The Politics of the Wretched: Race, Reason, and Ressentiment

The Politics of the Wretched argues for ressentiment’s generative negativity, prompting a shift from ressentiment as a personal expression of frustration to ressentiment as a collective ＂No＂. Inspired by Kant and Nietzsche’s philosophy, Zalloua identifies two modes of deploying ressentiment - private and public use - by substituting ressentiment for reason. This reinterpretation argues for a public use of ressentiment, for the wretched to universalize their grievances, to see their antagonism as cutting across societies, and to turn personal trauma into a common cause.

A public use of ressentiment rails against the ideology of identity and victimhood and insists on ressentiment’s generative negativity, its own rationality, prompting a shift from ressentiment as a personal expression of frustration to ressentiment as a collective ＂No＂. Reframing ressentiment as a tool to oppose the evils of capitalism, anti-Blackness, and neocolonialism, it both alarms the liberal gatekeepers of the status quo and promises to energize the anti-racist Left in its ongoing struggles for universal justice and emancipation.

Zahi Zalloua is the Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature at Whitman College, USA. He is the co-author of Universal Politics, and the author of Solidarity and the Palestinian Cause: Indigeneity, Blackness, and the Promise of Universality, and Being Posthuman: Ontologies of the Future.