Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Clover Reshad, “Resentment,” Political Concepts: A Critical Lexicon, Issue 8 (2025).

Derived from the prefix re- and the Latin sentire, resentment denotes a re-feeling of negative emotions. Its bitter, brooding outlook is often thought to be hostile to a life of action. It appears to want nothing more than to drag those on top down to its own level. And it seems to inevitably lead to a messy sort of politics — unreasonable, reactionary, and prone to violence. A handful of scholars, however, have tried to rescue a ‘good’ form of resentment by delineating ressentiment as its ‘bad’ underside. Yet any such effort runs up against an old problem in the conceptual history of this emotion: resentment is not so easily circumscribed or controlled. Drawing on thinkers from Adam Smith to Friedrich Nietzsche and Frantz Fanon, this article argues that resentment’s most readily disavowed traits, including its bitter refusal of the world as it is, lie at the very foundations of politics. Concerns surrounding this emotion do need to be treated seriously. But rather than redeeming or rejecting resentment tout court, this article reckons with its ambivalence as a site of political struggle. This article, in short, challenges the prevailing narrative that resentment is a threat to political life rather than an important, constitutive part.