Sjoerd van Tuinen
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Frogs in the Swamp: A Critique of Menno ter Braak and other Liberal Discourses on Ressentiment
5 November 2024, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)
Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)
School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon
Abstract
As the post-2016 boom in the self-diagnostics of toxic liberalism shows, the concept of ressentiment is still one of today’s main ‘ideologemes’ (Jameson). It is an ideologeme because, while having a strong morally disqualifying power, it offers no way out of the political impasse it describes. Here I propose a critique of the 1937 essay by the Dutch writer Menno ter Braak, ‘National Socialism as a Doctrine of Rancor’ (translated and published for the first time in English in Theory, Culture & Society in 2019) as the basis for a wider critique of ‘pastoral’ discourses on ressentiment. First, I argue that ressentiment initially and primarily names a bourgeois phenomenon and problem, and as such is an articulation of what Rancière has aptly called a ‘hatred of democracy’: liberal democracy is held responsible for all social problems as it inherently summons forth a bad infinity of emancipatory struggle (‘fanaticism’, ‘utopism’) that must be disqualified. Second, I show how ressentiment functions as a label for bourgeois self-legitimation: in discerning ressentiment everywhere, a claim is made to good conscience on the basis of either a more rational or a more authentic relation to one’s own ressentiment. It is this esprit de sérieux that culminates in Ter Braak’s hypocritical statement that ‘one will have to begin, for example, by speaking less disparagingly about the “bunch of losers”, because one cannot overestimate the extent of the reservoir of latent rancour.’ Third, I will briefly touch upon ways in which other discourses on ressentiment – those of Nietzsche and of the diplomat as invoked by ter Braak at the outset of his essay – seek to overcome this seriousness and contrast these other discourses with a discourse that is at risk of deepening it – in particular that of Améry.