The Polemics of Ressentiment

Download or read book The Polemics of Ressentiment written by Sjoerd van Tuinen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-05-17 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of populism, cynicism, fanaticism and fundamentalism challenges us to reconsider the problem of ressentiment. Characterized by Nietzsche as the self-poisoning of the will through internalising trauma in the form of a postponed and imaginary revenge, the concept of ressentiment is making a comeback in political discourse. Unlike resentment, the feeling of injustice, ressentiment is an intrinsically polemical notion. It implies a political drama in which there is no inherent good sense in its application and no universal criterion. Drawing on psychoanalysis, political theory, media theory and philosophy, this book examines a wide variety of ideological contexts, offering an examination of the divergent senses in which the concept of ressentiment is used today.