Passion and Judgment. The Politics and Ambivalence of Indignation

Abstract

The monographic issue Forms of Indignation: Genesis and Uses of a Political Passion reconstructs the historical configurations of an affect in which emotional intensity is fused with judgment, and the force of reaction with normative claims. From the Second Scholasticism to modern political philosophy, and through the transformations of industrial society and late capitalism, indignation is continually redefined alongside changing forms of power, criteria of responsibility, and boundaries of political belonging. Tracing its metamorphoses means examining the conditions under which the denunciation of injustice can become a principle of emancipation or, conversely, turn into a reactive dynamic that reproduces the very hierarchies it seeks to challenge