How effective is historical resentment in protest movements & what happens if your history’s been wiped?

‘Anger, Resentment and the Limits of Historical Narratives in Protest Politics: The Case of Early Twentieth-Century Irish Women’s Intersectional Movements’ in Emotions: History, Culture, Society, online 13 July 2021. Or read in my publications page.

There is a complex relationship between historical narratives and the emotions of ideologies and social movements. Crucially, the nature of this relationship can be racialised, ethnicised, classed and gendered.

Political activists often cite historical precedents to produce emotion and affect designed to inspire participation in the cause. They engage in an emotional practice, to use Monique Scheer’s concept, through working to elicit feelings to spur protest.

Moral battery

Often, activists consider that the most effective approach is to cultivate a combination of negative and positive emotions thereby creating tension which motivates or demands action. Sociologist James Jasper terms this double-edged strategy of invoking oppositional emotions as creating a ‘moral battery’.

For example, in early twentieth-century Ireland, anti-colonial nationalists drew on alternating historical narratives to variously inculcate feelings of anger and resentment or pride and hope.

Tactical history

Their choice of which narratives was tactical.

They were aware that sporadic events or acts could produce acute, intense short-term emotions, like an outburst of anger. Britain’s execution over 10 sickening days of the leaders of the failed but since romanticised 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin spurred widespread anger that rekindled Irish national feeling.

Birth of the Irish Republic By Walter Paget - Photo of original, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7494803

They were also aware that anger is exhausting and unsustainable in the long run.

To sustain a long-term campaign, long-term or ‘settled’ feelings of resentment were also needed. The repeated propagation of long narratives of oppression and injustice at the hands of the British could cause these. British administration during the catastrophic famines of the 1840s represent just one of these.

The scene at Skibbereen, west Cork, in 1847. From a series of illustrations by Cork artist James Mahony (1810–1879), commissioned by Illustrated London News 1847 - http://seanduke.com/2011/08/08/is-there-a-genetic-memory-of-the-irish-famine-the-holocaust/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24088245

Finally, hope, built on a sense of pride and righteous resentment that the Irish were a people whose ancient Gaelic culture (intellectual, creative, warriorhood) was equal to, if not superior than, that of the oppressor. The sheer injustice of the subjugated state of the Irish then provided the legitimation of the ideology – nationalism.

Different forms of resentment – forceful, righteous, helpless

If wielded by those with sufficient power and wilfulness, a ‘forceful’ form of resentment and pride can motivate a forceful behavioural response (in contrast to ‘helpless’ resentment which is linked to Nietzsche’s use of the French term ressentiment to encapsulate the meaninglessness, powerlessness and helplessness of those who feel frustration and hostility but have no ability to directly express this).

However, for tales of heroism and sacrifice, oppression and degradation, to be able to do the complex emotions work of protest movements, they need to have popular or cultural currency, complete with an emotional script.

That’s why the 1916 executions, the Great Famines of the 1840s (The Great Hunger/An Gorta Mór), and warrior legends such as those of Fionn mac Cumhaill or Cú Chulainn, could produce an effective emotional mix. They were readily known/recognisable and so could instantaneously elicit the desired/scripted feelings of anger, resentment, pride

"Setanta Slays the Hound of Culain", illustration by Stephen Reid from Eleanor Hull, The Boys' Cuchulain, 1904 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cuslayshound.jpg#/media/File:Cuslayshound.jpg

Ineffectiveness of stolen or silenced histories

But what happens when activists need specific historical narratives to suit their particular causes and these histories are not well known?

Or, if these histories are purposely silenced, omitted from the collective memory of a community or nation, or distorted to suit a dominant culture or authority?

How then can recollecting the past do the emotions work of protest?

Helpless resentment of feminists in postcolonial Ireland

Irish women fought on the side of anti-colonial nationalism.

However, when that war was partially won, they were written out of masculinised narratives of revolution and postcoloniality. Additionally, they became subjects of a postcolonial Irish Free State that turned notoriously anti-feminist.

In this article, I look at people like Irish feminist and republican activist Hanna Sheehy Skeffington who feared that the memory of revolutionary women would be ‘lost in old newspaper files or dusty museums’ or, even worse, would be used and abused by politicians for their own ends.

A portrait of Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, suffragette and Irish nationalist By Unknown (Life time: Subject: 1877 to 1946) - Original publication: UnknownImmediate source: https://www.storiesfrom1916.com/1916-easter-rising/hanna-sheehy-skeffington/, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59597184

She was right.

With women’s history erased, what narratives could Irish feminists harness to produce anger, indignation, pride and hope to build and sustain a postcolonial feminist movement?