From Anger to Outrage
This article delineates the possible transformation of anger, an emotion, into outrage, a social passion. Posing the question – when and how do emotions end? – it considers the putative role of revenge (in Aristotle’s perspective) and resentment (in Max Scheler’s perspective). The transformation is discussed in terms of the Harkis, the Algerians who sided with the French during Algeria’s war of independence, tens of thousands of whom were slaughtered by the Algerian population at large at the war’s end. Abandoned by the French, the Harkis’ anger is mediated by a sense of destiny which is not shared by their children, who suffer their father’s wounds without knowing what they exactly were as their fathers kept silent. Caught in their own painful experiences, the children are doubly traumatized. Removed from actual experience, the stories they tell as well as their political activism inflames the anger that lies behind their outrage. Is their a way out? This is the question this article is asking.