The miserable is political: a critical theory of anger and depression

Thesis

This thesis explores the role played by negative emotions—specifically, anger and depression—in motivating social critique and political resistance. Critical theorists, especially in the Frankfurt School tradition, have had wide-ranging debates about the nature and grounds of critique, and how it arises from experiences of alienation or misrecognition. However, these debates have so far largely ignored the epistemological and motivational role of emotions. On the other hand, feminist and anti-racist philosophers have written much about the role of feelings in emancipatory political movements. This thesis therefore brings together debates in Critical Theory with this work to develop a systematic account of how anger and depression lead to emancipatory knowledge and action.

The result of my engagement with these different literatures is a materialist understanding of critique as rooted in subjects’ embodied emotional experiences of the world. I will argue that we should conceptualize anger, depression, and other negative emotions, as subjective experiences of social contradictions. On a subjective level, these contradictions are concretely experienced as various forms of frustrated agency which interrupt our seamless engagement with the world and force us to reflect on our relationship to it. While these experiences, by revealing fissures in the reproduction of the social order, always harbour the possibility for progressive social change, they do not automatically lead to emancipatory consciousness. The resulting negative feelings can be turned inward in self-blame, as in depression, or misdirected towards innocent scapegoats. But in the best case, when similar frustrations are shared among groups of people, these emotional experiences can be collectivized, analysed, and provide the basis for political consciousness and emancipatory struggles. Critique should be thought of as the cognitive moment in these practical struggles to transform the world, and its normativity ultimately derives from negative emotions as the lived experiences of social contradiction.

Authors: Friedrich, J

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-gj8by8zqw
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: anger; Frankfurt School; depression; political emotions; critique; critical theory
• Subjects: Critical theory; Political Theory; Social Philosophy