Genealogy of anger: emotions and violence in Argentinean collective actions

Abstract

Anger constitutes an undeniable driving force to comprehend many of the collective actions that have traversed the Argentine reality since the return of democracy. As an expression of a constellation of social emotions that materialize in individuals' experiences, the anger underpinning protests not only questions the disputes over the “correct ways of feeling” in society but also communicates about what it is willing to acknowledge in terms of violence management. Emotion and violence emerge as two privileged lenses to unravel a genealogy of anger that materializes in collective actions. This study aims to approach the aforementioned relationship through a series of concrete postcards of Argentine collective action (since 1983). Without striving for exhaustiveness, a series of postcards are reconstructed from paradigmatic collective actions, enabling the identification of “rhythms” in the connections between anger and violence through the interactions of repertoires and action meanings. The following are analyzed: “escraches” (political actions against individuals accused of crimes against humanity), roadblocks, looting, lynchings and “digital cancellation” actions. Records from virtual ethnographies and in-person interviews engage in dialogue with media records and existing academic literature on the selected paradigmatic cases, all aimed at initially characterizing a genealogy of anger in Argentina.