Being angry: rhetorics of rage in the 21st century

Grimwood, Tom ORCID logo ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8099-6191 (2024) Being angry: rhetorics of rage in the 21st century. In: 26th Arts Research Initiative: Art as Resistance: Creative Practice in Austerity Britain, 20 November 2024, Stanwix Theatre, University of Cumbria, Carlisle, UK. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Traditionally, Western thought has aligned anger with deficiency: blindness, immaturity, and an obstacle to calm, reasoned dialogue. However, in contemporary culture, the experience of anger is a far more complex endeavour. For, on the one hand, there is much to be angry about, for reasons far from ‘blind’ and which do not preclude dialogical experience. On the other hand, there is a question as to how anger can be enacted effectively in a world that has confirmed the end of history as the stultification of revolution; rationalised the psychological mysteries of our inner depths; harnessed the energy of rage into myriad forms of self-improvement regimes; and arranged upset as a tool of behavioural insights to be nudged and channelled for strategic ends. Is it really possible to express an authentic anger that dissolves any self-aware ironies or complicities in today’s media ecology? Beginning from a question anonymously posted on the Quora website–‘I am so angry all the time, what should I do?’–this paper follows a line of inquiry into contemporary anger, and the possibilities of a hermeneutic engagement with it. In doing so, it address what Gadamer notes is a modern ‘transition from the rhetorical tradition to the psychology of experience’ (2004:503) in the interpretation of anger’s expression. Instead, building on hermeneutic insights alongside recent scholarship reappraising the philosophical value of anger, the paper considers the ways in which mood, medium and language interact, potentially challenging the traditional alignment of anger with blindness the way to a hermeneutics of rage.

‘The local is the international, the national is the parochial’ (Leonard). The focus of this University of Cumbria Arts Research Initiative (ARI) conference is to explore the role of creative practice as a form of socio-political engagement, with a focus on the evolving intersection of art, ideology, identity and place within the neoliberal world. Set in the context of North-West England, this conference brings together artists, writers arts organisers and academics to interrogate how creative practice responds to, reflects, and challenges the received conventions of the so-called therapeutic institution. Presentations and discussions will address how creative practice engages critically with issues and notions of economic migration, place, climate, authority and social class. Situating creative practice within both local, regional and national contexts, the conference seeks to enable a critical dialogue on its relation to communities, both real and imagined, within the neoliberal epoch.

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Lecture)
Departments: Institute of Health > Psychology and Psychological Therapies
Centre for Research in Health and Society (CRIHS)
Depositing User: Anna Lupton
Date Deposited: 27 Nov 2024 11:12
Last Modified: 28 Nov 2024 10:15
URI: https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/8495

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