Sing the Rage: Listening to Anger after Mass Violence

Description

What is the relationship between anger and justice, especially when so much of our moral education has taught us to value the impartial spectator, the cold distance of reason? In Sing the Rage, Sonali Chakravarti wrestles with this question through a careful look at the emotionally charged South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which from 1996 to 1998 saw, day after day, individuals taking the stand to speak - to cry, scream, and wail - about the atrocities of apartheid. Uncomfortable and surprising, these public emotional displays, she argues, proved to be of immense value, vital to the success of transitional justice and future political possibilities. Chakravarti takes up the issue from Adam Smith and Hannah Arendt, who famously understood both the dangers of anger in politics and the costs of its exclusion. Building on their perspectives, she argues that the expression and reception of anger reveal truths otherwise unavailable to us about the emerging political order, t Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1: More than Cheap Sentimentality: Victim Testimony at the Nuremberg Trials, the Eichmann Trial, and the South African Truth and Reconsiliation Commission Chapter 2: Confronting Anger: Where the South African TRC Fell Short Chapter 3: The First Skeptic: Hannah Arendt and the Danger of Victim Testimony Chapter 4: The Second Skeptic: Adam Smith and the Visualization of Sympathy Chapter 5: Three Values of Anger Chapter 6: Trust Enough to Tarry Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index