As limitações da raiva construtiva

Abstract

This article provides an analytical examination of the definition of anger and its political instrumentality, framed within the cognitivist literature on emotions. I analyze Martha Nussbaum’s critique (2016), which states that anger is counterproductive and that it should be substituted by positive emotions – a perspective I call the ‘substitution proposal’. Anger’s dismissive treatment takes harmful connotations when directed at women and black people, by raising up gender and race stereotypes. In response to that political problem, scholars such as Myisha Cherry (2022) have developed defenses of anger, advocating for its necessity to the fight against racism and characterizing it as constructive and positive. However, I contend that Cherry’s defense of constructive anger – what she calls ‘Lordean rage’ – aligns with Nussbaum’s proposal, as both ultimately advocate for the regulation of anger into a form of positive emotion. I argue that there is a gap in the defenses for the instrumentality of anger, which are not focusing on the key element of anger that is politically controversial and, nonetheless, imperative: its aggressiveness.