Voicing Anger
Chapter 1 recommends that emotionally charged discourse play an important role in the public speech of divided democracies. The present chapter builds on this recommendation by examining public expressions of anger. It is commonly held that publicly voicing anger is counterproductive. The chapter resists this challenge by articulating a crucial sense in which voicing anger can be epistemically productive. Because of anger’s distinctive felt quality, conveying anger to one’s listeners can play an indispensable role in alerting them to previously overlooked injustices, and in enhancing their understanding of these injustices. This epistemic function is vital in divided societies. Because such societies typically involve significant social segregation and epistemically detrimental ideologies, the injustices endured by some groups are often invisible to, or misunderstood by, other groups. Finally, the chapter defuses the most powerful objections to this defence, partly by exposing how they overlook the systemic character of public discourse.