Here Lies Bitterness

Cynthia Fleury is a philosopher and psychoanalyst who holds the Chair of Humanities and Health at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris.

“Fleury’s theorization of resentment is powerfully informed by philosophy, psychoanalysis, and political theory, and at the same time forges its own original and compelling account of self-destructive modes of existence. In this beautifully written meditation on resentment, Fleury opens up new ways of thinking about a subject’s capacity to become a trapped, incapacitated, and bitter victim of its own ruminations. The implications of this book are profound and manifold.”Claire Colebrook, Pennsylvania State University“In view of the political crises that spare no region of the world today, we can no longer ignore that democracy is mortal and very sick: too often we see the sacred right to vote turned against democratic values. It is essential to understand why, and what is to be done. That is why it is urgent to dive into this book’s luminous demonstration that the disease has a name – resentment – and to explore the philosophical and psychoanalytical paths toward healing that its author opens up.”Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Columbia University"an insightful and probing exploration"Philosophy and Society

• Part IBitterness: What the Man of Resentment Experiences1. Universal Bitterness                                            2. Individual and Society in the Face of Resentment: Rumbling and Rumination   3. The Definition and the Manifestations of Resentment                         4. The Inertia of Resentment and the Resentment-Fetish                       5. Resentment and Egalitarianism: The End of Discernment                        6. Melancholy in a State of Abundance                              7. What Scheler Could Teach to the Ethics of Care                               8. A Femininity of Resentment?                                           9. The False Self                                                   10. The Membrane                                                    11. The Necessary Confrontation                                    12. The Taste of Bitterness                                              13. Melancholic Literature                                         14. The Crowd of Missed Beings                                           15. The Faculty of Forgetting                                                 16. Expecting Something from the World                                   17. The Tragedy of the Thiasus                                           18. Great Health: Choosing the Open, Choosing the Numinous                     19. Continuing to Be Astonished by the World                             20. Happiness and Resentment                                       21. Defending the Strong Against the Weak                                     22. Pathologies of Resentment                                            23. Humanism or Misanthropy?                                       24. Fighting Resentment through Analysis                                      25. Giving Value Back to Time                                            26. In the Counter-Transference and the Analytic Cure                         27. To the Sources of Resentment, with MontaignePart IIFascism: The Psychological Sources of Collective Resentment                   1. Exile, Fascism, and Resentment: Adorno, 1                             2. Capitalism, Reification, and Resentment: Adorno, 2                       3. Knowledge and Resentment                                        4. Constellatory Writing and Stupor: Adorno, 3                                 5. The Insincerity of Some, the Cleverness of Others                       6. Fascism as Emotional Plague: Wilhelm Reich, 1                            7. The Fascism within Me: Wilhelm Reich, 2                               8. Historians’ Readings, Contemporary Psyches                             9. Life as Creation: The Open is Salvation                                    10. The HydraPart IIIThe Sea: A World Opened to Man                                           1. Disclosure, According to Fanon                                        2. The Universal at the Risk of the Impersonal                                 3. Caring for the Colonized                                              4. The Decolonization of Being                                           5. Restoring Creativity                                            6. The Therapy of Decolonization                                         7. A Detour By Way of Cioran                                       8. Fanon the Therapist                                                   9. The Recognition of Singularity                                        10. Individual Health and Democracy                                      11. The Violation of Language                                            12. Recourse to Hatred                                             13. The Mundus Inversus: Conspiracy and Resentment                         14. Toward an Enlargement of the Ego, 1                                  15. What Separation Means                                                16. Toward an Enlargement of the Ego, 2: Democracy as an Open Systemof Values                                                      17. The Man from Underground: Resisting the AbyssNotes