reect
how we feel, government will fail to provide constituents with the worlds
they want to inhabit. ese wants are inherently yoked to emotions,
which means we are miserable when they are not met. ey are also
linked to identity. We experience an existential threat when we are pre-
vented from pursuing the social arrangements we deem best. In a large,
diverse society, political identities will inevitably diverge, and passionate
polarization is a measure of the success that dierent groups have had in
getting their favored modes of existence into view on the public stage.
Agreement and consensus come with high costs: they leave many people
dissatised and serve to prevent people from living in accordance with
their identities. Peaceful co-existence of diverse identities is hard to
achieve, but polarization is a sign that we are aiming for that end, rather
than accepting unhappy conformity. Even if we don’t nd a way to co-
exist, those who get embroiled in polarized debates can nd some satis-
faction when they are able to engage in political discourse. No victory is
guaranteed, but a vociferous plea for recognition can arm identity and
rally fellow-feelers to the cause.
is leaves us with a question of how to balance the good and the bad.
Polarization undermines constructive dialogue, but it empowers neglected
individuals. One path forward is to proliferate parties and build coalition
governments, as is often the practice in Europe. Another path is to go
local. Marginalized groups often reside in dierent places (e.g., small
towns and big cities), and the profound divisions between them may call
for greater local control over public policy. Centrists will determine pol-
icy in their own communities on this arrangement (e.g., small cities), and
that may lead to greater satisfaction than letting the centrists or extrem-
ists settle policy for all. Modernity has emphasized nation-building, and
we are increasingly moving to multi-national or global forms of
Emotion and Political Polarization
22
government, but nations are comprised by diverse communities, sepa-
rated by emotional fault-lines. Rather than attening the political land-
scape, national and global power structures might work to protect these
aective lifeways.
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© e Author(s) 2021
A. Falcato, S. Graça da Silva (eds.), e Politics of Emotional Shockwaves,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8_2
The Efficacy ofAnger: Recognition
andRetribution
LauraLuzSilva
Anger is often an appropriate reaction to harms and injustices, but is it a
benecial one? Martha Nussbaum (2015, 2016) has argued that, although
useful in initially recruiting agents for action, anger is typically ineective
and often counterproductive to securing the political aims of the
oppressed. Nussbaum argues that to be eective at enacting social change,
groups and individuals alike, must move quickly out of states of anger.
Feminist theorists, on the other hand, have for long highlighted the
ecacy of anger, as well as its moral and epistemic value, in ghting
against the oppressive status quo (Frye 1983; Lorde 1997; Narayan
1988). It might be thought, therefore, that for political action to be
eective, a continued state of anger is preferable. I present a novel,
empirically informed, defense against Nussbaum’s attack on anger’s
ecacy in political action. Nussbaum adheres to a traditional view on the
nature of anger, which holds that anger constitutively involves a desire for
retribution. e view that anger is ineective falls out of this and is
L. L. Silva (*)
University College London, London, UK
e-mail: laura.silva.13@ucl.ac.uk
28
dominant in the literature, as well our everyday lives. Informed by work
in social psychology, I argue that anger is far more eective than Nussbaum
allows. is will give us cause to reconsider the traditional view of anger’s
nature that Nussbaum endorses. In doing so, I highlight angers aim for
recognition, rather than retribution, as key. I also uncover conditions that
favour anger’s political ecacy, as well as reasons for why the traditional
view of anger has been so pervasive.
1 Introduction
Injustices call for outrage. Nelson Mandela (1994: 257), for example,
famously wrote:
I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady
accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand
unremembered moments produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a
desire to ght the system that imprisoned my people.
at anger is a powerful motivator of political action is ubiquitously
acknowledged (Adams 1986; Jasper 2014). Granting anger an initial
motivational role leaves open the question of whether oppressed groups
will be most eective at securing signicant change by sustaining and
promoting anger at their targets, or, alternatively, by moving quickly out
of states of anger. Nussbaum (2015, 2016) has launched a contemporary
attack on anger, arguing that, beyond its initial motivational role, anger
is ineective, and more than often counterproductive, in ghts for social
justice.1 Nussbaum therefore recommends against anger in such political
struggles. I follow Nussbaum (2015, 2016) in using ‘anger’ to refer to a
range of related aective phenomena, including outrage, indignation and
resentment. By anger I will mean occurrent cases of phenomenologically
1 e notion of social justice I employ throughout is a thin one. I take social justice to be (non-
exhaustively) concerned with generating fair patterns of rights, opportunities, and wealth in a
society. Such a conception is intended to capture a fundamental notion of social justice without
taking sides on particular theories or forms of justice. I take what I have to say about anger to be at
least in principle applicable to whichever theory of justice one might favour.
L. L. Silva
29
salient negatively valanced states that involve evaluations, or appraisals,
of a triggering situation as wrongful. Like many emotions, anger is
thought to have both a cognitive component, that represents the world as
being a certain way, and a conative component, that disposes agents for
action (Deonna and Teroni 2012; Cogley 2014). Nussbaum’s recent
attack targets feminist philosophers, as well as many political activists,
who hail anger as amongst, if not the most, politically important emotion
(Frye 1983; Narayan 1988; hooks 1995; Lorde 1997; Lugones 2003; Bell
2005; Srinivasan 2018). Lorde (1997: 280), for example, writes that
“every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful
against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that
anger into being”. Anger is thought to create and sustain a sense of moral
obligation and justice that propels political progress (Jasper 2014).
In this chapter I develop an empirically informed critique of Nussbaum’s
position. We will see that empirical work provides support in favour of
anger’s political ecacy. I begin by outlining Nussbaums commitments
and highlighting two empirical claims amongst them (Sect. 2). I then
proceed to challenge these claims by bringing recent work in social
psychology to bear on them (Sect. 3). Doing so will call into question the
ancient conception of anger that Nussbaum, and many contemporary
philosophers, endorse (Sect. 4). I end by oering a pluralist conception
of anger that should be preferred (Sect. 5). My alternative view makes
desires for recognition central to anger, and allows the full ecacy of
anger to emerge.
2 Nussbaum onAnger
Nussbaum (2015, 2016) endorses an ancient construal of anger as con-
stitutively involving a desire for retribution.2 Aristotle characterizes anger
as “a desire accompanied by pain for a conspicuous revenge for a
conspicuousslight” (Rhet 1378a31–33 in Barnes 1984).3 Anger ceases
2 I make use of an intuitive notion of desire throughout. I take desires to: (a) dispose one to act in
ways that aim to achieve the desire’s aim, and (b) to be satised when the actual state of aairs in
the world matches the desire’s aim.
3 is view is shared by Stoics such as anger’s most famous critic Seneca (On Anger).
The Efficacy ofAnger: Recognition andRetribution
30
when the oended retaliates “for revenge relieves them of theiranger”
(NE 1126a21–22in Barnes 1984). e desire for the perpetrators suer-
ing is a conceptual part of anger on such a view, as anger is dened as a
desire for returning pain (DA 403a31). is retributive view of anger is
widespread in contemporary philosophy (see Pettigrove 2012; Ben- Ze’ev
2000: 384), indeed Nussbaum (2015: 4) calls it the “traditional” view of
anger. Nussbaum’s thought is not that anger always involves a desire for
violent revenge or to personally harm the oender, rather, “anger involves,
conceptually, a wish for things to go badly, somehow, for the oender in
a way that is envisaged, somehow, however vaguely, as a payback for the
oense” (Nussbaum 2015: 46). For example, when angry at a friend’s
betrayal, one may wish for the traitor’s life to go badly, yet not wish to
have anything to do with making this the case.4 Nussbaum’s view on
anger involves the following nature claim:
nature claim: Anger constitutively involves a desire for payback or
retribution.5
Given its nature, Nussbaum takes anger to be either irrational or immoral.
It is irrational in the sense that inicting pain upon a perpetrator when in
anger will not literally undo the wrong one has suered. An agent who
believes the contrary is guilty of “magical thinking” and irrationality
(2015: 47–48). e only way to avoid irrationality is to construe the
payback as capable of restoring one’s status following a slight. Anger is on
such a reading concerned with status-ranking, where “a retaliatory strike
back is thought to restore the balance of status” (2015: 48). e problem
with the status reading of anger, for Nussbaum (2015), is that it is
immoral as it involves a “narcissistic error” (51), an obsessive focus on
one’s standing relative to others (45). ere is, however, one domain in
which Nussbaum (2015: 50) grants that slights do lower ones status, and
that to be preoccupied with such status injuries is not immoral.
4 is is actually a departure from the Aristotelian account of anger where for revenge to be enacted
the oender must know by whose hand, as well as for what reason, he suers (Rhet 1380b22–25).
5 I follow Nussbaum (2015, 2016) in using the terms ‘payback’, ‘retribution’ and ‘revenge’
interchangeably.
L. L. Silva
31
Discrimination, for example, on grounds of race or gender, is often con-
ceived as an injury that really does consist in down-ranking, and there is
truth to this, just in this special sense: discrimination involves a denial of a
special status of equal dignity, and this status has intrinsic value.
But, she goes on to say that “the idea that denials of equal dignity can be
rectied by bringing the injurer low is a false lure” (2015: 51). Nussbaum
seems to think that anger is an inadequate way to promote positive social
change for two reasons: inecacy and immorality. On the latter she
writes that “reversing positions through payback does not create equality.
It just substitutes one inequality for another” (2015: 51). Here much
more could be said. Surely lowering the rank of those in power need not
involve the reversal of positions within a hierarchy, but merely
leveling them. It is unclear why such an aim would make the status-
lowering strategy morally problematic. I will leave these issues to one
side. My focus will be on the claim of inecacy. Nussbaum argues that
“non-anger and a generous disposition are far more useful” than anger to
revolutionary justice (2016: 228). Nussbaum doesn’t just make
comparative claims regarding anger’s ecacy however, she also argues,
largely counterfactually, that leaders of successful social movements, such
as Martin Luther KingJr and NelsonMandela, were eective precisely
because they did not act on their anger.6 Nussbaum takes anger to be
particularly ineective in the ght for social justice. is claim can be
summarized as follows:
inecacy claim: Anger is typically ineective at ghting social injustice.
is claim is by no means limited to Nussbaum (2015, 2016). Seneca
(1928) famously paints anger as “the most hideous and frenzied of all
emotions” which gives “no thought to itself if only it can hurt another”
and is “eager for revenge though it may drag down the avenger along with
it” (I.1). Casting anger as counterproductive has a long history
(see Rosenwein 1998), and is common in everyday life, where we are
6 Adams (1986) and Cogley (2014) take this autobiographical evidence to establish the exact oppo-
site: that anger-motivated action is extremely eective and prevalent amongst leaders of political
movements.
The Efficacy ofAnger: Recognition andRetribution
32
often advised to avoid anger on account of it being futile, and potentially
counterproductive, in situations that trigger the emotion.7 More recently,
Pettigrove (2012) has argued that anger is particularly ineective in
struggles for social justice, and claims meekness is preferable. What are
the specic reasons for holding the inecacy claim? e answer becomes
clear when we pay closer attention to the nature claim. First, as anger is
constitutively aimed at payback, retributive rather than conciliatory
actions are predicted of those in anger. Retributive actions are both
morally problematic for Nussbaum, and risk being counterproductive
(Nussbaum 2016: 1). ey are morally problematic, because they involve
harming, or at least seeking to harm, their objects. ey are
counterproductive because in so doing, they may harm the angry agent
themselves, often by triggering disengagement or retaliation in their
targets, which leads to the further entrenchment of conict (Nussbaum
2015, 2016).
When enraged African-Americans ooded the streets of Chicago fol-
lowing Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968 for example, 125
res were set, 210 buildings were damaged and numerous stores were
looted. In response to the riot, over 10,000 police and 5000 soldiers were
brought in. Many African-Americans were killed, injured or incarcerated,
the city of Chicago suered a food shortage, and the areas destroyed by
rioters were knocked down, many remaining to this day undeveloped.
Racial segregation intensied in the aftermath of the riot (Risen 2009).
Besides committing harms against Chicagoans in general, these actions
arguably left the city’s African-American community itself worse o. is
seems to lend support to Nussbaum’s view that anger often makes things
worse for the angry agent, as it is “incompatible with forward-looking
pragmatism” (2016: 230–233).
ere is, however, clear room to argue for the ecacy, and even justi-
cation, of destructive actions in ghts for social justice. Indeed, the
Chicago riots are thought to have played a crucial role in paving the way
for important victories for the civil rights movement (Risen 2009). e
7 Lepoutre (2018) and Srinivasan (2018) discuss the ‘counterproductivity objection’ and the ‘coun-
terproductivity critique’ against anger respectively. My target is the weaker claim regarding anger’s
inecacy. In targeting the weaker claim, my argument challenges also the stronger claim regarding
anger’s counter productivity.
L. L. Silva
33
ecacy or ethics of aggressive revolutionary tactics is however not the
focus of this chapter. In so far as Nussbaum envisions anger being
eective, she sees it as morally condemnable for harming others (2015:
51). Nussbaum would therefore not deny that anger can be eective, but
rather denies that anger can be eective while remaining morally
unproblematic. Anger’s ecacy therefore seems inexorably tied to its
immorality on her account. is is the narrower claim of inecacy I will
be concerned with. ere are two, in my eyes both fruitful, main strategies
against this stance: to argue for the morality of some retributive actions,
or to argue that anger’s ties to retribution are far weaker than Nussbaum
allows. I pursue the latter strategy here. We will see that eective, morally
unproblematic, anger is far more common than Nussbaum’s
account allows.
e rst reason for holding the inecacy claim then is that in aiming
for retribution, angry subjects act destructively, which we might think is
unlikely to improve the angry party’s standing, and can indeed worsen
their situation by antagonizing the targets of anger and provoking
retaliation. Independently of the specic actions taken, commitment to
the nature claim gives reason to think that mere displays, or
communications, of anger risk setting back goals for positive social
change. is highlights a second, related, reason anger is taken to be
ineective in struggles for revolutionary justice: that communicating
anger, for those committed to the nature claim, involves communicating
the desire for retribution, and this is likely to inspire animosity in the
targeted group. Nussbaum (2016) says that anger “breed(s) mistrust
(233) and increases “anxiety and self-defensiveness” in its targets (230).
Similarly, Pettigrove (2012) writes that anger communication is typically
counterproductive due to “triggering a defensive response” in its targets
that prevents them from appreciating the causes of anger (367). In a best-
case scenario, the communication of anger is unlikely to breed openness
to cooperation in its targets. In a worst-case scenario anger risks perpetu-
ating an “endless cycle of blood vengeance” by escalating conicts
(Nussbaum 2016: 1). ere might be other reasons for endorsing the
inecacy claim, but I will focus on the two just outlined. e rst is a
reason that pertains primarily to the actions of those in anger, while the
The Efficacy ofAnger: Recognition andRetribution
34
second is a reason that pertains to the responses of the targets of anger.
e two reasons can be summarized as follows:
In-group Reason: Anger motivates retributive actions on the part of
those angry.
Out-group Reason: Anger antagonizes those at whom it is directed.
Each reason is in eect an empirical claim against which recent experi-
mental work can be brought to bear. Before I turn to doing so, I would
like to note the one exception Nussbaum (2015, 2016) makes, the one
case in which she takes anger to be an eective and moral way of promot-
ing social change: cases of what she calls “transition-anger”. Nussbaum
characterizes transition-anger as anger that is not retributive, and which
focuses on “brotherhood”, “justice”, “reconciliation and shared eort”
instead, typically motivating constructive actions (2015: 53–54). is is
the type of anger Nussbaum takes Martin Luther King to experience and
express in his speeches (54). Nussbaum isn’t clear on whether transition-
anger is a distinct species of anger on her view: “is Transition-Anger a
species of anger? I really dont care how we answer this question” (2015:
54), what is clear is that she takes it to be a “borderline case” that is “rare
and exceptional” and only present in individuals with superior “self-dis-
cipline” (54). In sum, Nussbaums view on anger takes it to be typically
ineective in struggles for social justice. e only room made for the
permissible ecacy of an emotion akin to anger, is the special case of
transition-anger that is exceedingly rare and hard to cultivate.
To the question ‘should the oppressed avoid anger?’ Nussbaum
responds in the armative.8 Nussbaum’s targets are feminist philosophers
who have issued powerful responses to the above question in the negative
(Frye 1983; Narayan 1988; hooks 1995; Lorde 1997; Lugones 2003; Bell
2005; Srinivasan 2018). e oppressed should not avoid anger, on their
view, for a number of reasons. ese include anger’s psychological,
8 As does Pettigrove (2012).
L. L. Silva
35
epistemic, as well as practical, utility in resisting oppression.9 Here I am
concerned with the practical. Manyfeminist philosophers are opposed to
the inecacy claim, as they take anger to be crucial in motivating politi-
cally benecial action. Lorde (1997: 280) claims that anger
can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change. And
when I speak of change, I do not mean a simple switch of positions or a
temporary lessening of tensions, nor the ability to smile or feel good. I am
speaking of a basic and radical alteration in those assumptions underlining
our lives.
ose who have argued for the political value of anger have rarely engaged
in a head on denial of the inecacy claim however.10 is is likely in part
because such a task is largely an empirical one (see Lepoutre 2018: 3;
Srinivasan 2018: 127). By attending to relevant empirical work, my
challenge to the inecacy claim takes steps towards lling this gap in
support of those who have hailed anger as paramount for political change.
3 The Efficacy ofAnger
We saw that there are two reasons in support of the inecacy claim. e
In-group Reason and the Out-group Reason, both of which are in fact
empirical claims that generate empirical predictions. e former predicts
retributive behaviour of angry subjects, while the latter predicts targets of
anger to respond defensively, and often retaliate, against those who
9 On anger’s value in the psychology of the oppressed see Spelman (1989: 266), hooks (1995: 17),
Fanon (2008: 94), Yancy (2008: 847) and Leboeuf (2017). A common theme is that in anger one
rejects the self-image imposed by the oppressor, and arms ones agency. On anger’s epistemic
value see Frye (1983), Friedman (1986), Jaggar (1989) and Bell (2009). Anger plays a number of
epistemic roles. It allows direct apprehension of injustice (often constituting one’s only means of
apprehension), as well as indirect mapping of oppression through the observation of when and
where one’s anger is systematically dismissed (Frye 1983). Additionally, collective scrutiny of shared
anger plays roles in the generation of concepts that aid political progress. Independent to anger’s
psychological and epistemic eects, becoming angry when there is justifying reason to, is thought
to itself be intrinsically valuable (see Srinivasan 2018).
10 Lepoutre (2018) is a recent exception. His argument relies on historical examples of political
speeches where mine is informed by recent work in psychology.
The Efficacy ofAnger: Recognition andRetribution
36
display anger towards them. A look at relevant empirical work will give
us cause to question both reasons for the inecacy claim. I deal with them
in turn.
3.1 The In-Group Reason
Anger is seen as a crucial motivator of collective political action (Spring
etal. 2018). e eld of collective action research takes there to be two
main pathways by which collective action is motivated: the anger pathway,
and the instrumental reasoning pathway (van Zomeren et al. 2012;
Wlodarczyk etal. 2017). e anger pathway involves the experience of
group anger being triggered by a situation of unfair in-group disadvantage,
while the instrumental reasoning pathway involves reasoning about how
eective one’s group will be at changing the unjust situation.11 e anger
pathway is driven by appraising situations as unfair, while the instrumen-
tal reasoning pathway is driven by evaluating the amount of social sup-
port for action one expects. e latter involves reasoning about how
successful the group is likely to be at ensuring change through collective
action (van Zomeren etal. 2012).12
Given the In-group Reason for holding the inecacy claim, a supporter
of this claim would plausibly expect the actions typical of each of these
pathways to dier. Nussbaum would likely expect the instrumental
reasoning pathway of collective action alone to motivate morally
unproblematic actions in the pursuit of justice. Retributive collective
actions, on the other hand, would be expected of the anger pathway.
Experimental work on collective action seriously challenges these
predictions however.
11 In psychology, group-based anger is taken to be anger that is experienced by individuals “as a
result of their identication with a group or social category” (Mackie etal. 2000). is understand-
ing of collective or group-based emotions is distinct from, and likely agnostic about, the problem
in philosophy of mind as to whether there are such things as ontologically collective emotions (see
Krueger 2015). I remain agnostic about such problems and follow the psychological construal of
group-anger throughout.
12 Anger and instrumental reasoning were measured by asking participants to rate how strongly they
agreed with statements like: ‘I am furious about tuition rises’, ‘I am irritated by tuition rises’ in the
case of anger, and for instrumental reasoning about group ecacy: ‘I think that students can stop
the introduction of tuition fees’, ‘I think students have already lost the ght against tuition fees’.
L. L. Silva
37
In a key study, German university students were surveyed regarding a
real-life situation where the state had mandated an increase in tuition
fees. Students were asked to indicate how likely they would be to
participate in dierent actions against the tuition rise. e action options
were grouped into three types; (a) ‘constructive actions’ such as yer
dissemination, petition signing and demonstrations, (b) ‘destructive
actions’ such as arson attacks on university buildings or private property
and (c) ‘intermediate type’ actions that disturb events where tuition-rise
advocates appear, such as blocking university buildings or public roads
(Tausch et al. 2011). Adherents of the inecacy claim would plausibly
predict the anger pathway to mainly motivate actions of type (b),
destructive actions, perhaps as well as intermediate type (c) actions, while
predicting instrumental reasoning to be the main pathway for motivating
actions of type (a), constructive actions. On the contrary, however, both
anger and instrumental reasoning were found to be positively related to
engaging in type (a) actions, i.e. constructive actions. Indeed, anger was
found to be inversely correlated to destructive actions, being most strongly
correlated with constructive actions. Crucially, anger was not found to
signicantly motivate actions that involved enacting payback in any
straightforward sense (destructive or intermediate types of actions), as
anger motivated actions to change the tuition fee policy, rather than harm
those who implemented it.
Similar results were found outside of laboratory settings in studies
involving Muslim Indian minority communities in conict with the
Hindu majority (van Zomeren et al. 2004; Tausch et al. 2011). e
Muslim community is one of the most disadvantaged communities in the
country in terms of education, income, employment and political
representation (Basant 2007). e self-reported levels of anger amongst
the Muslim community in the riot-prone city of Aligarh, were found to
be unrelated to any support for violent actions against the dominant
majority. is suggests that the results of the study conducted on students
may extend to real world situations of historical conict. Other studies
have found anger in situations of group conict, such as Israel-Palestine,
to promote both destructive actions, as well as constructive actions,
against the out-group (Halperin etal. 2011). is evidence still speaks
The Efficacy ofAnger: Recognition andRetribution
38
against the rst reason for holding the inecacy claim, as anger is not
shown to motivate destructive actions over constructive ones.
Some have cited studies that show anger to motivate punitive and
aggressive actions (see Pettigrove 2012 for example). Nussbaum and
supporters of her view would likely try to explain away the constructive
eects of anger I just surveyed as exceptions to this trend. A few points on
this. First, the experimental evidence relied upon to support the inecacy
claim is almost exclusively from studies done on individuals or in
interpersonal settings (Pettigrove 2012: 362; Spring etal. 2018), therefore
we should be skeptical of whetherthey translate to the inter-group, and
often systemic, dynamics we are concerned with. Furthermore, below we
will see that there is ample evidence of anger being constructive in
interpersonal settings as well, which those arguing against anger’s ecacy
have long neglected. Most importantly however, I have not denied that
anger can trigger destructive actions, the point is that constructive anger-
triggered actions might be far more common than those who condemn
anger grant, and indeed constructive eects might be just as typical, or
even paradigmatic, of anger.
How do we account for the variance in anger’s motivational tenden-
cies? is is the question that guides much empirical work. e experi-
mental work suggests that key factors moderate the eects of anger. In
psychology, moderators are crucial to determining when certain eects
hold. Moderators are typically contextual variables that inuence which
eects are observed. Contextual moderators are likely crucial to deter-
mining when anger will motivate constructive or destructive actions. e
Tausch etal. (2011) study, for example, found destructive type (b) actions
to be favoured when the group had low condence in their ability to
change their predicament. is suggests that taking a situation to be
unchangeable may be a key factor in motivating destructive behavior.
Indeed, there is wide ranging evidence that punitive actions are favoured
in situations where change is unlikely. is is often because the out-group
is unresponsive to attempts to change the situation (Bandura 2000).
Indeed, some have called this the ‘nothing to lose’ phenomenon (Scheepers
etal. 2006) as the low status group has little to lose in responding to
injustice aggressively, seeing as their situation is unlikely to change by any
other means. e perceived changeability of the out-group in relation to
L. L. Silva
39
an anger triggering situation, then, seems to be a key moderator of anger
behaviour. is suggests that whether the In-group Reason holds or not
is heavily dependent on how changeable, or receptive to change, the
outgroup is perceived to be.
In sum, we have seen the In-group Reason for holding the inecacy
claim to be challenged by recent empirical work. Contrary to the
prediction that anger motivates destructive, or retributive, collective
actions, a range of studies in the eld of collective action have failed to
establish a signicant relation between anger and the motivation of such
actions. Indeed, in complete opposition to this prediction, anger was
observed to signicantly motivate constructive actions instead. Even
when anger was observed to correlate with destructive actions, it was also
observed to correlate signicantly with constructive actions. e key
notion of moderators has been introduced, and I have highlighted a
moderator that is likely to play a central role in determining when anger
motivates constructive actions.
3.2 The Out-Group Reason
Proponents of the inecacy claim take the communication of anger to be
ineective in struggles for social justice largely because communications
of anger will only serve to antagonize the dominant group. An antagonized
group is one that is likely to retaliate against one’s in-group, or at least
avoid this group, and will therefore be unwilling to work towards
rectifying injustice. Psychological research on intergroup conict provides
mounting evidence against this, however, as communications of anger
have been shown to correlate with increased support for constructive and
conciliatory action tendencies on behalf of dominant groups.
One experiment, for example, probed the eect of anger communica-
tion on the responses of Americans to Syrian-American relations. In the
experiment, Americans watched a short video clip about Syrian-American
relations after reading a brief text. In the ‘anger condition’, the text
described how a key Syrian leader gave an enraged speech that was
aggressive towards the US.In a ‘hope condition’, the text described the
leader’s hopeful view on the resolution of the conict. And nally, in the
The Efficacy ofAnger: Recognition andRetribution
40
neutral condition, non-emotional factual information was relayed in the
text about the Syrian leader’s speech. American subjects were then asked
to register their support for conciliatory policies, such as continuing
exports of food and medicine to Syria, and accepting Syrias request for
the US to fund humanitarian projects in Syria (Tagar etal. 2011).
e Out-group Reason for holding the inecacy claim would plausibly
predict Americans to become antagonized by, and respond retributively
to, displays and communications of anger. Nussbaum’s view would,
therefore, predict support for conciliatory policies to be lowest in the
anger condition. e view would plausibly expect increased support for
conciliatory policies in the neutral control condition because participants
would be able to think clearly about the conict at hand, and not be
negatively biased by anger. e view would additionally either expect
similarly increased support for conciliatory policies in the hope condition
as well, or it would predict support for conciliatory policies to be highest
in the hope condition, as a positive outlook is being conveyed.
Contrary to these predictions, the study found support for concilia-
tory policies to be highest in the anger condition. Support for concilia-
tory policies was not only higher in the anger condition compared to the
control condition, but the anger condition even saw signicantly higher
levels of support for conciliatory policies than were observed in the hope
condition. is starkly opposes the predictions we would expect of the
inecacy claim, and suggests that anger communication has an important
role to play in inter-group conict resolution. Mounting evidence
supports the main nding of this study, as anger communication has
been observed to increase dominant group support for conciliatory
policies in the context of the Israel-Palestine conict, US race-relations
(Shuman etal. 2018), and cases of xenophobia (de Vos etal. 2013). e
Out-group Reason for holding the inecacy claim is therefore challenged
by evidence that the communication of anger from a disadvantaged
group often actually increases dominant group support for conciliatory
policies.
In one of the above-mentioned studies, focused on xenophobia,
researchers investigated how the communication of anger plays such
benecial roles in inter-group conict. One might think that perhaps it
is fear of the enraged group that causes the increase in support for
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41
conciliatory policies on behalf of the dominant group. Indeed, Nussbaum
notes that in so far as anger can act as an eective deterrent to keep others
from infringing upon one’s rights, it does so by inspiring fear which is
“not likely to lead to a future of stability or peace” (2015: 55). Contrary
to this, however, increased levels of empathy were observed in the
dominant group following anger communication from an oppressed
group (de Vos etal. 2013). Indeed, empathy for the oppressed group was
actually highest in the anger communication condition. is suggests that
anger communication is a potentially optimal way of recruiting the
empathy of dominant group members that are the target of anger, and
that this in turn mediates their increase in support for conciliatory poli-
cies.13 is suggests that empathy for, rather than fear of, the oppressed
group may be causing the positive eects of anger observed in other
studies.
In a follow-up study, de Vos etal. (2016) found the appropriateness of
the anger to moderate its positive eects. In other words, anger
communication increased empathy in the dominant group when the
dominant group saw the oppressed groups anger as a justied response to
the situation at hand. is highlights a key moderator that helps determine
when anger communication is likely to cause the out-group to respond
empathetically and support constructive policies.
In sum, we rst saw that empirical work supports a vital role for anger
in motivating constructive collective action. In addition to this, studies
also showed the communication of anger on behalf of those oppressed to
trigger dominant group support for constructive and conciliatory actions.
Both reasons for holding the inecacy claim are therefore challenged by
recent empirical work.
Against any charge of having cherry picked the experimental work I
rely upon, it is crucial to note that the experimental literatures I invoke
have long departed from debates over whether anger is constructive or
not in collective action orinter-group disputes. Instead, researchersfocus
on trying to uncover key moderators that determine when anger is
13 Mediators, in psychology, are variables that speak to how or why certain eects occur. In this case,
empathy is a mediator because it can be seen as an intermediary step that explains the eect of
anger on out group support for constructive actions.
The Efficacy ofAnger: Recognition andRetribution
42
destructive or constructive, so as to better understand and aid conicts.
e underlying commitment to anger’s motivational pluripotency is clear
and widespread (Spring et al. 2018). is should be reected in
contemporary philosophical treatments of anger, and the relevance of
particular moderators attended to. e above considerations suggest that
we should drop the inecacy claim, at least regarding anger’s role in inter-
group conict resolution. If we do so, what does this mean for the nature
claim? I turn to this question now.
4 Anger’s Objects
e question that arises once we take Nussbaum’s inecacy claim to be
misguided, or, at the very least, overly simplistic, is whether we should do
away with the traditional retributive view of anger’s nature altogether. We
seem to have two choices here. Either we stick with the traditional nature
claim, and take anger’s oft constructive role in ghting for justice to be an
exception to anger’s typically retributive nature, in which case an
explanation must be given for why anger behaves uncharacteristically in
the social justice case; or, we take anger’s constructive role in social justice
to be evidence of something important about anger’s nature. What exactly
this might be must be cashed out, but any account of this sort will involve
a rejection, or at the very least a modication, of the nature claim. I argue
that we should pursue an option of the second, rather than the rst, type.
After this, I sketch a positive proposal of the second type.
One option open to anyone wishing to secure a fundamental role for
anger in the ght against social injustice, is to do so by distancing anger
in these cases from cases of everyday anger. Doing so involves casting
anger’s constructive role in ghting social injustice as a special, or deviant,
case that departs from anger’s nature. Interpersonal anger, i.e. anger felt
for one person by another, is taken to be the paradigmatic case of everyday
anger, where one’s reasons for anger relate to interpersonal betrayals or
harms. In line with the nature claim, everyday interpersonal anger is, on
Nussbaum’s (2015, 2016) view, ineective at bringing about interpersonal
resolutions as well. By constitutively involving an aim for payback,
everyday interpersonal anger may prompt retributive behavior that
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43
escalates the dispute, proving counterproductive for the angry party.
Everyday anger typically has an individual to blame and enact payback
over. Anger in the case of social injustice, however, might be less
destructive because payback cannot easilybe exacted against a particular
person. is is, perhaps, because there is often no adequate individual to
blame in those scenarios where anger is felt towards groups, institutions
or systems, and hence payback is perhaps a less immediate concern than
real change.14
Rosen (in progress) and Swaine (1996) have made independent cases
for the constructive role of anger in struggles for social justice that hinge
on anger being, in these cases, atypical for its lack of a clear agent(s) to
blame. at is, as the object of anger is not typically an individual in such
cases, payback cannot be straightforwardly exacted. Such a view maintains
a commitment to the nature claim, as anger is still by nature punitive.
Cases of constructive everyday anger are seen as outliers, and the
constructive role granted of anger in promoting social justice is taken to
hinge on a sort of uke in the natural functioning of anger; whereanger
is not able to live out its natural function of procuring payback or
retribution.
An immediate problem with such a view is that it endorses an implau-
sibly dire picture of everyday anger. e view takes a version of the inef-
cacy claim to apply to paradigmatic cases of anger, whereby anger is
ineective and often counterproductive at resolving interpersonal conict
for reasons analogous to the In-group and Out-group reasons in the case
of social justice. is doesnt sit well with empirical evidence, as
experimental work challenges the predictions that interpersonal anger
typically motivates destructive behaviour, or that it tends to antagonize
14 Everyday interpersonal anger and anger in social justice cases do not come neatly apart. First, for
the oppressed, anger at social injustice can be their ‘everyday’. Additionally, although the objects of
anger in cases of social injustice are often social objects, such as groups or institutions, anger at
specic individuals, for reasons pertaining to social injustice (such as sexism and racism) are com-
mon. For simplicity of treatment, and to mirror the experimental work, I treat interpersonal anger
and anger in cases of social injustice as conceptually distinct. e relevant distinction seems to me
not to pertain to whether the object of anger is an individual or not, but to whether the reasons for
anger involve group-based harms or not. My point in this section is that anger at individuals, for
reasons independent to group membership (what has been called paradigmatic or everyday anger),
has much more in common with anger in social injustice cases, such that accounting for anger’s
dierential eects in terms of its objects is not a promising move.
The Efficacy ofAnger: Recognition andRetribution
44
itstarget. Briey, with regards to the types of action interpersonal anger
motivates, a canonical study by Averill (1983) found a higher percentage
of non-aggressive than aggressive action tendencies in people experiencing
anger. Although there is robust evidence that, on economic distribution
paradigms, angered individuals on average respond more punitively to
unfair economic distributions than to fair economic distributions, recent
work has observed that angered individuals still choose behaviours that
are economically cooperative in response to unfair economic distributions
(Klimecki etal. 2018). is suggests that anger may not typically motivate
retributive actions towards the individuals it is directed at. Which actions
anger motivates is likely to be more a question of context than object.
Indeed, much like the social justice case, the ability of the target of anger
to change may be key to determining whether interpersonal anger
motivates constructive behaviour or payback oriented behaviour. A study
on adolescent responses to bullying for example, found implicit beliefs
about bullies to predict desires for revenge (Yeager etal. 2011). Greater
desire for revenge was observed in participants who believed that the
bully had xed character traits. e reverse was found for participants
that believed that the bully’s character was changeable. By highlighting
the changeability of the target of anger as a moderator aecting desires
for revenge, the interpersonal case seems to bear striking similarities to
the social justice case.
Similarly, as opposed to antagonizing the object of anger and promot-
ing retaliatory behavior on their behalf, the communication of anger has
been observed to trigger increased social support in close relationships
(Yoo et al. 2011), as well as increased personal gains in interpersonal
nancial negotiations (Van Kleef and Côté 2007). e latter study
pinpointed the appropriateness of anger as a key determinant of anger’s
benecial eects in interpersonal negotiations. e constructive eects of
anger were highest when the anger was seen as justied, as the oender
compensated the low status party in these cases. is points to the crucial
role of the appropriateness of anger in moderating whether the anger is
well received or not. is again suggests that interpersonal anger is far
closer to anger in the social justice case; as appropriateness similarly acts
as a moderator over anger’s benecial eects.
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45
We are left with little reason to think that anger in interpersonal con-
texts is more retributive than anger in social injustice cases. e studies
above suggest interpersonal anger plays robust benecial roles and that
anger’s eects are moderated by analogous factors seen to be key in the
social justice case: the appropriateness of anger and the changeability of
the object of anger. Given that interpersonal anger is the paradigmatic
case of having a clear target object to blame and enact retribution over,
the constructive role of anger in these cases suggests that the constructive
eects observed of anger in cases of social injustice does not hinge on
lacking straightforward targets. In light of this, the move to sideline social
justice cases of anger as atypical seems unpromising, and this in turn
makescommitment to the nature claim hard to maintain.
5 Anger’s Desires
I argue for an alternative view; one that secures anger a constructive role
in the ght against social injustice, in line with, rather than despite, its
nature. is will be a sketch, but one that I think more promising than
the other options on the table. We have seen that we have much reason
to reject a traditional view, such as Nussbaum’s (2015, 2016), that takes
anger to be constitutively tied to payback or retribution. We therefore
have reason to rethink the nature claim. I take the empirical work
discussed so far to suggest that the nature claim is unlikely to be true of
anger. Specically, I take it to t well with a view whereby two distinct
desires are central to anger: a desire for retribution and a desire for
recognition. I take there to be certain moderators that are key to
determining which desire is at play in a given case of anger.
Although the empirical work above can only provide indirect and sug-
gestive evidence for which desires are at play in anger, the phenomenol-
ogy of anger favours the existence of two distinct desires. Imagine your
friend Mark manages somehow to steal your inheritance. You would
surely want to make him suer for committing this wrong against you.
You may make him suer by cutting him out of your social circle, suing
him, defaming his character, or threatening him with physical violence.
Your anger would be aimed at Mark’s punishment. Let’s suppose now
The Efficacy ofAnger: Recognition andRetribution
46
that you fail to act on your anger. is could occur for a range of reasons,
perhaps there was high social pressure not to act, or perhaps you merely
lacked the opportunity. e desire to make Mark suer is still central to
your anger in such cases. Indeed, you are likely to hope for things to go
badly for Mark, and become happy upon hearing about his own hard-
ship, even if this news comes years later and is entirely unrelated to you.
Your desire for suering is satised in hearing this news, and you see his
pain as deserved.
Now imagine you are angry at your mother for not being there for you
throughout your divorce. When you needed her support the most, your
mother decided to go on a spontaneous three-month long holiday abroad.
Your anger at your mother would be entirely justied, but it is unlikely
that you would wish to ensure her social exclusion, or defame her
character. Nor would you want to make her suer physically, or hope for
things to go badly for her in the future. Your anger’s goal does not seem
to be that your mother suer, but rather, to make her understand what
she has done. Whereas Marks suering satised your anger’s desire for
payback, your mother’s suering will not satisfy your anger in this case.
is is because your anger at your mother does not involve a desire for
payback but rather for recognition. Your anger’s desire for recognition
will be satised by your mother’s genuine acknowledgement of the wrong
she has committed against you. is will involve your mother sharing
your appraisal of her actions towards you as unjust. is case of anger
involves a desire for recognition as it aims for an epistemic change in the
oender.15
I think anger aimed at recognition is a common phenomenon in our
daily lives, and not at all restricted to cases where the emotion is felt
towards a family member or close friend. Many cases where retributive
actions are pursued may actually aim for epistemic changes rather than
suering. Indeed, that anger aims for something akin to recognition, as
opposed to retribution, has long been noted (Smith 1976; Strawson
1962; Darwall 2013; Srinivasan 2018), yet the dominance of the
traditional retributive view of anger has not waned. I take retributive and
15 Cogley (2014), Srinivasan (2018) and Lepoutre (2018) have recently discussed anger’s recogni-
tional or epistemic aims as well.
L. L. Silva
47
recognitional aims to both be typical of anger. is amounts to a pluralist
account of the emotion.16 Desires for retribution attempt to bend others
to one’s will, while the desires for recognition attempt to have the agent’s
moral appraisals shared by the targets of anger. Each desire involves
associated satisfaction conditions, suering and understanding
respectively. I take Nussbaum to equate anger to what I have characterized
as anger that aims for retribution, while at best underestimating, and at
worst outright denying, the existence of anger aimed at recognition.
A pluralist account of anger can deliver on the phenomenological vari-
ability of our anger experiences, as well as more readily make sense of the
experimental evidence regarding anger’s role in collective action and
intergroup conict. ese studies showed the In-group and Out-group
reasons for the inecacy claim not to hold for many cases of anger. ese
are studieswhich desires for recognition help make sense of. Anger was
observed to motivate actions such as protesting, petitioning, and lobbying,
which are communicative actions that typically aim for recognition rather
than punishment. In terms of the Out-group Reason, I contend that the
dominant group can understand anger as either an appraisal of injustice
looking to be shared, or as a wish for payback. Dominant groups are
more likely to empathize with the angry group when they perceive anger
as involving desires for recognition, making them more likely to support
conciliatory policies towards them. When anger is perceived as a desire
for retribution the dominant group will be more likely to pursue
retaliatory actions against the oppressed group, or withdraw from any
engagement with them as anger is perceived as a threat. Although action
types dont line up neatly with distinct desires (we can seek recognition
through aggressive actions, for example) the role of appropriateness in
moderating anger’s ecacy in struggles for social justice suggests that
epistemic aims are central to anger.17 Even aggressive anger-triggered
16 is pluralist view is compatible with a number of specic accounts on which I remain agnostic
here. For example, anger could be constitutively linked to desires for either recognition or retribu-
tion. Alternatively, anger could be causally linked to these desires. e latter option leaves open the
possibility that anger also bears strong causal links to additional desires, as well as allowing the
possibility that a token case of anger can involve both recognitional and retributive desires. I think
the causal rather than constitutive account is more plausible but do not argue for it here.
17 e thought that emotions are appropriate or reason-responsive is widespread in moral philoso-
phy (Skorupski 2010; Raz 2011; Scanlon 2014), feminist philosophy (Frye 1983; Jaggar 1989;
The Efficacy ofAnger: Recognition andRetribution
48
actions may be met with empathy when anger is seen as appropriate, as
in such cases the targeted group shares the appraisal of those in anger.
I take the moderators highlighted to be important for three main rea-
sons. First, they highlight a key contextual feature, the changeability of
the targets of anger, which moderates over which desire—retribution or
recognition—is likely to be at play in a token case of anger. Second, the
moderators inform the conditions under which anger is eective in strug-
gles for social justice. When the targets of anger are seen as capable of
change, anger tends to involve desires for recognition. Desires for recog-
nition typically trigger actions that are primarily communicative, and
which make clear the reasons for anger. is allows the targets of anger to
share in the appraisal of a relevant situation as unjust. We saw that per-
ceiving anger as appropriate led the targets of anger to support concilia-
tory actions towards angry groups. When these conditions are in place
then, anger is eective in ghts against social injustice, without incurring
questions of morality. Lastly, the moderators shed light on why the tradi-
tional view of anger has been so prevalent. I turn to this now.
Recall that the empirical work suggested that retributive actions are
more prevalent when the target of anger is seen as unchangeable, and that
the targets of anger are more likely to retaliate against angry groups when
anger is perceived as inappropriate. is is actually an apt description of
the state of aairs in societies structured by oppression. Power imbalances
can structure which instances of anger are seen as appropriate, such that
the status quo is perpetuated and injustices left unaddressed. is means
that the anger of the oppressed will more easily be dismissed as
inappropriate due to dominant ideology (Frye 1983; Spelman 1989).
Relatedly, the angry are less likely to take their targets to be changeable in
Lorde 1997; Bell 2009) and philosophy of emotion (D’Arms and Jacobson 2000; Deonna and
Teroni 2012; Tappolet 2016). It is therefore common to think of emotions as amenable to norma-
tive assessment, such that some emotions are appropriate, or tting, while others are not.
Appropriate emotions are typically those whose objects in some way instantiate the evaluative
property in question; fear is justied when the object of your fear is in fact dangerous or poses you
a threat, for example. Prudential and moral considerations are thought to be relevant to the norma-
tive assessment of emotions as well (it might be inappropriate to laugh during an academic talk,
even though your friend’s whispered comment was funny), but these considerations are thought of
as the ‘wrong sort’ of reasons in so far as we are concerned with whether the emotion gets things
right about the world (see D’Arms and Jacobson 2000).
L. L. Silva
49
real life cases of entrenched social injustice, given their lived history of
struggle, and will therefore be more likely to act retributively. e
empirical work surveyed then seems to suggest that anger is least eective
under conditions of severe social injustice, where moderators that favour
retributive actions on behalf of the angry group, as well as against them,
are deeply engrained features of that society. Does this mean that
Nussbaum, and others who endorse the inecacy claim, get things right
regarding anger under conditions of oppression? Should the oppressed
indeed avoid anger on account of its inecacy?No, we have reason to
think that, despite moderators that favour the inecacy claim being more
prevalent under conditions of social injustice, anger is still an extremely
eective way of constructively ghting against social injustice.
For example, although under conditions of social injustice the domi-
nant group might tend to dismiss the anger of the oppressed as inappro-
priate, there are many cases of dominant group members becoming allies
of oppressed groups under conditions of severe oppression (see Brown
2002, for example). From the studies surveyed in Sect. 3 above, we have
reason to think that anger is one of the most eective ways of recruiting
allies, as anger was seen to recruit more support from out- group members
than neutral communications of wrongdoing (Tagar et al. 2011).
Furthermore, studies have shown that having even just one individual
member of an out-group share the in-groups anger, results in the in-
group seeing the out-group as potential allies. is in turn correlates with
in-group support for non-retributive actions towards the outgroup (see
McDonald etal. 2017). is highlights the crucial eect of recruiting
allies under conditions of social injustice. Recruiting even one single
member of the dominant outgroup seems to impact the perceived
changeability of the out-group immensely, and increased changeability
was one of the moderators highlighted that favoured anger’s constructive
eects. is suggests that even amidst widespread dismissal of the anger
of the oppressed, securing even a few dominant-group allies is not only
possible, but perhaps most eectively achieved through displays of anger.
Individual allies can be sensitive to the epistemic value of theangerof the
oppressed, and this can lead to changes in the key moderators that favour
anger’s ecacy. is suggests that anger has a robustly eective and
constructive role to play in struggles against social injustice.
The Efficacy ofAnger: Recognition andRetribution
50
What seems plausible, is that anger is most retributive in ‘nothing to
lose’ scenarios, where attempts at recruiting allies have proved futile, and
one’s anger has been systematically dismissed as inappropriate. ‘Nothing
to lose’ situations will be ones where the two moderators indicated in the
empirical literature—perceptions of appropriateness and perceptions of
liability to change—are most clearly operative. is sheds some light on
why the traditional view of anger has been so prevalent. It is plausible
that anger will have commonly manifested itself as retributive in unjust
societal arrangements, where the two moderators highlighted would have
been entrenched. is may have led to retribution being viewed as part of
anger’s nature. It would have been in the interest of those in power to
dismiss anger as inappropriate and to perpetuate the view that anger is
intrinsically retributive. When anger is perceived as inappropriate,
retaliatory actions are sought on behalf of the targets of anger against
angry groups. is would further entrench perceptions of the targets of
anger as having xed and uncompromising characters. is, in eect,
would ‘prove’ the traditional retributive construal of anger correct, much
to the benet of those with a vested interest in maintaining the prevailing
status quo. Once anger’s retributive tendencies are understood as
dependent on specic features of the very injustices it seeks to combat,
rather than understood as constitutive of anger’s nature, the recognitional
aims of the emotion can emerge, allowing its ecacy to be uncovered as
well as bolstered. A view of anger committed to the nature claim and
inecacy claim, then, is guilty of reading into the very nature of anger,
what on my account are contingent features of anger in specic contexts,
particularly ‘nothing to lose’ scenarios. In so far as Nussbaum captures
retributive forms of anger successfully then, she does so by obscuring the
social dynamics on which they likelydepend.
6 Conclusion
I have argued that Nussbaum’s attack on the political ecacy of anger
does not survive empirical scrutiny. Doing so led me to recommend
against the traditional construal of anger as constitutively retributive, in
favour of a pluralistic account where anger’s robust ties to a distinct desire,
L. L. Silva
51
a desire for recognition, is made central. Is anger that aims for recognition
the same as Nussbaum’s transition-anger? If it is, then Nussbaum is
pushed not only to count transition-anger as a bonied form of anger,
but to grant that non-retributive anger is far more common than her
accountcurrently allows. Anger has emerged as an eective, and morally
unproblematic, means of confronting social injustices. e oppressed
should not avoid anger, and asthe traditional retributive view of anger
loses hold, the full ecacy and meaning of anger will continue to emerge.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank Josh Knobe for all his insight and
support throughout the writing of this chapter. I am also grateful to Lucy
O’Brien, Amia Srinivasan and Andrew Knox, as well as audiences at UCL, Yale
University and UQAM’s Cognitio Conference.
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© e Author(s) 2021
A. Falcato, S. Graça da Silva (eds.), e Politics of Emotional Shockwaves,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8_3
Emotional Shockwaves, Populist Mode
ofHumour andPost-Truth Politics
JavierGil andSergioBrea
In Western democratic societies, humour practices are a pervasive ele-
ment of public culture and work actively in the political process in
numerous ways. Political actors, institutions and organizations are typi-
cally both the source and butt of jokes. Indeed, any political aspect of
collective life is susceptible to be satirized and parodied from within and
outside the political system. e settings and associations of humour and
politics are multiple, as are also the creators and participants, the produc-
ers and consumers of political humour. For instance, a day like any other
in parliamentary life involves the entanglement of ritualized and institu-
tionalized forms of political humour, as well as more informal and less
conventional ones: the formalities of a plenary speech leave room to
ironic statements, a lively debate in the house of representatives unfolds
J. Gil (*) • S. Brea
University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain
e-mail: javiergil@uniovi.es; UO217894@uniovi.es
e research resulting in this chapter was part of Civic Constellation III: Democracy,
Constitutionalism, and Anti-Liberalism project (Spain’s National Research Fund,
PGC2018-093573-B-100) and COST Action 16211 Reappraising Intellectual Debates on Civic
Rights and Democracy in Europe (RECAST).
58
incisive jokes and jocular allusions playing to the gallery, a session of a
parliamentary commission gives rise to ingeniously funny questions and
witty retorts, a private conversation between parliamentarians is seasoned
with in-jokes and sarcastic remarks, then cartoonists and journalists, web
pages and blogs’ content creators disseminate political jokes about these
sessions and debates, the internet memes travel through social networks
leaving an endless trail of laughing emoticons, the late night satirical
shows look over what happened during the day with a string of gags and
comments accompanied by the mirth of the audience, and so on.
Scholars from diverse theoretical and methodological backgrounds
have looked at the connections between humour and politics, unraveling
them in dierent political cultures and analyzing genres, codes and audi-
ences. Some modes of political humour have been said to fall on the side
of the classical theories of humour, which ultimately derived from phi-
losophers of the 18th and 19th centuries: the relief, incongruity and
superiority theories (Morreall 1983, 2016; Billig 2005). For instance,
humour generation and appreciation is often seen as an outlet that pro-
vides relief from the seriousness and roughness associated with politics
and it is valued as a benecial element for toning down the bitterness of
high-volume political debates, loosening the dialectical collisions that
partisan controversies transfer to civil society, and recovering the level of
acceptable informality that politicians should never leave completely
behind. If we adhere to the incongruity theory, the one that has attracted
the most interest from philosophers and psychologists,1 humour can be
seen as a human capability that leads to enjoy what is perceived as ludi-
crous, abnormal or out of place, that reveals absurdities behind the politi-
cal behaviours, patterns and norms, and that highlights incoherences
while readjusting the shared meanings of politics. Ranging from the con-
temptuous laughter to embodied parodies, humour practices and prod-
ucts can humiliate and demean the opponents and their merits and
demerits, “by comparison whereof they [the laughters] suddenly applaud
themselves” (Hobbes 1982: 125). However, these practices and products
can also “humanize” politics by focusing on the faults and shortcomings,
1 Philosophers such as Kant, Schopenhauer and Bergson endorsed the incongruity theory. Recent
and sophisticated cases for this theory are provided by Morreall (2005), Carroll (2014), and
Eagleton (2019).
J. Gil and S. Brea
59
mistakes and manias, lapses and inabilities of those risible rivals, be they
politicians, lobbyists, activists, citizens, journalists, civil servants, judges,
and so on.
Politics-related humour is a multifaceted phenomenon and supplies
human needs and interests that are not limited to express superiority,
release an inner tension and perceive a discord in the presumed legibility
of the political world. Researchers in humanities and social sciences have
looked into a variety of political uses of humour by parsing sundry epi-
sodes and genres: jokes, caricatures, vaudeville, plays, satires, sitcoms, etc.
ese political uses often extend the range of the classical approaches. For
instance, Michael Mulkays sociological and ethnographic approach con-
tend that the “humorous mode” of political communication has as much
impact as the serious forms of understanding of modern politics because
it has a capacity to manage the complexity and ambiguities of modern life
(Mulkay 1988). Many authors emphasize the subversive aspects of
humour practices and products. is is particularly evident in the case of
acts of disobedience, creative stunts and peaceful resistance in the context
of the new social movements and nonviolent activism (Yalcintas 2015;
Sørensen 2016). However, the seemingly disorderly and transgressive
expressions of humour very often have reinstated the dominant order by
oering transitory and carnivalesque relief instead of placing it in ques-
tion. Further, political humour practices may reinforce the status quo
rather than subverting it or, conversely, the norms they do subvert might
be worth preserving.
Other authors are concerned with the ethics of humour and the
boundaries between the aesthetic appreciation and ethical evaluation of
humour (Lockyer and Pickering 2005). Some of them claim that there is
a close connection between humour and public morality arguing that
laughter is a typical democratic response because sharing humour leads to
the cultivation of solidarity, harmonizes with armative political emo-
tions and has a positive impact on political coexistence (Buckley 2003;
Nussbaum 2013). However, this community-building dimension of
shared humour does not prevent it from being deeply divisive, corrosive
and disbanding. is other aspect is better considered by other theoreti-
cal views that prioritize the social critique (Lewis 2006; Tsakona and
Popa 2011). Any politically centered approach has to take into account
these views and explore the idea that laughing at each other—with malice
Emotional Shockwaves, Populist Mode of Humour…
60
and benevolence—may both facilitate the democratic engagement and
endanger the mutual coexistence.
In this chapter, we consider the relevance that humour practices and
products acquire after the “aective turn” in political and social theory,
and identify specically a subset of political humour that we call the
“populist mode of humor” in connection to the perspective of “moral
tribalism”. We don’t pretend to cover the whole range of possible mani-
festations of this mode of humour nor discuss in detail a denite list of
specic and transcultural features. We rather concentrate on a few distin-
guishing marks by drawing on three ctions from popular mass media
that agree in representing collective emotional upheavals when populist
leaderships build a commonality with the public. After that, we pay
attention to the fact that populist humour thrives on post-truth settings
and becomes a central part of the post-truth politics. We suggest that, in
the hands of populist activists inciting large audiences in highly polarized
scenarios, the online mutation of humorous practices seeks more aggres-
sively to undermine established institutions, shift the public opinion
encompassing overlooked and discredited issues, and convert and radical-
ize potential supporters. ese practices continue to favour the collective
emotional electricity having the “performance of the crisis” in prospect.
We conclude by glimpsing a counteractive mode of civic humour that
emotional citizens put at the service of public positioning and critical
discrepancies and that reinforces the lively tension between emotions and
facts, instead of supplanting the latter.
1 Political Humour andMoral Tribalism
In general terms, humour is a name for all those objects and situations
that give rise to comic amusement. Elicited and concomitant responses of
this enjoyment may be an overt laughter, a subtle smile, recognizable
facial features and more or less detectable bodily expressions. In turn,
being amused while detecting jokes and perceiving situations as comical
doesnt occur without feeling anything. Discrepancies exist as to whether
or not humorous amusement is to be considered an emotional state
(Carroll 2014; Morreall 2016). For what concerns us here, it suces to
J. Gil and S. Brea
61
point out some connections. Like the emotions, comic amusement may
rest upon or be connected to beliefs. Laughing fellows who nd the same
things funny display a share in an understanding of certain states of
aairs. Humorous sparks and remarks can make situations intelligible
and provide some sort of overview of them. Not very dierently of some
emotions, they can light up implicit shared knowledge and bring us back
to a common social world. However, they don’t make only explicit the
commonality and sociability that is implicit in our everyday practices.
ey also apprise us of the presence of “cognitive bugs” in the heuristics
and default modes of reasoning deployed in everyday life (Minsky 1986).
Again, as the emotions, the comic enjoyments and attitudes can inaugu-
rate mood states and be highly infectious. A humorous amusement can
put people in a droll mood, making them perceive something funny in
everything that comes the way or maybe relax and be rendered attentive
and well disposed. Likewise, comic amusement easily passes from one to
another as the transference of feelings known as emotional contagion
does. Such contagion may be a group one. Much like the uid emotions
can propagate rapidly inside the groups, people are easily aected by the
humour among group members (Provine 2012; Wild etal. 2003).
In recent decades, an appreciable sum of research has been made con-
cerning the role of human passions in political life (Neuman etal. 2007;
ompson and Hoggett 2012). Humour practices and products acquire
new relevance after this “aective turn” in political and social theory. A
way of approaching the issue we are concerned with is to start from the
fact that emotions have an impact on our moral and political judgements.
Insofar as the latter are highly susceptible of being swayed by social judge-
ments and political messages, the emotions are a vehicle for political agents
to shape the changes of opinion of individuals and groups. e more
extensive the audiences and electorates and the less restricted the oers of
mass media and social media platforms, the more likely it is that emotion-
based social inuence will be attempted and produced. Contemporary
mediated politics is deeply entwined with emotional manipulation. Even
if persuasive politicians publicly present arguments and data, they try to
establish rapport with the audiences by speaking directly to the emotions
and provoking aective ashes that prepare peoples minds in certain
directions. In this context, amusement ceases to be an activity engaged in
Emotional Shockwaves, Populist Mode of Humour…