The Uses of Anger: Feminist and Anti-Racist Philosophies of Rage

Full Tuition: $300 — Scholarship options are available in the drop-down enrollment menu for you to self-select.

Instructor: Dahiya | Thursdays | August 24 - September 21 | 7:00 - 9:00 PM ET | ONLINE

What are the political uses of anger? How can we use our rage without annihilating ourselves? In her 1981 speech titled “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism,” Audre Lorde argued that anger and rage are the result of racism and sexism, but that anger is not futile. Instead, it is “loaded with information and energy.” In other words, by acknowledging our rage, we can take the first step in urgent battles against racism and sexism, as well as class exploitation and climate change. Frantz Fanon argues that an explosion of rage can open up the possibility for us to “experience self-knowledge and the reconstruction of ourselves.” It is also important to attend to the embodied facets of anger, since it can harm us and make us ill. How can we channel our rage in ways that don’t diminish the fullness of our experience?

We’ll begin by reading psychology, anthropology, and theory to explore the relationship between anger, rage, emotion, and affect. We will then study how it is not our anger that is the “problem,” but rather the systems of oppression and hatred aimed at our destruction. We will spend five weeks naming the sources of our anger and imagining a feminist, anti-colonial, and anti-racist rechanneling of anger and rage into what Susan Stryker calls “the basis of self-affirmation, intellectual inquiry, moral agency, and political action.” In addition to Lorde, Fanon, and Stryker, thinkers will include bell hooks, Lester C. Olson, Brittney Cooper, Sarah Ahmed, and Myisha Cherry.

Classes are recorded to allow for students to participate asynchronously. If you want to take a class but cannot make the class time, sign up for the asynchronous audit option to follow along on your own. Recordings are password protected and will only be available for the duration of the class and two weeks after it ends.

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