Here Lies Bitterness

Healing from Resentment

By: Cynthia Fleury, Cory Stockwell (Translator)

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Hardcover | 23 February 2023 | Edition Number 1

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Hardcover
226 Pages

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23.11 x 15.75 x 2.54

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Political philosophy and psychoanalysis have one key problem in common, one which affects both the life of individuals and the life of societies: a bitter unhappiness which poisons their existence. When we experience feelings of inferiority in relation to others, resentment can set in: a diffuse and obsessive loathing, coupled with delusions of victimhood, which clouds one’s judgement and perspective, so that an individual’s capacity to act and heal is paralysed. Without the ability to heal, resentment can give rise to violent impulses, to the rejection of the rule of law, the proliferation of conspiracy theories and the urge to use violent means to try to regain control of one’s life. Resentment, argues Cynthia Fleury, is the disease most likely to endanger modern democracy.

By presenting resentment as a key threat to modern democracy, Fleury re-focuses democratic theory on the task of searching for the tools that could enable us to stem its flow. Democracy is a way of sublimating violent instincts and collectively creating institutions and cultural resources that enable us to cope with conflict. As individuals and as societies, we are facing the same challenge: how to diagnose resentment and its dark forces, and how to resist the temptation to allow it to become the motor of our individual and collective histories.

This bestselling and highly original account of the psychic forces shaping modern societies will be of great interest to anyone concerned about the crisis of democracy today and what we can do to address it.

Industry Reviews

“Fleury’s theorization of resentment is powerfully informed by philosophy, psychoanalysis, and political theory, and at the same time forges its own original and compelling account of self-destructive modes of existence. In this beautifully written meditation on resentment, Fleury opens up new ways of thinking about a subject’s capacity to become a trapped, incapacitated, and bitter victim of its own ruminations. The implications of this book are profound and manifold.”
Claire Colebrook, Pennsylvania State University

“In view of the political crises that spare no region of the world today, we can no longer ignore that democracy is mortal and very sick: too often we see the sacred right to vote turned against democratic values. It is essential to understand why, and what is to be done. That is why it is urgent to dive into this book’s luminous demonstration that the disease has a name – resentment – and to explore the philosophical and psychoanalytical paths toward healing that its author opens up.”
Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Columbia University

"an insightful and probing exploration"
Philosophy and Society

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