ANGER: NAVIGATING PAIN, WONDER, AND HOPE
Practicing Anger - Ana Mendieta - Imagen de Yagul (1973)
A feminist genealogy of anger: the history of an emotion
- The over-association of feminist/feminists and anger - the angry feminist (emotion and subject collapse)
- Anger is not the foundation of feminism
- A critique of the delegitimisation of "negative passions" (rage, ravings, outrage, anger); rage as useless, disruptive, unreasonable
- Feminist anger and theories of anger: not to dismiss emotions, but to critique how certain emotions are being attached to certain bodies, and not others, and used to delegitimise their claims; a call to overcome the dichotomy between emotion and reason; and for embodied thought; emotions as intricately tied up to knowledge production (they are not the outcome); i.e. affect studies
- Anger as a reaction to something external in the social world, moving outwards into the world with the desire to change something
- Anger is an emotion that can lead to new forms of knowledge; what does it expose, what does it try to communicate. What does anger do?
- Affect theory: "Feeling bad might, in fact, be the ground for transformation" It is about "how to live a better life by embracing rather than flossing over bad feelings." (Ann Cvetkovich, Depression: A Public Feeling, 3)
- Daily life, daily practice, daily politics; "embracing conflict"; or, the politics of ambivalence (Magda)
Anger within feminism: Audre Lorde
Sarah Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 68 - Anger and the angry Black woman
- Whose anger is being heard (or blocked)?
- Anger is a speech act, aimed at communication
- "Anger is loaded with energy and information" (Lorde)
- Anger needs to be unpacked and translated
- Anger is the expression of discontent with a situation and the wish to change it; to imagine a better alternative/world/future
- Anger means questioning our own investments in feminist projects
What does a feminist politics of anger look like?
- The risks of speaking out against established "truths"
- Feminist configurations
- "Figurations of alternative feminist subjectivity, such as the woman warrior, the womanist, the lesbian, the cyborg, the inappropriate(d) other, the nomadic feminist, etc., differ from classical 'metaphors' in calling into play a sense of accountability for one's locations. They express materially embedded cartographies and as such are self-reflexive and materially grounded. Figurations, for instance, the cyborg, are both analytical tools and creative devices. They act as the spotlight for aspects of one's practice which were blind spots before. By extension, figurations generate and express knowledge claims [...] On the creative level, figurations express also the desire for change, transformation, or alternative relations to the power one inhabits: they are affirmative as well as critical tools." (Rosi Braidotti, in Doing Gender, 249)
- Feminist killjoy (Ahmed): anger as investment in a better world
- Anger is not the foundation of feminism
- Anger is a spech act that can be heard, received, or blocked
- Anger is creative (examples Mendieta, Gadsby)
- Anger is an emotion that can lead to new forms of knowledge; what does it expose, what does it try to communicate
- Anger as political, historical, affect (Sue Kim)
- Political anger as systemic, i.e. directed against systems, not people
How is anger connected to pain, hope, wonder (and other affects)?
- Pain: excavating the pain of oppression and violence during CR-groups in the 1970's; how to access and "translate" the pain of others; who gets to speak?
- Hope and wonder: affective relations to the world that imply seeing an object as if for the first time, or, invested with a future; i.e. the ordinary?
- The ordinary as a site of wonder, but also, as a site of local politics, of the grounds for change. Wonder is also the recognition that nothing can be taken for granted! Thinking through forms of activism.
- Hope: about the future (an affective question); who is able/free to imagine what future; what horizons become visible to some people, and not others? How can anger be used to get there?
- It involves recognising and living with (for extended periods of time, if not always) insecurity (i.e. the impasse that Cvetkovich talks about), with surprises, both good and bad, and joy, along the way.
"If anger pricks our skin, if it makes us shudder, sweat and tremble, then it might just shudder us into new ways of being; it might just enable us to inhabit a different kind of skin, even if that skin remains marked or scarred..." see blackboard
Practicing Anger - Ana Mendieta - Imagen de Yagul (1973)
A feminist genealogy of anger: the history of an emotion
- The over-association of feminist/feminists and anger - the angry feminist (emotion and subject collapse)
- Anger is not the foundation of feminism
- A critique of the delegitimisation of "negative passions" (rage, ravings, outrage, anger); rage as useless, disruptive, unreasonable
- Feminist anger and theories of anger: not to dismiss emotions, but to critique how certain emotions are being attached to certain bodies, and not others, and used to delegitimise their claims; a call to overcome the dichotomy between emotion and reason; and for embodied thought; emotions as intricately tied up to knowledge production (they are not the outcome); i.e. affect studies
- Anger as a reaction to something external in the social world, moving outwards into the world with the desire to change something
- Anger is an emotion that can lead to new forms of knowledge; what does it expose, what does it try to communicate. What does anger do?
- Affect theory: "Feeling bad might, in fact, be the ground for transformation" It is about "how to live a better life by embracing rather than flossing over bad feelings." (Ann Cvetkovich, Depression: A Public Feeling, 3)
- Daily life, daily practice, daily politics; "embracing conflict"; or, the politics of ambivalence (Magda)
Anger within feminism: Audre Lorde
Sarah Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 68 - Anger and the angry Black woman
- Whose anger is being heard (or blocked)?
- Anger is a speech act, aimed at communication
- "Anger is loaded with energy and information" (Lorde)
- Anger needs to be unpacked and translated
- Anger is the expression of discontent with a situation and the wish to change it; to imagine a better alternative/world/future
- Anger means questioning our own investments in feminist projects
What does a feminist politics of anger look like?
- The risks of speaking out against established "truths"
- Feminist configurations
- "Figurations of alternative feminist subjectivity, such as the woman warrior, the womanist, the lesbian, the cyborg, the inappropriate(d) other, the nomadic feminist, etc., differ from classical 'metaphors' in calling into play a sense of accountability for one's locations. They express materially embedded cartographies and as such are self-reflexive and materially grounded. Figurations, for instance, the cyborg, are both analytical tools and creative devices. They act as the spotlight for aspects of one's practice which were blind spots before. By extension, figurations generate and express knowledge claims [...] On the creative level, figurations express also the desire for change, transformation, or alternative relations to the power one inhabits: they are affirmative as well as critical tools." (Rosi Braidotti, in Doing Gender, 249)
- Feminist killjoy (Ahmed): anger as investment in a better world
- Anger is not the foundation of feminism
- Anger is a spech act that can be heard, received, or blocked
- Anger is creative (examples Mendieta, Gadsby)
- Anger is an emotion that can lead to new forms of knowledge; what does it expose, what does it try to communicate
- Anger as political, historical, affect (Sue Kim)
- Political anger as systemic, i.e. directed against systems, not people
How is anger connected to pain, hope, wonder (and other affects)?
- Pain: excavating the pain of oppression and violence during CR-groups in the 1970's; how to access and "translate" the pain of others; who gets to speak?
- Hope and wonder: affective relations to the world that imply seeing an object as if for the first time, or, invested with a future; i.e. the ordinary?
- The ordinary as a site of wonder, but also, as a site of local politics, of the grounds for change. Wonder is also the recognition that nothing can be taken for granted! Thinking through forms of activism.
- Hope: about the future (an affective question); who is able/free to imagine what future; what horizons become visible to some people, and not others? How can anger be used to get there?
- It involves recognising and living with (for extended periods of time, if not always) insecurity (i.e. the impasse that Cvetkovich talks about), with surprises, both good and bad, and joy, along the way.
"If anger pricks our skin, if it makes us shudder, sweat and tremble, then it might just shudder us into new ways of being; it might just enable us to inhabit a different kind of skin, even if that skin remains marked or scarred..." see blackboard
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