Dissertation Research

Resentment is now one of the political scientist’s favored diagnostic tools, routinely used to explain the rise of the far right in terms of wounded entitlements. Yet, historically, this concept has been much more than an epithet for the right. Even its most well-known interlocutor in Friedrich Nietzsche theorized and, indeed, criticized ressentiment as animating emancipatory forms of politics. My work unearths a long-neglected counter-tradition on resentment in thinkers like Aristotle, Friedrich Engels, and Frantz Fanon. I find that the struggle for freedom is colored by bitterness, brooding, and the feeling of being wronged. Moving beyond the notion that resentment is regressive, I argue that the very demand for freedom depends on this emotion.

I intervene in the growing body of research on populism and political emotions by challenging the near-reflexive association of resentment with the right. I also contribute to radical democratic theory, building on the work of theorists who emphasize a role for negative emotions but tend to overlook resentment. More broadly, by recuperating the Manichean force of this emotion, my project develops an emotional vocabulary for left political renewal at a time when the right has proven far more adept at mobilizing emotions.