Anger in Repressive Regimes

A Footnote to Domination and the Arts of Resistance by James Scott

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2397643
AutoresHelena Flam (0000-0003-1429-0355, Leipzig University, autor correspondente)
Ano2004
Volume7
Fascículo2
Páginas171-188
Data de publicação2004-05-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEuropean Journal of Social Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1368-4310 • E-ISSN: 1461-7137
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1368431004041750
OpenAlexW1981960210
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas22
Referências citadas14

A well-established idea is that the powerless, even when they are angered by the relations of domination or their consequences, do not display this anger for fear of negative sanctions. Although in the first part of his Domination and the Arts of ResistanceJames Scott elaborates this idea in a creative manner, he challenges it in the second part of his book. He proposes that when autonomous spaces emerge in the systems of absolute domination, the powerless use them to develop their own cultures of solidarity and dissent. These make it highly probable that the long-suppressed anger, rather than just simmering, will one day explode in the face of the oppressor with a satisfying full blast. In this article I use mostly Central European material to argue against Scott's unorthodox view. I line up evidence in support of the thesis that, even where there are autonomous spaces and cultures of dissent, citizens display apathy and protesters start out with much anxiety and caution, afraid to provoke the anger of the powerful. Fear of repression and the wish to dilute one's own and the onlookers' anxiety, I argue, account for why, in this region after 1980, protest assumed ever more ambivalent, satirical and carnivalesque forms. Not anger, but rather a mixture of fear and hope - the latter propagated by the leading ÈmigrÈ and domestic dissidents - dictated the display of such emotions as anxiety, but also sorrow or joy

Ambivalence · Dissent · Sorrow · Eastern European Communism and Reforms