Look Back in Anger. Resentment, Justice and Violence

• Autores: Mirko Alagna
• Localización: On Resentment.: An Interdisciplinary Workshop on The History of Emotions, 26,27, 28 October, 2011 The Louis-Jeantet Auditorium, Geneva / coord. por Dolores Martín Moruno, Javier Moscoso Sarabia, Bernardino Fantini, 2011, pág. 1
• Idioma: español
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • After the experience of the Thirty Tyrants, the democratic Athens imposed itself an obligation: mè mnesikakein, to neutralize the corrosive effect of resentment. The amnesty permitted to re-create a civic community, moving the attention on the future. On the contrary, the resentful 'looks back', refuses the political burden to imagine the future and wants just to balance the past. It is not a coincidence that the one that harder criticized the passion of resentment is also, at the same time, the theorist of oblivion, i.e. Nietszche (see the second of the Untimely Meditations, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life): the core question is the idea that health and life are strictly bounded to a certain degree of oblivion. Who is obsessed by the past has no space to start over, living his present life and projecting his future.

    It is possible to apply this dynamics not just to individual life but also to political communities, as the preceding example of Athens show.

    In the third tragedy of Aeschylus' Oresteia -The Eumenidis -we can find some indications about this issue expressed in mythological terms: the Erinyes aspire to condemn Orestes for the murder of his mother. Due to the intercession of Athena, he is judged by a jury, and after the trial Orestes is acquitted. Athena persuades the Erinyes to accept the verdict and to abandon their intention to punish Orestes for his crime; in this way they became the Eumenidis, living in Athens - honoured by the citizens - and assuring wealth and peace to the polis.

    In theoretical terms: the violent and vindictive effects of resentment are neutralized through the institution of a juridical procedure which has also the right to exculpate the defendant. Amnesty and the sincere recognition of an institution in charge of the administration of justice are necessary preconditions to assure a peaceful future to the polis.

    It is important to highlight (1) the difference between anger/rage and resentment. Resentment surfaces when anger sinks to a sub-thymotic level: it is an amorphous rage, which has lost "collectability, transformability and cultivatability" (Sloterdijk). Resentment is an entropic rage which intoxicates life: it is the poisoned fruit of the duty to be patient. When anger lacks believable plans for the future, it goes 'in loop' and becomes resentment. For this reason I do not think that resentment is neither the unique nor the principal movebo for revolutions: they look forward in direction of utopian world. The housemaid of the Tocqueville's family made a smile when she heard the noises of riots, not a sneer (Negri).

    (2) Resentment is not a monochrome negative emotion: it is a speechless and masochistic reaction to injustice;

    but it is still a reaction and thus a symptom of the ability to recognize and perceive the injustice. A world without resentment can be either the Jérusalem Céleste or a social darwinistic world, which is impermeable to ethic and insensible to injustice. Resentment im-poses injustice as a social problem: it is deeply different from the acrimony and the arrogance of the winners1. In political field it is possible to identify three different ways to deal with past injustice looking at the future, taking example from recent history; (a) the Nurenberg process:

    this is the example of a justice where it is possible to find traces of resentment.

    What the Nazis did is unforgettable and then unforgivable (Jankélévitch). (b) Chile's Amnesty Law: the attempt to break with the past through the amnesty for the crimes of Pinochet's dictatorship was a (clumsy) try to neutralize resentment. On the contrary, the lack of legitimacy of the people and institutions who proposed this amnesty can cause a rise of resentment: when justice is impossible, resentment is the last resource for the victims. (c) The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Africa): this is the most interesting try to balance past and future, searching neither revenge nor oblivion. The public truth can be a form of compensation without violent consequences; this could be an escape route from resentment, the overcoming of the vulnus of violence without oblivion.

    (3) Violence and resentment. The difference between rage and resentment - from the point of view of violence - is not quantitative but qualitative: the violence of angry people may be brute, but it can have 'maieutic force' for a new social order. On the contrary, the violence of resentful people is blind because it is 'back-looking' and - literally - without future. The violence of resentful people has no future, abdicates to the future and it strives just for compensation. This is the arrogance of the positively privileged and their Rechthaberei. I prefer to use the Italian word livore, which derived from Latin livor, -oris: bluish color, livid spot. It reminds the colour due to the nausea of those who risk indigestion, the riches and 'sated'.