Political Emotions as Public Processes: Analyzing Transnational Ressentiments in Discourses

Abstract

Political ressentiments are shared emotional attitudes that are constantly (re)articulated in public discourses. Due to their textual (re)production, they are very amenable to interpretative research. To identify political ressentiments, researchers need to analyze discourses for articulations of cognitions, affective arousals and action tendencies that form the typical pattern of these negative emotional stereotypes. This chapter demonstrates how such a list of textual indicators can be derived from philosophical and psychological research into the nature of ressentiment. It then empirically illustrates the application of these heuristic tools by analyzing the SYRIZA administration’s discourse on Greek-German relations before concluding with a brief discussion of the benefits, wider applications and limitations of this kind of discourse analysis.