The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves [1st ed. 2021] 3030560201, 9783030560201

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The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves Edited by Ana Falcato and Sara Graça da Silva

The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves

Ana Falcato  •  Sara Graça da Silva Editors

The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves

Editors Ana Falcato IFILNOVA Universidade Nova de Lisboa Lisboa, Portugal

Sara Graça da Silva IELT Universidade Nova de Lisboa Lisboa, Portugal

ISBN 978-3-030-56020-1    ISBN 978-3-030-56021-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and ­transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

IELT and IFILNOVA are supported by National Funds through FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia—under the projects UIDB/00657/2020 and UIDB/00183/2020, respectively. The editors are supported by FCT under the contractual programme in accordance with articles 4, 5, and 6 of the Law Decree no. 57/2016, of August 29, altered by Law no. 57/2017, July 19.

Acknowledgements

When we initially planned to edit this book, we were far from imagining the social and political turmoil the world would be facing as we now write this short acknowledgment message, still quarantined at our homes. We would like to show our appreciation for everyone involved in the making of this volume of which we are so very proud. Inevitably, the COVID-19 pandemic affected everyone’s deadlines, tested everyone’s patience, and inspired a new take on what was already a challenging endeavor. The number of chapters collected in this book, and their diversity, is a testament to the ever-growing and ebullient interest the topics of emotion and morality originate, especially in this political context. Our most sincere thanks to all the contributors for their enlightening chapters, patience, and cooperation in these testing times. Thank you also to the editors at Palgrave for their professionalism and understanding during all the phases of the process, especially Lauriane Piette and Dhanalakshmi Muralidharan.

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Contents

I ntroduction xvii Ana Falcato and Sara Graça da Silva  Emotion and Political Polarization  1 Jesse Prinz  The Efficacy of Anger: Recognition and Retribution 27 Laura Luz Silva  Emotional Shockwaves, Populist Mode of Humour and Post-­Truth Politics 57 Javier Gil and Sergio Brea  Negativity in Contemporary Journalism Towards Civic and Material Progress 81 João N. S. Almeida  Perverse Witness: The Role of Photography and Shock Compulsion in Contemporary Trauma Discourse101 Hannah R. Bacon

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 Shockwaves of Rape and Shattering of Power in the Contemporary Indian Web Series: The Case of Delhi Crime, Made in Heaven, and Judgement Day123 Shuhita Bhattacharjee  “You Stink!” Smell and Moralisation of the Other147 Sara Graça da Silva  The Moral Significance of Shock165 Oded Na’aman  Emotional Shock and Ethical Conversion187 Ana Falcato  Making and Breaking Our Shared World: A Phenomenological Analysis of Disorientation as a Way of Understanding Collective Emotions in Distributed Cognition203 Pablo Fernández Velasco and Roberto Casati  The Radiant Indifference of Being: The Mystic Fable of The Passion According to G.H.221 Nicolas de Warren Index251

Notes on Contributors

João  N.  S.  Almeida is a PhD candidate of the Literary Theory Programme at the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa (School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon). He obtained his Master’s degree in 2018 with a dissertation on Nietzsche’s early tropological theory of language. Since then, he has presented several talks and articles in academic circles on topics such as Fiction Theory, Epistemology and Ontology, Early Christianity, Sound Theory, Art Cinema and Popular Cinema, and Philosophy of Language. Hannah  R.  Bacon holds a PhD in Philosophy from Stony Brook University. Bacon’s dissertation employs the work of Henri Bergson to present a durational conception of trauma and interrogates the consequences this would have for a Levinasian intersubjective ethics. Broader interests include aesthetics, phenomenology of embodiment, incarceration, care ethics, philosophy of race, gender, and sexuality, and social and political philosophy. Bacon holds a Master’s degree in philosophy from The New School. Shuhita Bhattacharjee  is Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts (English) at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. Having completed her PhD from the University of Iowa, she is working on a Routledge USA monograph that examines the representation of colonial idols in fin-de-­ ­ siècle British and Anglo-Indian literature and on an Orient xi

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Blackswan (Literary/Cultural Theory Series) monograph on Postsecular Theory. She has written in English Literature in Transition and has current and forthcoming publications on the Victorian Gothic and on diaspora literature and culture with Palgrave Macmillan, Lexington Books (Rowman and Littlefield), and Edinburgh University Press. Alongside her academic interests, she has worked extensively in the social sector at national and international levels in areas such as violence against HIVpositive women, gendered approaches to sex education, gender-­sensitive HIV media campaigns, and awareness of workplace anti-sexual harassment laws among university students. Sergio Brea  holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Oviedo (Spain). His dissertation is entitled The (at)traction of the center. A philosophical-­political proposal on the social liberal and fascist syntheses and speeches in Europe and Spain. His research focus has been on issues in political philosophy and includes articles and a book on Carl Schmitt’s thought. Roberto Casati  is the Director of Institut Jean Nicod. In the last years, he has worked mainly on the computational properties of shadow representations. His last book, The Visual World of Shadows, written in collaboration with Patrick Cavanagh, was published in 2019 with MIT Press. More generally, Casati has worked on theoretical problems related to cognitive artifacts in the framework of an extension and generalisation of the “two modes” account of reasoning, which is meant to be an alternative to “extended mind” theories. A number of training and field projects are ongoing or planned. The main aim is to dovetail the cognitive mechanics underlying the use of artifacts (shifting, bridging, recycling, contracting, and so on) in a unitary framework centered on the tradeoff between representational advantages. His present research is on wayfinding and navigation, and he is writing a book on the centrality of maps for cognition. Nicolas de Warren  is Associate Professor of Philosophy & Jewish Studies at Penn State University. He is the author of numerous articles and has recently published A Momentary Breathlessness in the Sadness of Time and co-edited Philosophers at the Front. He is writing a book on forgiveness and another one on the impact of the First World War on German Philosophy.

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Ana Falcato  holds a PhD in Philosophy from the NOVA FCSH, Lisbon, Portugal. Between 2013 and 2015 she was a Humboldt Research Fellow at the Johannes-Gutenberg University and the University of Oxford. Her work has appeared in Studies in the Novel, Hypatia, Kant-Studien, Wittgenstein-Studien and Daimon: Revista International de Filosofía. She published Philosophy in the Condition of Modernism in 2018 and Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity and Values (co-edited with Luís Aguiar e Sousa) in 2019. She is a research fellow at IFILNOVA, where she conducts a project about the novelistic and critical work of J.M. Coetzee. Over the past four-and-a-half years she has organised several international meetings at NOVA, and in all of them she systematically presented work on negative moral emotions, discussed through the lenses of literary criticism, phenomenology, and philosophical, anthropological, and moral philosophy. Pablo Fernández Velasco  is pursuing his PhD on the phenomenology of disorientation at Institut Jean Nicod (ENS, EHESS, CNRS) in Paris, and he is a visitor at University College London, where he collaborates with the Philosophy Department, the Spatial Cognition Lab, and the Bartlett School of Architecture. His work combines an interdisciplinary approach with philosophical methods, and has been published in venues such as Journal of Consciousness Studies and Human Geographies. He specialises in the phenomenology of space and in theories of cognition such as Distributed Cognition or the Predictive Processing framework. Javier  Gil  is an Associate Professor at the University of Oviedo. His teaching and research interests encompass the areas of political p ­ hilosophy, democratic theory, normative ethics, bioethics, and, more recently, public health ethics and disaster ethics. He is a member of the management committee of the COST Action CA16211 “Reappraising Intellectual Debates on Civic Rights and Democracy in Europe” (RECAST). Some of his recent publications are “Checks and Ambivalences: On Pierre Rosanvallon’s Conceptual History of the Political”, in Global Intellectual History (2019); “Hilary Putnam”, in Amy Allen and Eduardo Mendieta (eds.), Cambridge Habermas Lexicon (Cambridge University Press, 2019); “Abstaining citizenship”, in Claudia Wiesner et  al. (eds.), Shaping

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Citizenship (Routledge, 2018); “Modelling meritocracy”, in Philosophy and Public Issues (2017); “Democratic authority and informed consent” in Kari Palonen and José María Rosales (eds.), Parliamentarism and Democratic Theory (Budrich, 2015). Sara Graça da Silva  received her PhD from Keele University in 2008 with a thesis on the rich interplay between nineteenth-century science and literature: “Sexual Plots in Charles Darwin and George Eliot: Evolution and Manliness in Adam Bede and The Mill on the Floss”. She is appointed Researcher at the Institute for Studies of Literature and Tradition, NOVA/FCSH, Portugal, working on evolutionary readings of literature. She has a large experience with working in an interdisciplinary environment and has collaborations with Durham’s Centre for the Coevolution of Biology and Culture, and the Centre for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. She has contributed to the Victorian Literature Handbook, Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Journalism, Utopian Studies, Royal Society Open Science, National Geographic, PNAS, amongst others, and has edited two volumes with Routledge on the relationship between Morality and Emotion: New Interdisciplinary landscapes in Morality and Emotion. Routledge (2018), and Morality and Emotion: (Un)conscious Journey to Being. Routledge (2016). Oded Na’aman  is a Postdoctoral fellow at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Before coming to the Hebrew University, Oded was a lecturer at the Stanford Philosophy Department and a postdoctoral fellow at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University. He received his PhD in Philosophy from Harvard University. Oded writes about ethics, moral psychology, philosophy and literature, and political philosophy. Recently, he has been developing a process-based view of the rationality of emotions in general and of emotional change in particular. Recent publications include “The Rationality of Emotional Change: Toward a Process View”, Noûs 2019; “The Fitting Resolution of Anger”, Phil Studies 2019.

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Jesse  Prinz  is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director of Interdisciplinary Science Studies at the City University of New  York, Graduate Center. His research focuses on the perceptual, emotional, and cultural foundations of human psychology. He is author of Furnishing the Mind (2002), Gut Reactions (2004), The Emotional Construction of Morals (2007), Beyond Human Nature (2012), and The Conscious Brain (2012). Two other books are forthcoming: The Moral Self. New  York: Oxford University Press (in production) and Works of Wonder: A Theory of Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press (in production). Laura  Luz  Silva is a Post-Doctoral researcher at the Center for Philosophical Psychology at the University of Antwerp. She works with Bence Nanay. Laura holds a PhD in Philosophy from University College London and a BSc in Neuroscience from the same institution. Laura works primarily on the Philosophy of Emotion, at the intersections of Moral Psychology, Feminist Philosophy, and Philosophy of Mind. Her research is empirically informed in two distinct senses: she strives to take social reality seriously and engages with experimental work in the brain and behavioral sciences. Laura’s doctoral work focused on the emotion of anger in particular, and defended its ability to play the roles feminist philosophers have long advocated of it, by developing an account of anger, and its rationality, that better fits empirical and phenomenological reality. Laura’s research focuses on fundamental questions regarding what emotions are, including what and how emotional states represent the world around us, as well as epistemological questions regarding how emotions play positive and ­distinctive roles in the generation of knowledge. Laura is particularly interested in how these fundamental questions help shed light on the practical role emotions play, or ought to play, in our everyday and political lives.

Introduction Thou Shall not Believe in Fairies

We are living in dangerous times. The historical moment the world is facing is one of absolute uncertainty, with the soil of democracy being meticulously dismantled in front of our eyes on a daily basis. The subjective experience of such catastrophic events at a global scale is bound to be one of emotional shock. It is thus natural to assume that under such progression of existential threats, the emotional (im)balance of millions of men and women reflects these constant waves of emotional trauma, impacting on social, cultural, political, religious, technological, and other levels of existence. Not so long ago, pre-COVID-19 crisis, the world was already facing a sense of emotional disorientation, fuelled by the rise of political extremism and growing economic adversities. When we set up to edit this book, we were far from imagining that we would be confronted with such a shocking turn of events regarding the sort of life we grew familiar with. We are still in the beginning of this fight, and no one really knows how it will end, but the shockwaves from the COVID-19 pandemic have already changed the world as we knew it, and have so far succeeded in forcing us to assess new priorities of survival. This situation also created a sense of unity within and among nations which is hard to recall even in times of war. Governments and politicians agreed that people came first, and acts of empathy and altruism grew and flourished mostly everywhere. xvii

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Additional laws and severe restrictions were also enforced to control and halt the spread of the virus, which saw the normality of our lives and liberties altered indefinitely. The enforcement of measures differed according to each country and culture specific circumstances and has been met with various degrees of acceptance. It certainly raised a myriad of sensitive questions regarding morality (or better still, moralities) and emotions. It is interesting to observe the emotional waves that emerged during this testing period. We use the word “wave” deliberately here for there has been no word shared more widely over these weeks than “tsunami”. As with any tsunami, the danger is greater as the waves travel inland, becoming higher and higher until the unavoidable shock happens. As with a real tsunami, the world has been hit hard. It was awakened from trivial petulances to face real challenges and fight for our continuity as a species. The motion ranged from a sense of distant unaffected empathy when only the other (national or foreign) was stricken to an assimilation of feelings of panic and despair when the virus knocked at everyone’s door. Far and wide, an initial selfishness stemmed out of fear and was reflected in competitive and hoarding behaviour for the benefit of ingroups only. Many, including politicians, were caught preaching classical cases of “do as I say, not as I do”, demanding from others what they themselves could not carry out. In his book Why Everyone (else) Is a Hypocrite (2011), Robert Kurzban argues that people often fail to see their own inconsistencies. It is precisely this failure that makes us believe that everyone else is an hypocrite. When explaining human behaviour, he recognises that people use morality strategically in social environments, manipulating it in both cooperative and competitive situations. Furthermore, he claims that we are not so different from the politicians we complain about other than the fact that they are in the public eye. In a chapter masterfully titled “Morality is for birds”, Kurzan notes “this might be one reason that politicians appear to be such hypocrites. My guess is that—and maybe I’m just naive—politicians, despite appearances, aren’t actually all that much more hypocritical than the rest of us. It’s just that the rest of us skate by without anyone noticing” (Kurzban 2011: 217). We are all guilty of having felt pleasure at witnessing others’ misfortune. In this setting, politicians are great targets for this emotion, which cultural historian Tiffany Watt Smith

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describes as Schadenfreude (from the German for “Schaden”, damage, and “Freude”, joy): Schadenfreude might be seen as the opposite of empathy, but even vicarious sadness can be a pleasure. We all know people who love a good catastrophe, so long as it’s not happening to them. All that gossip and drama, the boxes of wine, the tissues. Misery, as the old saying goes, loves company. It’s reassuring, to hear about other people’s bad decisions and errant spouses and ungrateful children. It reminds us that it’s not only our own hopes that get dashed—everybody else’s do, too. (Smith 2018)

In a first clash which reflected a raw survival reaction, the “me/us” instinct spoke louder than the “them”, but it was not long before people realised that the former could not succeed without the latter, and displays of prosocial behaviour, generosity and support towards outgroups flourished. Bonds between neighbours and strangers were strengthened, and a duty of abnegation, norm following and sacrifice towards a bigger, moral goal, was incorporated. Indeed, in times of affliction, morality and law can act as pacifying and unifying premises in controlling conflicts that may arise from the intersection of the various forces that pull us in different directions. Research in cognitive neuroscience and moral psychology suggests that behaving morally and cooperating with others helps solve and negotiate social problems. We want to feel we belong (and the sense of belonging is crucial here), to a group, to a community, to the world. Over the years, research has shown that group mentality is crucial for successful social interactions. Whilst most emotions are about the “me”, we can feel strong emotions to what happens to other people, something evolutionary psychologists such as Jonathan Haidt call moral emotions: “The moral emotions can be defined as those emotions that are linked to the interests or welfare either of society as a whole or at least of persons other than the judge or agent” (Haidt 2003: 276). As “biological, psychological, and social entities”, our exposure to society and to a specific context from infancy to old age impacts deeply on our actions and on the way we react and perceive the other and ourselves, morally and emotionally (Schechtman 2014: 197). In practicing of our ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes on a daily basis, we constantly struggle to

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counterbalance our heliocentric tendencies with the need for cooperation and collaboration, and within this effort, morality provides a calming, soothing sense of security and identity by setting behavioural boundaries. As Marieke Vermue and colleagues note in a recent study on trust behaviour, “group memberships form an important part of our self-concept”, and is a “strong predictor of cooperation between individuals” (Vermue et al. 2019: 1004). In this book, we propose looking at emotions beyond the sheer conceptual and meta-conceptual level—that is, in terms of knowing what makes an emotion moral and how we know that is the case—and approach strong emotional episodes head-on. Our intention is to account for this new global disposition of calamity, lack of orientation and political incongruence, and analytically zoom in this epochal imbalance in different parts of the world, in different media, and in as many different types of emotional events. Emotional responses cut across cultural, social and political differences, and the shape and grade of interpersonal feedback naturally accompanies these variations. The intensity and success of social exchanges depends on the trust people allocate to feelings of belonging and community. A few years ago, James Jasper, a sociologist from New York, made a comment at a conference on Democracy and Emotions at the Centre for the History of Emotions, at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, which, thinking about it now, hit us for both its simplicity and reach within the present context. Jasper pointed out how, not so long ago, having emotions excluded people from citizenship whereas nowadays they are perceived as a requirement. Whether they are real or fake, that is another question. The current global situation has also made ideological divisions more pronounced, and politics has not escaped this vivisection. On the contrary, political gospel in democratic societies appears more refined than ever. The rise of political polarisation is the focus of Jesse Prinz’s discussion, which reviews this trend “through a specific lens: the role of emotions”. Prinz argues that emotions allow us to better understand the sources of political segmentation, and offers a tridimensional analysis of the ways in which they contribute to this reality: through an affective look, zooming in on the issue of ideology and, finally, on questions of identity. While the author focuses primarily on the situation in the US,

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his analysis retains a global perspective in an effort to present possible solutions to encompass diverse communities, for “in order to understand polarization, it is important to look beyond party divisions in any country”. Precisely such widespread feeling of political irresponsibility and impunity exacerbates the expression of violent emotions. This is the topic of Laura Luz Silva’s chapter in this collection. “The Efficacy of Anger: Recognition and Retribution” is an engaging defense of the moral value of anger in fighting social injustice and seeking recognition. Silva makes her case against Martha Nussbaum’s reasoned attack on the feasibility of anger for moral and political life, by examining the action-driven benefits of an extremely destructive feeling that can, however, serve the purpose of a radical wish to change the status quo and improve the life conditions of an unfavoured group or single individual. The essay defends this shift in the interpretation of the main features of anger and its efficacy for moral life by analysing its underlying motive: seeking recognition. The present climate of political polarisation and widespread mistrust in public institutions and political agents may equally arouse new forms of popular humor. Javier Gil and Sergio Brea’s contribution offers a critical approach to new manifestations of a political sense of humor based on expressions of moral tribalism. The authors have a keen interest in the unstable socio-political effects of a shared sense of humor, wisely claiming that “any politically centered approach has to take into account these views and explore the idea that laughing at each other—with malice and benevolence—may both facilitate the democratic engagement and endanger the mutual coexistence”. In a wide-­scope analysis of new forms of political and anti-political expression available to almost everyone nowadays—be it social media, sitcoms, cartoons, web-series and movies or popular novels—Gil and Brea defend that such digital forums for political debate can only serve democracy if they manage to preserve or reinstate the hiatus between political emotions and facts, rather than contributing to supplant the latter. The portrayal of emotional shocks is not always objective but often dependent on a series of social and political biases which are in turn perpetuated by media outlets all over the world. In his chapter about negativity in contemporary journalism, João Almeida addresses this situation,

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describing the role of the media in the emotional response of societies to the present and to post-enlightenment promises of progress. In his examination, he acknowledges the contradictory position of the media which “praises material and technological progresses while at the same time delights itself in presenting a decaying world”. This stance, he argues, oscillates between a conservative mindset focused on objectivity defended by the school of Walter Lippmann, and a progressive angle with a desire to change the world for the better inspired by John Dewey’s pragmatism. Almeida alerts to the risks of having what he considers the fundamental notions related to modern citizenship, such as res publica, free speech, or individual rights, directly mediated by the journalistic class. As he explains, media’s conduct can be somewhat dishonest when portraying the positive evolution of democratic capitalist systems for wanting to paint the worst possible picture. While it often focuses on showing a decline in civil and economic betterments, such as poverty, economic inequality or social mobility, the truth is, Almeida notes “ that, in relative and proportional terms, most of those indicators have in fact been improving”. This shows a clear conflict with what the author sees as a self-proclaimed objectivist ethics, and highlights the long dispute Almeida identifies between objectivity and interpretation in journalism. The search for the real is often associated with a confrontation with the traumatic. Increasingly, the dissemination of shocking images is a testament to memory and remembrance. It is also, we dare add, an expected proof of existence. In her chapter about trauma photography, Hannah Bacon insightfully describes the attitude shift concerning the way in which people interact with emotionally charged images and what she calls the fantasy of witnessing. There is, she notes, a rising preoccupation “to look at our own looking, to witness the desire to witness” that transforms the framing of photographs into both interpretative and representative acts. In this thought-­provoking chapter, Bacon explores the human fascination with trauma and victimhood seen through a variety of means (be it the evening news, films, talk shows, or others), and ponders on the dangers of this dissemination to an anesthetisation of feeling due to the repetition of shock. Dwelling into the notion of trauma discourse, she discusses the risk of viewing shocking images in order to prove our moral superiority: “it satisfies this vicarious and perverse itch [for] morally

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elevating cathartic desire in a way that appropriates the pain of the other without motivating the viewer to alleviate it”. By comparing Judith Butler and Susan Sontag’s contrasting perspectives regarding the use of shocking images (the former defending their viewing, the latter opposing it), Bacon argues that both arguments miss the point in that they fail to recognise that images are only necessary to make trauma real to those who are not firsthand experiencing these traumas. Her thesis acknowledges those traumas as real beyond the “performance and fantasy of vicarious witnessing”, which does not entail political action and is thus insufficient. Instead, she defends a way of seeing shocking realities that allows the witness to act and “honestly see their own privileged vantage without appropriating the pain of the other”. In a rather similar vein and making much from a quasi-sociological reading of gender issues in contemporary Indian society, Shuhita Bhattacharjee deploys a careful analysis of three well-known Indian web series: The Case of Delhi Crime, Made in Heaven, and Judgement Day. Bhattacharjee’s theme is violence directed against women, and how criminal behavior committed against an unprotected group in modern India can be sanctioned by a deeply conservative political structure. Her impressive analysis of one of the few available critical weapons against the ancient caste system and its politicised exercise—a powerful movie industry—leaves plain as day the hypocrisy of contemporary Indian society (specifically in what regards such pressing issues as violation). Bhattacharjee’s text cleverly addresses the topic of gender violence by reporting equally violent sketches from the three series picked up for critical scrutiny. The visual treatment of bodily violence made against women suddenly brings to front stage the shocking impact of forms of social behavior that an ancient power structure refuses to punish. Continuing the focus on unprotected, vulnerable groups, the following chapter by Sara Silva explores how the sense of smell is intimately linked to our emotions and morals in the context of the refugee crisis. As a species, we make use of scents to make decisions, judge pleasant and unpleasant situations, and avoid dangerous environments. Historically, however, as Silva notes, smell has always been somewhat overlooked in favour of other senses, in particular vision or hearing. In her essay, Silva revitalises the value of this particular sense by presenting a history of its

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evolution and a fresh take on its importance in the context of large-scale migration and refugee influx. Presenting smell as a “sign of identity, status, and social class”, Silva explores the negative framing of the foreign by focusing on how these particular outgroups are “especially vulnerable to contempt and hate behaviours because of the scents associated with their existence”, establishing a relationship between olfaction and prejudice. The topic of civic violence—or, better yet, of the systematic exercise of violence made against civilians living in a disputed shared territory—has become dramatically commonplace in this calamitous twentieth-first century. This is the starting point for Oded Na’aman’s instigating meditation on the relevance of the human capacity to be shocked for our moral life. Our susceptibility to shock is the mark of a sane moral performance as well as of an important openness to the potentially thorny—even chaotic—features of a shared human life. The author takes Benjamin’s notion of “aura” and deploys it in several readings of both fictional and real-life situations, in which a reasonable awareness of the moral meaning of surrounding events (especially another’s suffering) is a key condition of personal responsiveness, and even of mental health. The capacity to be shocked is all the more important for us, the author argues, because we can experience its failure as the beginning of a deep moral flaw. Thus, the true moral significance of shock reveals itself in the disturbing effects of a personal incapacity to suffer such a thing. The experience of a moral shock and its aftermath is indeed mysterious. As an instigating topic for reflection, especially in the strange moment the world is facing today, this topic can be addressed with contrasting tools and deliver equally different conclusions. Honoring the organising theme of this volume and trying to figure out the potential ethical gain behind a shocking incident, Ana Falcato discusses the relation between emotional shock and moral conversion. The essay uses a crossed methodology of analysis, linking phenomenology and moral approaches to negative emotions, in an effort to describe the potentially decisive impact of a moral shock on one’s convictions and even lifechanging decisions. The importance of an emotional shock, the essay defends, can also be assessed in the way it helps to understand the background of the specific shocking episode. For that end, analytically separating shock from the close experience of surprise is a key conceptual exercise.

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At times, we are surprised by experiences of disorientation. Getting lost allows us to devise strategies to either reassess our orientation, or engage in exploration. To do so, one must be connected to the surrounding environment, either through our bodies or with the help of technology. In their chapter, Pablo Fernandez and Roberto Casati show what happens when this connection is weakened or severed. They discuss how disorientation transforms our perception of the world by focusing on the role emotions play in distributed cognitive processes such as queuing or navigating, through the lens of a situated approach to emotions. As the authors explain, “situated approaches to emotion offer an alternative to a long tradition of considering emotions as purely internal states or processes. In contrast to such a tradition, situated approaches consider emotions as forms of skilful engagement with the world that are both scaffolded by and dynamically coupled to the environment”. While arguing for a phenomenology of disorientation, Fernández and Casati demonstrate how affective states help regulate cognitive processes by syncing the different elements of a distributed cognitive system, be it in humans or artefacts. Using the example of the practice of an Alaskan Eskimo community of shaming individuals who got lost in the wild, the authors show how emotional regulation occurs both synchronically (in the unfolding of the emotion itself, such as anger at being shamed) and diachronically (in the process of acquiring an emotional repertoire, e.g., the emotion of shame promoting the learning of navigational skills). The volume finishes with a reflection about a moment of social turbulence and emotional upheaval that demands a reassessment of the meaning of life as a whole. An original effort to rethink the human condition in existential terms is offered by Nicolas de Warren in his chapter about Clarice Lispector’s The Passion According to G.H. De Warren wisely reads Lispector’s story as an ontological fable about our situation in the world. Contrary to what Heideggerians use to preach, Lispector—with other twentieth-century philosophers and writers, like Emil Cioran—rightly allegorises the gratuity of our rootedness in the world as a struggle against the drama of having been born. The meaning of this ontological excess can be disclosed to us in such a trivial episode as meeting a cockroach in a closet. The nauseating overtones expressed in Lispector’s fable comes to

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show the keenness of our “personal” stories with the natural, disgusting stuff making up animal life in all its splendor. This collection of essays is an expressive attempt to better understand what happened to the world in recent (and not so recent) years. While the dangers and ruptures brought about by globalisation began to be anticipated several decades ago, few prophets of our time could have imagined the twists and turns of the dire political, economical, environmental, and sanitary crises with which we are currently presented. This widespread feeling of fear and fracture may well be the post-slumbering reaction of a generation accustomed to comfort. Be it as it may, current circumstances deserve and demand the effort of a deep, mature reflection. This book is our modest contribute to this challenge. Ana Falcato Sara Graça da Silva

References Haidt J. 2003. Elevation and the Positive Psychology of Morality. In Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the Life Well-Lived, ed. C.L.  Keyes and J.  Haidt, 275–289. Washington, DC: The American Psychological Association. Haidt, Jonathan, and Joseph, Craig. 2008. The Moral Mind: How Five Sets of Innate Intuitions Guide the Development of Many Culture-­Specific Virtues, and Perhaps Even Modules. The Innate Mind, Volume 3, Foundations and the Future, 3. Lispector, C. 2012. The Passion According to G.H. New York: New Directions. Kurzban, Robert. 2011. Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind. Princeton University Press. Schechtman, M. 2014. Staying Alive. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, Tiffany Watt. 2018. Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another’s Misfortune. UK: Profile; US: Little, Brown. Vermue, M., Meleady, R., and Seger, C.R. 2019. Member-to-Member Generalisation in Trust Behaviour: How Do Prior Experiences Inform Prosocial Behaviour Towards Novel Ingroup and Outgroup Members?. Current Psychology 38: 1003–1020. h ­ ttps://doi.org/10.1007/ s12144-019-00289-8.

Emotion and Political Polarization Jesse Prinz

Political polarization is a major source of conflict in democratic societies, and there is evidence that it is on the rise. Polarization has been most actively studied by political scientists, but it also raises psychological questions about the underlying mechanisms, historical questions about causes, and normative questions about whether and when polarization is problematic. This chapter will touch on all of these issues, but through a specific lens: the role of emotions. By focusing on emotions, we can better understand the psychological bases of our political divisions. I will begin with a characterization of polarization, reviewing research on its increase over time. I then turn to three different ways emotions contribute: affective outlook, ideology, and identity. I will argue that the first two factors are explanatorily inadequate on their own; identity plays a pivotal role. I will conclude with some speculation about causes of polarization, some of its consequences, and an assessment of whether it should be a matter of serious concern. J. Prinz (*) City University of New York, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. Falcato, S. Graça da Silva (eds.), The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8_1

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1

The Nature of Polarization

1.1

What Is Political Polarization?

Political polarization is difficult to define in a neutral way, because some initially appealing definitions bring in controversial commitments. Polarization clearly involves some kind of division between groups, but not all group divisions are polarized; there is no polarization dividing butchers and bakers, for example. It is tempting to define polarization in terms of ideological division, but it presupposes that ideology is essential, and that, we will see, can been challenged. One might opt for a more neutral approach and define polarization in terms of negative attitudes; two groups are polarized if they harbor mutual animus. This may, in fact, be true of polarized groups, but, for the purposes of this chapter, that makes emotional division true by definition, rather than treating emotions as a possible mechanism underlying a phenomenon that can be characterized in some other way. An appeal to animus is also too broad when it comes to political polarization. There are groups who dislike each other (e.g., mods and rockers in 1960s England), without necessarily dividing on political lines. I will opt here for the following working definition. Two groups are polarized if they regard the boundary between them as both political and oppositional. “Political” here is intentionally vague. In most cases, political polarization involves political party affiliation, but it need not. For example, in transnational cases, we can talk about a political divide between two countries, ignoring domestic party divisions. There can also be regional differences within a party (e.g., Southern and Northern Democrats in the US during the 1960s). A political divide can involve party affiliation, ideology, platform, local obligations that could impact voting patterns, and even choice of candidates within a party. Some divides are intersectional, such as the regional case, as well as divisions of class, ethnicity, and religion, which can contribute to political factionization. These latter divisions need to be political, but they begin to count as such when they become determinants of such factors as platform references, party alliances, or voting behavior.

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To call a boundary “oppositional” is also intentionally vague. Politically polarized groups may favor policies that are antithetical (e.g., for and against legal abortion), but they need not be. There can be a perception of division that transcends legislative incompatibility. This is evident in cases where people show patterns of enduring party membership, such that it would be anathema to vote for the other party’s candidate, regardless of platform. Polarized boundaries can also lead voters to feel that they must pick sides—they “cannot credibly claim neutrality” (LeBas 2011). In democracies where leading parties are ideologically close, polarizing affiliations can still arise. The opposition is ideational, not necessarily logical. This is sometimes captured by saying that polarization manifests itself as an “us versus them” attitude. In polarized climates, it would seem odd for a person to move willy nilly between two political groups. Polarization does not preclude compromise, however; indeed, the very word, “compromise” implies some kind of instrumental and provisional agreement between otherwise opposed groups. Compromise implies giving something up, and, thus, any context in which that concept is operative is also one in which compromise is difficult.

1.2

Is Polarization on the Rise?

I have characterized polarization in terms of oppositional political divisions between groups. The definition entails that polarization is a matter of degree. Indeed, it can be graded along a number of dimensions. There can be variation in the degree of perceived opposition between groups, in the number of people who affiliate with opposed groups, on the rigidity of those affiliations (e.g., do people vote for the same group within an election cycle?), and the fixity over time. Some of these dimensions can be subdivided further, or operationalized in different ways. Perceived opposition can involve intergroup attitudes, willingness to compromise, willingness to form alliances, and so on. Given such dimensions of variation, we can ask whether polarization has changed over time. Some have argued that polarization is on the rise in certain parts of the world. Much of this work has focused on party division within the US (e.g., Abramowitz and Saunders 2008), but there is also evidence for

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increased polarization in many other nations. In a recent edited volume, Coruthers and O’Donahue (2019) survey polarization in Poland, Turkey, Kenya, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Colombia, and Brazil. LeBas (2018) looks at polarization in Kenya, Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire. Lynch (2016) examines rising polarization in the Arab world, including Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Gulf countries. In Western Europe, evidence is mixed. Polarization seems to be declining in Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom (Boxell et al. 2020). In places like Germany, it is not unusual for voters to vote for different parties. Still, many European countries have seen an accelerating growth in right-wing extremism. Right-wing parties have seen a dramatic upswing in the number of seats held in the EU parliament, while centrist parties have experienced a steady decline. Left-leaning Green parties have also grown rapidly. Looking at Germany, again, we can see Greens and the Alternativ für Deutschland (two polarized parties) gaining ground, as centrist seats slip away. In what follows, I will focus on the situation in the US, though I will also retain a global perspective, because I hope to show that the situation in North America does not always generalize to the rest of the world. In order to understand polarization, it is important to look beyond party divisions in any one country. The claim that polarization is escalating in the US is somewhat contentious. Fiorina (2017) has been an outspoken skeptic, noting that party membership numbers have been stable for decades, and that the majority of American voters are not party affiliated; according to a recent poll, 38% are independents, as compared to 31% and 28%, who are Democrats and Republicans (Pew 2019). Still, the same poll shows that the vast majority of independents lean towards one party, leaving only 7% who have no preference. The number of “non-leaners” is slowly shrinking. Overall, party membership has not changed much, but there is striking evidence for polarization of attitudes; the two main parties are growing more distant and more hostile. Donald Trump is the most divisive president in recent history: the gap between Democrats and Republicans on his approval ratings is unprecedented, with Barack Obama close behind, followed by George W.  Bush (Jones 2019). Since the 1990s, Democrats have gotten more liberal and Republicans more conservative;

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the gap between their views on policies has tripled (Pew 2014). For example, in 1994, Democrats and Republicans were equally opposed to immigrants; now there is a 20-point spread. Likewise, there was only a 10-point difference in their stance on strict environmental laws; now the gap is 35 points. Bishop and Cushing (2008) show another sign of polarization: Since the 1970s, the number of American living in “landside counties” has doubled; thus, over 60% of the population lives in politically homogenous communities, where one party reliably wins elections by margins higher than 20 points. Polarization often takes on an emotional cast. There has also been a dramatic increase in negative sentiments between the two major parties. This is what political scientists call “affective polarization” (Iyengar et al. 2012; Kimball et al. 2018). Some studies use “feeling thermometers” to ask how voters feel about political parties. Between 1964 and 2012, there was about a 30% increase in the number of voters who have very warm feelings toward their own party; meanwhile, very cold feelings towards the opposed party quadrupled (Pew 2016). In 1964, only about 12% of partisans felt very cold towards the opposition, and now about half do, and nearly 80% feel some degree of coldness. Similarly, between 1994 and 2016, the number of Democrats reporting “very unfavorable” attitudes towards Republicans has grown from 16% to 55%; Republicans condemnation of Democrats has similarly climbed from 17% to 58% (ibid.). This trend is continuing. Between 2016 and 2019, both Republicans and Democrats came to see members of the other party as more close-minded, unintelligent, and immoral, and 78% say that partisan divisions are growing (Pew 2019). It is difficult to pin down the cause of these divisions. Party differences grew when Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act sending Southern Democrats to the Republican Party, but much of the division is more recent. One key factor is changing demographics. Cultural and ethnic diversity is on the rise, and white voters in smaller communities who feel like their way of life and access to power is under threat. The demographic analysis parallels a plausible explanation of European polarization: there, the rise of right-wing nationalism has been linked to the rising tide of immigration. Similarly, in Côte d’Ivoire, polarization is being fuelled by conflicts between migrants and indigenes. But, as we will

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see below, polarization may have many causes, and its causes may vary from place to place. For now, the key point is that polarization is real and rising in some places. Our next task is to explore the underlying psychology.

2

Polarization and Emotion

2.1

Affective Outlook

I turn now to the main theme of this chapter: the role of emotions in polarization. We have already seen that political divisions are accompanied by negative feelings. Polling data tells us that these attitudes exist, and psychological research can deepen our understanding. Various lines of investigation implicate a number of emotional processes. Emotions do not tell us the whole story, of course, but they play key roles, and examining these can teach us something about the psychological mechanisms that sustain polarization. The first topic I want to consider can be captured by the phrase “affective outlook.” It is sometimes suggested that the two major parties in the US differ in their emotional dispositions. According to this idea, members of each party tend to react to things somewhat differently, and this emotional divide could be related to different perspectives and concerns, thus contributing to division. It is unclear how far these patterns extend to other national contexts, but, before raising that question, let’s look at the American divide. Some researchers claim to show that American conservatives are more prone to fear than liberals (see Jost and Amodio 2012, for review). They show greater physiological responses to threatening stimuli, like spiders and wounds, a stronger startle reflex, and they have larger amygdala volumes on average (Oxley et al. 2008). Dodd et al. (2012) found that conservatives fixate faster and longer on negative stimuli. Heightened fear may also have implications for trust. Conservatives often seem less trusting than liberals. Among the negative adjectives most often used in Donald Trump’s twitter feed, we find: fake, crooked, dishonest, phony,

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and rigged. These seem like attempts to express and must distrust and that, in turn, can be seen as a kind of threat. Fear might be related to an elevated sense of threats such as job loss from immigration or rising crime. Liberals, in contast, place emphasis on hope (a key term in Barak Obama’s rhetoric). When Trump and Ronald Reagan invoke hope in their slogan, “Make America Great Again,” it is tinged with fear that things are degenerating. There is also a large body of evidence linking conservatives to disgust. Conservatives show higher levels of disgust sensitivity (Inbar et al. 2009), and this pattern has held up cross nationally (Inbar et al. 2012). Carney et al. (2008) report that conservatives have more cleaning products, indicating a fear of germs. Relatedly, reminders of cleanliness can make people’s political judgments more conservative (Helzer and Pizarro 2010). Disgust has been associated with socially conservative values, such as negative attitudes towards gay marriage and abortion. The foregoing findings have led Hibbing et al. (2014) to posit a “negative bias” among conservatives, though this may generalize too far. There is recent evidence that liberals may be more prone to anger than conservatives (Yang et al. 2019). Liberal anger has been implicated in attitudes towards climate change. Steiger et al. (2019) also show that liberals report more contempt than conservatives when considering politicians on the opposing party. Liberals are often stereotyped as smug (Etelson 2019), and Hillary Clinton weakened her election bid by calling Trump supporters “a basket of deplorables.” There is also research suggesting that liberals are more prone to empathy, or at least more likely to self-ascribe and endorse empathy as a motivation—another finding that had held up cross-nationally (Hasson et al. 2018). This may lie behind such clichés as “bleeding heart,” which has been applied to liberals. The phrase “tree hugger” is used to suggest that liberal empathy extends, perhaps absurdly, to nature. There is also a stereotype that liberals are hypersensitive, which has been enshrined in the pejorative term “snowflake.” In debates about political correctness these are used by conservatives to suggest that liberals have a thin skin. Such observations paint a picture of two very different affective outlooks. Conservatives are presented as highly reactive to threats (fear and disgust), while liberals are sensitive types, who feel each others’ pain, but

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show anger and contempt to those who are perceived as lacking adequate sensitivity. Differences in affective outlook imply pre-political personality divide. A clash in temperament might be used to explain why liberals and conservatives have difficulty getting along. These emotional dispositions can also be related to policy preferences, and they might also explain radically divergent perspectives on world events. For example, a terrorist attack might primarily be seen as a threat by conservatives, whose perpetrators need to be eradicated. Liberals might see the terrorists as freedom fighters, who are victims of imperialist oppression. Likewise, immigrants may be seen as competitors by conservatives, and as a downtrodden group in need of care by liberals. Disgust sensitivity may fuel conservative attitudes towards variation in gender identity and even contribute to racist attitudes, insofar as disgust can contribute to dehumanization. For empathetic white liberals, sexual and ethnic minorities are seen as vulnerable groups who must be protected. Such research points to an intimate link between emotions and political divisions, but two major caveats are also needed. First, much of this work is highly reductive: it relates small and graded differences in emotional dispositions to political orientations in a way that inflates their impact. Reading this literature, one might be tempted to think that innate emotional differences determine one’s party preferences, when, in fact, factors such as demography (think red states and blue states) are vastly more powerful determinants. It seems more likely that emotion dispositions are the result of political norms, rather than the other way around. Second, it’s not clear how far these findings generalize when looking beyond the Democrat/Republican divide. Despite some cross-­ national support, it’s unclear whether people on the left always fit the snowflake stereotype: this may apply more to white, privileged, Western, liberals than to people of color, to socialists, and anarchists, and other leftists, and to secularists, who are the liberals in states with powerful Islamist parties. In addition, as we will see in the next section, the liberal/ conservative distinction is not the only basis of polarized divisions. So the affective outlooks considered here may shed light on the US, but it would be a leap to assume that it captures political divisions more globally.

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9

Ideology

In the foregoing section, we saw that different emotional dispositions might relate to political attitudes, but differences in attitudes need not presuppose different underlying emotions. The very same emotions could bolster attitudinal differences, provided different people get upset about different things. So even if we assume that partisans have the same suite of emotions, we can imagine that these get directed in opposing ways. Members of different political groups have different values, and values can be analyzed as emotionally grounded beliefs. In political contexts, there is often another word that is closely related to values: ideology. Here I want to explore the role of emotions in ideology, by offering an analysis of ideology in terms of values, and values in terms of emotions. Values are most often discussed in the context of ethics and moral psychology, and there has been little discussion of ideology among ethicists and moral psychologists. I think they are intimately linked, if not quite identical, and I will begin by spelling out the relationship. “Ideology” has been defined in many different ways (Gerring 1997). One useful analysis comes from McClosky (1964: 362): [I]deologies [are] systems of belief that are elaborate, integrated, and coherent, that justify the exercise of power, explain and judge historical events, identify political right and wrong, set forth the interconnections (causal and moral) between politics and other spheres of activity, and furnish guides for action.

There is a lot to unpack here, but the core idea that I want to distill is that ideologies are systems of beliefs that are used to justifying matters of political concern: power arrangements, political norms, and the relationship between political and other spheres. To justify is to give a reason in favor of something, and, when it comes to politics, justifying reasons bottom out in core beliefs about what is good and bad, politically speaking. To call ideologies “systems” is to say that these justifying reasons often come as packages (“coherence” may be overstated, though people view their ideologies as coherent). Classic examples of ideologies include Nazism, Communism, and Classical Liberalism. Each encompasses a set

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of views of the principles that a just state must uphold, such as racial purity, non-alienated labor, or civil liberties. These foundational principles guide statecraft and policy, and can be used to interpret historical events (e.g., they settle which historical changes are progressive). Given this account of ideology, we can see how values come in. The foundational principles or justifying reasons in question can be regarded as values. A value, in contrast to a non-evaluative belief, is a belief about how things should be. It is a belief about what states of affairs are good or right. Thus, an ideology is a system of values concerning the political sphere. The term “ideology” is sometimes used derisively to imply that a set of beliefs is merely a matter of conviction, transcending pure reason and facts. I would submit, however, that this is true of values quite generally. As Hume (1739) argued long ago, values cannot be derived from reason alone (see Prinz 2007, for an extended discussion). Once we move beyond saying how things are, and start specifying how they should be, we are expressing or preferences. This is where emotions come in. For Hume, matters of value, unlike matters of fact, are based on feelings. To say that murder is wrong is not to describe some scientifically identifiable feature of cases where one person takes another life, but rather to say that such actions are abhorrent. Prohibitions against murder reflect our horror at such acts, and our desire to be protected from them. For this discussion, I will assume that Hume’s picture is basically right. Applied to ideology, this means that our political ideals can be regarded as systems of emotionally grounded beliefs: freedom is good, democracy is good, tyranny is bad, and so forth, where each of these expresses a complex set of emotional dispositions. The person who regards democracy as good would feel outraged to discover that an election was rigged, for example; she might also feel delighted to learn about a fledgling democracy, and guilty about buying products from countries that impede democracy. These emotions are collectively constitutive of the value that democracy is good, and that value may be a component of a system of values, such as classical Liberalism. Turning back to polarization, the concept of ideology gives us a more substantive and less reductive explanation than mere affective outlooks. Liberals and conservatives are not just temperamentally different; they

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endorse different systems of values. It is the ideologies that divide them, not just their emotional dispositions. Liberalism and conservatism are ideologies. As such, they have an emotional foundation. The principles that define each are not just cool factual beliefs, but emotionally grounded preferences that guide political action. We caught a glimpse of these ideological differences when discussing affective outlooks, but the discussion there focuses on different emotional feelings, as opposed to differences in values. Much recent work in empirical moral psychology attempts to identify differences in what liberals and conservatives care about. This work does not emphasize the term ideology, but it came to be so framed. One influential line of research has been pursued by Jonathan Haidt and his collaborators. Haidt and Joseph (2008) posit five different “moral foundations,” or innate domains in which moral values develop. These are: Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, In-Group/Loyalty, Authority/ Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. Haidt and Joseph argue that, somehow, liberals have stopped caring much about the last three of these, and only tend to use the first two in justifying their moral and political values. If a liberal wants to assess whether a policy is wrong, they ask whether it is harmful and fair. Conservatives, on their view, care about harm and fairness too, but they also regard the other domains as foundational values. If a policy does not show special concern for the in-group, respect for authority, and a commitment to purity it will be regarded negatively. In the US, that means conservatives think it is important to put Americans first, to display reverent respect for the flag and the military, and to uphold traditional social roles, such as heterosexual marriage, which are regarded as sanctified and decent. Haidt and Joseph believe that these domains have different emotional underpinnings, and, in this respect, their account also commits to divergent affective outlooks along party lines: harm and fairness are grounded in compassion and anger, respectively, while in-group, authority, and purity are respectively associated with emotions such as pride, respect, and disgust (Haidt and Joseph 2008: 382). Notice, however, that they think conservative values encompass liberal values, so there is some emotional overlap. Moreover, they emphasize the content of the domains more than the associated emotions, and they allow that the same emotion can arise for violations in

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more than one domain; anger, for example, occurs in response to both unfairness and disloyalty. What divides liberals and conservatives, therefore, is not just a matter of what they feel, but how their feelings are directed. Haidt’s approach has guided a productive research program (Graham et al. 2009), but I have misgivings about the details. First, it is not clear that Democrats have abandoned the three domains that he attributes differentially to Republicans. Consider Democrats’ attitudes towards civil rights leaders (reverence), union members (in-group loyalty), and men who engage in sexual harassment (sleazy). Democrats regard Trump supporters as members of a repugnant out-group unworthy of respect. If we avoid conservative buzzwords, like “purity,” I think Haidt’s domains might apply to both parties equally. Second, by positing innate domains, Haidt underestimates the degree of variation among political ideologies, reifying the contemporary American divide, and implying the conservative values are more natural. In reality, political divisions fluctuate across time and place. The current divide in the US has a complex history. Both liberalism and conservatism are offshoots of Classical Liberalism, the rights-based political philosophy that took shape during the age of revolutions, but they push that philosophy in different directions. The current Democratic agenda was cobbled together over different eras (tax reform in the 1910s, welfare in the 1930s, civil rights beginning in the 1940s, women’s rights in the 1970s, environmentalism in the 1980s). The Republican agenda also evolved (free trade in the 1910s, lowering taxes in the 1920s, social conservatism in the 1970s, shrinking government in the 1980s). In the past, the US has had different political divisions: between Federalists and anti-Federalists (focused on states’ rights), between free states and slave states, and between protectionists and laissez-faire capitalists (the election of 1912). None of these divisions map in any obvious ways onto Haidt’s domains. Third, it is even harder to deploy Haidt’s framework when we look internationally. Political divisions vary around the globe. In Taiwan, the main divide concerns attitudes towards China; in Palestine, the dominant parties disagree over strategies for liberating occupied territories; in Turkey, secularism is the main issue, and in Lebanon, there are both secular and sectarian divisions. In multiparty Western democracies, we find

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many divisions that are difficult to characterize in terms of Haidt’s domains: social democrats, labor parties, greens, classical liberals, populists, ultra-nationalists, and so on. We also lose resolution when making fine distinctions in the US, as between Republicans and Libertarians, and, when Haidt suggests that conservative values encompass the liberals’ concern for harm and fairness, we lose explanatory purchase on the deep divides with respect to issues such as affirmative action and social welfare. Such considerations weigh in against an emphasis on innate domains— the political spectrum is far too varied. Still, we might want to follow Haidt in trying to explain divisions by appealing to emotionally grounded norms. What I find most promising in his approach is the effort to give a psychological spin to the old concept of ideology, by identifying core values with emotionally grounded principles. Some of Haidt’s specific domains, including authority and purity, capture real ideological differences, provided they are not too rigidly interpreted. We might do better to put aside innate domains, and think about culturally constructed ideals, such as the tenets of socialism, or neo-conservatism, or green parties as the building blocks of ideologies. Historical forces and socialization would then determine which of these takes on emotional force for any individual. So elaborated, the ideological approach would contribute much to the understanding of polarization. Groups become polarized when their values are perceived as incompatible and their adherents have strong emotional commitments, making compromise and mutual respect difficult to achieve. There is, however, one important limitation to the ideological approach. Not all political divisions seem to be divisions of value. In many countries, the leading parties are not very different politically, as is the case in Japan (despite many fringe parties), and Mauritius, the most democratic nation in Sub-Saharan Africa. In some Arab states, there are divisions based on tribal affiliations, or on attitudes towards the US and Iran. Or consider Kenya, where, until recently, political divisions have been ethnic. In the US, too, there is empirical evidence that party affiliation transcends ideology. Lilliana Mason (2015) has shown that many Americans are fiercely divided across party lines even when their policy preferences are closely aligned (see also Kimball et al. 2018; Lelkes 2018). Thus, a

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complete account of the psychology underlying polarization cannot rely entirely on affective outlook and ideology. There must be something else at work in at least some polarized divides.

2.3

Identity

Mason’s effort to show the limits of ideological accounts is coupled with a robust alternative, which is developed in her (2018) book, Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became our Identity. The title gives it away: polarization results from a tendency to identify with a political group. In the US case, the idea is that being a Republican or a Democrat is not just a matter of adopting a party platform, but rather becomes a basis of identity here in its own right. We identify with our party affiliations, and, for many, that entails allegiance even as the platform evolves, or even when we are not entirely sure what that platform is. What is it to identify with something? There are thinner and thicker answers to this question. Let’s begin with the thin. In psychology there is a notion of social identity which refers to membership in a group. In this sense, the link between political group membership and identity is trivial, but there is a suite of psychological effects associated with group membership, and that is what Mason is inviting us to consider. There is a long tradition in social psychology investigating how group membership impacts behavior. Work in this tradition shows that membership in a group, no matter how arbitrary, can lead to preferential treatment of the in-group and derogation of the out-group (Tajfel 1970). In the lab, such effects can be transient, but long-term group memberships are likely to show a similar pattern at longer timescales. Studies of polarization bear this out. For example, Iyengar and Westwood (2015) show that Democrats and Republicans show preferential treatment toward members of their own party when considering scholarship allocations or when playing economic games in which other players can give money to a stranger. Iyengar et al. (2012) also found that people do not want to have friends in the opposing party, and would be upset if a family member married someone on the other side of the party divide. We also avoid dating people who belong to opposing parties (Huber and Malhotra 2016).

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Such group preferences involve emotions. We come to view members of in-groups positively, and we view members of out-groups negatively. We have already seen evidence for negative feelings in polling research. Recall the Pew (2016) study, where most Democrats and Republicans regarded each other “very unfavorably.” In the same survey, almost half those polled rated the opposing party as a source of fear, anger, and frustration. There is also another role for emotions here, and that requires a look at a thicker notion of identity. Psychologists usually think about identity as something purely social—the groups to which we belong. Philosophers tend to think of identity in a different way, as something personal. The features that make up one’s person identity are essential to retaining one’s self. If they change, one is no longer the same person. I think the social and the personal are often intimately linked. One’s social identity can become personal: it can become part of what one takes as necessary for remaining the same self. Some social identities are not like this. I can join a book club and then quit, without becoming a different person. Other social identities are more intimately related to the self. Elsewhere I have argued that moral values relate to identity in both of these ways, social and personal (Prinz 2016). When we adopt moral values, we join the group of those who share those values, and we come to think of these as essential to our personal identity. This is in part an empirical claim. There is research showing that people regard changes in morality as changes in the self (Prinz and Nichols 2016). Given the link between politics and values, it is no surprise, then, that people identify with political views. But what about cases where party membership is dissociable from ideology, and hence not essentially linked to a set of values? Is there any reason to think we would come to regard a membership in a political party as personal, not just social, if that party lacks a fixed ideology? I think the answer is affirmative, and it has to do with the fact that political group membership allows us to build long-term social alliances. With the addition of enduring social commitments, we have a special stake in retaining the trust and loyalty of the group. One way to ensure that is to treat group membership as something that is necessary rather than contingent. To regard political identity as personal is to treat it as

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something that cannot change without loss of self. This implicitly reassures others that our allegiance will endure. It’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we abandon our political affiliations (and any other long-term group memberships), we can find ourselves alone without a rudder. Long-term group memberships provide us with peers and also tell us how to make our way in the world. Once those are lost, there is a sense in which we really would lack a self; we would lose our basis for consistent decision-making. The personal nature of political identity is borne out by a pair of empirical observations that are sometimes discussed under the banner of “sorting,” which refer to alignments between traits. First, consider what I call “taste sorting”: our political differences align up with a surprising range of lifestyle choices. Party membership can impact what car you drive (Prius or pickup), what snack foods you like (guacamole or mozzarella sticks), what beer you drink (microbrew or Miller Lite), where you buy coffee (Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts), what vegetables you favor (arugala or iceberg), what sports you watch (tennis or NASCAR), how many kids you have (few or many), and even what pets you choose (cats and small dogs or big dogs) (Hetherington and Weiler 2018). Party membership also correlates with musical preference (DellaPosta et  al. 2015), and in an ongoing research project I am exploring links between party and personal appearance. Imagine someone who reads poetry, listens to jazz, dyes her hair blue, and loves sushi. Probably a Democrat. Now imagine someone who reads military history, listens to country, wears khaki shorts with a baseball cap, and loves red meat. More likely, a Republican. There will be many exceptions, of course, but we find many ways to celebrate the political groups to which we belong, and to signal this to others. Party membership may not be the source of these other behaviors—there is no manual on how to dress like a Democrat—but we implicitly capitalize on such correlations and use them to select social partners and signal enduring commitments. The second kind or sorting involves an alignment between political party membership and some of the most important aspects of our social identity—things like ethnicity and religion, cornerstones of sociological research. I call this “demographic sorting.” In the US, we find many religious Catholics joining the Democrats and many religious Protestants

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joining the Republicans. Given the close links between religion and values, we might expect both to join the same party, but the division between the two sects is deeply entrenched historically and geographically, and those differences may outweigh more ideological forms of overlap. Mason (2018: 24) emphasizes demographic sorting in her work. She comments, “The American electorate has sorted itself into two increasingly homogeneous parties, with a variety of social, economic, geographic, and ideological cleavage falling in line with the partisan divide.” She also comments on Trump’s appeal to white Christians; he can tap these aspects of identity without even mentioning policy, since, in America, party and social location have become highly correlated (p. 89). Sorting draws attention to another way in which emotions contribute to polarization. I have already mentioned that we harbor negative attitudes towards out-groups and positive attitudes towards in-groups. This is a straightforward corollary of laboratory research on the social psychology of groups. With more entrenched and aligned forms of identity, these feelings are intensified. We don’t just favor our in-groups; we take tremendous pride in them, and when the group is confronted with opposition, it is experienced as an identity threat. Here’s Mason: When multiple identities are strongly aligned, a threat to one identity affects the status of multiple other identities. The possible damage to a person’s self-esteem grows as more identities are partnered with the damaged group. (94)

Thus, when we disagree with a Trump supporter on some matter of policy, his whiteness, masculinity, and Christianity may also be on the line. For Mason, political changes qualify as identity threats because political identity is bound up with many other group memberships. I would add that identity is threatened because all these group memberships, including political affiliations, are construed as aspects of personal identity. They are enduring affiliations that we regard as essential to retaining our sense of self. The fact that they get bound together greatly increases the existential stakes. If our political affiliations change, we cannot rely on these other enduring affiliations to furnish us with a sense of personal continuity, for they too may destabilize.

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Threats to political identity can arise even when there is no explicit disagreement. Consider, again, our reluctance to socialize with members of other parties. Why not? Are we afraid we will argue? Perhaps, but many people enjoy debating topics that are not political in nature; political debates really sting (Skitka et al. 2005). Why? One answer is that close encounters with members of the other party pose an identity threat. This threat is double edged: it involves both appearances (will someone see me fraternizing with the enemy?) and anxieties of influence (can this person’s values rub off on me?). The first threat can erode our social alliances and support systems. The second threat comes, in part, from the implicit recognition of the fact that our political identities are somewhat accidental. We typically fall into them as a result of highly contingent facts, such as geography and socialization. Nevertheless, we regard them as essential to identity and authentic reflections of what we really care about. When we socialize with political opponents, there is a real risk that our convictions will shift. Thus, confidence in who we are can be shaken by exposure to others. These twin threats may shed light on other aspects of political behavior. We like echo chambers, and we spend many hours virtue signaling on social media. Surrounding ourselves with those who are like-minded and reminding them how much we agree can secure the camaraderie that we depend on and undergird our self-confidence. If we were to befriend or date a member of the out-group, we might lose our social networks and destabilize the convictions that make us who we are. Some commentators worry that biased news outlets are causing polarization. I grant that they can play a role, but I suspect the causal arrow usually points in the other direction: we tune in to biased media because we are polarized. Or rather, we tune in a strategy to keep our identities from fracturing, and when our opponents do the same, the net result is the ossification of separate political groups, each of which occupies its own, self-affirming reality. In summary, the concept of identity provides a perspective on polarization that we cannot derive from affective outlook and ideology alone. Differences in emotional temperament and deeply held beliefs can lead to divisions, but neither of these factors is necessary or sufficient for political group membership. Moreover, neither fully accounts for the emotional

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perils when we encounter political opponents. Some ideological disputes have high personal stakes: the rich might not want to be taxed and the poor might want social welfare. But many do not: those in the comfortable middle may not be personally worried about either exorbitant taxes or unemployment benefits. Still, they may have a strong commitment to a party that takes a stand on these issues. That commitment does not become emotionally impotent when policy disputes have limited personal impact. Our partisanship can remain passionate even if our policy preferences are not personal. That is because partisanship itself is personal. When someone challenges one’s party, one’s ego is on the line. The animus we have towards political opponents is a way of policing the facade of the edifice that shapes our identities. When we let down our guard, we risk a structural breach. Without those rigid contours, we may cease to exist in some sense; we lose the walls that keep us recognizably intact.

3

 onclusion: Causes, Consequences, C and Cures

In this concluding section, I want to return to an issue with which we began: rising polarization. Why is polarization on the rise? What are some consequences? What should we do about it? Let me briefly take up each question. I noted earlier that the rise in polarization may have many causes, but one of these seems to be changing demography, including demographic changes due to immigration. Now we can ask, why this should increase polarization. First, work on affective outlooks suggests that conservatives are prone to fear, and demographic changes could evoke a strong response, heightening tensions between parties. Second, ideology can play a role: for parties that value diversity, demographic changes can confirm core values, but parties that value homogeneity may regard demographic changes with horror. Third, changing demography puts us into contact with the political other, and that is an identity threat for all. That may lead us to affirm our current political commitments with new fervor.

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Is polarization a bad thing? Most commentators think so. The negative consequences are especially clear when we consider the role of emotions. Emotionally heated divisions can foreclose communication, and that is bad for deliberative democracy. This for two reasons: emotions generate animus, and disagreements about emotion-backed values cannot be rationally adjudicated. With deep divisions, compromise is very difficult. That can lead to stagnation or to a majority party imposing its agenda on all. In a two-party system, polarization can also lead to the disenfranchisement of independent voters, who are perennially subjected to the competing extremes. The risks of polarization can be made more vivid if we recall the link between party and identity. That entails that we may follow advice from party leaders, even if it arbitrary or weakly linked to a party’s official platform. A recent case is the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This became highly politicized. Those on the right, tended to downplay the virus and resist strong interventions such as lockdowns and mandatory mask wearing. Those on the left tended to favor such measures, but that preference may have had less to do with ideology than the simple fact that the virus was most active in liberal districts. After all, liberals do not usually favor government interventions that restrict borders and curtail basic liberties, especially when such measures threaten the livelihoods of the working poor. Research suggests that personal responses to the pandemic reflected political party membership, and that citizens tended to ignore guidelines issued by politicians in the party they oppose, regardless of the content of those guidelines (Painter and Qiu 2020). This culminated in numerous conservative politicians (including Donald Trump and several other heads of state) contracting the virus. That said, there may be benefits to polarization as well. LeBas (2018: 60) argues that polarization can help decentralize power, and build strong parties so that no single group controls government—an important milestone in fledgling democracies. Lupu (2015) provides evidence that polarization can bring clarity to a party’s agenda, and that increases party membership and political participation. Polarization can also give voice to individuals who have been politically marginalized. Both right-wing and progressive parties aim to represent people who feel invisible, and, doing so may be a good service, provided those conflicting voices can find

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a path forward. Voters on the American left are appalled by Trump’s base, but they cheer when progressive democrats fight for LGBT+ rights. Without polarized parties, both groups might be left out of the political equation (see Hochschild 2016, on the Tea Party). This advantage of polarization can also be explicated in emotional terms. In this chapter, I have linked political divisions to affective outlook, emotionally grounded ideologies, and deeply felt aspects of identity. Each is worth preserving. If we opt for policies that do not reflect how we feel, government will fail to provide constituents with the worlds they want to inhabit. These wants are inherently yoked to emotions, which means we are miserable when they are not met. They are also linked to identity. We experience an existential threat when we are prevented from pursuing the social arrangements we deem best. In a large, diverse society, political identities will inevitably diverge, and passionate polarization is a measure of the success that different groups have had in getting their favored modes of existence into view on the public stage. Agreement and consensus come with high costs: they leave many people dissatisfied and serve to prevent people from living in accordance with their identities. Peaceful co-existence of diverse identities is hard to achieve, but polarization is a sign that we are aiming for that end, rather than accepting unhappy conformity. Even if we don’t find a way to coexist, those who get embroiled in polarized debates can find some satisfaction when they are able to engage in political discourse. No victory is guaranteed, but a vociferous plea for recognition can affirm identity and rally fellow-feelers to the cause. This leaves us with a question of how to balance the good and the bad. Polarization undermines constructive dialogue, but it empowers neglected individuals. One path forward is to proliferate parties and build coalition governments, as is often the practice in Europe. Another path is to go local. Marginalized groups often reside in different places (e.g., small towns and big cities), and the profound divisions between them may call for greater local control over public policy. Centrists will determine policy in their own communities on this arrangement (e.g., small cities), and that may lead to greater satisfaction than letting the centrists or extremists settle policy for all. Modernity has emphasized nation-building, and we are increasingly moving to multi-national or global forms of

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government, but nations are comprised by diverse communities, separated by emotional fault-lines. Rather than flattening the political landscape, national and global power structures might work to protect these affective lifeways.

References Abramowitz, A., and K. Saunders. 2008. Is Polarization a Myth? The Journal of Politics 70: 542–555. Bishop, B., and R.  Cushing. 2008. The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-­ Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Boxell, L., Gentzkow, M., and Shapiro, J. 2020. Cross-Country Trends in Affective Polarization. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 26669, January 2020. https://www.nber.org/papers/ w26669#fromrss. Carney, D.R., J.T. Jost, S.D. Gosling, and J. Potter. 2008. The Secret Lives of Liberals and Conservatives: Personality Profiles, Interaction Styles, and the Things They Leave Behind. Political Psychology 29: 807–840. Coruthers, T., & O’Donohue A. (2019). Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. DellaPosta, D., Y.  Shi, and M.  Macy. 2015. Why Do Liberals Drink Lattes? American Journal of Sociology 120: 1473–1511. Dodd, M.D., A.  Balzer, C.M.  Jacobs, M.W.  Gruszczynski, K.B.  Smith, and J.R.  Hibbing. 2012. The Political Left Rolls with the Good; the Political Right Confronts the Bad. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Biological Sciences 367: 640–649. Etelson, E. 2019. Beyond Contempt: How Liberals Can Communicate Across the Great Divide. New Society Publishers. Fiorina, M. 2017. Unstable Majorities: Polarization, Party Sorting, and Political Stalemate. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Pres. Gerring, J. 1997. Ideology: A Definitional Analysis. Political Research Quarterly 50: 957–994. Graham, J., J. Haidt, and B.A. Nosek. 2009. Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96: 1029–1046.

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Haidt, J., and C.  Joseph. 2008. The Moral Mind: How Five Sets of Innate Intuitions Guide the Development of Many Culture-Specific Virtues, and Perhaps Even Modules. In The Innate Mind, Vol. 3, ed. P.  Carruthers, S. Laurence, and S. Stich, 367–392. New York: Oxford University Press. Hasson, Y., M. Tamir, K.S. Brahms, J.C. Cohrs, and E. Halperin. 2018. Are Liberals and Conservatives Equally Motivated to Feel Empathy Toward Others? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 44: 1449–1459. Helzer, E.G., and D.A.  Pizarro. 2010. Dirty Liberals! Reminders of Physical Cleanliness Influence Moral and Political Attitudes. Psychological Science 22: 517–522. ———. 2011. Dirty Liberals! Reminders of Physical Cleanliness Influence Moral and Political Attitudes. Psychological Science 22: 517–522. Hetherington, M., and J. Weiler. 2018. Prius or Pickup? How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America’s Great Divide. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Hibbing, J.R., K.B. Smith, and J.R. Alford. 2014. Differences in Negativity Bias Underlie Variations in Political Ideology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 37: 297–307. Hochschild, A. 2016. Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. The New Press. Huber, G.A., and N.  Malhotra. 2016. Political Homophily in Social Relationships: Evidence from Online Dating Behavior. Journal of Politics 79: 269–283. Hume, D. 1739/1978. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by P.H. Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Inbar, Y., D.A.  Pizarro, and P.  Bloom. 2009. Conservatives are More Easily Disgusted than Liberals. Cognition and Emotion 23: 714–725. Inbar, Y., D. Pizarro, R. Iyer, and J. Haidt. 2012. Disgust Sensitivity, Political Conservatism, and Voting. Social Psychology and Personality Science 3: 537–544. Iyengar, S., and S.J.  Westwood. 2015. Fear and Loathing across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization. American Journal of Political Science 59: 690–707. Iyengar, S., G. Sood, and Y. Lelkes. 2012. Affect, Not Ideology: A Social identity Perspective on Polarization. Public Opinion Quarterly 76: 405–431. Jones, J.M. 2019. Trump Job Approval Sets New Record for Polarization. Gallup Poll. https://news.gallup.com/poll/245996/trump-job-approval-sets-newrecord-polarization.aspx.

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Jost, J.T., and D.M.  Amodio. 2012. Political Ideology as Motivated Social Cognition: Behavioral and Neuroscientific Evidence. Motivation and Emotion 36 (1): 55–64. Kimball, David C., Joseph Anthony, and Tyler Chance. (2018). Political Identity and Party Polarization in the American Electorate. In J.C. Green, D.J. Coffey, & D.B. Cohen (eds.), The State of the Parties 2018 (pp. 169–184). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. LeBas, A. 2011. From Protest to Parties: Party-Building and Democratization in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2018. Can Polarization Be Positive? Conflict and Institutional Development in Africa. American Behavioral Scientist 62: 59–74. Lelkes, Y. 2018. Affective Polarization and Ideological Sorting: A Reciprocal, Albeit Weak, Relationship. The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics 16: 67–79. Lupu, N. 2015. Party Polarization and Mass Partisanship: A Comparative Perspective. Political Behavior 37: 331–356. Lynch, M. 2016. The New Arab Wars: Uprising and Anarchy in the Middle East. Washington, DC: Public Affairs. Mason, L. 2015. Distinguishing the Polarizing Effects of Ideology as Identity, Issue Positions, and Issue-Based Identity. American Journal of Political Science 59: 128–145. ———. 2018. Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. McClosky, H. 1964. Consensus and Ideology in American Politics. American Political Science Review 58: 361–382. Oxley, D.R., K.B. Smith, J.R. Alford, M.V. Hibbing, M.S. Miller, P.K. Hatemi, et  al. 2008. Political Attitudes Vary with Physiological Traits. Science 321: 1667–1670. Painter, M., and T.  Qiu. 2020. Political Beliefs Affect Compliance with COVID-19 Social Distancing Orders. Working paper, https://ssrn.com/ abstract=3569098. Pew Research Center. 2014. Political Polarization in the American Public. https://www.people-press.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2014/06/612-2014-Political-Polarization-Release.pdf. ———. 2016. Partisanship and Political Animosity in 2016. https://www.people-press.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2016/06/06-22-16-Partisanshipand-animosity-release.pdf.

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———. 2019. Political Independents: Who They Are, What They Think. https://www.people-press.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/03/ Independents-Report.pdf. Prinz, J.J. 2007. The Emotional Construction of Morals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2016. Emotions, Morality, and Identity. In Morality and Emotion: (Un) conscious Journey into Moral Being, ed. S. Silva, 13–35. New York: Routledge. Prinz, J.J., and S. Nichols. 2016. Diachronic Identity and the Moral Self. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the Social Mind, ed. J.  Kiverstein, 449–464. New York: Routledge. Skitka, L.J., C.W. Bauman, and E.G. Sargis. 2005. Moral Conviction: Attitude Strength or Something More? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 895–917. Steiger, R., C.  Reyna, and G.  Wetherell. 2019. Contempt of Congress: Do Liberals and Conservatives Harbor Equivalent Negative Emotional Biases Towards Ideologically Congruent vs. Incongruent Politicians at the Level of Individual Emotions? Journal of Social and Political Psychology 7: 100–123. Tajfel, H. 1970. Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination. Scientific American 223: 96–102. Yang, J.Z., H. Chu, and L. Kahlor. 2019. Fearful Conservatives, Angry Liberals: Information Processing Related to the 2016 Presidential Election and Climate Change. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 96: 742–766.

The Efficacy of Anger: Recognition and Retribution Laura Luz Silva

Anger is often an appropriate reaction to harms and injustices, but is it a beneficial one? Martha Nussbaum (2015, 2016) has argued that, although useful in initially recruiting agents for action, anger is typically ineffective and often counterproductive to securing the political aims of the oppressed. Nussbaum argues that to be effective at enacting social change, groups and individuals alike must move quickly out of states of anger. Feminist theorists, on the other hand, have for long highlighted the efficacy of anger, as well as its moral and epistemic value, in fighting against the oppressive status quo (Frye 1983; Lorde  1997; Narayan 1988). It might be thought, therefore, that for political action to be effective, a continued state of anger is preferable. I present a novel, empirically informed, defense against Nussbaum’s attack on anger’s efficacy in political action. Nussbaum adheres to a traditional view on the nature of anger, which holds that anger constitutively involves a desire for retribution. The view that anger is ineffective falls out of this and is

L. L. Silva (*) University College London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. Falcato, S. Graça da Silva (eds.), The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8_2

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dominant in the literature, as well our everyday lives. Informed by work in social psychology, I argue that anger is far more effective than Nussbaum allows. This will give us cause to reconsider the traditional view of anger’s nature that Nussbaum endorses. In doing so, I highlight anger’s aim for recognition, rather than retribution, as key. I also uncover conditions that favour anger’s political efficacy, as well as reasons for why the traditional view of anger has been so pervasive.

1

Introduction

Injustices call for outrage. Nelson Mandela (1994: 257), for example, famously wrote: I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people.

That anger is a powerful motivator of political action is ubiquitously acknowledged (Adams 1986; Jasper 2014). Granting anger an initial motivational role leaves open the question of whether oppressed groups will be most effective at securing significant change by sustaining and promoting anger at their targets, or, alternatively, by moving quickly out of states of anger. Nussbaum (2015, 2016) has launched a contemporary attack on anger, arguing that, beyond its initial motivational role, anger is ineffective, and more than often counterproductive, in fights for social justice.1 Nussbaum therefore recommends against anger in such political struggles. I follow Nussbaum (2015, 2016) in using ‘anger’ to refer to a range of related affective phenomena, including outrage, indignation and resentment. By anger I will mean occurrent cases of phenomenologically  The notion of social justice I employ throughout is a thin one. I take social justice to be (non-­ exhaustively) concerned with generating fair patterns of rights, opportunities, and wealth in a society. Such a conception is intended to capture a fundamental notion of social justice without taking sides on particular theories or forms of justice. I take what I have to say about anger to be at least in principle applicable to whichever theory of justice one might favour. 1

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salient negatively valanced states that involve evaluations, or appraisals, of a triggering situation as wrongful. Like many emotions, anger is thought to have both a cognitive component, that represents the world as being a certain way, and a conative component, that disposes agents for action (Deonna and Teroni 2012; Cogley 2014). Nussbaum’s recent attack targets feminist philosophers, as well as many political activists, who hail anger as amongst, if not the most, politically important emotion (Frye 1983; Narayan 1988; hooks 1995; Lorde 1997; Lugones 2003; Bell 2005; Srinivasan 2018). Lorde (1997: 280), for example, writes that “every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being”. Anger is thought to create and sustain a sense of moral obligation and justice that propels political progress (Jasper 2014). In this chapter I develop an empirically informed critique of Nussbaum’s position. We will see that empirical work provides support in favour of anger’s political efficacy. I begin by outlining Nussbaum’s commitments and highlighting two empirical claims amongst them (Sect. 2). I then proceed to challenge these claims by bringing recent work in social psychology to bear on them (Sect. 3). Doing so will call into question the ancient conception of anger that Nussbaum, and many contemporary philosophers, endorse (Sect. 4). I end by offering a pluralist conception of anger that should be preferred (Sect. 5). My alternative view makes desires for recognition central to anger, and allows the full efficacy of anger to emerge.

2

Nussbaum on Anger

Nussbaum (2015, 2016) endorses an ancient construal of anger as constitutively involving a desire for retribution.2 Aristotle characterizes anger as “a desire accompanied by pain for  a conspicuous  revenge for  a conspicuous  slight” (Rhet 1378a31–33  in Barnes 1984).3 Anger ceases  I make use of an intuitive notion of desire throughout. I take desires to: (a) dispose one to act in ways that aim to achieve the desire’s aim, and (b) to be satisfied when the actual state of affairs in the world matches the desire’s aim. 3  This view is shared by Stoics such as anger’s most famous critic Seneca (On Anger). 2

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when the offended retaliates “for revenge relieves them of their  anger” (NE 1126a21–22 in Barnes 1984). The desire for the perpetrator’s suffering is a conceptual part of anger on such a view, as anger is defined as a desire for returning pain (DA 403a31). This retributive view of anger is widespread in contemporary philosophy (see Pettigrove 2012; Ben-­Ze’ev 2000: 384), indeed Nussbaum (2015: 4) calls it the “traditional” view of anger. Nussbaum’s thought is not that anger always involves a desire for violent revenge or to personally harm the offender, rather, “anger involves, conceptually, a wish for things to go badly, somehow, for the offender in a way that is envisaged, somehow, however vaguely, as a payback for the offense” (Nussbaum 2015: 46). For example, when angry at a friend’s betrayal, one may wish for the traitor’s life to go badly, yet not wish to have anything to do with making this the case.4 Nussbaum’s view on anger involves the following nature claim: nature claim: Anger constitutively involves a desire for payback or retribution.5

Given its nature, Nussbaum takes anger to be either irrational or immoral. It is irrational in the sense that inflicting pain upon a perpetrator when in anger will not literally undo the wrong one has suffered. An agent who believes the contrary is guilty of “magical thinking” and irrationality (2015: 47–48). The only way to avoid irrationality is to construe the payback as capable of restoring one’s status following a slight. Anger is on such a reading concerned with status-ranking, where “a retaliatory strike back is thought to restore the balance of status” (2015: 48). The problem with  the status reading of  anger, for Nussbaum (2015), is that it is immoral as it involves a “narcissistic error” (51), an obsessive focus on one’s standing relative to others (45). There is, however, one domain in which Nussbaum (2015: 50) grants that slights do lower one’s status, and that to be preoccupied with such status injuries is not immoral.  This is actually a departure from the Aristotelian account of anger where for revenge to be enacted the offender must know by whose hand, as well as for what reason, he suffers (Rhet 1380b22–25). 5  I follow Nussbaum (2015, 2016) in using the terms ‘payback’, ‘retribution’ and ‘revenge’ interchangeably. 4

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Discrimination, for example, on grounds of race or gender, is often conceived as an injury that really does consist in down-ranking, and there is truth to this, just in this special sense: discrimination involves a denial of a special status of equal dignity, and this status has intrinsic value.

But, she goes on to say that “the idea that denials of equal dignity can be rectified by bringing the injurer low is a false lure” (2015: 51). Nussbaum seems to think that anger is an inadequate way to promote positive social change for two reasons: inefficacy and immorality. On the latter she writes that “reversing positions through payback does not create equality. It just substitutes one inequality for another” (2015: 51). Here much more could be said. Surely lowering the rank of those in power need not involve the reversal of positions within a hierarchy, but merely leveling  them. It is unclear why such an aim would make the status-­ lowering strategy morally problematic. I will leave these issues to one side. My focus will be on the claim of inefficacy. Nussbaum argues that “non-anger and a generous disposition are far more useful” than anger to revolutionary justice (2016: 228). Nussbaum doesn’t just make comparative claims regarding anger’s efficacy however, she also argues, largely counterfactually, that leaders of successful social movements, such as Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela, were effective precisely because they did not act on their anger.6 Nussbaum takes anger to be particularly ineffective in the fight for social justice. This claim can be summarized as follows: inefficacy claim: Anger is typically ineffective at fighting social injustice.

This claim is by no means limited to Nussbaum (2015, 2016). Seneca (1928) famously paints anger as “the most hideous and frenzied of all emotions” which gives “no thought to itself if only it can hurt another” and is “eager for revenge though it may drag down the avenger along with it” (I.1). Casting anger as counterproductive has a long history (see  Rosenwein 1998), and is common in everyday life, where we are  Adams (1986) and Cogley (2014) take this autobiographical evidence to establish the exact opposite: that anger-motivated action is extremely effective and prevalent amongst leaders of political movements. 6

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often advised to avoid anger on account of it being futile, and potentially counterproductive, in situations that trigger the emotion.7 More recently, Pettigrove (2012) has argued that anger is particularly ineffective in struggles for social justice, and claims meekness is preferable. What are the specific reasons for holding the inefficacy claim? The answer becomes clear when we pay closer attention to the nature claim. First, as anger is constitutively aimed at payback, retributive rather than conciliatory actions are predicted of those in anger. Retributive  actions are both morally problematic for Nussbaum, and risk being counterproductive (Nussbaum 2016: 1). They are morally problematic, because they involve harming, or at least seeking to harm, their objects. They are counterproductive because in so doing, they may harm the angry agent themselves, often by triggering disengagement or retaliation in their targets, which leads to the further entrenchment of conflict (Nussbaum 2015, 2016). When enraged African-Americans flooded the streets of Chicago following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968 for example, 125 fires were set, 210 buildings were damaged and numerous stores were looted. In response to the riot, over 10,000 police and 5000 soldiers were brought in. Many African-Americans were killed, injured or incarcerated, the city of Chicago suffered a food shortage, and the areas destroyed by rioters were knocked down, many remaining to this day undeveloped. Racial segregation intensified in the aftermath of the riot (Risen 2009). Besides committing harms against Chicagoans in general, these actions arguably left the city’s African-American community itself worse off. This seems to lend support to Nussbaum’s view that anger often makes things worse for the angry agent, as it is “incompatible with forward-looking pragmatism” (2016: 230–233). There is, however, clear room to argue for the efficacy, and even justification, of destructive actions in fights for social justice. Indeed, the Chicago riots are thought to have played a crucial role in paving the way for important victories for the civil rights movement (Risen 2009). The  Lepoutre (2018) and Srinivasan (2018) discuss the ‘counterproductivity objection’ and the ‘counterproductivity critique’ against anger respectively. My target is the weaker claim regarding anger’s inefficacy. In targeting the weaker claim, my argument challenges also the stronger claim regarding anger’s counter productivity. 7

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efficacy or ethics of aggressive revolutionary tactics is however not the focus of this chapter. In so far as Nussbaum envisions anger being effective, she sees it as morally condemnable for harming others (2015: 51). Nussbaum would therefore not deny that anger can be effective, but rather denies that anger can be effective while remaining morally unproblematic. Anger’s efficacy therefore seems inexorably tied to its immorality on her account. This is the narrower claim of inefficacy I will be concerned with. There are two, in my eyes both fruitful, main strategies against this stance: to argue for the morality of some retributive actions, or to argue that anger’s ties to retribution are far weaker than Nussbaum allows. I pursue the latter strategy here. We will see that effective, morally unproblematic, anger is far more  common than Nussbaum’s account allows. The first reason for holding the inefficacy claim then is that in aiming for retribution, angry subjects act destructively, which we might think is unlikely to improve the angry party’s standing, and can indeed worsen their situation by antagonizing the targets of anger and provoking retaliation. Independently of the specific actions taken, commitment to the nature claim gives reason to think that mere displays, or communications, of anger risk setting back goals for positive social change. This highlights a second, related, reason anger is taken to be ineffective in struggles for revolutionary justice: that communicating anger, for those committed to the nature claim, involves communicating the desire for retribution, and this is likely to inspire animosity in the targeted group. Nussbaum (2016) says that anger “breed(s) mistrust” (233) and increases “anxiety and self-defensiveness” in its targets (230). Similarly, Pettigrove (2012) writes that anger communication is typically counterproductive due to “triggering a defensive response” in its targets that prevents them from appreciating the causes of anger (367). In a best-­ case scenario, the communication of anger is unlikely to breed openness to cooperation in its targets. In a worst-case scenario anger risks perpetuating an “endless cycle of blood vengeance” by escalating conflicts (Nussbaum 2016: 1). There might be other reasons for endorsing the inefficacy claim, but I will focus on the two just outlined. The first is a reason that pertains primarily to the actions of those in anger, while the

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second is a reason that pertains to the responses of the targets of anger. The two reasons can be summarized as follows: In-group Reason: Anger motivates retributive actions on the part of those angry. Out-group Reason: Anger antagonizes those at whom it is directed.

Each reason is in effect an empirical claim against which recent experimental work can be brought to bear. Before I turn to doing so, I would like to note the one exception Nussbaum (2015, 2016) makes, the one case in which she takes anger to be an effective and moral way of promoting social change: cases of what she calls “transition-anger”. Nussbaum characterizes transition-anger as anger that is not retributive, and which focuses on “brotherhood”, “justice”, “reconciliation and shared effort” instead, typically motivating constructive actions (2015: 53–54). This is the type of anger Nussbaum takes Martin Luther King to experience and express in his speeches (54). Nussbaum isn’t clear on whether transitionanger is a distinct species of anger on her view: “is Transition-Anger a species of anger? I really don’t care how we answer this question” (2015: 54), what is clear is that she takes it to be a “borderline case” that is “rare and exceptional” and only present in individuals with superior “self-discipline” (54). In sum, Nussbaum’s view on anger takes it to be typically ineffective in struggles for social justice. The only room made for the permissible efficacy of an emotion akin to anger, is the special case of transition-anger that is exceedingly rare and hard to cultivate. To the question ‘should the oppressed avoid anger?’ Nussbaum responds in the affirmative.8 Nussbaum’s targets are feminist philosophers who have issued powerful responses to the above question in the negative (Frye 1983; Narayan 1988; hooks 1995; Lorde 1997; Lugones 2003; Bell 2005; Srinivasan 2018). The oppressed should not avoid anger, on their view, for a number of reasons. These include anger’s psychological,

 As does Pettigrove (2012).

8

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epistemic, as well as practical, utility in resisting oppression.9 Here I am concerned with the practical. Many feminist philosophers are opposed to the inefficacy claim, as they take anger to be crucial in motivating politically beneficial action. Lorde (1997: 280) claims that anger can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change. And when I speak of change, I do not mean a simple switch of positions or a temporary lessening of tensions, nor the ability to smile or feel good. I am speaking of a basic and radical alteration in those assumptions underlining our lives.

Those who have argued for the political value of anger have rarely engaged in a head on denial of the inefficacy claim however.10 This is likely in part because such a task is largely an empirical one (see Lepoutre 2018: 3; Srinivasan 2018: 127). By attending to relevant empirical work, my challenge to the inefficacy claim takes steps towards filling this gap in support of those who have hailed anger as paramount for political change.

3

The Efficacy of Anger

We saw that there are two reasons in support of the inefficacy claim. The In-group Reason and the Out-group Reason, both of which are in fact empirical claims that generate empirical predictions. The former predicts retributive behaviour of angry subjects, while the latter predicts targets of anger to respond defensively, and often retaliate, against those who  On anger’s value in the psychology of the oppressed see Spelman (1989: 266), hooks (1995: 17), Fanon (2008: 94), Yancy (2008: 847) and Leboeuf (2017). A common theme is that in anger one rejects the self-image imposed by the oppressor, and affirms one’s agency. On anger’s epistemic value see Frye (1983), Friedman (1986), Jaggar (1989) and Bell (2009). Anger plays a number of epistemic roles. It allows direct apprehension of injustice (often constituting one’s only means of apprehension), as well as indirect mapping of oppression through the observation of when and where one’s anger is systematically dismissed (Frye 1983). Additionally, collective scrutiny of shared anger plays roles in the generation of concepts that aid political progress. Independent to anger’s psychological and epistemic effects, becoming angry when there is justifying reason to, is thought to itself be intrinsically valuable (see Srinivasan 2018). 10  Lepoutre (2018) is a recent exception. His argument relies on historical examples of political speeches where mine is informed by recent work in psychology. 9

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display anger towards them. A look at relevant empirical work will give us cause to question both reasons for the inefficacy claim. I deal with them in turn.

3.1

The In-Group Reason

Anger is seen as a crucial motivator of collective political action (Spring et al. 2018). The field of collective action research takes there to be two main pathways by which collective action is motivated: the anger pathway, and the instrumental reasoning pathway (van Zomeren et  al. 2012; Wlodarczyk et al. 2017). The anger pathway involves the experience of group anger being triggered by a situation of unfair in-group disadvantage, while the instrumental reasoning pathway involves reasoning about how effective one’s group will be at changing the unjust situation.11 The anger pathway is driven by appraising situations as unfair, while the instrumental reasoning pathway is driven by evaluating the amount of social support for action one expects. The latter involves reasoning about how successful the group is likely to be at ensuring change through collective action (van Zomeren et al. 2012).12 Given the In-group Reason for holding the inefficacy claim, a supporter of this claim would plausibly expect the actions typical of each of these pathways to differ. Nussbaum would likely expect the instrumental reasoning pathway of collective action alone to motivate morally unproblematic actions in the pursuit of justice. Retributive collective actions, on the other hand, would be expected of the anger pathway. Experimental work on collective action seriously challenges these predictions however.  In psychology, group-based anger is taken to be anger that is experienced by individuals “as a result of their identification with a group or social category” (Mackie et al. 2000). This understanding of collective or group-based emotions is distinct from, and likely agnostic about, the problem in philosophy of mind as to whether there are such things as ontologically collective emotions (see Krueger 2015). I remain agnostic about such problems and follow the psychological construal of group-anger throughout. 12  Anger and instrumental reasoning were measured by asking participants to rate how strongly they agreed with statements like: ‘I am furious about tuition rises’, ‘I am irritated by tuition rises’ in the case of anger, and for instrumental reasoning about group efficacy: ‘I think that students can stop the introduction of tuition fees’, ‘I think students have already lost the fight against tuition fees’. 11

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In a key study, German university students were surveyed regarding a real-life situation where the state had mandated an increase in tuition fees. Students were asked to indicate how likely they would be to participate in different actions against the tuition rise. The action options were grouped into three types; (a) ‘constructive actions’ such as flyer dissemination, petition signing and demonstrations, (b) ‘destructive actions’ such as arson attacks on university buildings or private property and (c) ‘intermediate type’ actions that disturb events where tuition-rise advocates appear, such as blocking university buildings or public roads (Tausch et  al. 2011). Adherents of the inefficacy claim would plausibly predict the anger pathway to mainly motivate actions of type (b), destructive actions, perhaps as well as intermediate type (c) actions, while predicting instrumental reasoning to be the main pathway for motivating actions of type (a), constructive actions. On the contrary, however, both anger and instrumental reasoning were found to be positively related to engaging in type (a) actions, i.e. constructive actions. Indeed, anger was found to be inversely correlated to destructive actions, being most strongly correlated with constructive actions. Crucially, anger was not found to significantly motivate actions that involved enacting payback in any straightforward sense (destructive or intermediate types of actions), as anger motivated actions to change the tuition fee policy, rather than harm those who implemented it. Similar results were found outside of laboratory settings in studies involving Muslim Indian minority communities in conflict with the Hindu majority (van Zomeren et  al. 2004; Tausch et  al. 2011). The Muslim community is one of the most disadvantaged communities in the country in terms of education, income, employment and political representation (Basant 2007). The self-reported levels of anger amongst the Muslim community in the riot-prone city of Aligarh, were found to be unrelated to any support for violent actions against the dominant majority. This suggests that the results of the study conducted on students may extend to real world situations of historical conflict. Other studies have found anger in situations of group conflict, such as Israel-Palestine, to promote both destructive actions, as well as constructive actions, against the out-group (Halperin et al. 2011). This evidence still speaks

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against the first reason for holding the inefficacy claim, as anger is not shown to motivate destructive actions over constructive ones. Some have cited studies that show anger to motivate punitive and aggressive actions (see Pettigrove 2012 for example). Nussbaum and supporters of her view would likely try to explain away the constructive effects of anger I just surveyed as exceptions to this trend. A few points on this. First, the experimental evidence relied upon to support the inefficacy claim is almost exclusively from studies done on individuals or in interpersonal settings (Pettigrove 2012: 362; Spring et al. 2018), therefore we should be skeptical of whether they translate to the inter-group, and often systemic, dynamics we are concerned with. Furthermore, below we will see that there is ample evidence of anger being constructive in interpersonal settings as well, which those arguing against anger’s efficacy have long neglected. Most importantly however, I have not denied that anger can trigger destructive actions, the point is that constructive anger-­ triggered actions might be far more common than those who condemn anger grant, and indeed constructive effects might be just as typical, or even paradigmatic, of anger. How do we account for the variance in anger’s motivational tendencies? This is the question that guides much empirical work. The experimental work suggests that key factors moderate the effects of anger. In psychology, moderators are crucial to determining when certain effects hold. Moderators are typically contextual variables that influence which effects are observed. Contextual moderators are likely crucial to determining when anger will motivate constructive or destructive actions. The Tausch et al. (2011) study, for example, found destructive type (b) actions to be favoured when the group had low confidence in their ability to change their predicament. This suggests that taking a situation to be unchangeable may be a key factor in motivating destructive behavior. Indeed, there is wide ranging evidence that punitive actions are favoured in situations where change is unlikely. This is often because the out-group is unresponsive to attempts to change the situation (Bandura 2000). Indeed, some have called this the ‘nothing to lose’ phenomenon (Scheepers et  al. 2006) as the low status group has little to lose in responding to injustice aggressively, seeing as their situation is unlikely to change by any other means. The perceived changeability of the out-group in relation to

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an anger triggering situation, then, seems to be a key moderator of anger behaviour. This suggests that whether the In-group Reason holds or not is heavily dependent on how changeable, or receptive to change, the outgroup is perceived to be. In sum, we have seen the In-group Reason for holding the inefficacy claim to be challenged by recent empirical work. Contrary to the prediction that anger motivates destructive, or retributive, collective actions, a range of studies in the field of collective action have failed to establish a significant relation between anger and the motivation of such actions. Indeed, in complete opposition to this prediction, anger was observed to significantly motivate constructive actions instead. Even when anger was observed to correlate with destructive actions, it was also observed to correlate significantly with constructive actions. The key notion of moderators has been introduced, and I have highlighted a moderator that is likely to play a central role in determining when anger motivates constructive actions.

3.2

The Out-Group Reason

Proponents of the inefficacy claim take the communication of anger to be ineffective in struggles for social justice largely because communications of anger will only serve to antagonize the dominant group. An antagonized group is one that is likely to retaliate against one’s in-group, or at least avoid this group, and will therefore be unwilling to work towards rectifying injustice. Psychological research on intergroup conflict provides mounting evidence against this, however, as communications of anger have been shown to correlate with increased support for constructive and conciliatory action tendencies on behalf of dominant groups. One experiment, for example, probed the effect of anger communication on the responses of Americans to Syrian-American relations. In the experiment, Americans watched a short video clip about Syrian-American relations after reading a brief text. In the ‘anger condition’, the text described how a key Syrian leader gave an enraged speech that was aggressive towards the US. In a ‘hope condition’, the text described the leader’s hopeful view on the resolution of the conflict. And finally, in the

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neutral condition, non-emotional factual information was relayed in the text about the Syrian leader’s speech. American subjects were then asked to register their support for conciliatory policies, such as continuing exports of food and medicine to Syria, and accepting Syria’s request for the US to fund humanitarian projects in Syria (Tagar et al. 2011). The Out-group Reason for holding the inefficacy claim would plausibly predict Americans to become antagonized by, and respond retributively to, displays and communications of anger. Nussbaum’s view would, therefore, predict support for conciliatory policies to be lowest in the anger condition. The view would plausibly expect increased support for conciliatory policies in the neutral control condition because participants would be able to think clearly about the conflict at hand, and not be negatively biased by anger. The view would additionally either expect similarly increased support for conciliatory policies in the hope condition as well, or it would predict support for conciliatory policies to be highest in the hope condition, as a positive outlook is being conveyed. Contrary to these predictions, the study found support for conciliatory policies to be highest in the anger condition. Support for conciliatory policies was not only higher in the anger condition compared to the control condition, but the anger condition even saw significantly higher levels of support for conciliatory policies than were observed in the hope condition. This starkly opposes the predictions we would expect of the inefficacy claim, and suggests that anger communication has an important role to play in inter-group conflict resolution. Mounting evidence supports the main finding of this study, as anger communication has been observed to increase dominant group support for conciliatory policies in the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict, US race-relations (Shuman et al. 2018), and cases of xenophobia (de Vos et al. 2013). The Out-group Reason for holding the inefficacy claim is therefore challenged by evidence that the communication of anger from a disadvantaged group often actually increases dominant group support for conciliatory policies. In one of the above-mentioned studies, focused on xenophobia, researchers investigated how the communication of anger plays such beneficial roles in inter-group conflict. One might think that perhaps it is fear of the enraged group that causes the increase in support for

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conciliatory policies on behalf of the dominant group. Indeed, Nussbaum notes that in so far as anger can act as an effective deterrent to keep others from infringing upon one’s rights, it does so by inspiring fear which is “not likely to lead to a future of stability or peace” (2015: 55). Contrary to this, however, increased levels of empathy were observed in the dominant group following anger communication from an oppressed group (de Vos et al. 2013). Indeed, empathy for the oppressed group was actually highest in the anger communication condition. This suggests that anger communication is a potentially optimal way of recruiting the empathy of dominant group members that are the target of anger, and that this in turn mediates their increase in support for conciliatory policies.13 This suggests that empathy for, rather than fear of, the oppressed group may be causing the positive effects of anger observed in other studies. In a follow-up study, de Vos et al. (2016) found the appropriateness of the anger to moderate its positive effects. In other words, anger communication increased empathy in the dominant group when the dominant group saw the oppressed group’s anger as a justified response to the situation at hand. This highlights a key moderator that helps determine when anger communication is likely to cause the out-group to respond empathetically and support constructive policies. In sum, we first saw that empirical work supports a vital role for anger in motivating constructive collective action. In addition to this, studies also showed the communication of anger on behalf of those oppressed to trigger dominant group support for constructive and conciliatory actions. Both reasons for holding the inefficacy claim are therefore challenged by recent empirical work. Against any charge of having cherry picked the experimental work I rely upon, it is crucial to note that the experimental literatures I invoke have long departed from debates over whether anger is constructive or not in collective action or inter-group disputes. Instead, researchers focus on trying to uncover key moderators that determine when anger is  Mediators, in psychology, are variables that speak to how or why certain effects occur. In this case, empathy is a mediator because it can be seen as an intermediary step that explains the effect of anger on out group support for constructive actions. 13

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destructive or constructive, so as to better understand and aid conflicts. The underlying commitment to anger’s motivational pluripotency is clear and widespread (Spring et  al. 2018). This should be reflected in contemporary philosophical treatments of anger, and the relevance of particular moderators attended to. The above considerations suggest that we should drop the inefficacy claim, at least regarding anger’s role in inter-­ group conflict resolution. If we do so, what does this mean for the nature claim? I turn to this question now.

4

Anger’s Objects

The question that arises once we take Nussbaum’s inefficacy claim to be misguided, or, at the very least, overly simplistic, is whether we should do away with the traditional retributive view of anger’s nature altogether. We seem to have two choices here. Either we stick with the traditional nature claim, and take anger’s oft constructive role in fighting for justice to be an exception to anger’s typically retributive nature, in which case an explanation must be given for why anger behaves uncharacteristically in the social justice case; or, we take anger’s constructive role in social justice to be evidence of something important about anger’s nature. What exactly this might be must be cashed out, but any account of this sort will involve a rejection, or at the very least a modification, of the nature claim. I argue that we should pursue an option of the second, rather than the first, type. After this, I sketch a positive proposal of the second type. One option open to anyone wishing to secure a fundamental role for anger in the fight against social injustice, is to do so by distancing anger in these cases from cases of everyday anger. Doing so involves casting anger’s constructive role in fighting social injustice as a special, or deviant, case that departs from anger’s nature. Interpersonal anger, i.e. anger felt for one person by another, is taken to be the paradigmatic case of everyday anger, where one’s reasons for anger relate to interpersonal betrayals or harms. In line with the nature claim, everyday interpersonal anger is, on Nussbaum’s (2015, 2016) view, ineffective at bringing about interpersonal resolutions as well. By constitutively involving an aim for payback, everyday interpersonal anger may prompt retributive behavior that

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escalates the dispute, proving counterproductive for the angry party. Everyday anger typically has an individual to blame and enact payback over. Anger in the case of social injustice, however, might be less destructive because payback cannot easily be exacted against a particular person. This is, perhaps, because there is often no adequate individual to blame in those scenarios where anger is felt towards groups, institutions or systems, and hence payback is perhaps a less immediate concern than real change.14 Rosen (in progress) and Swaine (1996) have made independent cases for the constructive role of anger in struggles for social justice that hinge on anger being, in these cases, atypical for its lack of a clear agent(s) to blame. That is, as the object of anger is not typically an individual in such cases, payback cannot be straightforwardly exacted. Such a view maintains a commitment to the nature claim, as anger is still by nature punitive. Cases of constructive everyday anger are seen as outliers, and the constructive role granted of anger in promoting social justice is taken to hinge on a sort of fluke in the natural functioning of anger; where anger is not able to live out its natural function of procuring payback or retribution. An immediate problem with such a view is that it endorses an implausibly dire picture of everyday anger. The view takes a version of the inefficacy claim to apply to paradigmatic cases of anger, whereby anger is ineffective and often counterproductive at resolving interpersonal conflict for reasons analogous to the In-group and Out-group reasons in the case of social justice. This doesn’t sit well with empirical evidence, as experimental work challenges the predictions that interpersonal anger typically motivates destructive behaviour, or that it tends to antagonize  Everyday interpersonal anger and anger in social justice cases do not come neatly apart. First, for the oppressed, anger at social injustice can be their ‘everyday’. Additionally, although the objects of anger in cases of social injustice are often social objects, such as groups or institutions, anger at specific individuals, for reasons pertaining to social injustice (such as sexism and racism) are common. For simplicity of treatment, and to mirror the experimental work, I treat interpersonal anger and anger in cases of social injustice as conceptually distinct. The relevant distinction seems to me not to pertain to whether the object of anger is an individual or not, but to whether the reasons for anger involve group-based harms or not. My point in this section is that anger at individuals, for reasons independent to group membership (what has been called paradigmatic or everyday anger), has much more in common with anger in social injustice cases, such that accounting for anger’s differential effects in terms of its objects is not a promising move. 14

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its target. Briefly, with regards to the types of action interpersonal anger motivates, a canonical study by Averill (1983) found a higher percentage of non-aggressive than aggressive action tendencies in people experiencing anger. Although there is robust evidence that, on economic distribution paradigms, angered individuals on average respond more punitively to unfair economic distributions than to fair economic distributions, recent work has observed that angered individuals still choose behaviours that are economically cooperative in response to unfair economic distributions (Klimecki et al. 2018). This suggests that anger may not typically motivate retributive actions towards the individuals it is directed at. Which actions anger motivates is likely to be more a question of context than object. Indeed, much like the social justice case, the ability of the target of anger to change may be key to determining whether interpersonal anger motivates constructive behaviour or payback oriented behaviour. A study on adolescent responses to bullying for example, found implicit beliefs about bullies to predict desires for revenge (Yeager et al. 2011). Greater desire for revenge was observed in participants who believed that the bully had fixed character traits. The reverse was found for participants that believed that the bully’s character was changeable. By highlighting the changeability of the target of anger as a moderator affecting desires for revenge, the interpersonal case seems to bear striking similarities to the social justice case. Similarly, as opposed to antagonizing the object of anger and promoting retaliatory behavior on their behalf, the communication of anger has been observed to trigger increased social support in close relationships (Yoo et  al. 2011), as well as increased personal gains in interpersonal financial negotiations (Van Kleef and Côté 2007). The latter study pinpointed the appropriateness of anger as a key determinant of anger’s beneficial effects in interpersonal negotiations. The constructive effects of anger were highest when the anger was seen as justified, as the offender compensated the low status party in these cases. This points to the crucial role of the appropriateness of anger in moderating whether the anger is well received or not. This again suggests that interpersonal anger is far closer to anger in the social justice case; as appropriateness similarly acts as a moderator over anger’s beneficial effects.

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We are left with little reason to think that anger in interpersonal contexts is more retributive than anger in social injustice cases. The studies above suggest interpersonal anger plays robust beneficial roles and that anger’s effects are moderated by analogous factors seen to be key in the social justice case: the appropriateness of anger and the changeability of the object of anger. Given that interpersonal anger is the paradigmatic case of having a clear target object to blame and enact retribution over, the constructive role of anger in these cases suggests that the constructive effects observed of anger in cases of social injustice does not hinge on lacking straightforward targets. In light of this, the move to sideline social justice cases of anger as atypical seems unpromising,  and this in turn makes commitment to the nature claim hard to maintain.

5

Anger’s Desires

I argue for an alternative view; one that secures anger a constructive role in the fight against social injustice, in line with, rather than despite, its nature. This will be a sketch, but one that I think more promising than the other options on the table. We have seen that we have much reason to reject a traditional view, such as Nussbaum’s (2015, 2016), that takes anger to be constitutively tied to payback or retribution. We therefore have reason to rethink the nature claim. I take the empirical work discussed so far to suggest that the nature claim is unlikely to be true of anger. Specifically, I take it to fit well with a view whereby two distinct desires are central to anger: a desire for retribution and a desire for recognition. I take there to be certain moderators that are key to determining which desire is at play in a given case of anger. Although the empirical work above can only provide indirect and suggestive evidence for which desires are at play in anger, the phenomenology of anger favours the existence of two distinct desires. Imagine your friend Mark manages somehow to steal your inheritance. You would surely want to make him suffer for committing this wrong against you. You may make him suffer by cutting him out of your social circle, suing him, defaming his character, or threatening him with physical violence. Your anger would be aimed at Mark’s punishment. Let’s suppose now

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that you fail to act on your anger. This could occur for a range of reasons, perhaps there was high social pressure not to act, or perhaps you merely lacked the opportunity. The desire to make Mark suffer is still central to your anger in such cases. Indeed, you are likely to hope for things to go badly for Mark, and become happy upon hearing about his own hardship, even if this news comes years later and is entirely unrelated to you. Your desire for suffering is satisfied in hearing this news, and you see his pain as deserved. Now imagine you are angry at your mother for not being there for you throughout your divorce. When you needed her support the most, your mother decided to go on a spontaneous three-month long holiday abroad. Your anger at your mother would be entirely justified, but it is unlikely that you would wish to ensure her social exclusion, or defame her character. Nor would you want to make her suffer physically, or hope for things to go badly for her in the future. Your anger’s goal does not seem to be that your mother suffer, but rather, to make her understand what she has done. Whereas Mark’s suffering satisfied your anger’s desire for payback, your mother’s suffering will not satisfy your anger in this case. This is because your anger at your mother does not involve a desire for payback but rather for recognition. Your anger’s desire for recognition will be satisfied by your mother’s genuine acknowledgement of the wrong she has committed against you. This will involve your mother sharing your appraisal of her actions towards you as unjust. This case of anger involves a desire for recognition as it aims for an epistemic change in the offender.15 I think anger aimed at recognition is a common phenomenon in our daily lives, and not at all restricted to cases where the emotion is felt towards a family member or close friend. Many cases where retributive actions are pursued may actually aim for epistemic changes rather than suffering. Indeed, that anger aims for something akin to recognition, as opposed to retribution, has long been noted (Smith 1976; Strawson 1962; Darwall 2013; Srinivasan 2018), yet the dominance of the traditional retributive view of anger has not waned. I take retributive and  Cogley (2014), Srinivasan (2018) and Lepoutre (2018) have recently discussed anger’s recognitional or epistemic aims as well. 15

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recognitional aims to both be typical of anger. This amounts to a pluralist account of the emotion.16 Desires for retribution attempt to bend others to one’s will, while the desires for recognition attempt to have the agent’s moral appraisals shared by the targets of anger. Each desire involves associated satisfaction conditions, suffering and understanding respectively. I take Nussbaum to equate anger to what I have characterized as anger that aims for retribution, while at best underestimating, and at worst outright denying, the existence of anger aimed at recognition. A pluralist account of anger can deliver on the phenomenological variability of our anger experiences, as well as more readily make sense of the experimental evidence regarding anger’s role in collective action and intergroup conflict. These studies showed the In-group and Out-group reasons for the inefficacy claim not to hold for many cases of anger. These are studies which desires for recognition help make sense of. Anger was observed to motivate actions such as protesting, petitioning, and lobbying, which are communicative actions that typically aim for recognition rather than punishment. In terms of the Out-group Reason, I contend that the dominant group can understand anger as either an appraisal of injustice looking to be shared, or as a wish for payback. Dominant groups are more likely to empathize with the angry group when they perceive anger as involving desires for recognition, making them more likely to support conciliatory policies towards them. When anger is perceived as a desire for retribution the dominant group will be more likely to pursue retaliatory actions against the oppressed group, or withdraw from any engagement with them as anger is perceived as a threat. Although action types don’t line up neatly with distinct desires (we can seek recognition through aggressive actions, for example) the role of appropriateness in moderating anger’s efficacy in struggles for social justice suggests that epistemic aims are central to  anger.17 Even aggressive anger-triggered  This pluralist view is compatible with a number of specific accounts on which I remain agnostic here. For example, anger could be constitutively linked to desires for either recognition or retribution. Alternatively, anger could be causally linked to these desires. The latter option leaves open the possibility that anger also bears strong causal links to additional desires, as well as allowing the possibility that a token case of anger can involve both recognitional and retributive desires. I think the causal rather than constitutive account is more plausible but do not argue for it here. 17  The thought that emotions are appropriate or reason-responsive is widespread in moral philosophy (Skorupski 2010; Raz 2011; Scanlon 2014), feminist philosophy (Frye 1983; Jaggar 1989; 16

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actions may be met with empathy when anger is seen as appropriate, as in such cases the targeted group shares the appraisal of those in anger. I take the moderators highlighted to be important for three main reasons. First, they highlight a key contextual feature, the changeability of the targets of anger, which moderates over which desire—retribution or recognition—is likely to be at play in a token case of anger. Second, the moderators inform the conditions under which anger is effective in struggles for social justice. When the targets of anger are seen as capable of change, anger tends to involve desires for recognition. Desires for recognition typically trigger actions that are primarily communicative, and which make clear the reasons for anger. This allows the targets of anger to share in the appraisal of a relevant situation as unjust. We saw that perceiving anger as appropriate led the targets of anger to support conciliatory actions towards angry groups. When these conditions are in place then, anger is effective in fights against social injustice, without incurring questions of morality. Lastly, the moderators shed light on why the traditional view of anger has been so prevalent. I turn to this now. Recall that the empirical work suggested that retributive actions are more prevalent when the target of anger is seen as unchangeable, and that the targets of anger are more likely to retaliate against angry groups when anger is perceived as inappropriate. This is actually an apt description of the state of affairs in societies structured by oppression. Power imbalances can structure which instances of anger are seen as appropriate, such that the status quo is perpetuated and injustices left unaddressed. This means that the anger of the oppressed will more easily be dismissed as inappropriate due to dominant ideology (Frye 1983; Spelman 1989). Relatedly, the angry are less likely to take their targets to be changeable in Lorde 1997; Bell 2009) and philosophy of emotion (D’Arms and Jacobson 2000; Deonna and Teroni 2012; Tappolet 2016). It is therefore common to think of emotions as amenable to normative assessment, such that some emotions are appropriate, or fitting, while others are not. Appropriate emotions are typically those whose objects in some way instantiate the evaluative property in question; fear is justified when the object of your fear is in fact dangerous or poses you a threat, for example. Prudential and moral considerations are thought to be relevant to the normative assessment of emotions as well (it might be inappropriate to laugh during an academic talk, even though your friend’s whispered comment was funny), but these considerations are thought of as the ‘wrong sort’ of reasons in so far as we are concerned with whether the emotion gets things right about the world (see D’Arms and Jacobson 2000).

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real life cases of entrenched social injustice, given their lived history of struggle, and will therefore be more likely to act retributively. The empirical work surveyed then seems to suggest that anger is least effective under conditions of severe social injustice, where moderators that favour retributive actions on behalf of the angry group, as well as against them, are deeply engrained features of that society. Does this mean that Nussbaum, and others who endorse the inefficacy claim, get things right regarding anger under conditions of oppression? Should the oppressed indeed avoid anger on account of its inefficacy? No, we have reason to think that, despite moderators that favour the inefficacy claim being more prevalent under conditions of social injustice, anger is still an extremely effective way of constructively fighting against social injustice. For example, although under conditions of social injustice the dominant group might tend to dismiss the anger of the oppressed as inappropriate, there are many cases of dominant group members becoming allies of oppressed groups under conditions of severe oppression (see Brown 2002, for example). From the studies surveyed in Sect. 3 above, we have reason to think that anger is one of the most effective ways of recruiting allies, as anger was seen to recruit more support from out-­group members than neutral communications of wrongdoing (Tagar et  al. 2011). Furthermore, studies have shown that having even just one individual member of an out-group share the in-group’s anger, results in the ingroup seeing the out-group as potential allies. This in turn correlates with in-group support for non-retributive actions towards the outgroup (see McDonald et  al. 2017). This highlights the crucial effect of recruiting allies under conditions of social injustice. Recruiting even one single member of the dominant  outgroup seems to impact the perceived changeability of the out-group immensely, and increased changeability was one of the moderators highlighted that favoured anger’s constructive effects. This suggests that even amidst widespread dismissal of the anger of the oppressed, securing even a few dominant-group allies is not only possible, but perhaps most effectively achieved through displays of anger. Individual allies can be sensitive to the epistemic value of the anger of the oppressed, and this can lead to changes in the key moderators that favour anger’s efficacy. This suggests that anger has a robustly effective and constructive role to play in struggles against social injustice.

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What seems plausible, is that anger is most retributive in ‘nothing to lose’ scenarios, where attempts at recruiting allies have proved futile, and one’s anger has been systematically dismissed as inappropriate. ‘Nothing to lose’ situations will be ones where the two moderators indicated in the empirical literature—perceptions of appropriateness and perceptions of liability to change—are most clearly operative. This sheds some light on why the traditional view of anger has been so prevalent. It is plausible that anger will have commonly manifested itself as retributive in unjust societal arrangements, where the two moderators highlighted would have been entrenched. This may have led to retribution being viewed as part of anger’s nature. It would have been in the interest of those in power to dismiss anger as inappropriate and to perpetuate the view that anger is intrinsically retributive. When anger is perceived as inappropriate, retaliatory actions are sought on behalf of the targets of anger against angry groups. This would further entrench perceptions of the targets of anger as having fixed and uncompromising characters. This, in effect, would ‘prove’ the traditional retributive construal of anger correct, much to the benefit of those with a vested interest in maintaining the prevailing status quo. Once anger’s retributive tendencies are understood as dependent on specific features of the very injustices it seeks to combat, rather than understood as constitutive of anger’s nature, the recognitional aims of the emotion can emerge, allowing its efficacy to be uncovered as well as bolstered. A view of anger committed to the nature claim and inefficacy claim, then, is guilty of reading into the very nature of anger, what on my account are contingent features of anger in specific contexts, particularly ‘nothing to lose’ scenarios. In so far as Nussbaum captures retributive forms of anger successfully then, she does so by obscuring the social dynamics on which they likely depend.

6

Conclusion

I have argued that Nussbaum’s attack on the political efficacy of anger does not survive empirical scrutiny. Doing so led me to recommend against the traditional construal of anger as constitutively retributive, in favour of a pluralistic account where anger’s robust ties to a distinct desire,

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a desire for recognition, is made central. Is anger that aims for recognition the same as Nussbaum’s transition-anger? If it is, then Nussbaum is pushed not only to count transition-anger as a bonified form of anger, but to grant that non-retributive anger is far more common than her account currently allows. Anger has emerged as an effective, and morally unproblematic, means of confronting social injustices. The oppressed should not avoid anger, and as the traditional retributive view of anger loses hold, the full efficacy and meaning of anger will continue to emerge. Acknowledgements  I would like to thank Josh Knobe for all his insight and support throughout the writing of this chapter. I am also grateful to Lucy O’Brien, Amia Srinivasan and Andrew Knox, as well as audiences at UCL, Yale University and UQAM’s Cognitio Conference.

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Emotional Shockwaves, Populist Mode of Humour and Post-Truth Politics Javier Gil and Sergio Brea

In Western democratic societies, humour practices are a pervasive element of public culture and work actively in the political process in numerous ways. Political actors, institutions and organizations are typically both the source and butt of jokes. Indeed, any political aspect of collective life is susceptible to be satirized and parodied from within and outside the political system. The settings and associations of humour and politics are multiple, as are also the creators and participants, the producers and consumers of political humour. For instance, a day like any other in parliamentary life involves the entanglement of ritualized and institutionalized forms of political humour, as well as more informal and less conventional ones: the formalities of a plenary speech leave room to ironic statements, a lively debate in the house of representatives unfolds

The research resulting in this chapter was part of Civic Constellation III: Democracy, Constitutionalism, and Anti-Liberalism project (Spain’s National Research Fund, PGC2018-093573-B-100) and COST Action 16211 Reappraising Intellectual Debates on Civic Rights and Democracy in Europe (RECAST).

J. Gil (*) • S. Brea University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. Falcato, S. Graça da Silva (eds.), The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8_3

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incisive jokes and jocular allusions playing to the gallery, a session of a parliamentary commission gives rise to ingeniously funny questions and witty retorts, a private conversation between parliamentarians is seasoned with in-jokes and sarcastic remarks, then cartoonists and journalists, web pages and blogs’ content creators disseminate political jokes about these sessions and debates, the internet memes travel through social networks leaving an endless trail of laughing emoticons, the late night satirical shows look over what happened during the day with a string of gags and comments accompanied by the mirth of the audience, and so on. Scholars from diverse theoretical and methodological backgrounds have looked at the connections between humour and politics, unraveling them in different political cultures and analyzing genres, codes and audiences. Some modes of political humour have been said to fall on the side of the classical theories of humour, which ultimately derived from philosophers of the 18th and 19th centuries: the relief, incongruity and superiority theories (Morreall 1983, 2016; Billig 2005). For instance, humour generation and appreciation is often seen as an outlet that provides relief from the seriousness and roughness associated with politics and it is valued as a beneficial element for toning down the bitterness of high-volume political debates, loosening the dialectical collisions that partisan controversies transfer to civil society, and recovering the level of acceptable informality that politicians should never leave completely behind. If we adhere to the incongruity theory, the one that has attracted the most interest from philosophers and psychologists,1 humour can be seen as a human capability that leads to enjoy what is perceived as ludicrous, abnormal or out of place, that reveals absurdities behind the political behaviours, patterns and norms, and that highlights incoherences while readjusting the shared meanings of politics. Ranging from the contemptuous laughter to embodied parodies, humour practices and products can humiliate and demean the opponents and their merits and demerits, “by comparison whereof they [the laughters] suddenly applaud themselves” (Hobbes 1982: 125). However, these practices and products can also “humanize” politics by focusing on the faults and shortcomings,  Philosophers such as Kant, Schopenhauer and Bergson endorsed the incongruity theory. Recent and sophisticated cases for this theory are provided by Morreall (2005), Carroll (2014), and Eagleton (2019). 1

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mistakes and manias, lapses and inabilities of those risible rivals, be they politicians, lobbyists, activists, citizens, journalists, civil servants, judges, and so on. Politics-related humour is a multifaceted phenomenon and supplies human needs and interests that are not limited to express superiority, release an inner tension and perceive a discord in the presumed legibility of the political world. Researchers in humanities and social sciences have looked into a variety of political uses of humour by parsing sundry episodes and genres: jokes, caricatures, vaudeville, plays, satires, sitcoms, etc. These political uses often extend the range of the classical approaches. For instance, Michael Mulkay’s sociological and ethnographic approach contend that the “humorous mode” of political communication has as much impact as the serious forms of understanding of modern politics because it has a capacity to manage the complexity and ambiguities of modern life (Mulkay 1988). Many authors emphasize the subversive aspects of humour practices and products. This is particularly evident in the case of acts of disobedience, creative stunts and peaceful resistance in the context of the new social movements and nonviolent activism (Yalcintas 2015; Sørensen 2016). However, the seemingly disorderly and transgressive expressions of humour very often have reinstated the dominant order by offering transitory and carnivalesque relief instead of placing it in question. Further, political humour practices may reinforce the status quo rather than subverting it or, conversely, the norms they do subvert might be worth preserving. Other authors are concerned with the ethics of humour and the boundaries between the aesthetic appreciation and ethical evaluation of humour (Lockyer and Pickering 2005). Some of them claim that there is a close connection between humour and public morality arguing that laughter is a typical democratic response because sharing humour leads to the cultivation of solidarity, harmonizes with affirmative political emotions and has a positive impact on political coexistence (Buckley 2003; Nussbaum 2013). However, this community-building dimension of shared humour does not prevent it from being deeply divisive, corrosive and disbanding. This other aspect is better considered by other theoretical views that prioritize the social critique (Lewis 2006; Tsakona and Popa 2011). Any politically centered approach has to take into account these views and explore the idea that laughing at each other—with malice

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and benevolence—may both facilitate the democratic engagement and endanger the mutual coexistence. In this chapter, we consider the relevance that humour practices and products acquire after the “affective turn” in political and social theory, and identify specifically a subset of political humour that we call the “populist mode of humor” in connection to the perspective of “moral tribalism”. We don’t pretend to cover the whole range of possible manifestations of this mode of humour nor discuss in detail a definite list of specific and transcultural features. We rather concentrate on a few distinguishing marks by drawing on three fictions from popular mass media that agree in representing collective emotional upheavals when populist leaderships build a commonality with the public. After that, we pay attention to the fact that populist humour thrives on post-truth settings and becomes a central part of the post-truth politics. We suggest that, in the hands of populist activists inciting large audiences in highly polarized scenarios, the online mutation of humorous practices seeks more aggressively to undermine established institutions, shift the public opinion encompassing overlooked and discredited issues, and convert and radicalize potential supporters. These practices continue to favour the collective emotional electricity having the “performance of the crisis” in prospect. We conclude by glimpsing a counteractive mode of civic humour that emotional citizens put at the service of public positioning and critical discrepancies and that reinforces the lively tension between emotions and facts, instead of supplanting the latter.

1

Political Humour and Moral Tribalism

In general terms, humour is a name for all those objects and situations that give rise to comic amusement. Elicited and concomitant responses of this enjoyment may be an overt laughter, a subtle smile, recognizable facial features and more or less detectable bodily expressions. In turn, being amused while detecting jokes and perceiving situations as comical doesn’t occur without feeling anything. Discrepancies exist as to whether or not humorous amusement is to be considered an emotional state (Carroll 2014; Morreall 2016). For what concerns us here, it suffices to

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point out some connections. Like the emotions, comic amusement may rest upon or be connected to beliefs. Laughing fellows who find the same things funny display a share in an understanding of certain states of affairs. Humorous sparks and remarks can make situations intelligible and provide some sort of overview of them. Not very differently of some emotions, they can light up implicit shared knowledge and bring us back to a common social world. However, they don’t make only explicit the commonality and sociability that is implicit in our everyday practices. They also apprise us of the presence of “cognitive bugs” in the heuristics and default modes of reasoning deployed in everyday life (Minsky 1986). Again, as the emotions, the comic enjoyments and attitudes can inaugurate mood states and be highly infectious. A humorous amusement can put people in a droll mood, making them perceive something funny in everything that comes the way or maybe relax and be rendered attentive and well disposed. Likewise, comic amusement easily passes from one to another as the transference of feelings known as emotional contagion does. Such contagion may be a group one. Much like the fluid emotions can propagate rapidly inside the groups, people are easily affected by the humour among group members (Provine 2012; Wild et al. 2003). In recent decades, an appreciable sum of research has been made concerning the role of human passions in political life (Neuman et al. 2007; Thompson and Hoggett 2012). Humour practices and products acquire new relevance after this “affective turn” in political and social theory. A way of approaching the issue we are concerned with is to start from the fact that emotions have an impact on our moral and political judgements. Insofar as the latter are highly susceptible of being swayed by social judgements and political messages, the emotions are a vehicle for political agents to shape the changes of opinion of individuals and groups. The more extensive the audiences and electorates and the less restricted the offers of mass media and social media platforms, the more likely it is that emotionbased social influence will be attempted and produced. Contemporary mediated politics is deeply entwined with emotional manipulation. Even if persuasive politicians publicly present arguments and data, they try to establish rapport with the audiences by speaking directly to the emotions and provoking affective flashes that prepare people’s minds in certain directions. In this context, amusement ceases to be an activity engaged in

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for its own sake and serves to channel such manipulative process (Morreall 2005). Emotion-laden humorous states have some influence on the beliefs and behaviours and may even alter the moral and political judgements in ways that change the dispositions to political action. For instance, political jokes and satires may induce to hold certain views as justified and certain actions and decisions as legitimate, or may be intended to undermine trust in politicians and institutions and breed prejudices and facilitate biases towards those who laugh at them. From the perspective of moral tribalism (Haidt 2012; Greene 2013), humans are naturally gregarious and collaborative, but also righteous beings, prone to feel superior to other memberships. A sort of internalized spirit of the hive is at work when groups cooperate or confront intergroup conflicts. Provine’s evolutionary hypothesis on the emergence of laughter in early human groups can be understood in these lines (Provine 2000). We don’t need to endorse evolutionary theories in order to borrow the idea that people often base and understand their comprehensive doctrines upon a deep sense of membership in a particular group. This approach sheds light on the polarization of current partisanship and online contexts where political humour flourishes and spreads along with affiliative emotions facilitating cognitive distortions and divisive effects, as well as cohesive and rewarding emotional thinking. Humour is preeminently a social activity. Joking is typically an intersubjective practice that requires the assent of others and common targets (Davies 2011). Humour meaning and its impact are defined by the limits of those to whom the jokes are addressed. For those who share a moral matrix or embracing narrative, telling and hearing jokes around recognizable targets reveal what is joining them and entrenching their relationships and what they feel as threatening or disgusting. As Konrad Lorenz put it, “laughter produces, simultaneously, a strong fellow-feeling among participants and joint aggressiveness against outsiders (…) Laughter forms a bond and simultaneously draws a line” (Lorenz 1963: 284). Moreover, under favourable circumstances, humour practices and expressions trigger affective flashes and transfer fluid emotions among the insiders in the political groups. As a Durkheimian tradition outlines, one group emotion contagion phenomenon may be that of an “emotional electricity of collective effervescence” (Haidt 2012: 226). Laughing and shaking

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together in a communal chorus, the insiders feel connected to the bigger group, which might also blind them to the outsiders and occasionally to themselves as well.

2

Populist Politics and Populist Humour

Populism gained momentum as a global phenomenon in 2016 in large part as a result of three far-reaching events that caused collective emotional shockwaves: the decision of the UK to leave the EU after a referendum in June, the failed coup in Turkey in July and the consequent countercoup by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the presidential election of Donald Trump in November. However, the “populist Zeitgeist” or “populist moment”, the favourable pan-European and trans-Atlantic populist conjuncture of the last decades (Mudde 2004; Brubaker 2017), amplifies older alternative political ideas and attitudes that lie dormant in many democratic political cultures and that will presumably survive and keep mutating as long as we live in democratic regimes. This alternative politics expresses an expanding disenchantment with current representative institutions of liberal democracies and a re-enchantment of that symbolic place of power that should remain empty and only procedurally mediated and channelled. Hence, populism constitutes an inherent tendency and poses a challenge to liberal democracy. A major factor of this protean politics that has gone global is the resignification and reoccupation of the political sphere with the spreading of aspirationally hegemonic narratives and the instrumentalization of mass media and established institutions. Many national-populists actors— such as populist leaders, politicians, and parties—seemingly dispense with both racist and fascist ideological burdens and seek instead the return of politics back to “the people” and the withdrawal from denationalizing forces, such as those of the EU and of the global markets. A concern in this regard is to turn back the tides of immigration. A strategy of confrontation is thus deployed that rests upon the projected division of society into opposing groups, generally the deceived “people” who should be awakened and demand what has been illegitimately snatched from them and the “elite” integrated by plundering political and financial

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oligarchies that have to be taken out of power or by a series of targets susceptible to be identified as the enemy of the people, be it the press and journalists, intellectuals and politicians, international organizations and foreign political leaders, courts and annoying judges, universities and professors, celebrities, and so on. Of course, migrants are the presumed collective nemesis of the genuine people. In order to bestow their halo of authenticity and establish themselves as representatives of the pure people and the champions against the corrupt elites and the foreign invasion, populist actors take advantage of the mediatization of politics in the so-called audience democracy (Manin 1997). Contemporary media are a mainstay for national-populist leaders to recruit and mobilize large numbers of people who distrust democratic institutions and feel instead that they don’t have a recognized voice in politics nor are represented by mainstream parties, that they have been economically relegated and left helpless in maintaining their communities and forms of life, becoming strangers in their own lands (Eatwell and Goodwin 2018; Hochschild 2016). The simplifying logic of antagonism to aggregate disparate population’s demands and reconstruct the unity of the people tends to empty social and political pluralism and rely on a selective anti-institutionalism (Müller 2016). Populist leaders may circumvent both the complexity of the established mass media and the liberal requirements of pluralism by connecting directly with their followers and constituencies through messages that are posted, tweeted, and tagged on unregulated social media platforms. National-populist leaders that are humour-equipped speakers performing in the media landscape goad their followers and sympathizers to join the cause by inducing in them positive and negative emotions. They employ therefore a straightforward verbal and nonverbal language, often combined with bad manners, to seem authentic and take distance from the intellectualized and indirect style of professional politicians. They resort largely to informal humorous wit. Populist actors more generally, including shoddy journalism and active online groups, display a subtype of political humour style with a series of recognizable patterns of behaviour and attitudes. From this perspective, populist mode humour is, more than sheer pleasing diversion at the service of confirmation bias, a provocative, aggressive and self-gratifying style that can function variously

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insofar it contributes to and collaborates with the emotional manipulation. As a lever for collective arrogance in view of the weaknesses and shortcomings of other tribes, it provides a shared form of belittling and demolition that puts the opposite views in a disparaging light and that lets incessantly relearn how readily the adversaries err. But, in addition to attacking tribal outsiders such as political opponents, elites and foreigners, it helps the angry fellows to feel and unite in a higher sense of belonging and common resistance. It strengthens the social bonding by freeing them from prevailing liberal norms, values and interpretations. As we will see, it is also used to release dormant prejudices, galvanize political disaffection and attract and radicalize potential supporters. Certainly, group emotion contagion is a good conductor in cases of populist humour. But the entanglement also occurs. The bouts of laughter may plug audiences to emotional electricity. It is not unusual that talented populist leaders make use of tribal humour to awake latent attitudes among citizens, keep a favourable mood threshold and bring intense emotions to border on the shocking. Populist actors with pulling power often make people laugh to trigger attenuated versions of collective emotional disturbances. The emotional shockwaves provoked by disasters and serious crises intensify group cohesion, unleash the solidarity among the fellow nationals and predispose them to accept an authoritative leadership for efficient coordination. Analogously, the lessened emotional upheavals triggered by this incendiary humour might well underpin the in-group ties, the common concerns and the adherence to a strong leader. It has been argued that populist actors themselves promote and revive the sense of urgency and the perception of risks by spectacularization of the failure that underlies the crisis (Moffitt 2016) and the fuelling discontent logic (Rooduijn et al. 2016). In this regard, populist jokes might echo weakened emotional aftershocks that contribute to the “performance of crisis”. Since the emotional electrification and humorous vibration are amplified by digital media and platforms, it could also be said that to be again and again shocked is the aimed condition under the populist culmination of the democratic ideology of immediacy. Before analyzing this tribal humour in more detail in the following sections, let us mention two community-bonding functions it performs.

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In traditional settings ruled by presupposed norms and accepted values, laughing signals a social and private censure by marking certain behaviours as inappropriate. It rivets the attention on flawed thinking, moral vices or deviated rules. In a sense, this censor function is no longer dominant as long as the loosening of social norms and the pluralization of cultural values become pervasive. However, the function of policing everyday life mutates when the inadequate political attitudes and ideas are what is at issue to those tribal audiences who are privy to the incongruities that the shared humour seeks to disturb. This warning function still predominates in our digital culture insofar as the populist-sensitive laughters make sense of their social standing and bondings and give free rein to the public dissatisfaction and exasperation towards the shortcomings of all those who don’t conform to the common ground. The former function yet connects with the incongruity theories of humour. A second one underscores more clearly the belief of being better than others. In fact, the populist mode of humour elicits the feelings of distinctiveness, pride and resentment of the moral tribes. Comic amusement may bring opponents’ mistaken assumptions and reasonings to their fellows’ attention, and also devalue others’ views without engaging in a serious discussion with them and loosen any commitment of rebutting those questioned views. But usually it also maligns them as a kind of disparaging humour (Ford and Ferguson 2004). The shared pleasure in looking down at the laughingstocks and denigrating them as representative of the infirmities and degradation of certain sectors of society makes the manifestation of prejudices explicit and acceptable. As in the case of ethnic humour, the exposure of comic scapegoating and the laughters celebrating the invectives and abuses often strengthen the group inner relations of those who laugh together. Again as in ethnic humour, laughing at the expense of political opponents and other usual suspects (as foreigners and immigrants) can easily exploit jokes that caricature them as particularly foolish, ridiculous, clumsy, repulsive and deficient or disadvantaged in other respects, or that stereotype them as peculiarly canny, vain and greedy. Hence, while some overriding and transferable emotional states of tribal belonging are activated, others such as sympathy or concern for outsiders are disengaged or neutralized.

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Screening the Populist Mode of Humour

Nowadays most of political humour genres are produced and broadcast by the entertainment media and the Internet. Since the hegemonic rebalancing by populist actors is first and foremost a fight for conquering the public sphere while building toxic counterpublics, humour in the service of that goal also plays on the media landscape. In this section, we comment on three fictional instances that speculate on the scope that the intersection of entertainment and politics can reach when it escapes traditional professional politicians and is driven by the populism anti-­ establishment stance. We refer to the chapter “Trash of the Titans” of the ninth season of The Simpsons, the film adaptation of the satirical novel Er ist wieder da (Vermes 2012), and the chapter “The Waldo Moment” of the second season of Black Mirror. These three cases figure the populist mode of humour as a mediatized political weapon and as a triggering mechanism of collective emotional shockwaves, and capture its performativity for the sense of crisis largely induced by the populists themselves. The animated TV series The Simpsons is worldwide famous for its unencumbered and biting criticism of many aspects of American society and politics. Populist attitudes are often materialized in the character of Joe Quimby. A parody of a real politician, the Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, Mayor Quimby makes as many promises as he needs to come to power or to stay in office and constantly appeals to the emotions of the populace based on his electoral expectations. Of course, he interferes and coerces judges and courts if necessary and has no qualms about looking for scapegoats (for example, immigrants) that excuse him from his responsibilities. However, the episode that best reflects populism is “Trash of the Titans” (1998), starring Homer Simpson. After an incident with garbage collection, Homer confronts the Springfield Sanitation Commissioner Ray Patterson and declares to be “the last angry man [and] a crusader for the little guy” that comes “to fight city hall, to shake things up [and to] stir up some controversy”. Homer decides then to run for Commissioner. Despite several frustrated attempts to popularize his candidacy, Homer’s campaign is straightened and relaunched as a result of adopting the slogan “Can’t someone else do it?” Lifted by a popular

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outcry, his public promise that “someone else” will do the “dirty work” meets acceptance. During the electoral debate with Ray Patterson, Homer unfairly portrays his opponent as an old drunk man and relentlessly mocks his misfortune. Far from scandalizing and outraging the audience, the manipulation of Patterson’s car brakes becomes a new motive for hilarity that benefits the one who presumably perpetrated it. Although the experienced official warns of the impossibility of fulfilling Homer’s crazy promises, the latter insists on ridiculing Patterson and appeals to common sense recipes that win the favour of the audience and finally the favour of the electorate as well. Once in office, Homer carries out a disastrous and finally ruinous management in a short period of time. Homer connects to the masses and achieves support and votes by using blunt and coarse humour and simple and vulgar language and by issuing a single motto and easy solutions to a nonexistent problem. He strengthens once again his position by not claiming his own virtues and knowledge but making the prospective voters laugh at the expense of the defects of the rival candidate and inventing alternative facts. Of course, he largely ignores the responsibilities of the position relating the intricate public health issues, the management of the collection of garbage and the basics of budgeting. However, no reasonable argument is required, no reasoned proposal is requested beyond the appeals to mob’s emotions. In this view, a frankly populist humour relativizes serious issues, introduces fake ones and is used as a political weapon for demagoguery. Most plots of the acclaimed Black Mirror series elaborate the disturbing suspicion that human beings are unable to control or prone to be subservient to the new technologies. The episode “The Waldo Moment” (2013) does so by figuring humour as an instrument at the service of populism as a political strategy. Jamie Salter is the comedian behind an animated blue bear named Waldo in a British television program in which the guests are asked awkward and malicious questions. It is the case of the conservative politician Liam Monroe, who is ridiculed live on television as the dupe of hazing. The fierce interviews and the vis comica with which Waldo derides, while embarrassing his interviewees, gain such great popularity that Jamie’s bosses give him a solo program. Moreover Jack Napier, the owner of the Waldo program, plans that the bear will run for parliament taking account of the electoral prospects.

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Over the course of the campaign, Waldo’s entire strategy was focused on humiliating his rivals. Harsh attacks and outbursts of anger during the election debate garners much more support for Waldo, whose speech against professional politicians triumphs on YouTube. However, Jamie regrets that Waldo’s freedom from rules, nonrestricted emotionalism and boundless hoaxes has gone too far and decides to ask people not to vote for him. Then, Napier takes the control of Waldo and gets rid of Jamie. Although Monroe finally defeats Waldo at the polls, Napier-Waldo does not accept the result and drives people to riot. Interestingly, Napier had previously met with a representative of an American agency who sees in Waldo the potential symbol of a world authority. During the closing credits we see a homeless and beaten Jamie amid the social turmoil, contemplating on a public television screen that Waldo has become a ubiquitous world-class figure with new messages underpinned by words like Hope, Change or Future. Digital media technologies (television, animation and controls by movement and voice, online platforms, YouTube) allow the virtual existence of Waldo as a comical character, but also the populist strategy based on unleashing one-liners and cutting remarks. However, the initial comedian just reflects the irreverence towards politics via criticism and derision. In contrast, the later Waldo does not merely caricature the interviewee, but calculatedly seeks to obtain electoral benefits from the humiliation of political adversaries. The politicized Waldo resorts to mockery to fill the argumental emptiness and the lack of proposals and to win popular support by insisting on the defects or vices of others. At the end of the day, it is no longer the carefree humorous side of making people laugh at the expense of the politicians, but the populist face of performing the crisis by making people laugh at the expense of the political institutions. Ultimately, the Waldo moment becomes the populist moment. In the 2015 satirical comedy film Er ist wieder da (Look Who’s Back), Adolf Hitler “rises again” on the site where his bunker was located in Berlin. Once he stops believing that he lives yet in the forties, he realizes his extraordinary situation and begins to catch up on his new world. Fabian Sawatsky, a fired reporter ready to relaunch his career, finds who he believes to be a great impersonator and travels with him through

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Germany while recording him all the time. When the Führer goes viral in online networks, Sawatsky’s former head, Christoph Sensenbrick, offers Hitler to act in Hey, man! (Krass, Alter!), a successful humour show of the channel MyTV.  Thanks to his new secretary, Franziska Krömeier, the Führer discovers the Internet and better understands the contemporary society. Following his successful debut in the primetime show, he constantly appears on television programs and takes the opportunity to update his ideas. As his meteoric career because of his television starring role runs in parallel with a large wave of youtubers and networked public talking about the comedian and discussing his ideas, Hitler decides to return to politics. He takes an interest in the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands and records ordinary people who are asked about their view on Germany and the changes that should be made to improve it. After being ejected from the tv show for violent behaviour, Hitler writes the biographical story Look Who’s Back. The promotion of the book and its future film adaptation indeed brings him back to the forefront again. At a time that the MyTV channel audience has plummeted, Sensenbrick team hires him again. Sawatsky in turn deduces that this man is not an imitator, but the real Führer. But it is too late to rectify. Hitler begins a tour through Germany to promote his book and his film again, but also to relaunch his political career definitively, since the European and German conditions could not be more favourable. The sincere parody of himself becomes a prime tool that someone who is dispossessed of influence but is able to transform himself uses to regain power. Times have changed and things are different, but the populist strategy is even easier to put into practice than ninety years ago because of the mediatization of politics. It is no coincidence that the Führer’s first television appearance takes place in a humorous program and that he does not complain, neither then nor later, of being taken for a comedian. He is aware that mediated humour is a sort of Overton window mechanism; it sweetens the pill by covering his inadmissible ideas for all those who laugh and applaud his speeches… because he’s only kidding. In this regard, the encounter with the elderly Jewish woman is revealing. After a first reaction of recognition and panic, when she begins to scold the man for his crimes, her granddaughter, Miss Krömeier, tries to calm her by telling her that he is only an imitator. The response of the woman with

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senile dementia is disquieting: “Back then, people laughed at him at first”. The difference is that, at present, people laugh with him. As Ivan Krastev summarizes, “the question is no longer whether it’s possible for Hitler to come back; it’s whether we’d even be able to recognize him” (Krastev 2017: 6). A blockhead, a puppet and a revenant carry out what seems unthinkable once they create a common bond with the people while keeping them distracted. The fictional products can’t help but presenting the people as entertainment consumers and the new popular leaders as demagogues who claim to espouse the cause of the people and as political agitators who activate the emotional shockwaves of the mob. Of course, all the three incur the common fallacy of the argumentum ad populum and utilize expressive language and humour devices as a tool for ingratiating themselves with the people and gaining their trust as a weapon against the political adversaries and at the service of unrevealed interests. However, more can be said about these political functions if we further explore the way the people and the leaders are typified and disfigured at the same time. It has been noted that the ambiguous notion of “the people” has three core meanings among the populists: plebs, the ordinary people against the establishment; demos, the sovereign people against the political elites in power; and ethnos, the culturally and ethnically distinctive population against outside groups or forces. These meanings—socioeconomic status, political power, and national belonging—are often used in a combination (Brubaker 2017; Mudde and Rovira 2017). These people’s faces are glimpsed in the audiovisual products we have commented. An economic issue is thinkable to be behind Homer’s vindication of the “common people”. A furious sovereign bursts into the streets in “The Waldo moment”, recalling that a collective body could mobilize its potential even with revolts and wars. Hitler’s strategy restores the centrality of the question of national identity and intensifies the concerns with immigration and ethnic change as threatening the imagined community. Homer, Waldo and Hitler embody distinctive features we can find among flesh and blood populist leaders and caricature some specifics of the populist humour style and its reactions, from the recorded laugh track to the live acclamation. Turned into professional entertainers and

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almost friendly characters, they become populist sensations and leaders perceived as genuine insofar as they arouse and appeal to the people’s emotions in a context of media dominance. They do not need to be credible and honest, but to appear approachable and attractive. They struggle to capture the attention of mainstream and alternative media and influence the wider audience in search of direct connection with the general public. Homer’s populist agency rewards coarseness, incompetence and instinctive anti-intellectualism. A self-congratulatory funny rhetoric unashamedly brags about the bold action and common-sense solutions at odds with experts’ opinion and advices. The Simpsons’ episode makes it conceivable that populist humour is often effective in laundering discredited topics. Waldo “personifies” a style centered on the co-optation of the old and new media as the stage for the populist performances and the mise-en-scène of the distrust of established and distanced politicians and institutions (Moffitt 2016). Mixed with an impolite and hollow rhetoric, his humour has a “galvanizing effect” as far as it stokes political discontent among those who are already inclined to support a populist exit to the crisis (Rooduijn et al. 2017). The bursts of violence at the end accomplish the crisis to which the humour shocks were driving at. The Führer represents the raising of a charismatic leadership that seeks and collects from the anti-migration feelings. He matches much more with the theory of ideology than the theories of populism centered on agency and style: his populism is “a thin-centered ideology” adapted to the host ideology of nationalism (Mudde and Rovira 2017). He cleverly manages to sneak all his ideological merchandise by the back door knowing that the humorous framework allows him to do so with the utmost ease and relative impunity. His reiterated comedian activity conveys and naturalizes prejudices and opinions that remain hidden, relegated or deactivated. In the process, humour releases these prejudices and opinions and their uninhibited and uncomplexed outward expression (Ford 2014). In sum, populist humour practices function as a filter, a performance and a releaser, because they are alloyed with positive and negative emotions and open the Overton window of acceptable political discourse to accommodate neglected and thorny issues.

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 opulism Humour Thrives P on Post-Truth Scenarios

We have identified the populist mode of humour as a mediatized political humour in which a highly charged emotional and rhetorical manipulation by populist actors attracts large and devoted audiences that do more than merely consuming entertainment. Indeed, it is addressed to ordinary people who feel voiceless and treated with contempt and aspire to regain a democracy strong enough to defend their welfare and settled forms of life. It turns to be divisive on controversial matters and derogatory of certain identities and minorities because it seeks to strengthen the native community ties. This confrontational and community-bonding humour amuses above all those people that grow accustomed to tighter commitments and feelings aroused by the belonging to moral tribes and partisan groups and that indulge and feel gratified in the common fun around shared views and convictions. Its aggressiveness and tribalism sometimes mutate through the transgressive parody, mockering and trolling of the social media spectacle. Having migrated online, populist humour practices inciting large audiences in highly polarized scenarios combine the strategy of taking advantage of the proliferation of pseudo-truths in current postfactual politics and post-truth markets. We have said that these practices used to be provocative, threatening and self-indulgent in character. More than a rhetorical resource of censorship and reprobation, they turn into a disrespectful weapon for discrediting and ridiculing the opponents and outsiders. They fortify the mood, beliefs and attitudes of those who are socially sensitive to emotional gratifications and complacently swallow the agreeable manipulation that is offered to them. A tribal ambivalence is exploited accordingly: laughing citizens are people righteously convinced of their moral and cultural superiority, but also willing to hold their beloved, unexamined beliefs. Populist leaders and their fellow believers often bypass the critical assessment of political matters that find the best accommodation in reasonable dialogue. They are among the main practitioners of the post-­ truth politics. The latter has an intricate network of causes (d’Ancona

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2017; McIntyre 2018), but its emergence and rise largely depend on the influence of persuasion industries focused on emotion and attention management, applied to mass communication technologies, and fully accepted by professional political actors (Harsin 2018). Nowadays post-­ truth politics and markets infect the public discourse with the provision and consumption of new fakes and tall stories. Populist agents discount the epistemic efforts of tracking the truth and checking the facts and instead favour the simplification of complex interpretations and the elimination or packaging of data to be fit into comfortable formulas and predefined frameworks. It is not at all casual that the populists season with humor the fake news, rumours and hoaxes that they spread as part of the warped interpretation of reality they prefer. After all, it is a basic experience in enjoying humour to assume “a lack of concern with knowledge or truth. Amusement is evoked by fantasies as easily as by real events” (Morreall 2005: 68). Trusting in testimonial sources that are decoupled from the evidence, those entertainment and information consumers with comic licence self-confidently accept the alternative facts and make justified explanation and evaluation irrelevant or even ridiculous. Joking in this way rewards conformist attitudes and biased views. It also emboldens the bliss of arrogant ignorance. Whoever frankly laughs celebrating his incompetence is in an advantage position over the boring and cryptic specialist. Many believers in palatable conspiracies reaffirm themselves when overwhelming refutation is provided to them. Increasingly polluted digital information environments fuel the activity of shoddy journalism and the retreat to echo chambers and online gregarism. In post-truth scenarios, overtly sectarian, even extremist and conflicting groups select what to accept as true, expand their chosen visions, and amplify each other’s biases while waging war for cultural hegemony and common sense. New forms of populist political communication involved in the recent online culture wars don’t cease to throw harmful jokes, insults and gibe while disseminating shrill opinions, fake news and conspiracies. Some supporters of populism creatively weaponize irony and satire as the preferred populist form of radicalizing sympathisers, fighting adversaries and challenging ideologies under the conditions of post-truth politics. In the American “alt-right” subculture, ironic cynical mockery, disinhibited pranks and meme-making also aim

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to destabilize the political correctness and the hegemonic sentimental liberal culture and to “redpill” the so called “normies”, that is, to awake and recruit normal guys (Nagel 2017; Greene 2019). The bragging and inflammatory humour practices may function as an emotional shaker and bring with them occasionally tribal emotional jolts while making the normies feel out of place. This hard, often black and brown humour “just for the ‘lulz’” (a derivative of lol, laughing out loud) aims at “redpilling” while holding the fellows tight together through emotional electrification and tribal contagion. As drivers to “aftershocks” of strongest emotional quakes, these practices of lulz seeking such as trolling, memes and pranks ambivalently reveal the real violence as fictional target. The toxic counterpublics and the extremist ambition of vandalizing liberal democracy should be contested, and comic tactics and militant irony may arguably be an ally to this struggle. However, the bitterness and irreverence of populist humour should not pass unnoticed, just as the national populist demands raise uncomfortable but deeply felt and in some cases legitimate concerns about the growing socioeconomic inequalities, the distrust of elitist and corrupt politics, the increasing disaffection towards distant representatives, the outgrowth of immigration and the fast-paced ethnic change. Although there are reasons to listen to these laughs without letting us be infected by them, there are stronger reasons to reaffirm that a better way of laughing is always possible for democratic citizens.

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Laughing and Emotional Citizens

Citizens who engage in passionate democratic politics should be able to appreciate the points of view of the opponents and put political humour at the service of their public positionings and critical discrepancies. These “emotional citizens” (Miller 2011; Marcus 2002) keep vibrant the conflict around the emotions and the facts, instead of supplanting the latter. Of course, fact-checking and media literacy are options for empowerment. Likewise, they should be able to laugh and joke both at and with others and to laugh at themselves, or at least not to take themselves too seriously.

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Persuading others requires first to elicit their emotions and then to make good arguments. Comic amusement with a display of good manners on the part of the speaker favours emotional encounter and rational persuasion. Hence, the emotional citizens should combine humour-­ seasoned civility along with the giving and taking of reasons. They might well explain the jokes to the interlocutors, move them into a bona fide communication and justify why something is funny or not, if necessary. They practice in turn the Aristotelian virtue of wittiness (eutrapelia) when making fun at the expense of others. This sort of “educated insolence” defuses the aggressive and derogatory laughter by moulding the joy of laughing at others (katagelisticism) through generous reciprocal concessions that hold out the possibility of learning from each other and seeing themselves differently. Those who interiorize this virtue are able to laugh and joke at and with others in a critical way, while seeking to interact in the future (Lombardini 2018). In a sound democratic society, laughing at each other helps us understand each other better as citizens, consider broader views and other ideology-­laden doctrines and activate skeptical or incredulous, but not defeatist or unengaged attitudes. However, deactivating the combat attitude in an emotional, thoughtful and attentive citizenship for the sake of peaceful coexistence also implies using humour with oneself, even joking about one’s own, dear convictions. The emotional citizens laugh at their own incongruencies as an antidote against moral superiority. Rather than comparing to others or denigrating them, the humour they deploy derails the errors that their own normal thinking and reasoning can induce. Moderated self-deprecating humour gains pleasure in emotional and cognitive slips and can serve as a guide to learn from mistakes and move beyond them. In addition to disrupt the feelings of arrogance, this citizen humour expresses the recognition of their own modesty without victimization. In this sense, this sort of “benign masochism” guards against the tribal excesses and takes advantage of “the civilized mind (that) seems to take pleasure in the fact that it can rise above its group instincts” (Rozin et al. 2008). Having said that, those who practice political humour also should reflect on the scope of their humour itself. Assuming that no external limits are to be imposed, they should have the ability to assess

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whether it is worth saying some things in a certain way and taking distance from disruptive feelings. Populist citizens have reason to laugh. And their humour should matter to the emotional citizens, even if these don’t find it funny. The critical political humour in turn might be incisive, tendentious and partisan without meaning to be offensive, hurtful or denigrating. It may be sophisticated and ingenious, or not particularly witty and subtle, when avoiding or contesting the plain simplifications, the fakes and the warped facts. But, in the end, the emotional and laughing citizens take humour seriously and do not pay tribute to the hegemony of post-truth.

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Negativity in Contemporary Journalism Towards Civic and Material Progress João N. S. Almeida

This chapter describes the role of the media in the emotional response of contemporary  societies to the post-enlightenment promise of progress. Fukuyama’s “end of history” has prevailed, as modern democracy has not been seriously challenged, and technological developments have brought prosperity to a huge amount of people. But the media has a contradictory position towards this, as it praises material and technological progress while at the same time delighting itself in presenting a decaying world. A discussion will ensue on how the êthos of modern  western media has always oscillated between a conservative stance focused on objectivity, in the school of Walter Lippmann, and a progressive proposal aiming to change the world for the better, in John Dewey’s rebuttal to the former. Also, further insights are provided on the roots of free-press in the classical socio-economical liberalism of the nineteenth century, focusing on the primacy of the individual in John Locke and John Stuart Mill, in contrast with the current progressivism, influenced by Auguste Comte and Karl Marx, prevalent in many professionals of the journalistic class. J. N. S. Almeida (*) Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. Falcato, S. Graça da Silva (eds.), The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8_4

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Thus, contemporary news outlets are unable to conciliate civic stability and material development with their stance towards an idealistic future, as bad news, not necessarily more marketable per se, are more naturally put forward by the media’s distrust of other civil and political actors. I argue that today’s negative emotional climate derives from that failed interaction between such dire portraits and present-day progress, as politicians and democratic systems are unable to react to this. Excerpts from contemporary global media outlets are used to illustrate the point. In modern societies, public discourse is framed mostly by the media, particularly when reflecting on the definition of society itself, although more recent information mediums such as the internet and social networks may have somewhat changed that paradigm. Still, most of the fundamental notions related to modern citizenship—such as res publica, free speech, or individual rights—are directly mediated by the journalistic class, which tends to see itself as the fourth estate on which democratic societies themselves vitally depend. This was not the case when basic forms of journalism began, during the early modern era, but it gradually became so. Later, in the nineteenth century, the media was definitely established as the main mirror where society could see itself, cementing itself as a huge actor in today’s societies (Ward 2004; Maras 2013). But mass media, both in the US and in Europe, has its own ideological history, which is distinguished from information-gathering literature of other types, such as ancient chorography, epistles, chronicles, demographic surveys, etc. Having passed through periods of blatant partisanship, devotion to objectivity, or both, mass media, at its current stage, seems to fit somewhere in the last category. Contrary to what is commonly thought, the current state of relations in liberal societies between power, citizenship, and journalism, may differ in intensity but not in substance from other periods of media history, and can hardly be considered to be in a serious period of crisis. It is undeniable, though, that a latent tension persists in the present relation of mass media with other societal actors, most noticeable since the second half of the twentieth century, with public distrust steadily in decline, as it is widely documented in many studies and reviews (Ward 2004; Maras 2013; Kuypers 2014). Although today most citizens in liberal societies are skeptical about the global portrait presented in the news, their world views are still

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fundamentally framed by it. And it is clear, both from several sociological works on the subject (Kuypers 2014; Klein 2020), and from the blooming of “end-of-regime” type of literature during the last 40 years or so, that the emotional climate in present-day western societies seems, at least superficially, excessively polarised, politically charged, and generally distrustful of public actors such as politicians, journalists, etc. (Dimock et al. 2014; Hare and Poole 2014; Kuypers 2014; Pew Research Center 2019). Although the situation is probably much less severe than some may argue, there seems to be an exaggerated critical posturing of many intellectuals—journalists included—as they frequently engage in fear-­ mongering and in making prognoses on the end of current economic and political systems, thus shattering the modern dream of the “society” as envisioned in late seventeenth century positivist thought. This chapter attempts to (1) describe the role of the media in the emotional response of societies to present post-enlightenment promises of progress, (2) understand the history of that role, and (3) analyse if the current apparent desynchronisation between citizens, society (as an abstract collective body), and the media (as the mirror on which society sees itself and thus makes possible its existence), is rooted in a distortion of societal mechanisms that the media may or may not be a part of. Since its publication, Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis (Fukuyama 1992) has been subjected to intense criticism, even from the author himself (Fukuyama 2014). Still, the core of its argument has, in fact, solidly prevailed. Thirty years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the last significant alternative system of political and economical thought other than democracies or semi-democracies, which have become the norm in the post-industrialised world. World-scale military conflicts have not occurred since the Second World War, while the Cold War, with its geopolitical posturing and satellite guerrilla-warfare, was already much less demanding on citizenship than previous large-scale bloodshed conflicts. Additionally, international institutions that were created to facilitate management of social, political, and economical world-affairs have been working properly—not as planners, but mostly as mediators—helping to assure a period of stability that, still, is less dependent on those institutions and more on individual nation-states themselves being able to engage in fertile dialogues. In terms of national politics,

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modern democratic systems, with all their inherent imperfections, have not ever been seriously challenged, and socio-economic models associated with those systems, including liberal economies, social-democratic safety nets, constitutionally guaranteed civil equality—even when practiced by non-­democratic states—have fostered worldwide social and technological developments that brought prosperity to never before seen numbers of people, helping to sustain the post-cold-war international peace, and cementing Fukuyama’s argument with almost definitive credibility (Miller 2019; Roser 2020). Despite this, contemporary media reports seem to show little gusto in portraying the positive evolution of democratic capitalist systems. Clever but somewhat dishonest alternative statistical interpretations are often conjured to show a decline in several key indicators regarding civil and economic betterments, such as poverty, economic inequality, social mobility, etc. (on data manipulation: Goldberg 2003; Holiday 2012; Cushion et al. 2017; Jackson 2017; Wihbey 2019). In reality, closer analyses of sources show that, in relative and proportional terms, most of those indicators have in fact been improving (Ritchie 2019). It is true that journalistic approaches to statistical data typically highlight the more critical aspect of indicators, painting a picture of the present that tends to be worse than what came before, and such focus on criticism might be inherent to the media’s job itself; but if so, it represents a clear conflict with an often self-proclaimed objectivist ethics. Thus, presently, the media seems to harbour a contradictory position when facing a world with comparatively much less hunger, extreme poverty and blood-­ shedding wars than before, and it is important to understand why and how that position is formulated. While, on one hand, most news pieces join the popular chorus of rejoicing before the conquests of modern science, praising material and technological progresses and the ever-­ reinventing quality of the new, on another hand, a tone of professional delight and excitement is often found in their presentation of a decaying world with a never-ending accumulation of problems. I will argue that this is due to (1) inherent factors in the human psyche, (2) structural factors in the business of journalism, and also (3) temporal biases that belong to the present state of relations between citizens, social institutions, and the media.

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Traditionally, the position of the journalistic class on the general topic of representation—in their case, representation of the world in a realistic fashion, which is what every news piece aspires to—has oscillated between a conservative stance focused on neutral objectivity and a progressive êthos aiming to change the world for the better. The quasi-feud between Walter Lippmann and John Dewey, during the nineteen-thirties, embodied this dichotomy. Lippmann’s conservative, stratified view of the information network in modern societies, favours a clear separation of facts and interpretations, suggesting some kind of state-sponsored registry of raw statistical data; this would act in a separate role from that of the media, whose job it is to report relevant readings of those sets of data, among their own private investigations, and to add little or no partisan interpretation at all (Lippmann 1997). Dewey, on the other hand, does not buy the apparently absolute objectivity in Lippmann’s ideas of journalism, and underlines the dangers inherent to that view, emphasising how makers of statistics, the intellectual and scientific class, dangerously subordinate third-person interpretation to the data they produce. Dewey’s rebuttal sketches a vague neo-pragmatistic notion of a collective working towards social betterment, clearly situating his ideas in a progressive political field closely linked to a specific concept of democracy, which emphasises active citizenship for everyone, including media actors (Allan 2009). This problem is an evident reedition of the Platonist guardians of the republic polemic, but it also borders on hermeneutics. While Dewey may be right that objectivity is not interpretation-free, and thus stresses the role of interpretation on the part of the journalist, still one must notice that interpretation on the part of the mediator does not necessarily imply the blatant progressivism of Dewey’s ideas regarding society, the public, democracy, and the role of the media in all of that. The disagreement was not so intense in its origin, as Lippmann and Dewey agreed on many points (Allan 2009); still, Lippmann’s preference for natural law, and Dewey for pragmatic social negotiations, is evident. Later, during most public debates on the subject, a simplistic portrayal of Dewey as a participatory democrat and Lippmann as an elitist and skeptical of direct citizenship emerged, even prior to the notorious argument between Michael Schudson and James Carey (Rakow 2018). Thus, the dispute has remained central in the intellectual history of journalism, having

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expanded to other sub-debates carried on by posterior authors, with each side serving as a standard-bearer either for traditional positivist objectivity or for pragmatistic-oriented types of objectivity (Ward 2004). This dispute between objectivity and interpretation in journalism has a long history and not one where clear binary oppositions can be necessarily found. A common misconception is imagining, in a given society, a pristine state of both free press and free speech, and the emergence of posterior oppressive institutions, such as the state or economic powers, filtering existing civil and journalistic discourse and making media institutions’ outputs dependent on them. Historically, this is not the case, neither in Europe nor in the US (Kuypers 2014; Kaplan 2009), as social, economical, and even political dependence—and, therefore, bias—preconditions news media, and not the other way around. In the US, birth-­ home of the objectivity standard, mass media actually began with already clearly identified partisan bias in the press, where Jacksonian factions sponsored different publications carrying their socio-political points of view, similarly to what was already the case in the European nations (Chalaby 1996; Maras 2013). The history of journalism can be said to be less the history of free speech and more the history of affected discourse and its relationship with conceptions of objective reality. Since the standard of objectivity is not innate to the practice of journalism, its inception is to be looked up elsewhere. A common description of its origin in the American press—which Europe later followed, not to its entirety— point to the establishment of positivistic credos and the vindication of scientific methods during the nineteenth century, as well as specific technological developments such as the appearance of the telegraph in the early nineteenth century, that came to result in textual condensation of the news and thus led to conceptual objectivity. Although all of that could have played its part, a more comprehensive social-economic theory on its origins attributes to the economic independence of the journalistic class, during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, both the freedom and the need to create its own standards—thus ascribing to political liberalism the reason for the main ethics forming process of journalistic objectivity (Schudson 2001; Maras 2013). A large portion of the objectivism creed in American journalism seems to have survived during the course of the twentieth century, as most

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professed standards of the profession today still include terms such as “objectivity”, “fairness”, “balance”, “facts”, and so on, echoing the great American journalist and educator Walter Williams in “The Journalist’s Creed” (Williams and Martin 1922): hardly any mainstream media institution takes pride in being biased, and generally distinguishes itself from partisan publications. But there has been a clear decline of actual objective procedures—both in the gathering  of and in the presentation of information—as well as a significant change in the role of the media, as seen by the journalistic class, which can be traced to the sixties and seventies (Ward 2004; Maras 2013). During those years, epistemological relativism started to rule both in academia as in general social and political debate, since the natural ageing of post-World-War-II regimes led to direct distrust of both prevalent social values and public actors. For the journalistic class, these trends culminated in the early seventies’ Watergate scandal; thought not exactly a turning point in the history of American journalism, as the profession was already flirting with an aggressive conception of its role as the fourth estate, the affair came both as a consequence of that distrust and also as a further reinforcement of the self-appointed professional responsibility to act as a counterweight to the dominant system (Fuller 1996). This furthered the ongoing trend towards romanticising the profession, which originated obviously mixed results regarding its objectivity standards (vd. Compton 2000; Maras 2013; Kuypers 2014). But abandoning the idealistic objectivity of the early twentieth century does not mean that the American media started to split its allegiance between political factions equally. A clear prevalence of progressive bias was maintained, according to the vastly documented self-described political views of individual journalists (Weaver 2007; Willnat et al. 2017; Call et al. 2018), a form of social participatory ethics that probably stems from the early days of the progressive movement (Gans 1980). Nonetheless, arguments favouring the existence of conservative bias could also be sustained: if the media is considered to be a constituent part of the institutionalised order, it would therefore be inclined to defend the status quo (Lichter 2017). Such supposition seems, however, to rest on simplistic readings of ideologies: political conservatism is not necessarily equivalent to the establishment, and, generally speaking, progressive and conservative

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parties rotate their presence in governments in an almost equitable way (Brookings Institution 2019; Europe Politique 2019). Another explanation for conservative bias can be found in economic and materialist based arguments which describe how any truth-moral of the class is formed within socio-economical structures, and therefore is dependent on power relations, etc. (Tuchman 1980). However, the argument fails for not specifying in which professions, practices, or systems of thought are those socio-economical relations not found; since the pervasiveness of such mechanisms is generally observed, regardless of their importance, and the criteria for establishment of truth and impartiality necessarily involves such a negotiation, to frame the profession as particularly victimised by those structures is unfair. In the same tone, both Dewey and Jürgen Habermas (Dewey 1927; Habermas 1999) are probably equivocated in their view of the commercial aspect of journalism as distorting public discussion—which is also in direct contradiction with the emergence of free media as tied to economic liberalism. Overall, the critique of market economies when speaking of journalism appears unfounded, as if existing in the world of trade makes journalism less authentic, when in fact it probably makes it more. (Compton 2000; Schudson 2001). So while the positivistic belief in objectivity has maintained a dominant role in journalistic standards, a politically progressive interpretation of the journalist’s role gradually placed itself in the psyche of the profession. This idea echoed all the way up to some late-twentieth-century philosophers and social critics, who tended to closely associate the mechanisms of democracy and those of citizenship, public debate, and journalism (such as Richard Rorty and John Rawls; see Ward 2004). Thus, an equilibrium between objectivity and progressivism was attempted in this interaction between media theory and neopragmatism, where objectivity is subordinated not to a substantialist view but to social relationships; some contemporary authors actually see this as the culmination of ethics-based journalism (Rosen 1995; Ward 2004). Although the active participatory stance required by the pragmatist worldview is intellectually complex and philosophically laudable—for one always takes part in what one observes—it seems to require a set of maturations that the current journalistic class does not seem to possess at all times: (1) the firm belief in the existence of truth and of objective standards behind

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social constructions (apud Maras 2013, 90–91, quoting William James; also, the weak argument in Tuchman 1980); (2) the capacity to sufficiently immerse themselves in society, thus building truth from the totality of existent social interactions and not just a part of them; and (3) distinguishing pragmatism from political progressivism, thus remaining sufficiently skeptical of all forms of political organisation. When any or all of these conditions falter, the participative role of the journalist does not enhance objectivity but instead makes it murkier—even if it remains honestly admitted as a social construct—thus resulting in the current situation, where neither objectivity nor partisanship can be clearly identified in many news reports. None of these various positions on the role of the media and the ethics of the journalistic class have been synthesised in a consensual code of practices for the profession, and many normative theories of both êthos as well as technê of journalism remain incomplete (Benson 2008; Mcquail and Deuze 2020), while an awareness of the procedural character of the practice is increasingly fading, among journalists and the public alike (Anderson 2019). Jay Rosen attempts a reasonable explanation for the said progressive bias: it is possible that the ethics of professional neutrality which are taught in universities are actually assimilated by the students, but unconsciously serve to mask a progressive standpoint which they already possess. Why they arrive at the university with such a pre-existent set of ideas is unclear: perhaps because of the aforementioned romanticism of the profession, or perhaps due to the social changes occurred in the class during the twentieth century (Shaw 2002). This makes the contemporary journalist an intellectual hybrid, someone who is still progressive at heart but is absolutely convinced of possessing an objective point of view (Rosen 1995, 1997; also Kuypers 2014). This evidently contradictory stance obviously raises eyebrows on the part of many serious progressive media theorists, such as the aforementioned Rosen and Davis Merritt (Merritt 1995). In an attempt to revitalise the profession, they propose a serious renewal of the participatory role of journalists in society commonly known as public or civic journalism (adapted from Yankelovich’s public judgement, in Yankelovich 1991). This takes the practice to be not merely descriptive but assumedly engaged in the public good, aiming also to make the reader a stronger participant in the

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exchange (on the relation between public journalism and objectivity, vd. Hackett and Zhao 1998). But journalists in general resist democratic popular participation in the jurisdiction of contents, as they tend to see the public merely as an  active recipient of the news (Hermida et  al. 2011), and not as an equal participant. Overall, public journalism favours the self-invention of journalistic class as both a political actor and a public activist, possessing also an academic stance as well as the desire to make that stance accessible to the general public. Overall, it seems to carry an interesting anti-positivist quality, as Rosen emphasises, not neutral collection of data but human relationships, which are unequivocally a vital part of the profession (Rosen 1995). But since it is engaged with specific conceptions of democracy not entirely similar to traditional parliamentary representative systems—such as Habermas’ deliberative democracy—the vagueness of the proposal is not that different from the traditional progressive politics presently rooted in the professional class (Katz 2017). It certainly represents a more comprehensive and well-­ informed theoretical work on the practice of journalism, and it is certainly welcome, but given the current political, social and even professional entrenchment of the class, does not seem to hold much promise. However, political biases might not be the strongest factor at play in contemporary media’s portrait of reality; or, at least, no greater than the professional corporatism and social alienation of the journalistic class (Shaw 2002). In fact, what some studies show is much stronger evidence of a negativity bias occurring not only in specific settings but dominating a large part of human perception and judgement in general (Kanouse 1984; Rozin and Royzman 2001; Bebbington et al. 2017; Levari et al. 2018). In journalism, that tendency does not necessarily occur in a partisan way, as that overall negative tone can easily co-exist with other specific biases (Geer 2012). In this emotional climate, legitimate social interactions involving political persuasion or interest lobbying are viewed as power-gaining strategies, and therefore general cynicism towards civil and public actors also becomes a dominant mindset (Lichter 2017). With this mentality, bad news are more naturally put forward by the media, and thus contemporary news outlets are unable to conciliate the aforementioned advances in civic stability and material development with their progressive stance towards an idealistic future. It should be noted

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that bad news are not necessarily more marketable per se, but, due to an amalgam of factors, a correlation between negativity and marketability can be found. One is the dominant counter-power role of the media, which stems both from its native êthos (Soroka and McAdams 2015) and from the political preferences of its members; another is the tendency of negative news to capture the attention of the public more intensely, which ends up feeding a vicious circle  (Soroka et  al.  2019). This tendency is seen, for instance, in the relation between political campaigning—naturally based in advertisement techniques—and journalism: attack ads are meant to create media talking points, which the media covers because they feel that controversy—that is, disputed facts—is under their supervision (Geer 2012). While the trend favouring negativity in the media is widely documented, one would think that topics such as economic inequality and extreme poverty would be afforded numerous references, perhaps even excessively, in news reports. It is therefore puzzling how few scholarly sources document that; instead, most studies on the subject are aimed at documenting how the media insufficiently reports the topics, and end up concluding that underreporting plays a role in the aggravation of those problems. Unfortunately, some serious doubts can be raised on their credibility and preconceived biases, as most of these papers not only seem to assume that economic inequality is a problem without providing clear and comprehensive arguments for why it is so, but also possess no clear methodology of evaluating wealth, and erroneously tend to associate  equality  with compulsive redistribution (e.g. Grisold and Theine 2017; Diermeier et al. 2017; Oxendine 2019). Still, reports on topics like the rich getting richer or rising unemployment numbers far outweigh those on advances in standards of living in general, or the reduction of extreme poverty, which are rarer (Harrington 1989; Soroka 2006). Similarly, scarce or no coverage at all can be found regarding the so-far achieved success of global efforts to end hunger, one of the great conquests of modern civilisation (Roser and Ritchie 2020; FAO 2019). Reports on political participation tend to be equally negativistic, while liberal representative democracy has been on the rise for several decades, continuing to be a mostly unchallenged model  (EIU 2019;  Freedom House 2020). Likewise, coverage of war seldomly highlights how much

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less deaths occur in today’s technological advanced wars compared to before. This is evident in many present-day news pieces that highlight some supposed fault of society. Typically, the media’s criteria describes a negative indicator—say crime rates, or poverty, for example—by setting as its main referent either a supposedly golden age—New Deal and fifties post-­ war politics in relation to social policies, for example—or a dark age— nineteenth century laissez faire economies, as a counterpart to modern social safety nets. From then on, the analysis tends to play on polarities, subtly suggesting how the current event or process either signals a return to, or a distancing from, a given reference period; things are not what they used to be is a common motto. Other examples of the media unnecessarily and even irresponsibly exaggerating negative reports can be found in the swine flu coverage, during the seventies (Dowdle 1997; Neustadt et al. 1978), the ice age climate alarmism of the same decade (Pearce 2006), and in some examples of contemporary global warming alarmism (Ebell and Milloy 2019); all of these reports are initially rooted in legitimate empirical data, but somehow a more comprehensive and non-polarised interpretation is lost along the way. Another relevant point to be taken from this trend of journalistic coverage is that even before a bias favouring one side is completely evident, one can see a binary opposition being established between what is seen as a weak entity and a strong entity. These preconceived biases, which may or may not correspond to actual fact, affect the performance of journalistic inquiry, where reporters seem to give a much larger amount of credibility to the testimony of weaker parts, while employing harsher confirmability criteria when dealing with the stronger. This evidently stems from its role of holding power accountable; but also seems to rest on strong preconceived notions of who are the strongest and the weakest parts of the issue; the latter are seldomly questioned. Additionally, since the media considers itself to be—and in fact is—a considerable power as well, it also acts as an interested party in the issue, as it has every intention of seeing the angle of their reporting vindicated. Therefore, strong pre-­ constructed biases in this style of coverage have the potential to significantly distort the situation reported, not only due to a possible conscious and intentional choosing of sides by the part of the reporter, but mostly

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due to structural inclinations that come with the profession—such as holding power accountable—and also the dominant political positions, generally progressive, of the journalistic class. Working towards a conclusion, some additional points should be raised. I have tried to argue that today’s post-industrial societies exhibit a negative emotional climate that derives in large part from the failed interaction between the media, with its dire portraits of the world, and actual present-day material and social progress. On the other hand, in an almost secondary role, politicians and democratic systems are unable to react to this; but it is unclear not whether they should but whether they can or are in the right position to react. Politicians bear limited responsibility for the positive benefits of today’s age of prosperity, since  no matter how incompetent they might be—in all fairness, they are generally considered to be neither absolutely brilliant nor highly incompetent—the system keeps going, suggesting that liberal democracies could be a very long-­ lasting end of the specific type of history that Fukuyama referred to. A clear contrast between matter-of-fact material or social progress and the perceived accumulation of problems is likely at the root of most of that negative climate, as the media’s role as accountants of power, both interested in conflict and fostering dissent themselves, plays a large part in this; this is explicit, for example, in a typical conversation, at least under the public eye, between a journalist and a political representative, which tends to be belligerent—and not necessarily more so in the current political age, where some public actors have begun to fight back against the press. The media’s fourth power role has been widely debated; its public accountability seems to differ from the other three branches, whether this refers to social classes—clergy/nobility/commoners—or to the governmental legislative/executive/judicial separation; while these are legitimised by civil consent and/or power counterweights between one another, the media exists basicaly in the marketplace and is directly dependent on economic forces. So it is strange that its professional class, having its independence incepted by economic liberalism and its subsistence entirely derivative from the marketplace, harbours such a progressive anti-market ideology. Additionally, we should not assume that there is a substantial identification between civil freedoms and the establishment

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of media as the fourth estate, but perhaps only a correlation. The fourth estate thesis, that is, journalists viewing themselves as a constituent component of the democratic society itself, instead of mediators of a more substantial power, might seem sketchy: such idea of sacredness seems mostly a corporative construction, as democracy is not directly dependent on free press but instead on free speech, which is not the same (Broddason 2005). Hence, the direction to where journalism will evolve is uncertain, given the ever-growing direct access of citizens to data, sources, and so on. In the future, the media will, most likely, try to pose as a mediator between hard data and active citizenship (Bardoel 2005). Lastly, two often forgotten points should also be mentioned: firstly, there seems to be a close relation between modern journalism and twentieth century schools of sociology. This is dependent on whether sociology is descriptive or politically engaged, and whether it can be purely descriptive, as the premises of its core corpus probably presuppose social engineering (Golding 2005); such relation could probably be critically evaluated. Secondly, the procedural character of the journalistic practice seems to have been forgotten, and some notice how this dangerously borders both on narrow-sighted criteria of objectivity and on the emotional appeal of sensationalism (Anderson 2019). In conclusion: while the roots of the free press are unquestionably linked to the classical liberalism of the nineteenth century and  to the primacy of the individual in the thought of John Locke and John Stuart Mill, classical liberalism is also at the root of modern objectivity standards of the profession, as economic independence of the journalistic class coincides with its emergence. Somewhere along the line, a different contrasting stance towards journalism seems to have emerged: a progressivist êthos influenced by the social positivism of Auguste Comte and Karl Marx, which is not directly prescribed in journalism and liberal arts programmes, but is part of the general mindset of the student of journalism (Rosen 1995). This fundamentally ideological conflict, rooted in nineteenth century philosophy, gave rise to several sequels in the twentieth century, and the journalistic profession inevitably got caught up in the problem, as it emerged from a more discrete role, dependent on literary criteria, to representing the main mirror where society sees itself. Pragmatism and neopragmatism attempt to solve this problem,

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balancing objectivity and social relations, but its appeal does not seem strong enough to counter the immensely powerful emotional calls both of Mill’s classical liberalism, which today would be framed as conservative, and Comte’s—and G.W.F.  Hegel’s, and Marx’s—positivistic progressivism, which promises a future without social problems. It would probably be useful to journalism, given that it is largely an intellectual profession, to assume a significant part of these issues as pressing, and discuss them openly both in opinion pieces as well as using them to problematise its practices and reports. And although it may seem counterintuitive, one must keep in mind how the idea of presenting things as they are might actually be one of the most unnatural practices known to man.

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Geer, John G. 2012. The News Media and the Rise of Negativity in Presidential Campaigns. PS: Political Science & Politics 45 (03): 422–427. Goldberg, Bernard. 2003. BIAS: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News. 1st Perennial ed. New York: Perennial. Golding, Peter. 2005. Telling Stories: Sociology, Journalism and the Informed Citizen. In Communication Theory & Research: An ECJ Anthology. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Grisold, Andrea, and Hendrik Theine. 2017. How Come We Know? The Media Coverage of Economic Inequality. International Journal of Communication 11: 4265–4284. USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Habermas, Jürgen. 1999. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hackett, Robert A., and Yuezhi Zhao. 1998. Sustaining Democracy?: Journalism and the Politics of Objectivity. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Hare, Christopher, and Keith T. Poole. 2014. The Polarization of Contemporary American Politics. Polity 46 (3): 411–429. Harrington, David E. 1989. Economic News on Television: The Determinants of Coverage. Public Opinion Quarterly 53 (1): 17. Hermida, Alfred, David Domingo, Ari Heinonen, Steve Paulussen, Thorsten Quandt, Zvi Reich, Jane Singer, and Marina Vujnovic. 2011. The Active Recipient: Participatory Journalism Through the Lens of the Dewey-­ Lippmann Debate. #ISOJ: The Official Research Journal of the International Symposium on Online Journalism 1: 129–152. Holiday, Ryan. 2012. Trust Me, I’m Lying: The Tactics and Confessions of a Media Manipulator. New York: Portfolio. Jackson, Chris. 2017. Media Manipulating Same Data to Drive Different Narratives. The Hill. Kanouse, David E. 1984. Explaining Negativity Biases in Evaluation and Choice Behavior: Theory And Research. Advances in Consumer Research 11 (1): 703–708. Kaplan, Richard. 2009. The Origins Of Objectivity In American Journalism. In The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism. London: Routledge. Katz, Elihu. 2017. Nowhere to Go: Some Dilemmas of Deliberative Democracy. In The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication. New  York: Oxford University Press. Klein, Ezra. 2020. Why We’re Polarized. Avid Reader Press.

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Kuypers, Jim A. 2014. Partisan Journalism: A History of Media Bias in the United States. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Levari, David E., Daniel T. Gilbert, Timothy D. Wilson, Beau Sievers, David M.  Amodio, and Thalia Wheatley. 2018. Prevalence-Induced Concept Change in Human Judgment. Science 360 (6396): 1465–1467. Lichter, S. Robert. 2017. Theories of Media Bias. In The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication. New York: Oxford University Press. Lippmann, Walter. 1997. Public Opinion. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Maras, Steven. 2013. Objectivity in Journalism. Oxford: Wiley. McQuail, Denis, and Mark Deuze. 2020. Mcquail’s Media and Mass Communication Theory. 7th ed. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. Merritt, Davis. 1995. Public Journalism and Public Life: Why Telling the News Is Not Enough, LEA’s Communication Series. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Miller, Paul D. 2019. Fukuyama Was Right (Mostly). The American Interest. Neustadt, Richard E., Joseph A. Califano, and Harvey V. Fineberg. 1978. Swine Flu Chronology January 1976–March 1977. In The Swine Flu Affair: Decision-Making on a Slippery Disease. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Oxendine, Alina R. 2019. Exploring Politicized Media Coverage of Economic Inequality Using Mixed Methods. SAGE Publications Ltd. Pearce, Fred. 2006. The Ice Age that Never Was. New Scientist 192 (2582): 46–47. Pew Research Center. 2019. Public Trust in Government: 1958–2019. Pew Research Center. https://www.people-­press.org/2019/04/11/public-­trust-­in-­ government-­1958-­2019/. Rakow, Lana F. 2018. Family Feud: Who’s Still Fighting about Dewey and Lippmann? Javnost—The Public 25 (1–2): 75–82. Ritchie, Hannah. 2019. 12 Key Metrics to Understand the State of the World. Accessed April 17, 2020. https://ourworldindata.org/12-­key-­metrics. Rosen, Jay. 1995. Public Journalism: A Case for Public Scholarship. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning 27 (3): 34–38. ———. 1997. Public Journalism as a Democratic Art. In Public Journalism: Theory and Practice—Lessons from Experience. Kettering Foundation. Roser, Max. 2020. Democracy. Our World in Data. Roser, Max, and Ritchie, Hannah. 2020. Hunger and Undernourishment. Our World in Data.

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Perverse Witness: The Role of Photography and Shock Compulsion in Contemporary Trauma Discourse Hannah R. Bacon

The illiterate of the future will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph. —Walter Benjamin

Hal Foster opens his 1996 essay “Obscene, Abject, Traumatic” by stating: “In contemporary art and theory, let alone in contemporary fiction and film, there is a general shift in conceptions of the real: from the real understood as an effect of representation to the real understood as an event of trauma” (emphasis in original, Foster 1996: 106). This shift is correlated with another: the camera came to occupy an elevated status in its ability to capture, represent, endlessly duplicate, and disseminate the real—and thus also to capture, represent, and repeat the traumatic event.1 The rise of the overwhelming visual culture of social  The frequent reference to the real has clear ties to Lacan. However, to state which particular shading of the Lacanian real would double the length of this text. I am instead pointing to the way in 1

H. R. Bacon (*) Marymount Manhattan College, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. Falcato, S. Graça da Silva (eds.), The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8_5

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media, coupled with a lack of media censorship, meant that photographic images have become the circulating currency of trauma discourse, the evidence of the traumatic real.2 Increasingly, this traumatic real is circulated on a virtual network of viewed personal handheld glowing screens. What effect does this passive participation in the traumatic real has on the experiential real, public spaces, and unmediated forms of sociality? The debate around images of the traumatic real is often whether or not their circulation is morally good, in terms of whether or not they should be viewed. This is a valuable debate, but with the rise of the traumatic real, I suggest that the terms of debate must necessarily shift. Photography, as evidence of the real, is elevated above other art mediums in its capacity to fulfill a ‘repetition compulsion,’ the desire to repeat or replicate traumatic shock through the dissemination and reproduction of images indicative of trauma discourse.3 In contemporary academic aesthetic theory, the debate around graphic photographic images usually hinges on whether or not one should look at these images. The staked out position (to look or not) often relies on arguments concerning whether these images have the capacity to motivate the viewer to action. While the prominent positions on the desire to bear witness via trauma photography are worthwhile, they are limited by their framework as a response to a binary question of whether one should or should not partake. If trauma is considered the index of the real, then the desire to witness through photography amplifies an impulse to participate vicariously in the real as trauma. Repeating and reproducing trauma through the act of witnessing cannot be collapsed into a purely prescriptive moral framework. Turning the gaze back on the viewer rather than the image shifts the relevant question. It is not whether or not to look, but what different ways of looking as a form of participating and perpetuating trauma which a photographic image is present and part of our reality in a way that a text is not. It does not have the same distance as textual description, which, in Lacanian terms, is part of the symbolic and the absent sphere. 2  I am using ‘photography’ and ‘the camera arts’ interchangeably. This is in part because for many, the only camera they own, and the camera they use most frequently, is their phone, which has both video and still photography capacities. This is the reason for the somewhat clumsy locution ‘photographic images’. 3  Freud notably outlines this ‘repetition compulsion’ in his essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle (New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1961).

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discourse suggest about this witness and the real, as a network of meaning that is socially produced and perpetuated.

1

 hotography and Shock: The Positions P of Sontag and Butler

In addition to Hal Foster, Judith Butler and Susan Sontag are authoritative figures in the study of the medium specificity of photography and its relation to the traumatic real. Both analyze the ways in which photography augments, supplements, and contextualizes shared notions of reality and meaning. The shared understanding of the real is visually mediated and constituted through the circulation of photographic images, a trend that has reached its apex through online social media platforms. Butler and Sontag consider the ramifications of the large-scale circulation of images depicting torture and trauma. The endless circulation of shocking images strengthens and frames the real as traumatic, creating a cyclical anesthetization through the affective repetition of shock. If the real is traumatic, then participating in the real means witnessing the traumatic, even if it is only through the remote viewing of images. Insulating oneself from these images is consequentially considered living in denial or in a state of obliviousness. These are the planks of the argument for the moral elevation of ‘bearing witness’. Susan Sontag, a chief proponent in the argument against witnessing, alleges that the photograph lacks narrative capacity and thus requires contextualization. She maintains, “One never understands anything from a photograph,” in that a photo is inherently illustrative rather than interpretive (Sontag 1978: 6, 23). This idea stipulates a hierarchical distinction between the photograph, which has the capacity of displaying, and discourse, which has the possibility of creating understanding: “A photograph that brings news of some unsuspected zone of misery cannot make a dent in public opinion unless there is an appropriate context of feeling and attitude…Photographs cannot create a moral position, but they can reinforce one—and can help build a nascent one” (Sontag 1978: 17). Sontag asks why these photographs are then circulated at all if in fact they

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are only able to bolster a pre-existing sentiment. This is especially pertinent considering the risk of desensitization, of anesthetizing the shock of violence through saturation. Furthermore, photography is inherently alienated. It references a temporally and spatially absent sphere in which the viewer cannot directly act and thus invites resigned passivity. Revisiting this position in her book Regarding the Pain of Others, Sontag reaffirms this stance, “Harrowing photographs do not inevitably lose their power to shock. But they are not much help if the task is to understand. Narratives can make us understand. Photographs do something else: they haunt us” (Sontag 2003: 89). While this is meant in a negative connotation, photographic haunting, as a preservation of that which no longer exists, is just as accurate a description of family snapshots and portraits of loved ones. Meaning, haunting intrinsic to all photography as an attempt to preserve or document that which is ephemeral, to testify in a spatially or temporally absent sphere. For Sontag, “To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability” (Sontag 1978: 15). A photograph preserves some essence of whatever or whomever it portrays for a future in which it no longer exists. This capacity for haunting is also invoked by Roland Barthes and Judith Butler. Butler draws on Sontag’s notion of photography as an instance of memento mori to substantiate her claim that photography is a manifestation of “the grievability of life” and a “haunting in advance” (Butler 2009: 98).4 Both Sontag and Butler highlight a degree of iterability in photography. Butler avers, “The photograph is a kind of promise that the event will continue, indeed it is that very continuation, producing an equivocation at the level of the temporality of the event: Did those actions happen then? Do they continue to happen? Does the photograph continue the event into the future?” (Butler 2009: 84). In this regard, photographs act as iterative, as entailing a polysemic generative capacity to mean and continue to mean beyond the existence of what they depict. In terms of shock, the photograph extends and thus circulates shock. This is both Sontag’s contention with photography, that it causes useless shock, and  It is telling that both Sontag and Butler describe photograph as a haunting, but the former intends a negative valence and the latter a positive one. 4

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Butler’s insistence on the importance of traumatic images, that it makes these shocking instances real to those who are not present. Butler asserts, “Every photographic portrait speaks in at least two temporal modes, both a chronicle of what has been and protentive certainty about what will have been” (Butler 2009: 97). In this logic it is hard to resist the idea that what occurred is what is evinced in the photograph, and this puts into doubt that which is not only not photographically captured, but that which cannot be captured through photography. For Butler, these images not only make these events real but thus grieveable, which for her is necessary for someone or something to matter. This potential of photography to outlast what it captures is read as a temporally disruptive capacity by Roland Barthes who claims in Camera Lucida that, “Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe” (Barthes 2000: 96). Photographs exhibit their future hauntology; those portrayed will someday die. The past exhibited in photography has the possibility of piercing the present with its past-­ ness, which Barthes terms the ‘punctum,’ “no longer of form but of intensity, is Time, the lacerating emphasis of the noeme (‘that-has-been’), its pure representation” (Barthes 2000: 96). The photograph punctures the linearity of time, making the portrayed subject palpably present, and yet irretrievably past. The documentation of the traumatic, or of that, which can be traumatically lost, has this potency to shock long after the scene has ended. Butler argues, “The indefinite circulability of the image allows the event to continue to happen and, indeed, thanks to these images, the event has not stopped happening” (Butler 2009: 86). Photography functions as a contextual temporal horizon of visual experience. Any particular photograph inherently contains the possibility of generating new formations of meaning within shared visual reality. Therefore, photography functions as that which is irrevocably past or absent but whose meaning and determination are always ‘yet to come.’ But what does that perpetuation mean in terms of the photographs Butler references, photographs of military personnel torturing imprisoned others? More saliently, what does it mean for the tortured and their agency over these images? Part of the point that Sontag makes is that these photographs do not help those whose trauma is captured, rather these images traumatize the viewer. The viewers can thus easily intellectually and affectively align

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themselves with the tortured, as both have been traumatized by this event. This has the potential of inhibiting culpability. Sontag rightly points out that in the United States we inhabit a photographed reality; personal electronic devices now come with a camera as default, and every individual is steeped in a network of visual ecology often both as a consumer and producer in this ecology. If the traumatic is synonymous with the real, then those who are most removed from these photographed realities are the most compelled to consume them, in order to authentically participate in the real. Who does this compel to document their trauma, to make sure it is depicted with the visual feeling of authenticity that inhabits the iconic photographs of historic horrors? What kind of moral aligning does this permit for the viewer, who conceives of their responsibility as bearing witness? The photo is what allows us to be haunted, to witness that which is outside one’s own current experience. The contention between Butler and Sontag is whether this haunting is a net positive or negative. My interests lie in the sort of realities we construct through this privileging of photographs in terms of veracity. Events attested to in photographs continue to generate meaning. That which is portrayed in photographic images occurs at the point in which it is captured, and reoccurs continually each time the photograph is viewed, making the past or spatially remote present, allowing the meaning of the image to shift in the present context. Every photograph functions as an acknowledgement of the precarious mutability of that which it exhibits, as evidence against a future amnesia.5 In this way, the photograph acts as a promissory note, not merely for its content but for the compounding of meaning, for how it can continue to mean. Against Sontag, Judith Butler argues that a photograph can author epistemic claims. She contends that images inform an understanding of the shared world: our understanding of the world around us is carefully augmented in order to “ratify what will be called reality: the extent of what is perceived to exist” (Butler 2009: 66). She continues, “Indeed, if  Part of this trust in photography is the inherent temporal constraints of the form. Unlike film, painting, or written narrative, a photograph is necessarily temporally delimited and has a circumscribed event horizon. This is true even of long exposures; the moment the shutter opens and closes is specific, unlike mediums that have a durational and unspecified production time. 5

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the notion of a visual interpretation is not to become oxymoronic, it seems important to acknowledge that, in framing reality, the photograph has already determined what will count within the frame—and this act of delimitation is surely interpretive, as are, potentially, the various effects of angle, focus, light, etc.” (Ibid: 67). In the case of the photographs she discusses of torture from Abu Ghraib, what is most striking is the lack of shame or even discomfort with these horrific acts on the part of the photographer. The torture appears to be performed for the sake of the photograph itself. These photographs were not taken in order to document torture, but as part of the enjoyment of that torture. An affective dissonance between the apparent intentions, the apparent enjoyment of the photographers and perpetrators, and the public framing of the images emerges. Social interpretation is the ineluctable framework through which any particular photograph carries meaning. Acting as evidence, it displaces, augments, supplements, and undermines other notions of visual reality, even narrative reality. It is because the real is constructed as traumatic that photography as a medium that ‘captures’ the traumatic, is considered representative of the real. Photography is no more immune to conveying false testimony than other mediums. Objective veracity is not a virtue of the medium itself but rather of the elevated status of the medium. We continue to attribute veracity to photographs despite the ease with which these images can be altered. Photography supplements or contextualizes reality in a manner that necessarily intervenes in this reality. Despite Sontag’s view of the limited power of photographs, images often are the underlying text, supplanting real memory or written narrative. This is especially true of shared instances of cultural narrative in which the image supplants the life, event, or lived experience. Sontag’s articulation of photography fails to account for the political and ethical ways in which photographs are publicly circulated and presented: how photography is necessarily framed.6 One never receives an image from the ether without context. For Butler, framing is central to  Nobody receives a photograph from the ether, even the photographs of Dachau and Bergen-­ Belsen that Sontag witnessed were ‘framed’ in that they were witnessed at a bookstore, presumably in a book (Sontag 1978: 19–20)

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the way in which photographs are both interpretive and representative. Butler observes, “Even the most transparent of documentary images is framed, and framed for a purpose, carrying that purpose within its frame and implementing it through the frame” (Butler 2009: 70). Photography and the circulations of images not only contribute to visual reality but underwrites this shared reality. The frame that remains underdeveloped in both Sontag and Butler is the frame of their own position in viewing the images they discuss. As successful and sharp intellectuals, as white Jewish women, as Americans, these identities are insinuated in their way of viewing in such a way that the way they view images of the holocaust has a different valence than the way they view images of Abu Ghraib. The shock of these images, for these women, is the telling distance between what is depicted and their everyday existence. This is the position of most of us when we view these images of some remote horror. My question is not whether or not viewing these images is helpful but what is the affective draw of such images for those who are so removed. What is missing from the Sontag/Butler discussion of the moral and veridical aspects of photography is the centrality of the affective framing of these images. For Andre Bazin, a salient quality of photography is the aesthetic possibility of exhibiting the world anew, by illuminating the participatory frame of seeing. Photography shows not merely the depicted scene but the showing of what is shown, allowing for a new emotional relationship with a scene. Images are not merely a facsimile of the world but are also objects in the world, objects that, as Sontag indicates, are ever saturating a shared visual ecology. This is counter to the popular argument that photography’s relationship to reality is primarily indexical, a correlative rather than a constitutive of the real.

2

 he Becoming Real T of the Traumatic Image

In the case of the Abu Ghraib torture photographs, those events became real for the larger world when the images as evidence became public. Butler asserts, “If the photograph not only depicts, but also builds on and

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augments the event—if the photograph can be said to reiterate and continue the event—then it does not strictly speaking postdate the event, but becomes crucial to its production, its legibility, its illegibility, and its very status as reality” (Butler 2009: 83.) Butler’s assertion invites two questions: who needs these images in order for these events to be real? Torture is not new. The torture at Abu Ghraib is a relatively contemporary chapter of a long history of United States state-sanctioned torture. Who do these images shock, whose view of reality do they alter? In her own estimation the photographs of Dachau and Bergen-Belsen that Sontag stumbled upon at the age of twelve were permanently scarring. Incidentally, this is the same age as Tamir Rice when he was shot and killed by a police officer. This shooting was caught on surveillance footage and the images were widely publically circulated. Tamir Rice’s family watched the looped video along with the rest of the country. While this footage made this event ‘real’ for many, if you read or listen to the testimony of Samaria Rice, Tamir Rice’s mother, instead of just re-watching these images, this violence is just the most public in a long history of violence that pre- and post-date this exorcised clip of footage that has come to stand in for the whole. The violence of this short video has become the image of an entire life, but in doing so it eclipses the forms of violence that systemically contribute and accrue before and after. It frames a story, but the images alone do not tell of the ongoing violence that are intrinsically linked to this moment. Is it the repeated viewing of these images that makes them sensationalistic or is it the way in which they provide seemingly unmitigated access to someone else’s remote reality? One salient issue with the overwhelming violence of traumatic images is that they occlude more nuanced and ongoing forms of incremental violence that extend before and after the photographic frame. Violence and trauma are recognized in terms of their resemblance to these images instead of lived experiences or narrative accounts. This is the everyday experience of violence that never rises to the level of photography and also the kind of violence that cannot be captured visually. There is a great deal of systemic and incremental violence that falls outside of the frame of the photographs to which Butler and Sontag refer.

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 he Aesthetic Framing of Shock: T The Affective Frame of Witnessing

To Hal Foster, a collective obsession with images of trauma, both realistic and abstract, is symptomatic of contemporary entrenchment in what he terms ‘trauma discourse.’ Butler and Sontag invoke photographs of the Holocaust and Abu Ghraib (respectively) as examples of images that have caused this ripple effect in the visual ecology of our culture. The same can be said of images of violence that have become ubiquitous, such as images of police brutality against Black and Brown men in the United States or the journalistic images of the horror of the global refugee crisis. These images assert the reality of these historical events. Because we live in an overwhelmingly visual culture, one concern is that these exact images will play a part in atrocities becoming normalized through repetition and proliferation. If the real is what is traumatic, and photography connotes reality, then there is a ratcheting up of the demand for shock, for trauma, as confirmation of the real. The demand for the real becomes conflated with a demand for access to the traumatic. Trauma is that which resembles these images, and that feeling of shock is available only through repetition, through ever more and novel images. The question of who has the right to see and use these circulating images has become a central discussion in the art world. Artists are accused of appropriating these images to bolster their own success. Contemporary debates arose over Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket, a depiction of Emmett Till’s mutilated body in the casket; or Sam Durant’s installation Scaffold at The Walker Art Center, which reproduced the gallows used to hang abolitionists, anarchists, and most significantly thirty-­ eight Dakota men in 1862. Critics argued that because Schutz and Durant are both white, these pieces were appropriative (Greenberger 2017; Miranda 2017). Both artworks received substantial pushback. As a result, Durant donated his piece to the Dakota tribe, who buried it. Schutz resisted calls to destroy Open Casket but agreed not to sell it and therefore profit out of it. Shock art, capitalizing on shock for shock’s sake, or because it is ‘honest’ or ‘real’ is insufficient. The desire to participate in traumatic discourse is also evident in the cases of Schutz and Durant.

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Why is this art that these artists (and others) feel compelled to make especially when their participation is limited to the shared image economy. This is indicative of a common dynamic of those for whom these images are their point of access to the traumatic real. In academic circles the images of Abu Ghraib are more associated with Butler than with the actual people depicted. When discussing the images that Sontag refers to, we think of her experience and the trauma it causes her to see them, not the meaning of those images for those who survived and lived those experiences. These images of trauma are generative of the real and thus they become proprietary to the reality of the viewer. Several theorists have noted that the images that are appropriated in art (as well as images that dominate our visual culture) are often photographs and videos of violence against Black and Brown bodies. These include but are not limited to the images of Tamir Rice; Philando Castile; migrants Óscar Albert Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria; or drowned Syrian child Alan Kurdî.7 These images continue a visual lineage of photographs of systemic racial violence in the United States and are widely circulated in the news. Similar shocking images and video of shootings of white victims are infrequently circulated. For these latter victims we see public photos of the victims rather than images of their death. When is the consent of victims or their families to use shocking images of them granted? When is their consent sought? We attribute to these images an experience of ethical spectatorship. Why do we need these images to produce this affect when the knowledge of these tragedies is already readily available?  The debate over bias in the circulation of shocking images has renewed the debate on whether these images should be distributed at all. These same problematic images of violence against Black and Brown individuals frequently comprise montages in academic presentations, classes, and conferences buoying the reputation of such  scholars. Often these very images are invoked and shown to bemoan the invocation of such images. The montage levels down each image, rendering both the images and our  The images continue a legacy of the United States spectacle of Black and Brown death that is exhibited in images of lynchings (Mitter and Sharpe 2017; Guerra Abrams 2017). Sharpe has written extensively on this, most notably in her 2017 book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being Duke University Press. 7

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ideas of these individuals as equivocal and interchangeable. This equivocation is the opposite intention of the photograph, to return the humanity to statistics or catastrophes. The signaling of concern, or the appropriation and recirculation of these images by white authors and artists, has been referred to as ‘white tourism’ (Guerra 2017) or trauma tourism. While these artists are taken to task, the same public criticism is not (as frequently or loudly) levied against academics and theorists. When the demand that a person looks at these images is conflated with the demand that these images become real, the person displaying said images is assuming an audience that is at a remove from the depicted reality. This is the context in which the debate between Butler and Sontag is taken up in contemporary discourse. Instead of asking whether or not one should view these images, some critics are now discussing who is looking, and how that looking benefits or affectively satisfies the witness as opposed to the witnessed. Whether or not it is important for a third party to view traumatic shock images of the world depends, in part, on whether those images more than linguistic testimony alone motivate the necessity to act. When such images are infrequent, they can provoke political action and become rallying issues for civil and human rights. This is the tact of Butler who insists that the representational frame of shocking images contributes to a shared understanding of human suffering. These images, as memorialization, partake in the shared field in that they participate in that constant negotiation of the limit case of which lives matter in terms of their grievability. In this context, Butler argues that the Abu Ghraib photographs “make our capacity to commit atrocity into a defining concept of American identity” (Butler 2009: 72). The question Butler poses—how the frame determines whose lives are grieveable—does not address who needs a photograph for these lives to be considered grieveable or for specific traumas to be made real. Nor do we robustly examine how that veridical framework comes to be. Specifically, in the contemporary context, why photographs of Black and Brown individuals suffering are necessary for that suffering to be legible to mostly white intellectuals and academics. Nor is there sufficient questioning on the affects of primarily viewing and circulating images of racialized subjects as wounded or as traumatized bodies do to instances of mutual recognition to subjects that

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are often racially objectified by a white hegemonic academic gaze. The white theorists need the image as an object of theory, but do they also need the subject in terms of consent and dialogue?  Often in response to images of state violence, well-meaning citizens state, “This is not who we are.” The atrocities against, and displacement of, Indigenous people is the first chapter of the United States’ history (as opposed to the history of Turtle Island); a nation built through slavery and which has profited from systemic racism, inequality, and suffering continually since its inception. The capacity to commit atrocities is certainly not new and Butler is not alone in insisting in the novelty of this horror. These photographs of Abu Ghraib are, in fact, exactly what the United States is as a nation, what it contradicts in the political imaginary of this state that distances culpability from a white colonial settler nation. While I think these photographs are important, I reject Butler’s claim that this offers new information, and I reject the framework that grants their importance. This is not to say that images of the Holocaust, or the contemporary shocking images should not exist (one could claim that the events they depict should not exist but that is a different argument). Images of Dachau help to affirm the existence of the Holocaust because there are Holocaust deniers. These images are still pertinent, but the problem is that the shock of these images obscures other forms of testimony such as the importance of firsthand accounts. These images are more recognizable than the people whom they depict, and the names of those who provide important contextual narratives. It is necessary to attend to which instances we clamor for photographic proof, and at the expense of what other forms of testimony and bearing witness. One reason that the photographs that are circulated overwhelmingly depict marginalized communities and individuals is because narratives from those communities are not believed and consent is often not sought in the use of these images. These images feed into a narrative about imagined others. Until other tactics of bearing witness to trauma are considered viable, political action and effective change are stymied, held captive by the reifying power of photography. This is indicative of a larger issue in the spectacle of traumatic images and the tactics of veracity that are affirmed in and through trauma discourse.

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 he Probing of the Wound: Fantasy T and Desire

Photographic images emerge into a complicated and discursively delimited socio-visual discourse. Hal Foster maintains that the discourse of trauma is the dominant framework in which meaning is created and circulated. Trauma discourse is the horizon of meaning in which these photographs emerge. What is real is no longer what is made visible, what is real is now that which can be couched within a schema of trauma, that which can be witnessed as trauma. Photographs, in their privileged position as evidence, are integral to the construction of a traumatic real. This is not a mere reversal from images constituting the real to the real emerging out of a discourse structured in trauma. Foster argues that this fixation on trauma is not rooted in a desire to heal or understand (Foster 1996: 123). The fascination with trauma takes the form of a probing into the wound, a constant re-enactment of the traumatic event, a desire and fantasy of witnessing. Consider, for instance the spectacle of the commemoration of September 11th. Many of the first responders who suffered from toxin exposure in the immediate aftermath have yet to receive federal compensation. The 9/11 Museum recreates the experience firsthand, hearing what those in the towers would have heard, traveling down the stairs that were used to flee the building, a minute-by-minute recreation. This allows the audience to have an immersive and affective experience of the event, to re-enact the moment and play act  without the ongoing trauma of actually being there. In this appropriative tourism, one can have propriety over an experience, despite the fact that those who actually underwent this experience are still living with the negative consequences, are still suffering without adequate compensation. These public enactments do not create the possibility of closure or healing, but instead create experiences aimed at the pleasure of reliving the trauma of the other. In his book Fantasies of Witnessing: Postwar Efforts to Experience the Holocaust Gary Weissman points out that the memorialization sites of the Holocaust are often curated to satisfy this desire to witness or partially undergo the trauma depicted.

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Both Foster and Weissman attend to how we participate vicariously in trauma through the viewing of shocking images. This allows the illusion of participation in these events that signal a disapproval or distancing from those performing the barbarous acts. It is therefore critical to focus on the desire for shock and the perpetuation of it by those who are most removed in order to avoid the intellectualization and ‘deadening of conscience’ that Sontag describes. To some degree, this requires a decoupling of photographic images and veracity. Likewise it is critical to question the logic that makes moral claims about whether one should witness atrocities through photographic images, and why one would want to and what this satisfies in the viewer as well as what this does to the viewed individuals captured in these images. Foster attributes the rise of this trauma mentality to a failure of existing representations of the real; disillusionment with hedonistic consumption and the commodified fulfillment of desire; and the urgent escalation of real world crises (Foster 1996: 120). Pleasure is not considered as real as pain. This has culminated in an obsession with trauma or traumatization as the arbiter of the true that is not for the service of anything else but collapses in on itself. While perhaps different catastrophic events would be listed today, the fascination and the draw of trauma has only compounded since the publication of Foster’s article over two decades ago. In enumerating the outcomes of trauma discourse Foster articulates: And one result is this: A special truth seems to reside in traumatic or abject states, in diseased or damaged bodies. To be sure, the violated body is often the evidentiary basis of important witnessings to truth, of necessary testimonials against power. But there are dangers with this citing of truth as well, such as the restriction of our political imagination to two camps, the abjector and the abjected, and the assumption that in order not to be counted among sexists and racists one must become the phobic object of such subjects. (Foster 1996: 123)

An overvaluation of martyrdom saturates the public sphere with trauma narratives such that real suffering is often obscured. Truth becomes subsumed in this binary opposition of abjector and abjected such that trauma as a category becomes so capacious as to be meaningless. The desire for

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the total emotional affect that is induced by photographed atrocities creates a demand for such images so that one can affectively align oneself with the abject or victim of horror. That horror is considered real in terms of how closely it resembles the images we have elevated of such instances. One appropriates and consumes the pain of the other in order to internalize it. The fascination with trauma and victimhood becomes a demand for these narratives in film, on talk shows, in the evening news, which can slip into a demand for the trauma itself.8 This is the teleological end of the metonymic movement of trauma-discourse: a movement in which the image replaces the event and is subsequently drained of its shock only to be replaced by a new shocking image. The traumatic or obscene in art has the effect of rupturing of the frame that situates the subject in relation to the image. The veracity of trauma authenticates the subject and moreover authenticates and legitimates and elevates the viewer by their proximity to the traumatic real. Foster stipulates: … trauma is treated as an event that guarantees the subject, and in this psychologistic register the subject, however disturbed, rushes back as survivor, witness, testifier. Here a traumatic subject does indeed exist, and it has absolute authority, for one cannot challenge the trauma of another: one can only believe it, even identify with it, or not. In trauma discourse, then, the subject is evacuated and elevated at once. (Foster 1996: 123–124)

When the image returns the viewers’ gaze, it aggressively undermines the traditional subject-image relationship. This is what Sontag describes as the horror of experiencing the images of Dachau (Sontag 1978: 14). Foster refers to this as an attack on the scene of representation, on the image-screen. (Foster 1996: 113) Foster is using the term image-screen in the Lacanian sense of the object returning the gaze of the subject (Foster 1996: 108). The traumatized subject is authenticated, and in the face of the viewer’s own lack of trauma and the guilt and shame of their relative privilege, the witness is absolved of guilt through witnessing. Often when  This is evident in false victim-narratives, which are the overwhelming minority, but do significant damage towards discrediting real testimony. A pertinent example is instances of Munchausen such as those who fake illnesses or Alicia Esteve Head, who falsely claimed to be a 9–11 survivor, who toured the country touting this false narrative. 8

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one claims that a person has a responsibility to view an upsetting image when these images are shared and circulated it is done because it is believed that one’s peers or audience is ignorant of the atrocities these images depict. This reflects the different reasons people outside and people inside a community circulate an image and why those who are most removed should give pause before participating in the circulation of such horrific images. Absolution through viewing only increases demand for traumatic testimony and images, in order to allow the witness to experience the shock vicariously, but also to affirm the witness’s innocence, to align them with the traumatized instead of the traumatizer. The problem is that this obscures all but the most clear and distinct cases and also reduces these experiences to the moment of photographic capture. Images of torture present an ethical problem of a shared construction of perceptual reality. There is a draw to cathartically satisfying the desire to witness trauma, to participate in the voyeurism as a perverse witness, without necessarily ameliorating that depicted reality. If we demand that the real is verified by virtue of being traumatic, then this voyeurism is a way of passively and affectively participating in the real. This is what Gary Weissman terms “the fantasy of witnessing” as he describes the desire to vicariously experience others’ trauma without incurring actual risk of real trauma (Weissman 2004). This can easily slip into forms of participation in trauma discourse that satisfy this vicarious and perverse itch while morally elevating this cathartic desire in a way that appropriates the pain of the other without motivating the viewer to alleviate it. Trauma is then a necessary object for a moral hierarchy  and a hierarchy of truth. It is because of photography’s true capacities, as well as its accessibility, that it is granted primacy within a trauma discourse; it is the object through which this fantasy of witnessing is experienced on a daily basis. This has more to do with the viewer, or the one who is sharing and recirculating these images as a form of virtue signaling.  Historically, art has also functioned as a critique of this fetishism of trauma. Andy Warhol is an exemplar of this critique in his Death and Disaster series, in which his repetition of day-glow hued newspaper-style photographs of horrific images dulls their traumatic effect. Contemporary artist Angela Strassheim also takes up this fascination with violence and evidence. In her series Evidence she photographs chemically exposed

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images of the settings of domestic homicide, making the gruesome genetic material that remains once again visible in outwardly anodyne homes. Yet art is rewarded, too, for this participation in the hierarchy of pain by being deemed morally good when it participates in social justice in ways deemed authentic. In this saturated trauma discourse, an image of trauma that is ‘correctly’ framed and thus ‘good’ is deemed more important than one that is aesthetically good (Morris 2018). Aesthetic value is collapsed into moral value. Sontag argues that we should not look at shocking images; Butler claims that we should. Both arguments are compelling, but neither is altogether satisfactory. The decisiveness of their respective approaches is appealing in a way that simply saying, ‘It depends’ is not. The theoretical question is universal in a way that does not attend to the differences in the framing gaze: both in whose traumas are depicted and for whom the frame is prepared. The questions we pose with regards to trauma photography are beginning to shift, so that we are beginning to look at our own looking, to witness the affective desire to witness. Without the actual images, a discussion can focus on the looking, and the larger critique of the affective justifications and veridical frameworks that underpin doing so. The frustrating element of Sontag’s and Butler’s arguments about what we should look at is that the remove through which they gaze is not a choice everyone is equally free to make. By occupying and speaking to a universal witness, they assume a commonality with their readers, missing the point that these shocking images continue to be someone else’s reality. It is their very remove and privilege that allow them to posit participation in visual trauma discourse as a choice. If images are necessary to make trauma real, this is only true for those who are not firsthand experiencing these traumas. This does not mean we should subject, say, twelve-year-olds to these images, but that as adults, it is important for the precarity and grievability of others (to invoke Butler’s terminology) that we acknowledge that those traumas are real, and struggle to validate those realities to permeate without appropriating them through the performance and fantasy of vicarious witnessing (which elevates the act of witnessing and relies on a false equivocation between witness and victim but does not entail political action).

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Acknowledging that neither witnessing nor looking away is an innate good, and that by themselves they are insufficient, is the first step in breaking the chain of shocking realities whose moral demand proliferate around seeing rather than doing and privileges one’s own right to firsthand viewing. This involves a certain degree of self-policing, of asking why we want to witness, which images we have the right to see, to perpetuate, and appropriate and what instances we demand photographic proof in order to believe. When has consent been sought in the circulation of these images? This shifts the line of questioning to attend to the type of fantasy or perverse desire this witnessing satisfies, instead of questions concerning whether one ought to look or not look. This alternate line of questioning examines the affect of the gaze as opposed to whatever new image of human suffering it is trained upon. This line of interrogation may bring us closer to tactics of seeing that disincentivize the passivity and disbelief of the witness, without the demand visual proof. This shift invites an honest appraisal of the privileged vantage of the gaze and the agency this entails without appropriating the pain of the other. The gaze validates the images position in underpinning the traumatic real. The virtue of Sontag’s and Butler’s work on this issue is that it allows us to interrogate the act of gazing, and to return the gaze that so often is affectively focused on the spectacle of suffering and death. What this discussion often fails to parse when it sees the shocking images of the Holocaust as equivalent to the shocking images of Abu Ghraib is that the way of looking is different depending on not just the viewer but the affective manner of viewing. By looking at the gaze as opposed to the object of the gaze, we can interrogate the more insidious aspects of the shock compulsion at root in contemporary trauma discourse. These lines of inquiry begin to uncouple the image and the traumatic to allow for a more polyphonic notion of the real. This question, whether or not to witness, is unsatisfactory because it is not the right question in a culture immersed in trauma discourse. The shocking image is the conduit for access to the real. The problem is that the image as punctum becomes the substitution for the reality of traumatic experience. It is divorced from all of the violence that surrounds that moment, and it goes on to penetrate and underwrite other contexts. Shock signifies the authenticity of the relation to the image or in this

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context an authentic relation to the real. In the academic slideshow, in the collection of images in a book, these images become both interchangeable with each other, and at the same time overly dissimilar in that the underlying structures of violence and the systemic linkage of different forms of violence and different forms of consuming the violence of the image are muddied. By training the gaze not on the image but on the conduits of participation in the real and the ways in which this perpetuates a traumatic real, we can begin to decouple the image and the experience, the trauma and the synecdochic substitution by which it comes to be considered as the real at the expense of other expressions. Dethroning these images as the paragon of the real, strips the overwrought moral positioning of the witness. This slackening can allow for more nuanced experiences instead of the overwhelming affect of shock, the over determined positions of either passive witness or participant, either the traumatizing villain or the traumatized victim. By distinguishing the traumatic image and the real, we can stop relying on the image to speak for the real, and inhibit the desire and expectation that those entirely removed from this violence should be the authorities on these images and their veracity.

References Barthes, Roland. 2000. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. London: Vintage. Butler, Judith. 2009. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London: Verso. Foster, Hal. 1996. Obscene, Abject, Traumatic. October 78 (Autumn): 106–124. Freud, Sigmund. 1961. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Greenberger, Alex. 2017. ‘The Painting Must Go’: Hannah Black Pens Open Letter to the Whitney About Controversial Biennial Work. Art News, March 21. www.artnews.com/2017/03/21/the-­painting-­must-­go-­hannah-­black-­ pens-­open-­letter-­to-­the-­whitney-­about-­controversial-­biennial-­work/. Guerra, Abram. 2017. On Emmett Till, Black Death Spectacle, and Cultural (Mis)Appropriation. Huffington Post, March 28. www.huffpost.com/entry/ on-­emmett-­till-­black-­death-­spectacle-­and-­cultural_b_58d7cb1be4b0f6330 72b3894.

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Miranda, Carolina A. 2017. Artist Sam Durant Was Pressured into Taking down His ‘Scaffold.’ Why Doesn’t He Feel Censored? Los Angeles Times Arts & Culture, Los Angeles Times, June 17, www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/ la-­et-­cam-­sam-­durant-­scaffold-­interview-­20170617-­htmlstory.html. Mitter, Siddhartha, and Christina Sharpe. 2017. ‘What Does It Mean to Be Black and Look at This?’ A Scholar Reflects on the Dana Schutz Controversy. Hyperallergic, March 25. https://hyperallergic.com/368012/what-does-­it-­ mean-­to-­be-­black-­and-­look-­at-­this-­a-­scholar-­reflects-­on-­the-­dana-­schutz-­ controversy/. Morris, Wesley. 2018. Should Art Be a Battleground for Social Justice? The Morality Wars, The New York Times, October 3. Sharpe, Christina Elizabeth. 2016. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham; London: Duke University Press. Sontag, Susan. 1978. On Photography. New York: Dell Publishing. ———. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Weissman, Gary. 2004. Fantasies of Witnessing: Postwar Efforts to Experience the Holocaust. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Shockwaves of Rape and Shattering of Power in the Contemporary Indian Web Series: The Case of Delhi Crime, Made in Heaven, and Judgement Day Shuhita Bhattacharjee

The three Indian web series that this essay examines were all produced for different paid video portals between 2019 and 2020,1 and together they draw on the emerging and hugely popular genre of the web series to crystallize a critical national conversation about sexual assault—a ubiquitous and heinous contemporary reality—and the controversy it generates across the country in watershed moments. I study Delhi Crime (2019), a Netflix Original on the 2012 Nirbhaya Rape Case in Delhi, Judgement Day (2020), a Zee5 Original that alludes to the 2012 Park Street Rape Case in Kolkata, and Made in Heaven (2019), an Amazon Prime Video Original that delineates the horrific systemic injustices and sexual violence  Delhi Crime and Made in Heaven mix Hindi and English, and Judgement Day is a Bengali-language show. The English translations used in the essay are my own and have some overlaps with the production subtitles.

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S. Bhattacharjee (*) Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. Falcato, S. Graça da Silva (eds.), The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8_6

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to which the Indian queer community was subjected before the 2018 Supreme Court verdict. Delhi Crime (2019, Netflix) documents the details of the 2012 Nirbhaya Rape Case in Delhi in which a 23-year old female physiotherapy intern returning home with her male friend in South Delhi was gangraped aboard a moving bus on 16th December by six men that included the driver and the conductor before being thrown out of the bus along with the friend. They were left to die, both in fatal condition, before being rescued and hospitalized by the police. The case fuelled international headlines and throbbing protests by civil society across the nation, and particularly by the student population in Delhi, bringing the country to the brink of a huge social and political crisis. Though the victim eventually died, the case led to the foundation of the Justice Verma bench that dramatically changed rape laws in the country. Delhi Crime closely follows the files on police record to produce the details of the case in documentary style and to present in some ways an account from the perspective of the Delhi Police that was categorically criticized and shamed for failing its duties. The series documents the dedicated efforts of the Delhi Police force, led by Vartika Chaturvedi, Deputy Commissioner of Police (South Delhi), and presents both their hard work in this high-stakes investigation as well as their long-standing grievances about the extreme limitations of manpower, budget, and infrastructure within which they have to function. Made in Heaven (2019, Amazon Prime), to which I refer only briefly, primarily dedicates its sixth episode to telling the story of one of the two central characters of the series, Karan and Tara. Karan, a gay man, is video recorded by his neighbor while in the middle of same-sex intercourse with his partner and is later arrested by the police under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Court which was used to criminally prosecute same-sex relationships before the long and distressing struggle for gay rights in India finally culminated in the overturning of this law on 6th September 2018. The series, however, is located in the pre-amendment period and portrays the discrimination and violence historically suffered by the LGBTQ community before the landmark 2018 legal verdict. Episode 6 clearly implies that Karan is subjected to police brutality and rape at the hands of a police officer while in custody. After his release, he refuses to go public on this out of a sense of shame. His lifelong fight with

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his family, and particularly his mother, now intensifies as the whole country reports on him invasively through all media outlets. In the following episodes, publicly shamed and harassed, Karan decides to fight back and files a Public Interest Litigation against Article 377. He also speaks up through the media about the need to redress legally the severe wrongs directed at the gay community in India. He does not go public about his rape, despite the urging of his lawyer and his friend, Tara. However, as the web series ends we see how his protests, accompanied by that of thousands of others throughout the country and across decades, ultimately culminate in legal justice in 2018. Judgement Day (2020, Zee5), produced more in the style of a thriller than a documentary, obliquely but significantly refers to the 2012 Park Street Rape Case. In this incident the victim, Suzette Jordan, who later publicly revealed her identity in order to more effectively work for anti-­ rape campaigns, was gangraped in February 2012 inside a moving vehicle by five men who offered her a lift when she came out of a Park Street nightclub late in the night. She went public with her identity in 2013, worked actively for women’s rights and safety, appeared on a famous national show called Satyamev Jayate (translation, ‘Truth Always Prevails’) to promote the cause, and died of meningoencephalitis three years later in 2015 at the age of forty. Only three of the five rapists have been convicted so far and the two other men who were absconding for several years were finally caught in 2016 and are being prosecuted. The web series tells the story of Hiya, the lead vocalist in a music band called Parthenium, who is gangraped after a visit to a nightclub by four friends of her boyfriend, Mac. Mac himself orchestrates the entire crime to seek revenge because she dances with some other men at the nightclub in between socializing with Mac’s group. Hiya is abandoned half-dead near the banks of the river Ganga from where Hiya struggles to journey back to the main road, get a lift, and reach a hospital. Her entire family chooses to blame her but her sister, Diya, supports her through an excruciatingly difficult court case with the help of the Assistant Commissioner of Police (Kolkata), Javed Khan, and her boyfriend and supervising doctor, Kingshuk. Hiya’s case is compromised, however, by her unethical lawyer, Sujay Dutta, and Season One ends with a disappointing failure in judicial justice but with the promise of a more rigorous jurisprudence in the next season that is yet to premier. While this web series creates several subplots

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and even ends inconclusively with the case half-solved, it is significant for certain key aspects of the Park Street Case that it recreates. There are two clear references to a nightclub in Park Street in the first episode of the series where Hiya is reported as missing at the police station, a direct allusion to the iconic setting of the actual crime. Additionally, the series showcases at length the police harassment that Jordan and her family had suffered in 2012 in the form of demeaning remarks about her lifestyle choices and character because she had been raped on her journey back from a nightclub.2 Echoing this, Diya, Kingshuk, and Diya’s flat mate are horrendously insulted by the inspectors at the police station when they try to report Hiya as missing in the first episode. The police officers comment demeaningly on the clothing and lifestyle patterns of the missing girl. Part of the huge controversy in 2012 that had sent shockwaves across the country, and in particular the state of West Bengal, resulted from the fact that the leader of the gang of men who committed the crime, Kader Khan, was understood to be extremely well connected politically. He was in a relationship with Nusrat Jahan, a female actor who currently serves as the Member of Parliament for the party (Trinamool Congress or TMC) that was also in power in the state of West Bengal at the time. It was widely believed that the leader of TMC, and the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, had offered protection to Nusrat and directly or indirectly to Kader Khan as well. This perception was further heightened by the fact that Mamata Banerjee blatantly dismissed the Park Street Rape Case as a conspiracy by her Opposition, and other members of her party went on record to imply that the survivor was not raped but was a sex worker.3 Thus, common to the series and the case to which it alludes is the character assassination of the survivor in the public realm and the evident connections of the prime accused. Mac in the series reeks of arrogant belligerence and violent indifference, clearly founded on assurances of complete protection—similar to the contrition-free and self-assured

 Sharma, “Kolkata Rape Victims Find a Police Officer Who’s on Their Side.”  Sharma, “Kolkata Rape Victims Find a Police Officer Who’s on Their Side”; Jha, “Why an India Rape Victim Disclosed Her Identity”; Gupta, “4 Years After Park Street Rape Case, Main Accused Arrested Near Delhi”; “TMC’s Candidate Nusrat Jahan, Mamata Banerjee and Their Connection with the Infamous Park Street Rape Case.” 2 3

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public stance assumed by Kader Khan.4 The web series shows Hiya’s case playing out in the Sessions Court, which is also the juridical level at which the Park Street Rape Case continues to be heard. That the format of the web series is crucial to the kind of discursive subversion that these series attempt to stage is obvious. Alternative genres have been known to fail when it comes to performing the kind of creative and social intervention that underlies these productions. The Park Street Rape Case was treated in some detail, though indirectly, also in a 2012 film titled Teen Kanya (translation, Three Girls), a film that was shockingly banned from a state-run theatre through what were believed to be the obvious political machinations of the ruling party (Bhabani, “Mamata Stops Screening of Bengali Film for Resemblance to Park Street Rape Case”). The web series, of course, continues to be a format that eludes this level of scrutiny or censorship while still promising a wide, dedicated, and young viewership—a demographic constituency more likely to commit to the cause of social intervention and legal redress around shape-shifting moments of national criminal history. That this critical cluster of productions could effectively perform this critical intervention only through this format of a web series also becomes evident in Priya Arora’s New York Times article. Noting how Made in Heaven critically comments on the #MeToo movement and “archaic colonial-era laws” like Section 377, Arora indicates how this commentary is made possible precisely because of its template so that while “Bollywood might gloss over these uncomfortable truths,” a “streaming medium,” with its “freedoms from a censor board and stifling box office numbers, unshackles the creators.” Thus, these series across web platforms come together as part of a strand of contemporary cultural production that is able to function subversively in the face of hidden hierarchies and pervasive patriarchy. No wonder then that Arora goes on to refer to the emergence of the global Indian market across both established and new platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Zee5, or Eros—a constellation of online video streaming services from which the three series under discussion are drawn—and observes that Made in Heaven is a “part of a small but growing contingent of progressive and daring shows tapping into a corner of the Indian  Khanna, “Kolkata Park Street Rape Case: Kader Khan Shows No Remorse in Court.”

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market that has largely been ignored.” Such is the “progressive” contingent of the web series that I examine, focusing on the three that within the last two years not only drew on landmark national incidents of sexual assault and related controversy, but also attempted to critically alter the understanding of and conversation around rape.

1

 ain at the Crossroads: The Conflict P of the Personal and the Social

Crucial studies on pain theory have interestingly charted the whole range of existing scholarly positions on the topic—between regarding pain as an exclusively personal and bodily experience and viewing it as a reality that can come into being only in and through the social. Rachel Ablow delineates this entire gamut of approaches noting, on the one hand, the stance taken up by Elaine Scarry—who describes pain as internal, as marked by certitude for the sufferer, and as inscrutable to outsiders— and, on the other hand, the position of scholars like Wittgenstein, Veena Das, or Stanley Cavell who insist that pain is not personal, that it is not an entity (does not refer to an ‘it’5), and that it makes claims on the ‘other’ (Ablow 5–7). Paying careful attention to the content of these three series that portray in varying detail the physical pain of rape, and the socio-political shockwaves this generates when made public, allows us to detect several of these registers in the understanding and representation of pain. One of the most pervasive approaches in these series overlaps with Scarry in its insistence on the private experientiality of the sufferer and the inarticulable nature of pain. Scarry explains her position by noting that for the person in pain, “so incontestably and non negotiably present is it that ‘having pain’ may come to be thought of as the most vibrant example of what it is to ‘have certainty,’” while for a person not  Bourke notes that, according to Dr. Peter Mere Latham, “pain is an ‘it’, an identifiable thing or concept,” “an independent entity within … [the] body” (Bourke 3; Referring to Latham, “General Remarks on the Practice of Medicine”). Joanna Bourke discusses at length both figures—Latham in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and Elaine Scarry in the twentieth century—as examples of the camp which held the view that pain is personal and marked by certitude for the one undergoing it (1–5). 5

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in this pain, “it is so elusive that ‘hearing about pain’ may exist as the primary model of what it is ‘to have doubt’” (Scarry 4). This is reflected at several points through these series, where the narrative screeches to a complete halt when faced with the specter of the sexually violated body in terminal pain. In Delhi Crime, one of the most powerful visuals is in Episode 1 when Deepika is brought into the hospital by the police for the first time from the scene of crime. As she describes in precise detail the horrific assault that she had suffered, the camera shifts repeatedly to the police constable who bows his head in tragic shock, silent at the sight of such incomprehensible and extreme pain. The most pronounced examples are to be seen in Judgement Day where the first three episodes are framed by three sets of silent sequences depicting the brutalized and bleeding body of the survivor. The first sequence opens the series where the victim, evidently raped and savagely tortured, drags her blood-soaked body from the isolated riverbank where she had been dumped to where she could be hospitalized and saved. As this episode begins, chilling in its gory intensity, Hiya is found abandoned on a boat mid-river amidst a torrential downpour, massacred and dead to all appearances. Soon she wakes up trembling and choking, trying to raise her bloody and shattered body, and drops helplessly off the boat into the river instead. In the second sequence that figures in the next episode, Hiya drags her bleeding and broken frame up the muddy and slippery riverbank in the middle of the frightening downpour, nearly collapsing with unbearable pain, and finally clutches at a dilapidated wall embedded with tree roots to pull herself up to a standing position. Grim and terrifying to the viewer, this scene and the episode itself ends with her reaching the main road and throwing herself at the mercy of an approaching vehicle hoping to be rescued. The third and final sequence in this webbed continuum across the first three episodes shows a couple in a car—evidently the one at which the victim had thrown herself in hope at the end of the last episode—driving the senseless victim to a hospital. The man at the wheel is clearly reluctant and apprehensive and argues vehemently with his female partner in the rear seat who sits cradling Hiya’s head in her lap in a frantic effort to support her outstretched body. Hiya croons with intense agony as the speeding vehicle jolts and her body crumbles. These three heavily silent sequences run parallel to the conversations in which the rest of

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Hiya’s family and the police engage while searching for her—further heightening the contrast between the recognizable templates of legal functionality and the unverbalizable suffering of the tortured body in pain. Pain, however, in the way in which it is portrayed in the series is delicately lodged between the private or pre-linguistic on the one hand and the public or linguistic on the other. Scarry herself notes the way pain slides in and out of the socio-linguistic framework that tries to address and contain it, observing that “the moment it [pain] is lifted out of the ironclad privacy of the body into speech, it immediately falls back in” (Scarry 60-1). Pain, that “[f ]rom the inarticulate,” “half emerges into speech and then quickly recedes once more,” therefore becomes the topic of sustained scholarly discussion as an experience that is not strictly personal but also socially inscribed (Scarry 60-1). This counter-analysis of pain is provided at length by Rachel Ablow and Joanna Bourke who disagree with scholars like Latham and Scarry about the entirely private and incommunicable nature of pain. Both emphasize the problems with treating pain purely as an internal event, marked by certitude only for the sufferer. Ablow notes that Scarry’s analysis creates an epistemological problem surrounding the complete untranslatability and unknowability of pain. Ablow argues instead that pain does not refer to an inner truth and is not referential. Bourke explains that Latham and Scarry make the error of treating pain as an actual entity—‘an identifiable thing or concept,’ referring to pain as an ‘it’ and using metaphors to describe this entity. Bourke contends instead that pain should be understood significantly as an event, as something we experience, and that it requires a being-in-pain (i.e., it requires a person claiming that kind of consciousness) (15–16). Therefore, pain describes not what we experience, but the way we experience something. So, according to Bourke, while one way of seeing pain is to objectify it as an entity, the other and more important way of seeing it is as an event that “involve[s] a series of agents, immersed in complex relationships with other bodies, environments, and linguistic processes” (8). This fundamental emphasis on the experiential aspect of pain, despite pain’s internality and opaqueness to language, highlights the centrality of the process of feeling pain and the urgency of communicating it to the external onlooker who is excluded from private experiential

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immersion. This approach is further nuanced by Ablow who notes that pain, in fact, makes claims on the other, asking for acknowledgement. This acknowledgement, explains Ablow, does not imply the acquisition of a knowledge of pain—knowledge being challenging for an experience like pain that defies relatability and linguistic translatability—but suggests the participation of the ‘other’ in the experience of that pain through the acknowledgment of it. This is the acknowledgement that the raped victim seeks, even when in intense pain and when fighting for life such as in Delhi Crime or Judgement Day. In Episode 5 of Delhi Crime, for example, as she lies in the hospital bed in between massive and distressing surgeries, Deepika chooses to speak with DCP Vartika immediately after regaining consciousness in a poignant moment marked by the shared recognition of her bodily agony. As Vartika enters the hospital room, visibly shaken by the sight of Deepika’s pained state, Deepika eagerly reaches out to her enquiring to confirm if she was the DCP. In Made in Heaven, Karan similarly steps out of the jail cell in which he had been sexually assaulted, distressed and stained, to meet Tara who had got him released on bail, and as soon as she comes closer to hug him, he says, “Don’t, I am filthy” [Episode 6]. In a quiet acknowledgement of the torture and pain he had had to undergo, they hug and Karan looks visibly unburdened to have had his pain recognized by his friend. Later in the same episode, soon after refusing his lawyer’s urgings to publicly accuse the police for torturing and raping him, he collapses in Tara’s arms, his battered body slumping in her loving embrace, unable to inhabit his tormenting agony alone, and grateful to have his private pain become real and whole through this shared social space marked by empathetic recognition. Sobbing helplessly, he burrows his head in her arms and says: “I can’t do this anymore, Tara. I’m so fucking tired. What am I gonna do? I’ve … I feel so alone. What all am I supposed to fight?” Drawing on the scholarly insight that pain is an event involving not just the sufferer but also the ‘other,’ the web series stage the way pain comes into existence in the space shared by the sufferer and the onlooker, and the way this process externalizes what was deemed to be intensely personal—and by doing so intervenes in the socio-political discourse. Thus, the oft-silent suffering of the assault victim in these shows is not without a deeply disturbing charge and a complex political significance. The

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political implications of physical pain and its inarticulability are made explicit by Scarry. She explains how the felt-attributes of pain are often discursively lifted into the visible world and are attached to a referent other than the human body. That is, the “felt-characteristics of pain,” most significantly its “compelling vibrancy or its incontestable reality or simply its ‘certainty,’” can be and are often “appropriated away from the body and presented as the attributes of something else”—“something which by itself lacks those attributes, something which does not in itself appear vibrant, real, or certain” (13–14). And Scarry’s analysis suggests how this possibility is instrumentalized as political strategy when “some central idea or ideology or cultural construct has ceased to elicit a population’s belief ” and the society undergoes “a crisis of belief ”—“either because it [the idea] is manifestly fictitious or because it has for some reason been divested of ordinary forms of substantiation” (14). At such moments, hints Scarry, the powerful in authority may borrow the “sheer material factualness of the human body” to lend “that cultural construct the aura of ‘realness’ and ‘certainty’” (14). According to Scarry, this is how torture and war are often constructed and justified by the political machinery— the former example resonating deeply with the torture of the victims depicted in the series. Crucially, this analysis allows us to recognize how “the attributes of pain can be severed from the pain itself and conferred on a political construct”—one that is unstable and possesses only bleak support—in order to strengthen its claim to power by creating the appearance of its stability and how this offers us a parallel to understand the depiction of sexual torture in the series (14). We must therefore understand how sexual torture that is portrayed in the series in fact serves to strengthen the appearance of unassailable patriarchy—as represented both by the rapists and by the political-administrative system that attempts to suppress and demean the victims. These assertive patriarchal undertones that covertly bolster our ‘rape’ culture become evident in the sheer power that the series ascribe to the voice of the rapist and to the administrative system in general. Jai Singh, the first rapist captured by the police in Delhi Crime, and by far the most violent of the whole group, describes in unsparing detail and with vengeance in his eyes the horrific acts that he had committed and about which he was entirely unapologetic. He says: “[W]e bashed her … Then we dragged her to the back of

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the bus. We threw her on the floor. She fought back hard. I got really pissed off. So I raped her. From the front and also from behind … The others did too. She then bit one of us. So we bit her harder. I got even more pissed off. There was a rod in the bus. I shoved it inside her, in front, and behind…. Then I put my hand inside her and pulled her intestines out. I wanted to tear her apart from the inside.” [Episode 3] A more invisible torture to which the victim is subjected is embodied by the legal system that demeans her voice and agency by repeatedly trying to appropriate it. In Episode 2, Ira, likely the public relations and media manager for the Chief Minister of Delhi, studies the reality of the case at the hospital and the police headquarters and immediately after communicating to the Chief Minister the incommunicable horror of the incident, proceeds to politicize the suffering by holding a press conference. The Chief Minister initiates the political game by asking Ira to hold this press conference, instructing her to “tell the public as much as possible,” including “what happened, how, and when” [Episode 2]. He also makes the incident an excuse to seize power over the Delhi Police Force which had always been and continues to be under the control of the Indian Central Government instead of the Delhi State Government. In different ways, the deeply hierarchical and oppressive patriarchal agents and structures torture Deepika, and the narrative exposes the way the spectacle of this torture—this infliction of pain, either expressly by the rapist or in more muted ways by the legal system—is meant to reinforce patriarchal hierarchies that attempt to discipline and delimit women. In Judgement Day, we observe the same instrumentalization of the victim’s pain through the enactment of torture, both by the rapist and by the administrative machinery, for the sake of bolstering the existing patriarchal regulations imposed upon women. This series portrays even more graphically the figure of the rapist with his sexist judgement of and violence against women. Mac repeatedly insults Hiya, undermines her right to her voice or her body, and retaliates brutally when she tries to assert herself. The systemic forces similarly torture Hiya in their response to her rape, first at the police station where they insinuate that her lifestyle choices are the reasons why she has gone missing, and later through news channels that seemingly continue to sensationalize her experience. However, what is crucial to note, as I will show, is that this cluster of series dismantles this

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political instrumentalization of pain through the figure of the victim who seeks to articulate her/his intense personal pain and inscribes through it, not the invincibility of the patriarchal social, legal, and political structure, but the very instability of this structure in the face of the victim’s irrefutable pain and the nation’s uncontainable public protest. Thus, the series intervene in the conversation surrounding sexual assault by mainstreaming the uncontainable and frightening excess that is the bodily pain of the survivor, and by using the viscerality of this pain to challenge and overthrow the patriarchal administrative structures and social assumptions that make ‘rape culture’ a reality. A key feature of Delhi Crime, for example, is the attempt to inscribe on public memory the intense reality of personal physical pain that defies linguistic or administrative articulation in order to destabilize the logic of patriarchal power. The legal patriarchy is fractured by being forced to acknowledge the being-in-pain of the one being oppressed, or in this case assaulted (Bourke 15–16). Thus, a consistent feature of the series is the attempt at articulating the inexpressible bodily pain through and within the politico-legal register, alongside a repeated reminder of the chasm separating the two realms. In the very first encounter with the raw and visceral reality of Deepika’s shattered body, DCP Vartika looks at the mutilated spectacle dumbfounded and hears the doctor describe the condition of this body in language that seems woefully inadequate to describe the full extent of the pain inscribed on it. The doctor says in grim tones, providing the very first public translation of Deepika’s private bodily pain: “She is in critical condition. We are moving her to the emergency surgery to repair the torn areas, as well as her mesentery. Put simply—her intestines appear to be hanging out of her vagina and rectum…. yes, [it was a gang rape]. And they [the rapists] also inserted a rod. [Episode 1]6 In Judgement Day, Dr. Kingshuk examines Hiya, the rape survivor, and similarly attempts to describe the brutally tortured body. When Diya, distraught in the hospital, asks him to tell her honestly what had happened to Hiya, he blurts out to her: “She was gangraped.” Diya looks at  The doctor elaborates on the condition later to Vimla Bharadwaj, the Investigating Officer, in the presence of the parents: “We have started the treatment. There is internal injury, several organs have been damaged. The bite marks on her face have caused swelling. And there’s internal haemorrhaging.” [Episode 1]. 6

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him shattered and paralyzed. He continues: “They gave her a date rape drug till she was knocked out and then they raped her, not only once but several times in an hour. On top of that, she was physically tortured. After that they tried to kill her by drowning her in water. Or maybe she herself fell into the water.” The medical account hardly matches up to the ghastly reality of torture that we witness in later episodes where the gangrape is depicted. Nor does it even begin to express Hiya’s spasmodic pain and bodily seizures that we see before or right after. A little later, the doctor approaches the lawyer (Sujay Dutta) and the police officer (Javed Khan) to provide a more clinical account of Hiya’s injuries—one that makes even more blatant the gap between tepid and sanitized medico-­ legal discourses of pain and its horrifying physical reality embodied by Hiya. Kingshuk says: “[E]ven besides anal and vaginal bleeding, there has been a lot of internal bleeding. Along with this, she also has fever. So we have to keep her for seventy two hours of life support.” Through questions asked by Sujay Dutta and Javed Khan, legal and administrative discourse is shown to also simultaneously weigh in on the clinical summation with questions and commentaries about the level of Hiya’s criticality and the possibility of her recovery. Kingshuk’s confident medical pronouncement on the visceral pain of the raped body is followed by a scene in which Diya enters the general ward where Hiya lies unconscious, strapped to several medical devices. Symbolizing the rift that separates the reality of the bodily suffering and its medico-legal articulation, the body of the survivor responds with uncontainable excess as soon as Diya steps into the room. Hiya’s body impresses upon the viewer its palpable gore-soaked gashes by convulsing violently and uncontrollably so that Diya has to run outside, wildly screaming for medical assistance. This encounter with acute and tangible pain continues as a recurrent strand through the series. In Delhi Crime, immediately after seeing the victim and meeting the doctor-­in-charge for the first time, Vartika addresses her team of officers, instructing them about the plan of action and crucially admitting the limits of public language and social comprehension when it comes to pain of the kind suffered by Deepika through sexual assault. While she instructs her team peremptorily, likely restraining tears of anger, shock, and resolve, her controlled tone exhibits her bafflement and trauma, and her voice chokes almost imperceptibly as she pauses before saying:

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This is not a standard gang rape case. What happened to this girl, I’ve never seen before. This crime is not just heinous. It is insanity. I don’t want any mistakes on this one. Focus everything on finding that bus.

In Episode 2, Vartika further emphasizes the physical pain of the victim that challenges limits of administrative or legal articulation. She commandeers the office of her deputy, Bhupindar, to lead the investigation in person, to which he retorts with the question: “What’s so special about this case?” To this, she replies vehemently: “You didn’t see that girl’s condition.” She further goes on to explain that even when measured against other cases of rape, this case was “demonic beyond all limits,” and implies that they themselves would have exploded with violent and vengeful rage if it had happened to their own daughters. Soon after, in the same episode, we are shown a close shot of Vartika along with her two officers in the back seat of a car, heading over for investigation to the bus depot. While the officers talk, Vartika—visibly disturbed and emotional—wells up with anger and grief, and says while wiping a tear: “They practically finished her off, her condition is worse than death. I have seen many a cases but these rascals have crossed all limits. We have to solve this case, we have to get those bastards.” Throughout the several episodes of the series, Vartika’s quiet, cold, teary-eyed stare, her shocked and shattered demeanour, and her resolute yet baffled acknowledgement of the victim’s pain serve as ample reminders of the basic disjunct between the visceral reality of bodily pain and its conceptualization within the socio-legal imaginary. In Made in Heaven, the intuitive understanding of this disjunct is exactly what stops Karan from speaking publicly about the brutal sexual assault to which the police had subjected him in jail, or even from seeking redress in the form of a lawsuit despite the empathetic suggestion of his lawyer. When his lawyer continues to insist, informing him that “police brutality is not an unknown thing in this country” and that there were “ways and means” to prosecute the officer, Karan bursts out angrily, repeating his disinclination to pursue the matter legally, and says, “I said I have nothing to say. Can you just do what I am asking you to?” A similar rift between the reality of physical pain and its medical translation becomes evident when, in Judgement Day, the doctor himself appears baffled and helpless in the face of the extreme bodily reaction of the

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victim. As Dr. Kingshuk and Diya walk into Hiya’s ward, Hiya is seen in an uncontrollable paroxysm, her legs flailing wildly as she tries to name her rapist in a broken voice. Strapped to hospital equipment that tries to rein in her painful seizures, Hiya’s assaulted body embodies the failure of the medical system to define or contain the pain. Later while still in the hospital, when Hiya is informed by Javed that she was drugged and gangraped, her instant reaction is entirely bodily and socially unanalyzable. She begins to spasm uncontrollably and says disjointedly: “Pain… pain.” When asked where she feels the pain, Hiya says convulsively, “All through my body.” Diya frantically tries to calm her sister and appeals to Dr. Kingshuk for help who himself seems unable to medically comprehend or assist the situation. Then again later, when Hiya is in recovery in her parents’ home, this grim rift between personal pain and legal/linguistic comprehensibility becomes clearest. On two separate occasions at this time, Hiya’s mother and her sister try to draw Hiya close by warmly pulling her into a hug and lightly grab her right arm in the process. Unwittingly, however, they both end up hurting her physically in one of her torture wounds. Both pause, enquire, and offer to help, but Hiya waves aside their gestures and continues to reserve for herself the privacy of her bodily pain, as if to remind them and us of the fundamental linguistic inaccessibility of this experience. Overall, the hostile reaction of Hiya’s immediate family sums up the vast distance that separates the social understanding of rape on the one hand from the hoarse palpability of Hiya’s bodily suffering on the other. As Hiya’s family blames and disowns her for what has taken place, echoing the societal associations of shame and guilt that accompany rapacious pain, only Diya stands by her sister, attempting to recognize and understand Hiya’s bodily agony. However, she gradually learns to grasp fully the privacy and remoteness of Hiya’s physical pain and suffering. When she meets Hiya in the hospital for the first time after Hiya’s attempted suicide, she runs her finger lightly over the sheet, letting it slide up her injured leg, and delicately touches Hiya’s hand with the tip of her own finger. In this quiet moment, Diya seems to realize the vast chasm that separates her own language of crime and justice from the corporeal reality of her sister’s pain. The viscerality of the pain is also made evident through direct and indirect suggestions, or enactments, of the assault itself in the three series.

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In Delhi Crime, the gruesome and agonizing rape comes horrifyingly alive in front of our eyes when the series offers us a narration of the entire incident by Jai Singh, one of the five rapists, who is caught first and who was responsible for the most heinous acts in the gangrape. Very soon after the leader of Vartika’s special investigative team finally discovers the rod with dried blood on it in the bus where Deepika was raped—the moment that grips him with horror as he reports to Vartika (“We found it, madam. There is blood everywhere”; Episode 2)—we hear Jai Singh’s confession that once again forecloses language in its starkness and terror. His shockingly unapologetic recounting of the incident which I excerpted earlier— and his remorseless admission that he himself had taken the lead in repeatedly raping her because he wanted to decimate her entity—recreates the extra-linguistic space of tortuous bodily mutilation and pain that exceeds all limits of comprehension or articulation. In Made in Heaven, the brutal rape of Karan is indirectly suggested when Tara catches a glimpse of the heavily etched torture marks all over Karan’s back while he is being examined by a doctor after being released from jail. But we also directly see the beginning of this gruesome assault when Karan is visited in his cell by a police officer who demeaningly asks Karan to perform oral sex for him and begins to brutally torture him when he refuses—an episode that evidently escalates to rape which we are not shown. Finally, in Episodes 8 and 9 of Judgement Day, the brutality of the rape is depicted in stark detail. Orchestrated by Mac, his group of friends rape Hiya repeatedly with excruciating force, and there is frequent focus on Hiya’s drugged body writhing with pain. She is gangraped first inside a car and is later thrown on the road outside and raped again until she falls unconscious. Finally, on the way to dumping her into the river, she is gangraped again on an anchored boat. The most crucial aspect of the picturization is the complete silence on the part of the drugged and unconscious victim. Despite this vacuum of language, the sheer physical rhetoric of pain registers through constant involuntary convulsions and bleeding. One of the men slaps her with brutal force repeatedly and forces her semi-­unconscious body into oral sex by thrusting his penis into her mouth with such extreme force that permanent cuts and bruises are ridged around her lips in every following episode till the end of the season. When she is dragged out of the car and thrown on the road, her spasms climax with violent

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intensity and scary regularity, after which she is slapped shut by one of the men so that she can make no detectable sound. It reaches an extreme when Max tried to throttle her by stamping her neck with his booted foot and she nearly dies gurgling and spouting blood. Following this, he seals the humiliation of the violated and exposed female body by urinating on her face. Across the several sequences depicting the rape, the body responds, despite silences, through its own rhetoric—a rhetoric that remains for the viewer part undecipherable and part intuitive. Other agents working as part of the politico-legal structure also acknowledge the enormity of the chasm separating bodily pain and socio-­ legal language. Ira, working for the Delhi Chief Minister, who later helps him politicize the rape at a press conference, first reports to him the grim realities of the assault in a private telephonic conversation, evidently affected by the sheer bodily massacre: “It’s a gang rape on a moving bus. She was also assaulted badly with a rod. It’s ghastly, sir.” [Episode 2] As I noted earlier, acting on the instructions of the chief minister, Ira holds a press conference soon after to report the details to the journalists. As the inarticulable viscerality of this bodily pain begins to reach the public sphere in this episode for the first time, Vartika watches this press release on television in stony silence and tense apprehension, subsequently walking over to look out of the window in grim anticipation of the violent rupture that was likely to result from the vast difference in these two registers. As the quiet panic ripples through the scene, Vartika looks less anxious about the difficulty of controlling the emerging civil society rallies and more perplexed about this clash of registers—one that makes the expression of excruciating bodily pain in public discourse nearly impossible while also necessitating the mainstreaming of this reality in order to ensure justice for the victim. Vartika’s dilemma becomes apparent when, very soon after this, she is called upon by the Delhi Commissioner of Police to address the press herself in order to control and contain public curiosity, emotion, and rage. Predictably, after having outlined the facts of the case in a matter-of-fact manner, she stumbles when a journalist asks about the victim’s current condition. We are offered a close shot of her stony and tense face, followed by a brief shift to the audience in waiting, and are then looped back to Vartika who offers a halting and uncertain set of half-sentences: “I cannot uh… I’m not allowed to …” Realizing

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the discursive conundrum herself, Vartika tactfully changes registers and returns to the realm of language in which she is best able to function: “[B]ut the investigation is underway, we are making progress, we hope that like every other time we are hoping to solve this case soon. Police is trying its best to apprehend these criminals” [Episode 2]. Despite the excess that bodily pain represents in the series, and despite the viewer’s intuitive understanding of its foreignness to all known socio-­ legal language of protocol or justice, the shows constantly return us to the crucial ways in which the victims continue to strive to mainstream their bodily pain. This mainstreaming defeats, as I have noted earlier, political strategies that instrumentalize pain in ways that may bolster unjust and exploitative socio-political hierarchies. Thus, as Scarry notes, “the successful expression of pain”—such as the kind of expression we find through the victims in these series—“work[s] to expose and make impossible … [the] appropriation and conflation” of this pain with “debased forms of power” (14). The series portray how tortured victims courageously and determinedly foreground their private pain by projecting it into legal-administrative discourse, thereby preventing administrative, journalistic, political, or social discourses from appropriating their pain, and in this way destabilize the established patriarchal power structures that enable rape in the first place. In Delhi Crime, the legal-administrative attempt at appropriating the narrative of pain is seen on various occasions such as when Ira describes the rape at a press conference, or the Chief Minister discusses it in meetings with senior policemen, or the NGOs and the police analyze it in investigatory sessions, or the court explores it and the failures of policing surrounding it. In Judgement Day, as I briefly suggested earlier, there are multiple instances where the lawyers and policemen (Sujay Dutta & Javed Khan) end up monopolizing the accounts of the painful rape in their investigations or speculations, especially because the victim has very little and largely troubled recollection of the rape because of the date-rape drug used on her. However, despite these attempts, the overwhelmingly powerful voice is that of the victim who inscribes her visceral agency through the repeated articulation of the bodily pain imprinted upon her. The vital importance of this legal mainstreaming of an otherwise private discourse is emphasized in subtle and indirect ways in the series by the portrayal of the general lack of personal

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and administrative awareness. Judgement Day, for example, emphasizes in Episode 9 the need for this mainstreaming by foregrounding the overall lack of understanding surrounding issues of sexual consent at the personal level, and the complete absence of legal recognition in the case of certain sexual crimes (such as marital rape) at the systemic level. In this episode, Mac says in the middle of the gangrape, “Rape and Sex, it is the same thing. When a fucked woman heads to the kitchen in the morning it is sex, when a woman heads to the police station it is rape.” Once again in Delhi Crime, Vartika and her team highlight similar slippages within the legal procedural implementation that disrupt the possibility of justice in complex sexual crimes. Vartika, right from her very early briefings, is particularly alert about ensuring that legal procedure functions flawlessly so that it can attempt to offer redress for the brutal pain inflicted upon the victim. In her very first briefing in Episode 1, she asks her colleagues to collect evidence carefully in order for the police to be able to establish an unbroken chain of custody, attacking the police for which would be a prime strategy for defense counsel. Very soon after this the Investigating Officer, Sub-Inspector Vimla Bharadwaj, who was responsible for ensuring the proper procedural collection of critical evidence from the rape victim at the hospital, is shocked when the constables bag evidence without getting proper seals from the hospital authorities—crucial for establishing an unbroken chain of custody. Vartika also advises her team not to involve junior constables in such a sensitive and crucial case because they would most likely mishandle the case and leak critical information to the media that would damage the legal possibility of prosecuting the arrested criminals. In line with this attempt to claim the realm of the legal for prosecuting sexual crimes that otherwise exceed the limits of legal rhetoric, the rape survivors in all three series strongly attempt to inscribe the reality of their bodily pain, with all its indecipherability or uncontainability, into the mainstream legal discourse. In Delhi Crime, very early into the series, the survivor herself is shown to be acutely aware of the need to locate her staggering pain within the uncomprehending administrative mechanism. In Episode 1, the very first time Deepika’s blood-soaked and battered body is brought into the hospital on a stretcher and the doctor enquires about what has happened to her, she whimpers her distinct replies in the middle of her unbearable

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pain: “Rape. And they beat me with an iron rod. Then they pushed the rod into my vagina…. I think they might have pulled out flesh from inside me.” As I noted briefly earlier, in Episode 2, barely conscious and in excruciating bodily pain, Deepika takes Vartika completely by surprise by recognizing and reaching out to her. As Vartika offers her legal reassurances (“I’m handling this case myself. And I promise, all of them will be punished”), Deepika says to her in a resolute tone: “I know who you are. I’m very happy that you are working on my case” [Episode 2]. Then again in the final episode, we witness one of the most poignant and heart-­ wrenching sequences of the series where the court magistrate arrives in the hospital to record the testimony of the terminally-ill rape victim not likely to survive much longer. While recording this statement, the Magistrate is shown to be deeply affected by the consuming pain of the patient lying incapacitated on the hospital bed in front of her. Deepika provides, as the relieved Magistrate tells a tense Vartika at the end of her private meeting with the ailing patient, a “signed four-page statement which is very detailed and very lucid”—a legally viable translation of Deepika’s bodily pain, as closely as it can be approximated in legal language (Episode 9). In fact, at the start of this scene, as the Magistrate enters the room, the camera follows her from behind, revealing the spectacle of Deepika’s pain to the viewer in the same moment as it is revealed to the Magistrate, through the crisp parting of the curtain around Deepika’s bed. It is in this moment that we become acutely aware of the distance separating our legal and social narratives of pain, epitomized by the figure of the Magistrate, from the bodily experience of the victim. Deepika speaks in calm and intricate detail about the chilling and gruesome torture to which she had been subjected, causing the Magistrate to look up shocked when Deepika recounts how she had been brutalized with an iron rod: “[T]hey inserted a Rod inside me, from front and from behind, then they put their hand inside me and I don’t know what all they pulled out of me.” The Magistrate pauses from writing, looks up traumatized not knowing how to process into language the pain that she was witnessing. Affected by the sight of Deepika, she addresses her twice as ‘beti’ (a term of affectionate endearment meaning ‘daughter’), and requests her signature on the recorded statement to ensure that the

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unutterable physical pain she was witnessing finds an approximate translation, however inadequate, into legal language. When she emerges from the hospital room and reassures the perplexed Vartika about the unquestionable legal viability of the recorded statement, the immense relief in the tone of both these women who had been spectators to the victim’s bodily agony is inescapable. Vartika says, with rejuvenated determination about completing the circle of administrative requirements and seeking legal redress for what she knows to be the victim’s unquantifiable pain: “We shall get the official medical reports to you from the hospitals as well.” In Judgement Day, Hiya seems similarly determined to speak her pain in legal language. In her first moment of conscious awareness after she discovers the fact that it was her boyfriend and his group of friends who had gangraped her, she declares single mindedly in the hospital while recovering from her attempted suicide that she “wants to change her statement,” implying that she now wants to name her rapists who had inflicted the cruel pain on her body. Additionally, despite the apprehensions of Hiya’s regressive family, the media coverage of her case does kick off with Khabar Bangla, a regional news channel, that calls the family repeatedly to disseminate the details of Hiya’s case—a hopeful beginning of constructive public discourse on private pain. And in Made in Heaven, Karan decides to also mainstream his own experience of bodily pain indirectly when he goes on live television with his experience of police harassment and his views about the need to change the legally sanctioned discrimination against the LGBTQ community. After the portrayal of Karan’s assault, his harassment by the media, and his family tensions in Episode 6, it is the following episode that shows his growing resolve to register his pain and his revolt in legal terms. After a grueling recollection of his high-­school past where he had exposed and humiliated his partner, Nawab, Karan rushes in the last scene of Episode 7 towards his lawyer’s home late in the night and desperately knocks to tell her: “I want to register a PIL against Article 377 … Can I do it tomorrow?” That Karan feels the sheer urgency of this act of mainstreaming becomes obvious to the lawyer when she expresses her surprise about why Karan could not wait to tell her this in the morning and Karan responds to this by frankly confessing his desperation and conviction: “You weren’t picking up your

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phone, and I had to know right now.” The following episodes show news channels incessantly flashing updated headlines on the issue as well as Karan’s interview about his grilling experience of the systemic legal injustices meted out to a gay man. The series end with a compelling portrayal of the victim’s bodily wreckage that reverberates as emotional and political tremors in the national imaginary. The translation of pain into politico-legal language and action emerges as the radical and triumphant climax of each of the series—one shows the eruption of anti-Article 377 protests (Made in Heaven), one of volatile demonstrations near India Gate (Delhi Crime), and one of a potentially socially responsible cycle of media reportage on the Park Street victim. What remains in the mind of the viewer is the viewer’s recent memory of the national controversy and rage surrounding these watershed crimes, overwritten by the poignant demand that legal process acknowledge socially normalized pain and politics overthrow the patriarchal oversight of agony.

References Ablow, Rachel. 2017. Victorian Pain. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Arora, Priya. 2019. An Indian TV Show Points the Way for a New Generation. The New York Times, April 9. Bending, Lucy. 2000. The Representation of Bodily Pain in Late Nineteenth-­ Century English Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bhabani, Soudhriti. 2012. Mamata Stops Screening of Bengali Film for Resemblance to Park Street Rape Case. India Today, November 3. https:// www.indiatoday.in/india/east/story/mamata-banerjee-stops-screening-of-filmfor-resemblance-to-park-street-rape-case-120462-2012-11-03. Bourke, Joanna. 2014. The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Cavell, Stanley. 1969. Must We Mean What We Say? A Book of Essays. New York: Charles Scribner’s and Sons. ———. 1979. The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 1999. The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Das, Veena. 2007. Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley: University of California Press. Delhi Crime. 2019. Directed by Richie Mehta, performance by Shefali Shah, Rasika Dugal, and Adil Hussain. Netflix. Gupta, Saurabh. 2016. 4 Years After Park Street Rape Case, Main Accused Arrested Near Delhi. NDTV, September, 30. https://www.ndtv.com/ kolkata-news/four-years-after-park-street-rape-case-main-accusedarrested-near-delhi-1468432. Jha, Rupa. 2013. Why an India Rape Victim Disclosed Her Identity. BBC News, June, 22. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-22999478. Judgement Day. 2020. Directed by Ayan Chakraborti, performance by Sohini Sarkar, Madhumita Sarcar, and Abhishek Singh. Zee5. Khanna, Rohit. 2016. Kolkata Park Street Rape Case: Kader Khan Shows No Remorse in Court. The Times of India, October 1. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/Kolkata-Park-street-rape-case-Kader-Khan-showsno-remorse-in-court/articleshow/54617862.cms. Latham, Peter Mere. 1862. General Remarks on the Practice of Medicine. British Medical Journal, June 28. Quoted in Joanna Bourke, 1–5. Made in Heaven. 2019. Directed by Prashant Nair, written by Alankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar, and Reema Kagti, performance by Arjun Mathur, Sobhita Dhulipala, and Vinay Pathak. Amazon Prime. Morris, David B. 1991. The Culture of Pain. Berkeley: University of California Press. Scarry, Elaine. 1988. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York: Oxford University Press. Sharma, Anuradha. 2014. Kolkata Rape Victims Find a Police Officer Who’s On Their Side. The New  York Times, February 28. https://india.blogs. nytimes.com/2014/02/28/kolkata-rape-victims-find-a-police-officerwhos-on-their-side/. Teen Kanya. 2012. Directed by Agnidev Chatterjee, performances by Rituparna Sengupta, Ananya Chatterjee, and Unnati Davara, Rose Valley Films. TMC’s Candidate Nusrat Jahan, Mamata Banerjee and their Connection with the Infamous Park Street Rape Case. 2019. OpIndia, March 13. https:// www.opindia.com/2019/03/tmcs-candidate-nusrat-jahan-mamatabanerjee-and-their-connection-with-the-infamous-park-street-rape-case/. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 1960. The Blue and Brown Books: Preliminary Studies for the “Philosophical Investigations.” 1933–35. New York: Harper Perennial. ———. 2001. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.

“You Stink!” Smell and Moralisation of the Other Sara Graça da Silva

Although scholarship on the senses and sensory history has been fast expanding over the last decades, the importance of smell tends to be somewhat overlooked in favour of the other senses, in particular vision, already regarded by the likes of Plato as a superior sense. The ephemeral nature of smell, and the inherent difficulties in interpreting its sensory information, help explain this lack of attention. Smell is, however, one of the most intriguing senses, pivotal in the perception of ourselves and others, and deeply connected to our emotions and moral decisions. Medical and cultural historians, as well as anthropologists and psychologists, have emphasised the key role olfaction plays across time and place, not only through rituals, or as a means of diagnosing disease, but also as a warning mechanism regarding threats and dangerous environments, and

S. Graça da Silva (*) IELT, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. Falcato, S. Graça da Silva (eds.), The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8_7

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ultimately, dangerous, stinky people (Classen et al. 1994; Reinarz 2014; Jenner 2011). In Hamlet, Marcellus alludes to the state of political and moral corruption at Elsinore using an olfactory reference—“something is rotten in the state of Denmark”. Indeed, shared, familiar smells create a sense of identity and security, at both individual and group level, whereas the opposite leads to smelly feelings of distrust, avoidance and fear. In an increasing globalised world, smell is intimately connected to the politics of power, status and identity. Recent studies have shown that body odour disgust sensitivity (BODS) is commonly linked with authoritarianism and avoidance of “individuals and groups that are perceived as foreign, strange, morally deviant or norm violating” (Liuzza et al. 2018: 2). In this chapter, I revive Alain Corbin’s masterful distinction between “the foul and the fragrant”, and use smell and emotional olfactory experiences to explore negative attitudes towards certain societal outgroups, in particular migrants and refugees.1

1

A Brief History of Smell

Before embarking on a more contemporary analysis of the relationship between smell and prejudice with regard to a negative framing of the foreign, it is important to present a brief contextualisation of the value of olfaction over time. After all, a history of smell is inevitably a history of humanity from ancient to modern times. Among the many historians who have covered this evolution in their works, I would like to start by highlighting Alain Corbin’s seminal Le  It is important to distinguish between migrants and refugees. According to UN Migration, migrant designates “an umbrella term, not defined under international law, reflecting the common lay understanding of a person who moves away from his or her place of usual residence, whether within a country or across an international border, temporarily or permanently, and for a variety of reasons”. A Refugee is, according to the 1951 Convention, “a person who, owing to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.” https://www.iom.int/key-migration-terms. 1

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Miasme et la jonquille: l’odorat et l’imaginaire social, XVIII-XIX siècles (1982), published in English in 1986 as The Foul and the Fragrant: Odour and the French Social Imagination. Corbin’s book has become a bible in studies on olfactory perception, as well as an object of study itself. His examination represents a masterful exploration of developments concerning urbanisation and urban waste treatment, hygiene (including its lack), and medicine during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, offering a contemplation of the evolution of these progresses and their impact on French society through a smelly lens. Along our lifespan development, both our own smell and our capacity to appreciate the scent of others, change. As Corbin notes, this odorific fluidity accompanies us from infancy to old age: Human beings possessed a succession of smells from childhood to old age, from the milky sourness of the suckling to the sweeter, less acid, sourness of senility, a smell that Haller found intolerable. Between the two extremes was the fragrance of adolescence, particularly marked in young girls. Puberty, which radically transformed the odor of males and gave them the aura seminalis of the adult, did not change women’s constant odor so clearly. “At that time their slack, rarely exercised fiber only dulls their childhood sourness and gives a stale and sweetish odor to their transpiration”. Nevertheless, menstruation and, above all, sexual intercourse, temporarily altered the character of their smell. (Corbin 1986: 38)

Corbin’s fascination with smell is echoed in one of the most well-­known and successful novels exploring olfactory entanglements and disentanglements. Published in 1986 and seductively adapted to the cinema in 2006 by Bernd Eichinger, Patrick Suskind’s Perfume: the Story of a Murder follows the (mis)adventures of the mysterious Jean-Baptiste Grenouille and his exceptional sense of smell. His extraordinary power is particularly captivating since he has no smell of his own to account for. Throughout the novel, Suskind plays with the readers’ expectations and anxieties, providing incredible fictional olfactory illustrations. The opening description is terrifyingly poetic, and I dare copy it below in its entirety for fear of losing the brilliance of its odorific magic:

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In the period of which we speak, there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat ­droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlors stank of stale dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheets, damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots. The stench of sulfur rose from the chimneys, the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries, and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of onions, and from their bodies, if they were no longer very young, came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. The rivers stank, the marketplaces stank, the churches stank, it stank beneath the bridges and in the palaces. The peasant stank as did the priest, the apprentice as did his master’s wife, the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the king himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the queen like an old goat, summer and winter. (Süskind 1987: 1, my emphasis)

Inhaling the fumes of the above passage certainly makes us dizzy: the numerous references to “stench; stank; manure; urine; moldering wood; rat droppings; spoiled cabbage; mutton fat; unaired parlours; greasy sheets; damp featherbeds (…) congealed blood; sweat; unwashed clothes; rotting teeth; rancid cheese; sour milk”, etc., place us in an uninvited sensory dance that is bound to leave us breathless and nauseated. Historian of medicine Jonathan Reinarz has coined a beautiful expression to describe authors who are able to tie the sense of smell to that of lasting memories, very much like Suskind does in the passage above. He calls these writers, including Charles Dickens or Émile Zola, “aromatic authors”, and I am incredibly fond of this formulation (Reinarz 2014: 7). Indeed, memory and smell are intimately connected. In his Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa, one of the most celebrated Portuguese writers, attests to this symbiosis in a mere (yet not quite so) walk down the street: Smell is a strange way of seeing. It evokes sentimental scenes, sketched all of a sudden by the subconscious. I’ve often experienced this. I’m walking down a street. I see nothing, or rather, I look all around and see the way everyone sees. I know I’m walking down a street and don’t know that it

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exists with two sides comprised of variously shaped buildings made by human hands. I’m walking down a street. The smell of bread from a bakery nauseates me with its sweetness, and my childhood rises up from a distant neighbourhood, and another bakery emerges from that fairyland which is everything we ever had that has died. I’m walking down a street. Suddenly I smell the fruit on the slanted rack of the small grocery, and my short life in the country—I can’t say from when or where—has trees in the background and peace in what can only be my childhood heart. (Pessoa 2001: 268, my emphasis)

It is with some sadness that I recall finding out about a dear friend’s inability to smell due to a childhood illness. Amazingly, and despite having known her for years, I have never noticed her sensory limitation until we went for a walk in the fields some years ago. As I began to describe these “sweet”, luxuriant fragrances with excitement, she lamented not being able to know what that felt like. Until then, I had never contemplated not being able to smell, nor had I paid much attention to being able to. Like many, I took smell for granted. There are, however,  burgeoning studies that link the lack of a sense of smell to social insecurity and to difficulties in engaging in social relationships (Croy et al. 2012). Psychologist Rachel Herz, for instance, has shown that “odors that evoke positive autobiographical memories have the potential to increase positive emotions, decrease negative mood states, disrupt cravings, and reduce physiological indices of stress” (Herz 2016: 1). On the contrary, odours that elicit negative memories tend to lead to depressive dispositions. The history of smell has been regularly relegated to a secondary plan in favour of other senses, such as sight or hearing. In his wonderful Past Scents: Historical Perspectives on Smell (2014), Reinarz provides a thorough historical review of the importance of smell which is worth reviving. According to Plato, for instance, smell was difficult to classify due to a lack of definite patterns, “most smells being half formed entities that occurred when substances were in the process of changing their state (…) the particular source of each odour was the condition of instability”, belief shared by Aristotle, who classified smells into five distinct categories: “sweet, harsh, astringent, pungent, and rich” (Reinarz 2014: 8). For Christian intellectuals, smell existed “so that the devout could experience

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the goodness and beauty of divine creations” (ibid.: 9). This demanded both the practice of the abnegation of sensorial experiences as a sign of a righteous moral conduct, as well as the condemnation of those who gave in to impulses, and were therefore labelled as impure and sinners. Reinarz adds that the correlation of smell and moral character was also impactful during the medieval ages, linking it to temperament and intelligence: “While those individuals who were wrathful and rowdy, rash and ignorant, were said to be ‘without a nose’, sagacious types were expected to possess a keen sense of smell” (ibid.: 11). While the Renaissance period witnessed a general shift in the understanding of the role of the senses as important receptors “providing people with the necessary information to rationalize, discuss and respond to very specific situations”, smell, Reinarz remarks, continued to be perceived with general distrust due to a “lack of precision and reliability” (ibid.: 12). A strong scepticism towards smell continued to be fostered during the Enlightenment with Descartes, Kant and Hegel, who considered sight as the most vital sense. Indeed, as cultural critic Laura Frost observes, “for Kant, smells—ephemeral and mostly foul—are associated with the masses and the irrational body. Olfaction was not thought to be connected to aesthetics, and the pleasure it did produce was deemed too ephemeral to merit contemplation” (Frost 2013: 36). There was a slight turn with Ludwig Feuerbach’s defence of the lower senses, including smell and taste, as instrumental “to intellectual and scientific activities” (Reinarz: 14). This smelly campaign was also supported by Nietzsche’s animalistic view. However, overall, the tendency in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was to devalue smell, equating it with animals, savages, and degenerates. In his insightful “Follow Your Nose? Smell, Smelling, and Their Histories”, historian Mark Jenner claims there was a negative association between “olfactory sensitivity” and “a lack of control over the emotions”, which seemed to suggest that “the sense of smell is inherently animalistic or instinctual and thus inclined to atrophy with civilization” (Jenner 2011: 344). Both Reinarz and Jenner link this primitivisation of smell to Freud’s suggestion that it had declined in status as a result of “humankind’s adoption of an erect posture”, an idea he expands in Civilization and its Discontents (ibid.). This civilisational exegesis had been already advanced by Constance Classen et al. in Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (1994), another solid historical study on

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olfaction: “while sight was the pre-eminent sense of reason and civilization, smell was the sense of madness and savagery. In the course of human evolution, it was argued by Darwin, Freud and others, the sense of smell had been left behind and that of sight had taken priority” (Classen et al. 1994: 30). The core thesis of Classen and her colleagues is very simple yet critical: it proposes that smell is a cultural perception. This conviction was revolutionary and inspired subsequent historians, including Robert Jütte in his A History of the Senses: from Antiquity to Cyberspace, to conclude that “there can be no such thing as a natural history of the senses, only a social history of human sense perception” (Jütte 2005: 9). Another scholar who has dedicated much of his work to the study of olfactory perception from a social perspective has been Hans Rindisbacher. His discussion about smell and Karl Marx’s belief that human perception is socially constructed is particularly enthralling. (Rindisbacher 1992, 2015) Increasingly from the Victorian period onwards, particular smells and strong odours, such as perspiration, became associated with the poor segments of society and the proletariat in general, whereas more sophisticated scents, such as soaps and light perfumes, were linked to the wealthy and the aristocracy. Animalistic odours, quite popular up until the eighteenth century, particularly “musk, a substance that comes from a musk deer’s scent gland; ambergris, which is extracted from the excrement or vomit of sperm whales; and civet, from the anal gland of a civet cat”, were steadily replaced in the nineteenth century and beyond by a new standard: lightness and the “scent of cleanliness”, which helped distinguish between whores and graceful, respected women, for instance (Frost 2013: 37–38). The association of foul smells to disease and deviant behaviour led to a revolution in sanitary efforts during the nineteenth century. Edwin Chadwick, the acclaimed Victorian health reformer, is often cited in this context. His famous declaration “all smell is, if it be intense, immediate acute disease; and eventually we may say that, by depressing the system and rendering it susceptible to the action of other causes, all smell is disease” is a reflection of the profound fear regarding the spreading of miasmas. This fear led to significant actions in governmental policies concerning

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waste treatment, including the implementation of sewage systems to eradicate possible sources of contamination and infection from urban spaces, and at the same time galvanised the fascination with the art of perfumery and the creation of lighter scents (Chadwick 1846: 651). Smell came to represent a sign of identity, status and social class. As Corbin observed, “the atmosphere of bodies influenced human relationships at two levels: at the level of personal attraction or revulsion, and at the level of infection. (…) Animal scent belonged to the masses” (Corbin: 43, 76). Working classes were identified by a recognisable, primitive, stench, which provoked a sense of repulsion in the higher classes, to whom the scent of the poor was almost intolerable. This disgust is well documented in reports of the time: “writings focused on the aspect of narrowness. The crampedness of the sleeping area, the depth of the yard, and the length of the alley created in the mind of the bourgeois (who normally had plenty of room) the impression of suffocation” (ibid.: 153, my emphasis). Olfaction and deviance thus walked hand in hand. As the next section will show, this assumption continues relevant to this day.

2

“Ewwwww”: Smelly Moral Compasses

Many sensory historians have noted an emerging strand of research in recent years that has focused on how odour and its waves have been used to stigmatise social and ethnic groups in a multitude of contexts, from colonial to slavery and segregation studies (Jenner 2011). In this final part, I will explore how the prejudices Corbin, Suskind and others observed in relation to the French proletariat and the masses in general, are still alive in contemporary society. Although these biases are aimed at copious sections of society for a variety of reasons (age, sexual orientation, disability, etc.), my discussion will address a specific outgroup: that of migrants and refugees. The aim is not to dwell on considerations over political responsibilities towards these groups, but rather to offer an examination of the expectations and perceptions towards this “other”, based on olfactory premises. As a species, we use smell to make choices, to judge pleasant and unpleasant situations, and to avoid dangerous environments. The absence

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of smell is in itself an alarm signal. We have only to look at the present pandemic, where evidence for the loss of smell—known as anosmia, (and often associated with the loss of taste)—constituted a symptom of COVID-19. Clean, fresh smells convey a sense of security and relaxation, whereas bad, strong ones promote feelings of disgust, distrust, and avoidance. Research in moral psychology has long investigated this matter. There is evidence of a strong correlation between clean smells and fairer attitudes, and of the role of olfactory stimuli to moral choices in general (Schnall et al. 2008; Liljenquist et al. 2010). Likewise, there have been many studies dedicated to inducing feelings of disgust which indicated a correspondence between unpleasant scents and a stronger predisposition for moral condemnation (Landy and Goodwin 2015; Cecchetto et  al. 2017; Inbar et al. 2009, 2012). A recent study by Cecchetto et al., for example, showed that body odours, even when masked, make us more emotional (2019). Over the last decade, and particularly since 2014, large-scale migration and refugee influx have become a challenge for many Western countries. Sizeable groups of imaginably stinky people fleeing the wars in Syria and Iraq and attempting to cross the Mediterranean suddenly became a threat to national borders, to economy and culture, and most importantly, to identity. Notoriously, refugees and migrants usually arrive crammed in overcrowded makeshift boats that resemble nut shells, thousands drown, and the smell of death and decay inevitably accompanies their journeys. This crisis is all over the media, all over the world. Incidentally, I came across an analysis of various press reports about the coverage of one of the most emblematic episodes of the refugees’ plight, that of the unlucky three year old Syrian boy who drowned at a Turkish beach whilst trying to complete the treacherous journey, back in 2015. The treatment of this episode by the various media outlets leaves no doubt as to the emotional shockwaves it created at a global scale: As we complete this report, the front pages of newspapers across the world have been dominated by images of a drowned three year-old Syrian boy, washed up on a beach in Turkey after his family’s attempt to reach Greece ended in tragedy. Broadsheet and tabloid, conservative and liberal, the image made the front page: ‘Somebody’s Child’ read the simple red image

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caption of the Independent, picking out the colour of the boy’s red t-shirt as he lay face down in the sand; ‘Tiny victim of a human catastrophe’, headlined the Daily Mail; ‘Unbearable’ reported the Daily Mirror. In Italy, ‘A picture to bring the world to silence’, reported La Repubblica. In Spain, ‘An image that shakes the awareness of Europe’, said El País. ‘Aylan 3, experienced only wars’, reported Aftonbladet in Sweden, and in Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, ‘Aylan Kurdi, three years old, drowned in the Mediterranean Sea’. Many outlets spoke of a ‘turning point’ for European migration politics or an ‘awakening’ in the awareness or consciences of the public. ‘Everyone who saw these pictures last night could not help but be moved’ said the UK Prime Minister David Cameron on Sky News. (Berry et al. 2015: 5)

Aylan—that was the boy’s name although he is mostly known as that poor Syrian boy who drowned at someone else’s beach/country—was trending everywhere. However, despite the emotionally charged coverage, Aylan’s fate always felt distant, removed, odourless. It obviously disturbed us but we were by then (and still are) so used to viewing these shocking images that we have become somewhat desensitised from it all. Furthermore, the danger was not really ours, nor was the smell. While we genuinely lamented his death, we also secretly rejoiced in the fact that this migrant “infection” did not happen on our shores. Sad as it was, he/them was/ were someone else’s stinking problem. When the stench is distant, everyone feels entitled to behave in a morally superior way, shouting indignation and anger from rooftops (mostly virtual from the comfort of our sofas). News channels opened and closed with Aylan’s lifeless body splattered across the screens, and the world was appalled by his difficult life. We feel morally superior as long as we are not dealing with the stench of urine and faeces of the refugee camps. Now, how disgusting would that be? Also in 2015, a British nurse volunteering at the migrant camp with over five thousand refugees, infamously known as “The Jungle”, in Calais, offered a shocking description of the migrant’s dismal living arrangements to The Nursing Times, an online news magazine, which caught the attention of several media outlets. Her acerbic portrayal is populated

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with allusions to different smells, recalling Suskind’s earlier odorific description: The first thing that hits you is the smell. It’s the smell of rubbish, urine, faeces and just rot everywhere. Then you see people coming out from places that you thought were just uninhabitable. There is mud, water and dirt running down worn-away paths, flies everywhere and seagulls circling above. (…) It’s very overcrowded. In the camp, there are two water stations and 40 toilets, so that gives you an idea of the sanitary conditions. There has been an outbreak of lice and scabies. We’re seeing rat bites and infected wounds from where people have been walking through dirt and human waste. (Nursing Times 2016)

References to the smell of rubbish, urine, faeces, rot, dirt, infected wounds and human waste, paint a desperate picture. Additionally, her depiction also calls attention to a now familiar scene: that of the narrowness and overcrowding of the enclosures. Studies have shown that people traditionally equate foul scents with social and moral corruption and defilement. This expectation deeply affects our perception of others (and ourselves), as well as our attitudes of both inclusion and exclusion. Importantly, this sense of disgust is not only aimed at refugees or migrants that arrive into our countries in passage while we wait for them to move on somewhere else. Immigrants who have long settled in our countries are also discriminated against. For the most part, this is because they seem to share the same narrowness of living of Corbin’s proletariat masses. Again, narrowness enhancing the stench of fear and the sense of threat. Psychologist Jason Faulkner notes that work on the history of stereotypes and prejudice has revealed a tendency to associate foreigness with disease, especially in the context of epidemic diseases, where particular ethnic outgroups are often blamed for the outbreaks (Faulkner et  al. 2004). In the context of the current pandemic, as in any situation of crisis where the source of disease is ambiguous or invisible, suspicion and paranoia towards outgroups increase exponentially. In Portugal, for example, when news about COVID-19 first broke, the Chinese community was

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stigmatised by locals, who mostly avoided their shops and warehouses like the plague. Ignorance breeds mistrust, the old dictum keeps reminding us. Migrants and refugees are especially vulnerable to contempt and hate behaviours because of the scents associated with their existence. Many live in precarious sanitary conditions, bundled together in closed groups (physically, socially and linguistically), and it does not help that they are bearers of strange customs. Considered dirty, unhygienic, smelly people, forever foreign, the stench of their existence is often wrongly equated with a moral stench, awakening in locals a primitive mechanism of avoidance which is explained by evolutionary psychologists as being linked to a fear of disease and infection. The metaphorical association of cleanliness with morality and virtuous behaviour is deeply rooted in culture. One has only to consider everyday adages and expressions such as “cleanliness is next to godliness” or the importance of having a “clean conscience”, or a “clean record”. In a study about morality and physical cleansing, Zhong and Liljenquist found a psychological association between bodily purity and moral purity (Zhong and Liljenquist 2006). They are also responsible for having coined the expression “The Macbeth effect”, which describes the need to physically cleanse whenever our moral purity is under threat, normally after committing some sort of immoral action, which arouses feelings of guilt or shame. This denomination supports an embodied theory of morality and emotions, and was wittily inspired by the famous episode in Shakespeare’s play, where Lady Macbeth feels the need to wash her blood-stained hands after her and Macbeth’s involvement in King Duncan’s assassination (Zhong and Liljenquist 2006). Not surprisingly, there have been investigations that suggest that hand washing is essential to induce a clean state reaction in moral judgments (Kaspar et al. 2015). I can only imagine that the current pandemic has given rise to many mutations of this Macbeth effect (without the bloodied daggers, I hope). Washing hands has become an obsession in the fight of this terrible infection whilst disinfectant smells—smells of cleanliness—endow us with a sense of safety and protection. I do not remember ever having bought so many ethyl alcohol flasks, at such expensive prices. One thing remains uncertain, though, as Zhong and Liljenquist humorously put it: “it remains to be seen whether

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clean hands really do make a pure heart, but our studies indicate that they at least provide a clean conscience after moral trespasses” (Zhong and Liljenquist 2006: 1452). From the previous considerations, it is not difficult to understand why (im)migrants and refugees from specific vulnerable groups are at a position of disadvantage from the word go. In 2018, far from imagining the situation we are faced with today, a group of scholars conducted a study on odour and prejudice towards immigrants. Their research suggested that our behavioural immune system scaffolding (BIS) is ruled by a psychological mechanism, “adapted to detect and avoid pathogen threats”, which translates into social relationships. Hence, as the authors of this study reported, “prejudice towards outgroups might be partially driven by implicit pathogen concerns related to dissimilarity of these groups’ hygiene and food preparation practices” (Liuzza et al. 2018: 221). This thought-provoking investigation linked body odour disgust sensitivity (BODS) to the emotion of disgust and xenophobic attitudes, suggesting that “prejudice might be rooted in primitive sensory mechanisms” (ibid.). That is, at their root, feelings of uneasiness and disgust have an evolutionary explanation because they work as a protection against potentially dangerous, infectious and even lethal circumstances. Interestingly (but not surprisingly), previous research by the team also found a positive correlation between BODS and right-wing authoritarianism (Liuzza et al. 2018). In this line of argument, other important studies have identified a correspondence between the predisposition to feel disgust and conservative political attitudes (Inbar et al. 2009). The term behavioural immune system was coined by psychologist Mark Schaller in 2006, and has since been widely used in studies on human behaviour and stigmatisation. As Schaller acknowledges: Many people suffering from infectious diseases also suffer from prejudice and social stigmatization as well. Importantly (and troublingly), the evolved design of the behavioural immune system can not only lead to the social stigmatization of people who truly are infectious but also to equally pernicious prejudices directed against people who are not (…) The behavioural immune system produces a somewhat different form of discriminatory sociality as well: aversive responses to subjectively foreign peoples.

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There are, of course, many different psychological sources of xenophobia and ethnocentrism, and some of these psychological processes have nothing to do with infectious disease; still, disease-avoidant processes a­ pparently contribute to these discriminatory outcomes. There are at least two distinct reasons why subjective ‘foreign-ness’ may implicitly connote an increased infection risk. First, exotic peoples may be host to exotic pathogens that can be especially virulent when introduced to a local population. Second, exotic peoples may be more likely to violate local behavioural norms (in domains pertaining to hygiene, food preparation, etc.) that serve as barriers to pathogen transmission. (Scheller, 3420–3421)

What locals seem to forget is that exoticism is not a necessary condition for norm breaking. In fact, many “locals” are guilty of transgressing norms. However, perceptions of familiarity bring a sense of safety and belonging (that might very well be misleading), while threatening and strange foreignness evokes feelings of distrust and anxiety, and this perception  inevitably impacts on anti-migrant attitudes and movements. The foreign is, therefore, depicted as somewhat filthy. We keep going back to Corbin’s distinction between the fragrant and the foul. The us and the them. The good, the bad, and…the stinky (might it be that we are all somewhat smelly?). It has become commonplace to argue that today’s history comes deodorised, in a civilised effort to eradicate stench of various kinds (one can almost picture STENCH as the villain in a Marvel adaptation: Stench by name: reeks by nature BAM, POW, ZAP). Invariably, smells are intimately linked to our emotions: clean ones are normally associated with positive judgments and decisions whereas bad scents trigger feelings of aversion and disgust in our body and, ultimately, in our social behaviours and attitudes towards the other. However, it is also important to remember that the meaning of a bad smell is not straightforwardly universal but culturally dependent. What constitutes an unpleasant odour for some, might represent a pleasant one for others. Nauseating smells are not only putrid scents or a rotten cabbage left in the fridge (having found one yesterday, I know what I am talking about). In this chapter, I tried to demonstrate the role smell plays as a trigger of emotional memories, both positive and negative. Beyond the undeniable objectivity of stinky odours,

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which is real, the perception of smells is ultimately associated with feelings of unfamiliarity, distrust and foreignness. Regarding the smell of the other, we must learn to shy away from vicarious smelling and wake up and smell the coffee, opening our olfactory receptors to the world.

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Herz, R., and J.  Schooler. 2002. A Naturalistic Study of Autobiographical Memories Evoked by Olfactory and Visual Cues: Testing the Proustian Hypothesis. The American Journal of Psychology 115: 21–32. https://doi. org/10.2307/1423672. Inbar, Yoel, David A. Pizarro, and Paul Bloom. 2009. Conservatives Are More Easily Disgusted than Liberals. Cognition and Emotion 23 (4): 714–725. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930802110007. Inbar, Y., D.A. Pizarro, and P. Bloom. 2012. Disgusting Smells Cause Decreased Liking of Gay Men. Emotion 12: 23–27. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023984. Jenner, Mark S.R. 2011. Follow Your Nose? Smell, Smelling, and Their Histories. The American Historical Review 116 (2, Apr.): 335–351. Jütte, Robert. 2005. A History of the Senses: From Antiquity to Cyberspace. Translated by James Lynn. Cambridge and Malden. ———. 2012. The Sense of Smell in Historical Perspective. In Sensory Perception, ed. F.G. Barth, P. Giampieri-Deutsch, and H.D. Klein. Vienna: Springer. Kaspar, K., V. Krapp, and P. König. 2015. Hand Washing Induces a Clean Slate Effect in Moral Judgments: A Pupillometry and Eye-Tracking Study. Scientific Reports 5: 10471. Landy, J.F., and G.P.  Goodwin. 2015. Does Incidental Disgust Amplify Moral Judgment? A Meta-Analytic Review of Experimental Evidence. Perspectives on Psychological Science 10: 518–536. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615583128. Liljenquist, Katie, Chen-Bo Zhong, and Adam D. Galinsky. 2010. The Smell of Virtue: Clean Scents Promote Reciprocity and Charity. Psychological Science 21 (3): 381–383. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610361426. Liuzza, M.T., T. Lindholm, C.B. Hawley, M.G. Sendén, I. Ekström, M.J. Olsson, et al. 2018. Body Odour Disgust Sensitivity Predicts Authoritarian Attitudes. Royal Society Open Science 5: 171091. Nursing Times Magazine. 2016. https://www.nursingtimes.net/opinion/ nursing-­in-­the-­calais-­jungle-­the-­first-­thing-­that-­hits-­you-­is-­the-­smell-­of-­ rot-­23-­08-­2016/. Pessoa, Fernando. 2001. The Book of Disquiet. Translated by Richard Zenith, 1st ed. London: Allen Lane. Pizarro, David, Yoel Inbar, and Chelsea Helion. 2011. On Disgust and Moral Judgment. Emotion Review 3: 267–268. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1754073911402394. Reinarz, Jonathan. 2014. Past Scents: Historical Perspectives on Smell. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

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Rindisbacher, Hans. 1992. The Smell of Books: A Cultural-Historical Study of Olfactory Perception in Literature. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ———. 2015. What’s this Smell?: Shifting Worlds of Olfactory Perception. KulturPoetik 15: 70–104. Schaller, M. 2011. The Behavioural Immune System and the Psychology of Human Sociality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences 366 (1583): 3418–3426. https://doi.org/10.1098/ rstb.2011.0029. Schnall, S., J. Haidt, G.L. Clore, and A.H. Jordan. 2008. Disgust as Embodied Moral Judgment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34: 1096–1109. Süskind, Patrick. 1987. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Translated by John Woods. Penguin. Zakrzewska, M., J.  Olofsson, T.  Lindholm, A.  Blomkvist, and M.T.  Liuzza. 2019. Body Odor Disgust Sensitivity Is Associated with Prejudice Towards a Fictive Group of Immigrants. Physiology & Behavior 201: 221–227. Zhong, C.B., and K. Liljenquist. 2006. Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing. Science 313 (5792): 1451–1452.

The Moral Significance of Shock Oded Na’aman

…the disintegration of the aura in the experience of shock. —Walter Benjamin

My topic is a kind of moral failure: a failure to be shocked. The idea that there can be such a moral failure might initially seem dubious. Shock is not voluntary, it seems to involve a certain failure of agency and cognition, it is unpleasant and at times profoundly wounding. Initially, such a state might not seem morally desirable. And yet the absence of shock sometimes strikes us as a moral failing. To explain this, we might be tempted to invoke the instrumental value shock can have. But in what follows I am interested in the possibility that the absence of shock can be a moral failing independently of any morally desirable consequence of shock. Consider the title of an op-ed recently published in The Washington Post: “After three years of Trump, we’ve lost our ability to be shocked” (Klaas 2020). The author writes that “because the barrier for what shocks us has soared so high, Trump is able to get away with increasingly bad behavior” (ibidem.). The reason the failure to be shocked is significant, O. Na’aman (*) Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. Falcato, S. Graça da Silva (eds.), The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8_8

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according to the author, is that it leads to a lack of accountability. This is an example of an instrumental account of the moral significance of shock. But is it true that the failure to resist Trump is a result of the failure to be shocked? The opposite might be the case. Those who were initially shocked by Trump’s behavior might no longer be moved by it because they’ve come to feel there is nothing they can do about it. But if the dissipation of shock results from moral impotence rather than leads to it, then what is its moral significance? What could be morally lamentable about the gradual dissolution of shock when the presence of shock would not have any morally desirable consequences? Indeed, it might seem that the absence of shock in such circumstances is a moral improvement. The occurrence of shock is burdensome and hurtful; if being shocked would not lead to any good—say, by motivating effective moral action, or leading to a diminishment in suffering—its absence seems welcome. Now, one might insist with the author of the op-ed that continuing to be shocked by Trump’s behavior would have good consequences after all. Perhaps. But I shall discuss cases that suggest that shock can be morally significant independently of its consequences. These cases raise the question of the moral significance of shock. I shall arrive at an answer to this question in a roundabout way, so I want to state the answer in advance to make clear where I am heading. I shall propose that shock can be morally significant independently of its consequences but only as part of an ongoing commitment to certain norms, in particular, norms that constitute recognizing another as a person. When we witness others in agony, or being severely wronged, or when we ourselves severely wrong or mistreat others, our shock can reflect our recognition of them as persons, a recognition constituted by our commitment to certain moral norms. However, if we do not in fact respond to the suffering or wrong in accordance with these norms—if, for example, we do not act to relieve their suffering or to properly address the wrong done, and do not avoid or prevent its recurrence—then our commitment to the relevant norms is undermined. When we consistently violate the norms whose violation initially shocked us, our lingering shock upon repeated violations gradually loses its significance and becomes a mere impulse—a fossil of a past commitment, so to speak— before it disappears completely. The failure to be shocked in such instances

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marks the failure of our moral commitments, which is the failure to recognize others as persons. * * * Part 1: My interest in the moral significance of shock originates from a specific, real example from my own past, which had a significant influence on my life and which I’ve never fully understood. I served as an Israeli soldier in the Occupied Territories. During my first ever eighthour shift in the West Bank, I saw a soldier stop a van with ten Palestinian women on their way to work. It was very early in the morning. He ordered everyone out, yelled at them and gave them tasks, such as singing and dancing for him. I remember distinctly my sense of shock as I watched them obey his orders, trying to satisfy his whims. But of course, I wasn’t a mere witness: I stood there as his escort, holding my gun, providing him cover. The same shock recurred several times in each of my first few shifts, as I became more actively involved in terrorizing and humiliating people. These incidents weren’t deviations from our mission; they were its manifestation. Our job as enforcers of military rule was to control people through sheer force and intimidation. Soon—very soon— my shock subsided. I can’t say exactly how long it took—maybe less than a week and certainly less than a month—before I felt nothing at all in response to the same things that at first left me speechless. It is not, however, as if my judgment had changed. I still thought what we were doing was horrible and morally shocking, but I just couldn’t feel it. I thought we shouldn’t be doing this, but I didn’t know what else to do: there was no other way to be a soldier at a checkpoint. With time I also came up with reasons to keep doing it. If I refuse to serve here, I thought, someone else, more cruel and ruthless, would take my place and then no one will be made better off, certainly not the Palestinians who cross this checkpoint every day. So, I came to think that defection—that is, ceasing to terrorize people—would be an act of moral narcissism. I decided I should stay and keep doing this morally shocking job, but, I insisted, I should also continue to be shocked by it. The dissolution of my initial shock seemed like an additional moral failure. But after a while it occurred to me that feeling bad about not being shocked is ludicrous. What does it matter whether I am shocked by what I am doing if I continue to do it anyway? My guilt about

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growing accustomed to terrorizing people seemed as self-indulgent as the desire to run away. In both cases, I was more concerned about my moral righteousness than I was about the reality that tarnished it. And so, I let myself fall into moral numbness. It was as if my mind collapsed upon itself. * * * Part 2: A strikingly similar reaction to shock is described by John Berger, in his essay “Photographs of Agony”. Writing in 1972 about photographs from the Vietnam war that appeared in the newspapers of the time, Berger says such photographs are “arresting”: “we are seized by them” (Berger 1972: 42). It is often assumed that such photographs raise awareness and arouse empathy for the suffering of others, thereby increasing the chances we’ll do something to end the suffering they depict. This would explain the instrumental moral significance of the shock they inspire. But Berger argues the photographs in fact paralyze us. As we are confronted by photographs of agony, we cannot help but be struck by the failure of our response to them. Even the circumstances in which they appear to us—say, as we are drinking our morning coffee—seem inadequate. Moments of agony are discontinuous with all other moments, Berger says, “they exist by themselves”. The reader who has been arrested by the photograph may tend to feel this discontinuity as his own personal moral inadequacy. And as soon as this happens even his sense of shock is dispersed: his own moral inadequacy may now shock him as much as the crimes being committed in the war. Either he shrugs off this sense of inadequacy as being only too familiar, or else he thinks of performing a kind of penance—of which the purest example would be to make a contribution to OXFAM or UNICEF. In both cases, the issue of the war which has caused that moment is effectively depoliticized. The picture becomes evidence of the general human condition. It accuses nobody and everybody. (idem., 43, italics in original)

The force of what we see in the photograph immediately turns our gaze upon ourselves and thereby shifts the focus of our shock to our own inadequacy. The shock of another’s suffering turns into the shock of our moral failing. It is helpful here to distinguish between the moral significance of shock and the significance of moral shock. Moral shock is a shock that is about

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some violation of a moral norm, such as a shocking lie, or a shocking mistreatment of another person. But a shock can be morally significant without being a moral shock. I can be shocked by the ruin brought about by a hurricane, which is not itself a violation of a moral norm. My shock in this case would be morally significant because it is part of a response to the suffering of others that is itself subject to moral norms.1 So shock need not be about morality in order to be morally significant. Confronted with photographs of agony in the newspaper, one is inclined to be shocked by the agony rather than by the wrongs that underlie it. This initially non-moral shock is then replaced by a moral one when one is shocked by one’s failure to adequately respond to the agony of the people in the photograph. So, the non-moral shock leads to a moral shock, but it distracts us from the morally shocking wrongs—such as the unjust war—that led to the suffering in the photograph. There are many differences between the checkpoint soldier and the consumer of news. In particular, the soldier is shocked by a wronging in which he is directly complicit while the consumer of news is shocked by agony depicted in a photo. And yet the checkpoint soldier and the consumer of news share a similar reaction to what each sees as a moral failure he or she cannot avoid: a failure to properly respond to the person they (directly or indirectly) encounter. Berger urges his readers to recall the political backdrop of the moment depicted by the photograph and which the photograph obfuscates. Oddly enough, something similar might be said of my predicament in the West Bank checkpoints: for me, the shock of terrorizing civilians overshadowed the political conditions that required (and were perpetuated by) terrorizing civilians. But the discontinuity of the moment of agony with other moments remains: what shocks us in the war photographs is primarily the agony of the particular people in front of us and our failure to respond to it, not the political conditions that caused their suffering. Even if the right  In the literature about the problem of evil it is common to distinguish natural evils from moral evils. Natural evils are bad states of affairs which do not result from the intentions or negligence of moral agents (e.g., hurricanes and toothaches), whereas moral evils are bad states of affairs that result from the intentions or negligence of moral agents (e.g., murder and lying). The same distinction can be drawn not in terms of states of affairs but of suffering that either involves or does not involve the violation of moral norms. I’m suggesting that moral shock is about moral evils, though shock about natural evils (as well as about other things) can be morally significant. For the distinction, see for example Calder (2018). 1

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response to their suffering is addressing the political conditions that cause it, such response would not address their present plea, which is the immediate object of our shock. Our moral impotence with regard to what shocks us is real: we cannot help or do right by the people depicted in the photograph. Because our moral impotence is truly shocking, it is an effective distraction from political action. Susan Sontag had similar concerns about the de-politization of suffering. In Regarding the Pain of Others, Sontag recounts the words of a woman she met in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. The woman told her: In October 1991 I was here in my nice apartment in peaceful Sarajevo when the Serbs invaded Croatia, and I remember when the evening news showed footage of the destruction of Vukovar, just a couple of hundred miles away, I thought to myself, ‘Oh, how horrible,’ and switched the channel. So how can I be indignant if someone in France or Italy or Germany sees the killing taking place here day after day on their evening news and says, ‘Oh, how horrible,’ and looks for another program. It’s normal. It’s human. (Sontag 2003: 99–100).

Sontag claims that it is because war doesn’t seem as if it can be stopped that people become less responsive to its horrors. “Compassion is an unstable emotion”, she says, “it needs to be translated into action, or it withers” (idem., 101). On its own, Sontag says, our sympathy is not called for. “So far as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence. To that extent, it can be (for all our good intentions) an impertinent—if not an inappropriate—response” (idem., 102). Instead, she says, we need to reflect on how our privileges might be linked to the suffering we see. Sontag thus brings the consumer of news closer to the checkpoint soldier: both want to feel bad for the suffering they witness in order not to feel responsible for it. But why can’t we both feel sympathy for suffering and recognize our complicity in causing it? Or, put another way, if we do recognize our complicity in causing the suffering we now witness, why not also feel sympathy? Indeed, would it not be a failure to recognize our wrongdoing and yet remain emotionally indifferent to the plight of the people we

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have wronged? What I want to better understand is whether, and why, the experience of shock (and the sympathy that might accompany it) can be morally important even when it cannot lead to action that resolves the reason for it—that is, even when we cannot act with regard to what the shock is about. * * * Part 3: To begin, it is worth noting that it is no coincidence that the examples of shock I’ve considered so far are associated with the experience of war. Writing about the meanings of “surprise” in eighteenth century English literature, Christopher Miller says that “the word contains a history of violence” (Miller 2015: 3). The English word “surprise” first denoted military assault, seizure, rape, or disturbance. Only in the late Middle Ages the word acquired a mental and cognitive sense. The modern term, ‘surprise attack’, marks the shift in meaning: when understood according to the original meaning of ‘surprise’, the term is redundant (idem., 225). By the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the word has lost most of its violent associations. Indeed, people often enjoy surprises. Miller notes that “the modern bourgeois birthday is celebrated with a surprise party, not a shock party, which would connote an entirely different kind of spectacle” (idem., 227). He suggests that the term ‘shock’, more closely associated with modernity, “takes up the sense of violence and stupefaction contained in the older sense of ‘surprise’” (idem., 226). “Shock”, Miller says, suggests “a direct assault on the sensorium that bypasses higher rationality, it draws on the clinical frisson of trauma, and it often connotes an attack on standards of morality or propriety” (idem., 227). War, violence, and shock are also brought together in Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Freud wrote the essay in the wake of the Great War, and in it he aimed to offer an explanation of ‘traumatic neurosis’, and of ‘war neuroses’, or shell-shock, in particular. On Freud’s model, consciousness is a defense against external stimuli. Shock, or ‘traumatic neurosis’, results from ruptures in this defensive mechanism. “We describe as ‘traumatic’,” Freud writes, “any excitations from outside which are powerful enough to break though the protective shield” (Freud 1961: 23).

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Freud sought to understand the effects of such shocks on the mind. According to him, these shocks occur when consciousness is unprepared for the external stimulus, and its unpreparedness consists in the absence of anxiety—that is, a lack of expectation of the danger. A person who suffers from traumatic neurosis might try not to think of the traumatic event from her past during her waking hours, but the catastrophe will recur in her dreams. According to Freud, dreams of this kind “endeavor to master the stimulus retroactively, by developing the anxiety whose omission was the cause of the traumatic neurosis” (idem., 26). In other words, the dreams of trauma patients go back in time so they can prepare for what had happened. We recover from the shocking event by recovering it, by making sense of it and weaving it into our consciousness. In what follows I do not mean to endorse Freud’s analysis of shock but to take from it the idea that shock involves both a cognitive success and a cognitive failure. In the experience of shock a person successfully cognizes a real event, occurrence, or fact, but she fails to make sense of it or to understand what she saw or experienced in light of her other practical and epistemic commitments. Shock is a cognitive crisis precisely because it involves a conflict in our cognitive capacities: we see but cannot comprehend; witness but cannot understand. Furthermore, shock caused by extreme violence is an extreme kind of shock, but there might be more moderate kinds of shock that share the same essential features without having the same lasting or debilitating impact. Consider, in comparison, the shock of city life. * * * Part 4: In his account of the modern city, Walter Benjamin drew on Freud’s account of shock and trauma. In “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”, Benjamin argues that shock, and particularly the experience of shock that is distinctive of the modern metropolis, is at the center of Baudelaire’s artistic work. The modern city constitutes a new condition of existence, according to Benjamin, and a new way of relating to other people. Benjamin cites Paul Valéry’s observation: The inhabitant of the great urban center (…) reverts to a state of savagery—that is, of isolation. The feeling of being dependent on others,

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which used to be kept alive by need, is gradually blunted in the smooth functioning of the social mechanism. Any improvement of this mechanism eliminates certain modes of behavior and emotions. (Benjamin 1969: 174)

And Benjamin adds: “Comfort isolates; on the other hand, it brings those enjoying it closer to mechanization” (ibidem.). Benjamin describes this process of mechanization, from the invention of the match, around the middle of the nineteenth century, to that of the telephone, and, of course, the camera. Through the creation of these and other machines, new experiences emerged, and all these machines and experiences came together in the modern city. Haptic experiences of this kind were joined by optic ones, such as are supplied by the advertising pages of a newspaper or the traffic of a big city. Moving through this traffic involves the individual in a series of shocks and collisions. At dangerous intersections, nervous impulses flow through him in rapid succession, like the energy from a battery. Baudelaire speaks of a man who plunges into the crowd as into a reservoir of electric energy. (idem., 175)

Benjamin is interested in what happens when shocking, external stimuli repeat themselves regularly. He argues that the perception and conduct of the city dweller—like that of the factory worker, that of the film viewer, and that of the gambler—are regulated by sequences of shocks. “Technology has subjected the human sensorium to a complex kind of training”, he says (ibidem.). In these different environments, people act as if they “adapted themselves to the machines and could express themselves only automatically” (idem., 176). According to the Freudian model, consciousness adjusts itself in response to shock in order to subsume the past event and prevent shocks by similar events in the future. What Benjamin noticed is that this Freudian mechanism (or some mechanism like it) can be manipulated. Shock can be used to shape and direct an individual’s consciousness. The camera—like the conveyor belt to which the factory worker is bound or the game of chance in which the gambler is enthralled—was a new technology for the reshaping of the mind. A technology founded on a simple principle:

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The greater the share of the shock factor in particular impressions, the more constantly consciousness has to be alert as a screen against stimuli; the more efficiently it does so, the less do these impressions enter experience (Efahrung), tending to remain in the sphere of a certain hour in one’s life (Erlebnis). (idem., 163)

The distinction between “experience” and “a certain hour in one’s life” is crucial for understanding the phenomenon Benjamin is describing. Unlike a singular incident of shock, which can, in principle, be made sense of retroactively, repeated shocks undermine the mind’s ability to weave external stimuli into meaningful experiences that make up a coherent whole. A shock inducing system forces the mind to create a protective shield, but one that is unable to incorporate the shocking stimuli as memory into consciousness. The system thereby numbs the mind to any particular instance of shock-inducing stimulus. The modern man, “capable only of a reflex reaction” (idem., 178), is “cheated out of his experience” (idem., 180). The Freudian model construes shock as a form of injury to the mind, but the sinister aspect of the systematic manipulation of shock that Benjamin describes calls our attention to the fact that unlike other injuries, shock has a cognitive element: it purports to register something in the world, it is about something. In the cases of trauma Freud considered, the mind recovers by coming to understand the shocking occurrence, but Benjamin suggests that in the modern city this process is stymied. In the city, the injury of shock diminishes with the diminishment in a person’s ability to understand or even to notice its cause. Shock is thus blunted without regard to its content, and the injury heals at the expense of cognition. We anticipate the shock but cannot cognize it, neither in the moment of its occurrence nor in retrospect. Our mind effectively blinds us to the shocking events that occur to us. * * * Part 5: A friend told me a story that might illustrate the difference between these two kinds of shock reactions—the singular shock of a particular event and the systematic shock of Benjamin’s modern man. My friend, call him S, served as an officer in the Israeli army. On one occasion, he was leading his team into a Palestinian village in the West Bank

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to carry out an arrest. The mission went sideways, as they say in the movies, and S led his soldiers in pursuit of the wanted persons through the streets and alleyways of the village. In the midst of all the confusion, one of S’s soldiers fired several shots and two uninvolved civilians were badly injured. S did his best to give them initial medical assistance, but it was clear from the injuries that even if they survive they would never fully recover. This event shook S to the core and, eventually, led to his discharge from the military. A year or so after his discharge, S went on a first date with a woman he met, call her K. They decided to go to the movies to watch A History of Violence, a film directed by David Cronenberg. Cronenberg is one of the main originators of a genre known as “body horror”, and his movies often include extreme, and extremely gory violence. As the film went on, S became worried that K is deeply distressed by the violence shown on screen and kept suggesting they leave the theatre. K, however, insisted that they stay through till the end. When the film finally ended and they walked out, S was a nervous wreck but K seemed perfectly calm. She liked the film and wasn’t bothered by the violence. S realized that for K, the images of broken bones and gushing blood did not seem real. But he, who witnessed similar violence firsthand, found the images unbearably real. “This is exactly what it looks like when someone’s leg is shot off!”, he told me. They never went on a second date. What made the images of violence less real for K is not that they failed to faithfully depict the injuries they purported to show, nor that she mistakenly thought they were unrealistic. What made them unreal was that she experienced them in a context in which shocking images are to be expected and enjoyed. Like most trained movie-goers, she could not experience a film as reality. To be sure, she might have been shocked by the violence and gore in the movie, but if so it was only in the way one is shocked by a film. S, by contrast, could not detach these images from the images he had seen in (the context of ) reality and which he has since struggled to make sense of. His trauma bypassed his movie-goer reflexes. In thinking back of the gradual numbing of my shock at the West Bank checkpoints, it occurs to me that I was transitioning from the kind of shock S experienced to the kind of subdued shock K experienced in watching the film. Of course, K was right that the violence in the movie wasn’t real. But I, in the checkpoints, wasn’t watching a film. For me, real people

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became less real. Maybe in trying to hold on to the initial shock of terrorizing people, I was trying to resist a “training” of my impulses that threatened to blind me to the reality of my actions and the people they impacted. * * * Part 6: It is possible to understand philosophy as the systematic avoidance of realities we cannot bear: philosophy as a defense against shock. For instance, Bernard Williams describes the history of moral philosophy as the history of attempts to justify, redeem, deny, or forget suffering (Williams 1996/2006). There is, he writes, Leibniz’s theodicy, according to which this world is the best of all possible worlds; or Hegel’s teleological view of history, according to which the horrors are rendered worthwhile by the achievements they make possible; and even Schopenhauer, who rejected Hegel’s triumphalist teleology, held that life, with all its suffering, is redeemed by art. Modern forms of moral philosophy, Williams argues, tend to avoid the problem by looking away, so to speak. Modern moral theories—whether of Kantian or consequentialist stripe—focus on the rational agent and on moral restrictions on her intentions to change the world. With this focus, moral theories overlook “the very plain fact that everything that an agent most cares about typically comes from, and can be ruined by, uncontrollable necessity and chance” (idem., 54). Consider the suffering caused by the current global pandemic. To moralize this global event is to deny its arbitrariness and inexplicability and present it as somehow justified or worthwhile. But modern moral theory doesn’t exactly moralize such suffering, according to Williams, it mostly has nothing to say about it (or, more precisely, it has nothing to say about the part of the suffering we could not have prevented and cannot change.) Indeed, Williams claims moral theory successfully sidesteps the prospect of being shocked by arbitrary and inevitable suffering by ignoring it altogether. Therefore, both past and modern moral philosophy is an attempt to numb the mind to shocking realities we cannot avoid, undo, or change. Insofar as philosophy successfully defends the mind from such shock, it trades in truthfulness and is oblivious to a real and important human concern. In this respect, moral philosophy according to Williams is analogous to city life according to Benjamin.

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An exception to moral philosophy’s tradition of bad faith, says Williams, is provided by Nietzsche. Nietzsche rejected redemptive stories about suffering. He sought a way to be truthful about the horrors without “being crushed by them” (idem., 53). The only truthful response, Nietzsche thought, is a fully conscious refusal to be crushed and a conclusive affirmation of one’s life. The possibility and difficulty of such a response are captured by the thought experiment of eternal recurrence, in which one must be prepared to will everything, with every horror and every hideous triviality, to happen endlessly over again. Williams is doubtful of the prospects of Nietzsche’s solution and calls our attention, instead, to the capacity of certain forms of fiction to allow us to truthfully confront the horrors. In fact, this, too, is a theme of Nietzsche’s, namely, that works of art can allow us to contemplate certain things in honesty without being crushed by them. Williams writes: “When (…) he [i.e., Nietzsche] said that we have art so that we do not perish from the truth he did not mean that we use art in order to escape from the truth: he meant that we have art so that we can both grasp the truth and not perish from it” (idem., 58). Williams is suggesting that fictional horrors can help us understand real ones without offering relief, justification, or redemption, on the one hand, and without traumatizing us, on the other. Fictional horrors are not shocking (at least not in the debilitating way that real horrors are), they do not crush us, and we can therefore bear them without diverting our eyes or invoking stories of redemption. Consider an example: Gerhard Richter made a series of paintings of members of the Baader-Meinhof group, a radical left group that had become notorious in Germany for executing kidnappings and terror attacks in the late 1960s. The group was finally caught and imprisoned, and the series’ title, October 18, 1977, marks the day the bodies of the leaders of the group were found in their prison cells. Richter made his paintings on the basis of photographs of members of the group, including photographs of their dead bodies. He later commented on these works: “the photograph provokes horror, and the painting—with the same motif—something more like grief. That comes very close to what I intended” (Richter 2009: 229).

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I take Richter to mean that the painting of the corpse creates a distance that is necessary for the pensiveness of grief, whereas the photograph is too close to what it depicts and therefore elicits shock and lends itself to the excitement of voyeurism and pornography. Coming too close can be distorting. What affords us a clear view of the dead body of Ulrike Meinhof is precisely the distance created by the painting. As Williams suggests, fiction, and art more generally, has an important ethical role: it enables us to grasp the truth without being crushed by it. * * * Part 7: In line with the idea that we might better understand reality if we look at it through the lens of fiction, I propose to reflect on our current state of shock in this time of a global pandemic, and on the nature of shock itself, through a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Man of the Crowd” (Poe 2015). Benjamin, too, opens his discussion of the shock of city life with this story, which Baudelaire translated and—Benjamin claims—was influenced by. The epigraph of the story, taken from La Bruyère, already seems pertinent to our times of social distancing and zoom-socializing: “the misery of being unable to be alone” (“Ce grand malheur, de ne pouvoir être seul”) (idem., 163). The story begins, enigmatically, with statements about a certain German book that “does not permit itself to be read”, about a conscience “so heavy in horror” that it cannot divulge its secrets, and about “the essence of all crime” that remains buried (ibidem.). Immediately thereafter begins a tale that initially seems entirely unrelated to the dark, cryptic messages of the opening paragraph. The story is set in London and the narrator is a man who, after a long illness, goes out again for the first time to the busy streets, with “a calm but inquisitive interest in every thing”. In the evening of an autumn day, he sits by the window of a big coffee house, smokes a cigar, reads a paper, and looks over the other guests. But his interest is drawn to the throng of people passing by his window in the street. This latter is one of the principal thoroughfares of the city, and had been very much crowded during the whole day. But, as the darkness came on, the throng momently increased; and, by the time the lamps were well

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lighted, two dense and continuous tides of population were rushing past the door. At this particular period of the evening I had never before been in a similar situation, and the tumultuous sea of human heads filled me, therefore, with a delicious novelty of emotion. I gave up, at length, all care of things within the hotel, and became absorbed in contemplation of the scene without. (idem., 167)

The narrator proceeds to describe different types of characters as they are passing by—their looks, conduct, and gestures. By far the greater number of those who went by had a satisfied business-­like demeanor, and seemed to be thinking only of making their way through the press. Their brows were knit, and their eyes rolled quickly; when pushed against by fellow-wayfarers they evinced no symptom of impatience, but adjusted their clothes and hurried on. Others, still a numerous class, were restless in their movements, had flushed faces, and talked and gesticulated to themselves, as if feeling in solitude on account of the very denseness of the company around. When impeded in their progress, these people suddenly ceased muttering, but re-doubled their gesticulations, and awaited, with an absent and overdone smile upon the lips, the course of the persons impeding them. If jostled, they bowed profusely to the jostlers, and appeared overwhelmed with confusion (…) They were undoubtedly noblemen, merchants, attorneys, tradesmen, stock-­jobbers. (ibidem.)

Benjamin notes that Poe attributes to the high-ranking employees the same restless dejection he attributes to the riffraff. Poe “deals with people, pure and simple”, Benjamin writes, “for him there was something menacing in the spectacle they presented” (Benjamin 1969: 172). And yet the spectacle is engrossing. The narrator, somehow both drawn and repulsed by the sight of the masses, seems to manage to discipline them, so to speak, by analyzing them and producing a taxonomy of city dwellers. But then—and this is where the plot, if it can be called that, begins—the narrator notices a man he cannot decipher. With my brow to the glass, I was thus occupied in scrutinizing the mob, when suddenly there came into view a countenance (that of a decrepit old man, some sixty-five or seventy years of age)—, a countenance which at once arrested and absorbed my whole attention, on account of the absolute

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idiosyncrasy of its expression. Any thing even remotely resembling that expression I had never seen before (…) As I endeavored, during the brief minute of my original survey, to form some analysis of the meaning conveyed, there arose confusedly and paradoxically within my mind, the ideas of vast mental power, of caution, of penuriousness, of avarice, of coolness, of malice, of blood-thirstiness, of triumph, of merriment, of excessive terror, of intense—of supreme despair. I felt singularly aroused, startled, fascinated. “How wild a history,” I said to myself, “is written within that bosom!” Then came a craving desire to keep the man in view—to know more of him. Hurriedly putting on an overcoat, and seizing my hat and cane, I made my way into the street, and pushed through the crowd in the direction which I had seen him take; for he had already disappeared. With some little difficulty I at length came within sight of him, approached, and followed him closely, yet cautiously, so as not to attract his attention. (Poe 2015: 168–169)

The narrator follows the “decrepit old man” all night and all day through the foggy, rainy, streets of London. Whenever the old man reaches a less crowded street, he walks more slowly, loses his sense of purpose and becomes hesitant. Whenever the old man finds a large, dense crowd again, he speeds up and walks intently, pushing through the crowd, until he finally turns, retraces his steps, and makes his way through once again. When the crowd dwindles, the old man hurries elsewhere. As the night progresses and the streets empty, the old man becomes more desperate. When finally a crowd of people came out of a theater after a show, the narrator saw “the old man gasp as if for breath while he threw himself amid the crowd; but I thought that the intense agony of his countenance had, in some measure, abated” (idem., 171). The race continues as the night grows desolate and the old man walks through the poorest parts of the city, surrounded by “the most abandoned of a London populace … reeling to and fro” (ibidem.). The man descends into “something even more intense than despair” but never relents. With the new day, people swarm the streets again and the man continues to pursue the crowds till dusk. Finally, the anticipated confrontation occurs: as the shades of the second evening came on, I grew wearied unto death, and, stopping fully in front of the wanderer, gazed at him steadfastly in the face. He noticed me not, but resumed his solemn walk, while I, ceasing to follow, remained absorbed in contemplation. “This old man,” I said at

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length, “is the type and the genius of deep crime. He refuses to be alone. He is the man of the crowd. It will be in vain to follow; for I shall learn no more of him, nor of his deeds. The worst heart of the world is a grosser book than the ‘Hortulus Animæ,’ and perhaps it is but one of the great mercies of God that ‘er lässt sich nicht lesen.’ [it does not permit itself to be read].” (idem., 174)

There are two cravings in Poe’s story: the narrator’s craving to know and understand the old man and his secrets, and the old man’s craving to be among the crowds. The story describes the fierce competition between these urges, and the outcome of the competition turns out to have moral and metaphysical implications. But why should these two longings be in competition with each other to begin with? That is, why does the narrator, upon coming to terms with the old man’s refusal to be alone, conclude that the old man cannot be understood and his secrets cannot be known? The implicit assumption in the narrator’s inference is that only a person who can bear to be alone is a person who can be known to others. The crowd is the old man’s hiding place. His determination to be surrounded by people is also his determination to avoid his guilty conscience. His horror of being alone is his horror of his own past. By avoiding himself he keeps the truth about himself beyond the reach of others. His truth cannot be known because he cannot bear to know it. But what is it about the crowd that provides the ultimate shield from knowing oneself and being known to others? The key to answering this question is noticing that the city crowd is anything but a community. In the crowd, the old man is surrounded with the presence of people without facing the prospect of their recognition. This is why Valéry speaks of city life as ‘isolating’: it creates a new relation to others; a proximity without mutual recognition. The lack of recognition is, in fact, the trigger of the narrator’s insight in the final paragraph of the story. The narrator looks directly at the old man, but the man doesn’t notice. He doesn’t notice the narrator noticing him. The old man forgets himself in the crowd, to the point that he is no longer conscious of his own existence and of the possibility that he might be the object of another’s gaze. It is this realization that leads the narrator to the conclusion that the old man is unknowable.

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Benjamin describes the disintegration of relationships of mutual recognition as “the decline of the aura” (Benjamin 1969: 187). He says: “Looking at someone carries the implicit expectation that our look will be returned by the object of our gaze. Where this expectation is met … there is an experience of the aura to the fullest extent” (idem., 188). When the camera first appeared, says Benjamin, it was felt to be “inhuman” and “deadly” due to the prolonged looking into the camera, since “the camera records our likeness without returning our gaze” (ibidem.). Similarly, he writes: “Baudelaire describes eyes of which one is inclined to say that they have lost their ability to look” (idem., 189). In the city we become accustomed to experiencing the presence of others without the possibility of a relationship of any kind, and, like the man of the crowd, if to a lesser extent, this allows us to forget ourselves, to avoid ourselves, to be as absent to ourselves as we are to others. There’s a delight in this experience of being weightless. Benjamin says of Baudelaire: “He has lost himself to the spell of eyes which do not return his glance and submits to their sway without illusions” (idem., 190). This might as well be said of the old man of the crowd, and once the narrator gives up the hope of recognition, it might be said of him, too. Or maybe the narrator, like the man of the crowd, never sought recognition to begin with. Maybe, after a long while alone due to his illness, the narrator was simply delighted—indeed, desperate—to step outside into the crowd, and get lost. * * * Part 8: City life, according to Benjamin, is arranged so as to undermine the possibility of mutual recognition over time; it achieves this by the systematic employment of shock. I do not mean to endorse the proposal wholesale—it seems to capture something true and important but it strikes me as too sweeping. I am also not sure the phenomenon first emerged with the modern city, nor do I mean to equate the shock of war with the shock of the boulevards of nineteenth-century Paris.2 However, the idea that a systematic change in one’s relation to oneself and to others can change the significance of shock is illuminating when applied to the West Bank checkpoints.  For a critique of the idea that ‘the shock of the city’ is comparable to trauma, see Samuels 2010.

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The initial shock of witnessing people being humiliated is itself an expression of their “aura”, in Benjamin’s sense. As we have seen, shock is an indication of a cognitive crisis: given one’s commitments, one cannot comprehend how a person, who has the capacity to return one’s gaze, can be treated in this way. A relation to another that is based on sheer force is a relation that excludes the possibility of mutual recognition; such a relation is shocking only when the possibility of mutual recognition is presupposed.3 I take the possibility of mutual recognition to be the mark of a moral relation to another. Thus, shock, in this context, is the manifestation of crisis in one’s moral relationship to another. The norms that define and constitute the moral relationship have been violated. However, the crisis in the relationship is a sign of one’s commitment to it. And there is, in principle, the possibility of moral repair.4 But once a relationship of sheer force becomes systematic and therefore predictable, one can no longer assume the possibility of mutual recognition and therefore struggles to recognize what has been lost. The ongoing violation of norms amounts to the gradual dissolution of one’s commitment to them. The eyes of the helpless gradually cease to carry in them the capacity to return one’s gaze. At the extreme, ‘humiliation’ ceases to be the right word—from the point of view of the new, morally  I do not pretend to have offered an account of mutual recognition here, nor of a relationship based on the possibility of mutual recognition. How to understand these ideas is a difficult matter (for an influential account, see Honneth 1992). The only thing I want to insist on here is that we can have a sense of what mutual recognition (and the possibility of it) is, even if we don’t have a satisfactory analysis of it. Similarly, I do not offer an account of the distinction between a relationship of sheer force and a relationship based on the possibility of mutual recognition. But we admit such a distinction when we contrast coercion or exploitation with relations of basic equality and dignity. Of course, there are rival accounts of these ideas as well. All I need for the purposes of the present essay is to be granted the distinction. My use of the distinction is not meant to be partial to any one analysis, though what I say about it, if plausible, might be seen as an adequacy-constraint on a plausible analysis. 4  My suggestion—i.e., that a relationship of mutual recognition is a moral relationship that is constituted by certain norms and that shock is a response to the violation of these norms while at the same time an expression of one’s commitment to them—is similar to Agnes Callard’s view of anger. Callard argues that anger is how we value a relationship whose constitutive norms have been violated: 3

My violation of a norm constitutive of our relationship is a failure to care about what we can only care about together. When I defect, I reduce you to anger. Anger is the form that your co-valuation of our relationship takes in response to the action by which I (seem to you to) withdraw from co-valuing with you. Because you cannot care (value) together with me, you care about (are angered by) it. (Callard 2017: 130)

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corrupt relationship, there’s no one to humiliate. ‘Management’ seems more appropriate. The shock dissipates because it is the last stronghold of a moral relationship that has ceased to exist; the absence of the relationship is itself a moral failing. Yet the soldier’s need for recognition remains, especially as there is now no one who can recognize him as superior. The camera, with its blank, black lens, promises to satisfy this need. The eye of the camera tells him: “someone will see you”. The photograph can only shock a person who is neither a subject nor an enforcer of military occupation. To be shocked by it is to express one’s commitment to the possibility of mutual recognition with regard to the individuals in the photograph.5 But that possibility depends on the nature of one’s relationship to these individuals over time. Those who live in this reality of brute force cannot reasonably expect mutual recognition, though perhaps they might keep faith that one day it will be possible. Shock is morally significant not merely because or in so far as it might lead to action; it is morally significant because it is an essential feature of the kind of relationship we take ourselves to bear to the people whose treatment shocks us. It is an expression of our commitment to the moral norms that define and constitute this relationship. But when we no longer bear the relevant relationship to these people because we are not in fact committed to its norms, then our shock, if it persists at all, is at best an expression of our moral pretensions and at worst a condemnation of impropriety or bad taste. When, in the checkpoints, I tried to hold on to my sense of shock, I failed to understand that, over time, one cannot recognize a person as a person without treating her so. When all that is left of a moral relationship is the shock of its destruction, the shock itself is but a mere impulse, which stands for nothing and soon dies out.

 Here the “possibility of mutual recognition” cannot be understood too literally, since any actual encounter between the viewer and the individuals in the photo might in fact be impossible due to distance in time and place. This is precisely why I avoid offering a full account of what “the possibility of recognition” amounts to. Perhaps a counterfactual account of this possibility is needed, but I cannot examine this question within the limits of this paper. Still, I insist, we can have a sense of there being such a possibility even if we struggle to spell out what it amounts to. 5

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Acknowledgment  This paper was written while I was in quarantine, during the first lockdown due to COVID-19, yet in writing it I resorted to the wisdom and insight of others. An early draft of this paper was presented (online) at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows. I thank my friends and colleagues at the Buber Society for their valuable comments. For generous and helpful conversations on drafts of the paper, I thank Ulrika Carlsson and Liran Razinsky. For astute written comments, I am grateful to Chiara Caradonna, Antonio Vargas, and Vida Yao. The writing of the paper was supported by the Martin Buber Society of Fellows in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Hebrew University.

References Benjamin, Walter. 1969. On Some Motifs in Baudelaire. In Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, 155–200. New  York, NY: Schocken Books [1940]. Berger, John. 1972. Photographs of Agony. In his About Seeing (1980), 41–44. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Calder, Todd. 2018. The Concept of Evil. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N.  Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/ concept-evil/. Callard, Agnes. 2017. The Reason to be Angry Forever. In The Moral Psychology of Anger, ed. M. Cherry and O. Flanagan, 123–137. London: Rowman & Littlefield International. Freud, Sigmund. 1961. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Translated by James Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton, [1920]. Honneth, Axel. 1992. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995. Klaas, Brian. 2020. After Three Years of Trump, We’ve Lost Our Ability to be Shocked. The Washington Post, January 14. https://www.washingtonpost. com/opinions/2020/01/14/after-three-years-trump-weve-lost-our-abilitybe-shocked/. Miller, Christopher R. 2015. Surprise: The Poetics of the Unexpected from Milton to Austen. Cornell University Press. Poe, Edgar Allan. 2015. The Man of the Crowd. In The Annotated Poe, ed. Kevin J. Hayes, 163–174. Harvard University Press, [1840]. Richter, Gerhard. 1988. Tote (Dead), Oil on Canvas, Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art. New York.

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———. 2009. Conversation with Jan Thorn-Prikker Concerning the 18 October 1977 Cycle, 1989. In Gerhard Richter. Text. Writings, Interviews and Letters 1961–2007, trans. David Britt, London, UK: Thames & Hudson. Samuels, Maurice. 2010. Trauma on the Boulevard. Romanic Review 101 (1–2): 115–127. Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York, NY: Picador. Williams, Bernard. 1996/2006. The Women of Trachis: Fictions, Pessimism, Ethics. Originally appeared in The Greeks and Us: Essays in Honor of Arthur W.  H. Adkins, ed. Robert B.  Louden and Paul Schollmeier. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 43–53. Reproduced in Myles Burnyeat (ed.). The Sense of the Past: Essay in the History of Philosophy, 49–59. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Emotional Shock and Ethical Conversion Ana Falcato

1

Introduction

Emotions have long stopped being taken as mere ‘itches’ of sensibility or mood disturbances affecting the behavior of the human being under their grip. Philosophers and social scientists continue to emphasize that emotions have both histories and intentional structures and that their development in each individual’s psyche, as well as their peculiar attachment to character, impact both the moral outlook of the individual and the dispositional framework that sets him or her apart from others.1 Emotions are a sign of character. But how exactly should one characterize the (first-hand) experience of an emotional shock? On all accounts, suddenness and damage to self- and world-apprehension seem to lie at the essence of what occurs when one experiences an emotional shock. One’s immediate apperception of one’s environment is disrupted, and the usual, unreflective anticipation of external micro-events is suddenly put in jeopardy.  Cf. Sartre, Esquisse d’une théorie des émotions (Sartre 2000); Bernard Williams, ‘Morality and the Emotions’ (Williams 1976); Wollheim, R. On Emotions. (Wollheim 1999). 1

A. Falcato (*) IFILNOVA, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. Falcato, S. Graça da Silva (eds.), The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8_9

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With good reason, we commonly describe what happens when we are suddenly shaken by a deeply emotionally disturbing outside event through the language of receiving an electric shock. In the one case, our skin and muscles absorb a convulsive pulse that can ultimately lead to burning and paralysis; in the other, our dispositional apprehension of outside information is shifted in ways that can lead to numbness and inarticulateness. In this paper, I concentrate on the force of this metaphor, which is meant to account for the similarity between a physical event and a psychological experience. Drawing on detailed descriptions of moments in which the stability of our apperception of the external world is forcefully disrupted and the impression of a shock is paramount, I make a case for the (personal) ethical conversion to which it can lead. A further detail that I will briefly touch on concerns the seemingly contradictory disproportionality of the immediacy of the shock’s impact and the slow pace of recovery; whereas the damaging effects of such experiences on sensibility are altogether sudden, recovery can be slow, resembling a process of mourning—or, alternatively, of forgetting.

2

 eceiving the Shock and Processing R the Damage

A remarkable generation of brilliant young men who came of age around the outbreak of the First World War (1914) described how an entire world(view) that had already been bruised over the previous decade finally collapsed, bringing with it a dangerous cocktail of emotions ranging from sheer despair to an almost delirious hope for an unpredictable future (Zweig 1964; White 1998; De Warren 2019). Indeed, one of the bittersweet legacies of the calamities of the past century is the fact that an entire cultural heritage was not only constructed during the two World Wars but also, in a sense, their most straightforward outcome. If we pay close attention to the accounts and private statements of some of the

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most illustrious members of the so-called Lost Generation, we are likely to be struck by what we might call a pattern of anticipation of universal calamity that had settled even within the ranks of the European Intelligentsia (for it is always easier to trace the opinions of those with a voice in the public domain than the thoughts of the poor layman, who was certainly more affected by these events). Would it be fair to claim, then, that (fear of ) calamity and the expression of genius are simply two acts in the same drama? In a way, such a claim is not even polemic, for life-threatening experiences usually elicit reflection and demand expression. My purpose in this essay is critical rather than invocative, however; I aim to focus on the personal impact of a type of shock that can indeed cause our most primitive certainties to collapse—just as one can imagine a declaration of war would—while bringing with it something as self-assuring as an outburst of genius. I am dealing here with a notion that is rather loaded from a historical and philosophical perspective—that of ‘genius’—and it is wise to keep its conceptual nuances in sight. Thus, in speaking of an ‘outburst of genius’, I am (also) referring to an uncommon grasp of a given state of affairs, in which the understanding finds itself at pains to encompass its innermost findings and is overwhelmed by its fundamental tasks. After and due to the shock, one understands too much rather than feeling numbed or paralyzed by the impact. (Thus a more pedestrian understanding of the notion of ‘genius’ is equally at play in my interpretive proposal.) In modern philosophy, the notion of genius was given its own arena of intellectual discussion—and that in spite (or because) of the fact that its main features run against the basic tenets of a deeply rooted theoretical assumption. In fact, while the critical project insisted on the indispensability of the mediating role of sensibility in human knowledge, a whole range of child prodigies and notable figures working in pretty much every sphere of public intellectual life at the time Kant himself was writing bore witness to the opposite state of affairs. In what concerns the specific aim of this chapter, Kant’s project as a whole has relevant affinities with my presumption that there is an essential link between the disturbing impact of an affective shock and a kind of intellectual insight, not only regarding the strictly cognitive interplay

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of the human faculties—as Kant’s approach to human knowledge would insist—but also given the deeply revealing fact that, from the early decades of his career on, Kant viewed aesthetics and morals as inseparable.2 If on deeper analysis this overlap signified nothing more than a crossover between perception and moral feeling (or moral sense), as is sometimes assumed by interpreters of Kant’s philosophy in the analytic tradition (cf.: Williams 1985; McDowell 1998), it would be difficult to account for more complex moral phenomena, in which an entire history of human interaction, emotional growth and imponderable expectations are set in place without our realizing it. The experience of emotional shock that I wish to examine in some detail in this chapter does indeed link the ethical dimension of a lived moment to its aesthetic nuances, but the way this is done presupposes a human history that both connects the lived episode with past ones and allows for the anticipation of future events that the shocking moment immediately forecloses. Time is doubtless in the essence of such an episode, but so is warranted decision. I would like to focus my analysis on a typical kind of moment in which the experience of shock not only brings an added layer of sense to what is apperceived but connects the key event with many preceding episodes, none of which were experienced as emotionally ‘extreme’. These anticipating moments were in no way experienced as shocking incidents (they may even have been pleasant, impersonal or utterly irrelevant) but are now suddenly compacted as remote previews of the emotional imbalance currently being felt. Because I am dealing here with an extremely slippery situation, and because I am keen to dismantle certain misconceived views on its ethical impact on the subject through providing a tentative phenomenological account of its inner workings, it is important not to conflate this kind of diachronic experience—or set of interrelated experiences—with a narrative overview or recapitulation. When I claim that the moment of the shock in fact discloses a whole range of marginal but tightly connected phenomena—phenomena that are existentially linked to the present one,  Cf. ‘Observations on the feeling of the Beautiful and the sublime’ (1764); ‘Essay on the maladies of the head’ (1764); (cf. Kant 2007). 2

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although they are dispersed across time—I am far from assuming that the connection in question is a narrative one. It is not as if the subject suddenly begins to articulate or rearticulate past episodes that bear a direct relation to the present one—either an interpersonal relation or a mere sequential connection now invoked by memory. Narrative is too complex and telling, too demanding, to be appropriately associated with what is suddenly understood when one is in a state of shock. One must therefore come to understand—as I will struggle to explain in my discussion and analysis of the examples below—that although the timing of an insight is crucial to the kind of experience I am attempting to account for here, the emotional shock proper does not fit into the mold of a narrative. With this said, any form of linguistic clothing that is deployed to share a first-person experience—a possibility as open to linguistic creatures like ourselves as any other—will both distort and untether the key experience from its quid, distorting its emotionally meaningful content. What is thereby conveyed is a secondary version of such a happening, experienced as a different event. At this point, it is perhaps worth recalling which understanding of ‘emotion’ am I dealing with here. More specifically: what kind of variation on the key philosophical theme of ‘emotion’ is the shock at stake in the present analysis? Because it is at once deep and provocative, I will support my own analysis of this phenomenon with Bernard Williams’s longstanding model for restoring the relevance of emotions to contemporary philosophical debate and—much more importantly—to our common moral life. Williams spent about half of his academic life being instructed by members of the Ordinary Language Philosophy circle—and another half destroying that inheritance. What makes his work so interesting is its unfinished nature, not in the sense that he did not write as much as he could have or left behind unpublished manuscripts and notes, but because some of his core ideas deserve to be re-written with the support of a new method, through which they can be fleshed out and more widely understood. In spite of his genius and his philosophical non-conformism, Williams was a son of his time and education, and the philosophical framework in which he set his work never moved beyond the sight of the analytic tradition.

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My intent here, however, is to cross this threshold so as to unpack some of his ideas with another set of tools—tools that are less constrained by a commitment to linguistic analysis and that lie closer to a phenomenological and historical approach. My aim in this regard is based on my firm conviction that Williams’s ideas on the structure of human emotions cannot receive (and have not received) the theoretical treatment they deserve under the formal constraints of linguistic analysis (cf. Falcato 2019). In his seminal paper from 1957, ‘Morality and the Emotions’, Williams makes an early but impressive effort not only to restore the value of emotions in the sphere of morality—his antipathy toward the philosophical notion of ‘morality’ was not as strong at that point as it would later become3—but also to deploy a personal view of what human emotions themselves can be and what they accomplish in our common life. For Williams, emotions and emotional expressions always arise under the aegis of a given set of character traits and a personal ethical outlook, underlying our moral character while lending strength, color and vividness to our particular responses to human situations. They can be reduced neither to one’s tone of voice, nor to the inflection of one’s utterances, nor to one’s behavior; they do not embody a natural given, predictable or even unavoidably occurrent under such and such external circumstances. However timidly—for this is an association he does not develop—in the seminal 1957 essay Williams alludes to Rousseau’s ‘moral republic’ (Williams 1976: 227) as one that can bind its citizens via the heart rather than reason, even presupposing a pronounced contrast between individual characters and dispositions, thus making of interpersonal differences a form of collective strength rather than an impediment to moral growth. In a key passage in the text, we find the following: I am suggesting, then, that reference to a man’s emotions has a significance for our understanding of his moral sincerity, not as a substitute for, or just an addition to, the considerations drawn from how he acts, but as, on  Cf. Williams, B. ‘Morality: The Peculiar Institution’. In Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2011. 3

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o­ ccasion, underlying our understanding of how he acts. […] what is relevant for our understanding of his moral disposition is not whether there are (in our view) grounds or reasons for action of that sort, but whether he takes there to be; whether he sees the situation in a certain light. And there is no reason to suppose that we can necessarily understand him as seeing it in that light without reference to the emotional structure of his thought and action (Williams 1976: 223).

It may be hard to see how such a rich conception of the emotions and their impact on our common ethical life could possibly account for the kind of disturbing episode one experiences when one feels as though one is caught in a trap, suffering a shock that momentarily bars meaningful action—whether physical motion or short-term decision-making. For one of the peculiarities of emotional shock is the impression that it happens to us without being anticipated—let alone as embodying a personal response emanating from our character or life story. Can one even count it as an emotion, as described above? Such is indeed my claim, but to understand its implications one must come to see that the shock itself is a meaningful byproduct of many previous situations in which the undeniable mark of selfhood was experienced as such. The meaningful shock one experiences upon receiving disturbing and unexpected information corresponding to a worldly state of affairs the very existence of which one was, up to that point, unware of, can only have the emotional impact it does because it is the terminus ad quem of a long chain of events. In other words, one is shocked when one receives the disturbing information only because that episode is linked to, and brings to a close, a whole sequence of disparate moments that only then gain final significance as a unified, meaningful story. Understanding how a psychologically shattering moment can help us to make sense of otherwise half-forgotten threads in our life experience is at least as challenging as encapsulating the content of an experience that pulls the rug out from under one’s feet in consistent verbal terms. Ultimately, such difficulties have to do with the deeply paradoxical effect that the shocking episode has upon the subject. We know how difficult it can be to manage, in emotional terms, personal loss, an act of treachery, infidelity, the loss of a job, and many other

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kinds of unforeseeable traumatic experiences. Contrary to the complex phenomenology of this kind of emotional shock, such situations usually occur against a background context that makes it easier, at least easier for the subject, to identify what lies behind (and before, i.e., which events precede) the moment of the terrible blow. What differentiates the shock, as I have been describing it to this point, from other, similar, experiences, is its lack of grounding and proper explanatory framework—something that contributes to its association with a feeling of isolation in one’s immediate field of experience. ‘Processing the damage’ of the shattering moment is part and parcel of understanding what happened when one was ineradicably surprised by the unexpected ‘assault’ of the disturbing information—or, to be even more precise: the indirect, non-confrontational impact of the deeds of another human agent on one’s unreflective sequential grasp of worldly phenomena as they present themselves to one: the breeze across one’s skin, the noise of children playing in the playground, the barking of the dog, the continuous noise of a machine reaching from afar. Processing the damage of an emotional shock amounts to understanding where, from an intentional standpoint, it stems from. The following will explore this complex mental exercise in further detail, through the analysis of a fictional example.

3

In the Flesh

Imagine you are in a room full of people you barely know. Because this is a rather formal meeting with no foreseeable impact on your personal plans or immediate goals, you don’t quite manage to pull your thoughts away from other, more pressing daily, long-term concerns. To be honest, this meeting does not interest you all that much. You came here because you were invited, someone talked you into it, or because you believed the topic might be relevant in the long run. People whisper among themselves, and someone is at the front of the room giving a presentation. You came in late and missed the beginning of the talk, which makes it even harder for you to follow the bulky details of the exuberant PowerPoint presentation. You turn to your belongings,

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your laptop, the personal files on your desktop, a scuff on your boots, the silly expression on your neighbor’s face. You miss the core of the discussion and cannot wait for it to come to a close. Then, all of a sudden, a personal message pops up in your email inbox: amidst the colorful mess and indiscreetness of a personal Microsoft webpage, it looks trivial—however out of context—and you lazily click on the icon to open it. It is suddenly as if the floor opened up under your feet, and the room—the distant faces across the table, the big wooden surface on which you rest your arms—itself begins to crash, in slow motion. Although you’re not sure why, your heart beats uncontrollably. Your pulse races, and the world around you begins to spin. What is going on here? What was going on when that message was written? How can one even begin to explain this uncontrollable bodily reaction? You long, of course, for the meeting to finish, to be able to leave the room. But ‘longing’—if longing indeed is the right feeling, the right word—is too articulate an impression for what is going on right now. The news in the email box was not good, to be sure, but this appraisal is both pleonastic and false, for it was just the cover of a highly complex emotional trap, the minutiae of which it will take time to unfold correctly and completely—as indeed it will, which will in turn give new meaning to the whole incident and make many previous ones clearer—but the general framework of which is altogether too plain. Doubly so: too plain to withstand a thorough explanation and too plain to be borne. This highly complex impression, double edged but utterly transparent in its overall significance and impact on a long episode in one’s life, is the shock in the shock, so to speak. In addition, precisely the way in which the shocking incident comes upon us involves the intertwinement of the nauseating sensible breakdown of our immediate field of experience and a simultaneous blow to our most deeply rooted moral certainties. For on account of the brutality of the short-term impact of such an experience, both on our pre-reflective conscious stream and on a second-order, reflective re-disposition of its main data in a clearer sequence, the first set of reactions can well be disproportionate and fail to do justice to the moral outlook of the person thus affected. One will certainly ‘overreact’ to such an incident, but the trouble with this moralistic assessment is the omission of the main

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features of its primary source. One ‘overreacts’ to what was an altogether excessive impression. Perhaps the most important feature of the shocking episode hereby described is the key element of surprise—but even this must be qualified. For in the overall incident there was doubtless a surprising span of seconds during which the global meaning of the drastic blow upon one’s circumstantial expectations regarding external events was blocked. That moment was brief, however, and the more revealing side of such a complex state of surprise is yet to come. What this means, in turn, is that the impact of such an unpleasant surprise is double and unequally spread over time. (It is important not to conflate surprise with shock in this tentative description, and in what follows I will better separate the two). The shock is sudden, quick and painful—in precisely the way that electrical shocks are. One is caught unaware and utterly unprepared for its inner content and its bodily impact, as described above (the physical impact is obviously variable, but it will mostly vary along the lines illustrated above). The shocking impact vanishes quickly, however—no matter how slowly it takes one’s bodily reaction to disappear in the end. The surprise comes, in turn, with the shocking incident, being in a certain sense its first meaningful proclamation. Its ethical import for the overall incident, however, will take much longer to unfold completely, and even the deep meaning of its damaging effect upon one’s wrecked nerves after the shock will take time to emerge. Let us pull apart the analytical threads of this complex mixture of feelings to see if we understand them better. Different theoretical approaches would consider the emotional shock experienced under the circumstances described above to be lacking in propositional content (cf. Bach 2001). What this ugly jargon means varies among theoretical models, but the underlying idea is very simple: it is about whether one can articulate the overwhelming impact of the lived instant when the shocking message reaches one in meaningful and articulated discourse. If one can do that—however at a point in time removed from the violent incident—then the crucial instant does indeed carry propositional content and can be reported in different ways to others. The shocking incident can then be put into words—this is in fact a crucial element of its follow-up effects—and it already contains a surprising

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twist that will help the affected target to put all of the parts of the incident together as a whole, to connect it logically with many previous episodes that were scarcely noticed, and so to begin to recover from the violent blow. In a certain sense, the shock turns into surprise, and it is the surprising effect of the experience upon us that will lead, in due course, to a more holistic understanding of the situation and impose a shift in one’s behavior and one’s personal ethical stance. The surprise is thus an aftereffect of the shocking incident, and it is the fruitful intertwinement of both that leads to true moral growth. One way to bring this about is to turn the surprising aftershock into an opportunity for reflection, in a non-trivial way. Departing from the initial reaction of incredulity and one’s inability to justify the shocking situation, as well as default knowledge of its real background, one will— instinctively, perhaps—try to figure out what lies behind the final outcome, the shock proper. A useful strategy in such interpretive activities is to play with different—even contrasting—points of view in order to simulate and explain the events that lie behind the personally disturbing incident. In the example depicted above—one that is structurally common nowadays, given the ways in which people communicate with each other—the sharing of information is often indirect, mediated by online artefacts that make our lives so much simpler and the need for face-to-­ face human interaction so minimal. However, it is not as if the technological rhythm of modern life is to blame for the distressing emotion under scrutiny. Quite the contrary, for no harsh emotional wound such as that typified by the example described above would be effective upon sensible creatures like ourselves were it not for its meaningful import for one’s singular life experience, in its complex zigzagging pattern, from which some key moments stand out absolutely. In other words, no indirect, mediatized communication containing bad news or a disagreeable message could provoke the emotional clash reported thus far were it not for the chord of meaningful intimacy or personal feeling it dared to touch or bring to the fore. These considerations bring us back to Bernard Williams’s decisive conception of the emotions and their resuscitated role in our common moral life, on the one hand (cf. Williams 1976, 1993), and to the second

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theoretical moral hint dropped at the opening of this essay, to the effect that such an experience can help to reorient our common, routine moral procedures—even our moral outlook as a whole. Clearly, the demanding task for someone who has suffered this shocking blow is to lend intelligibility to the puzzling and sparse manifestation of the shocking incident and its remote origin, to find its source in one’s moral being and deep-­ seated self. I have suggested that this in turn develops from the close sense of surprise and its typical inquiring mood. Moved to root out the ultimate cause or causes of the perplexing, jaw-dropping incident that left us in a deep state of disquiet and personal indignity, we will soon gather a relevant set of data, which reasonably accounts for the episode motivating the shocking response (the short message behind the tiny Microsoft icon, in my made-up story). Furthermore, a half-involuntary search for how to respond will soon settle in our mind, and similar or anticipating gestures that may somehow explain the shocking blow will come to our attention, as part of a rapid process of psychological recovery. There might be something ‘mechanical’ about this re-discovery of important elements of the story one shares with the person who stands behind the emotionally damaging episode. Like the shock itself, a sudden flow of associations and a psychological chain of images may indeed stand out in one’s immediate field of attention. It is also my firm belief that the process of recovering from the shocking incident and all that it helps one to rediscover, from recent to more remote moments, preceding it in time and even anticipating its destructive impact, stands in an utterly asymmetrical relation to the flashing time of the shock. What this means is that the psychological recovery is bound to be slow—if indeed it ever occurs. The required time for such integrated personal healing, however, does not prevent the issuing of a categorical moral judgment about the emotional shock itself and about a whole network of interrelated situations on which the present moment ultimately depends. For just as it wouldn’t be possible to be thus affected by such a seemingly trivial incident (e.g., the mere receiving of an electronic message) without sharing a story of mutual conflict and misunderstanding with the person who stands behind this maneuver, so it wouldn’t make sense for the one who sparked the event to set off the grenade that unleashed the experience of shock if she did not have a precise target in mind. Thus, neither the emotional

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response nor any further moral judgment falls out of thin air or utterly out of context. They both partake in a common interpersonal story, which now—only now—changes direction and becomes fully transparent. After the immediate shock, the lasting impression of surprise will bring with it intellectual strength and curiosity regarding scarcely detailed former meetings with the person behind the shocking blow (some of them ages old, and in terms of direct personal interaction no more than sketchy). This may be the required window for the clashing of perspectives on a single issue or on more complex personal worldviews mentioned above—and this includes, of course, intrinsic features of the shocking episode, as well as different ways of looking at it. As with any fragmented perspective on the world and any subjective stance toward a morally relevant situation in one’s life, the shocking moment and its anticipating thematic context are susceptible to several discontinuous readings and as many post-factum reports. No integrated and uniform account of this partial event, on the one hand, or the conflicting network of interrelated moves leading to the final moment of the shock-inducing action, on the other, is likely to be available. This lack of an integrated view holds, of course, both for different personal versions of the shocking incident itself (the negative impact of which affects one member of the strained relation highlighted above, but not the other—not in the way depicted in this analysis) and for many previous critical steps leading up to it. What one can be sure of, in any case, is that such a violent unexpected blow, the intrinsic details and affective nuances of which trigger the final experience of shock, will bring with it a radical decision to change our behavior toward the other party in the (emotionally) equivocal relationship. The rashness of the experience may well amount to more than that, however, for the combination of shock and surprise, their radical impact on our unreflective disposition and the corresponding second-order treatment by our longer-term reflective ability and its factual exercise, may well lead us to mend our ways with regard to the human world in which we live, to which we have a duty to respond. The violent incident may gradually lead to a decisive shift in our entire moral outlook. The emotional shock may thus turn out to be the last saving opportunity for our personal life—not only as a profoundly justified ‘excuse’ for

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engaging in thorough reflection on our life trajectory but as the last valid thread to selfhood.

4

Conclusion

I have tried to make a case for a morally sane revival and conversion of a disturbing emotional shock—an exercise that transforms a key morally distressing moment into a responsible and autonomous decision-making process. The example under scrutiny was more or less random, but it at least has the benefit of discouraging more naturalistic approaches to an altogether common psychological phenomenon in times of crisis and political rupture, favoring a more existential examination both of its impact on one’s life as a whole and its potential ethical repercussions in one’s future. In a certain sense, being shocked by external events in our human and non-human environment is a rather trivial affair. In times of natural and social catastrophe, this is even more common. What is harder to understand and uncommon in most of the analyses and multimodal accounts of a world turned upside-down that we come across every day is examination of the long-lasting moral impact of most of the calamities we must endure. It is even rarer to be given a chance to turn a calamitous event of this kind into a route for self-understanding. My main argument in this paper has followed this course. The chance to understand what has been occurring for years right under our nose in an intimate and important relationship, and was often either misunderstood or under-examined for lack of the right tools, is now paradoxically made available by the startling impact of an emotional shock. The atypical suddenness of its immediate effect upon our psychological structure and set of personal expectations may enable us to finally make sense of many mysteries in our shared human-world and to stand guard against trickiness and undesired personal projections enacted as if we were another human being. This is indeed a route towards moral growth and mature self-affirmation; from this point on, we may begin to be ourselves and to act as such.

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References Bach, K. 2001. You Don’t Say? Synthèse 128: 15–44. De Warren, N. 2019. The Poetry in the Pity. In Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity and Values, ed. Luís Aguiar de Sousa and Ana Falcato. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing. Falcato, A. 2019. Shame and Ideas of the Self: Bernard Williams, Kant and J.M. Coetzee. In Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity and Values, ed. Luís Aguiar de Sousa and Ana Falcato. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing. Kant, I. 2007. Anthropology, History and Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McDowell, J. 1998. Mind, Value and Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sartre, J.-P. 2000. Esquisse d’une théorie des émotions. Paris: LGF. White, Patrick. 1998. Flaws in the Glass: a Self-Portrait. London: Vintage. Williams, B. 1976. Morality and the Emotions. In Problems of the Self. Philosophical Papers 1956–1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1985. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Fontana Paperback and William Collins. ———. 1993. Shame and Necessity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Wollheim, R. 1999. On the Emotions. New Haven: Yale University Press. Zweig, Stefan. 1964. The World of Yesterday. University of Nebraska Press.

Making and Breaking Our Shared World: A Phenomenological Analysis of Disorientation as a Way of Understanding Collective Emotions in Distributed Cognition Pablo Fernández Velasco and Roberto Casati

Studying disorientation is studying how, through our bodies, culture and technology, we humans are connected to our environment, and what happens when this connection is weakened or severed. What happens, of course, depends again on our environment, bodies, culture and technology: the world around us becomes at times uncanny, unfamiliar or dangerous when we get disoriented. Disorientation can be exciting and refreshing—an invitation to explore, to leave behind nagging desires for control and certainty, and to embrace instead a more spontaneous relationship with our surroundings. Getting lost shapes our consciousness, not only by transforming our perception of the world around us, but by transforming our sense of who we are in that world, and what possibilities are open to us within it.

P. Fernández Velasco (*) • R. Casati Institut Jean Nicod (ENS, EHESS, CNRS), Paris, France e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. Falcato, S. Graça da Silva (eds.), The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8_10

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In this paper, we analyse the phenomenology of disorientation to elucidate the role that emotions play in distributed cognitive processes that involve multiple agents and cognitive artefacts. The feeling of disorientation destabilises our horizon of experience and turns the world around us unfamiliar or alien. This feeling embodies our disconnection to the agents (e.g. walking companions), the cognitive artefacts (e.g. maps) and the environment around us. A proper analysis of the phenomenology of both orientation and disorientation uncovers the role feelings play in distributed cognitive processes: emotions serve as a form of evaluative regulation that contributes to, on the one hand, the syncing of the different elements of a distributed cognitive process, and on the other, to the eventual disengagement of the agent from an unreliable distributed cognitive process.

1

 istributed Cognition and Situated D Approaches to Emotion

Distributed cognition is a theoretical framework developed under the idea that all instances of cognition can be understood as emerging from distributed processes (Hutchins 1995). Distributed cognitive processes may include elements at many spatial and temporal scales (Hutchins 2014). In a liberal construal, both the brain in itself (e.g. the interaction of different brain areas) and the interactions of the brain and the body, can be seen as distributed cognitive processes. On a larger scale, the interactions of humans with cognitive artefacts (e.g. in the use of a calculator), constitute an instance of distributed cognition, and, last but not least, a distributed cognitive process may also emerge from the interaction of several human agents. At an even larger scale, cultural practices within a given cognitive ecosystem (e.g. the emergence of language, as in Hutchins and Johnson 2009), can also be explored through the lens of distributed cognition. A paradigmatic example of a distributed cognitive process is the cultural practice of queuing, in which the emergent spatial arrangement of the agents’ bodies maps the order of arrival to the queue. This involves a

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cooperative social practice and often also a practice involving material objects, such as the presence of ropes indicating how the queue should form or a line on the floor indicating the appropriate distance between the first and the second person in the queue. What is particularly interesting in the case of queuing is the mental practice of seeing a physical structure (the linear arrangement of bodies) as a conceptual structure (the order of arrival), which affords certain cognitive inferences (e.g. order of arrival, estimated waiting time…). Seen in the light of distributed cognition, cultural practices such as queuing are forms of dimensionality reduction (i.e. a two-dimensional array of people on a surface is constrained into the approximation of a one-dimensional line) that increase the predictability of the situation (e.g. computing who will be next in accessing a service). Importantly, as Edwin Hutchins points out, this dimensionality reduction does not take place inside any one individual’s mind, but in the space shared by the participants of the practice (Hutchins 2005). Queueing is an example of how humans turn material patterns into representations by enacting their meanings (Hutchins 2010b). By enacting the cultural practice of queuing within the appropriate cultural context (i.e. a situation involving waiting within a society in which queuing is common), the people in line produce the phenomenal vehicle of interest and the queue’s physical array becomes an enacted representation of the order of arrival. Hutchins claims that enacted representations are dynamic (involving both memory and anticipation), multimodal (e.g. combining visual perception and bodily action), and “saturated with affect” (Hutchins 2010b: 434). To see what Hutchins has in mind, it is useful to look at the example he provides from the use of manual plotting tools during ship navigation in a U.S. Navy ship in the early 1980s (Hutchins 1995). In normal conditions, fixing the ship’s position requires measuring the bearing from the ship to at least three landmarks. The navigators plot a line of position (LOP) with respect to each landmark using a special tool called “hoey”. The intersection of three LOP’s on a chart forms a triangle within which the ship is assumed to be located. A large triangle indicates that there are problems with the plotting process, and a small triangle indicates that the process is reliable.

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On one occasion, the main gyrocompass of the ship failed, and the crew became unable to follow the practice described above. They were required instead to calculate the true bearing of a landmark, which equals compass heading plus magnetic deviation (the errors of the compass due to the local magnetic environment) plus magnetic variation (the difference between the direction of the earth’s magnetic field and true north from a given point) plus the relative bearing of the landmark with respect to the ship’s heading. The crew had to try to figure out how to calculate true bearing while plotting thirty-eight lines of position. They were missing the deviation term from their calculations and the three lines of position resulted in unusually large triangles. Eventually, the plotter realised what was missing, and once he included the deviation term, the crew gradually became able to fix the position of the ship again. What is interesting about the failing gyrocompass incident is the process through which the plotter realised that the deviation term was missing. The discovery came through an “Aha!” insight obtained from the plotter’s bodily engagement with the tools through enacted representations. As mentioned earlier, the resulting triangles were at first unacceptably large. The plotters exclamation “I keep getting these monstrous frigging god-damned triangles!” gives us an impression of how emotional the process was. During the whole process, the plotter shifted his own body around (e.g. placing his index finger on the location of the landmark) and moved the chart and the hoey to imagine LOPs that would make the fix triangle smaller. This continued until the elements of the involved enacted representations combined so that the plotter was able to imagine a small clockwise rotation superimposed on his visual experience of the protractor scale, leading to the realisation that adding a small number to the bearing for LOP3 would reduce the fix triangle. After this moment of “Aha!” insight, the plotter understood that what had been missing from the calculations was magnetic deviation (3°), which would improve not only LOP3, but all the LOPs, resulting in the desired small triangle (Hutchins 2010a). The above is an excellent example of distributed cognition because the necessary calculations to fix the ship’s position did not take place solely inside the plotter’s head through internal mental representations, but instead took place through enacted representations within a cognitive

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ecosystem. Such enacted representations are embedded in durable material media—what Hutchins refers to as “material anchors for conceptual blends” (Hutchins 2005)—and in bodily processes (somatic anchors), producing a multimodal integration that, if congruent, leads stability to the enacted representations employed in a distributed cognitive process. It is important to note that for a distributed cognitive process to emerge, the necessary multimodal integration of different elements often involves more than one agent. And as Hutchins points out, affective states1 thereby play an important role in distributed cognitive processes, but what this role is precisely is yet to be clarified in the literature. Our claim in this chapter is that the main role of emotion lies in the regulatory tracking of the congruence of the different elements within a distributed cognitive process. In what follows, we will introduce situated approaches to emotion and then use navigation as a case study to clarify the role of emotion in distributed cognitive processes. Situated approaches to emotion offer an alternative to a long tradition of considering emotions as purely internal states or processes. In contrast to such a tradition, situated approaches consider emotions as forms of skilful engagement with the world that are both scaffolded by and dynamically coupled to the environment (Griffiths and Scarantino 2005). A tenet coming from this perspective is that emotion is designed to function in a social context and “is often an act of relationship reconfiguration brought about by delivering a social signal” (Griffiths and Scarantino 2005: 2). To illustrate the degree to which emotion is designed to function in a social context, Griffiths and Scarantino draw on paradigmatic cases of situated emotion such as social appraisal (Sorce et al. 1985) or audience effects (Fernández-Dols and Ruiz-Belda 1997). Social appraisal cases are those in which an individual’s appraisal of a situation relies on that of others. Social appraisal is especially interesting for our study of distributed cognition because it shows how the appraisal of a situation is often distributed beyond the individual. Emotions play an important  In this paper, we are using the term “affective” as a reference to emotions. This is the use of the term in, for instance, “affective neuroscience” to mean the study of the neural mechanisms of emotion or to mean the “affective turn”. Here, by the expression “affective state” we mean an emotional state, and by “affective experience” we mean an emotional experience. 1

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role in these distributed cognitive processes. A well-known example is an experiment showing that the willingness of infants to crawl over a visual cliff was influenced by the negative or positive facial expressions of their mothers (Sorce et al. 1985). Instances of social appraisal are very common, ranging from judging if a situation is dangerous to judging if a joke is funny or offensive. “Duchenne smiles” (involving both the movement of the mouth and of the eyes—generally interpreted as a display of happiness) provide a good example of audience effects. When bowling, whether bowlers smile or not after knocking down some pins depends much more on whether or not they are facing their companions than on the actual number of pins they knock down, so that they will often smile a Duchenne smile after knocking a few pins while facing their companions, but not smile after a full strike while facing away (Kraut and Johnston 1979). Similar effects are found in football fans and even in Olympic medalists (Fernández-Dols and Ruiz-Belda 1997). Audience effects point to emotions being used in a transactional way, rather than being primarily internal states. The understanding of embarrassment as a sign of acceptance of social norms one just infringed upon (Leary et al. 1996) or the interpretation of sulking as a strategy of relationship reconfiguration (Parkinson 1995) also point to the transactional nature of emotions. In turn, emotional management (which, as with social appraisal, is often distributed beyond the individual) influences the unfolding of the emotion itself, which sustains the situationist idea that emotions are dynamically coupled to the environment, insofar as they work in “a feedback mechanism which involves the reciprocal exchange of signals delivered by expressions and other behaviour in the course of time” (Griffiths and Scarantino 2005: 19). An important distinction to be made when considering the environmental scaffolding of emotions is that this scaffolding happens both synchronically (in the unfolding of the emotion itself ) and diachronically (in the process of acquiring an emotional repertoire). In any given society, the environment scaffolds the development of the appropriate emotional repertoire diachronically through ideational factors such as normative standards, shared expectations (about the unfolding of emotions) or belief systems (about the nature of emotions) and material factors such as

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venues with specific emotional affordances (e.g. a theatre favours displays of elation and a bar favours displays of joy) or emotional technologies ranging from depression medication to stress balls (Parkinson et al. 2005). Synchronically, the environment scaffolds the unfolding of different emotions through material elements (e.g. a confessionary box), rituals (e.g. the different stages of a wedding and the corresponding expected emotions) and social processes such as the afore-mentioned social appraisal. Through the lens of distributed cognition, emotions can be understood as cultural practices unfolding (i.e. synchronically scaffolded) within a particular cognitive ecosystem (i.e. diachronically scaffolded).2 Let us call this subset of cultural practices (i.e. practices in which emotions play a paradigmatic central role) emotion practices.

2

The Phenomenology of Disorientation

From fixing the position of a Navy ship to following a well-marked trail, wayfinding offers some of the best examples of cognition “in the wild”. It often involves cultural practices such as collective decision-making (e.g. chart plotting), social appraisal (e.g. relying on a guide or a group), environmental scaffolding (e.g. trail signage, cairns…) or the use of cognitive artefacts (e.g. compass, GPS devices), all of which need to take place within the appropriate cognitive ecosystem. So far, we have seen how a given cognitive ecosystem provides the scaffolding for emotion practices. Now we turn our focus to the other side of the coin. The question at hand is how emotions provide the scaffolding for broader cultural practices, such as navigation. Here again, the scaffolding can happen both diachronically and synchronically. Diachronically, emotion practices work as ideational factors that promote and facilitate the appropriate cultural practices within a cognitive ecosystem. In his  The situated approach to emotions stays neutral about the stronger ontological claim that emotions extend onto the environment. The situated approach to emotions does not necessarily imply that the environment is a constituent part of an emotion; the claim is simply that the environment has a casual contribution to emotion. What the approach offers is a methodological alternative to traditional emotion accounts, just like distributed cognition offers an alternative to traditional accounts of cognition without making ontological claims about the extension of the mind. 2

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longitudinal study of the social dimensions of geographic disorientation in Arctic Alaska, Sonnenfeld highlights the disappearance of the practice of shaming as one of the causes underlying the increase in disorientation episodes among the Inupiat residing in Wainwright (Sonnenfeld 2002). It turns out that in the 1960s there was a widespread practice of shaming the individuals who happened to get lost in the wild. The emotion practice of shaming involves the shaming of the individual on the part of the community, the embarrassment of the individuals who get lost and, most importantly, the fear of such potential embarrassment, which incentivises the learning and application of the appropriate navigational practices: “Fear of such ridicule forces the Eskimo to learn his navigation skills well and to exercise caution whenever he travels” (Nelson 1969: 386). By setting the normative standards, the emotion practice of shaming contributed to the diachronic scaffolding necessary for the development of the appropriate cultural practices (e.g. navigational skills) of the Inupiat cognitive ecosystem in Arctic Alaska. Consequently, the disappearance of this emotion practice after the 1960s resulted in a degradation of the broader cultural practices of navigation and in the subsequent increase of disorientation episodes that Sonnenfeld witnessed in the early 2000s. Sonnenfeld’s study can also offer us an insight into how emotion practices can provide scaffolding for navigational practices synchronically. Travel among the Inupiat is often group travel, which involves a great deal of relationship reconfiguration. An advantage of travelling as a group is that it allows for the distribution of cognitive tasks. When hunting, one of the members of the group can follow an animal trail while another member focuses on staying oriented, so that the group as a whole is not lost after the hunt. Even without a clear division of tasks, travelling in a group can facilitate orientation because if one of the members fails to orient correctly, there is a chance that another member of the group has maintained the correct orientation. Nevertheless, this can only work if the group can determine whose orientation is correct when there is a conflict. When two members of a group disagree on the direction that the group should follow, relationship reconfiguration is needed, and this is a highly affective process involving confidence, doubt, trust, mistrust, anger, pride and even fear.

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During navigational group conflict, emotion practices provide the synchronic scaffolding to evaluate and regulate distributed cognitive processes. Confidence and doubt arise to evaluate the ongoing distributed cognitive process of orientation (both one’s own and that of one’s companions) and to regulate it as well (by continuing the process, adjusting or terminating it). Feelings such as anger can be used to reconfigure the existing relationship by trying to force the group to follow one’s sense of orientation rather than that of another member. And mistrust can even force the dissolution of the group, so that each member can follow the way they see fit. The example of Inuit group travel brings to the fore a picture in which the synchronic scaffolding of emotion practices works as a way of evaluating and regulating a distributed cognitive system. In what follows, a phenomenological analysis of disorientation will clarify this picture. At the end of the nineteenth century, the psychologist Alfred Binet collected reports for his study of what was back then called “vertigo of direction” and that is nowadays commonly known as “getting turned around” (Binet 1885). Getting turned around is a rather common occurrence and one of the most interesting forms of spatial disorientation. It often happens when one is distracted and turns in the wrong direction when coming out of a building, and after walking for a while realises that what one thought to be ahead is behind one and vice versa. This sudden realisation makes the space around one appear to switch 180°, as if clicking back into the correct position, and it often produces a strong if brief sense of dizziness and confusion in the disoriented subject. Another common event that produces this effect is taking the mistaken exit out of the metro and finding oneself on the opposite side of the street than expected and facing the things that one anticipated would be behind one. Below is another example from Binet’s corpus, in which the subject takes the wrong turn after exiting a building and suddenly realises that he is looking at Hôtel de Ville and not Place de la Republique as he had expected: Instead of taking the right to return to the Place de la Republique, I took the left toward the Hotel de Ville…While on my way I felt sure of meeting the Place de la Republique. Thus my confusion was extreme on coming to the Hôtel de Ville… I was some moments in recognizing it. Then I

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r­ecognized the Hôtel de Ville, without destroying the illusion. It disappeared, however, very quickly… when I understood the cause of my mistake. (Report in Binet 1885: 341)

There are two interesting elements in the reported episode. The first one is that the mistake in orientation prevents the subject from recognising a familiar building. Disorientation impairs recognition, and it is recognition that triggers the reorientation. Large-scale spatial representations contribute to visual identification and visual identification contributes to large-scale spatial representations. The other interesting element is that the subject refers to being turned around as an illusion. This is something that is recurrent in the disorientation literature. A good example is Visual Reorientation Illusions (VRIs), an effect that occurs to astronauts in micro-gravity environments and that is akin to being turned around. Gravity stops being a cue for what is up and what is down in free-falling environments and the space around the astronaut often does not offer exploitable visual cues either (e.g. tubular corridors). It is a common occurrence for astronauts to suddenly realise that they are mistaken by 180° about their vertical orientation. Then, the space around them switches, as with illusions of being turned around, but on the vertical instead of the horizontal axis. Charles Oman compares these VRIs with figure-ground illusions, although the simile can be extended to the case of bi-stable figures in general (e.g. Necker cube, Rubin’s face-vase…): “VRIs typically occur spontaneously, but as with figure ground illusions, onset depends on visual attention and is therefore under cognitive control. One astronaut commented: ‘If you really want a surface to be “down”, you can just look at it and decide that it is’” (Oman 2007: 213). This is something that is also the case with being turned around. By directing attention in particular ways, one can delay the onset of the horizontal 180° switch. The reason that we are bringing the illusive aspect of being turned around to the fore is that it points to large-scale spatial representations somehow influencing our conscious experience of the navigational space. Here, Edmund Husserl’s concept of the horizon of experience can be usefully leveraged. Husserl argued that all of our conscious experience happens within the context of expectation and anticipation. We expect

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cylindrical objects to have a backside even if we cannot see it, and we anticipate the downward movement of falling objects. In familiar spaces and familiar cultures (what Husserl calls “homeworlds”), there are many more expectations (cultural, social, spatial…) that are framing our conscious experience. When one is navigating an environment, there are expectations of the place that different large-scale spatial elements occupy (e.g. Hôtel de Ville, Place de la République) with respect to oneself (in an egocentric frame of reference) and with respect to each other (in an allocentric frame of reference) (Klatzky 1998). The expected locations of these elements hover around one, as it were, and they frame one’s experience of the surrounding environment. When one gets turned around, the horizon of experience gets destabilised and rearranged as the large-scale spatial representations switch around us. This often results in confusion and uneasiness—being turned around can transform a familiar world into an unfamiliar and alien world (“Fremdwelt” in Husserl’s original German), a common aspect of many disorienting experiences (Fernández Velasco 2020). Under the effect of disorientation, once familiar buildings become unfamiliar and unwelcoming (e.g. the Hôtel de Ville that Binet’s subject fails to recognise) and the streets and paths around us stop being the way to a familiar location. When disoriented, one’s surroundings appear uninviting and alien. For the last two years, we have been collecting reports of disorientation episodes in order to build a corpus of experiences of disorientation that can help us better understand the phenomenon. Sixty-six per cent of subjects agreed (from somewhat agree to strongly agree in a Likert scale) that the experience of disorientation made the environment feel unfamiliar. This unfamiliarity of spatial disorientation is not just visual. A central element of disorientation is that one’s experienced possibilities suffer a degradation. Having a correct representation of large-scale environment makes navigation possible; reaching a set of locations is possible thanks to this spatial representation. These experienced possibilities disappear when one is disoriented. Accordingly, helplessness is one of the most common elements in the disorientation reports we have collected. For instance, one subject reports the following: “I felt unsafe and anxious because no one was with me, and the environment was not familiar to me”. Another

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subject reports: “I just felt confused and helpless—I didn’t know what to do”. The different aspects of the phenomenology of disorientation outlined above support the claim that during spatial disorientation, the subject undergoes a reduction “of its possibility space within an unfamiliar environment framed by an uncertain horizon of experience” (Fernández Velasco 2020: 17). To fully make sense of the phenomenology of spatial disorientation, a proper characterisation of the phenomenon is needed. In a previous paper, we showed the shortfalls of characterising disorientation as a belief or as a breakdown in a cognitive process and argued that we should characterise disorientation instead as an affective state (Fernández Velasco and Casati 2019). An upshot of this characterisation is that it helps us make sense of the afore-mentioned phenomenology. Furthermore, via affordances, we can understand the link between this regulative-evaluative process and the degradation of possibility that subjects undergo during spatial disorientation. Affordances are sensed possibilities for action in the environment (Gibson 1966, 1979). According to recent versions of the control-process view, feelings (by regulating and evaluating changes in the relation between an organism and its environment) serve to monitor affordances, making them more or less salient (Proust 2015).3 Disorientation, by evaluating orientation, transforms the saliency of the surrounding affordances, which is subjectively experienced as a diminished sense of possibility, and induces the corresponding alienation from the immediate environment. While disorientation dims down certain affordances, it makes other affordances more salient, many of which are mental affordances (McClelland 2020). Disorientation pushes the subject, for instance, to reconsider their mode of orientation and the spatial representation of the environment around them. In other words, when we are disoriented, we tend to re-evaluate if we have achieved the “reconciliation between the features we see in our world and a representation of that world” (Hutchins 1995: 13). In navigation contexts, this process of re-evaluation is often distributed beyond the individual and involves the use of maps, compass,  For a detailed computational account of how such regulatory and evaluative role might be implemented see Joffily and Coricelli (2013). 3

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navigation instruments, GPS technology or environmental cues. If the source of the error is resolved (like Binet’s subject realising that he had turned on the wrong direction), the effect is often an “aha moment” (as in Hutchins’s case of the plotter finding the correct deviation) and a sudden phenomenal realignment follows (e.g. the allocentric frame of reference of a turned-around subject switching 180° to the correct orientation). Reconsidering one’s orientation is not the only action that is prompted by disorientation. A common reaction of people who get lost in the wilderness is exploration. Kenneth Hill conducted over a hundred interviews with subjects who had become lost in the wilderness and identified a series of common strategies in lost person behaviour. Some of these strategies were driven by a desire to reach civilisation as quickly as possible (e.g. following a single route for as long as it takes), but many of them were based on exploring the surroundings to facilitate reorientation. Three clear examples of disorientation-induced exploration are route sampling, direction sampling and route enhancing. Route sampling consists in using an intersection as a base for exploring different routes. Direction sampling consists in using a visible landmark as a base for exploring different directions. View enhancing consists in aiming for a high position in order to gain visibility. Additionally, disorientation can be highly arousing, and it is known to push subjects into panic, which results in suboptimal behaviours such as random walking (Hill 1998). Now, disorientation is not a discrete, on-or-off affective state. It comes in degrees, and it sometimes nudges navigational behaviour rather than prompting a complete reassessment of the subject’s orientation. When one gets turned around, disorientation is a very sudden, arousing and salient feeling. However, when one is following a map through a city, a slight feeling of disorientation might simply prompt one to double-check that we are still on the street we are supposed to be following. Another thing to note is that orientation itself is also an affective state. This becomes clear when we look at the being-turned-around cases: once one understands what’s going on and the spatial representation switches 180° to its correct position, one feels oriented. Of course, orientation does not often come to the fore because most of the time it is a background feeling. Still, we should consider the affective dimension of navigation as a

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continuum between orientation and disorientation, helping us guide our navigational activities in an evaluative-regulative fashion.

3

Conclusion

If all instances of cognition can be understood as emerging from processes distributed at many spatial and temporal scales, navigation is no exception. Navigation is performed in a particular cognitive ecosystem (e.g. involving signage codes, trail conventions, adapted navigational skills…) and is distributed within individuals (involving processes of attention, memory and decision-making) and beyond individuals (involving several group members and cognitive artefacts such as compasses and maps). Consequently, when disorientation evaluates and regulates navigation, it is evaluating and regulating a distributed cognitive process. If a map is indicating a route that no longer exists, if a malfunctioning GPS is misrepresenting one’s heading or if a demagnetised compass is failing to point north, and one becomes disoriented as a result, the affective state of disorientation is not simply evaluating an internal process, it is evaluating a distributed cognitive process that extends beyond the individual. Inseparable from this evaluative aspect is the regulative aspect of disorientation, which can range from modulation (e.g. turning the map around in an effort to elicit alternative interpretations; or restarting the GPS) to disengagement (e.g. pocketing the compass and trying to infer north from the position of the sun).4 With this, we already have all of the elements of our present account. According to our account, affective states evaluate and regulate distributed cognitive processes. Diachronically, this can lead to the promotion of certain cognitive processes (e.g. shame promoting the learning of navigational skills). Synchronically, the evaluation of different modes of cognition distributed at different scales can lead to modulation (within one

 Another variation of disengagement is the initiation of contingency measures, such as the co-pilot starting to double-check the route on their own phone once they feel that the driver has lost the way. 4

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cognitive process) or disengagement (i.e. switching between cognitive processes). We expect that in certain situations, mild affective states (e.g. of disorientation or orientation) lead to different levels of engagement rather than to on-off disengagement (e.g. double-checking street names if we are not that confident of our GPS system, rather than turning off our GPS), and that in most cases mild affective states lead to the modulation of distributed cognitive processes in ways that might not be very apparent. Most of the time, when navigating in a group, if a member of the group feels disoriented, this does not lead to a burst of anger that breaks the group apart, but to shows of doubt (e.g. forms of emotional negotiation such as unsure smiles or raised eyebrows) that make the expedition leader double-­ check that the expedition is well-oriented. The way that affective states evaluate and regulate distributed cognitive processes brings us back to the phenomenology of disorientation, namely to the sinking away of affordances and the ensuing alienation. We have already mentioned that affective states serve to monitor affordances and that they become more or less salient as a result (Proust 2015). It is easy to see how disorientation, qua affective state, results in the sinking away of affordances (in particular, navigation-related affordances). What is interesting here about the novel account introduced in this chapter is that we can extend this understanding of disorientation to distributed cognitive processes. When a subject is engaged in a distributed cognitive process involving either other subjects or cognitive artefacts, the disengagement following from disorientation affects the affordances that were facilitated by the particular distributed cognitive process. If the different elements of the cognitive process (e.g. material media and somatic anchors) required to produce enacted representations fail in their multimodal integration, the enacted representations disintegrate as a consequence, and with them the corresponding affordances. If we realise that the map that we have been following has led us to the wrong trail, in our disorientation we become alienated from both the map, which stops representing our surrounding space, and the trail, which is no longer a meaningful trail to our destination. If we become disoriented after following our GPS, the GPS becomes conspicuous, as the navigational potential it afforded sinks away. Equally, we become alienated from the

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other members of a group if we stop feeling like a member of that group. Multimodal integration within a distributed cognitive process leads to the emergence of (often interpersonal) phenomenal objects. Consequently, when a negative affective state triggers the disengagement from that distributed cognitive process, the affordances sustained by it sink away and the subject becomes alienated.

References Binet, A. 1885. Vertigo of Direction. Mind 10 (37): 156–160. JSTOR. Fernández Velasco, P. 2020. Disorientation and Self-consciousness: A Phenomenological Inquiry. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s11097-­020-­09659-­1. Fernández Velasco, P.F., and R. Casati. 2019. Disorientation and GIS-Informed Wilderness Search and Rescue. In The Philosophy of GIS, 241–251. Cham: Springer. Fernández-Dols, J.M., & M.-A. Ruiz-Belda. 1997. Spontaneous Facial Behavior During Intense Emotional Episodes: Artistic Truth and Optical Truth. In The Psychology of Facial Expression, 255–274. Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511659911.013. Gibson, James J. 1966. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. ———. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Houghton Mifflin. Griffiths, P.E., and A. Scarantino. 2005. Emotions in the Wild: The Situated Perspective on Emotion. In The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition, ed. P. Robbins and M. Aydede. Cambridge University Press. Hill, Kenneth. 1998. The Psychology of Lost. Lost Person Behaviour Ottawa, Canada: National SAR Secretariat. Hutchins, E. 1995. Cognition in the Wild. MIT Press. ———. 2005. Material Anchors for Conceptual Blends. Journal of Pragmatics 37 (10): 1555–1577. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2004.06.008. ———. 2010a. Cognitive Ecology. Topics in Cognitive Science 2 (4): 705–715. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-­8765.2010.01089.x. ———. 2010b. Enaction, Imagination, and Insight. In Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science. MIT Press. ———. 2014. The Cultural Ecosystem of Human Cognition. Philosophical Psychology 27 (1): 34–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2013.830548.

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Hutchins, E., and C.M. Johnson. 2009. Modeling the Emergence of Language as an Embodied Collective Cognitive Activity. Topics in Cognitive Science 1 (3): 523–546. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-­8765.2009.01033.x. Joffily, M. and Coricelli, G., 2013. Emotional valence and the free-energy principle. PLoS Comput Biol, 9(6), p.e1003094. Klatzky, R.L. 1998. Allocentric and Egocentric Spatial Representations: Definitions, Distinctions, and Interconnections. In Spatial Cognition: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Representing and Processing Spatial Knowledge, eds. C. Freksa, C. Habel, and K.F. Wender, 1–17. Springer. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/3-­540-­69342-­4_1. Kraut, R.E., and R.E.  Johnston. 1979. Social and Emotional Messages of Smiling: An Ethological Approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 (9): 1539–1553. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-­3514.37.9.1539. Leary, M.R., J.L. Landel, and K.M. Patton. 1996. The Motivated Expression of Embarrassment Following a Self-Presentational Predicament. Journal of Personality 64 (3): 619–636. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-­6494.1996. tb00524.x. McClelland, T. 2020. The mental affordance hypothesis. Mind, 129(514), pp.401–427. Nelson, R.K. 1969. Hunters of the Northern Ice. University of Chicago Press. Oman, C. 2007. Spatial Orientation and Navigation in Microgravity. In Spatial Processing in Navigation, Imagery and Perception, ed. F. Mast and L. Jäncke, 209–247. US: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­0-­387-­71978-­8_13. Parkinson, B. 1995. Ideas and Realities of Emotion. Routledge. Parkinson, B., A.  Fischer, and A.S.R.  Manstead. 2005. Emotion in Social Relations: Cultural, Group, and Interpersonal Processes. Psychology Press. Proust, J. 2015. Feelings as Evaluative Indicators. In Open MIND. Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. https://open-­mind.net/epubs/feelings-­as-­evaluative-­ indicators2014a-­reply-­to-­iuliia-­pliushch/OEBPS/bk01.html. Sonnenfeld, J. 2002. Social Dimensions of Geographic Disorientation in Arctic Alaska. Études/Inuit/Studies 26 (2): 157–173. JSTOR. Sorce, J.F., R.N.  Emde, J.J.  Campos, and M.D.  Klinnert. 1985. Maternal Emotional Signaling: Its Effect on the Visual Cliff Behavior of 1-Year-Olds. Developmental Psychology 21 (1): 195–200. https://doi. org/10.1037/0012-­1649.21.1.195.

The Radiant Indifference of Being: The Mystic Fable of The Passion According to G.H. Nicolas de Warren

Mein Leben ist das Zögern vor der Geburt. —Kafka

Cioran writes: “In the fact of being born there is such an absence of necessity that when you think about it a little more than usual, you are left—ignorant how to react—with a foolish grin.”1 This virtual grin, our veritable birth mark, remains during our lives essentially suppressed. Whom amongst us in our comings and goings becomes, whether provoked by the world or induced by ourselves, genuinely awoken to one’s begotten being, that one exists, and only exists for having been born? The seriousness to which we take ourselves and demand of others to receive us  Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born, p. 17. “Il y a dans le fait de naître une telle absence de nécessité, que lorsque’on y songe un peu plus que de coutume, faute de savoir comment réagir, on s’arrêtte à un soirire niais” Cioran, Oeuvres, (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), p. 1281. 1

N. de Warren (*) Penn State University, State College, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. Falcato, S. Graça da Silva (eds.), The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8_11

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is predicated on this necessary forgetting of the laughable accident of one’s birth. In our waking lives much as in our dreams, we behave—to shadow another thought from Cioran—as if we were a capital event, indispensable for ourselves as well as to the world. This seriousness undergirds our claimed and proclaimed insistence on being significant. Identity armors this insistence, the proper of existence as owning one’s existence, as if we had ordained being for ourselves. We are not indifferent towards being and expect of others the same with regard to ourselves. What, in this respect, is claimed to name what it is “to be” is said to be a proper name. In appropriating one’s existence as significantly and properly one’s own, we pursue a life without quotation marks, that is, a life not held in suspended animation in the wonder of what sense, if any, there could be to the accidental fate of having been born, as if our proper name, by virtue of standing without any article (I am not “a Nicolas” or “the Nicolas” but properly “Nicolas”), effectively canceled the fate of “being” in name only. What it is to be awake to the world, duly encompassing our nocturnal byways of sleep, unfolds along the trajectory of self-appropriation. Phrased in these terms (and to invoke once again Cioran’s Silenic wisdom), “we do not rush toward death, we flee the catastrophe of birth, survivors struggling to forget it.”2 Waking life rests on the dogmatic slumber of forgetting the foolish grin lurking behind our pretensions of being—a pretension that does not slacken when we surrender ourselves to sleep in assured anticipation of finding ourselves once again as the proper name which never lets us go. We are attached to ourselves as an event of capital significance, thinking ourselves significant without admitting the smile that haunts us from within. We play at the seriousness of being in the bad faith of our own fortuitousness. Baptism is the first flight from having been born. What would it be (rather than mean or signify) for the fortuitousness of one’s being to be revealed in the midst of being? Such an awakening “to being” should not be construed as an awakening of our “ownmost” in the appropriation of our being, our thrownness, as the chosen destiny I  Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born, p. 4. “Nous ne courons pas vers la mort, nous fuyons la catastrophe de la naissance, nous nous démenons, rescapés qui essaient de l’oublier. La peut de la mort n’est que la projection dans l’avenir d’une peur qui remonte à notre premier instant.” Cioran, Oeuvres, (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), p. 1271. 2

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singularly could call my own. On the contrary, we would become in such an awakening dispossessed of ourselves as well as dis-appropriated of the arrangements of the world, brought back through an ontologically cataclysmic anamnesis to the bruteness of being without any residual consciousness of resoluteness or irony. Such an event of dispossession and dis-appropriation would amount to the recasting of birth played out in reverse, as it were, the shock of which we would not survive in our quotable and quotidian existence untransformed. Rather than speak of “being-­ towards-­ death” that would rupture our inauthentic mode of living between quotation marks—the they, or das Man—we would become plunged into an immersive “being-towards-birth,” which would disrupt the prearranged domesticity of life while thrusting our exposed life back into the fortuitousness of being from which life itself, my life, issued. Heidegger’s argument that Dasein enters into the revelation of its “ownmost” in distancing itself from the distractive and immersive falsity of “das Man”—existence lived in quotation marks—through the resolute seriousness of being-towards-death has it all backwards. It is being towards birth, not being towards death, that we incessantly evade; it is birth, not death, that orients the fundamental sense of being—the emergence of oneself from nothing and, hence, in this sense, one’s participation in the neutral of being. To speak of the neutral of being forecloses the question “why does one exist?”, “where did one come from?”, or other seductive smuggling of transcendence into the fortuitous night of one’s having been conceived. To speak of the neutral of being, the “there is” of one’s being, and not “given that there is” (es gibt), is to inhibit the fabrication of one’s birth as a capital event, or, in other words, as a gift. In being born, nothing is received; nothing is given. Speaking of the neutral of being (and language will incessantly falter as we proceed, but not without its own diction) counters any retrospective or retrograde necessity, and hence, salvation, projected onto one’s being in its atonal materiality. Facticity is neutral; but, not of a species of meaninglessness that manifests itself as terminal angst or incipient self-hatred. Neither angst towards existence or resigned hatred of existence, which betrays either seriousness (as with angst) or conceit (as with hatred), are fitting tonalities for the neutral of being. How could we stand before the neutral of being in a posture that would

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remain itself neutral, neither serious, spiteful, nor ironic? How might we undergo the shock of having been born after having been born, and, in this sense, return, or become “reduced,” neutralized in the sense of dispossessed and dis-appropriated, so that we might not only face the foolish grin of one’s existence, its laughable accident, but embrace this smile as an expression of joy? If philosophical thinking is a joyful science, it is, as Cioran writes, “Nietzsche’s great luck—to have ended as he did: in euphoria!”3 In what follows, I propose to explore The Passion According to G.H. as a dispossessing and dis-appropriating revelation of the neutral of being in the splendor of its indifference. In Lispector’s narrative, the fortuitousness of being, of having been born, becomes embraced in the after-­ effectiveness (Nachträglichkeit), or traumatic shock, of having aborted a birth of one’s own. Reconciliation with the calamity of being, the shock of having been born, transpires within the post-partum shock of aborting the emergence of a being from nothing, of a life not born. The shock of being born as well as the shock of aborting a being born are unbearably borne together. Lispector’s narrative is haunted by the spectral lament “why have you forsaken me?” of an aborted being, written in confession as a kaddish for an unborn child. The transformation of this suffering into a joy at being narrates the passion of forgiveness. Cioran writes: “I do not forgive myself for being born. It is as if, creeping into this world, I had profaned a mystery, betrayed some momentous pledge, committed a fault of nameless gravity. Yet in a less assured mood, birth seems a calamity I would be miserable not having known.”4 * * * Much obscurity surrounds the characterization of Lispector’s writings and, in particular, The Passion According to G.H. as “mystical.” The term is often applied generically without any differentiated conception in mind, and frequently invoked as either a suspicion or an accusation, which in turn serves as a motive for refutation or disavowal by facile  The Trouble with Being Born, p. 22.  The Trouble with Being Born, p. 15.

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means, as if stating that it is not so, would make it not so.5 Others have examined possible resonances in Lispector’s narrative with mysticism, given its rich evocation of tropes from mystical literature and echoes of the New Testament. Whether dubbed “Christian” or “Jewish” mysticism, or “a mystic writer” or “female mystic,” the terms “mystic” or “mysticism” in such instances all too commonly serve as a label for a certain category of “mysticism” or, on the other hand, as a designation for a presumed marginal dimension for a “specialist literature of great interest.”6 This ambivalence regarding Lispector’s “mysticism” is shadowed by an ambivalence regarding the invocation of “the God” or, as in so many cases, the outright elision of the search for “the God,” which dramatically animates The Passion According to G.H. The elision of the apotheosis, or climax, of Lispector’s passion narrative in the revelation of “the God” is striking in its obtuseness given the intensity of the narrator’s passage towards the God.7 In the “aching letting go of what to me was the world,” including, most painfully, the letting go of herself, the narrator, “bids farewell to all that means such great disappointment,” and in this release and abandonment of the attachments and arrangements of the world, touches upon the God: “God is whatever exists, and all the contradictions are within  For example, Rosi Braidotti’s generic statement: “In her choice of language, Lispector echoes the century-old tradition of mystical ascesis, but also moves clearly out of it. G.H. symbolizes a new postmodern kind of materialism: one that stresses the materiality of all living matter in a common plane of coexistence without postulating a central point of reference or of organization for it. The emphasis is on the forces, the passions, and not on the specific forms of life. In other words, I think that Lispector is better read with Spinoza and Nietzsche via Deleuze than as Christian mystic” (Nomadic Subjects, p. 120). Benjamin Moser, however, proposes without further elaboration: “The result [The Passion According to G.H.], which might be called mystical Spinozism or religious atheism, is her richest paradox yet” (p. 262) and thinks of her God as “nothing” and “everything: Life” as “a Jewish definition” (p. 268). 6  As an example of the former, Luisa Muraro, “Commento alla Passione Secondo G.H. di Clarice Lispector,” in: Le Amiche di Dio: Scritti di Mistica Femminile, (Napoli: D’Auria, 2002); for the latter, Adriana Cavarero, “La passione della differenza,” in: Storia delle passioni, ed. S.  Finzi (Bari: Editori Laterza, 1995), who characterizes Lispector’s mysticism as “ormai oggetto di una sconfinata letteratura specialistica di grande interesse.” 7  For example: Helene Cixious observes that Lispector “has treated as no one else to my knowledge all the possible positions of a subject in relation to what would be ‘appropriation,’ use and abuse of owning.” In this “dis-appropriation,” or, in the term proposed here: neutralization, Lispector’s narrative pursues a “relentless process of de-selfing” and “de-egoization.” Entirely disregarded, however, in Cixious’ appropriation of Lispector, the divestment, detachment, and abandonment of the self from herself, her arranged world, and her relation to others—her becoming-nothing—accedes to the living nothingness of God and living hell of materiality. [get] [130]. 5

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the God, and therefore do not contradict Him.”8 In narrating the “metamorphosis” of a self who becomes “engorged” in rapture and rupture into “a vibrating nothing,” G.H., in confession and prayer, addresses the God in the mute throes of unknowing: “Speaking to the God is the mutest that exists.” “What I say to God must not make sense! If it makes sense it is because I err.”9 Among attempts that address intelligently “the mysticism” of The Passion According to G.H., Benedito Nunes’ discussion of its “mystical itinerary” provides an illuminating point of departure for my own.10 Nunes sketches an hermeneutically alert reading of Lispector’s narrative, which he takes to be organized around the paradox of a first-person (“parodoxo egológico”) narrative recounting the disintegration of the self.11 This first-person narrative of first-person disintegration combines “existentialist” and “mystical” themes, “nausea” and “ecstasy,” in the drama of its unfolding revelation. The unbinding and emptying of the self in relation to a symbolically and socially arranged world is structured along the rupture of ontological distinctions between “self ” and “other,” “nature” and “culture,” “human” and “animal,” “inside” and “outside.”12 Unbeknowningly collapsing towards a mystical union of the God and the denuded self, the climax of disintegration does not establish a point of contact with the transcendence of God nor a standing of the self before the presence of God. The God is there in the material sheerness of being in its radiant indifference. The God as well as the self are immanently “de-personalized.”  The Passion According to G.H., trans. Idra Novey (London: Penguin, 2012), p. 168.  The Passion According to G.H., p. 169. 10  As Renata Wasserman remarks: “the reference to the Gospels and the representation of the Passion, as well as the themes of a desire for infinity and for transfiguration present in the novel make a reading in terms of religion almost obligatory; specifically, given not only the thematic material as the terminology, the novel invites a reading in terms of a tradition of mysticism, that Benedito Nunes addresses with clarity and erudition.” Central at the Margin: Five Brazilian Women Writers (Bucknell: Bucknell University Press, 2007), p. 123. 11  Benedito Nunes, O drama da linguagem, (São Paulo: Quiron, 1973), p. 76. 12  Rosi Braidotti describes this itinerary towards “otherness” as passing through different transgressions of boundaries: racial, class, style of life, inhuman, animal, and cosmic. “Femminismo, corporeità e diferenza sessuale,” in: Questioni di teoria femminista, ed. P.  Bono (Milan: Edizioni La Tartaruga, 1993). See also Nomadic Subjects (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), Chapter Four. 8 9

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According to Nunes, despite differences in cultural tradition and religious orientation, mysticism can be defined as an ascetic negative practice of purging and denuding the soul (“uma práctica negativa de purgação e desnudamento da alma”). Mystical experience, on this notion, involves the emancipation of the self from the limits of knowledge and bounded symbolic forms. Through this collapse of structures of meaning and orientation, the dispossessed self enters into communion with the divine in “extricating itself ” from a sense of ownership of the human creature. This axis of liberation turns on the“sacrifice of the self ” and “death of the self.”13 Given this ascetic notion of mysticism, Nunes proposes that Lispector’s narrative can be aligned with “Eastern mysticism” as well as Neo-Platonic forms of “Christian mysticism,”14 and additionally characterizes its mystical itinerary towards “organic indetermination” and “de-­ individuation of the subject” as “Dionysian.”15 The arranged world of the narrator’s humanized existence, on this Nietzschean comparison, corresponds to the Apollonian; the deranged loss of the self and dissolution of the world corresponds to the Dionysian. Although Nunes does not develop this evocation of the Dionysian, it brings to mind Max Scheler’s “Dionysian reduction,” by which is to be understood the radical suspension of the constitutive power of subjectivity—the constitution of intentionality as transcendence. The Dionysian reduction is antiphenomenological. It is not a method of reduction that reveals and retrieves the constitutive activity of subjectivity in its world-relatedness. Rather, it is a countermovement that reduces, or brings back, subjectivity in its world-relatedness to the ekstatic (ekstatisch) “there is-ing” of being. Subjectivity and the world in their “spiritual” (geistig) co-constitution are expunged, or neutralized. This Dionysian voiding of the self allows for the upsurge of the original phenomena (Urphenomena) of the “absolute process of living.” With its evident pantheistic bent, the “Dionysian  Benedito Nunes, O drama da linguagem, (São Paulo: Quiron, 1973), pp. 63–63: “Seja apenas empregado para liberar a alma de suas limitações pelo conhecimento, ou também para uni-la a divindade, o ascetismo e um método que visa fundamentalmente ao sacrifício do eu, extirpando o senso de propriedade da criatura humana em relação a si mesma.” 14  Benedito Nunes, O drama da linguagem, (São Paulo: Quiron, 1973), p. 64. 15  Benedito Nunes, O drama da linguagem, (São Paulo: Quiron, 1973), p. 76: “O estado de indiferenciação orgianco (dionisiaco), desindividuando o sujeito […]” 13

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reduction” discloses the “pre-real” (vor-wirklich) of what Scheler, referring to Goethe’s Faust, characterizes as “the Mothers”—what Mephistopheles calls “the higher mystery”—of creation: the rhizomic root of all things in an oceanic profusion of vitality.16 In a comparable manner, the “Dionysian reduction” reveals for Nunes the “impersonal state of immanence,” albeit in a highly stylized characterization: “É uma especie de comunhão negra, sacrilega e primitivista, que ritualiza o sacrifício consumado.”17 Black magic, sexual consummation, and racist undertones are all intimated in this less than felicitous expression “comunhão negra.”18 In Lispector’s Dionysian ritual, emptying of the self attains the radiant indifference of being. As Nunes remarks: “God, the proper name par excellence, becomes ‘the God,’ the common noun of all things.”19 We attain a mystical pantheism without gods: “O divino e o real se equivalem.” Without tarrying on Nunes’ interpretation, it is worth noting that his notion of mysticism draws significantly (and not unproblematically) from French anthropologist Roger Bastide’s Les problèmes de la vie mystique (1931). A specialist of African-Brazilian religions, Bastide in this earlier work defines mysticism as an “ascetic method” of “de-­ personalization” and “loss of self.” For Bastide, the aim of ascetic mystical practice is: “Tuer le moi!”20 This emptying, or “becoming nothing,” of the self in Lispector’s narrative employs various mystical tropes, many of which can be found, Nunes proposes, in Meister Eckhart: spatial and temporal dislocation, the topography of the desert (dry, silence, deserted), and attaining a vision of the ineffable via contradiction and negation. This mystical itinerary accedes to the “nucleus” of prime matter as “nothing” (nada), of “the God” as nothing of a personal or transcendent God, of an indifferent God. In Les problèmes de la vie mystique (as well as in his other writings on religion), Bastide speaks of the experience of mysticism,  Max Scheler, Schriften aus dem Nachlass, Band II, ed. M. Frings (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1979), p. 251 ff. 17  “It is a species (or kind) of black, sacred, and primitive communion, which ritualizes the consummated sacrifice.” 18  My thanks to Victor Portugal for bringing these resonances to my attention. 19  O drama da linguagem, p. 65. 20  Cited by Nunes, O drama da linguagem, p. 64. 16

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its fervor and élan, regardless of its object, as the communion (communier) with an “object” to the point of becoming indistinguishable from the self. The self does not relate to an object; the self—emptied of itself— participates in the “savage sacredness” (le sacré sauvage) of communion with undifferentiated being.21 With such characterizations of “purification,” “purgation,” and “sacrifice of the self,” Nunes can be faulted with over-laying an ascetic notion of mysticism onto Lispector’s narrative, thus obscuring the true drama of its passion narrative. This interpretative over-­ lay of “mysticism” fails to recognize the internal plot-points of Lispector’s mystical itinerary. Its drama centers on the transfiguration of the self through stations of abandonment, dejection, and hopelessness where the promise of salvation through eschatological transcendence or humanized arrangement of teleological meaning are each renounced in the name of attaining forgiveness in being: “that’s what I’ll call forgiveness, if I want to save myself in the human world. It’s forgiveness itself. Forgiveness is an attribute of living matter.”22 * * * Eschewing any attempt to discern “influences” or identify “analogies” with particular historical mystical writers, nor any interest in classification (“Christian,” “Eastern,” “Neo-Platonic,” “Kabbala,” etc.), I propose to continue along the horizon broached by Nunes by different means in approaching The Passion of G.H. as a mystic fable in the sense broadly understood by Michel de Certeau. As he proposes: “The fable is discourse in its capacity to institute afresh.” In drawing from and against established conventions of writing, a mystic fable operates as much in language as it does on language in its transformation of speaking into “manners of speaking” by means of “linguistic alchemy” and “a mobilizing fiction” (“une fiction qui fait marcher”). A mystic fable is neither a fabulous tale or flight of the imagination that would stand antithetical towards truth and reality. Nor is a mystic fable a pretension to reveal the  Bastide’s understanding of participation bears the imprint of Lévy-Bruhl’s notion of “participation mystique” as a defining trait of “pensée primitive.” 22  The Passion According to G.H., p. 61. 21

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truth and reality of the world. A mystic fable does not deploy itself within the bounded alternative of “truth” or “fiction.” As de Certeau writes: “For mysticism, unlike theology, it is not a matter of constructing a particular, coherent set of statements organized according to ‘truth’ criteria; and, unlike theosophy, there is no interest in letting the violent order of the world reveal itself in the form of a general account […].”23 Mystic writing operates within the liminal zone of its own undermined authority with respect to truth or fiction; its “use of language authorizes without being authorized.” The fictional refuses to be enthroned into its own fiction. Hence, the social marginalization and psychological stigmatization of mystical writers and their unauthorized discourse as “insane,” “female,” or “heretical.” As de Certeau stresses, a mystic fable cannot be reduced to an “essence” or “identity” of mystical experience or “mysticism”—a category invented by philosophers and scholars of religion that emerged with the historical disappearance of mystical science as a form of writing and way of unknowing.24 Along these lines, the mystic fable of The Passion According to G.H. does not encrypt a mystical theology, but, by the same token, does not express a “mystical” view of the world, pantheistic or otherwise. Instead, it operates within the fault lines of a double-cleavage: it institutes a separation of the said, or the theme of speaking (the world and the self ), from the saying, or the act of speaking; in thus cutting into the “density of the world,” it severs the conditions of dialogue between an I and a Thou “seeking one another in the thickness of the same language.” This cleavage recasts what Nunes identifies as the “egological paradox” of  Michel de Certeau, “Mystic Speech,” in: Heterologies. Discourse on the Other, trans. B. Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Pres, 1986), p. 90. 24  For this argument, see Denys Turner, The Darkness of God, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995): “The hypothesis is that there is too much discontinuity between what the mediaeval Neoplatonic apophaticist meant by the ‘mystical’ element in theology and life and what modern people have come to mean by ‘mysticism,’ to permit of the common assumption that Western Christianity possesses a single ‘mystical tradition’ embracing both […] At its boldest, my hypothesis is that modern interpretation has invented ‘mysticism’ and that we persist in reading back the terms of that conception upon a stock of Mediaeval authorities who knew of no such thing—or, when they knew of it, decisively rejected it” (p. 7). “I have argued that not even in The Cloud of Unknowing […] is the apophatic ‘unknowing’ to be described as the experience of negativity […]; rather it is to be understood as the negativity of experience (the absence of experience). The apophatic is not to be described as the ‘consciousness of the absence of God,’ not at any rate, as if such a consciousness were an awareness of what is absent” (p. 264). 23

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Lispector’s narrative. The subject who narrates is at once the subject who disintegrates; the composition of the narrative searches for the means of telling its own decomposition as a subject, as the one who can and cannot narrate. In this cleavage between the subject who narrates and the subject who is narrated, the identity of the subject (who is speaking, of whom is spoken) becomes elusively confounded. This ontological cleavage occurs as well between the narrator (or subject) and the world; the world becomes regressively “disjointed” through chains of uncoupling that run along the fault lines of collapsing ontological distinctions between “nature” and “world” as well as the temporal localization of the world as “contemporary” and “historical,” along with its geographical locality. Most significantly, this cleaving effect in Lispector’s narrative, where narrative is at the same time, yet not in the same time, where moments of integration (composition) and disintegration (decomposition) pass into and through each other, is achieved through the rhetorical device of ending each of its thirty-three sections with a statement which becomes repeated as the first statement of the subsequent section. In this manner, the narrative is made continuous through each of its discontinuous joints, thus shaping its telling with a fugue quality where the ending of each kaleidoscopic reflection becomes the beginning for a subsequent kaleidoscopic reflection. The unfolding of the narrative across these kaleidoscopic figures (the thirty-­ three sections) melds a spiraling temporality and a volatile spatiality into a chronotopic fugue. In the fugue composition of The Passion According to G.H. the cataclysm of all positions of a subject comprises positions of the reading subject as well towards the narrative. The narrator confesses that she cannot bear to tell her own narrative without the assistance of another’s hand, who, as reader, would serve as the amanuensis for the writing of this mystic fable. Searching to understand what occurred to her—her revelation—the narrator seeks to give the experience she remains unable to understand to a reader, who, in turn, cannot herself appropriate and master what is given, what is told, what is seen, to her. Within this tension, narration shutters and stumbles back and forth between narrator and reader, each tenuously progressing hand in hand until a final moment of release and letting go. In Lispector’s mystic fable, we are solicited to enter into the strangeness of its narration by way of a dispossession and

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dis-appropriation of reading that the narrative itself performs in its writing, spelled out before our eyes and held in our hands. In this manner, the mystic fable of The Passion According to G.H. cannot be read as either a monologue or dialogue; nor does it speak “to everyone” or “to no one.” As Lispector writes “to the possible reader”: “This book is like any other book. But I would be happy if it were read only by people whose souls are already formed […] They who, only they, will slowly come to understand that this book takes nothing from no one.” As a mystic fable, Lispector’s narrative does not present the reader with a testimonial of mystical experience or mysticism conventionally understood as so-called “lived-experience of verticality.” Contrary to the historically dominant trope of mysticism as “an ascent” and “epiphany” of height or transcendence, Lispector’s mystical itinerary crucially breaks with the grammar of verticality. If such a vector of verticality can be said to define “Abrahamic” forms of mysticism, and, especially, with liberation from materiality, The Passion of G.H. portrays a non-Abrahamic mysticism without transcendence.25 In its infernal embrace of carnality, Lispector’s narrative is not composed around the experience of transcendence, but, on the contrary, around the transcendence of experience through an immanentization without the eschaton. Lispector’s mystical fable presents the reader with a narrative of mystical contemplation. As the narrator writes: “So how was I supposed to inaugurate thinking within me now? and maybe only thought can save me, I’d afraid of passion.”26 This inauguration of thinking should not be construed as a “knowing” or “not-knowing.” The Passion According to G.H. narrates a transformative journey to the end of the possible, of what Georges Bataille calls “inner experience,” as an undergoing, or trial, born of “nonknowledge” in an “intellectual vision” of the God without form and mode that brings one into “a presence that is no longer distinct in any way from an absence.”27 Inner experience is neither “introspection” nor “inwardness.” It is “inner outwardness,” so to speak, beyond the  Anthony Steinbock, Phenomenology & Mysticism: The Verticality of Religious Experience, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), p. 241. 26  The Passion According to G.H., p. 7. 27  Georges Bataille, Inner Experience, p. 10. Nunes speaks of “‘não-entendimento’ dos místicos.” 25

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stability of any distinction between “inner” and “outer,” expelled into the desert of the neutral of being. Contemplation is visceral; it searches along the routes of “unfinding” (Lispector’s term) or “unknowing” in a transitive verbal form: to unknow. As practice and writing, contemplative nescience touches the God through a decomposition of the self in relation to the world in a cloud of unknowing. This journey to the end of the possible unfolds through an intensification of seeing that unhinges and disarranges the seeing of a subject, or myself seeing, where what is seen would be subjected to my seeing, or who is seeing. Philosophically speaking, intentionality, as girding a differentiated world along stable horizons, spacings, and timings of a unified cosmos, becomes neutralized. Neutralization is not negation but the surging forth of the wild heart of being, the splendor of the neutral. In Lispector’s narrative, this revelation of the neutral of being climaxes with tasting. In the words of Giles of Rome, “contemplation of the theologian is less a kind of seeing than a kind of tasting—magis consistit in sapore quam sapere—and is more a matter of ‘loving and sweetness’ than of speculation.”28 In Lispector’s hands, this moment of tasting in mystical contemplation does not attain knowledge or ignorance. In this respect, we might provisionally speak of amor dei intellectualis where what hangs in the balance with the blessedness of unknowing is neither salvation nor hope, but the joy of forgiveness in the neutral of being. The fable of the Passion According to G.H. is discourse in the upsurge of adoration. As Roger Bastide writes in his essay “Un mysticisme sans dieux”: “Au sens propre du terme, le mysticisme est une transformation de la personnalité qui se vide de son être propre, de ses instincts, de ses tendances distinctives, pour sortir en quelque sorte d’elle-même et communier avec l’objet de son adoration.”29 * * *  The Darkness of God, p. 201. Giles of Rome, Ordinatio, 1 Prol, Fol. 8raB, cited in A Companion to Giles of Rome, ed. Charles Briggs and Peter Eardley (Leiden: Brill, 2016), p. 44. 29  Roger Bastide, Le sacré sauvage, (Paris: Stock programme ReLIRE, 1997), p. 11. These lines are (perhaps) echoed in the final line of Lispector’s narrative. In the Spanish translation of Bastide’s essay: “una transformación de la personalidad, que se vacía de su ser propio, de sus instintos, de sus tendencias distintivas, para de cierta forma salir de sí misma y comulgar con el objeto de su adoración.” Roger Bastide, “Um misticismo sem deuses,” in: O Sagrado selvagem e outros ensaios, trad. Dorothée de Bruchard (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1997), p.  14. Whether or not 28

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“ – – – – – – am searching, am searching. I’m trying to understand.”30 It begins in the throes of a searching initiated before our arrival, already running out of breath, with neither the sincerity of a question or need of a problem. It does not search in wonder or amazement, nor indifferently without marked urgency. It begins vehemently, confusingly, in the neutralization of any traceable question or pliable problem, and, hence, without expectation for an answer or a solution. It has already begun, this searching of the narrator G.H. trying to understand what has happened to her. An experience of dispossession to the point of dispossessing the sense of experiencing itself. In the aftershock of having had an experience without having lived it, mastered it, understood it, constituted it for herself as hers to experience, what happened retains the mark of the neutral. “Did something happen to me?” The question undermines itself. Something happened, and yet was not lived. Was it too profound or too superficial? As the narrator expresses it: “Did something happen to me that I, because I didn’t know how to live it, lived as something else?” This cleavage of experience attests to the neutralization of how to live what has happened. Can we still speak of an experience when not lived as an experience? Can we still speak of experiencing something without lived as something to know and tell about myself? It does not begin with the shock of an experience, but with the aftershock of an affect—the disorientation and panic of searching—in search of the shock that it could not originally live as an experience even as it originally became shocked from this experience into this searching after its experience. Philosophically speaking, what defines the form of any possible experience is the integral possibility of “living” an experience as something happening to me, and, hence, in this regard, as “knowing what to do with what I lived”—to live and to tell. An experience is only an experience for Lispector knew of Bastide’s writings remains unknown to me. However, see Fernanda Peixoto, “DIÁLOGO INTERESSANTÍSSIMO: Roger Bastide e o modernismo,” in: Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, Vol. 14, No. 4 (1999): 93–109. Peixoto remarks: “De sua pena [Bastide], poucos escaparam. José Lins do Rego, Graciliano Ramos, Clarice Lispector, Orígenes Lessa, Augusto Frederico Schmidt e uma infinidade de outros nomes conheceram umas linhas do crítico. Em relação aos artistas plásticos propriamente ditos, analisou obras de Tarsila do Amaral, Di Cavalcanti, Rebolo, Segall e outros.” 30  The Passion According to G.H., p. 3 (translation modified) “– – – – – – estou procurando, estou procurando.”

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a self who lives, or undergoes, an experience as hers, as happening to her. In the opening of Lispector’s narrative, we stumble across the narrator’s searching in the aftermath of a deranged experience where the form of experience itself has become neutralized in its own immanent dispossession. This derangement in the form of experience does not make it an experience of the impossible, but marks it with the stigmata of an impossible experience, an unbearable experience nonetheless suffered and survived. We might term this derangement an abjection of experience: an experience that casts-off, or ab-jects, the self from its own axis of living its experience, thus intensifying the urgency of its experience of abjection. For the narrator, this abjection of experience makes of it lived as something else to the point of living it as someone else or for someone else, in need of another to whom this abject experience could be given. This abjection of experience is at the same time an abjection of the self. The form of “what” is experienced as well as form of “who” experiences are jointly disjointed. Intentionality, in the parlance of phenomenology, has collapsed. In this neutralization of the underpinning of possible experience in intentionality, an event befalls the narrator more startling and cataclysmic than facing the perplexity of a question or the befuddlement of a problem. This derangement of experience cannot be calibrated by the measure of a question in search of an answer nor of a problem in need of a solution. In pronounced disarray, the narrator’s attitude towards her unknowing situation of searching is neither dogmatic (“I know what I lived”) nor skeptical (“I doubt what I lived”) nor critical (“how was it possible what I lived?”). She finds herself, or, more accurately, we find her in the throes of a breathless searching without question and hence, perhaps, without end. “– – – – – – estou procurando, estou procurando.” Given that what has happened to the narrator, as she announces, undermines any sense of having been unambiguously lived as an experience, the testimony of what happened to her cannot take the form of a telling that looks backwards to recount and retrieve a settled past. Her searching narrative cannot find orientation in remembering a past experience as if that experience were over and done with, arranged within the domestic hold of a past awaiting the leisure of remembrance. Nor can the narrator look forward towards the future appropriation of her experience as hers alone to tell. The predicament of narrative testimony is

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exceedingly complex as it requires another to partake of the telling, not simply as the reader to whom this narrative becomes confessed, but as an indispensable reader without whom the narrative could not be told and confessed to herself, the narrator. As the narrator writes: “This effort I’m making now to let a meaning surface, any meaning, this effort would be easier if I pretended to write to someone.” In order for her to live what happened—what happened in the neutralization of its own living—it must happen again in writing and become lived in this telling hand in hand with the conjured presence of another. In the sudden opening of Lispector’s narrative, an elastic relation between seeing and speaking, writing and reading, as well as the visible and non-visible, the spoken and silence, is thus set into motion. As the narrator writes, in what befell her, she saw without knowing what she saw. There is no doubt, however, that this experience, though ambiguously lived, amounted to a transformative revelation. In this revelation, something essential, perhaps: the essential, has been lost. No meaning or sense can be given to this revelation because the form of experience itself was neutralized. “Meaning” or “significance” no longer stand as what matters most and yet there is nonetheless a seeing that stands inseparable from an impulse to speak. This impulse to speak does not respond to the need of testimony nor a desire to communicate “the truth” or “meaning” of what happened. This impulse to speak is the impulse for deliverance: to give to another, the reader, what has been seen so that the narrator can be delivered from the torment of aftershock. What is given to the reader is not shaped around “the meaning” of what happened to the narrator; it absolves the narrator from her unknowing without rendering her unknowing a possession or communicable knowledge. As she writes: “I know I saw—because there’s no point to what I saw. Listen, I’m going to have to speak because I don’t know what to do with having lived. Even worst: I don’t want what I saw.” “Take what I saw, deliver me from my useless vision, and from my useless sin.”31 Deliverance from the suspended position of having experienced without having lived must deliver oneself to another in order to find oneself. Much as this outbound reaching towards “I don’t know whom”—the possible reader—remains unspecified, who is to be found as well as who seeks to find oneself  The Passion According to G.H., p. 9.

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remains unspecified, the latter held in suspense with two initials, G.H., the former held in the suspense of whose ever hands are reading. In this need for someone to hold her hand as she begins to speak about what happened to her, the narrative drifts into an atmospheric aura. The narrator begins to tell of what happened to her to a spectral reader who holds her hand, trustingly, tenderly. She writes: “While writing and speaking I will have to pretend that someone is holding my hand.” “Going to sleep so closely resembles the way I now must go toward my freedom.”32 Hand in hand, the narrative unfolds within a liminal time and place suspended between the hand that writes and the hand that reads. Only on this condition of inducing a literary somnambulism can the narrator relive in writing what happened to her. This liminal atmosphere between sleep and wakefulness imbues a trance-like character to Lispector’s narrative, thus giving her narrative the form of ritual: every time that her narrative becomes read it writes itself afresh and its vision becomes relived for the narrator as in a trance. The “first step into the absence of me” requires the invented presence of the reader: “I shall invent your unknown presence and with you shall begin to die until I learn all by myself not to exist, and then I shall let you go.” The hand of the reader steadies the narrative living of what had been experienced yet paradoxically had not been lived; in thus piecing together for herself what she had not lived, she places herself in the situation of danger. As she writes: “Handing myself over to what I don’t understand would be placing myself at the edge of the nothing.”33 The spectral reader allows for the narrator to envision “the enormous vastness I discovered” without becoming absorbed and blinded in what she saw; without, in other words, experiencing what she saw. The trance-like atmosphere of the narrative conjures the reader for the ritual of reliving what had been experienced but not lived, but which can now become lived without having to be experienced. Only with this conjuration of the reader in the act of writing can the narrator begin to speak in her “sleepwalker’s language” and “create the truth of what happened to me.” * *  32 33

 The Passion According to G.H., p. 10.  The Passion According to G.H., p. 10.

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“I’m putting it off. I know that everything I’m saying is just to put it off—to put off the moment when I will have to start to speak, knowing I’ve got nothing left to say.”34 Once the narrator has put off speaking about what happened to her long enough to conjure an invented reader and muster her own courage, she begins by recalling how “yesterday morning […] nothing led me to suspect that I was a step away from discovering an empire.”35 Sitting at the breakfast table, the outstretched day before her seemed innocently bland, another day in the life of an artist in a top floor penthouse apartment in Rio. The day before, her maid, Janair, whose name she struggles to recall, had quit for reasons left unspecified. G.H. admits to harboring a visceral antipathy towards her and suspects in turn that she “despised” her. The narrator additionally relates how an amorous relationship had recently also come to an end. Free from binding relationships, she sits at the breakfast table kneading small balls of dough from a loaf of bread. Distracted, we are left uncertain, as the narrator might herself have been, as to what she might have been thinking that morning, remembering, perhaps, her “last relaxed romantic entanglement” or meditating on the circumstances of her maid’s departure. Happy to savor “the insipid taste of freedom,” she found herself alone with her silence. This silent testimony to the absence of others (the maid, the romantic entanglement) masked another silence. As the narrator relates, there always lurked a silence which at the time she did not recognize. This silence did not attest to the absence of others. It was a silence that “I’d only seen in lakes, and that I’d only heard in silence itself,” but could glimpse in the expression of her eyes in photographs. As she reflects: “Sometimes, looking at a snapshot taken on the beach or at a party, I noted with a light ironic apprehension something, the smiling and darkening face revealed to me: a silence. A silence and a destiny that escaped me, I, hieroglyphic fragment of an empire dead or alive. When I looked at the portrait, I saw the mystery. No. I am going to lose the rest of my  The Passion According to G.H., p. 13.  The Passion According to G.H, p. 15.

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fear of bad taste, I am going to begin my exercise in courage, being alive is not courage, knowing that one is alive is the courage—and I am going to say that in my photograph I saw the Mystery.”36 She never imagined that one day, this day, launched unknowingly that morning while distractedly sculpting meaningless balls of bread, she would go off to encounter and embrace the mystery of that foolish grin. The revelation of this Mystery occurs in an ontological vertigo, where, as Nunes and others have recognized, decomposition and dispossession pass through the collapsing of ontological distinctions. This vertiginous itinerary to the end of the possible exposes the complicity of the realism of the world with the idealism of the self. The derealization of the world, disarranged from its symbolic forms of constitution, rides in tandem with the depersonalization of the self, dispossessed of its identity and self-­ appropriation. Significantly, this mystical itinerary is not composed as an ascent towards a transcendence singularity or with the revelation of the darkness of God. A dialectical passage through conflicting and canceling oppositions based on the synthesis of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Moses’ standing before God “in a dark cloud” (Exodus 19, 9), which, since Denys the Areopagite, traditionally provided a dominant grammar of mystical theology, is decisively abandoned.37 Lispector’s mystical fable is materialist in its undermining of the trope of mystical verticality, or transcendence. Moreover, the complicity of the realism of the world with the idealism of the self becomes exposed as “inauthentic” without the disclosure of an authentic Dasein grasped in its ownmost possibility to be. Instead, what becomes stressed in Lispector’s narrative is the falsity of the humanized and domesticated self without, and indeed, subversively against, the promise of salvation and authenticity of self-appropriation. What occurred on that fateful day involved the essential loss of her “human form” and promise of salvation that underwrites the stability and significance of being-in-the-world. “A whole civilization that had sprung up, with the guarantee that one sees be mixed immediately with what one feels, an entire civilization whose foundation is salvation—so I was in

36 37

 The Passion According to G.H, p. 16.  See Denys Turner, The Darkness of God, Chap. 1.

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ruins.”38 Characterized as a “third leg,” “humanized life” allowed for the inlay of her life into the world. As she writes: “Yesterday, however, I lost my human setup for hours and hours.”39 This being-in-the-world is bound to an idealism of the self. What it is to be a self, the bearer of a proper name, is to live for and from an idea. I am defined by an Idea of who I am. On these terms, incarnation in the world is the incorporation of being—one’s existence—into an Idea in terms of which one gains an ontological standing (psychological as well as social) in the world: “Until now finding myself was already having an idea of a person and fitting myself into it: I’d incarnate myself into this organized person, and didn’t even feel the great effort of construction that is living.”40 I take myself to be the self who I am in such earnestness that I no longer recognize myself as conforming to an idea, or image: “The image of myself in quotes satisfied me, and not just superficially. I was the image of what I was not, and that image of not-being overwhelmed me: one of the most powerful states is being negatively. Since I didn’t know what I was, ‘not being’ was the closest thing I could get to the truth: at least I had the other side: I at least had the ‘not,’ I had my opposite.” It is living as the “clean and correct pretty replica” of an idea possesses the disarming allure of the social conceit of elegance and well-being. There she sat, “that woman,” eating “delicately what was mine, and delicately wiping [her] mouth with the napkin.” This idealism of the self hangs on the inversion of “not-being” into “being” in a manner that distantly recalls the ontological condition of what Sartre called bad faith: in taking myself to be who I am not, I realize, or appropriate, being who I am not. As the narrator writes: “I was devoted to every detail of the not. Painstakingly not being, I was proving myself that—that I was.”41 “As for myself, without lying or being truthful—as at that moment yesterday morning when I was sitting at the breakfast table—as for myself, I always kept a quotation mark to my left and another to my right. Somehow ‘as if it wasn’t me’ was broader than if

 The Passion According to G.H., p. 59.  The Passion According to G.H., p. 4. 40  The Passion According to G.H., p. 4. 41  The Passion According to G.H., p. 24. 38 39

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it were—an inexistent life possessed me entirely and kept me busy like an invention.”42 This idealism of the self is connected to the realism of the world as modeled with her apartment: “Everything here is the elegant, ironic, and witty replica of a life that never existed anywhere: my house is a merely artistic creation.”43 “The apartment reflects me. It’s on the top floor, which is considered an elegance. People of my milieu try to live in the so-called ‘penthouse.’” The self as determined by an idea—an idea bearing a proper name—was sculpted and shaped in order to be comprehensible to oneself as well as others. “At the breakfast table I was framed by my white robe, my clean and well-sculpted face, and a simple body.” Life was lived inside a mirror, reflected onto the self what others saw and projecting what wanted to see of oneself: given place and identity, finding oneself in the phonebook.44 One had a place in the world (social place and psychological place), and, in terms of this idea of oneself and place in the world, a sense of belonging and standing. As the narrator writes: “That morning, before entering the maid’s room, what was I? I was what others had always seen me be, and that was how I knew myself.45” The self as bearing a proper name is shaped around an idea of the self in terms of what others want to see. The idea of the self is the reference point for the fixation of the gaze of the other mirrored within oneself as the form in which one comes to see oneself. These arrangements of the self, the form of the self, as bearing a name (in contrast to the unnamable); and this name is initials, meaning that all “proper names” are not proper to what is named, but are initials, a kind of cipher. One ends up being a name in being named, and has as much of a relation to what is named as the relation of the initials G.H. on her suitcase. “This her, G.H. in the leather of her suitcase, was I: it is I—still?”46 As the narrator reflects, the image of herself in the photograph and its haunting silence betrays a hidden truth: “Only in photography, when the  The Passion According to G.H., p. 23.  The Passion According to G.H., p. 22. 44  The Passion According to G.H, p. 20. 45  The Passion According to G.H., p. 16. 46  The Passion According to G.H., p. 24. 42 43

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negative was developed, was something else revealed that, uncaught by me, was caught in the snapshot: when the negative was developed my presence as ectoplasm was revealed too. Is photography the picture of a hollow, of a lack, or an absence?”47 The photograph exposes the self as an image, as formed in the form of an image, or idea, which bears a proper name. To borrow Roland Barthes’ terminology, the silence of her eyes in photographs marks the punctum within the studium of the image: its social encoding, visibility and legibility. That face in which this silence is glimpsed in an inexpressive face; neutral and blank. In that muteness of her own glance there portends “a most direct link with the world.” In the negative of the photograph, the hollow or absence within her life exudes like a gelatinous, shapeless material. In its original esoteric usage, the term “ectoplasm” referred to a supposed spiritual essence that was said to exude from an individual, and often photographed as escaping from the mouth, nostrils, or surrounding the head. The release from the body of such “ectoplasm” was understood within spiritualist circles as establishing a vital communion between the medium (often a woman) in her trance and the universe.48 The term itself derives from the Greek: ektos (“outside”) and plasma (“something that can be formed or moulded), and makes its first appearance in the 1880s in Spiritualist literature. As Marian Warner notes, ectoplasm is allotted “to the category of symbols of generation: the foam, or aphros, of semen and spittle that can generate, as in creation myths, and heal […].”49 In Theosophical discourse, ectoplasm was said to express “the shapeless primordial paste,” or prime matter, in which everything that exists partakes. In Lispector’s striking usage of this term, this sideways glimpse in the negative exposure of photographs of the spectral plasma within her, her presence as ectoplasm, foretells unbeknownst to the narrator the dramatic encounter that resides on the other side of the maid’s room, as much inside that room as inside herself. * * *  The Passion According to G.H., p. 23.  Marina Warner, Phantasmagoria, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 290. 49  Marina Warner, Phantasmagoria, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 296. 47 48

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As she makes her way down a corridor towards the maid’s room, a vague presentiment that something is about to happen shudders through her. She pauses for a cigarette and looks down into the inner courtyard of her apartment complex. The architecture of the building around her takes on the appearance of a strange landscape that seems to be speaking to her; “it was saying nothing.” Only in hindsight, will she come to know what at that time remained veiled to her, “that I was always receiving the mute signal. I looked around the courtyard. Everything was of an inanimate richness that recalled that of nature: there too one could mine uranium and from there the oil could gush.”50 Only later would she realize that what seemed at the time to be a “lack of meaning” would in fact be meaning. Unsuspectingly, she throws the butt of her cigarette over the edge, and heads down the dark hallway behind the service area towards the maid’s room, expecting to find it “filthy and unclean,” as befits her class prejudice. As she opens the door, her eyes are struck by a startling vision: a quadrilateral space suffused in white light. She enters, much to her astonishment, into a clean room that had been stripped bare of arrangements of the living; she finds herself facing an “empty order,” a “dry emptiness,” a “created void.” The room itself no longer feels to be at the back of her apartment but seems instead to be “on a level incomparably higher than the apartment itself,” standing aloft like a minaret above a “limitless expanse.” Cryptically, she finds on the wall of the room the “nearly life-­ sized charcoal outlines of a naked man, a naked woman, and a dog more naked than a dog.” Is this strange apparition a coded reprimand of her life by her former maid? In the emptiness of the room, three old suitcases; as she observes “upon them, and upon the nearly dead sign of a ‘G.H.’, an already calm and sedimented accumulation of dust […] The room is so different from the rest of the apartment and the opposite of what I’d created in my home: “it was a violation of my quotation marks, the quotation marks that made me a citation of myself. The room was the portrait of an empty stomach.”51 Irritated and uncomfortable given a palpable eeriness, “the room’s inaudible sound was like a needle sweeping across a record after the music had stopped. A neutral hissing of thing was what 50 51

 The Passion According to G.H, p. 27.  The Passion According to G.H, p. 34.

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made up the substance of its silence.” She feels a foreign hostile presence lingering in the room, as if haunted by something unspeakable, and is suddenly seized by an inexplicable rage—“I wanted to kill something there.” Framed by the idea of bringing order into the room, she scans the wardrobe as she struggles to get a handle on the room’s “vast emptiness.” Nearing the wardrobe, she cracks open its narrow door and peers into its dark breach. She sees nothing; opens the door a bit more. “Then, before understanding, my heart went gray as hair goes gray.” From the depths of the wardrobe, a cockroach crawled forward. Stunned and revolted, she smashes the door and cleaves its body. Not entirely dead, she meditates in both disgust and fascination at whitish oozing from its body. This dying cockroach anchors a vertiginous revelation that “the world is not human, and that we are not human.” Much can be said and has been said regarding this coordinate singularity in The Passion According to G.H. As Nunes suggests, the disintegration of the self turns on the “ambiguous role played by the cockroach within the collapse of the system [i.e., the world] within which the narrator lived.”52 The cockroach surprisingly and shockingly discovered in the deserted maid’s room resists, however, allegorical interpretation.53 The cockroach is “real” as “the agent of that strange conversion” (“agente dessa estranha conversão”) that seizes the narrator in rapture and rupture. In witnessing the dying of the cockroach, there is a dying of the self: “My agony was like that of wanting to speak before dying. I knew that I was saying farewell forever to something, something was going to die, and I wanted to say the word that at least summed up whatever it was that was dying.” The cockroach is the resurgence of the archaic as the Real within the world as ambivalent punctum of attraction and repulsion, fascination and disgust.54 There is a touch of H. P. Lovecraft to Lispector’s unheimlich cockroach: the outside as the inside irrupts within the realism of the world and idealism of the self. The world’s realism only obtains in relation  Benedito Nunes, O drama da linguagem, (São Paulo: Quiron, 1973), p. 60.  Benedito Nunes, O drama da linguagem, (São Paulo: Quiron, 1973), “A barata que o provocou nada tem de entidade alegórica.” 54  For the appearance of a cockroach in Lispector’s other novels, see Benjamin Moser, Why This World. A Biography of Clarice Lispector, (London: Penguin, 2009), pp. 263–264. 52 53

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to the idealism of the self; the idealism of the self is only sustained in relation to the realism of the world. Both become short-circuited in the shock of encounter with the archaic Real, thus propelling the narrator into the Inferno of the neutral of being beyond “realism” and “idealism.” The “real” of the cockroach, the sheerness of facticity of being, is an outside that is neither “empirically” or “transcendentally” exterior (the latter, as would be the case with H. P. Lovecraft), but marks an outside that is transcendentally interior or, in other words, immanently exterior.55 After this first shock of encounter and her channeled rage against the cockroach, half of its body hangs outside the jarred door. It is alive and “looking at me,” the narrator; in revulsion, she averts her eyes and raises her arm for a final blow, then stays her hand of violence in coming face to face with the  cockroach. The cockroach’s blinking cilia “called” and “seduced” her as “a monotonous and remote canticle calls” “toward the most divine primary life.”56 Life itself in its archaic, non-human, and indifferent materiality—“an inferno of raw life”—was gazing back at the narrator, reducing her in this seduction of all seductions to a nucleus of life where “I’ll no longer know what hope is for.” The whitish, thick insides oozing from the cockroach’s twitching body provokes a dry heaving of nausea and urge to scream. Horrified as much at herself as disgusted by the spectacle of suffering before her eyes, G.H. has arrived at the depths of Hell bereft of “salvation” and “hope” which provided the foundation for the arranged human setup of civilization, the conjunction of the realism of the world with the idealism of the self. In this despair of having been cast into an immense desert without salvation, abjected, as it were, from the world and her humanness, G.H. hears a silence come to whisper in its promise of relief from the quenching thirst of her damnation. As she writes: “And the first true silence began to whisper. Whatever I’d seen that was so calm and vast and foreign in my dark and smiling photograph—whatever that was, was outside for the first time and entirely within my reach, incomprehensible but within my reach.”57  For this reading of H. P. Lovecraft, see Mark Fischer, The Weird and the Eerie (London: Repeater Books, 2016), p. 19ff. 56  The Passion According to G.H, p. 54. 57  The Passion According to G.H, p. 59. 55

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Standing within her reach in its incomprehensibility in the communion of the extruding ectoplasm of the cockroach with the exuding smile, she “had reached the nothing, and the nothing was living and moist.”58 What is here remarkable in its dramatic telling, finding herself in abjection beyond the horizon (or verticality) of any possible salvation or hope, is forgiveness itself that stands, as it were, within the nothingness she has reached, the neutral of being. “Forgiveness is an attribute of living matter.” Taking a cue from its etymology, “forgiveness” (in Portuguese: perdão) is here a remittance of oneself, or “giving of oneself ” entirely, in utmost urgency and absoluteness. In giving herself over to the nothing, moist and living, we do not witness a mystical union or identification. Rather, we witness a mystical forgiveness, not, however, in the sense of a life brought to perfection (or a gift brought to perfection), but, on the contrary, of a life reconciled with its abjection: “I, neutral cockroach body, I with a life that at last doesn’t escape me because I finally see it outside myself—I am the roach, I am my leg, I am my hair […] I am every hellish piece of me.” This shock of the return of the archaic of the Real in the figure of cockroach is the return of the repressed and what resided hidden inside herself. As the narrator writes: “The roach is an ugly and sparkling being. The roach is the other way around. No, no, it doesn’t have a way around: it was looking at me. And it wasn’t a face. It was a mask […] Its two eyes were alive like two ovaries. It was looking at me with the blind fertility of its gaze. It was fertilizing my dead fertility.”59 The denuding and disarming gaze of the cockroach expose the narrator in shame and guilt not only for the dying cockroach but for her own killing of a life within her, her dead fertility. In this moment of self-revelation, she “suddenly shouted” to herself “with the muteness of those whose mouths are gradually filled with quicksand, ‘I’m asking for help’.” As the narrator confesses, when the dark cloud of her despair passed while still facing the cockroach’s dying judgment and gaze on her life, its eyes like “two neutral and fertile

 The Passion According to G.H, p. 55.  The Passion According to G.H, p. 74.

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ovaries,” she recalled having struggled some time ago with her decision to have any abortion, roaming the streets, “feeling inside me the child that still wasn’t moving, while I stopped to look in the shop windows at the smiling wax mannequins.”60 Her pregnancy was the “happy horror of neutral life that lives and moves.” When does a woman’s love for the child she bears within her begin? When does it end? The fear confessed by the narrator at her pregnancy is the fear of “the silence with which life makes itself. The fear of the neutral.” Does the love for life originate with the neutral origin of life itself? Is the conceiving of life from the moist nothingness beyond “good” and “evil,” and hence, fundamentally and fortuitously indifferent, always marked, as it were, with the neutrality of being, ashes to ashes, dust to dust? The aftershock of having aborted her child manifests itself in the fear and trembling provoked by the unveiling gaze of the dying cockroach. As the narrator declares: “Mother: I killed a life, and there are no arms to receive me now and in the hours of our desert, amen […] I interrupted an organized thing, mother, and that is worse than killing, that made me enter through a breach that showed me, worse than death, that showed me the thick and neutral life turning yellow.”61 In agony for the killing of a life, the cockroach is the Real of the killing of her own child. The agony of abjection at having interrupted “an organized thing” becomes revealed, or shown to her, in entering “through the roach” into the breach of the neutral of life. Claire Varin suggests that “the disgusting roach appears explicitly as the only way to be born. A single narrow passage opens onto the room: ‘through the roach’.”62 Could we not therefore understand the smashed cockroach as both a primal figure of “the Mothers,” or what Lispector calls “the neutral crafting of life,” its indifference, and as a figure for the abortion of life, crushed as it were, within the breach of the living, not, however, for any “moral” or “ethical” grounds, but, more profoundly,

 The Passion According to G.H, p. 90.  The Passion According to G.H, p. 93. 62  Claire Varin, Langues de feu. Essai sur Clarice Lispector, (Laval: Editions Trois, 1990), p. 74. Let me take this opportunity to express my gratitude to Clair Varin for helping me locate a copy of her wonderful (and regrettably hard to find) book. 60 61

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as a metaphysical calamity that would call for, in forgiveness and atonement, in the narrator’s words, “a goodness so other that it wouldn’t resemble goodness”?63 This “goodness so other than goodness” could not take the form of salvation or hope, nor other kind of transcendence, whether to God or the cosmos, let alone a human system of moral values. This Goodness beyond good and evil is forgiveness as the attribute of living matter, giving oneself over to the neutrality of being in atonement for the killing of a life. * * * “She would feel the lack of something that should have been hers.”64 Not everything has been confessed to us. Who is “us” or “you” to whom the narrator confesses? When she writes, after speaking the words “but there is something that must be said, it must be said,” that “I’m going to say that I love you. I know that I said that to you before, and that it was also true when I said it, but only now am I really saying it.”65 In the throes of convulsions within the arc of her despair, she gets up from the bed facing the cockroach in the wardrobe with the determination “not of a suicide but of a murderer of myself.” After vomiting in nausea and emptying of herself, “I felt physically simple as a girl” as she steps forward “to eat the paste of the roach.” Waking up from having fainted, the phrase from the Apocalypse of Saint John, “I will spit you out of My mouth” comes to her. In this exaltation of the neutral of life, the spitting image of the exuded ectoplasm in her photographs, she has become reconciled with her being in knowing that “there is an experience of glory in which life has the purest taste of the nothing.” As revealed to her: “When living comes to pass, one wonders: but was that it? And the answer is: that is not only it, that is exactly it.”66 Revealed is that the life in her does not bear her name, the atoned ambiguity of which, in having tasted the moistness of nothing in forgiveness for her shame and disgust at herself, allows her  The Passion According to G.H, p. 86.  The Passion According to G.H, p. 141. 65  The Passion According to G.H, p. 121. 66  The Passion According to G.H, p. 183. 63 64

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to reply “I” whenever someone says her name, G. H., in the knowing unknowing that “being alive is a coarse radiating indifference […] being alive is inhuman—the deepest meditation is so empty that a smile exhales as from a matter.”67

References Bastide, R. 1997. Le Sacré Sauvage. Paris: Stock programme ReLire. Cavarero, A. 1995. La Passione della Differenza. In Storia delle Passioni, ed. S. Finzi. Bari: Editore Laterza. Cioran, E. 1973. De l’inconvénient d’être né. Paris: Gallimard. Cioran, E.M. 2012. The Trouble with Being Born. New York: Skyhorse Publishing. Lispector, C. 2012. The Passion According to G.H. New York: New Directions. Muraro, L. 2002. Commento alla Passione Secondo G.H. di Clarice Lispector. In Le Amiche do Dio: Scritti di Mistica Femminile. Napoli: D’Auria. Nunes, B. 1973. O Drama da Linguagem. São Paulo, Quiron. Scheler, M. 1979. Schriften aus dem Nachlass. Band II. Edited by M.  Frings. Bern: Francke Verlag. Warner, M. 2006. Phantasmagoria. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

67

 The Passion According to G.H, p. 181.

Index1

A

Accountability, 93, 166 Action, xix, xxiii, 27–29, 31n6, 32–39, 41, 41n13, 44, 46–50, 62, 72, 102, 104, 112, 113, 118, 135, 144, 153, 158, 166, 170, 171, 176, 183n4, 184, 193, 199, 205, 214, 215 retributive, 33, 34, 44, 46, 48, 49 Aesthetic, 59, 102, 108, 110–113, 118, 152, 190 Affect, 92, 116, 119, 120, 157, 199, 205, 217, 234 Affective framing, 108 outlook, 1, 6–8, 10, 11, 14, 18, 19, 21 turn, 60, 61, 207n1

Altruism, xvii Amazon Prime, 124, 127 Anesthetisation/anesthetization, xxii, 103 Anger cognitive component, 29 conative component, 29 political value of, 35 transition-, 34, 51 Animalistic, 152, 153 B

Barthes, Roland, 104, 105, 242 Behaviour moral, 158 prosocial, xix Behavioural immune system (BIS), 159

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2021 A. Falcato, S. Graça da Silva (eds.), The Politics of Emotional Shockwaves, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56021-8

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252 Index

Being, xvii, xxv, 29, 32, 33, 36–38, 40, 43, 46, 49, 50, 59–62, 66, 68, 70, 83, 87, 92, 114, 117, 118, 124, 125, 128, 131, 134, 138, 148n1, 149, 151, 158, 166–169, 172, 176–178, 181–183, 184n5, 187, 190, 191, 193, 196, 198, 200, 208, 212, 213, 221–249 Benjamin, Walter, xxiv, 172–174, 176, 178, 179, 182, 183 Berger, John, 168, 169 Bias, xxi, 62, 64, 74, 84, 86–92, 111 Binet, Alfred, 211–213, 215 Birth being born, 221, 223, 224 being-towards-birth, 223 Body, xxv, 7, 71, 83, 110–112, 115, 128n5, 129–135, 137–139, 141, 143, 148, 150, 152, 154–156, 159, 160, 175, 177, 178, 203–206, 241, 242, 244–246 Body odour disgust sensitivity (BODS), 148, 159 Butler, Judith, xxiii, 103–113, 118, 119 C

Censorship, 73, 102, 127 Chadwick, Edwin, 153, 154 Cioran, Emil, xxv, 221, 222, 224 Citizenship, xx, xxii, 76, 82, 83, 85, 88, 94 Classen, Constance, 148, 152, 153 Cleanliness, 153, 158 Comte, Auguste, 81, 94, 95

Conflict, xix, xxii, 32, 33, 37, 39, 40, 42, 43, 47, 62, 75, 83, 84, 93, 94, 128–144, 172, 198, 210, 211 Conservatives, xxii, xxiii, 68, 81, 85, 87, 88, 95, 155, 159 Conversion, xxiv, 200, 244 ethical, 187–200 Cooperation, xx, 33 Corbin, Alain, 148, 149, 154, 157, 160 COVID-19, 155 Crime, 70, 92, 125, 126, 129, 136, 137, 141, 144, 168, 178, 181 Culture, xviii, 57, 58, 63, 66, 74, 75, 101, 110, 111, 119, 132, 134, 155, 158, 203, 213, 226 D

Danger, xviii, xxii, xxvi, 85, 115, 156, 172, 237 Darwin, Charles, 153 Delhi Crime, xxiii, 123–144 Democracy, xvii, xx, xxi, 63, 64, 73, 75, 81, 83, 85, 88, 90, 91, 93, 94 Democrats, 85 Demographics, 82, 127 Dewey, John, xxii, 81, 85, 88 Discrimination, 31, 124, 143 Disease, 147, 150, 153, 157–160 Disgust, 154, 155, 157, 159, 160, 244, 248 Disorientation, xvii, xxv, 203–218, 234

 Index 

Distributed cognition, 203–218 Distrust, 64, 72, 75, 82, 87, 148, 152, 160, 161 Diversity, 5, 19 E

Emotion, xviii–xxi, xxiii, xxv, 29, 31, 34, 36n11, 46, 47, 47n17, 48n17, 50, 59–62, 64, 65, 67, 68, 72, 74–76, 139, 147, 151, 152, 158–160, 170, 173, 179, 187, 188, 191–193, 197, 203–218 Emotional citizens, 60, 75–77 disposition, 6, 8–11 scaffolding, 209–211 trap, 193, 195 Empathy, xvii–xix, 41, 41n13, 48, 168 Environment, xviii, xxiii, xxv, 74, 130, 147, 154, 173, 187, 200, 203, 204, 206–209, 209n2, 212–214 Ethics, xxii, 33, 59, 84, 86, 87, 89 Ethnicity, 2, 16 Evolution, xxii, xxiv, 84, 148, 149, 153

253

110, 130, 148, 155, 158–161, 167, 172, 179, 189, 190, 194–197, 204, 211, 214, 215, 218, 247 Foreign, xviii, xxiv, 64, 148, 157–160, 244, 245 The foul and the fragrant, 148, 149 Free press, 81, 86, 94 Freud, Sigmund, 102n3, 152, 153, 171, 172, 174 Fukuyama, Francis, 81, 83, 84, 93 G

Gaze, 102, 116, 118–120, 168, 181–183, 241, 246, 247 Gender, xxiii, 31 Genius/genius, 181, 189, 191 Guilt, 116, 137, 158, 167, 246 H

Haidt, Jonathan, xix, 62 Hate, xxiv, 158 Holocaust, 108, 110, 113, 114, 119 Humour political, 57–64, 67, 73, 75–77 populist, 63–66 shared, 59, 66

F

I

Fear, xviii, xxvi, 40, 41, 48n17, 148, 148n1, 149, 153, 157, 158, 189, 210, 239, 247 Feelings, xviii, xx, xxi, xxvi, 60, 61, 66, 72, 73, 76, 77, 103, 106,

Identity, xx, xxiv, 71, 73, 108, 112, 125, 148, 154, 155, 222, 230, 231, 239, 241 Ideology, xx, 48, 65, 72, 74, 87, 93, 132

254 Index

Image, xxii, xxiii, 102, 102n1, 103, 105–120, 111n7, 155, 156, 175, 198, 240–242, 248 dissemination, xxii, 102 repetition, 103, 110, 117 reproduction, 102 visual, 110, 111 Inarticulateness, 188 Incongruity theory, 58, 58n1, 66 Indian society, xxiii, xxiii web series, xxiii, 123–144 Indignation, 28, 156 Inequality, xxii, 31, 75, 84, 91, 113 Ingroups, xviii, 49, 65 Israel army, 174 Palestine, 37, 40 soldier, 167 J

Journalism, xxi, xxii, 64, 74, 81–95 Judgement Day, xxiii, 123–144 K

Kurzban, Robert, xviii, xviii L

Liberals, 63–65, 75, 82, 84, 91, 93, 94, 155, 204 Lippmann, Walter, xxii, 81, 85 Lispector, Clarice, xxv, 224–229, 225n5, 225n6, 225n7, 231–233, 233n29, 234n29, 235–237, 239, 242, 244, 244n54, 247 Locke, John, 81, 94

M

Macbeth effect, 158 Made in Heaven, xxiii, 123–144 Marx, Karl, 81, 94, 95, 153 Media, xx–xxii, 60, 61, 63–65, 67, 69, 72, 73, 75, 81–94, 102, 103, 125, 133, 141, 143, 144, 155, 156, 207, 217 Membership group, xx, 41, 43n14, 49, 61, 216 identity, 14 party, 15 Memory, xxii, 107, 134, 144, 150, 151, 160, 174, 191, 205, 216 Miasma, 153 Migrants, 64, 111, 148, 148n1, 154–158 Mill, John Stuart, 81, 94 Minorities ethnic, 8 sexual, 8 Moral character, 152, 192 conversion, xxiv decisions, 147 emotions, xix, xix failure, 165, 167, 169 foundations, 11 numbness, 168 psychology, xix, 155 shock, xxiv, 168, 169, 169n1 tribalism, xxi, 60–63 Morality, xviii–xx, 33, 48, 59, 158, 169, 171, 192 Mourning, 188 Mystic, 221–249 Mysticism, 225–230, 225n6, 226n10, 230n24, 232, 233

 Index  N

Navigation, 205, 207, 209, 210, 213–216 Netflix, 124, 127 Numbness, 188 moral, 168 Nussbaum, Martha, xxi, 27–36, 38, 40–42, 45, 47, 49–51, 59 O

Olfaction, xxiv, 147, 148, 152–154 Outgroups, xix, xxiv, 39, 49, 148, 154, 157, 159 Outrage, 28

255

Post-truth, 57–77 politics, 57–77 Poverty, xxii, 84, 91, 92 Power, xxiii, 31, 48, 50, 63–65, 67, 70, 71, 82, 86, 88, 92–94, 104, 107, 113, 115, 123–144, 148, 149, 180, 227 Prejudice, xxiv, 62, 65, 66, 72, 148, 154, 157, 159, 243 Primitive, 154, 158, 159, 189, 228n17 Progress, xxii, 29, 35, 35n9, 43, 81–95, 140, 149, 179, 180 Proletariat, 153, 154, 157 Q

P

Pandemic, xvii, 155, 157, 158, 176, 178 The Passion According to G.H., xxv, 221–249 Phenomenology, xxiv, xxv, 45, 194, 204, 209–217, 235 Photography, xxii, 101–120, 241, 242 Polarisation, political, xx, xxi, xx, xxi Political affiliation, 16, 17 behaviour, 58 debates, xxi, 58, 87 discourse, 72 division, 1, 3, 6, 8, 12, 13, 21 group, 62 identity, 15–18, 21 membership, 62, 148n1 party, 2, 5, 15, 16, 20 views, 15, 87 Post-enlightenment, xxii, 81, 83

Queuing, xxv, 204, 205 R

Racism, 43n14, 113 Rape, 123–144, 171 laws, 124 Real, xviii, xx, xxii, xxiii, 37, 43, 49, 67, 70, 74, 75, 101–103, 101n1, 105–112, 114–120, 116n8, 131, 132, 161, 167, 170, 172, 175–177, 228, 244–247 Reality, xx, 74, 84, 86, 90, 102n1, 103, 105–112, 117–119, 123, 128, 132–137, 139, 141, 168, 175, 176, 178, 184, 229, 230 Recognition, xxi, 27–51, 70, 76, 131, 141, 166, 181–184, 183n3, 183n4, 184n5, 212 Refugees, xxiii, xxiv, 110, 148, 148n1, 154–159

256 Index

Reinarz, Jonathan, 148, 150–152 Representation, 37, 85, 105, 115, 116, 128, 205, 206, 212–215, 217, 226n10 enacted, 205–207 Republicans, 4, 5, 8, 12–17 Resentment, 28, 66 Retribution, 27–51 Right wing extremism, 4 S

Scaffolding, 208–211 Schadenfreude, xix, xix Sensationalism, 94 Senses, xvii, xviii, xx, xxi, xxiii, 29–31, 37, 47, 62, 65–68, 76, 116, 124, 147–155, 157, 158, 160, 167, 168, 171, 172, 174, 175, 180, 183, 183n3, 184, 184n5, 188, 190, 191, 193, 196–198, 200, 203, 211, 214, 222–224, 226, 227, 229, 234–236, 241, 246 Shame, xxv, 107, 116, 124, 137, 158, 216, 246, 248 Shock after, 65, 75, 197, 234, 236, 247 art, 110 compulsion, 101–120 emotional, xvii, xxi, xxiv, 187–200 humour, 72 images, 112 moral, xxiv, 168, 169, 169n1 moral significance, xxiv, 165–184 shell-, 171 traumatic, 102, 112, 224 Shockwaves, xvii, 123–144, 155

Situated approaches to emotion, xxv, 204–209 Smell, xxiii, xxiv, 147–161 Smith, Tiffany Watt, xviii, xix Social appraisal, 207–209 behaviour, xxiii, 160 catastrophe, 200 injustice, xxi, 31, 42, 43, 43n14, 45, 48, 49, 51, 57–77 norms, 66, 208 problems, xix, 95 Sontag, Susan, xxiii, 103–112, 104n4, 107n6, 115, 116, 118, 119, 170 Stench, 150, 154, 156–158, 160 Stereotypes, 66, 157 Strassheim, Angela, 117 Surprise, xxiv, 142, 143, 171, 196–199 Suskind, Patrick, 149, 150, 154, 157 T

Technology, xxv, 68, 69, 74, 173, 203, 209, 215 progress, xxii, 81, 84 Torture, 103, 107–109, 117, 131–133, 135, 137, 138, 142 Trauma, xvii, xxii, xxiii, 101–103, 105, 106, 109–118, 120, 135, 171, 172, 174, 175, 182n2 discourse, xxii, 101–120 The Trouble with Being Born, 221n1, 222n2 Trump, Donald, 63, 165, 166 Trust, xx, 62, 71, 106n5, 210

 Index 

Reorientation Illusions (VRIs), 212

V

Value, xxi, xxiii, 27, 31, 35, 49, 65, 66, 87, 118, 148, 165, 183n4, 192, 248 Vicarious witnessing, xxiii, 118 Violence, xxiii, xxiv, 45, 72, 75, 104, 109–111, 113, 117, 119, 120, 123, 124, 133, 171, 172, 175, 245 Virtue signaling, 117 Visual culture, 101, 110, 111 image, 110, 111

W

West Bank, 167, 169, 174, 175, 182 Williams, Bernard, 176–178, 190–193, 197 X

Xenophobia, 40, 160

257