Jean Améry’s reconceptualization of resentment: Reflections on a political pedagogy of resistance to oblivion and indifference

Abstract

This essay examines Jean Améry’s account of resentment as protest against oblivion and indifference and explores its implications in invoking a political pedagogy that attempts to find moral and political virtue in resentment. Exploring the pedagogical implications of resentment through the lens of Améry’s account reveals something important about how resentment is understood today and used to “pedagogize” individuals and groups into a particular affective politics. More importantly, this exploration creates openings for a different conceptualization of resentment that does not “reject” resentment for its “negativity” but rather reclaims it as a politically and pedagogically value-laden concept that operates, under certain conditions, as a productive form of resistance against efforts to put the painful past under the carpet. The analysis argues that it is crucial to reframe resentment in education from an existential pathology to a political pedagogy that affirms a different orientation towards time and violence.