Dissertation
Better living through anger: religious women negotiating virtuous anger through community organizing
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Spring 2020
DOI: 10.17077/etd.005326
Abstract
Can anger be a virtuous emotion and yield virtuous action? US culture implicitly and explicitly constrains performances of anger, especially by women. This religious ethics study probes the possibility of virtuous anger in order to show that anger and its expressions can both be morally good. I conduct structured interviews and participant observations with three women community organizers of different religious and cultural backgrounds and examine their insights alongside Thomas Aquinas’s virtue ethics and philosophy of emotion as well as performance studies’ choreographic practices. The results reveal that multiple forms of anger exist, some of which are morally commendable, which challenges existing notions about the homogeneity and morality of anger. There is a form, which I call transformation-anger, that is rooted in love, characterized by hope and courage, and in relation to which people can feel well, choose well, and do well. Not only is a virtuous form of anger possible, it appears to be requisite in the pursuit of communal justice. Three movements collaborate in a deliberate cultivation of a virtuous habit of transformation-anger: interior movements of emotions of anger, intellective movements of deliberation and choice, and bodily movements and expressions. The organizers intentionally and informally work on their anger while they invite others to transform their own anger through a expertly nuanced social choreography, which they all enact in communities of accountability and mutual flourishing. The cultivation of justice-attuned anger transforms people’s other angers, transforms the people themselves, and increases potential for social transformation. Angry behaviors associated with transformation-anger include exposing for people the gap between who they say they want to be and how they behave, filtering out vicious angers, focusing chaotic angers on something beneficial, aiming toward realistic change on a structural level, connecting with others who share one’s concern, motivating action, and coordinating public actions that counteract harmful social systems on behalf of vulnerable populations. In a world where injustice hampers communal flourishing, people do well to cultivate transformation-anger in order to support their pursuit of justice.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Better living through anger: religious women negotiating virtuous anger through community organizing
- Creators
- Jan Rippentrop Schnell
- Contributors
- Diana Fritz Cates (Advisor)Hyaeweol Choi (Committee Member)Christopher-Rasheem McMillan (Committee Member)Kristy Nabhan-Warren (Committee Member)Jenna Supp-Montgomerie (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Religious Studies
- Date degree season
- Spring 2020
- DOI
- 10.17077/etd.005326
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- xiv, 279 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2020 Jan Rippentrop Schnell
- Language
- English
- Description illustrations
- color illustrations
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-279).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
This research brings together ethnographic inquiry, virtue ethics, philosophy of emotion, and choreographic theory to claim that people can experience anger well and do good through their anger. Studying women in particular, I find that, of the multiple forms of anger, cultivating what I call transformation-anger, which is grounded in love, hope, and courage, can productively enhance movement toward social justice by transforming the anger itself, the person experiencing anger, and social structures that cause anger when they limit communal human flourishing.
- Academic Unit
- Religious Studies
- Record Identifier
- 9983949496802771
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