This is intended as a living document, as a way to get my thoughts in order, and should not be viewed as finished product. Basically I realized that I’d never post anything theoretical if I wanted it to be exactly how I wanted, so I decided to post something intentionally incomplete to open myself up to feedback. I’ll probably do more of these. I encourage debate and discussion on what I say here, and would love if this prompted some collaboration with friends. Originally published 6/26/20
I think it could be extremely generative to connect contemporary understandings of trauma as a physiological experience, and empirically-grounded treatments thereof, to Friedrich Nietzsche’s concepts of ressentiment and the bad conscience. For Nietzsche, these concepts refer to embodied experiences, and their description resonates with contemporary understandings of trauma. Trauma can sometimes stem from experiences of powerlessness and immobility during situations of pain and violation, and it is proven that one way to treat trauma is to approximate the traumatizing situation but this time act to defend oneself or to attack, wielding agency that was before inaccessible (cf. The Body Keeps the Score). I believe that this method of trauma therapy could be named revenge. Here, I am interested in connecting these methods of trauma treatments to anarchist, queer, feminist, and anti-colonial meditations on revenge as liberatory practice. To put it another way, I am interested in surveying the literature on these conflictual trauma therapy methods and investigating to what extent these therapeutic methods could be described as revenge, and conversely surveying radical literature about revenge and investigating the extent to which their descriptions of and advocations of revenge could be mobilized as trauma therapy. I am curious to see how comfortably this might sit with the mobilization of Nietzschean concepts, though there is clearly a precedent for using Nietzsche to talk about revenge in a positive light (cf. Hostis, Bonanno, “Deleuze, Active Nihilism, Revolt”).
One concern I have about using Nietzsche is that sometimes the way that he talks about “sickness” is sort of ableist, in the sense that he sometimes seems to imply that one can just voluntaristically refuse sickness, premised on one having an essentially healthy nature (for example, “I took myself in hand, I made myself healthy again: the condition for this (…) is that one be healthy at bottom.” Ecce Homo, “Why I am So Wise,” Aphorism 2, pg. 224 in my copy). While it is certainly important to emphasize the real agency that people can and do exercise in recovery and healing, essentializing people as inherently healthy or sick does no one any favors, in fact does the opposite of maximizing agency, and simply does not square with reality. However, there are plenty of other moments in Nietzsche that can be mobilized for non-ableist approaches to health and recovery, and it is likely that his ableism can be discarded as neatly as his misogyny.
Another concern I have is that this study of revenge as trauma therapy/trauma therapy as revenge definitely runs the risk of privileging spectacular, ultraviolent forms of action. It’s important to acknowledge that healing, from trauma or from other afflictions, is a whole holistic process, built more through routine and small steps than through rupturous events. I am curious if there is a way to extend the concept of revenge to events, moments, or processes that one might not usually associate with the word, or if this would stretch the concept so far as to reduce its usefulness. One area I have little knowledge but would probably be generative to look into on this question are alternative therapy practices (or alternatives to therapy) experimented in by the anti-psychiatry movement(s).
Themes, Sources:
Differentiating revenge from justice (important to this will be Alfredo Bonanno’s evolution in thought regarding revenge from “Armed Joy” to “I Know Who Killed Police Superintendant Luigi Calabrese”).
Material practices of revenge (Bash Back!, burning the 3rd Precinct, burning down Wendy’s. the bulk of this so far was brainstormed before the start of the George Floyd uprisings, but I would argue that many moments in the past month are powerful examples of revenge in action).
Revenge as trauma therapy? Trauma therapy as revenge? This quote from Jackie Wang’s “Against Innocence” is relevant here: “For Fanon, it is precisely the element of risk that makes militant action more urgent — liberation can only be won by risking one’s life. Militancy is not just tactically necessary — its dual objective is to transform people and “fundamentally alter” their being by emboldening them, removing their passivity and cleansing them of “the core of despair” crystallized in their bodies.” (emphasis mine) Need to read Frantz Fanon, clearly (if I recall correctly the bits Wang is quoting from above are from Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth).
With all of these, the role of guilt, ressentiment, the bad conscience…should maybe locate a good secondary source on Nietzsche to handle this effectively (Deleuze? well and of course Lucrezia’s “Deleuze, Active Nihilism, and Revolt” piece).