The shadows of Ourselves: The Material Expression of Resentment

• Autores: Javier Moscoso Sarabia
• 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. 16
• Idioma: español
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• Resumen

  • This presentation takes Adam Smith's Theory of moral sentiments, as the starting point to discuss the material expression of emotions, or even vicarious emotions, in the field of the new Humanities. Though the connection between emotions and expressions is not univocal or immediate, that does not mean that history, or political science for that matter, can do without taking into consideration the forms that subjective experiences have acquired in the sciences, in the literature or in the arts. In this case, I will propose a reading of one of the most famous paintings of Théodore Géricault, Le radeau de la Méduse, as an exemplification of political and moral resentment. Unlike similar works of art, intended to enhance the viewer's approval towards the figure of the "benefactor", Géricault's work, which sympathizes with the hatred of the victims towards the perpetrators of their misfortune, aims at public resentment rather than compassion; it conveys an implicit accusation and a craving for justice.

    The historian Lynn Hunt is right to connect the invention of human rights with the cultural processes of empathic identification that proliferated during the second half of the eighteenth century. Many of these processes are framed in a "politics of compassion"; the result of kindness towards the wretched of the world, understood en masse, with no distinction among them and with no reference to the reason that initially converted them into victims. She is wrong, however, to consider that the impartiality of the observer depends only on identification or mimesis. In the works of Burke or Smith, sympathy is not given under the form of empathy or emotional contagion, but through an imagination that is at the same time performative and reflexive. The observer not only dreams, but also judges; she does not only look, but also determines the propriety or impropriety of the conduct of others. More important still, she does not only reflexively identify with what she sees, but also with what might have happened, or with that which, against all evidence, cannot happen nor will ever happen. It is only through this fantasy that mimesis is transformed into a potentially universal and virtually just emotion; only in this counterfactual way of experiencing the pain of others can the observer reach sufficient distance to construct a universal position - one that is just in its evaluation and general in its sphere of application.

    Unlike a politics of pity, based on immediate identification with the person who suffers, the "politics of justice" cannot do without the enunciation of tragedy. Here observation is linked to verbal or visual expression because the observer is not there only to look, but also to report. The observer's expository capacity transcends her (subjective) emotion and explains her (objective) desire to provide a historical record. In his detailed study of distant suffering, the sociologist Luc Boltanski identifies three expository forms that, with all their historical variations, serve to account for the spectacle of violence. The first two, he tells us, may take the form of accusation or philanthropy. The first, accusation, stems from the idea, as old as Humanity itself, that it is easier to construct a moral system when an agreement is reached as to who is directly responsible for the evil being denounced. In this case, the observer not only looks on but also condemns. In the second, on the other hand, where sympathy toward benefactors is greater than hatred toward executioners, the action is directed toward philanthropy rather than toward revenge. In the third, enunciative form, which I will attribute to Géricault, the observer cannot be drawn toward denouncement nor does she succumb to sentimentality. On the contrary, he keeps his gaze steady in the face of horror and does not blink in the face of truth. In the world in which we live, nothing seems stranger than this connection between what we call today the sphere of aesthetics and the world of politics.