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9th Conference European Sociological Association
Lisbona, 2-5 settembre 2009
Internet and the plot of resentment
Guido Di Fraia
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to present some of the provisional results emerging from research
work on the theme of resentment carried out by Dr Risi and myself at the Iulm University of
Milan. The theoretical conceptual coordinates of our remarks may be encapsulated as a
constructionist epistemology which does not consider emotions as phenomena circumscribed to the
individual and closed within the mind, but as phenomena which, whilst having a neuronphysiological root in the bios, are largely relational issues. Interior responses to experiences that
have been lived, emotions are generated in situational contexts that are largely social, starting out
from interpretative processes that can be activated only internally and by way of symbolic devices
and of meanings that are determined culturally and socially. Being communicative acts and
actions, they represent the externalised part of interpersonal relations (Mead ) through which daily
life and social reality incessantly produce and reproduce themselves, playing a decisive role in
social dynamics (this is, at least, the second premise for our remarks).
Setting out from these considerations, the purpose of our work research program is to explore the
heuristic potential of resentment regarding a series of processes and social dynamics which
characterise late modernity. More particularly, using an analytical perspective that ideally refers to
the “political economy of emotions” as desired by Dezin, and considering resentment as a
decidedly social emotional experience (a sentiment more than an emotion), the generation of
which is inevitable in any human grouping, we attempt to give certain embryonic answers with our
work to the following questions. In what way have the structural changes that have accompanied
the transition to late modernity had an impact on the processes of the generation and the individual
and social elaboration of resentment? Is it possible to recognise in resentment the emotional motor
on which certain reproductive mechanisms of contemporary western society are based, defined by
some (Lipovetsky) as a society of hyper consumption, and thus also the origin of some of the “sad
passions” (depressive experiences, chronic dissatisfaction, sense of confusion and inadequacy,
weak planning ability, etc.)? At a more specific level, what macro-economic role may be attributed
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to online communications and relations in processes of production, elaboration and possible
„sublimation‟ of resentment? In order to tackle these points synthetically, this paper has been
divided into three parts. The first outlines the phenomenological and structural characteristics of
resentment, specifying its distinctive tracts compared to other neighbouring states of being such as
envy and jealousy. The second focuses on certain recently developed hypotheses regarding the
relationship between resentment and late modernity. The third presents the first results of empirical
research currently underway by our work group on the way in which the forms of community and
social life that are present on the web contribute to social processes for the elaboration of
resentment.
Part 1
As with envy and jealousy, with which it is often associated and confused, resentment is a complex
and unmentionable state of being, subject to processes of individual and collective removal that
constitute its very nature
Karstic, that is tending to come to light in a discontinuous and unforeseeable way, its presence
alone has been the object of analysis. Brought to light in its macro-social and cultural
consequences by Nietszche and Scheler, many decades later it became the centre of attention anew
in Girard‟s mimetic theory of desire, only to disappear again until recent years, when renewed
interest in the theme has arisen in sociological, anthropological, psychological and juridical fields
(Tomellieri, 2009; Tomellieri, 200?? Kancyper, 2002; Ansart, 2002). It is difficult to resist the
impulse to see in this theoretical discontinuity not only the selective, non-accumulative overview
typical of human sciences, but also to recognise the effect of the features that make up resentment
itself, and the removal mechanisms alluded to above. Resentment, being that “impotent violence”
concealed in the desire for revenge which poisons the spirit, constitutes part of the negative side
that individuals, cultures and institutions tend to hide away, denying its existence, and so
relegating it to an unconscious which one cannot liberate oneself of, and with which, sooner or
later, one has to come to terms. Every society in every period has worked out symbolic-narrative
systems (myth, religion, ideology, etc.) and rites with which to represent, legitimate and give a
shared sense to its own architecture of power, and to hide away the violence of the negative side at
the base of society itself, through which inequality of power and possession, injustice, suffering,
abuse of power, violence and death are produced.
To question oneself about resentment from a perspective which is not reductively intrapsychic
(concerning the “resented personality” ……) but rather contextual and cultural means to seek to
cast some light into the meanders of the collective unconscious. It means looking oneself in the eye
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in an attempt to understand something of that obscure violence that stirs and moves us from deep
within, both as human beings and as a collective group.
Resentment is an experience of feeling that is extremely complex and protean and that insinuates
itself from below into that which is visible and sayable. When it comes to light, and it rarely does
so in a direct way, it manifests itself above all through episodes of a violence that is “excessive”
when compared to the conditions and dynamics that are objectively in play (this demonstrating a
surplus that has unexpectedly found release). For most of the time, and in the majority of cases, the
repressed, controlled energy behind individual and collective resentment follows winding,
transverse paths, taking on shapes which, however relevant for interpersonal and social dynamics,
are prevalently symptoms, difficult to recognise and to decipher. Already Darwin, when talking
about rancour in his treatise on human emotions (rancour is here, forcing things a little, taken to be
a synonym of „resentment‟), affirmed that it could not be directly recognised, given that it was not
accompanied by any specific behavioural or expressive pattern on the part of the subject, and could
thus only be presumed from contextual elements (Bonfigli etc. p. 191??)
From a philological point of view, the inescapable reference for any discussion of resentment, with
the meaning of resentment, is undoubtedly represented by the Nietszche-Schelerian model.
Outlined by Nietszche in the Genealogy of Morality, this model has the undoubted merit of
identifying in resentment a theoretical concept which is extraordinarily effective in any attempt to
describe the socio-cultural and symbolic processes that have brought modernity into being
(Deleuze, 1962). Using an approach in which the socio-anthropological reconstruction of the
development of such a sentiment within the Judaeo-Christian religion is carried out at a level of
abstraction which doubtless gives a simplificatory outcome, Nietzsche defines resentment as an
“impotent hatred”, a desire for revenge which, given the impossibility of its finding relief in any
action capable of having any true effect on reality, ends up by poisoning the spirit of he who
resents, and polluting his thought processes in a tendentious way. An abstract and dichotomic
anthropology is among the basic features of the model that divides social – or better human –
reality into two typologies, Masters and Servants. Endowed with desires and an autonomous will,
and possessing the force necessary to exercise an active capacity for dominion over the outside
world, the Masters are founders of noble morality, immune “by nature” to any resentment. Such
resentment represents, however, the inevitable outcome of the existence of the Servant who,
lacking autonomy of thought and his own free will, is destined to obey but, at the same time, also
to nurture resentful feelings within himself. Given the impossibility to act with its repressed rage,
the Servant populace will channel this same energy into a reactive force capable of acting at a
symbolic level until subverting the principles on which the dominant moral of the Master is based.
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The historical result of such a process of overturning values is to be seen, according to Nietszche,
in the affirmation of Judaeo-Christian morals, made incarnate in the principle “Blessed are the
poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. From this viewpoint resentment is therefore
mechanistically attributed to a certain typology of humanity whose interior exasperation is
imagined by Nietszche as a force that, although reactive, should be capable of triggering cultural
processes of great breadth, such as those that have led to the formation of the morals of modernity.
Whilst paying greater attention to historico-social dynamics, Scheler substantially picks up on the
Nietszchian model only to reach differing conclusions. He too holds that resentment is the product
of modern egalitarianism, or better of the modern contradiction between egalitarian thought and
the permanence of social inequality, with regard to which individuals find themselves helpless to
react, either from a collective or individual point of view. The result of the subversion of values
produced by the sense of impotence felt by large masses of individuals would be, however, not
Christian religion but bourgeois morality impregnated with humanitarianism and philanthropy. In
both their differences and their convergences (Meltzer, Musolf, 2002), what is interesting to note is
that both writers attribute to resentment a crucial role in the processes that created modernity, and
in the historical transformations between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Tomellieri, 2009,
p. 25).
In more recent years this kind of feeling has been the subject of studies in the sociological,
psychological and socio-psychological fields, based on empirical work which, distancing itself
from the philosophical concept of resentment (as a feature belonging only to a certain,
constitutionally weak class of humanity), has allowed decidedly more specific and analytical
definitions of this sentiment (often conceptualised as „rancour‟) to be reached, along with its
phenomenological and experiential characteristics
Resentment is literally a “re-feeling” of a negative emotion already felt before, from which one
cannot liberate oneself. Not by chance the term „rancour‟ (which, although forcing things a little,
we may take as a synonym of resentment for the ends of our discussion) derives etymologically
from the concept of „rancid‟, referring to something that has kept badly (in this case an emotion).
This thing has deteriorated and risks infecting its surroundings and polluting the spirit of whatever
nourishes it. From the point of view of dynamics, it is proceeding forwards with one‟s gaze fixed
behind, fixed on the negative event undergone which one was not capable of opposing and from
the outcome of which one is still suffering.
Subject A has suffered (or believes he has suffered) wrong from subject B, a wrong to which he
did not know how to, or could not, offer resistance. This episode or situation that continues
through time becomes rooted in the memory of the subject in the form of a recurring thought
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which has a negative effect on his development at an emotional, cognitive and behavioural level.
The „re-feeling‟ of the injustice suffered without being able to overcome the „trauma‟ produces a
pathetic, resentful, cross-eyed look in he who resents. In one sense, in fact, his gaze remains turned
backwards, fixed on the humiliation experienced, whilst in another this potentially malefic gaze is
projected towards an unforeseeable future painted in the colours of revenge and vendetta. With any
progress blocked by this double check from the feelings, imprisoned in an emotional cage of his
own construction, he who resents sees the production of his own thoughts and planning weighed
down and confused by this pondering on what he should have or could have done - but did not - to
avoid suffering that which he suffered, and by the fantasies of what he will do one day in order to
obtain justice.
From a narrative point of view, resentment is an aborted story, Whilst the prototypic formula for
all stories foresees a protagonist who, acting within a certain context and using certain instruments,
seeks to follow certain objectives, overcoming all that gets in his way, with resentment it is the
formula itself that stalls, given the incapacity of the protagonist to meet the expectations on him.
The sense of inadequacy that psychology recognises as one of the experiences most closely
associated with resentment springs from this, as does its unmentionable nature. To declare oneself
resentful (or envious) means, in fact, admitting one‟s own weakness, openly declaring that one is
not up to it.
Resentment, however, has also to do with feelings of justice and with the perception of inequality
intervening within social, moral or ethical order. The resentful subject, in fact, often lives the
injustice suffered as fruit of an action which, beyond harming him or placing him at a
disadvantage, represents an abuse of power and so a transgression of some universal reference
value. Accepted this way, it is evident that resentment may represent a positive force capable of
contributing to the moralisation of society and history by keeping alive memories of, and
condemning, abuses of power that have come about. (Améry, 1987; Risari, 2002).
At a level yet more abstract and general, resentment is a triadic socio-relational situation in which
the following actors are found. A “victim” A, a valued object or state O, and a third entity B (not
necessarily a human being), recognised by the subject as to be blamed for his own lack of success
in reaching the valued object. It is also possible to recognise a social reference group outside the
triad, from whom the values in play originate and under whose judgemental gaze the dynamics that
give rise to the resentment are produced.
The fault of B may be the result of his deliberate action, more or less violent in damaging A (an
attack, an obstacle), but also the lack of any intervention by B on behalf of A (lack of support), or
indeed the result of total indifference on the part of B regarding A and his desires (indifference). It
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is clear that the role of B may be played by any „agent‟ whatever (human beings, but also groups,
organisations, institutions, etc.). Such an agent must be equipped with power (this being
understood as the capacity that can condition the possibilities that A may reach his goal) and must
be imputable of a “not innocent” fortuitousness regarding the episode at the origin of the
resentment. Equally evident is that it is not necessary that B is truly responsible for the humiliation
suffered by A when trying to reach his goal, but it is sufficient that A is convinced that this is so. A
crucial aspect to consider in order to differentiate resentment from other similar emotional states is
that the game played at the table of resentment is a lop-sided one (given that by definition B is
more powerful than A, being able to impede the latter in his attempt to reach his goal), and not a
zero sum game. This means that the wrong suffered by A because of B is not necessarily
transformed into an advantage for the latter. The promotion that the boss offers to a colleague, and
which A perceives as an injustice to him, causes B no advantage.
To define the formal structure of resentment in such a detailed way should allow us to see more
clearly its outline, and thus make us better able to distinguish it from envy and jealousy, with
which it tends to be confused and overlain, as much in individual and social experiences as in
theoretical treatment. Envy too, in fact, is a feeling with a triangular structure (A the envious, B the
envied, O the valued object). The difference, subtle at the level of dynamics but substantial at a
conceptual level, is that whilst in the case of resentment the valued object is available “on the
market” and A may legitimately hope to obtain it (or keep it), and assert his rights in that sense, in
the case of envy it is the recognised property of B, and the envious cannot stake any valid claim to,
or legitimate hope of, it. That underlying envy is, at least at a first phenomenological level, not a
sum-zero game. It is not a given fact that the popularity or the sports car possessed by B, and
object of envy by A, may not be possessed by the latter one day1. Beyond this, on the motivational
level the purpose of resentment is that of gaining revenge for the wrong suffered and obtaining
justice, whilst the objective of the envious is rather that of reducing the inequality between himself
and the envied by the use of strategies that devalue his person or his possessions to the point of
being able to destroy them (if it can‟t be mine then it mustn‟t be anybody‟s). It is true, however,
that envy and resentment often find themselves united in a single emotional experience that is
produced when A interprets the possession of a valued object by B as an injustice towards himself
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Things are in reality more complex, although it is not possible to go into them here. If, from the level of the infinite
objects of value that may arouse resentment or envy, we pass to the more abstract one of aims that orient subjective
behaviour with relation to certain macro-ordinators that are common to all individuals (such as that of the need to have
a good perception of oneself – the need for self-esteem, the need to generate positive impressions in others – the need
for adoption, etc.), we may discover that in reality also envy may take on the form of a zero-sum game. The envious
gaze concerning, for example, the beauty of B may in fact derive from the overriding need of A to “be better” than B, or
at least “not to be inferior” to B in the eyes of the reference group to which they both belong (and not the specific object
of contention). These aims may evidently only be met to the detriment of B. (cfr. Castelfranchi…??)
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(why him and not me?). This is an injustice for which B himself, or other external bodies (often
abstract and illusory, like fortune, destiny, the system, etc.), are held responsible. A promotion
which A believes he deserves and which is instead given to B triggers at the same time feelings of
envy (towards B) and of resentment (towards B or towards, for example, a system where who you
know counts more than what you know). We intend to call “envious resentment” that which has its
origins in competition for a valued object in B‟s possession so as to distinguish it from that which
is triggered by situations in which the responsibility for the wrong that A blames B for has nothing
to do with the ownership of possessions by B.
Part 3
Although all emotions have a relational and social nature, resentment, as with envy or jealousy, are
states of feeling that are decidedly social in that they have their sole generative source in the
relationship with another. The group of sentiments to which resentment belongs may be considered
“comparative”, given that they are produced by way of affective-cognitive processes that are
connected with the comparison that the subject carries out between his own condition and that of
others, in relation to the possession of resources, attributes, qualities, status, fortune and so on. The
distinctly social nature of this bunch of sentiments induces one to make hypotheses as much
regarding their adaptive function with regard to the evolution of the species as their social
functions connected with the unequal distribution of resources within human groups (families,
social classes, communities, etc.). It is also a characteristic that suggests the impossibility of
imagining human formations freed from resentment or envy. Where two or more human beings
live in the same social space, subterranean themes of rancour and envy will be lodged in a more or
less intense and self-aware manner.
Aware of the potentially splintering, negative energy of resentment and of envy which human
cohabitation inevitably produces, cultures have always worked out symbolic devices, ritual
practices and institutions aimed at giving voice to, interpreting, channelling and containing such
dark forces. These have been devices, practices and institutions that evolved alongside the
evolution of the economic and political structures and the historical social forms of human society
(Elias, 1988).
In archaic, rural societies, for example, characterised by scant resources, reduced social complexity
and direct interpersonal relationships, resentment and envy were perceived as ever-present forces
that dominated relational and social dynamics (…..speaking of institutionalised resentment),
Characterised by symbolic interpretative universes centred on magic and superstition, these
societies linked the majority of negative experiences that struck individuals or the community to
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the malefic energy produced by the envy and resentment of other components of the group. To
explain any inauspicious event (from sickness to a bad harvest, to poor fortune during the hunt,
etc.) it was brought into a narrative where a person‟s luck and material well-being would have
triggered the envy and resentment of others whose evil looks (sometimes channelled into precise
magic practices) would be translated into malign influences capable of bringing disgrace to
whoever had dared to be or to have more than others.
Underlying this type of thought there is evidently a vision of the social world regulated by a zero
sum distributive “economic” dynamic (typical of societies dominated by shortages), where the
total quantity of any asset whatever (material possessions or good fortune) was imagined to be
finite (and limited), and consequently each individual acquisition (of goods, health, power,
happiness, etc.) was held to be possible only at another‟s expense (Foster). To contain the resentful
rivalry and to repel the danger contained in the malign energy of the resentful or envious look,
these same subsistence societies laid down a series of ritual and behavioural practices, some of
which survived in rural areas of Italy until a few generations ago, or have remained encapsulated
as survivals in customs that still live on. Just to give some examples, one might think of the rules
of good manners that advise that one should not boast of good fortune or display one‟s good luck,
to dress one‟s children a little less well than one could, to conceal pregnancy as late as possible and
to talk about it in a modest way as though it were a misfortune, or, again, not to make compliments
and praise the luck or possessions of others exceptionally, this being open to interpretation as an
expression of envious tendencies (263).
At a more general level, the persecutional and depressive elaborations represent two different and
particularly effective, “transcultural” forms for the curbing and social dislocation of resentment
(Alberoni). Through the former type of elaboration, the identification of an enemy internal or
external to the group to whom to assign the blame for every ill (individual or collective) allows the
negative energy and aggressive resentment of individuals to be diverted, whilst at the same time
consolidating the ties of belonging and sense of identification that each member has with the
group. The process of victimising a scapegoat, as described by Girard at the base of archaic
societies, the ideological justification of the majority of wars that have devastated the history of
humanity and accompanied the development of national states (Tomellieri), indeed, the growing
wave of rancorous and violent intolerance towards immigrants in many western countries, their
being blamed as the cause of violence, social insecurity and the lack of work (Barman….) – all of
these are examples of the persecutional forms of social elaboration of resentment. The depressive
mechanism, probably more “modern” in that it is possible only within the vision of a world which
recognises the capacity of self-determination in a subject, is a mechanism through which the
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subject is induced to take upon himself the blame for his complete negative condition, even when
it has social and structural origins. The current widespread diffusion of depressive forms in
complex societies is probably linked to this, as is the search for personal solutions to the systemic
dysfunctions described by Beck (
).
Emotional experiences and the motivational energy connected with the perception of social
inequalities and with the awareness that the abuses of which one has been victim are structural in
origin, and also strike other individuals with whom one shares certain characteristics, certainly
play a role in the processes of class pretensions and collective movements (Coser, Runciman, etc.).
Although there are few specific studies on the role played by the emotions (micro dimensions) on
the processes of collective mobilisation (macro dimensions), it is our belief that the interpretative
viewpoint for this type of phenomenon should be placed exactly at the meeting point of affective
and cognitive dimensions on the one hand and socio-structural ones on the other (Alberoni, ).
As noted above, Nietszche and Scheler identified the social control strategies and symbolic
dislocation of resentment that came into being in the transition to modernity as having an active,
structural role with regard to the evolution of social forms of cohabitation. Thus as far as
resentment may be an impotent sentiment, potentially negative in that it is associated with a desire
for revenge that may easily take on the form of vendetta, the mechanisms of containment and
sublimation that society activates to contain it may give rise to processes which valorise the
system. According to some (Tomellieri), the realisation of systems of social protection and the
patriotism of modern national states have been results of this mechanism.
It therefore appears both legitimate and inevitable to ask from a macro social point of view what
the relations are that late modernity has woven with individual and collective resentment. What, in
other words, are the effects that the socio-economic structures and concrete forms of life in
advanced western societies have with regard to the subjective probability of living experiences that
potentially generate resentment? And what, on the other hand, are the symbolic and social control
mechanisms of this sentiment? In brief synthesis, our hypothesis, which picks up on and articulates
some recent work on the subject (Tomellieri, …. ), is that the subject of late modernity, living in a
cultural symbolic universe which transmits to him a conviction that everyone is free, and may with
equal legitimacy aspire to a boundless self-realisation, free to express his own desires with regard
to the infinite possibilities that the market offers, is constantly at risk of seeing his expectations
(often unrealistic) disappointed. As such, more than in any other historical era, he ends up being
potentially subject to the insidious growth of feelings of resentment. In other words, it seems to us
that the situation in which the late modern subject finds himself is in some ways intrinsically
destined for resentment, in that it tends to set formal liberty, which recognises the equal legitimacy
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of desire for everyone, against the growing economic-structural inequality of effective possibilities
for satisfying desire, condemning in this way the great majority of subjects to a lack of satisfaction
and a resentful desire of revenge which, though remaining latent, can find no peace (Tommellieri
12).
What should surprise us, in other words, is not so much that there is latent resentment beneath
human relationships, but rather how it is possible that contemporary society can survive without
breaking apart under the centrifugal thrust of the resentment brought about by the frequent
frustration of desire that is produced by the incapacity of the system itself to maintain the infinite
promises of well-being, self-realisation and happiness that it tends to generate within individuals.
To outline at least the fundamental structure of the argument in favour of this hypothesis, we may
recall some of the most characteristic features of late modernity, limiting ourselves to their simple
enunciation, which seem to us to have a role regarding the dynamics underlying the generation of
experiential situations that risk causing resentment,
Amongst these we may recall hyper-individualism (lipo) which, by taking to extremes the process
of emancipating of the subject from the bounds of belonging (religious, traditional, class), gives to
the individual total responsibility for his own destiny and thus for his possible failure. The subject,
discovering himself perforce to be free to forge his own destiny, ends up discovering ever more
often from direct experience the impossibility of reaching those objectives (of work, earnings,
consumerism, etc.) that he had set himself, pressed by a highly competitive context and a cultural
symbolic system that lauds the total satisfaction of desire. The very ideology of rampant
competition and attention to performance, faced with reward mechanisms that are but rarely based
on merit and personal capacity (Sennet), not infrequently winds up leaving dysphoric emotional
trails, envious of “those who made it” and resentful for the injustices held to have been meted out.
Running parallel to this, economic development in a global context accentuates the differences and
social inequalities (at a global level and within each individual country) between an ever-more
restricted number of the super rich and the group of the poorer, towards which the crisis of the last
few months has pushed a significant number of the middle classes, even in more advanced
countries.
On the other hand, the crisis of welfare systems that has accompanied the consolidation of
modernity has meant a notable reduction in the number of mechanisms of social protection and
attenuation of hardship, weakening the social shock absorbers (for resentment).
All of this has come about whilst, in recent generations, the consumer society that had become
consolidated between the end of the war and the close of the „70s took a significant leap forward to
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reach what Lipovetsky defined as “phase III” of the system, and thus from mass consumption to
individual hyper-consumption. This phase has further legitimised the processes of acquisition and
the satisfaction of desire, moreover diffusing the right to luxury, to the superfluous, to high quality
brands and to goods and situations of post-materialist consumption. This consumption is marked
by a rampant cult of hedonism and by a further privatisation of life and an accentuated acquisition
of autonomy by the individual with regard to collective institutions. (Consumption processes
certainly represent one of the mechanisms, probably the most important, for the social sublimation
of resentment that were brought to light by Gans, amongst others, following on from the Giradian
mimetic theory which, however, cannot be entered into here for reasons of space (to continue).
Finally, the abandonment of the pyramidical company model typical of modernity (Sennet),
capable of accompanying and containing in an almost total way the life experiences of employees
and guaranteeing their future, the diffusion of flexible work, processes of delocalisation, the lack
of efficient mechanisms for the retraining and placement of unemployed workers, the scant linkage
between scholastic-formative courses and work openings, and the ever greater areas of more or
less institutionalised, underpaid, precarious work which, particularly in Italy, involve a relevant
percentage of intellectual workers – all these are mechanisms that certainly tend to diffuse a
generalised climate of uncertainty and a fear for the future, as has been widely theorised and
discussed (CITA).
However, these also constitute further objective conditions in which painful and frustrating life
experiences to come about, lived as unjust (with regard to one‟s merits, one‟s behaviour, one‟s
aspirations) and of which the subject may feel himself victim. It may be difficult or impossible to
react against these situations, perhaps because of the impossibility of identifying one who is truly
to blame and against whom aggression may be directed (impersonal decision-making bodies,
supranational and globalised as are, for example, the boards of multinational companies), or those
strong institutions through which to channel any possible protest (the crisis of the representational
system and a lack of faith in politics and unions), and of symbolic systems and a more general
culture of protest (the decline of revolutionary ideology) , and thus they become situations that are
structurally “perfect” for the generation of resentment.
If it is accepted that the synthesis given above lists some of the socio-structural phenomena typical
of late modernity that may be held to be potential generators of resentment, the identification of the
mechanisms of control and of symbolic and social elaboration of the suffering generated by this
state of feeling seems more complex. Also in this case we shall propose certain relevant
hypotheses in a very brief manner.
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It seems to us that a first structural mechanism may be identified in the amply thematized
fragmentation of experience and the subjectivity typical of late modernity….
Part 4
If that which has been all too briefly recalled may therefore represent the theoretical conceptual
universe within which our research work takes place, let us now look, in brief, at the empirical
work that Risi (Risi, 2008) and I have been carrying out, the main aim of which has been to
understand the role played by online communication and emotional exchange within social
networks on the processes of elaboration of individual and collective resentment
It is our belief, in fact, that the web, and more particularly certain of its social “environments”,
may be conceptualised as a socio-technological structure that, connecting individuals, ends up by
generating a system whose “emergence” is represented not only by that collective intelligence
which has been widely discussed in recent years – beginning from what we might call a model of
cognitive derivation – but also, if not overridingly, by an emotional network that enfolds and
connects individuals with their own selves and with others. As has been shown by the recent
transition to web2.0, over and above a content and “data” from logical discourse, it is relationships
and therefore emotions, affection, mood and individual experiences that travel through the web.
These seek to be shared by others, as do collective experiences that may become individual. It is
our belief that a “web emotionology”, a study of the processes by which such a technologicalrelationship structure allows emotional states to be rendered objective, elaborated and shared,
would allow a better understanding to be reached both of the success gained by certain of its
environments and usages (we are obviously thinking of “phenomena” such as Facebook, Twitter.
etc.) and the individual, relational and social processes of generation, sharing, elaboration and
dissipation of emotions.
The importance of online communication in the relational processes of sharing and exhibiting
emotions and the self to the other, and of the related functions in the practice of elaborating the
identity, has already been the focus of recent empirical work (Di Fraia, 2007), whilst the value of
the social sharing of emotions, and the role of this activity in mechanisms for attenuating
subjective emotional suffering and in the reinforcement of social ties, is known from and supported
by evidence from research (Rimè, 2005).
Beginning from these premises, the research has been carried out through a reading and
qualitative/quantitative analysis of the contents of the posts (around 700) present in 10 blogs, 5
discussion forums and 10 social networks created and/or visited by net users who have in common
the fact of belonging to the category of workers with precarious job tenure. The choice of this
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typology of subject was evidently suggested by the fact that if, as noted above, it is true that job
placement represents one of the principal assets around which the process of identity construction,
and more generally the concrete life experience of the subject revolves, it is also true that exactly
in this field the accelerated evolution of the labour market and globalisation processes have had the
greatest impact on broad population groups within advanced countries. Precarious work, in
particular, constitutes a working model that is certainly functional within current economicproductive logic, but it is also a work experience of which the “victims” are often the young and
well-educated, who find themselves often having to accept conditions of work that penalise their
formation and are intrinsically incapable of offering them any guarantee with respect to the future,
as well as (and this is what interests us most) being almost always far removed from their
expectations and hopes. These are the “ideal” structural conditions for the formation of resentment.
Using a narrative type of analytical approach (Bruner 1990; …..Di Fraia, 2004), the interpretative
work has been carried out reconstructing the content and textual form used in recounting things
and oneself on the web, with the aim of gathering the following from within this communicative
and narrative material, spontaneously produced by subjects in posts entrusted to the web;
more or less evident traces of resentment, both as explicitly expressed and shared
content, and also as the “unspoken” that may be inferred from the enunciative form and
contents of the stories told;
the prototypical stories underlying the events narrated, and the correspondence (or lack
of correspondence) of the elements that make these up with what studies suggest would
be the elements that constitute the experience of resentment (both at a behavioural and
emotional level), as briefly given above;
the functions attributed by the subjects monitored to relational processes of sharing
their own negative experiential situation and related emotional states;
the more general role that such environments for sharing emotions may play in the
performance of processes of “recognition” and of becoming aware of the structural
origins of one‟s situation of discomfort, potentially at the basis of actions of collective
mobilisation (focussing resentment on a common objective), rather than of the
dissipation or sublimation of resentment.
From the initial results of ongoing analysis of the collected material, it seems possible to affirm the
following. The narrative, communicative and dialogue contents present in the body of texts that
has been analysed, taken from blogs and social networks of those with precarious work, contain a
large number of stories whose narrative dynamic and explicitly expressed emotional tonality allow
them to be classified as true stories of resentment. These in fact trace out the path of “injustices
13
suffered” in the working world, characterised by asymmetrical relationships between the
narrator/subject (generally protagonist of the story) and some external entity – which is rarely a
person but generally a collective or abstract entity – equipped with powers which, by acting or not
acting, prevents the subject from reaching his aims and constrains him to a situation of frustrating
dissatisfaction. (Examples of prototypes of collected stories include – “the precarious worker
deluded for years by the possibility of a permanent contract”, “the victim of mobbing threatened
with the sack if he or she does not do “unpleasant” jobs or work during holidays”, “someone
unemployed for years feels unease at having to account to people for a situation that he or she
never sought for but had to undergo, often unpleasantly”)
The continuation of such situations through time, a structural dimension of precarious work, tends
to make the sense of impotence and inadequacy that the subject feels become chronic, a feeling
that heavily punishes his or her self-esteem and damages the possibility of planning and
undertaking alternative paths. “The unemployed man or woman of over XX feels humiliated
because
he
finds
himself
in
a
situation
of
inferiority
as
compared
to
others”
(nonholeta.blog.tiscali.it); “The precarious worker feels that he too is considered a mummy‟s boy
as he can‟t afford to take out a mortgage, to plan for a holiday or to have children”
(anagrafeprecari). This reduced ability to plan ahead is often accompanied by a looking back to the
past, as is typical of those caught up in the web of resentment, which appears in many of the stories
examined. (“The fifty year old unemployed manager recounted how he thought back on his entire
working life, looking for the mistakes that didn‟t seem to him to justify his situation in any way”.
“The precarious worker has not thought about the future for many years because he cannot find
relief there for his anxiety and frustration, but thinks of the choices he made in the formation he
underwent” (http://www.argonauti.it/forum/).
Within these same accounts it is also possible to recognise, sometimes put into words in an
exemplary manner, the action both of the persecutory mechanism “here it is full of Egyptians with
families who nick your work from you” (anagrafeprecari) and of the depressive one that attributes
blame and elaborates resentment - “I felt myself to be at fault and began to doubt my abilities in
everything” (http://tuttosulmobbing.blogspot.com); “I‟m desperate, pissed off, depressed (…) I‟ve
had panic attacks, wept, called myself stupid. I asked myself how I could have made such a choice
(http://www.benessere.com/forum/); “I‟ve suffered depression because of discontent at work,
precarious work for almost 11 years” (anagrafeprecari).
At a verbal level, resentment is very rarely cited as a state of feeling rooted in the stories of
precarious work to share with others. Probably undergoing the effects of a social process of
removal which has already emerged in preceding empirical observations made by ourselves and
14
others (???), resentment is in fact evoked through the group of emotions that accompany it, in
particular by anger, bitterness, shame, and those other dysphoric emotions that derive from the
sense of impotence towards an experience that has been lived through, amongst which are fear,
insecurity, anguish, solitude and so on – “I am, however, definitely pissed off, very pissed off”;
“bitterness, every morning when I see the cars of people going to work”; “there‟s always fear, right
from the first change, but it turns into anguish after 50 … the principal hardship is the solitude of
being different”.
At a more abstract level, an attempt by way of analysis has been made to map the “functions” of
the stories entrusted by precarious workers to the social environments of the web, and of the
related socio-relational dynamics. Principal among these functions seem, at the moment, to be
those which are prevalently of a communicative type: a) expression of one‟s discomfort in order
to try to give it form, making it objective in written practices (Di Fraia), and ease it by giving vent
to it on the web (“I don‟t know if I‟ll manage to explain how I feel: I have had an anger and a pain
inside me for years and it‟s truly difficult to find words to describe them (nonholeta.blg.tiscali.it);
b) display of one‟s condition of discomfort in a perspective of sharing and denouncing it (“I wish
this space would turn into a cry loud enough to reach the ears of those who are ignoring us”
nonholeta.blg.tiscali.it; “to make aware of, denounce or more simply to communicate”
generazione1000.blogspot.com; “the moment has come to expose the small and big daily problems
linked to this contractual typology!” anagrafeprecari.it).
To these may be added: c) the mnestic function of bearing witness and constructing a shared
memory (“the blog is not intended to be a debating area for this problem but only a notice board
where those who have lived through this situation can leave an account, a memory”
(nonholeta.blg.tiscali.it), d) the aggregative function: “the web isn‟t a solution, it‟s true, but at least
it‟s an “instrument” (…) that brings together, as much and more than any single group” “if the web
didn‟t exist we wouldn‟t be able to talk about our problems and be able to compare ourselves with
such a number. We know there are lots of us and we all have the same problems”
(generazione1000.blogspot.com). and finally, e) the propositional one, singing the praises of the
possibility of starting up collective mobilisation, either within or outside the web, in order to
reclaim one‟s own rights “let‟s send an e-mail to Damiano: don‟t be concerned about the increase
in pensionable age, think about young people”; “they‟re organising a strike and have started up a
blog to talk about the problem, stimulate attention and gather agreement and solidarity”; “it‟s the
case to get thousands of pissed off people out on the streets so as to make others aware of the
problem, make it visible, otherwise you just don‟t exist”; “strikes come and go, movements don‟t.
We need to start up some kind of national movement of precarious workers” (anagrafeprecari).
15
The capacity of communication within the social networks that allows processes of “recognition”
and awareness of a common condition on the basis of which to identify oneself with the other, and
to stimulate a sense of belonging to a social formation capable of having some effect on reality, is
decidedly more problematic: “the person who finds himself in this situation tends not to want to
recognise himself as being such. It‟s difficult for someone to say “I‟m unemployed””
(nonholeta.blogspot); “we precarious workers belong to the same category. Our limit is our
diversity, our intrinsic plurality. To be aware of this is the first step forward” (anagrafeprecari). At
the root of this difficulty there certainly lie some well known components structural and cultural in
character, amongst which are: the decline of ideologies capable of transferring individual stories
into shared macro-narrations; the crisis of faith in representative institutions in the political and
unionist world; the widespread individualist culture driving people toward the discovery of
individual solutions to systemic dysfunction, etc. It is reasonable to hypothesise that the
intermediary dimension of communication on the web acts on this difficulty of recognition and of
the construction of a sense of belonging, generating weak links and sharing situations at a distance
(….).
To conclude by briefly looking at other elements of the detailed results obtained up until now, it
seems to us that we may say that personal blogs and social networks centring on the condition of
precarious work represent virtual environments into which subjects tend to pour their own stories
and emotions, benefiting from the opportunity to “meet” that the web offers to spatially and
socially dispersed subjects (a structural condition of being in precarious work) who would
otherwise have been very unlikely to come into contact with each other in any other way. Within
these, resentment is frequently evoked and made a common theme by way of the expression of the
emotions that accompany it, and of the narrative plots that characterise it. Comparing and sharing
with others the discomfort and suffering produced from being in the condition of a precarious
worker stimulates the production of proposals for action that could come into being inside and
outside the web, in order to draw attention to the theme of precarious work and to bring on motions
to claim one‟s proper rights. As far as it has been possible to know by way of the observations we
have made up until now, these proposals remain inactivated in almost all cases, however,
individual voices which, although saying the same thing as the others, do not manage to come
together as a single voice and generate a project destined to produce a result. In this way they end
up taking on a ruminatory tone, that is just that of the process that creates resentment, in which the
subject who is incapable of, or prevented from, acting in order to assert his rights continues to
fantasise on the actions that he could (one day) carry out in order to have justice and see those
rights recognised. At a more general level, and in extreme synthesis, it seems to us that we may
16
therefore state that social networks and sharing environments on the web, giving rise to weak,
“expressive” communities and allowing emotions to be shared by way of processes of
objectivisation (mediated by writing and by the web itself), which end up by generating “distance”
between the subject itself and his own feelings, tend to play a prevalently expressive and
dissipatory role regarding resentment, facilitating the processes of rumination which characterise
its experiential structure. On the other hand, they seem less capable of constituting phenomena of
recognition, identification and delineation of common plans which are the precondition for the
activation of processes of collective mobilisation, and thus of the reinforcement and focussing of
resentment itself.
17
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