Introduction -- A concept of bodies politic -- Above, below, and alongside the subject -- Bodies politic -- Bodies politic as organisms -- The organism in Aristotle and Kant -- The anorganic body in Deleuze and Guattari -- Love, rage, and fear -- Terri Schiavo : the somatic body politic -- The Columbine High School massacre : the transverse body politic -- Hurricane Katrina : the governmental body politic -- Conclusion.

Anger is often described as a wild emotion that endangers both social order and the possibility of constructive political dialogue. And yet, anger is an indispensable political emotion – for without angry speech the body politic would lack the voice of the powerless questioning the justice of the dominant order. Anger is not the opposite of order, for anger is domesticated by the dominant to serve order – in the form of force, authority, moral indignation and care. Moreover, order itself, (...) in the form of technical rationality, is rooted in the anger of the middle-class professional whose claim to social status and power depends upon their moralistic enforcement of the rule of technique. A dialogical politics can only emerge when anger is heard with empathy, rather than domesticated or silenced. (shrink)

Moral outrage is a response to the behavior of others, never one's own. It is a response to infringements or transgressions on what people perceive to be the immunities they, or others with whom they identify, can expect on the basis of their rights and privileges and what they understand to be their reasonable expectations regarding the behavior of others. A person's culturally defined social identities and the rights and privileges that go with them in relationships to which those identities (...) can be party make up the contents of that person's social persona and also constitute that person's social territory. Infringements of rights and privileges in the social and symbolic worlds in which humans live are the equivalent of encroachments on territory among animals, and moral outrage can be understood as the human expression of what we perceive as territorial behavior in animals. As emotion, outrage is affected by such clinical processes as displacement, rationalization, projection, and reaction formation. Outrage has an essential role in the maintenance of viable social groups, but it also exacerbates conflict among people who perceive one another as “others.”. (shrink)

Vehement resentment and indignation are rife in societies emerging from dictatorship or civil conflict. How should institutions deal with these emotions? Arguing for the need to recognize and constructively engage negative public emotions, Mihaela Mihai contributes theoretically to the growing field of transitional justice. Drawing on an extensive philosophical literature and case studies of democratic transitions in South Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe, her book rescues negative emotions from their bad reputation and highlights the obstacles and the opportunities such (...) emotions create for democracy. By valorizing negative emotions, either through the judicial review of transitional justice bills or the criminal trials of victimizers, institutions realize the value of respect and concern for all while contributing to a public culture hospitable to democracy. (shrink)