“Emotions as Regime of Justification? The Case of Philanthropic Civic Anger,” European Journal of Social Theory (2011), 14, 2: 301-320. (original) (raw)

Emotions as regime of justification?: The case of civic anger

European Journal of Social Theory, 2011

Page 1. Emotions as regime of justification?: The case of civic anger Ilana F. Silber Bar-Ilan University, Israel Abstract The aim of this article is to explore the implications of a specific type of anger – termed here 'civic' anger – with ...

Emotional Politics – Some notes on anger, resentment and compassion

Nordicum-Mediterraneum, 2020

This article presents some attempts to understand the recent political turn to authoritarian right-wing populism in terms of emotions – more specifically anger. This anger belongs, according to researchers, to a specific demographic; white, downward mobile, middle class men are the backbone of the populist far right in US and Europe. The move towards populist authoritarianism is, however, a worldwide phenomenon, and Pankaj Mishra links the authoritarian and illiberal turn to inherent problems in the global modernization process first envisioned by Rousseau and the failure of liberal political theory to take human emotions seriously. Martha Nussbaum’s Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice wants to amend this lack of attention to emotions in liberal theory. This article problematizes this approach from an Arendtian perspective.

The Role of the Moral Emotions in Our Social and Political Practices

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2016

In this article, I address problems associated with 'Modernity' and those encountered at the impasse of post-modernity and the newly named phenomenon of 'postsecularism'. I consider more specifically what I call 'moral emotions' or essentially interpersonal emotions can tell us about who we are as persons, and what they tell us about our experience and concepts of freedom, normativity, power, and critique. The moral emotions, and retrieving the evidence of the 'heart' , point to the possibility of contributing to the social imaginary of the Modern and its postmodern variants, playing a significant role in shaping civic life and relations of power.

MORAL OUTRAGE Introduction The Generative Power of Political Emotions

2018

Moral outrage has until now been conceptualized as a call to action, a reaction to injustice and transgressions, and a forceful motor for democratic participation, acts of civil disobedience, and violent and illicit action. Th is introduction goes beyond linear causality between trigger events, political emotions, and actions to explore moral outrage as it is experienced and expressed in contexts of political violence, providing a better understanding of that emotion’s generic power. Moral outrage is here understood as a multidimensional emotion that may occur momentarily and instantly, and exist as an enduring process and being-in-the-world, based on intergenerational experiences of violence, state histories, or local contexts of fear and anxiety. Because it appears in the intersubjective fi eld, moral outrage is central for identity politics and social positioning, so we show how moral outrage may be a prism to investigate and understand social processes such as mobilization, coll...

Introduction - Moral Outrage: The Generative Power of Political Emotions

Conflict and Society, 2018

Moral outrage has until now been conceptualized as a call to action, a reaction to injustice and transgressions, and a forceful motor for democratic participation, acts of civil disobedience, and violent and illicit action. Th is introduction goes beyond linear causality between trigger events, political emotions, and actions to explore moral outrage as it is experienced and expressed in contexts of political violence, providing a better understanding of that emotion’s generic power. Moral outrage is here understood as a multidimensional emotion that may occur momentarily and instantly, and exist as an enduring process and being-in-the-world, based on intergenerational experiences of violence, state histories, or local contexts of fear and anxiety. Because it appears in the intersubjective field, moral outrage is central for identity politics and social positioning, so we show how moral outrage may be a prism to investigate and understand social processes such as mobilization, collectivities, moral positioning and responsiveness, and political violence.

Moral Outrage: the generative power of political emotions

Conflict & Society, 2018

Moral outrage has until now been conceptualized as a call to action, a reaction to injustice and transgressions, and a forceful motor for democratic participation, acts of civil disobedience, and violent and illicit action. This introduction goes beyond linear causality between trigger events, political emotions, and actions to explore moral outrage as it is experienced and expressed in contexts of political violence, providing a better understanding of that emotion’s generic power. Moral outrage is here understood as a multidimensional emotion that may occur momentarily and instantly, and exist as an enduring process and being-in-the-world, based on intergenerational experiences of violence, state histories, or local contexts of fear and anxiety. Because it appears in the intersubjective field, moral outrage is central for identity politics and social positioning, so we show how moral outrage may be a prism to investigate and understand social processes such as mobilization, collectivities, moral positioning and responsiveness, and political violence.

The Moral Legitimacy of Anger

This article seeks to contest the frequently repeated assertion that anger poses the greatest threat to transitional societies moving from authoritarianism to democracy. Against suggestions that victims of past injustices should forswear their 'negative emotions' lest they spark a renewed cycle of violence, it argues that it is important to recognize the moral legitimacy of their anger. While anger is notoriously (though contestably) vulnerable to excess and needs to be moderated in reference to shared norms of reasonableness, it represents an appropriate response to wilful harm and needs to be afforded a central role in any conception of justice.

Emotion as a Dimension of Ethical and Moral Motivation

Innovation In Social Sciences Research 16 (4) 1997, 1997

Can emotion be validly inserted in the construction of a rigorous sociological or political methodology? There is no simple and most likely no definitive answer to this central epistemic issue of the sociological method. A partial, albeit unsatisfactory solution is provided by the classical distinction between value judgments and factual judgments. Though the boundaries separating the two types of judgment are fluid, subjectivity is traditionally confined to the very first moments of research, to the question or questions chosen to construct interpretative models of reality. It is afterwards banished from empirical scientific investigation and excluded from the architecture of categories of the modern sociological method. The intended result is to detach the observer from the object of study, to describe and interpret what is -the realm of factual judgments -without ceding to the temptation of saying what should be.

Moral Anger Acknowledgments As Political Acts (Draft Version Do Not Cite June 16, 2013)

In what follows, I will argue that, whereas expressing moral anger against injustice is politically important, simply acknowledging this anger, weather privately or publically, is also political, and arguably necessary. I am interested in self-acknowledgment of the emotion and not the naming of the emotion by another. Although it can be argued that certain emotions are beneficially or necessary in the moral or political life of a person, I will not argue for the usefulness of an emotion like anger. Neither am I primarily concerned with examining if an emotion like anger is a political emotion. Rather, more specifically, I want to argue that the acknowledgment that one has the emotion is a political act. This paper will proceed in two parts. In section one, I provide arguments for why I believe anger acknowledgments are political. Borrowing from the work of Naomi Scheman and Jeffrie Murphy, the arguments are based on the belief that anger acknowledgements make claims to certain transhistorical political values such as autonomy, political judgments, and self-respect and therefore before or even without direct political action, acknowledging one’s moral anger is a political act. In section two, I will give reasons for why I reject what I call “yes accounts” to the underlining question. I use Marilyn Frye’s and Sue Campbell’s work on emotional dismissal and social uptake to critique the claim that based on its productivity and effectiveness, anger acknowledgements are political. I will also respond to possible objections to my argument.

The Emotional Reengineering of Loss: On the Grief-Anger-Social Action Continuum

This article deals with the role of bereaved parents' anger as a motivating force for political and public activism. After reviewing the place of anger in the experience of processing loss and bereavement and presenting anger as a factor that leads to public initiative, the article deals with the place that anger occupies in the bereaved sector of Israeli society. The claim is made that Israeli society has changed since its early years, when "the national management of emotions" did not allow anger to be present in the public discourse of bereaved parents, to the current era in which anger is an inseparable part of Israeli bereavement discourse. The following section of the article includes an interpretive analysis of the place of anger among the research subjects, bereaved parents who later became public and political entrepreneurs. All of the research subjects lost a son in one of three circumstances that are part of the Israeli security agenda: operational accidents, terrorist attacks, and IDF combat in Lebanon. Finally, the study attempts to answer how anger structures both public and private bereavement in Israel, shaping the bereaved parents as instant celebrities.