The Global Politics of Ugly Feelings: Pessimism and Resentment in a Mimetic World

Abstract

Negative emotions are not what they used to be. As the world edges closer and closer to the brink of a dark political dystopia, sentiments of disenchantment such as pessimism and resentment stand out as dominant moods of our age. Despite being once endowed with a critical and creative potential, today these ‘ugly feelings’ sustain forms of politics that are ambivalent and equivocal. Against the background of a highly mimetic social ontology, where affects mutate into memes at dazzling speed, these sentiments of disenchantments are appropriated by the political right as well as the left, hanging dangerously between reaction and emancipation. The chapter provides a diagnosis of their re-emergence, highlighting their common phenomenological matrix, their shared dysphoric and non-cathartic nature, and their ambivalent political work.