Explosive Passion: A Conceptualization of Political Anger
No. 90 (2024-10-04)Author(s)
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Iván Garzón VallejoUniversidad Autónoma de ChileORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3471-3688
Abstract
In recent years, anger has emerged as a crucial category for analyzing contemporary political phenomena such as democratic elections, protests, collective violence, social movements, and crises of institutional representation. However, it has also become a vague or empty signifier among commentators and journalists trying to describe these events. This article begins with a brief philosophical overview of anger, tracing its evolution from Greco-Roman antiquity to the French Revolution. This historical journey sets the stage for the second part, where the article proposes a conceptualization of political anger through three contemporary shifts: first, a shift toward a realistic understanding that diminishes the relevance of the negationist perspective rooted in ancient and Enlightenment moral, philosophical, and theological views; second, a shift toward a collective and political dimension that has overshadowed individual ethical or religious interpretations; and third, a shift toward the ethical and moral legitimization of anger. For political anger to transcend its status as an empty signifier, as has often happened in Western public debate since 2016, it must be conceptualized as an emotion that is explanatory—identifying the passionate motivation or justice-driven response behind countless recent political phenomena—political—recognizing the latent presence of thymos in various contemporary expressions—and comparative—considering historical, geographical, national contexts and related emotions like hatred and resentment. The ways in which anger is used, abused, expressed, and represented are shaped by the contexts, actors, and causes in which it is experienced as a potentially explosive passion.
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